#please dont let that happen

[greek-dracula]

Here's the thing.

I loved… I have loved… I have loved her, your mum, more than I expected to. And I have loved you more than I could ever have hoped to. And I loved Marnie… absolutely.

BEST INTERESTS season 1 episode 3 (2023) dir. Michael Keillor

[inkskinned]

because sometimes there are invisible tests and invisible rules and you're just supposed to ... know the rule. someone you thought of as a friend asks you for book recommendations, so you give her a list of like 30 books, each with a brief blurb and why you like it. later, you find out she screenshotted the list and send it out to a group chat with the note: what an absolute freak can you believe this. you saw the responses: emojis where people are rolling over laughing. too much and obsessive and actually kind of creepy in the comments. you thought you'd been doing the right thing. she'd asked, right? an invisible rule: this is what happens when you get too excited.

you aren't supposed to laugh at your own jokes, so you don't, but then you're too serious. you're not supposed to be too loud, but then people say you're too quiet. you aren't supposed to get passionate about things, but then you're shy, boring. you aren't supposed to talk too much, but then people are mad when you're not good at replying.

you fold yourself into a prettier paper crane. since you never know what is "selfish" and what is "charity," you give yourself over, fully. you'd rather be empty and over-generous - you'd rather eat your own boundaries than have even one person believe that you're mean. since you don't know what the thing is that will make them hate you, you simply scrub yourself clean of any form of roughness. if you are perfect and smiling and funny, they can love you. if you are always there for them and never admit what's happening and never mention your past and never make them uncomfortable - you can make up for it. you can earn it.

don't fuck up. they're all testing you, always. they're tolerating you. whatever secret club happened, over a summer somewhere - during some activity you didn't get to attend - everyone else just... figured it out. like they got some kind of award or examination that allowed them to know how-to-be-normal. how to fit. and for the rest of your life, you've been playing catch-up. you've been trying to prove that - haha! you get it! that the joke they're telling, the people they are, the manual they got- yeah, you've totally read it.

if you can just divide yourself in two - the lovable one, and the one that is you - you can do this. you can walk the line. they can laugh and accept you. if you are always-balanced, never burdensome, a delight to have in class, champagne and glittering and never gawky or florescent or god-forbid cringe: you can get away with it.

you stare at your therapist, whom you can make jokes with, and who laughs at your jokes, because you are so fucking good at people-pleasing. you smile at her, and she asks you how you're doing, and you automatically say i'm good, thanks, how are you? while the answer swims somewhere in your little lizard brain:

how long have you been doing this now? mastering the art of your body and mind like you're piloting a puppet. has it worked? what do you mean that all you feel is... just exhausted. pick yourself up, the tightrope has no net. after all, you're cheating, somehow, but nobody seems to know you actually flunked the test. it's working!

aren't you happy yet?

[piplupcola]

Writers trying to convince Disney execs not to cancel Nimona, Owl House, and many other IPs:

It's almost laughable how ironic this scene is with what a dumpster fire Wish turned out to be

[taikk0]

the unspoken broflovski family curse

[kanakori]

hi i havent posted in a while but the gay pirates inspired me

[theloneotaku158]

As of Batman: The Brave and the Bold #12, local precious-gremlin-who-I-would-die-for, Maps Mizoguchi, is now officially(?) the sixth Robin. Or at the very least, she's now "in" on The Secret™.

If this isn’t a set up for her taking up the Robin mantle officially then I genuinely don’t know what is.

As one of the twelve Gotham Academy enjoyers in existence, I am having the extremely normal reaction of "FUCKING FINALLY! LET'S FUCKING GOOOOO--!"

In all honesty, I'd be lying if I said I hadn't seen this coming from miles away. Like, Maps has appeared in a number of seemingly random cameo roles recently, including Batgirls (2021), and even technically as Robin in the backup issues of Batman (2016) #119-121, and in a short story in Batman Black & White. And most of those got collected in a standalone titled "Maps of Mystery", which specifically gathered all her appearances as Robin (and the Gotham Academy Belle Reve story).

And then, of course, her recent time-travelling Future-Trunks-esque appearance in Birds of Prey (2023), as the tech-based Meridian, from a potential future timeline where she apparently makes it as a superhero using gadgets she apparently designed, proving that she's hero material.

That's not something you do for a character for no reason. That's the sort of thing you do when you want to keep a character in the conscience of your readers for whatever reason, because you have bigger plans for them.

Also interesting to consider that, in the "Mother's Day" story where this took place, Alfred is standing right there and not lying down six feet under wood, dirt and a stone slab, and that Bruce is in the old Batcave under the manor so he still has Money™. So we must assume this was some nebulous time in the past (after GA: Second Semester(?), but before City of Bane)... which I won't bother to analyse the exact timeframe of because DC doesn't care about the post-Flashpoint / New 52 / Rebirth / Prime Earth / idfk / Dawn of DC timeline, so neither should I.

But I think it's really funny that this presumably means Maps has known The Secret™ for a long time relative to present-day comics, but always acted like she didn't.

But if all her appearances are in chronological order, that means Bruce is only the fourth Bat whose identity she discovered.

Like, she discovered Cass' identity almost by accident on a trip to the zoo, Damian showed off his grapple gun and gave her an actual Batarang during the three hours he was enrolled in the school (as if she wouldn't immediately put two-and-two together even back then), and she even found out Terry fucking McGuinness would become Batman in a future via a time-travelling grandfather clock.

No I did not make that last part up. Read Gotham Academy istg.

Did Cass know that Maps had been acting as a Robin when she met her, both at the zoo in Batgirls and her future version in Birds of Prey?

Does Damian know the one (1) friend(?) he made in Gotham Academy is potentially in the running for his job?

Is Bruce himself aware that she knows as much about their identities as she currently does?

How is DC going to retcon this so it all makes sense in the barely-functioning canon of the modern DC universe?

I'm digressing. Where was I going with this?

Point is, she's destined to become a Robin, and I'm glad DC finally pulled their fingers out their asses and capitalised on that destiny.

Let's just hope it doesn't take another year for them to follow up on this plotline again.

Bonus: Jason Todd, after learning of Bruce taking yet another happy kid under his wing as yet another Robin, giving her some advice:

[lxvenderjewel]

who is ready for sherlock and co his last bow/the final problem? raise your hands if you are (my hands retract into my arms)

[p4nishers]

"so, what? that's it?"

"i don't know what you want me to say, crowley. even if– even if there were feelings of the nature you're referring to between us, we couldn't– if that were true we couldn't possibly act on it, it would be too dangerous"

"you really would have us hide away like fucking cowards–"

"i want you safe, crowley! that's what i would have, through any means. i'm not willing to risk you for feelings which might not even last"

"not last? do you have any idea–"

"i'm done talking about this. we can't be together. you need to accept that"

"...right, of course, what was i thinking"

[wyrmlair]

I am once again wishing that season 11 hadn’t been canceled 6 issues in, but at least we got some banger cover art!!!

[noodlearg]

GUYS OH MY GOD

[anxiously-sidequesting]

Wizard101 is so crazy because the final bosses in each arc get more and more existentially fucked up as the lore thickens. First arc is a grieving man driven insane, second arc all powerful tyrant queen who was mutated into an eldritch being through the forces of the universe, third arc are the equivalents of God and Satan themselves, and fourth arc is an ancient, older-than-time, proto antimatter-nega-God whose essence split into a Void of Nothing who through science and philosophy gained sentience and sapience who then went on to unintentionally become a multiversal threat. Like how the actual freshly baked fuck is Kingsisle going to follow that up. How could you possibly, possibly top that

[standard-muse]

Safe to say Junho has officially ruined all other men for us

[cranberrytea451]

At this point, Chris Pratt is gonna end up voicing Sans in the Undertale movie.

[crispywizardtale]

[brookheimer]

the one thing i feel pretty certain about for this episode is that america will not decide the election. a decision will be made, a president will be elected, but america will not be the deciding factor.

succession can’t mimic 2016 or 2020 point blank, that would be boring and have nothing to say. it can’t try to outdo trump because it’ll go too whacky and fall flat like veep’s last season (sorry conheads, no way he’s winning). but what it CAN do is illustrate the immensely corrupt, often arbitrary, and hugely influential nature of news media and conglomerations on political processes. i think probably jimenez will be in the lead, then atn/waystar does something to, i don’t know, discount votes or cast suspicion on jimenez or call the election for mencken early, and the tide will shift, even though the votes are already in. the votes don’t actually matter. the actual result doesn’t actually matter. that’s the power logan (and as an extension, billionaires and CEOs in general) hold. shiv says it herself to logan in s4e2: “just cause you say it’s true doesn’t make it true. everyone just fucking agrees with you and believes you, so it becomes true and then you can turn around and say like, 'oh, you see? see? i was right.'” but it doesn’t matter that logan’s “a human fucking gaslight,” everything he says comes true anyways. not because he was right, but because that’s how it works. he says things and then they happen, regardless of what the truth is or what should actually come to pass. that’s been one of the key throughlines since the very first episode of the entire show when, in response to kendall calling logan out of touch because times are changing and logan isn't changing with them, logan hisses that everyone always says you’re wrong until you do it and prove you were right: “you make your own reality.” you can't miss the bus if you're the one driving it. the election, the votes, the political process? none of that matters. it was always going to come down to the roys and their ilk (allies or enemies, just the top 1%) — that was the whole point of “what it takes” (the mencken episode) last season, after all.

i’ve seen lots of theories about what america will choose and how the candidates will respond and all that and i just don’t think that’s the show’s focus; i think the whole point is to demonstrate the lack of agency, the illusion of democracy. because, i mean, we’ve already seen the fall of democracy via fascist election and fascist election-denial, both in real life and in the countless (usually mid) satires created afterwards. it would be disappointing to see succession use the election to reiterate that same point of 'ohhh alt-right ahhhhh!!!' i don’t think it’ll be about ‘fascism’ at all — at least, not ‘trump-y’ fascism. it’ll be about fascism in the broader sense, the kind that doesn't sport a KKK hood (even when it keeps one tucked away in the attic). it's the fascism that every single roy (very much including shiv and kendall) aid and abet -- the fascism that so many succession fans don't seem to regard as fascism, despite it quite literally being the definition of fascism. trump wasn’t the entrance of fascism into our political process. he wasn’t the lone sign of the failing of american democracy. democracy in america has long been illusory, trump just made it more blatantly evident with his particular brand of hate-speech-ridden masculinist in-your-face fascism.

so i think that’s what this episode will hopefully focus on — america will not decide. corporations, news media, and the roys will. thus, the president will most likely become president not because the country supports his policies the most, but because he’s likely to agree to help block a business deal for a major media empire, and the other candidate is unlikely to. and this will likely come to pass due to said major media empire's interference and influence: they create their own reality. they say it, and everyone agrees with them and believes them, so it becomes true.

[randomartist-1]

hollowhead rant bc i've been obsessing over ava/avm and i cant stop thinking abt the hollowheads

victim is that character i want to beat the shit out of and then hug them until all their pain goes away. omfg victim was completely ripped from any chance at a normal life. he was deleted not even 2 minutes after they were created, and when they get to live, they say "fuck you alan" and create a whole ass company out of spite. and if hollowhead age is 0 years old at creation, that means he was not even 16 when he made rocket corp a thing. all because they couldnt let his deletion go, which honestly, completely fair

chosen. oh, chosen. the universe really said "hey wouldnt it be funny if we made that one guys life a living hell" and threw everything at him. he was thrown into a "survival of the fittest" situation the moment he was created, and alan just used him as an ad blocker like he was nothing but a tool. the first ever true friend he made was created to kill him, and the friendship failed bc neither knew how to fucking communicate. and then hes tortured on his GODDAMN BIRTHDAY. his BIRTHDAY. BY HIS OWN BROTHER. WTF VICTIM?? he dragged second along to help him bc he was desperate to escape the mercs but all he accomplished was getting them both captured. he must be feeling so much guilt rn omfg (to be fair it was a shit move to pull but also i completely understand his decision)

we dont know much abt dark, but it must be difficult being coded to kill your best friend. maybe the code was altered when she took chosens hand, but as far as i can tell all it did was give it powers. so assuming the code stayed, that means that dark had to fight with its own code for however long she and chosen were living together. i know for a fact its exhausting to fight with your own brain, and i cant imagine having to do it for however-many-years straight. i dont know if i want dark to make a comeback in later episodes, but i definitely wanna know more abt her.

second coming is such a fuckin sweetheart. theyve been through sm and they havent deserved any of it. they literally watched rest of the cg get ripped from them FOUR TIMES (alan ending rygb, dark murdering rygb, chosen kidnapping second, parkour episode) like they must have seperation anxiety or smth like that at this point. also claustrophobia like theyve been forced into too many tiny boxes. they literally just accepted the fact they were gonna be helping chosen when second was literally forced. they still went out of their way to try and save chosen. theyve attacked whoever hurt their friends when rygb all go down. if we continue to go with the "all hollowheads are 0 when created" logic, second is nine. NINE. turning ten this october but WTF. THAT IS A CHILD. NOT EVEN DOUBLE DIGITS

ALL THE HOLLOWHEADS ARE CHILDREN WITH THE "0 at creation" LOGIC (i mean, cho and vic are technically like 16, but still) can i PLEASE just shove them into a massive pillow fort with blankets and hug them?? is that SO MUCH TO ASK ALAN

anyways im gonna go make a playlist abt them cya