#like of course he has flaws (I literally just reblogged a gifset of one of them)

[dull-c]

.

[angrycowboy]

So @lsobelevans and @rosaortecho sent me asks to talk about my favorite creations. This literally changes depending on my mood, but here it goes. 💜

I’m really good at reblogging and promoting my gifsets. Visual creations like that, for me, have always been easier to share with others. Anyone who’s followed me for any extended period of time probably also knows my love of Megan McCafferty and the Jessica Darling series, and when I remembered this quote from Charmed Thirds, it just screamed Malex, so I had to make it into a gifset. Then there’s also this set, using a poem by nikka ursula. It’s not my favorite piece by nikka ursula, but it was so fitting for Malex and the music motif that exists in their relationship. And finally, this set based on a fic by @nielrian that was a Christmas present to her because she has been my rock in this fandom since the first time we spoke over a year ago. I knew for a long time what lines would make a good gifset, I just had to figure out which scenes worked, and it’s probably one of the sets I am most proud of - the coloring, the scenes I chose with the excerpts, the font... just everything about it. I wouldn’t change a thing about this set or how I did it, and her words deserved a beautiful visual to go along with it.

Promoting my writing has always been harder for me, because writing feels much more personable. So like, it’s there, but I don’t really talk about it. I wrote quite a bit while S1 was airing, and less during the hiatus and while S2 was airing. One of the things that I wrote during the hiatus, partially out of spite for the way the fandom was treating Maria, was Growing Up Is Hard To Do. I was tired of the constant bashing of her character, the way fandom chose to treat her simply for daring to have feelings, so I started exploring her headspace the way I’d already been doing for months with Alex and Michael. And then there’s No One Else But You Will Do, which I literally finished the weekend before S2 premiered, but which I love because it is the first thing I wrote that was multi-chapter and fucking LONG. There is one thing about the fic I’d change, that I has actually written differently in the earlier drafts, but I changed, and there are times I still have doubts if I like this version better (I will probably write another amnesia au some day, and use that idea so it doesn’t go to waste). And of course, It Was Bound to Happen (So Just Keep Movin’ On), which also was a tiny bit out of spite because of the fandom’s treatment of Maria, and the constant and continual insistence that Alex would somehow shun Maria post S1, or that he would feel “betrayed.” And I wanted to explore what a conversation between them would look like.

There’s only one piece of meta I want to talk about, and it’s this piece about RNM, it’s female characters, and the Bechdel and Mako Mori tests. People are always talking about the lack of female characters in media, which is a completely valid and accurate argument, however, the flaw in the Bechdel test is that it doesn’t take into account a character’s agency. That’s why I think the Mako Mori test is equally as important in making sure that the media we consume doesn’t only give us the numbers in regards to female characters, but also provides the quality of well written female characters who don’t exist to support a male character’s arc. 

[smallblueandloud]

hi essbie!! you seem super awesome❤️❤️ if you would like to talk to me about the west wing i would love that! i’m watching for the first time now and i’m in LOVE with it- tell me all your thoughts! otps, favorite episodes, arcs, characters... anything!

oh my god, this is my FAVORITE ASK THAT I HAVE EVER RECEIVED EVER. i’m so happy to talk about the west wing because the fandom that’s still alive today seems to be TINY (although high-spirited!!). thank you for asking!! i will endeavor to talk a lot.... which isn’t hard for me, lol.

(psst, before we begin, can i recommend you check out @donnajosh, who posts gorgeous new gifsets of tww pretty regularly [and also has gifs tagged by episode so you can find the right post to reblog when you’re liveblogging, shh], @etraytin, who’s written some AMAZING multichaps that have gotten me through this very stressful week, and @cassiesinsanity, who’s just plain genuinely amazing?? okay. now that that’s out of the way.)

i tried to figure out from your blog where you are in the show, but i can’t find anything more detailed than “probably has finished in the shadow of two gunmen”, so i’m just gonna keep things anti-spoilers. there are some really, really cool plot developments in tww, and i don’t recommend you spoil yourself for things on purpose! but also like. i DEFINITELY spoil things for myself all the time. so what the hell, don’t listen to me lol.

(i tried to put this under a cut, but tumblr glitched. sorry, peeps who don’t care about the west wing. also, WATCH THE WEST WING.)

my ALL TIME, dearest headcanon is adhd josh. i just. i love my boy so much. i love my impulsive, ridiculously-sensitive-to-perceived-rejection, loud, hyperfixated boy so much. i don’t know everything about adhd, but from what i know josh is TEXTBOOK. or at least he’s a lot like me! and i’m reasonably sure i have adhd. so. i’m REALLY, REALLY into that headcanon and everything about it. (i actually wrote a fic in which i wrote him the way i see his adhd presenting, because i love him so much. hmm, i should write a fic about josh being adhd. what kind of stims would josh like??)

i love and adore josh/donna, like many many other people. i like zoey/charlie, just because i think they make each other happy and both of them deserve that. i... like cj/danny? sorta? i think they’re adorable, and they have some REALLY good moments (no spoilers but. oh my god. danny really out here chugging his respect women juice and i love him for it). but also i am EXTREMELY ATTACHED to cj/toby and more specifically cj/toby/andy.

HEAR ME OUT. cj has EXTREME wlw energy and cj and toby have A LOT of married energy but then toby and andy... love each other so much, it’s so clear, in literally everything they do, i don’t know if you’ve gotten to the end of s5 yet but i cry. so like?? obviously, because i am who i am, polyamory is the answer! basically the rundown is: andy and toby are a typical couple except that they fight a lot. cj is kinda in the middle. if gay marriage had been legal / socially acceptable in the 80s (because god knows this ot3 has been thinking about optics since they graduated college), cj and andy would’ve gotten married and toby would’ve come and gone depending on who he’d pissed off recently, and everything would’ve been perfect. instead, andy and toby got married and it didn’t work because they really just couldn’t function as a unit, especially since their getting married meant that cj isolated herself a bit more. definitely cj and toby have a couple of SCREAMING arguments about the whole relationship. idk.

but just like. imagine with me, if you will, cj and toby... not dating, while working in the white house, but being exes. friendly exes. friendly exes who are still in love with each other and know it. please imagine that and then think about “i love you desperately / i know” and “you wanna make out with me right now, don’t you? / well, when don’t i?” and “we had it good there for a while / yeah, we did” and then join me in the pit of sadness.

(sidenote i have a sense8 au for the west wing and the second story is just me being emotional about their cluster for 5k. i have another story vaguely planned that i’ll probably never write about the development of the ot3 and about their cluster and how it functions. but don’t read that story until you finish... the first half of s7? or thereabouts? actually probably you should finish the show before you read the sense8 au in general if you’re avoiding spoilers.)

(when i say “i’ll probably never write”, i mean “until the next time i get obsessed with the west wing”. which will probably be years from now. oh, well, we can all hope the muse actually does something efficient for once.)

so yeah. those are my ships. i know a lot of people shipped josh/sam, but i don’t really see it? sam always seemed Way Too Straight for that to work lol, although i DO like the idea of sam pining tragically for josh for years just like donna does. (can you tell i read such a winter’s day a few days ago? it’s amazing. i haven’t left a review yet because i have not been a human being recently, but go read it!! it’s awesome!!)

also, i love the idea of bartlet/abbey/leo, although i can’t really visualize it lol. but there’s some amazing fic for them out there. maybe one day my stupid brain will realize the angst potential and actually let me write something for them, hopefully within the sense8 au. (sam also has a cluster! and i would love to write about them! .....but my brain doesn’t do what i tell it to. ever.)

my favorite arc.... i don’t know. i really loved the early seasons, which were a little more episodic, but ALSO i actually really liked the tone after aaron sorkin left after s4? it takes some getting used to, but it’s WAY more emotional, and i am ALL HERE FOR THAT. i definitely have a least favoite arc, or at least a least-favorite way-that-they-handled-a-storyline (spoiler alert: i hated how they handled the end of bartlet’s presidency in the white house. like. SHE’S ALL ALONE IN THERE- anyways. trying not to give detailed spoilers!)

favorite episodes: hmm. i love the thanksgiving episodes. i loved any episode with the ainsley-and-sam dynamic. noel is a phenomenal episode. 26 could make anyone weep. the flashbacks are the best. the fucking- the fucking what’s next motif.

honestly, probably i’d have to say my favorite episode is either 4x20 (evidence of things not seen, for “stupidly noble cluster” reasons and cj/toby reasons and bartlet & charlie reasons. also i feel like there’s some good josh/donna there too but i can’t remember exactly?) or 7x21 (institutional memory, because i’m pretty sure the writers reached into my id and pulled out EXACTLY what i needed from them to be okay with the show ending. jesus CHRIST i have never felt so satisfied after an episode. literally everything i ever could have wanted happened in that episode. i’m STILL reeling. it’s a perfect episode.)

my favorite characters are... literally everyone? i know that’s cheating but i love them all SO MUCH (except mandy and amy, of course). josh is my favorite, always and forever, but i love cj more than words and sometimes i can’t breathe for love of toby. leo and bartlet and charlie and sam and donna- here i was thinking i was gonna resent will forever but i LOVE will. ainsley is an amazing woman. abbey is such a good character, god, talk about a flawed woman who’s allowed to be a good person.

AND THEN THEY MADE ME ROOT FOR A REPUBLICAN. again, i doubt you’ve gotten to s7, but the republican nominee in the last election... jesus christ. i love that man so much. arguably, i’m very biased, but also how D A R E they expect me to root against him. how DARE.

(i swear this will make more sense once you meet him. i just love the actor a lot, okay?)

anyways. this got ridiculously long. i would LOVE to talk about the west wing with you, feel free to reblog this with your own thoughts or tag me in your own post or message me or something. i would love to hear your reactions!! it’s such a good show, and such a smart show, and every character is so mcfreaking good at what they do and i adore it. enjoy the ride because there’s nothing as perfect and as quality as the west wing. if you’ll please excuse me, i’m going to go cry about 7x21 again.

[schmirius]

have YOU been staying up all night watching light comedy programs for the last few weeks, and are YOU a person who is depressed? This Entry May Be For You!

watched avenue 5, which has put me on the hugh laurie train for a little bit. (a lie -- the only reason I watched avenue 5 was, of course, hugh laurie.)  this led me to finally watching the last series of a bit of fry and laurie, which always... looked from their hosting set like it was different enough from the previous series that i wasn’t interested in trying to accommodate it? was a show i couldn’t bring myself to finish in the way i also have never been able to bring myself to watch the last delgado serial of doctor who because then i wouldn’t ever get to watch one for the first time ever again? (hey self, i have spotted a flaw, if you stop at *that* place forever!)

anyway the tl;dr of it is that that series aired after stephen fry had that one nervous breakdown where he wouldn’t do his stage play and tried to kill himself far from home which inevitably gets me on: how do you do things after that? the same things you were doing before that?

and, back to the just fine laurie-in-space show: there’s so much time between late 80s and 2020 hugh laurie, but he’s still doing things... like he’s *been* doing... because people start doing things they’re interested in when they’re young and then they keep doing them...

the whole existential crisis i started having as a teenager -- wait, what do i DO every day, literally how do i pass my time? / oh my god, what am i going to do when i’m not in school anymore, how does anybody get ANYTHING done -- which, btw, *certainly* is tied up with how my executive functioning works and what a massively depressive person i am whose central tenet is something like ‘nothing meaningfully changes and if it does you’re in trouble’ --

this very adolescent existential crisis has persisted, and persisted, and is really getting its workout during my unemployment during quarantine while i spend time with my one of my best friends and her beautiful family including her beautiful infant in the beautiful home she’s built. big wow! how does anything happen? 15 years later, i don’t have a permanent home, i still can’t even sleep right, and i’m LESS interested in pursuing things i used to love!

THIS IS NOT A SET OF TAGS ON THAT HUGH LAURIE GIFSET THAT I JUST REBLOGGED, ok, that’s what this entry is really about, SOMETIMES you hate everything and all you were going to use to express that on your single social media site was one overproduced gifset from an overproduced show and you were GOING to just stuff a few feelings in the tags BUT YOU THOUGHT YOU’D TREAT YOURSELF TO PARAGRAPHS JUST THIS ONCE, DAMN IT

[rughydrangea]

I just rewatched TLJ and I will be reblogging a lot from it! So, heads up.

It’s wild, TLJ certainly has its flaws (it’s too damn long! why is Poe so dumb? and how does he keep his job after all the shit he pulled? of the main three, he really did get the rawest deal in terms of an overall arc. in that he did not have one at all. Finn at least got two good movies, which is, not for nothing, also what Han and Leia got in the original trilogy), but I love how thoughtful it is, how willing it is to challenge and play with Star Wars convention in a way that is ultimately hopeful and reaffirming. And I personally adore the Finn/Rose plot--not only is it delightfully anti-capitalist, but I also find the way that it first confronts Finn with how conflicted and ugly the galaxy can be, and then takes him to a place where he can discover within himself the desire to take a stand anyway, to protect a cause that he thinks is worth dedicating his life to.

Alas, though, most of the gifsets I’ll be reblogging are Rey/Ben because, uh, that’s what’s in the tag. For what it’s worth, though, although I wouldn’t consider myself a Reylo (I feel like that requires caring rather more than I do?), I honestly have nothing against them as a pair. The actors have a genuine, palpable chemistry, and then, let’s be real, the only thing that works about TRoS is their faces, even though everything that is done with Rey in that film is criminally stupid, and Ben’s arc also makes literally no sense (maybe one day when it isn’t 1:30 AM, I’ll sit down and try to figure out why Anakin’s redemption in RotJ works so beautifully for me even though we know next to nothing about who he is at that point, but every piece of backstory we get about Ben, even in TLJ, just serves to confuse me more. I’m not sure I have a handle on who Ben is at all, but Driver is so damn good that when I’m watching I feel like I do). 

Honestly, the main thing that this rewatch did to me is make me even angrier at TRoS. Some elements of what was wrong with that movie were out of Abrams’s control, of course, but I still feel like every decision he made was the worst possible thing he could have done. The lack of a guiding idea/personality behind the new trilogy really doomed it, I think. Say what you will about the prequels (and people do!), but for all its failures in execution it really does tell a story that clearly tracks from beginning to end. The sequel trilogy is just a hodgepodge.