#like I would have stopped it earlier

[victorluvsalice]

-->Victor finished up in the greenhouse around this time, so I had him head to the barn to make an eco upgrade part (the fabricator STILL refuses to attack him and paint him funny colors for our amusement), then Transportalate up to the second floor to use the toilet and mop some mysterious symbols in the seance room before heading to bed. He climbed in just as a refreshed Alice climbed out, which, figures. XD As Alice was feeling the Fury again, I decided it would be better to just indulge in the werewolf stuff for a bit and see if I could knock her over the edge into a little rampage. Because sometimes it really is just easier to let them fall to the Fury and see if they can bring themselves out of it quick. So she transformed into her beast mode, scavenged up a time capsule in the back yard, then went out for a very successful hunt (bringing back THREE spare pieces of meat!) before coming back and saying hi to Smiler (who, after getting a bunch of robot salvage parts and checking the latest SimsTube trends, was busy making computer chips and mechanisms on the robotics bench) and heading upstairs to play some video games. And that is where I would have left things --

-->If I hadn’t seen Rory Oaklow hanging out on the front porch, having just been sprinkled by a specter! I figured "oh, okay, Alice can chat with her and get some more werewolf experience" -- and indeed, a quick conversation with Rory about her time as a werewolf unlocked the "Werewolf Mentorship" ability for Alice! Making her a more effective mentor toward new werewolves! :D I'm – not sure when she’s ever going to use that, but still. XD I then decided they might as well play tug-of-war while they were hanging out together, since that too would be good for the old XP bar --

-->But then, who should show up in the kitchen but bad old Temperance, ready to cause mischief! Fortunately, Victor had already woken up and started making himself breakfast, so it was the work of a moment to slap down his bizarre idol and render her pretty much immediately helpless. (Getting slapped in the face with a spatula as he prepared his eggs couldn't have helped either. XD) However, Temperance's appearance was accompanied by the house making a bunch of creepy noises, and, well, despite being a big bad werewolf, Rory didn't take them well and ended up running off in fear before any tugging of warring could happen. So Alice instead just scavenged up some turquoise from the yard. XD Victor had his breakfast as Temperance finally floated out, and eventually Rory came back from her terror run, allowing me to get Alice to send HER home too.

And THEN, with all the actual residents of the house safely gathered in the kitchen where I could keep an eye on them, I was finally able to save and close out of the game! Whew! These sessions always take longer than I think they're gonna...but hey, it was nice to play again, see the trio in action, and actually make some real progress at selling stuff in the store! :) Next time, though, we're taking a break from store shenanigans for HOLIDAY shenanigans -- as next episode, it'll be Winter Saturday, aka New Year's Eve! Which involves the completion of a few errands, and a very special date...see you then!

[doctorsiren]

Angsty Psychic Lawers AU stuff?

like Separation Arc or Disbarment era

yeah so I decided Reigen’s disbarment was only gonna be 6 months since that’s the length of time that Mob was stuck in the mindscape world that Mogami made, and so it’s then the length of time that Mogami is Mob’s mentor (and also this allows the ages to not be all messed up LMAO haha)

[coquelicoq]

what i like especially about the pronouns in the goblin emperor is that this language doesn't just have the T-V distinction (aka informal vs. formal second-person pronouns, in this case 'thou' vs. 'you'), it also has informal and formal first-person pronouns. having BOTH of these distinctions in the same language lets you fine-tune your tone by mixing and matching. with only one axis of formality, when you use informal pronouns, are you being familiar in an intimate way, or in an insolent or dismissive way? when you use formal pronouns, are you being polite or standoffish? you can't tell just from the pronouns; there's ambiguity. but a language where you can use a formal first-person pronoun in the same sentence as an informal second-person pronoun allows you to distance yourself (via the formal first) while also being familiar (via the informal second), thereby achieving the conversational tenor known to linguists as Fuck Thee Specifically.

[wycross]

i cant stop thinking about yuuta now. like sure i liked him well enough but after this chapter he has my entire heart. and he is so so so tragic. (of course he is everyone here is)

its this that i keep going back to in my head. it encapsulates what i think is yuuta's grief.

right before this, of course, we've seen him screaming about how nobody ever cared about demanding gojo to be a monster. he cares for gojo so deeply, of course, because gojo saved him, gojo is practically his dad, and he actually sees gojo.

hes a special grade, one of few, and out of the special grades, i think hes the only one with realistic potential to surpass gojo. he has the potential to be gojos peer, so gojo doesnt have to be alone. hes the only one strong enough to save gojo, in a way, to actually take up his burden and allow gojo to be human in a way he hasnt been since geto.

but yuuta is simply too late. hes too young, too unpolished, too late. gojo's already been a monster for a decade, with no other choice and with nobody to stand by his side. yuuta cant save him now.

thats what i think really crystallized for me in this panel. yuuta is telling gojo about his plan, the plan that was so controversial with everyone else because of yuuta's humanity being on the line, the plan that only he could ever pull off. and gojo shrugs it off, not shocked in the least, and just tells yuuta that he's got to keep working because he's not good enough yet.

the talk about yuuta's heritage is so important to this too. "you might've been born even more blessed than me". does that ring any bells, maybe? "i alone am the honored one?"

gojo is acknowledging that yuuta could've been at his side, could've been strong enough to save satoru, for him to not be alone in this curse of a blessing of strength anymore. but hes just. too. late.

[originalartblog]

I just think Chuuya deserves to snap for this arc. Crumble under his unaddressed trauma. Be evil for a little while. Make Dazai face some consequences for a change. A little corruption arc, if you will.

[is-the-milk-fresh]

"But the ship is pseudo-incestuous!!" THE GIRL CANONICALLY FUCKED HER ACTUAL COUSIN???

Like incest bad. Don't do incest. Don't be Lucy. But I feel like maybe thats not the grounds on which to be arguing here? Never mind that they are literally NOT related (no matter your personal headcanons). Ms. 'Incest is a normal part of growing up' probably isn't going to be morally hung up on that. Even if she (in the case of actual incest, not headcanon father figure pseudo-incest) absolutely should be.

I don't even ship it myself. But Lucy Maclean is a capital F Freak. You gotta accept that.

[zarnzarn]

untapped comedy potential truly is hob gadlings siblings. he was born in Plagues England there's no way he didn't have em in the double digits. someone asks if he's intimidated by the number of in-laws and he cheerfully says that no these ones don't even bite. there's no way this guy wasn't annoyed into immortalality with righteous older siblings and annoying younger ones w the crazy look in his eyes.

[jq37]

Descendants: The Rise of Red is kind of a bizarre movie to talk about critically because, imo, it almost doesn't make sense to talk about it in the usual terms of good vs bad or enjoyable vs not enjoyable when the way more obvious tension is finished vs unfinished.

Because, more than any other movie I've ever seen, it does *not* read as a full movie. And I don't mean in a "this movie has a cliffhanger" kind of way. The Empire Strikes Back and Across the Spiderverse fit that description. They end on big dramatic cliffhangers that point to a resolution in the third installment.

But Rise of Red just sets all this stuff up and then...ends without concluding anything. It doesn't feel like the first movie in a trilogy (or duology). It feels like the first act of a two-act musical. It very specifically reminds me of the end of the first act of Into the Woods where all the main characters sing the song Ever After about how they all fixed their problems with magic and nothing bad will ever happen to them again and then the narrator ominously says "To be continued" before the curtain drops. But in Into the Woods you know there's a second act and this movie wasn't sold as the first act of a bigger story. Like sure, it has the, "You didn't think this was the end" tag at the end like all the other movies, but those movies were complete, self-contained stories even though they had sequels. This was NOT a full story. It's half of one story.

Like, if we're supposed to take this as a full story, there are so many bizarre choices:

Why did they make sure to mention that Cinderella and Charming fell in love at the ball at the top if it wasn't meant to set up Back to the Future style, "Oh no, I accidentally got my mom banned from the ball so she's not gonna fall in love with Dad and I won't be born" shenanigans?

Why did Maddox very pointedly have that bit about "you could lose your mom completely" if that was never going to come into play? Red never did anything to endanger Bridget or endanger her own birth so it doesn't make sense as a warning in that way.

Why was there all this focus on this Carrie on prom night moment for Bridget if we LITERALLY NEVER SAW CASTLECOMING? Why dance around this moment and talk about it all cloak and dagger with no specificity if they weren't building up to some big reveal that it wasn't as straightforward as it seemed? And like, they leaned in HARD with making Bridget the nicest, sweetest, cotton candy princess as a teen so I need WAY more than, "She got pranked by known bullies she's been enduring with a smile very handily up to this point" to buy that she went from that to "murderous dictator". And even if she did become murderous, I find it insanely hard to believe that she'd include her best and only friend on the list of people she wants to suffer unless there was a betrayal. I find it INSANE that there wasn't a falling out scene at any point in this movie with how thickly they were laying on the admiration and camaraderie.

(Note: And adult Cinderella def has guilty vibes re: the Queen at orientation. Which I know I'm not imagining because it's literally spelled out in the Jr Novelization!)

Before the time travel element of the movie started, I thought they were going for something like they go to the past and realize that Bridget was bullied not by the VKs but by the spoiled royals, and Ella ends up joining in the bullying once she gets with Charming, betraying Bridget and justifying her whole "Love Ain't It" philosophy. Or Ella ditching her at the last minute to be with Charming meaning she has to deal with the monster prank alone and it was the being alone rather than the prank itself that hurt her (though that is NOT a good enough reason to go all off with their heads on your subjects). The fact that, as far as we know right now, it literally was just a relatively mild and reversible prank that caused all of this is just, such flat storytelling, you know?

But! All of this makes way more sense if this is meant to be the first act of a single contained story. And I don't wanna be all "Pepe Silvia, secret good 4th episode of Sherlock" about this but I did see this picture:

Which seems to indicate that this was written as a Part One. Which, if so, idk why they wouldn't advertise it that way but whatever. The point is, if that's the case then it means that we're potentially in bad pacing territory rather than straight up bad storytelling territory. Because this isn't a bad place to be halfway through your story:

The heroes, warned that time travel is dangerous, have gone back in time to change the heart of a brutal tyrant before she can stage a coup. They seemingly succeed in their mission and when they come home, everything is great! But then, the side effects of time travel start to catch up with them. Chloe realizes that, in breaking the vase, she prevented her mother from going to the ball and falling in love with her dad (who was conspicuously absent from the final scene btw) which means she's starting to be forgotten and erased from the timeline. And Red realizes that though this new version of her mom is as sweet and kind as the teen she once met, she's a complete stranger to her (fulfilling the Hatter's warning that she could lose her mom completely). So they have to go back in time once more to make sure the Ella and Charming fall in love again, perhaps at the cost of whatever bad thing that happened to Bridget happening again and bringing back the original version of her future self. But, now with more context of how her mom became that way, Red can now talk to her mother and persuade her to give people another chance.

Boom, that gives us time to go back and hit everything we haven't yet hit. We can pay off the time travel tropes that were set up but not explored. We can go to Castlecoming which feels so obviously set up to be the centerpiece of this story (like, come on, Back to the Future literally does the school dance thing. This is Time Travel Storytelling 101). We can actually get info about what the prank was and why it affected Bridget so completely.

(Note: This is a side thing but it really strikes me as so crazy that Bridget would so SUCH a big 180 here. Like, I know the Queen of Hearts is a silly, goofy, campy villain, but she straight up murders people and there's no way to get around that if we're taking her out of the surreal story she comes from and putting her in a (comparatively) grounded story. If I wasn't doing a betrayal plot, I would make the twist that the spell that turned Bridget into a "monster" didn't just have a physical effect, it had a mental effect and it magically twisted her personality to be the way it is now. So they broke the physical half of the curse, but neglected the other half and it's been festering the whole time, turning her as evil as she was sweet. Because like, a simple physical transformation isn't that big of a deal to have such heavy security--Bridget made cupcakes with a transformative effect and that was totally fine. I'm not saying that that's what's gonna be the case. I just think it would be an explanation that makes sense for why she changed so crazy much that makes more sense than a simple prank or even a betrayal. Her mom wasn't even evil! How did she go from zero to murder without even an evil mom to push her onto the path? But I'm super digressing right now.)

(Note #2: OK, one last thing. The trap on the book presumably would have hit the VK's and trapped them in Merlin's office regardless of what Chloe and Red did, right? That's like, net zero influence on the timeline. I genuinely can't tell if that's a straight up plot hole or set up to be like, "Oh no. Actually when she said that she was turned into a monster in front of everyone it was meant in a less literal way." Like she was just made to look bad and that was the real thing that pushed her over the edge. Like idk. It really feels like the only thing they really did that would change the timeline was get Ella banned from the dance and presumably out of the way where she couldn't hurt Bridget. OK NOW I'm done.)

Anyway, my point is that this is not how I would have structured my movie and I think this was a super weird way to go into the second era of Descendants movies, but they can still tell a complete story if that's their plan. I'm genuinely really curious to see if this pans out to be a fairly competently told story that just happens to be split over two movies or a complete fumbling of the narrative bag because it could really be either at this point and it's fascinating to me.

[weregonnabecoolbeans]

I love Obi-Wan and I know it's not his fault

But if I were Anakin…I would NEVER forgive Obi-Wan for Shmi’s death

[dragonpyre]

Shout out to my ex-uncle for attempting to commit perjury so he could marry his mistress faster because her priest wouldn't agree to marry them since he ex-uncle was still married

Also shout out to my dad for being a divorce fraud investigator and threatening to sue his ass if he tried

[p1x1x]

me pushing myself further with my art drawing really cool perspectives and whatever with the Duo and then i turn around and make lame cutesy ship art waaahhah 😭😭😭

dont read the tags on this if you havent watched gbc i just ramble spoilers 😭 just uhh screaming yknow. mostly mmnn but i like the other characters i swear its just these guys are making me insane

[cuteniarose]

The consequences of my poor financial decisions are here!!

[myebix]

consider! what if jax wound up in the digital circus when he was 14, and his avatar reflected that? there's so much potential here...

[shutup-andletme-go]

I cannot rely on one person for me to be happy my happiness isn't allowed to be only triggered by one person I can be happy at every little thing it doesn't matter about this one person

[adri-atics]

Was anybody going to tell me last 200 pages of The Great Hunt were absolutely life-changing incredible or was I supposed to find that out by losing my shit on a plane myself?

[moomeecore]

on that subject, obsessed with today when i was like "hey guys, can you two stop playing the jumping game for now because it's giving caden a headache" and my 6 yr old cousin is like "you mean 'me'. it's giving 'me' a headache, because your caden". it's like yeah man ur right. my bad . and then they stopped jumping. it was awesome