#prestige tv this and prestige tv that

[darkwood-hollows]

hot take but i actively miss when tv shows were like 20 episodes a season. slow down. let me get to know the characters. let them do something dumb and not consequential to the plot for one fucking second i'm begging you.

[stewykablooey]

AND BEST DRAMA SERIES LADIES WHO UP SUCCING THEY SESSION ONE LAST TIME

[tomwambsmilk]

Can’t wait for the “succession was never actually that good” backlash after it sweeps the 2023-2024 awards season followed by the ~2030 “succession was actually deeply underrated” renaissance followed by the ~2035 “succession isn’t THAT good you guys are just blinded by nostalgia and also it’s actually pretty problematic” discourse followed by the ~2040 “succession is actually one of the greatest shows of the last 50 years and defined an era and had a lasting impact on prestige tv as a genre” consensus at which point it’ll be one of those shows everyone says you SHOULD watch and film/tv buffs take great pride in having actually watched and everyone else who hasn’t seen it already just says “yeah it’s definitely on my list” and then never touches it

[deepspacememes]

my father was a tailor. in leeds. as was his father. and his father’s father. time was, if a man on the avendale road asked where he could find the finest clothes in northern england, he was pointed towards the shop of a man named rackham. THEN: the men who sell wool decided they would rather not compete with the men who sell cotton. and as the men who sell wool have the ears of the men who make laws, an embargo is enacted to increase profits. and calico disappears. and my father’s business - that he inherited from his father... and his father’s father - begins to wither and die. and my father suffers the compound shame of financial failure seen by the eyes of his son, and descended into drink. i’d sit beside him as a boy at the sunday services as he shouted at the pastor. at the altar. at anyone who would listen, really, about the injustice of it all. and i’d put his arm over my shoulder as the insults began, and i’d carry him out of the church GOD THE INSULTS. at his funeral, our neighbors were kind enough to whisper them instead of call them out loud. SO. i set to work, determined to rebuild what had been taken away; i was thirteen years old, but i was determined! until a man arrived at my door claiming to hold debts belonging to my father, debts accumulated as my father drank, debts he claimed that now belonged to me, debts i could not possibly have hoped to repay. debts over which that man would have seen me imprisoned... imprisoned in a place where the debts would only have been discharged through hard labor. hard labor at no wages, working at - wait for it - the production. of textiles. “you people. incapable of accepting the world as it is.” says the man to whom the world handed everything. if no anne, if no rescue, if this is defeat for me, then know this: you and i were neck-in-neck in this race, right til the end. BUT JESUS DID I MAKE UP A LOT OF GROUND TO CATCH YOU.

[rawliverandgoronspice]

I think what particularly annoys me with the "zelda was always gameplay before story" is that... it's not true? At least I don't think it's true in the way people mean it.

Zelda games were always kind of integrating story based on the standards of the time. When game stories were in game pamphlets, Zelda's stories was in the pamphlets. ALTTP tried to tell a pretty complicated stories with the limitations of the time. OoT was actively trying to tell an epic, cinematic tale packed with ambiance and expand what 3D could offer that 2D games struggled with. Majora's Mask is deeply character-driven in many, many ways. Wind Waker and Twilight Princess are both pretty concerned about their stories, down to the point that some people were bored by TP's cutscenes in particular. Skyward Sword, from what little I have played it, is very very invested in its characters and their journey (and 2D Zeldas have Link's Awakening, Minish Cap... None of them are visual novels, but they are concerned with emotional journeys, character arcs, mysteries about their own world...)

What is true is that the narrative wraps around the mechanics, and not the other way around. The mechanics drive themes, aesthetics, emotional beats and character journeys; and that's great. The world is a puzzle, and the world is delightfully absurd when it needs to be, full of heart when it calls for it, dark and oppressive when it suits the player experience.

That does not mean the games aren't invested in their stories. Even BotW has a pretty complicated story to tell about an entire world rather than one specific tale or legend --all of it at the service of the gameplay, which is exploration and mastery of your environment.

So. Yes, none of the Zelda games are million-words long visual novels that care deeply about consistency and nuance; but stories don't need consistency or deep lore to be meaningful and serve an emotional journey. Again: gameplay is story. The two cannot be so easily parsed from each other.

And Zelda as a franchise obviously care deeply about story, characters and setting (and still does right now --otherwise there wouldn't be a movie), even if it doesn't try to imitate prestige narrative-driven games, which is great and part of why I love this series so much. Doesn't mean it couldn't have done better in the past, it obviously could have, but I feel like pretending that nobody ever cared about story or character is just... false? It's a huge disservice to the devs too. Some of them obviously cared immensely.

The "gameplay above story", at least in the extent to which it is paraded today to defend TotK, mostly, is a really recent development. And I think it's one that deserves to receive some pushback.

[thealogie]

Honestly starz renewing black sails to infinity and letting them end on their own terms is even funnier now. No one I know who isn’t deeply online has even heard of black sails. People have heard of ofmd

[bellamysgriffin]

get to know me meme >> Favorite TV Shows [23/?] Big Little Lies

I feel so ashamed for saying this, but being a mother, it's not enough for me. It's just not. It's not even close.

[bbyteach]

Hate ppl being like well at least there’s *edgy show with queer characters* *show with super conventionally attractive, young leads* or *show with both* like… not the fucking point?

I don’t need all art I connect with to be cutting-edge or ‘cool.’ I’m an artist that does a lot of horror/‘edgy’ work outside of this fandom space. This shows earnestness and whimsy and how little it cared about being ‘cool’ has been a breath of fresh air for me. In the sea of media that is banking on existing IP or bleak social commentary and true crime… this truly was original and interesting. Like. True height of queer media golden age. A warm light that doesn’t need to peak through a million layers of irony. Sigh

[avelera]

David Jenkins was a playwright before he was a TV showrunner and it so clearly shows in how OFMD was designed as a stage play. Indeed, our logistical questions around how Stede managed to find his crew with just a dinghy or why distances don't matter only come up because we can see the ocean and the distances thanks to the power of CGI movie magic and wouldn't even ping our collective consciousnesses if this was all happening on a stage as the story in its bones was clearly meant to, in this essay I will...

[phasmotid]

marty. buddy

[nativehueofresolution]

2x10 Bust-Out

[tanadrin]

stargate sg-1 is a deeply silly show, which is why I love it, but man just by virtue of having 22 hour long episodes a year to explore random high concept science fiction premises that don’t need to link up too much with each other, you occasionally get some really interesting stories. I mean not in season 1. Season 1 is kind of a boondoggle in the same way star trek tng season 1 is. but I miss mid-budget sf shows that had the room to spread out like that and really explore their premise.

[stewykablooey]

paying homage 🤲 succession ends tonight but ambigiousdisorder.gif you will always be famous

[nellarw95]

Happy Birthday Scarlett +39🥳🎂🎈🎁🎉

Buon Compleanno 🥳🎂🎈🎁🎉

[evenlarksandkatydids]

if true detective s1 came out now the amount of rust cohle x reader fanfic would be insane. his tag would be absolutely clogged with “dating rust cohle would include…” and “rust cohle sex headcanons” posts.

[wulfhalls]

not kiernan shipka.....

im jumping of a building what are we doing to our beautiful queens 😭😭😭😭