#its also so compelling. her nature. yknow?

[suncaptor]

Like I do think we push past how willing Feferi was to kill Eridan wayyyyy too fast too. Like. Ngl.

[vigilskeep]

wynne fascinates me partially bc we have no clue what she really like pre-possession, other than a single conversation, unlike anders. yknow there's a lot of reasons why wynne wanted out of the tower and to go with the warden but i wonder if it was also partially so no one in the circle would notice a personality change bc of the possession

no for real...

i’m building up some wynne characterisation thoughts in my mind but i think it’s really interesting in that she seems so closely aligned with her spirit, in comparison to anders and justice, who are foils in awakening? justice accuses anders of failing to live up to the virtue of justice, and anders is the one companion who will disapprove of helping justice when you first meet him unless persuaded. whereas wynne seems to exemplify faith, but then again it’s impossible to tell whether she was always like that or if she’s changed at all. it’s like trying to guess anders’ awakening personality if you’ve only played da2. he’s the same guy but also not. there is the difference that faith sought wynne out all her life whereas justice and anders came across each other essentially by happenstance, and in the mortal world where if justice was ever capable of “reading” mortals he doesn’t seem to be able to do it now

i’m really compelled by wynne’s spirit being faith; and she says that she thinks it is a spirit of faith, so that’s a conclusion she’s come to herself rather than it announcing itself. i find that compelling when wynne has such a complicated relationship with the chantry, says she is only religious “to some extent. it does not govern my life, however”, says alistair “got away from the chantry just in time” when he doesn’t judge her for having a child out of wedlock, and yet will fight and die against a warden who defiles the sacred ashes. of course, faith isn’t just religion. it’s also wynne’s sense of purpose, her confidence in sharing her advice, her value for ideals like that of the grey wardens. there’s a really complicated relationship with a virtue there, for it to be the one wynne assigned to the spirit that guarded her all her life

i wonder if with a spirit very in tune with her previous personality, and also by its nature confident and purposeful, it’s harder for even wynne to notice she’s changed

[meatriarchived]

i cannot sleep for the life of me due to nausea, im running on maybe like. twenty solid minutes of the Essence of Sleep™ than any substantial sleep so. whatevers below may not make a lick of sense etc but imma just ramble until maybe my eyes kinda tucker out on me and whenever i become more human again ill revisit this so. possibly take it with a grain of salt

and also possible cw in the just case i ramble about anything like g.ore / injury / murder what have you. also nothing is meant to like. pigeonhole interactions into what this mess might have in it. i am simply wordvomiting at this point from lack of rest fingerguns

so when i think about the, what, i think they said roughly a month that maria's been missing? ( dont quote me pls but thats the estimated timeframe i have in my head so if its not then.... vague hand gestures ) with the implication that she's been captive so long, obviously comes with some thread-pulling on the usual M.O. of the family, which is typically yknow, kill quickly get the body taken care of so ideally no ones' missing their loved ones long enough to follow any trails. which, in that case, would mean that more than likely maria ( maybe others in the past ) were kept around as a plaything of sorts, a thing to toy with, to break.

and while i could see it being done so by johnny, for whatever his motive could possibly be to keep her alive for any prolonged period of time. frankly? i could more easily see her being kept alive for so long because of nancy. if maybe its just the womans' vitriolic nature that compels her to do so with a random victim from time to time, esp with her voicelines about some conjured up "attraction" regarding johnny on marias' part ( no ), its like. i could so easily see the woman being a big part of why they didn't kill her off as quickly - to teach her a lesson? to taunt her needlessly? to take out her sick anger on? who knows. but thats what im more inclined to at the moment when it comes to how i portray maria, esp in her Living aus.

its partly why ive got the itch in the back of my mind tho to possibly take on nancy when shes released ( i want to have more info on her esp before i decide to or not ). the woman just has so much venom in her and as much as it compels me to wanna hoist her up and throw her at a wall, shes like the hoyt of the game so far - theyre meant to be disgustingly cruel and vile and disturbing characters. but shes such a... nice foil in a sense to both luda and to maria.

like luda's not unfamiliar to killing, shes got blood on her hands in spite of her age, but shes not unnecessarily violent like nancy. luda harms or kills to get the job done - nancy has too much fun with it, she seems like she likes to take her time with people she fixates on and she seems as if she'd going out of her way to cause an abundance of unneeded harm to her victims. id argue that luda is respected in the family for her guidance and her role as matriarch, nancys' just lowkey straight-up feared to a degree because of how 0 - 10000 she can get. i can see them losing alot of potential food because she just...frankly goes way too far at times handling victims, that it makes the body mostly if not completely unusable to be butchered properly.

all that to say, yeah johnnys the one that herded maria to the family and sure i can see being why she wasn't killed immediately for likely just toying with her for a bit, tho with him i can feel the novelty of doing so could dwindle fairly quick; but i can see nancy being why shes still alive almost a month later, and in such rough shape yet still being kept alive ( in reference to her worse wounds being stitched up - if speaking with thomas in mind, he does enjoy sewing and will sew victims up if they arent ready or needing to be butchered right away so, could argue that he / bubba were told to do so by nancy to prolong maria's suffering. )

as for maria, in the aftermath of it all, its difficult to describe the types of injuries she definitely has because frankly when you consider the idea of her being alive for those weeks, her injuries must have been consistent and substantial, yknow? shes severely m.alnourished, severely dehydrated. physically shes a complete wreck and i truly think that until she saw ana and her friends? she'd gotten to the point of being shut down to it all and was simply waiting for death to take her in its arms ( which, i think if we think about nancy having a hand in keeping her so long, the lack of fight / reaction likely set her off in a different way than she's used to victims behaving and made her want to prolong marias life just to spite her ). like. at the end of it all, these people genuinely terrify and disgust and have t.raumatized her so badly, imagine being in her position for weeks.

maria's entire worldview and thoughts on people in general were so severely trampled on by this one singular family unit; she could never blindly trust people again, paranoia of being followed like she was, flinching from physical contact with people. she feels a shiver of fear when people smile broadly because she views it as having a sinister motive behind it. so much of her trust and willingness to see a shred of good in people by default just, shattered completely.

to note: i am still awake and my eyes are not tired yet and i am internally sobbing cause at this point im not going to get any sleep until later in the day cause i have errands to run in a couple hrs but im gonna cut this here dsfbjhkas

i'll end it here tho by noting that, should this make sense in terms of nancy by the time shes in game and all, then theres a good chance she'll ( unfortunately ) be added but also

in terms of the slightest sliver of a chance that, should one of the friends locate maria years after shes gone off to the pacific north west on her own and tell her about the plans to return to the house?

imma just be real and say maria may or may not wanna beat the ever-loving shit outta nancy if she somehow still has the audacity to be breathing- dsasdjk

[suite43]

So, starscream's Prophecy... got any thoughts on it?

OOOH okay this ones fun!

so i do have a few thoughts on this and theyre kind of disjointed so to help me think im gonna jenny nicholson this bitch and use a delightful numbered list.

the narrative explanation - so basically in-universe the dark cybertron prophecy is, eventually, revealed to be complete bullshit. shockwave made it up in a paradox-induced scheme and it was all, from the titan's announcement to the "you're the devil reincarnated", designed artificially to get starscream to do what shockwave wanted. this is boring!

why is it boring - mostly because it would have much more interesting implications if the "true meaning" for the prophecies was left more ambiguous. There's something really interesting about the sort of contradictory nature of the prophecies, because over the course of phase 2 Starscream is formally delivered 3 different declarations, and all of them both compound on and contradict each other. Starscream is the chosen one to raise Cybertron from darkness, Starscream is the harbinger of Cybertron's doom, and Starscream is the literal reincarnate of like, the actual devil. And every single time, she just kind of rolls with it, as do most other people. She says she doesn't buy it, but a lot of her behaviour and dialogue suggest otherwise, and by the time the third one comes around shes just kind of done pretending and basically is just like "yeah sure, sounds right". And i think that adds an interesting element to her character, especially with where we left her late phase 1, clinging to the matrix and the lie that it chose him. I think starscream has this particular sense of desperation mixed with insecurity mixed with delusion that makes him sort of need to feel important, and whether that means being the worst of the worst or being everybodies hero, she just kind of describes it as knowing he's cosmically important, and i think that can make a lot of the inconsistencies in his character sort of smooth out and create a more complete kind of person. 2.5 some things can just be magic - i also just think the need for everything to have an explanation or be tied up really is a weakness in barber's half of phase 2, its just really not compelling to be like these cool mystical elements and ancient prophecies actually didnt mean anything. it also imo just kind of stinks of edgy atheist ideology where all religion is bullshit - and while that works for the exrid parts focused on Optimus, Pyra, and others and the discussion of corruption in religious icons and what it means to have faith and where the line between religion and politics blurs, it kind of falls flat when you look at starscreams half, which focuses much more on introspective character growth and faith in other people and also has a main character who is a ghost soulbound to some other guy so like, why cant we just have scoop genuinely be into some weird religion that's just a weird religion? idk the shockwave paradox in general was rlly boring to me and robbed the story of any compelling or mystical elements it had.

religion continued - i think if starscream's prophecies had been allowed to just be weird ambiguous stuff that may or may not have been signs from god it couldve created a lot of interesting parallels both with optimus and with windblade, who's relationships to religious concepts were both central tenants of their phase 2 roles. especially consdiering starscrseam in phase 1 and her brief tenure as a matrix-bearer and the way she sort of clung to it as a sign that she was important, even if he said he didnt believe in it (the same way optimus does in phase 2), but starscream's parallels to them in this regard just kind of feel half-formed and not really explored in the way they couldve been. like, the ingredients are all there but its just not finished. its like one of those meal prep subscription box things, yknow?

the starbee one - ive talked at length before about how i think the ideas of starscream and bumblebees relationship to the concept of a saviour, a hero, and a sacrifice are really interesting to me - the contension of bee as a saviour-type who offers 2nd chances to badguys and kickstarts redemption arcs (in a weird sort of jesus parallel that was honestly way more apparent in bee than it was in optimus) whereas starscream is viewed both in-universe and on a metanarrative level as a corrupting force - his entire relationship to windblade for the first chunk of their interactions was him trying to pull her to his level, and as a figure in the prophecies starscream is usually viewed as a bad omen, antichrist or devil figure. i think these are all so interesting as concepts but in execution theyre kinda half-formed and again, spoiled by the shockwave paradox 4.5 - BUT that said the ending of unicron did a really fun twist with starscream in that regard and i liked watching her, on her own, decide that it was time to step away from the roles pushed on her and the lies he'd told to others & herself and actually be a hero, and sort of reclaim the "chosen one" thing and actually end up paralleling both bumblebee and opitmus in the noble sacrifice category - and i liked that we left with starscream in a neutral state, not widely loved but no longer deplored as he was around the start of the wb/taao series', and the whole ghost thing as a "rebirth" of sorts kind of ties in with that in an interesting way

tldr - i think it couldve been way better if it was left more ambigious, and i also tihnk it smells a lot of edgy ex-christian atheist worldbuilding while also being really really heavy handed in some of the xtianity parallels, but i like what they do for star as a person specifically in her reactions to and treatment of the prophecies.

[freunwol]

may i have some more phanlumi thoughts

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF hell yeah

- i mentioned that the post-opening up dynamique would be good but WHAT is that dynamic well i think phantoms ribbing would be less direct and more just...ribbing? thered still be some tension for a while cuz yeah phantoms naturally a cagey bitch but once theres an understanding of how the other works and that yes they can be honestly abt what they think of the other, theyd bounce off each other more naturally? lumis natural kindness would be more evident as well, since hes less frustrated by phantoms cageyness

- once they start dating? lumi wouldnt want it to be public at all but phantom would wanna be like LOL HEY LOOK AT MY BOYFRIEND I GOT ONE ISNT THAT FUCKING COOL

- in private? i think that phantom feels compelled to be flirtatious but lumi just. he either doesnt pick up on it or he doesnt give a single shit and phantoms like damn how do i show i have the gay for you

- again, theres still ribbing, but its just that- ribbing. if they have fights, theyre far less personal than...whatever the fuck happened in hom

- soft moments dont happen often cuz thats just who they are but they do happen...

- they manage to convince each other to go to a therapist lmao

- they look at the moon together on lumiere... i just think they would, i also think thats where phantom would wanna propose dlksjghlfskdjhgf

- either the heroes accidentally find out immediately or they dont find out until theyre invited to the wedding...the latter is super funny actually

- lania accidentally calls phantom her dad and he starts crying

- i also think lania is the one who helped lumi realize he actually had feelings for phantom and i think immediately after realizing he just sits there stunned for a while

- phantom meanwhile doesnt realize until hes like “why cant i stop fucking thinking about him today i havent seen him in half a month”

- idk if ive shared my headcanon that phantom is very hardcore flirtatious but he can barely take it back, i think lumi tries to flirt like once and it goes awfully but phantoms internally still really charmed Somehow

- obviously he makes fun of him but yknow

- lumi writes poetry abt phantom and phantom bursts into flames

- i actually have no clue who would confess... phantom seems like the obvious choice but i think lumi would wanna be straightforward...after planning it out for a week kfjghflsdkjhgk

- phantom takes lumi on like super lavish dates and lumi just invites him to his house and they have cookie dough ice cream

- i mustve mentioned that i hc that lumi has a sweet tooth? phantom figures this out and exploits the hell out of it

- so essentially phantom makes a lot of stereotypical romantic gestures at first and lumi isnt rlly having most of it but eventually it shifts into stuff lumi would actually really like and they have more fun

- on the other side, lumi doesnt think phantom actually wants romantic gestures in return but realizes he dies for that shit so despite being the Worst at romantics he tries his best and phantom once again bursts into flames

- i think they actually both dont like pda so they decide to keep it on the dl in every aspect aside from phantom wanting to announce that he has a bf

- once the heroes do find out they freak out like WHAT THE FUCK SINCE WHEN???????????

- since a while

ok that was a lot more than i thought uhhhhhhhhhhhyeah

[unproduciblesmackdown]

Why don’t you like Only Us?

lmao Only Us exasperates me on like several levels at once......

i mean there’s plenty of stuff in deh that i’m just like. “i don’t particularly feel the need to experience this again” like, naturally i care most about the jared and alana content, so already a song with neither of them in it is at a disadvantage with me, which is yeah most of the songs but that’s deh canon for you. my favorite parts are the non-hansen non-murphy characters!! epic for me

meanwhile from like a Story standpoint the writing for zoe and evan’s relationship is like, baffling lmao, and i think both Love Songs (if i could tell her & only us) exemplify how it is a mess.......like, why does “if i could tell her” Not tell us why evan likes zoe???? it’d be great if we could find out, since we already have found out he’s never talked to her. is it just that she Seems Nice. b/c like, sure, except that here we have a whole song to explain to us in greater detail why evan is so set on being in love with zoe and pinning all his hopes on her, but he just kind of lists off random surface-level stuff which doesn’t actually tell us anything either about her or, you know, Why Evan Likes Her? we’re just skipping to like, “oh see he Pays Attention, that proves he likes her” like okay whatever but WHY lmfao please......and yknow not to mention that this is all stuff that we can understand as both “something evan noticed about zoe b/c of crushing on her” and “something zoe might think was an observation coming from her brother” like.......bit underwhelming here, and really the most interesting Interaction zoe and evan have is where zoe says the wild shit about how evan is a Fool to want to be financially secure and evan is “rude” in response and she’s like yeah you don’t have to be polite all the time, and then this potential avenue of connection of them both feeling Obligated to Act Nice is pretty much just dropped and their relationship just becomes based on “you’re nice” again and like, is Nothing lmao.........why

and slam dunking on “if i could tell her” also there b/c Only Us is similar in that like, oh here’s the other Love Song but now it’s zoe’s turn to tell us why she likes evan!!!!! except she pointedly Does Not like *why* are either of you At All invested in this relationship lmaooo i s2g........like, just writing in “wow i like you so much” is not really compelling and like. i would be fine with this just being some nice, enjoyable high school dating experience where they Don’t really have any big reason to be together beyond “well, you’re pretty nice,” except there’s the problems that a) between So Much Time and focus being put into this Relationship, and zoe’s character pretty much becoming “evan’s nice gf” for all of act 2 and not much else about any other aspect of her experience, and the fact that the whole finale to resolve the show and its themes (?? what are those) and evan’s arc (?? what is that) is zoe Forgiving him and saying “Everyone Needed [what he did] For Something” like....did they??? did You???? did jared, did alana.........and also then telling us that she wishes she could’ve dated evan still if things had been normal like???? whyyyyyyyyyyyyy. and why would zoe feel the need to tell him this. seems 2 be justifying evan’s crush and pinning-of-hopes re: her, and by extension justifying this whole Relationship being given soooo much focus b/c even if there’s meant to be some Ambiguity in what we, the audience, might be intended to take away from it, like, clearly this relationship is justified as being Vital and the show treating it as such. which wouldn’t quite fit if it Was just like “oh shrug yeah i mean dating you was alright but nbd” like, it Must be meant to be some whole ~signficant connection~ between them. buuut there’s no actual sign of that lol. and the other problem is b) it also can’t just be a Fun, Casual High School Romance b/c at no point do they really seem to enjoy being together lmao or comfortable in each other’s presence. even their Joking Around for 2 seconds at the start of the “only us” scene feels to me more like nervous joking to cut the tension lmao...

like it does not count to have evan be like “i like zoe” and never actually give us reason why and have zoe take the other love song like “i like you also” but not tell us Why and expect us to like, just take a wild guess at the Supposed Depth of this relationship and what constitutes it or be at all invested. and i mean, evan’s holding zoe at arm’s length b/c there’s this inherent amount of lying he has to do constantly, and why would zoe be like “wow this relationship is great, i’m getting so much out of it” like, have they had conversations?? have they Enjoyed being in each other’s presence and like had genuine fun Being Themselves??? “only us” really does just feel like this cop out both in terms of Why zoe likes him and Why zoe feels like this relationship *isn’t* completely entangled with evan’s supposed relationship with connor. in that it explains neither, just has the character Say that is how she feels. like, we have ALL of evan’s interactions with zoe being dependent on connor, and the whole Initial love song is zoe paying attention b/c Supposedly evan is telling her stuff about what connor thought about her, and then zoe deciding she Does want to kiss evan actually is via disappear and ywbf and everyone’s reaction to evan’s speech supposedly about connor and her dad acquiescing to the fact he has emotions about his dead son thanks to everyone’s reaction to evan’s speech / tcp........like, this relationship is clearly contingent on stuff re: connor, and zoe apparently changing her mind and wanting to be with him is Because of everything re: connor, but then like, just b/c she says in Only Us that she Doesn’t want it all to be about connor doesn’t change all of that......like, yeah, it can be true that she wants this relationship to be separate from anything re: connor, but just having her Say That does nothing to convince me that oh yeah they have this whole Romance that really *is* separate from connor, like?? where??? we haven’t seen it. and when zoe says at the end that she wishes she could’ve dated evan minus [everything that actually happened], again: why!!!!! what *was* your Relationship-Minus-Connor. here it Supposedly is in “only us,” except that the tl;dr of it is just them insisting they totally have a relationship which involves Them and Nothing Else and i do not buy it just b/c they’re saying it??? i mean, for a start, they’re just Hypothesizing it. “what if it’s us & only us” etc etc “we could Try that” like, fuck around and find out, pretty literally i guess??? lmfaoo god.........

like, there’s some space between “hey maybe the Entire Solution to your being Anxious about this relationship isn’t a handy list of things i like about you” and “i shouldn’t tell you anything i like about you” like, sure there’s something that maybe works in like, why don’t you just Assume i like you instead of assuming i Don’t until Proven Otherwise, but again she can get that across And tell him (and like, more importantly, us the audience) why she likes him......and she can give some of those reasons why she likes him Without it being just a list of traits or things she’s noticed a la “if i could tell her” lmao like, describe him broadly!!! talk about One Nice Experience you shared!!!! we have noooo info about why evan likes zoe or why zoe likes evan. we just know that they’re Nice Teens (or teens who feel obligated to act nice all the time) and they are saying “I Like You” to each other. why does this relationship feel so necessary and Good to zoe even after she found out he was lying, and was she having such a great time beforehand??? you can find lots of nice boys you can kiss if that’s what you’re after, like, neither love song tells us Anything about why this particular relationship is so important and good or like, has any substance at all

and additionally you Know i’m your one-stop shop for Hot Takes About Any Number Of Concepts Re: Romance(tm) Which I Think Are Bullshit Slash Hate lmfao and one of those is tying whatever notion of the Ideal Romantic Relationship to that like, isolating the partners, like oh they’re your whole world now and the relationship’s defined by the fact that you don’t need about anybody or anything else and/or don’t care about anything/anyone else even nearly as much and wouldn’t it be Great if nothing else existed but you and your partner and this relationship........like sure it’s one thing for evan and zoe to be like “hey epic some Alone Time where larry isn’t trying to share metaphors about sports equipment” or whatever. but like, okay sure @ the start of things where the focus is more on like “hmm weird that everything about our relationship is so tied to connor, what if we just sort of say it’s starting for real Now unrelated to all that, even though we even have to talk about it to do so” but then you get towards the end and oh we also want the whole world to be irrelevant to us. and absolutely everything except each other / It Is Only Us(tm) like.........again sure if you look at this Immediate Moment where they wanna make out and fade to black, whatever. but this moment is also supposed to be this second start to the relationship, at least sorta reestablishing it, so natch it’s sort of like....about More than this particular moment. the zoevan brand ethos is This??? where your relationship is defined by like, needing or Wanting to be [just the two of you] like, well it can’t always be, so what are you gonna do about that?? and if your Best Times Together in that ideal state of isolation is like, hey now let’s make out, okay, again there are many decently nice people out there to kiss

and there sure seems to be Some awareness that this isn’t ideal thanks to how the immediate next scene is alana going like “um what the fuck, evan” and evan taking out the stress of Having Problems on jared...........aaaand yet i’m not so sure this is like, “oh, the Only Us brand of approach of just wanting and trying to ignore The Rest Of The World wasn’t so ideal after all” but rather just like. Wow How Tragic that they couldn’t truly keep the rest of the world at bay and now reality is intruding on their perfect relationship :( which would suuuure seem to fit with the mystifying sentiment zoe expresses in the finale of like, oh i wish i could’ve dated you Normally w/o [how the entire course of their relationship played out] like. oh Only Us really WAS ideal, that’s the epitome of / the Core of all the great parts of their relationship which was obviously great, and if only everything re: tcp and connor wasn’t the way that it was, they would’ve just been able to forget obligations w/o someone being like “the hell” and hold hands and kiss without people talking about it or anyone feeling bitterly rejected........like, idk, would they Really have dated if the entire plot hadn’t happened as it did??? evan was never talking to zoe, and we don’t know why he liked her so much in the first place, and apparently zoe’s perception of evan was “sort of a loser” like, okay. and when they Are together thanks to tcp-related stuff, we get no more information about why they might like each other. that one potentially engaging thread of “we both feel obligated to put on these fronts of Constant Niceness” existed for like 3 seconds and then they just start being constantly nice around each other, great lol. like again, this doesn’t seem so much of like “oh, these teens just having a chill time dating maybe have this simplistic / offbase ideas about relationships” as much as like the show justifies Only Us and all the sentiments therein.........like yeah wow if Only it could’ve been only them and the rest of the world could’ve stayed out of it!!! everything would’ve been perfect!! b/c we tell you so

not to mention all the like Official covers of Only Us which areout of the specific context in which it’s placed in the show, which sure only emphasizes like “hey these sentiments can be and should be taken straightforwardly” and i’m like, get tf away from me with this lmfao i am So uninterested. a romantic relationship should do the Opposite of shrink / restrict your world or suddenly make all other relationships less important, much less like, require those things, and also the nuclear family model is a scam pushed by capitalism to cut off people’s support networks / isolate them lmao But Really It Is, social isolation is Not romantic or anything else that is ever positive. and it’d be Whatever if it truly was applied to that very specific moment of “boy it sure is Only Us in this room, :eyes emoji:” buuut it’s not, and it’d be Whatever if evan and zoe’s relationship was Meant to be sort of a misguided mess all around lmao Or just more superficial and casually enjoyable than meant as anything ~deep and Real(tm)~ buuuut it is not........i think canon does sure allow for the fact that things are messy for sure but i think it also definitely wants you to think that like. oh this Relationship was truly great and things were all good in its Core (jk, what core), it’s just that tragically all those complications with connor / tcp got too in the way........yet it was so Essential and ultimately positive that this relationship happen for both of us...........like, whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy lmaoooooo @ deh WHAT are your themes, What are either of these character’s arcs meant to be!!!!!!! idk zoe and evan's relationship more felt bizarrely like these two teens were Settling for white picket fence ideals of “well you’re nice and i’m nice and we could kind of tensely continue to be nice indefinitely” like, do you guys even like each other that much, do you Know each other at all, do either of you truly Enjoy being in this relationship??? and then meanwhile you get all the bizarreness re: larry and cynthia’s relationship and how it doesn’t actually improve but uhhh they’re going on dates and they’re not divorced so hey, i’m sure that’s good, you definitely helped them through Mystery Reasons...........and idk it seems like the idea of the Journey that zoe takes is that like, oh it’s Bad that this nice girl has to be mad, somehow dating evan will fix that and she won’t be mad, since being mad can never be a good thing, and Not being mad is always an improvement. like, why is she this cool with evan in the finale. why does she want to tell him she (and everyone) Needed what happened and that she wishes she could date him. deh is of the Mystery genre actually, and so much of it remains unsolved

also Only Us just gets fairly boring like 3 listens in i think. like can we literally pick up the pace a little. up the tempo. get it over with faster. i don’t even know at this point b/c i just choose not to listen to it ever lmfao every time the deh twitter tries to tell me about a cover it’s transphobic b/c i hate it. but i’d put up with it if i didn’t hate the ideas in it meant as ~romance~ and if any of this was tempered by evan and zoe’s relationship being written better and/or Not trying to be wrangled as like, “This Is Good Actually even if some parts aren’t perfect, the point is that evan was right to pin all his hopes on zoe, who’s needed in this show to validate his existence in the finale” like. what is this. and again, capitalism is bad and the nuclear family is Not the base unit of society, and what’s the deal with deh being like “well, as long as larry and cynthia don’t get divorced, right???? we don’t need to know that their relationship actually improved and that cynthia’s at all happier / feels like she has more of an identity or that larry has more fundamental respect for cynthia or thinks he’s not Automatically / Always Right just b/c his life has been fine.....they’re going on dates and aren’t divorced so that’s their Improved Ending!!” like, what’s up with that, right. the relationships that matter are Familial ones and dating the nice girl who has a juxtaposable family, and the other relationships, i.e. with jared and with alana, can evaporate into the ether and maybe get damnatio memoriae’d for as much as their existence plays into the finale. disappear.mp3. i have absolutely zero motivation to experience Only Us again ever lmao and in fact i guess i have negative motivation b/c i Want to avoid it and will take active steps in the sense of like “oh i’m watching deh? let me just skip past all these parts i don’t need to see again, including only us” like. i’m good

tl;dr  it annoys me & i do not think it works from Any structural standpoint

[aglayalilich]

on some horror movies

a few months ago i got to see midsommar and though it didn’t quite do to me what hereditary did i thought it was a very compelling movie...shortly after, though, i was able to see the 2018 version of suspiria and wowwww did i feel some ways about that movie. i felt at the time that the two went very well together. so my friend invited me to see the director’s cut version of midsommar this weekend (still very interesting, though i felt the final cut was the right choice) and i decided i would also watch suspiria again and take notes on both. because i

wanted to articulate more why these movies work so well as a double feature for me, beyond ‘ah yeah there’s some girls dancing in it’ though certainly the role of dance and the climactic dance scenes are a part of it. there’s this structural similarity too in the final ritual acts. but like i was saying, it’s more than just a similar aesthetic. in fact the aesthetics are really in contrast, with suspiria’s bright red on desaturated colors versus midsommar’s blue and white on very lush, saturated backdrops. though they also do something similar with how color begins creeping into the character’s clothing in midsommar and of course many people have already talked about how the iconic red begins to creep into suspiria culminating at the end. really drastically different cinematography style also, midsommar is full of these long empty lingering shorts, all this wideness and slowness while suspiria is fast cuts, sudden zooms, races fromt he point of view of one character to the next. (sidenote: both have this GREAT visual language of mirrors, suspiria has the mirror room and dance studios and characters refracted a hundredfold, great for questions and multiplicity of identity. midsommar has a couple of really great scenes where one character is talking to another character but the second character is standing out of the shot and only visible in a mirror. ahhh so good. in general i wouldn’t say the effect of either movie is fear so much as disorientation--reflections, refractions, inversions. physical spaces impossible for the audience to navigate. images that the audience cannot arrange chronologically. i love it) anyway. this isn’t an essay so it is unstructured. i took about 10 pages of notes during my second viewing of midsommar and i can only understand about half of that because it was dark as fuck in the theater but i would like to at least ATTEMPT to give form to what i was feeling. comes down to 3 core similarities.

1. i read both of these movies as about abuse in communities that are supposed to be ‘safe.’ the community is a relief from trauma/abuse/horror of the outside world. there’s also a strong emphasis on the familial nature of this community. important to note that the community is genuine, it is not wholly a falsehood. it has a motivation beyond doing evil for evil’s sake, it may even believe the evil is necessary for the care of the community. this is a close and poignant topic for me, and i assume for other people as well, so it’s compelling to see it addressed in horror. it can be a great relief to see something as the subject of horror--that is an acknowledgement that it is horrific. a confirmation, an understanding, and sometimes through the resolution of the movie we can find stories that help us work through this.

2. both mostly focus on the horror of endurance rather than the horror of ending (death) which is a big thing for me in terms of my horror preferences. while i love some iconic monsters and killers ultimately the idea of ‘what if a fucked up thing killed you’ is just not actually that scary for me. what is scary for me is, yknow living in a state of unspeakable agony.

the olga scene in suspiria (you know the one) is a perfect example of this. every time you think that scene is about to be over it keeps going. and keeps going. the character is hurt but never killed, contorted impossibly, injured beyond the realm of what the human body should be able to endure but she is still alive. even when the scene finally comes to an end she is still alive! hard for me to articulate this scene if you haven’t seen it--i am very pleased and excitable about body horror and it was still rough for me purely because of how long it feels. in a sense this scene doesn’t even really end because much later during the climactic scene of the movie she is still fucking alive and has been in this state for the entire duration of the movie.

with midsommar it’s less of a body horror angle and more...dani living with all her pain and grief. but it’s done physically as well--being killed suddenly is not so horrible as being kept alive, the climactic horror is about a very prolonged, painful death. the dance scene doesn’t take it to suspiria levels but there is still a sense of the participants having no choice of when to stop, but simply must keep going in exhaustion until they cannot.

3. i really love how both of these films show pain (and other emotion) evoked through motions and breath. this one is harder to articulate. you know a lot of the time in a movie you will see an act of violence but it’s pretty...shallow, it’s just the image of violence, it has no weight to it. you don’t feel it. not so in these movies. it’s hard for me to articulate exactly how a piece of media goes about accomplishing this or not but often it makes the key distinction between things i think are just fine and things i really love.

these two have a really particular way of showing pain. in a very literal sense, there are incredible portrayals of bodies in physical pain. but there’s also dani’s raw screams of grief at the end of midsommar’s intro (and at other points throughout the film.) she is in too much pain to speak, all she can say is no, the leaked script describes it as ‘it’s so intense that it looks painful, dangerous even.’ on a slight digression i often feel  like i dont love ari aster the way a lot of people do but the thing i really truly do love and am awed by is the portrayal of this raw horrible grief pain in his films. it is so horrible it is very difficult for me to see and that is a little part of why i can never watch hereditary again. but anyway

sometimes pain robs us of thought and of language. (the movie knows this, the aforementioned prolonged painful death at the end of midsommar is one in which the character involved cannot move or speak). at a certain point it cannot be articulated through words. so these characters, the films themselves, articulate their pain (both physical and cosmic) through dreams, sighs, movement, screams.

sometimes pain seems too much for any one person to bear. this is when the movies come back around to the topic of community. both films emphasize the community as a body, made up of the individuals who serve as its cells or organs. when one part is hurt, the whole body feels the effects. more than that, the things too big for one human to possible feel are instead taken up by the community, felt by the larger body. volk is danced by one body, expressing the feeling not just of its creator but of the body. in midsommar we see the community take on in unison the feeling of one member, dancing or screaming as one (though i’ve seen different takes on whether this is to positive or negative result.) the body is formed and expresses itself through motion and breath, the dances, the sighs, the rhythmic exhalations which are all both precise and instinctive.

there is also something more i can’t say here about...not pain but the desire for someone to understand your pain, the desire for true connection.

i tried a few times to write about why this is a topic i fixate on but it didn’t feel right. to summarize ill just say that i struggle deeply with the ability to express pain.

now, on horror and the working-through of trauma...i said earlier that it is compelling to see these topics addressed in horror. horror is the main genre of any media that i enjoy and though i like other things, i don’t generally seek out anything that doesn’t have some inclination towards horror. this has always been the case but grew more true the more, uh, fucked up my life became, and i find it generally the best mechanism for thinking about (and not necessarily but sometimes coping with) grief and trauma and pain in all its forms. other people have written extensively about this, articulated it better than i could, there’s not really a need to get into it further than that.

but i’m thinking about one thing i’ve seen recently...(actually two things, firstly, some posts that seems to imply horror movies never tackled trauma before ari aster started directing which is just...quite a take, quite a take.) it was shots of ending scenes from a few horror movies, including hereditary and midsommar and also suspiria...i think the vvitch also and maybe also possession or something you know all the movies bitches with ptsd love (i’m bitches.) shots of the protagonist’s faces in the ending, a certain expression both rapturous and dissociated. there was something in the way i saw some people respond to this that made me think a lot...i think the idea that through great overwhelming trauma we can reach a point of ecstasy, or total transformation, is a very compelling story. it is something i have wished for often or even believed will happen--that there will be a certain point at which it really is too much and beyond that will be something different. some rapture that you will reach. not necessarily something positive but something that isn’t pain, that is beyond pain and horror. the idea of reaching divinity through great suffering is nothing new of course. but.

the true horror of endurance is that this is not going to happen. there is no point at which there will be absolution or ascension. the mirror does not shatter. it just keeps going. when you think this is the limit, it just keeps going.

the nice thing about movies is that they have a structure, and though they might leave you altered, they do end, the screen goes black. comfort of darkness, relief of endings. a sigh...

at least, that’s how i feel right now.

[pikeclaw]

001 risingdawn/duskfang or 002 for just duskfang?

will do!! 002!!

002 | give me a character and i will tell you…how i feel about this character

dude i LOVE duskfang!! i am mel’s hugest stan so it’s impossible for me not to but even outside of that she’s a wonderfully written and incredibly compelling character!! its fascinating to see how much she’s changed in all this time in fogclan, for better and for worse... her emotions and thoughts are also so cool to read, and i enjoy seeing her everytime she’s in roleplay

all the characters i ship romantically with this character

[flips through almost all of the young adults in fogclan] hm

no but for real, uhh... first of all, risingdawn, of course. but i’ll go into why exactly in a little later section-- 

pumpkinpelt!! i think that when they were friends, before the uhh.... leechclaw thing... that they were really cute and good for each other!! pumpkinpelt’s kind and excitable nature was a sweet contrast to duskfang’s more reserved one. i think he could help her grow and bring her out of her shell, but i don’t think he would push her too hard and make her uncomfortable! throwback to when things were cool... and i think that duskfang could offer a more mature and world wise perspective to pumpkinpelt’s world, and help him to grow into a more mature guy as well!! though i don’t think she’d want him to tamp down on his excitement, of course. i think they could grow a lot together!

i’ll go in depth with just these two BUT i must say that i think that duskfang is a really charismatic sort of character who has a sort of ~~~mystery~~~, with an underlying kindness and sincerity that a lot of characters would be drawn to! and her Shit with palestar could be relatable to a lot of other characters, who also have Shit with palestar, founding a common ground where a relationship could begin to grow..... i think she could end up with a lot of people in her age group depending on if and how they’re roleplayed together!

 duskfang, a pretty and very cool girl: [shows up] hey

 all of fogclan youth at once: oh on god????

non-romantic otp for this character

being basic and saying what everyone else is saying, which is Duskfang and Foxflame. because everyone is! right! Foxflame shows her an immense amount of no holds barred care that i don’t think she’s ever known before. it seems really unfamiliar to her to have someone care about her without her thinking that she’s expected to pay them back for their compassion or mercy somehow.... he’s just a dad! and she needs a dad. i like seeing them together i like seeing duskfang being taken care of thank u 

my unpopular opinion about this character

i wouldnt have expected this to be an unpopular opinion but it seems like it is?? but... i like risingdawn and duskfang together! as a couple, romantically, 

I think that a lot of people think that it would be nice for them to be able to grow beyond their pasts with each other by finding other people... and i agree that they should grow beyond their pasts, but i dont think they have to leave each other to do it!! bc. like. rising and dusk understand each other like no one else can. they’re both trying to cope with the same events, though from different perspectives... i think we’ve seen time and time again in rp that they don’t like, serve as reminders of the bad things in their pasts for each other. they both offer a sort of anchor to reality and safe place to each other. i think its kind of seen that duskfang was purposely used as a tool by risingdawn, but i dont think that at all! it just looks like they were both raised in someplace awful, and that they were shoved into roles that they didn’t even want and are left after the fact (after they escaped in such a horrible and traumatizing fashion, another pain they went through together) trying to break that unhealthy dynamic and create a relationship where they’re on equal ground with one another... and i think they’re doing it!! slowly but surely, we’re seeing that they’re growing apart from who they were before, into something, someones entirely new, and they didn’t have to leave each other to do it!! in fact, they helped each other to do it! yknow??

in conclusion. i think they are neat! ....cries abt them....

one thing i wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon

wish dippernose could talk to duskfang without dipper acting like a fucking ASSH-- /s

no but what i really want for duskfang... is recovery!! i want palestar OUT of her fuckin head, i want her to be able to see what she’s really worth and love and be loved by people who really adore her unconditionally. i want her to grow!! and she’s already on her way 

now if we could just get palestar out of the friggin picture--

my otp/a headcanon

ok technically this is a question from 001, but as for whos big spoon and little spoon for risingdusk, i think they switch! like naturally you’d assume that duskfang would be the big spoon bc she Big and rising Little, and i think they do sleep like that sometimes... but i also think that risingdawn would enjoy feeling big and protective in the way that being big spoon allows you to feel, and that duskfang deserves to be held. so they switch every other night. thank u. [bows] 

[homestucky]

ok ok this is like not anything new but still since i havent been on here i havent fully ranted about this yet. big long rant incoming

re the epilogue (spoilers etc)

ok. i have onl y read meat. but fucking? dirk? dirk? ok? dirk??

no.

i am aware of what happens in candy. i know he dies.

i also know in the version i read, in meat, he becomes his ultimate self, all versions of dirk. as many people have said, this includes AR, this includes bro, this includes even to some degree, LE. its an interesting idea ill give you that. but its also.... shitty and not backed enough by well, anything?

so heres my personal rant about the shitty things in Meat.

when i first finished it i couldnt help but think. was the dirk narrative even necessary? on the one hand it was meant to be the MAIN PLOT and it defined the narration etc, but.... it honestly didnt seem to have any importance. i know it was likely  a set up to imply future stuff like making the next sburb or whatever but like

who CARES? why on earth would that be interesting or important? maybe im crazy but like, the ‘b plot’ which was mostly about character relationships and jobs in earth c, was compelling and enjoyable. the narrative with john ‘not important and not the main character anymore’ egbert had details and conclusions ACTUALLY RELATING TO HOMESTUCK, THE COMIC I LIKE AND WANTED TO READ AN EPILOGUE FOR. it was tragic and frankly very upsetting! im not saying i liked it!! but the tragedy felt compelling and significant. 

i appreciate that dirk as narrator IS BIASED so him saying that these narratives are less important is inherently like. not to be trusted but. just. i cant help but feel like you could have cut the whole ‘main dirk reality affecting’ narrative OUT 

and that seems to me maybe like... not good? if such a central part of your narrative has almost no bearing on homestuck or anything anyone cares about?

but im sure there are other people who found it compelling and necessary. thats fair. cant relate but you do you. there are other issues. 

me saying that the dirk narrative felt weirdly isolated and insignificant sounds pretty weird given that it put jade into a coma, manipulated kanayas mind, effectively killed rose and destroyed rosemary right? WELL that brings me on to the next thing. people have noted that meat barely passes the bechdel test. and hey, sometimes things like that can just be a coincidence or unlucky. but the repeated erasure of the female characters minds, motives, identities and autonomy was????  a little too consistent to dismiss. like ok terezi was still her dope self in a lot of ways. jane kinda did some stuff (under dirks direction, and only shitty stuff but . whatever). 

(sidebar: ofc it doesnt make sense to talk about calliope and roxy in the context of the female characters in Meat but either way they were very in the background. like cool an all, and i always love roxy. and i respect they were mostly just minding their own businesses??? which is fair)

 i just. urgh. homestuck has such a genuinely good track record of giving female characters genuine motivations and powerful abilities etc. the fact that almost ALL the female characters involved were working for or manipulated by DIRK. DIRK of all people. is like... is this even based off the real comic? idgi????

roses loss of autonomy.... rose is such an important character. and she goes along with everything dirk says because dirk is suddenly all OP and ‘theyre basically the same person anyway’ like i get that there was some magic bullshit going on or whatever but at the end of the day rose was still written as weak and passive. dirk as strong and skilled and decisive. i get the undertones.. hes a prince of heart. a destroyer of souls, and identities. he messed with kanayas identity , destroyed roses, repeatedly ignored roxys and calliopes, and god i wont even get started on jake yet. but that doesnt make it satisfying to read. or even really feasible.

so theres a possibility im missing something. but im confused about WHY dirk is allowed this power. in the narrative its waved off as a kind of ‘i guess because im like a prince of heart or whatever and im just super good at managing identities and being a strong boy’ like ok if theres some implication somewhere that that is MEANT to be a bogus explanation id be interested to know because it sounds pretty goddamn bogus. why would this happen to dirk? why? literally? one reason? one that makes sense? because there arent any i can think of. why, in the new universe, would dirk, a prince of heart, manifest into a narrative controlling supergod. and fucking WHEN has dirk showed any actual capabilities in this area before?? he KINDA sucked at it in the game. dirks an idiot! hes smart and capable in like, some ways but. its like

why is dirk so powerful suddenly -> its because hes become super ultimate dirk -> ... ok why -> uh because like. hes just so naturally inclined towards being a great manipulator yknow..... canonically.... uhhhh

it just. canon dirk to epilogue dirk is the most ridiculous leap character wise, skill wise, arc wise, personality wise, with minimal reasonable explanation. 

which brings me on to the next thing. so i roasted dirk and said he wasnt strong enough to be able to manipulate things this well. well, obviously through some other means dirk HAS been afforded this power. but what about his personality? its obviously gonna be warped with self importance and knowing how things ‘have to be’. but hes heartless, cruel and hateful. in some ways it seems like canon dirk levels of ruthlessness, especially when it shows that he is actually doing something dumb and petty like his treatment of jake. that shows that he STILL has emotional connection to people as dirk. he also seems to care about some people, like dave and roxy, and cracks jokes and wants to have ‘fun’. this makes the ways in which hes so warped and cruel seem even worse. maybe on the one hand im giving dirk too much credit, everyone knows he has the potential to be a real bastard. but i dont think that was the trajectory he was on when we last saw him. and if this is truly due to him just.. becoming other versions of himself too including LE and bro and stuff..like. i dont see how it could have gotten that bad without say, roxy or dave noticing. 

‘oh they didnt notice because hes just so good at hiding’ why on earth would i believe that!! dave especially this is kinda insulting for. dave is shown to have an almost supernatural ability to detect danger. partially this might be timeline stuff, knight stuff, but also notably im sure his upbringing is involved too. he was trained to be hypervigilant. who was he trained to be hypervigilant for? bro. bros manipulation and traps. near the end of the epilogue we show that dave IS capable of detecting the mindfuckery thats happening. how would that not set off 1 million alarm bells? theres literally apparently a twisted dirk-bro mutant INSIDE HIS HEAD telling him what to do. i just. know that scene was played for comedy and romance but at the very least thats gotta like???? mess with u if ur traumatised? and thats like , why i think dave should have had an inkling abt what was going on!! this is exactly the thing he hates and fears and was traumatised by! and it just going under his nose n him not even knowing , and still pretty recently being all buddy buddy with dirk seems just stupid and infeasible to me. maybe this is me being naive or kind of a stretch but i just feel like daves danger instincts would have been kicking up a whole assed ruckus that whole time. 

also kind of unrelated but i associate sunglasses with strider style toxic masculinity and hiding things so like. ok transitioning or changing gender presentation is one thing but roxy apparently permanently wearing sunglasses makes me NERVOUS

and ill probably wrap up this mighty rant soon but i wanna also say jake was done so fucking dirty. i know he was like, meant to be, because for some reason god dirk just hated him? like ok petty much. but. urgh jake is such an interesting character with a lot of potential and while i appreciate that him being manipulated by someone who may reasonably have a problem with him may make him do stupid and embarrassing stuff, all the narrative seems to have taken a backward step in how hes represented. jake isnt stupid, dirk clearly knew this in canon and he maybe was the only one even including jake. and there was some acknowledgement of this near the beginning of the epilogue. but then for some reason it goes back on itself. everyone still thinks jake is just completely stupid, including the embittered superdirk. so yeah i guess hes upset with jake or whatever but. its still dissatisfying to be like oh yeah jake isnt stupid he actually has a complex set of motivations and potential etc BUT over the X number of yrs on earth c no one else has realised this yet?? hmm. then his narrative is just gonna end up with him being a total joke and essentially becomes as stupid and incompetent as his worst critics say he is. feasible given the mind control ? yeah. enjoyable to read or having any kind of satisfying bearing on anything? nope!

so anyway. i feel like any criticism i have could be argued back with ‘but oh it has to be this way’ or ‘mind control!!’ or ‘not everything has to be nice and happy !!’ but like. dude. there are flaws. many of them. and seeing characters just get shat on is never gonna be good writing. 

[swordatsunset]

Uhhhhh some complicated thoughts abt Cat and Gwendolyn

Yknow what I find so compelling and upsetting about their dynamic is, yes, that deep confusion and obliviousness Cat holds wrt to the nature of their relationship, that Gwendolyn is using him and relying UPON his ignorance and naivety and at the heart of it, his love for her. But also how the people around him take that dynamic at face value. People look at them and think he’s just a meek boy who lets himself get steamrolled by his charming powerful older sister, he’s on her side, and people operate upon that idea for such a long time. No one asks him, yaknow? They see a dynamic and slot it into place . And then Cat lights himself on fire in a desperate attempt to prove to himself and everyone that she ISNT bad. That she’s on HIS side, and not the other way. And he fails.

I often think about the ways that abuse is not just an act of the personal and intimate- the me and the you, even though abuse at its heart aims to make the world “the me and the you”- but the way others perceive it, perceive you. How will you know what happened if no one believes you, or if everyone has already written you off?

[kittensinsocks24]

Observations and facts on the Boss Baby netflix series from someone who painfully sat through 4 episodes last night with friends

The theme song is a discount Lonely Island-esque sounding rap which you are forcibly subjugated to every episode, which contains lines such as “boss boss boss baby boss boss” and “I run this house, I rule this crib”

Within the first episode it is canonically shown on the love-scale or whatever that people in this hellish Boss Baby universe people apparently only love their spouses a little more than a bird, with dogs, cats, and babies ranking supremely over, yknow, your life partner in that order

Boss Baby’s never-before-mentioned-or-introduced superior has the eyes of a L’oreal model and extremely plush kylie jenner lips. you cant stop staring at them even though the grotesqueness of his design compels your better nature to look away 

The rigging on everyone is understandable lower quality which is to be expected but it genuinely feels at times like you’ve been strapped down and forced to watch a loop of a dancing baby ecard from 2012 somebody sent you out of pure spite

The rendering also being lowered in combination with the aforementioned rigging results in it often times feeling like you’re watching a sick pantomime of a boss baby chapter book by several people with decently recreated Boss Baby VRChat models: it looks close enough to boss baby, but something indescribable within the very thread of the production feels uncanny and wrong 

I have no idea who hired some of these voice replacements and its been legit ages since we ironically streamed the movie but even I can tell that the girl baby and the mom legit sound nothing like they should 

Diet Dr. Perfect (TM) replacement Alec Baldwin sounds like an amateur changeling fae spirit’s first test by its superiors to try and replicate somebody, in this case alec baldwin, but yet it feels so devoid of warmth, charm or charisma it instantly sets off your fight or flight response 

The boss baby film was an obvious dark herald of evil changes to come in the animation industry and wholly unnecessary but it was ultimately harmless for children and had a soft warm charm to it with both the aesthetic and tone. This, however, has taken a complete tone shift and feels cold and angry. Legit, nearly every episode has some sort of spiteful takeaway or jokes at the expense of real life groups, Boss Baby himself is both much crueler to his coworkers and family and violent overall with lines like a giddy delivery of “Beat it like it owes you money!” and being shown on-screen to knock a man out forcibly over the head twice, and everyone else in-universe just seem much more vindictive and cold than in the film 

Speaking of which it legit feels like one of those anonymous baby boomers who writes in to the paper to complain about millenials and society wrote some of these episodes. Nobody ever shuts up about the free market, couples who decide kids aren’t for them are both portrayed in a doofy idiotic light and in-universe are the secondary antagonists because lord forbid anybody in this country abstain from parenthood for their own personal reasons, and that “Oh I’m sorry, I didn’t realize your brother was a.... liberal” joke comes after the main character suggests to boss baby that a particularly tantrum-prone child isn’t inherently worthless and is perhaps misunderstood, suggesting by-proxy that showing mercy and basic human decency for others is weak and somehow for liberals only i guess?????????

every cat model in this show looks like a littlest pet shop figurine

The main boy is either 2 times the height of boss baby or three times the height and it varies wildly. For example, the boy is roughly 3 babies high in a normal situation, but during one episode where they’re in the vents, and a baby takes up roughly half the vent height, he is shown not crouching or even crawling standing fully upright normally in the vents and is now only about 2 babies high. I dont know how you go that off model with, yknow, pre-rendered 3D models. 

who fuckin knows what decade this is set in anymore 

The whole thing about the first boss baby movie was that if you joined a family you didn’t get any more magic Youth Milk (TM) or whatever and couldn’t work for the company. Boss Baby joins the family yet not only is he still working for some reason but the kids he was working with in the first movie which were more or less implied to just be normal infants he was aligned with for the mission but not direct employees of the baby company (as they all had parents and lacked the hyper-intelligence of boss baby) are now retconned to all be working with him, I guess, which just raises questions again about how the system works when supposedly if you have a family you can’t work for the baby company because the two are (were?) mutually exclusive 

the lady who voices hollyhock from bojack horseman makes her debut in this as a character eloquently nicknamed Vent Baby who’s homeless and continually staples her shirt to her desk so she can lean her chair back and not fall over.

That’s all I got. 

[zevons]

what are your favorite EVERRRRR football fics?

The first thing I did when I saw this in my inbox was zip over to my handy dandy excel doc of fics I like and filter for football rpf.

WOW, okay self. So I scrolled through and opened up the ones I remembered particularly adoring, trying to be selective and

…alright then.

So what you see here is a list, painstakingly teased out and compiled and highly angsted over! There are so many excellent fics out there, goddamn. These are the ones that I return to over and over, and I also tried to get a good cross-section of some of my favourite pairings, because honestly I have 43 gerlonso fics alone to choose from and wanted to get a wider selection. (Also hey, my excellent followers! Please add what fics I’ve forgotten/whack me over the head with a newspaper for leaving out your faves.)

As Far As You and Me Go - distira: Pep Guardiola/José MourinhoFULL DISCLOSURE: I AM SO WEAK FOR THIS ~NARRATIVE IT IS EMBARRASSING. It’s so trope-y it could have been scripted for television. And this is, imo, the best fic out there for them, and a brilliant read besides. Even if you’re not into the pairing I can’t recommend it enough, as by nature of the ship it’s sort of the opposite of a getting-together story. (Also Sharon refused to read it for ages and ages bc ew, Mou, but I broke her down and she agreed it was good SO THERE.) The slow collapse of their relationship, the underlying nastiness on both sides, the scheming, conniving…this is the perfect example of ‘like a trainwreck; it’s terrible but you cannot look away’. You just have to keep on reading in a sort of fascinated horror as they go about carving their way through to their various victories, and at the end it’s impossible to be sure that they’ve even lost anything of value. If someone asked me to explain José Mourinho to them, I would probably give them Jonathan Wilson’s excellent article in the actual, real life Guardian, and this fic. SERIOUS BUSINESS. 

Being Young and Famous is Not a Consolation Prize - synaesthetical: Thomas MüllerA lot of these fics are Spain/England-based, but do not be fooled. On my deathbed, when my family is gathered around my withered corpse, weeping as I slowly fade from this life, one of my favoured great-grandchildren will ask, ‘Sabina, did you lead a happy life? What was your finest moment?’ And I will gaze up at the ceiling through my cataracts and say, smiling with true joy, ‘Yes, my life was fulfilled. Germany won the World Cup in 2014.’ AND THEN I WILL DIE. This particular fic is not about 2014, it is about 2010, but the point stands. If you love Germany NT, or feel, y’know, not hatred towards them, then please read it because it captures so wonderfully the tone of that tournament and that squad. Old enough to know better, but young enough to have a second chance when the time comes. This is one of those fics that I think really exemplifies not only a good story, but a good piece of football writing as well. That World Cup feeling, deliriously, dangerously happy, and at the same time how deadly serious this is. How deadly serious football is. It’s light, lovely writing, and it hits hard. 

eDisharmony - ascience: Benedikt Höwedes/Mats HummelsI’m not even going to pretend like this fic doesn’t hold the massive cool award of being the fic that inspired me to get back into writing. I gotta love myself, yknow! It’d been five-ish years since I’d written any fic of substance (I think I only posted about 4,000 words in total in that time) and then wham, I read this fic, fell entirely in love, and decided to jump on the train. And just so you know I’m not entirely biased, I reread it like a week ago and yes, it’s still hilarious, 10/10 would restart my fic career again. The dialogue and the pacing bounce along so gleefully in this story, you really have to be eating popcorn while reading. There’s a wonderfully joyful irreverence and so many shenanigans. Sooo many shenanigans. The style of the humour is also just infectious. It’s fun, there’s no better way to say it. This is a fun fic. It also has the added pleasure of reminding me just why I love/hate forums. Ohhh forums. Bring back forums! I’ve lurked on ONTD-F too long to ever properly participate and r/soccer is full of manchildren. 

Filling Up the Space - luxover: Xabi Alonso/Steven GerrardThis isn’t exactly what you would think of as ‘traditional’ gerlonso (and forreal, it’s such an Institution by this point that it’s practically spawned its own subgenres. That’s when you know a pairing has really made it.) and so it’s always stuck out to me. It’s mean, in a way that this pairing usually isn’t, and I find it absolutely fascinating. I also love this Steven; a bit harsher, a bit harder, a bit more destructive than usually shows up in fic. I mention it later down this list in a different rec but fic!Stevie has a tendency to become a bit soppy, and this is a man who would kill for his club, grim but determined. This is a divorce fic, more or less, and the way that it pulls all the threads apart to show why they were woven together in the first place is…I don’t want to say chilling, because that makes it sound like a horror story or something, but it definitely gives you pause. Idk, I just really appreciate it. (By the way it does have a happy ending, if a lack thereof would have turned you off. On the other hand, if you’ve been jaded to gerlonso and are just sick to the teeth of them, this might be the thing to draw you back in! Incredibly compelling read.)

Good Timing - Ferritin4: Xabi Alonso/Steven GerrardI couldn’t even tell you how many times I’ve read this fic. I love future fic, love love looove it, and this is possiblymaybedefinitely my favourite of the genre. Xabi is managing Real Madrid and Stevie is a pundit and it is glorious. Their voices are so perfectly written, it’s the kind of fic where I have to set aside twice as long to read it as I usually would, because I inevitably end up reading and rereading almost every line, just to really savour the dialogue and the pacing. And the pining! Oh, the pining. Stevie and Xabi are so perfectly characterised, and in such generous characters. That’s really the only way I can think to describe them. Generous. The fic is warm and funny, and so comfortable. You can really tell that they’ve been friends for decades, and how deeply important that friendship has been to both of them. Also did I mention the pining? Oh god, the pining. It is delicious. 

look back in anger - neyvenger: Jamie Carragher/Gary NevilleIf you like rivalshipping and you haven’t read any Carraville fics, WHAT ARE YOU EVEN DOING. I don’t care if you’re only vaguely, guiltily fond of Liverpool and still haven’t forgiven Manchester United for doing All That Winning in the most formative years of your footballing life, filling you with the kind of simmering rage that probably won’t go away until you die. (What, talking from experience? Nah m8, this is a hypothetical. Haha. Hah. sigh) I don’t care!! It’s a great pairing that managed to escape the boundaries of being a crack ship and has somehow strayed dangerously close to being the best ship in the business! And if you like Carraville and haven’t read this fic, THEN I HAVE NOTHING TO SAY TO YOU UNTIL YOU SIT YOURSELF DOWN AND READ IT. There’s time-travel! There’s enemies-to-friends-to-enemies-to-friends! Bb!Carra putting in tackles! At one point David Beckham is described as having “the air of a lazy cat”, which made my deep and enduring crush on said David Beckham cry out for mercy. THIS FIC HAS EVERYTHING.

Sandbox - scheherazade: Michael Ballack/Alexi LalasDo you like nonsense? Do you like obnoxious Americans? Do you like obnoxious Germans? How about a lot of insufferability on both sides, a whole lot of pigtail pulling, and people being Wrong in football analysis? Then this pairing is for you! Micha was my first football crush and I will forever thank whoever decided that he would make a good analysis partner for Alexi Lalas. There’s something so great about that footage from 2012, whenever Alexi says something and you can actually witness the incredulity in Michael’s face as he prepares to utterly and irrefutably shoot down whatever ridiculous statement he’s just heard. God bless! I just love these confrontational ships. They deserve a mountain of fic but with ones as good as this, I’m satisfied. They dance the line between dickiness and idiocy with such delight, you almost find yourself rooting against them because they probably don’t deserve it, even if good-hearted golden retriever Taylor Twellman is pulling for those crazy kids. This is a funny fic, and they’re such a wonderful odd couple, but if you’re like me and are consistently being emotionally tortured by the 2006 World Cup/Euro 2008/Michael Ballack’s general life and career, then you will also appreciate the underlying disappointment of a man behind a desk when he just wants to be out on the grass. 

Supertyp - imkerin: Pep Guardiola/Philipp LahmLAUGHS WILDLY INTO THE VOID OHHHH MY GOD this fic exposed me for the wreck of human being that I am, because I seriously seriously did not mean to ship this beyond like, a thought experiment, and then this fic happened and I was forced to come to terms with the fact that wow, I am All About This. Pep and Philipp’s mutual appreciation society finds its beginnings, Pep is exploratory, Philipp is cautious, José Mourinho is a ruinous individual who knows just when and where to twist the knife, I am fired into the sun by the United Nations for being entirely not okay. I was vaguely keeping it together until this fic. And so naturally, I reread it like, every other week. Every word is perfectly placed and every exchange is shoot to kill. The characters in this fic don’t do anything out of the ordinary for their jobs, but you get the sense that if they were in politics or poisons they would be frightening. 

they were a long hallway - madanach: Bastian Schweinsteiger/Lukas PodolskiTen years for this shit, man. Schweinski is one of those long-term, rock solid ships that you can rely on to like, have made you dinner when you get home from a twelve hour shift and pour you a fourth glass of wine without asking if you’ve maybe had too much. It’s always gonna be there, even though they’ve had their shaky moments. Despite those shaky moments and a lot of awkward growing up, it’s also a ship that can somehow seem easy. It can somehow seem like they don’t have to work for it. This fic has them work for it. There’s messiness and idiocy and some amazing fun times and some shitty low times. This fic is like the Bildungsroman for schweinski. It’s not clear-cut and it’s not straightforward: in life you get all tangled up and are sometimes tempted to just chop your way out, Gordian Knot-style, but you just can’t do that, y’know? This fic does such a good job with the tangling and the untangling, I feel like it validates a lot of the nonsense I got into in my Youth. Even though I’ll probably never win the World Cup as payoff, but still.

This Bitch of a Country - Rave: Xabi Alonso/Steven Gerrard[quiet wailing noise] nnngnggjhgn okay I said I was going to try and mix up the ships in this list but look!! look. Gerlonso is like, the ultimate holy fucking grail and there’re simply too many good fics not to throw more than one in here. Also it would be a crime not to include this one, which manages to be hilarious and heartbreaking, comforting and cruel, all at once. There’s something about mid-2000s Liverpool that will never fail to make my breath catch, this sort of tragic magnificence that achieved so goddamn much and yet…and yet. (Read this fantastic article from gone-too-soon Grantland, because this fic understands that atmosphere. Also I blame Thierry Henry entirely for validating my soft spot for this club. He set such a precedent!) There’s familiarity here, and anger, and the sort of hopeless love that makes you want to weep your goddamn eyes out. This fic manages to show the hurt on both sides without woobifying anyone out of recognition (and look…I love a good woobie as much as the next person but sometimes gerlonso gets skewed a bit too much in one direction or the other, with Stevie either being a helpless weepy ruin or Xabi being run out of everyone’s hearts on a rail, which can be great if you’re in the mood but a little bit of perspective is nice. And this fic has perspective in fucking droves.) 

tripas y corazón - Hyb: Iker Casillas/Sergio RamosThis fic will have you on the fucking floor. One of the inspirations behind football fic is, of course, the personalities and the relationships: who are these people, how do they interact, what ties them together. But another aspect is of course the clubs. Some of the best football fics are the ones that can really dig into the clubs, which are really sort of nebulous entities defined mostly by the players and the supporters. This fic uses the entity of Real Madrid to devastating effect. It’s a seriker fic, but it’s also very much a fic about the love affair between Iker and Real, and how thorny and complicated such a love affair can be. (Do you ever cry your eyes out about Iker Casillas? Do you ever wish you could throw yourself into a volcano as a sacrifice to make his life easier and happier? JOIN ME TODAY!) There’s something about the prose that brings everything out into a kind of harsh definition. As you read, you think that you can see what’s happening but then it does happen, and you feel winded, somehow. Blindsided. As a bonus, there’s also a cryptic and unhelpful Xabi cameo, in utterly classic style. Read and enjoy, read and die slowly inside because your life is a mess and you never even really supported  Real Madrid what has happened!!!!! here!!!!!!

und wenn ein lied - scheherazade: Philipp Lahm, Bastian Schweinsteiger, genThis is a difficult fic, okay. It’s not a nice fic, I guess, definitely not a happy fic, and it’s a tricky subject. It’s hosted on lj but if it had been written yesterday on AO3 there would be a lot of warning tags. Essentially it deals with homophobia in the sport, and whether or not players should come out or not. It’s a serious story and more than a little bit heartbreaking, but it’s a brilliant read and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Maybe I’m a little bit biased, because I love Fips and this fic can be seen as a kind of vindication for some disagreeable comments he made back in 2011 that got the fandom all a-spinning and it was generally not a great time. (On a side note, it is really interesting to read today and see just how much these politics have changed in the past- oh, fuck me, six years? Jesus I feel old) So definitely a huge YMMV warning on this one, but it remains one of my favourites. It’s beautifully written and really delves into various characters and the tightropes that they walk.

vainglory - anemoi: Raúl González/José María GutiérrezI blame two culprits for my complicated Thing with Real Madrid. The first is Iker Casillas and his unfairly beautiful face/hands, and the second is this fic. Because it’s fine to have a long-lasting crush on a player, but when you start delving into a club’s legends and becoming invested in the story lines? Then, my friend, you have a problem. There’s something gloriously sparse about the prose of this fic. It’s like a thin jacket in late fall that isn’t quite keeping you warm, so you just have to pull it tighter around yourself even though you keep shivering. There are so many descriptive passages that make you shudder: orange streetlights, oranges from a cart on the streets. There’s a sense of desperation in the bones of this fic, which is so stark against the backdrop of the club and the responsibility placed on the captain and vice-captain. Strength on the pitch contrasted with open vulnerability in quieter, more private moments. Breath-taking and just- ugh. This one really made an impact on me, and is always going to be one of my favourite Raúl/Guti stories amid a multitude of excellence. 

….

good grief, I know I’ve forgotten so many (and will in all probability wake up in the middle of night tonight in abject horror because how could I have forgotten such-and-such fic! And so-and-so!) but here you go, thirteen fics that I love and adore. All of these authors, too, have incredible oeuvres that are worth checking out! I could talk forever about fic and honestly, come ramble with me because yayy literary criticism! and also crying about footballers! etc etc

If you’ve read this far, I commend you. Thanks for the opportunity to talk your ear off!

[umbrellamemorabilia]

its been a long time since i last shipped anything as like, more or differently toxic than canon, rather than either being given more than enough to work with (hannibal lmao) or just appreciating a ship as earnestly having or working toward healthiness, so. i'm just thinking about Why i'm doing it this time.

some of it is just by the nature of the series itself-- you give us the premise that everyone is equally fucked up and at fault, and expect that not to be thoroughly explored? that's why it aggravates me so much that leonard is treated as just a cookie cutter Bad Guy... the "abused kid who fixates on superheroes" trope is already very dear to me so i was abruptly very compelled by the flashback and then it just made me miserable that they'd made him such a fucking clown previously and then dispatched him in the same manner as any cheap villain without vanya ever even knowing his motivations. the unbelievable fucking waste of it. an abused kid unjustly seeking revenge on other kids whose "advantage" or privilege was just a different flavor of abuse... why kill leonard off at all, or at least at the stage they did? he and vanya were the same, just from different vantage points. leonard had no idea anything was even wrong inside the mansion lmao whereas vanya literally saw ben morose and drenched in blood and said why can't i play with the others. she's more gladly violent than five ever was.

it feels like i keep writing about bending things so that she "deserves" her abuse by leonard but i don't mean it that way, i just... idk. i dont think i get to define myself as having been in Abusive relationships but certainly mutually toxic ones where i came away with trauma anyway and likely inflicted it too. i'm not a pure victim and no one like, abused me into thinking that, it's my own assessment of my behavior years down the line. believing myself a constant victim was what CAUSED a lot of my toxic selfish treatment of others. so. i project that on vanya because i identify with her self-perception and know it's what i need to change about myself. her victim complex is shitty, it's unfair, it hurts others, it makes her incredibly stunted and dumb. after a certain length of time it becomes more and more your own fault when you dont recover.

it's not her fault leonard knowingly manipulated her into a relationship to use her as a weapon, so like, my au takes out the false pretenses of the relationship-- i think he wouldve and after a while genuinely did love her for herself. his ability to go to such diabolical lengths is unchangeable but it shouldnt be his sole trait, so: he was never a great partner anyway, couldnt see past his own wants, but he did love her alongside the bullshit. the anger he feels at discovering she does have powers is on her behalf but it's the jealousy of it that makes him decide to talk her out of considering that her siblings didnt know or couldnt understand their supposed complicity. her inability to accept that they suffered too is childish and nasty and her own fault and she literally didnt need input from leonard to act on that, hence the book, and the awfully-written avalanche of blatant red flags leonard's canon interactions with her brought up was the literal only reason he had to make an effort to keep her turned against allison lmfao? allison wouldnt have the same "he seems like a fucking serial killer honey please watch out-- oh see i was right lol" foothold if he hadnt been made to, yknow, act like a fucking serial killer overtly. (he didnt even need to kill helen and that plot point laid over such a compressed timeline is laughable. yeah first chair was late to a single day's rehearsal so guess it's time for an immediate replacement. sure.)

it's just... there should've been more there. the point of a Dysfunctional Family is that no one remains a pure victim; you didnt deserve that initial wound but how you behave in response causes new problems and youre responsible for how you handle them. vanya should not be cast as a pure victim who was thrown over the edge into a purely tragic meltdown by a pure villain. your show is supposed to be about shades of grey. act like it. if i'm supposed to have sympathy for all the siblings because They Were Abused then i'm allowed to also have sympathy for the villain too because he was fucking abused. setting up a "but revenge is bad and once you have that response youre bad forever" clause in that just feels so childish. if part of their traveling back in time addresses leonard's past and treats him as someone who also needs help i'll take back almost every bad thing ive said about this show