#real talk I was dying to know if she actually goes by Mel or not lol

[fazedlight]

Cameo had a sale and I couldn't resist! Transcript below the cut. Twitter link is here.

Hi Melissa! Name twins. Thanks so much for requesting this cameo, I hope you had a really happy holiday if you celebrate Thanksgiving, I hope it was a really nice one. And thanks for these great questions! When I directed the episode of Supergirl that I directed, on shows like that, you don't typically have too much control over the story or things like that. It was really to make things easier to shoot, you would change something. Or if I had an idea that would tie in with a location that I chose - which, that was something I had control over, which location we used for Lex Luthor's house, we did a whole location scout. So you get to choose those spots, and how it will look on camera. That being said, every decision I made, it was a collaboration with the directory of photography, it was a collaborations with the [Associate Directors], it was a collaboration with costumes and wardrobe and everyone to make sure everything would work on the day we were shooting whatever scene. Also those superhero shows are really complicated to shoot as you can imagine, with the action, the special effects, the stunts. So really, I had control beforehand of very little, but then on the day you have control on what you say to the actors and principle actors on set with where you want to go, but also you're trying to match the tone of the show that's been established, that there's been multiple seasons of. So that's fun! And then after the fact in the editing room, you really get to collaborate 1:1 with the editor to try to make the episode more your own and give it your own voice, even though it lives in this existing world that's been established. I loved it, and it was really great, and we had the best crew, so I worked with really awesome people that I loved!

And with my book, the process of writing with my sister, we kind of came up with the idea together. Jessica is a writer, she's a much better writer than me, we'd kind of come up with ideas together, brainstorm, she'd kinda go, I'd help finesse, we had a fantastic editor. But storywise we really came up with the world and mythology together. And I go by Melissa in life! Actually, everyone on set at Supergirl called me Mel. I think because one of the stunt coordinators, Simon, started calling me Mel, and then all of a sudden I became Mel. Which, never in my life was I ever a Mel, suddenly on Supergirl I was a Mel - I was fine with it! You're awesome too, thanks for the support, thanks for reaching out, I send all my love!

[highlifeboat]

First off, my heart was broken with the "Swap!Mel telling Alcina not to baby her" bit, please tell me they talk things out and get their happy vibes back. :( Second - I now really wanna hear about Mia and the wife from Crimson Snow. You may have given me a new ship and need to know this XD

Always gotta throw in a little angsty family drama, no matter the AU.

I feel like, eventually, Alcina is going to question Melony's sudden disdain for getting babied. Her daughter is just kind of coasting and sullen since it stopped, and it's worrying. With all the strange vibes between her kids, too, there has to be some suspicion that something happened.

She has a little private meeting with Mel and pushes the subject more, reminding Mel she can be trusted and all that. Mel, despite having every right to throw Max under the bus, goes with the half truth of "I've just heard.. people say some things about me." and how it made her think on how much time she spends around Alcina. She doesn't like being seen as a baby, or weak, or anything like that since she's arguable just as capable as her siblings. But when Alcina asks her if she's sure she doesn't want to be babied anymore she doesn't have a real answer.

Mel still likes the extra attention, and the kisses and hugs, and general motherly love, but she also feels like she should get some independence and responsibility. Alcina tells her they'll work to find a nice balance that makes Mel happy, and if Alcina ever goes too much either way to simply tell her. She's going to miss her baby moth and constant cuddling and whatever, but she won't deny Mel's want to have her own life.

A little bitter sweet, but they hug it out after and get back into their good vibes, even if it isn't the same as before.

AS FOR THE SECOND THING--

Listen, okay, so... Ideas are limited at the moment, but bare with me.

Main backstory isn't fully important right now, but the short version is Mia gets relocated to whatever snowy undisclosed town Crimson Snow takes place in. Gets a note from the neighbour across the road as an invite for dinner, say "fuck it" because she's tired of being lonely post-Ethan dying and losing everything (again). Ends up in Scary Ex's house, who quickly realizes Mia is NOT her ex boyf. Hilarity ensues, Mia makes friends with a demon woman, enter gay lady kisses. Y'know, classic tale pfff.

I will supply a little bit of headcanons, because that's the only way I can explain ideas coherently pfff.

The reason the Ex doesn't kill Mia on the spot, is because Mia still takes her up on the dinner offer/is actually civil despite... everything

Like, my girl saw the spaghetti on the table and said "I know this is awkward, but I brought wine and I feel like it's rude if I just leave."

Ex is initially confused, but after realizing Mark(the game MC/Ex Boyf) isn't showing up/moved, agrees.

This is heavily reliant on the idea that the Scary Ex only kills Mark in-game because he's running/hiding from her, and because Mia doesn't the Ex is chill.

A good chunk of dinner is Ex venting about how "I put all this effort into the holiday and he doesn't even bother to tell me he's MOVING?" and Mia nodding along and saying stuff like "Sounds like he was a loser honestly. You deserve better."

In terms of general relationship, lowkey they be cute

Ex drags Mia dress shopping all the time, for both of them

Mia always be complimenting her. On her dresses, and make up, and cooking, just showers this woman with compliments.

Ex has accidentally scared the shit out of Mia in the middle of the night before. More than once.

They do living room karaoke.

Mia might have a thing for women with sharp teeth and long nails.

The Ex is lowkey ecstatic to just be in a relationship with someone who doesn't call her crazy

Mia casually dropping how she used to be possessed too, except it wasn't by choice and now she's forever infected with sentient fungus.

Scary Ex being like "That explains a lot actually." and then never bringing it up again

Basic idea is: Local Himbo falls in love with Horror Beyond Human Comprehension

[winderlylandchime]

Okay so two tiny stories about what happened with my idiot brother. First if all: He went on an insane rant after the episode about Lindsay and her cheating on pregnant Mel and how that was the same shit that happened in s1. Which I fully agree. He has a lot of feelings about the sam plot, not one of them is good. Except, he didn’t go on his rant to me but instead on one of the poor new nurses/interns at the hospital. The poor girl didn’t even know who or what he was talking about because the idiot slipped up a few times and said words like ‘my Brian/my Justin, How will i be able to watch Gus deal with this’ and so on, so it kind of sounded like he was talking about a friend. And he kept going on and on and the poor girl was GIVING HIM ADVICE! And also listening as if she was getting some amazing gossip. Only for one of the other nurses to walk in that does know him and before she left the room she pointed to him and went ‘and don’t pay attention to anything he says. He’s talking about a tv show not real people’ and the new nurse looked at him all shocked and this moron looks at her and goes ‘if it makes you feel better, they are real to me’

And then the second little story: he called our mom and left her multiple texts and voice memos and majority of them were about Brian and his cancer. But she’s a smart woman, so she didn’t answer. However he found a brand new victim. Our uncle. He called him and started talking about Brian and Justin as if they were his friends and i can hear the conversation because it’s on speaker and our uncle goes ‘(his name) is this about that show that your mom warned me about? That she specifically told me to not let you talk to me about it because you’re acting weird about it?’ And he goes ‘off the record? Yes, and i AM worried! AND FOR A GOOD REASON! Bri Bri has cancer and even though he’s doing better, cancer is cancer! And it’s scary. And then there’s Justin and theyre getting closer and closer and I can tell that Brian is seconds away from saying I love you. He’s changed so much this season. But on the record? I have no clue what show you’re talking about, never heard of it, so don’t even think about telling on me to mom’ And then the next thing that we hear is our mom on the phone going ‘(his name), youre on speaker. And you promised youd try and act normal about this show’ and this moron went ‘sorry, wrong number’ and then hung up. This man is an actual legal adult.

DEAR SWEET ANON! I AM DYING OF LAUGHTER.

“if it makes you feel better, they are real to me” I AM DEAD.

HE WAS ON SPEAKER AND YOUR MOM WAS THERE. Busted! I came back from the dead just to die again at “sorry, wrong number.”

HE IS TOO MUCH. He is what I would be like if I didn’t have any embarrassment. My post doc screens intakes for my practice and we were joking around about how everyone should submit a list of celebrities they could not be a therapist to because they know too much about them (and because of where we work this is a legit concern). My post doc asked who I could not be a therapist to and I had to say a currently famous person rather than Gale Harold because how the fuck would I explain who Gale is to me? Your brother would just launch right into it! And good for him.

[otometrashqueen]

The Last of Us Part 1 and 2 Musings *Spoilers abound*

I finished up watching playthroughs of The Last of Us Part 1 & 2 this week and holy hell! SO good. So many feels.

I totally sympathize with Joel for not wanting to lose Ellie, but I also understand that Ellie felt robbed of her purpose for not dying in order to create a cure.

But honestly, what were the odds that her death would actually result in a vaccine?? She would die and they would have a starting place for immunity maybe? or understand how Ellie developed her immunity perhaps, but I feel like it would have taken more than just Ellie's sacrifice to develop a cure. I could definitely be wrong, but those are my thoughts. SO I'm probably more in the Joel camp as far as the ending of Part 1 goes.

Part 2 was, wow, A LOT. There is so much unpack there.

I was glad that Ellie eventually found out the truth and Joel was finally honest with her.

Joel teaching Ellie to play guitar was everything.

Also, Ellie having her own place and space was really good to me. I assumed that she would stay with Joel, but I liked that she had her own independence, but Joel was always close by if needed.

I liked that Joel was finally living near Tommy, I have a special relationship with my brothers, and we live pretty separated from each other so I liked that Joel got to have his brother nearby finally.

It seemed that Joel was more at peace in Jackson, for all the terrible things he did, he's our special boi and it was nice to seem him looking a little more relaxed and play the dad role to Ellie, whether she wanted him to or not.

LOOK AT HIM, HE DESERVES EVERYTHING <33

AND THEN THEY KILLED MY BOI :((((

I honestly was so shocked, that even when the next scene happened and Tommy comes to see Ellie. I was like, "Oh ok this where he says Joel is in a coma or something." BUT NOPE. T.T

It was a great and terrible thing that they did. A really bold piece of story telling and much respect for that, but I was screaming at the screen much like Ellie here.

This beautiful, flawed man, I was so upset, like for a whole day I was mad about it. I moved onto acceptance and I was very satisfied that Ellie hunted them down one by one.

Tommy going by himself before Ellie and Dina was dumb, especially after he had tried to talk Ellie out of it. The girls were going regardless of what anyone said. Tommy should have owned up to that and they could have helped taken care of each other especially having a singulair purpose to avenge Joel's murder.

What's incredible about this game is that it made me not care about the group that came after Joel, they killed my post apocalypse father, a daddy if you will. You don't mess with my daddies >:)

I found satisfaction in each of their deaths, even when we were forced to switch perspective to Abby, which I hated BTW, I HATED IT, but that's why it was so good right?! But even then, and I'll probably get in trouble for this, but I really didn't care when Owen and Mel died, I know, I'm a terrible person, but like fuck them for real. Fuck that stupid love triangle with Abby and Mel and Owen. I didn't care. I was too invested in Ellie, even though her story mirrored Abby's a bit.

I had mixed feelings about the ending as many did. I think Ellie should have either stayed with Dina or finish her revenge journey. The fact that she settled down just to pick up Abby's trail again later seemed a little wishy washy to me well then when she found Abby, she couldn't finish the job and lost her guitar playing fingers in the process.

So she had effectively lost Dina for nothing and did not avenge Joel and lost her only means of connecting with him, the guitar.

Now I can see her returning to Jackson to look for Dina, if she's even there, effectively leaving behind Joel's guitar and her revenge. And Dina could take her back, but like they what's the point of her going back after Abby???

Just to let her go, which at that point I was ok with because she had Lev and I was more invested in the Lev than Abby and I wanted Lev to survive for real.

What I was hoping was maybe Abby and Lev convincing Ellie to go with them to the Fireflies and maybe devise a way to find a cure that DOESN'T murder Ellie, if that's even possible. She fulfills her purpose, doesn't die which also preserves what Joel did to keep her alive and Ellie breaks the cycle of revenge. It would have made her losing Dina still shitty, but make more sense.

Ah well, what the hell do I know? It was a great and terrible journey and I'm happy I made it through. It makes me even more excited for what the show is going to come up for us. :)))))

Me too Joel, me too <333

[lyricwritesprose]

My New Who Fic Masterpost For Those Stuck At Home

More fic to take peoples minds off things.  After all, the only things I can do at this point are (a) wash my hands, and (b) entertain.  Please consider reblogging rather than just liking, so that more people will see the post.  And please feel free to comment on AO3 no matter how old the fic is.  Comments feed my ego let me know how a fic works, and they’re also tremendously encouraging.  If you want to know which ones I think are best, I’d pick “Dragons of the Mind,” “Practical Mythology,” and the duology of “They Say” and “Invisible Road.”  But I’m not great at judging my own stuff, so.

Doctorless Doctor Who Stories I think these fit into New Who because they feature some New Who species.  However, they don’t feature the Doctor, and the companion they include is a classic companion.

“They Say” A slave tells a disobedient prince about a planet that eats armies.  Somewhat experimental narration. “Invisible Road” The prince makes his way to the Dark World to save his sibling.  Somewhat experimental narration.

Ninth Doctor Stories

“Homefall” After the Doctor burns Gallifrey, the TARDIS looks for someone who can persuade him to stay alive.  Jossed by later events.  Angsty. “Sense Memory” Rose should try to sleep off the drug.  She doesn’t want to.  Emotional hurt-comfort, mental violence warning for attempted brainwashing. “And Anon Stands For Memory” Outsider POV fic that I wrote when I was still somewhat finding my feet in fic writing.  Basically, the Doctor meets an OC from a world he saved way back in the classic series. “Practical Mythology” Jack’s first night on the TARDIS, and the next morning.  Action/adventure fic with some angst and one of the huge reveal moments that I really love.  Borders on Outsider POV because Jack is new to the team.  Easily one of my most popular Who-fics. “Things of Great Worth” Lighter and fluffier sequel to “Practical Mythology.”  Team TARDIS attends a festival. “Of Strangers and Second Chances” After "Boom Town," Team TARDIS needs to find a place that will welcome an egg with no Family.  Outsider POV.

Tenth Doctor Stories

“Inspiration” Martha and the Doctor try to help with a plague, and Martha discovers something about the Doctor’s past.  Crossover with classic Who. “To Catch Us When We Fall” When traveling with Alonso, Jack gets into an unsurvivable predicament—which is a problem, because Jack will survive it anyway.  It’s a virtually impossible rescue, but Alonso isn’t as alone as he thinks.

Eleventh Doctor stories, Twelfth Doctor stories and others under the cut (there are a lot of them).

Eleventh Doctor Stories

“Dragons of the Mind” Crossover between new Who and classic Who.  In a dark, menacing landscape, Ace McShane tries to work out how she’s being played, and by whom.  Adventure, mental manipulation warning.  One of my more popular Eleventh Doctor stories, and also probably the longest. “Little Details” Rory’s first morning on the TARDIS.  Fluff. “Boxing Day” Wilfred Mott meets Eleven.  He isn’t happy about it.  Angst with a happy ending, containing many thoughts about regeneration. “Just Because” Rory doesn’t feel like he measures up.  The Doctor decides to do something nice for him.  Fluff. “Interleaving” A look at exactly what was up with Amy’s Aunt Sharon, somewhat more sympathetic than most fandom interpretations.  Effectively Outsider POV. “Faces” A look at regeneration, set soon after the ending of “The Big Bang.”  Jossed by later events. “Night Terrors” After the events of “The Doctor’s Wife,” Rory is having nightmares.  He talks to the Doctor about it.  Angst with a happy/hopeful ending. “Edge of Human” After the events of “Let’s Kill Hitler,” the Doctor visits River.  Doctor/River. “Sweet Sixteenth or Close Enough” Mels has a good time.  Rory experiences the joys of time-scrambled fatherhood.  Fluff.  Short-term Mels/Jeff. “First Time Flying” There’s a first time for everything, including leaping off very tall structures.  River-centric. “Goodbye” The Doctor visits a dying friend.  (Canonical) major character death, tissue warning. “Definitions of Victory” River has issues with losing.  The Doctor has his own doubts about winning.  But he also has a lot of experience in changing the game.  Doctor/River. “Cheek” River is one of the few people to learn Gallifreyan without being born there.  Linguistic musing disguised as a fic, with a joke at the end.  Offscreen Doctor/River. “In the Winter Woods” Team TARDIS plays around in the snow.  Christmas-y fluff. “Christmas Punch” After the events of “The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe,” Rory has something important to say to the Doctor. “Freedom and Lies” The Doctor says incredibly disturbing things when he feels like he has to.  An attempt to make an out-of-character idea in character.  Warning for lots of sexual violence in the background of an original character. “Torpor” Vastra and Jenny and huddling for warmth, which isn’t quite as sexy when you have to do it to revive a reptile. “Disaster, Pizza (Comma Optional)” A cracky little crossover with the original Teen Titans show, centered around the fact that both feature aliens with weird taste buds. “A Problem of Background” The eleventh Doctor needs Martha Jones’s advice about a new companion.  Warning: the OC’s background is messed up.  Please mind the warnings.  This is one of the more serious pieces I’ve ever done for Doctor Who. “Always a Bit Left Over” The popcorn button on the TARDIS microwave causes all corn within a two mile radius to violently explode.  Inspired by a tumblr post.

Twelfth Doctor Stories

“Someone Else’s Promised Land” The Doctor promised he would do something amazing in honor of Gretchen Allison Carlyle. “Strange Creatures” Martha and Mickey are looking for an alien hiding at a university.  They find one.  Actually, they find more than one. “Flashpoint” History on the planet Enuan has gone wrong, and it's up to Bill and the Doctor to put it right.  But they're not the only time travelers here.  Crossover with classic Who.

Original Doctor Stories These came about when I was experimenting with the idea of a female Doctor, before Jodie Whittaker was cast. “Polarity Reversal” Unfinished and abandoned vignette that was more a writing experiment than anything else.  Features the same introduction story, once for a male Doctor, once for a female one. “The Lies of Garden” Unfinished and abandoned multi-chapter that began as a sixth Doctor fic and then suffered through me changing all the pronouns to see how it played out.  I think I taught myself some interesting things, and I like the story, but if I ever finish it it’ll probably be by making it into an original dystopia novel.  (Because this thing is about two hundred percent YA dystopia novel.) “Green Menace” Part one of a three-part story arc.  A regeneration story featuring an original male Doctor, a far-future companion, and a classic monster.  Warning: body horror, cliffhanger (continued in the next story, “Maze of Fears”). “Maze of Fears” Part two of a three-part story arc.  Immediately following the events of “Green Menace,” the original companion struggles to fix her mistake and figure out what’s real.  Warning: unreality, disorientation. “Two of Hearts” Part three of a three-part story arc.  A woman named Stella is working at a radio station in a city that seems a little—off.  And then she finds a playing card with a phone number on it, and a note: “The Doctor—call me when it goes odd.”  One classic monster, one New Who monster.

Sarah Jane Adventures

“Du Liebes Kind, Komm, Geh Mit Mir” Crossover with classic Who, slight crossover with new Who.  After she moves to America, Maria Jackson meets young Sarah Jane and gets caught up in an adventure with the Fourth Doctor.  Warning: Mental Manipulation.

[han100894]

Some of My Frustration with NNT

So this is probably going to be a controversial take, but as much as I like NNT, there are things about it that have been bothering me.

One big one is, despite attempting at least lip service, the girls often vastly get overshadowed by the guys.

(Note, this is me airing my frustrations, I still like NNT, I like all of theses ships to some extent, I don’t mean to rain on anyone’s parade. It would be awesome to know if anyone else agrees, but mostly I’m just trying to make myself feel better and honestly it may not be the best written and I’m probably forgetting points that made me feel this way and I’m sure I’ve forgotten things in the Manga itself.)

Just look at the three biggest ships: Kaine, Banlaine, and Melizabeth.

I like Kaine, it was my first favorite ship but… it’s ultimately King’s story. The majority of the focus is on King’s POV and feelings. Even Daine’s memory loss is played more about how he feels than her—she doesn’t even get a chance to get mad at Gowther for it, or for that matter angry at King—no instead King gets mad on her behaft. She gets pulled around by the plot, and the memory loss in particular to give King extra angst. Even her confused feeling for Meliodas are mostly played as comic relief, drama fodder early on with Elizabeth, and to King more angst. We get very little from her POV.

And whenever Diane tries to protect King (In my memory at least) it always backfires on her, leading to King to Angst and “power up” and come to the rescue.

She has no real major victories to her name. Generally in any fight from the second half of arc 1 and moving forward she’s either coached by King (The Vytle festival, he saves Diane and defeats his enemy alone, but Diane needs couching), or King takes the spotlight (fighting Helbram, fighting Mael)

The only plot point she gets on her own is the brief time with Matrona after she loses her memory once again. Otherwise her plotlines are heavily tangled with King’s and again we usually see things from King’s point of view. Even when they both went back to the past Diane ends up goofing off but King notices something is wrong. We just—we never get into her head like we do King. We don’t see anywhere near the kind of character development he has.

And King gets several plots unconnected to Diane, Helbram, the fairy forest, Ban and his sister, his inferiority complex…

I just wish she’s get some focus that didn’t revolve around King (or Mel)—and also that she got a chance to protect King without it instantly backfiring on her or making King feel bad about himself again…

(Also, there is no reason for Diane to be “equivalent of 15” none at all. Made even worse once King gets to go through “fairy puberty” in an instant and grow up something she can’t do (Also why the heck would 700=15 when giants only live to like 2000?)

And then Banlaine:

Let’s be honest, Elaine exists almost completely as a prop for Ban’s story, up to and including dying on him (aka being fridged) and causing his manangst and driving his story). She spend half the story dead and the other half deathly ill. She has little to no interaction with anyone else—even her conversations with her own brother is all about Ban.

She doesn’t even really get much of a say about the whole thing, Ban’s quest to save her, it just is.

I do think the Raven’s arc was the best arc, but it was so entirely because of Jericho and her character development and drive, not because of Elaine. She had one moment of cute interactions with Elizabeth as they fought off two people who had no build up and were pretty much fodder, and then she had one moment where she saved Ban and managed to “grow up” something that’s downplayed slightly by being part of the reason Ban gets into his huge angst, and her losing her upgrade literally the next time we really see her just in time for Ban to save her (And turning her back into a child look alike) something that was truly not necessary. Gloxina didn’t lose his wings when he died, and wings are literally something fairies are killed for to sell—she could have stilled died and not lose her upgrade.

Honestly what I want from her is her to get to talk with her god damn brother, and maybe actually work things out on screen how he hurt her, and her understanding how he did so almost entirely unintentionally without Ban being their or brought up would be nice. Off screen does not count at all either. other than that let her be a person and not a prop!

And finally Melizabeth

Technically, or at least some people believe so, Meliodas and Elizabeth are the two main, main characters of the story. Honestly I kinda feel that Meliodas, Ban and King are the one who have gotten the most development and focus throughout the whole story, or at least until recently.

Elizabeth has tried, but in a lot of situation she’s been a plot point (Getting kidnapped, the seed not being in the cup for her test, ect) or had a lot of her agency taken from her to push the story along. Ever since she got her memories back she’s been trying to change that yes, but so far has instead been nearly instantly kidnapped and put into a situation where she could only be saved by others. (And yes, in story context she as in a bad situation for her powerset, but Nakaba still decided to have this happened to her and decided that she could do nothing to help just after she decided she would do something about all of this. It’s not like he didn’t have a choice.)

Meanwhile Meliodas has mostly treated Elizabeth like a child—which is fair considering she is one, she’s only 16 (Seriously, why couldn’t she have been at least 18, what would that have changed other than a tiny bit of the creepy factor)—but even after she regains her memories, he decides what he’s going to do with no input from her (Take the Commandment, break the curse, kidnap her, ect) and yes he has no emotions at the time but it’s still really shitty and only a step more than earlier when he refused to allow her to join the Sins again at the start of arc 2, without even explaining why, and even insulting and hurting her instead.

And it’s not that I want her to be a badass fighter. I’m fine with her being a realistic pacifist and mostly a healer and leader—that’s great. I just want her to have more agency instead of being shoved around to force the plot to do what Nakaba wants and get a chance to actually help Meliodas like she wants.

Bonus: Monspeet and Derieri

Their relationship is interesting, as on its outside it’s actually reverses some of the tropes this story has. Derieri is the one who get most of the focus and character development, while Monspeet is somewhat behind her. And in a twist, instead of the girl being fridged for the guy’s character development, the guy is fridged for the girls. Something rare enough that I actually thought that Monspeet’s death was somewhat okay (Up until Derieri’s story faltered right after).

Derieri has the same somewhat realization as Elizabeth—she was always the one being protected by Monspeet, being taken cared of by him, and how she wanted to be the one who did it back.

But then just as she was getting a big moment, finally a chance to somewhat redeem herself and try and help stop this war and save Mael, she is killed just as she’s about to do it, stopping her story cold turkey.

And now with Mael doing the weird reincarnation thing I have to ask why. If she’s almost certainly going to come back at some point (probably in the sequel—Arthur’s story I’d assumed if it actually happens) why couldn’t she have succeeded when she was so close. Why did she have to be worfed to show off Mael and eventually being the catalyst to power up King.

It’s just… frustrating.

I just wish she’s been allowed to succeeded after everything. I wish she’d gotten at least one moment where she protected Monspeet.

Last complaint

And one thing that has bothered me over all is, most notably while Ban and Meliodas were in Purgatory, how “We are going to get out of here and save our girls” which is great I guess, but, both them, and King in his “I have to protect you” say it so often that it almost feels…infantizing. The guys are so obsessed with taking care of and protecting the girls who don’t get the same chance to do it for them, or try and get punished for it, or realize to late and it’s just…

Ban and Mel really do it, King has his huge “I have to save everyone” complex, even Monspeet goes overboard with Derieri a bit (hitting away the rocks anyone). Escanor is similar, though he respects and believes in Merlin as much as he wants to jump to her defense making him a bit of an exception but I have no idea if Escalin is supposed to be a thing or not at this point. Margret got to be political prisoner for ages, and when she went out to find Gil she gets manipulated into becoming Ludo’s host. Veronica gets a whole side plot only for it to suddenly stop with no conclusion.

I just want the girls to get to do cool things, sometimes completely unconnected to the boys, and not have it backfire on them or get overshadowed. I want the relationships to have more equal screen time between each partner, Is that so much?

[albionjake]

Goodbye Big Brother: The Show That Changed Television and My Life

You’ve probably read this title and thought ‘Christ, he really likes Big Brother too much’ and you’d be correct. I definitely do. There’s no denying that. But I would add that you probably think Big Brother is just a trashy, meaningless reality show and I’m afraid to tell you that you’re wrong about that. You have probably come to that conclusion as a result of extreme reality saturation. Reality as a genre is now almost exclusively easy to watch trash that washes over you and you forget about a few days later. Big Brother is entirely responsible for all of it existing but I don’t believe it should be judged the same way as its spawn. BB is the original and it should be treated with respect (yes Channel 5, I’m talking to you). At one time in the UK, Big Brother was the biggest show on television. It was on the front pages of national newspapers and magazines. Housemates became household names. It was watched by four times the amount of people that watched the Love Island final this July. It changed the way TV was made. Before Big Brother, we didn’t have shows where the public called up and voted people off. It wasn’t a thing. Big Brother is the original reality show. The greatest of all time. A show with so many iconic scenes and characters, no other reality can even come close. Try arguing a case against a show that gave you Nasty Nick’s confrontation, Helen and Paul’s romance, Jade Goody’s verruca meltdown, Fight Night, Michelle and Chicken Stu under the table, Kinga and her bottle, Nikki Grahame’s diary room rants. If we go over to CBB, it gave you George Galloway being a cat, “Yeah, Jackie”, Tiffany Pollard believing David Gest had died in the house. No other show could produce moments like this.  So why is it being cancelled at the end of this series? Well, nobody is watching it anymore. Has the show changed? Yes, a bit. But not really. The basic premise has always been there for 19 series. What’s changed a lot more is society. We are a very different country to what we were in the year 2000. People have much shorter attention spans and have come to expect shows to be heavily produced and edited. Big Brother is still essentially the same show it always was but it has changed and I’m going to tell you how while also hopefully reminding you why the show is so incredibly important and why it’s an absolute travesty that it’s been thrown on the scrap heap without anyone caring. Series 1 began on the 18th of July 2000. Ten people went into a house, and the first few weeks bubbled away without much fuss, viewers were steadily increasing as people became interested in loud and confrontational characters like Caroline and Nicola and a burgeoning romance between Andy and Mel. We could spy on people living their lives. After years of having to covertly peak through the net curtains or put a glass to the wall to spy on the neighbours, we could do it openly in our homes and then get rid of anyone that was annoying us by calling up and voting them out. The show didn’t take long to become a national talking point. After 35 days, Nick Bateman was ejected from the house for cheating. For weeks leading up, he had been secretly writing names on pieces of paper and showing them to other housemates in an attempt to sway their nominations. The public had also watched him make up stories about things like his wife dying in a car accident and he’d become the most hated man in Britain. On his final day, the other housemates had confronted him, led by Craig who eventually won the show. Nick was on the front pages, he made the show a massive hit, everyone was talking about it.  The second series was eagerly anticipated and was full of much of the same arguments and controversy. The show was streamed 24 hours a day on E4 and a sister show began called Big Brother’s Little Brother which would lead to the ‘sister show’ becoming a genre of its own and being a staple of pretty much every reality and talent show on TV. Brian Dowling won the second series after being adorable and hilarious for 64 days. His win told me, a gay 13 year old boy, that young, gay men could be accepted for who they are by millions and that was invaluable to me. Big Brother literally changed my life, so forgive me if I get defensive about it. It’s more than a TV show to me. Over 19 years, it has taught me so much about human interaction, about accepting people for who they are and about a whole host of controversial issues. Watching a house full of different adults every year from the age of 12... I can’t even imagine how many things the show taught me. It’s almost certainly shaped a huge part of me and my personality. Week one of the third series brought the first ever nominations twist as the public were asked to nominate two housemates and then the housemates would decided which one to evict. Of the two that were up, the housemates chose to evict Lynne who had actually received the second highest number of the votes. Who had the highest number of votes to leave after one week? Jade Goody. Sort of proves that letting the public vote for anything might have been a huge mistake all along. Jade Goody would later become the biggest star the show has ever produced. Jade’s story is one of the most fascinating stories in British pop culture history and I’m astounded it hasn’t been made into a film. She made the series unmissable and I believe she’s one of the all time greats. BB3 also gave us Allison Hammond who now presents on This Morning along with a load of other stuff and Adele Roberts who hosts the Radio 1 early morning breakfast show. This series was the most crazy yet, with more twists and turns than before and a more volatile mix of housemates.  Following the insanity of BB3, the show tried to get back to basics with its cast and the people chosen were a bit less manic. This was the first huge misstep for BB. It’s a risky format, there’s always a chance that your housemates just aren’t going to work. Always a chance they’ll all pretty much just get on and have a nice life in the house. This is another reason why I love Big Brother. There’s always a risk that it could be a shit series. Sure, producers can intervene and try to spice the show up but, what I’ve learned over the years is, that if it’s a shit series then it just can’t be saved. If those housemates aren’t right then nothing you throw at them is going to fix the problem. BB4 was one of those years, it was perfectly pleasant but entirely uneventful. So Big Brother 5 had to win everyone back. A lot of people had given up on BB4 but the show was still young enough to stir up interest when it came around again the following year. They’d learnt from last year and were telling us that Big Brother was “going evil”. The house was pumped full of loud, opinionated and diverse people. Big Brother was harsher and meaner than ever before. The show was exciting again. The huge argument that is now known as ‘Fight Night’ was one of the show’s landmark moments. Security was sent in to diffuse the situation. The police were called by concerned viewers at home. Housemates were screaming and shouting in each other’s faces. Tension that had been bubbling under the surface for weeks had erupted and it was absolutely amazing to watch. I was watching the live feed on E4 that night and despite mostly only getting to see shots of the garden and hearing the familiar sound of birdsong, the little snippets I was able to see were genuinely thrilling. Big Brother 5 was won by Nadia Almada, the first trans housemate ever. Following Brian’s win a few years earlier, this cemented Big Brother’s important place in the LGBT world. No other show has shown quite as many varied types of queer people in this country. And it doesn’t just show them, it lets an audience get to know them. Nadia didn’t win because she was trans. She won because she had been an incredible housemate. Seeing the leaps and bounds trans rights have made in recent years has been amazing but let’s remember how out of the ordinary it was to see a trans person on mainstream TV in 2004. Not a drag queen like Lily Savage or someone wheeled out on Jerry Springer for a cheap laugh. We got to see a real trans person on mainstream national TV and it can’t be understated how healthy that was for our country and culture. BB was now back on track as BB6 came along and was just as great as BB5 had been, probably better. We had legends like Makosi and Kemal, Craig and Antony’s fascinating friendship and fiery characters like Science, Maxwell, Roberto and Derek to keep the drama going for the whole summer. Kinga and her bottle will probably be the most memorable moment from the series but the whole three months were exceptional. Big Brother 7 was more of the same. Another amazing mix of housemates including Pete, Nikki, Richard, Lea, Aisleyne and Glyn. But BB7 is where things started to take a turn. This series had 22 housemates overall. That is too many housemates. One thing that hardly ever saves a series is throwing in more housemates and BB7 added 8 people across three different twists. Not only that but a very late twist allowing the public to put their favourite evicted housemate back in was the first time BB messed with one of it’s fundamental format points, “Who goes, you decide”. The public had paid to evict Nikki and then she was allowed back in. If that wasn’t bad enough, when she did return she was a lot more knowing, she’d seen how hilarious the public found her tantrums so she was playing up to that and it wasn’t the same. Nikki is one of the greatest housemates of all time but I think letting anyone back in when they’ve been evicted by the public just isn’t right. I would say, though a fantastic series, that BB7 was the beginning of the end for Big Brother as a cultural talking point. The minute they messed with those BB fundamentals, the whole format was up for grabs, they could mess around with anything, the public lose sight of what the show is about when you’re changing the rules all the time. So BB8 came along and was perfectly acceptable. I would argue that it had far too many knowing housemates. Chanelle made several blatant attempts at becoming the new Nikki with some excruciatingly exaggerated tantrums. We had out first ever BB superfan housemate in Brian Belo. We had a weird twist where they only put women in for the first week. Completely pointless. Looking back, there were so many examples of BB losing its way in this series. BB7 had created a small puncture and BB8 was failing to contain the water damage. Then BB9 came along and added several more punctures. I hate Big Brother 9. I think it’s trashy and gross. It’s grubby. The house was full of incredibly unlikeable characters along with some entirely forgettable ones. It was all so crude and unpleasant. There was an incident where Dennis spat in Mohammed’s face and was ejected. There was Alexandra threatening people with her gang friends on the outside. There was Mikey who was vile. Rex who was horrible. Darnell who later appeared in porn with Bex from this series and Billi from BB8. Just grubby and, for me, not what Big Brother should be about. Everyone was crass and loud and fame hungry and dreadful. BB is accused of being that all the time but for 80% of the time, it isn’t. Sadly, this series lived up to critics perceptions and it was awful. I’d say the only good thing BB9 did was give us Lisa Appleton who I am still obsessed with. I could look at pictures of her putting the bins out whilst eating a saveloy all day. After BB9, Big Brother had lost the public. BB9 was the one that stuck a knife in Big Brother’s cultural significance. The show never recovered. Big Brother 10 was a vast improvement but nobody knew because ratings went down by a third. It’s amazing that BB10 was actually on Channel 4. Although I guess ITV keep chucking The Voice and The X Factor on air and nobody cares about those. Telly is weird. BB10 was great, it toned down on the vile people and we had a bunch of genuinely interesting people. It wasn’t as fast paced as the previous 5 series which was actually a relief. The balance was right again but by this point Big Brother was far from the only reality show around. Structured reality was creeping in and BB couldn’t compete with faked storylines. The public’s attention span for watching a bunch of fairly nice people make a few friends, have a few bust ups and a couple of romances just wasn’t there. Society had changed and Big Brother had been left behind. Channel 4 then announced it was cancelling the show. Nobody was particularly surprised. BB11 would be the last series of all time which actually got ratings up slightly. I loved Big Brother 11. Shabby and Caoimhe’s unrequited love storyline was the first we’d seen between two girls. BB superfan Mario being picked at random from a huge group of hopefuls on launch night was great and his task at being BB’s secret mole while having to dress as a mole and wear a sign saying “I am a mole’ showed that BB was back to being silly and fun. There was a talking chest of drawers that gave housemates secret tasks and plenty of really great, imaginative and fun tasks throughout. BB had finally shown what sort of show it could be but, sadly, it was too late. The series’ winner Josie Gibson was one of the best winners BB had and her relationship with the fascinating John James was amazing to watch. To see a handsome, toned, blonde, Australian surfer guy fall for a normal, plus-sized girl from a Bristol farm was something that only Big Brother could give you.  Then we had an underwhelming Ultimate Big Brother which was deservedly won by Ultimate Housemate Brian Dowling and BB was gone. I was sad to see it go but I understood why and looked forward to its inevitable return a few years down the line. But then Channel 5 came knocking and the show was reborn. Now, I’m grateful to C5 for giving the show a second chance and brining us a new era of BB. They took Celebrity Big Brother and ran with it, creating a huge number of iconic telly. Kim Woodburn, Perez Hilton, Gemma Collins and so many more completely insane celebrities have made TV gold on C5′s version of CBB and it has been amazing. But, much as I love CBB, my heart is with Civilian and I’m not sure it has ever been quite right on Channel 5. The moment it first began, things were different. The editing, the music, the way the housemates names would constantly come up like I was watching an episode of TOWIE. Big Brother was finally trying to fit in with the modern crowd of reality shows and it looked like an embarrassing dad trying to hang out with the cool kids. Just be yourself, BB. All the show ever needed to be was itself and things would have been fine, this year’s series has proved that. Unfortunately, the show just became less and less itself and completely lost its way. One thing I will say about C5 is that Emma Willis and Rylan Clark-Neal have been absolutely incredible. They both love Big Brother as much as the fans and it’s so appreciated. After a shaky start with poor old Brian Dowling hosting, Emma took his place and did Davina proud. Of course Davina McCall will always be THE host of Big Brother but Emma has done a perfect job and made the role her own. Rylan has been a brilliant Bit On The Side host. Following Dermot O’Leary and Russell Brand as BB sister show hosts is not an easy task but Rylan has been just as wonderful as both of them. Davina, Dermot, Russell, Emma and Rylan all did amazing jobs hosting BB and BB related shows and I’m thrilled to have been there with them the whole time. Of course, there have been moments of greatness on C5. It’s Big Brother for goodness sake. I enjoyed Aaron winning the first C5 series and being the first winner to be booed when he left. I enjoyed Luke A showing everyone that trans men exist too and becoming the second trans winner. I enjoyed a lot and I never stopped watching. The first three series on C5 sort of passed everyone by, including me really. I watched them and enjoyed them but I wasn’t hugely fussed. Then Big Brother 14 happened and BB lost itself completely. Firstly, Zoe Birkett from Pop Idol was in civilian Big Brother. There had literally been dozens of far less famous people than her in the celebrity version. Due to the success of CBB, C5 were clearly mixing the two together and it was awful. The housemates were now being scouted. We had the same people who were also trying to get on X Factor, The Apprentice, Britain’s Got Talent etc etc. People that just want to be on telly. NOT people who want to be on Big Brother.  One of those people was the odious Helen Wood. One of the most poisonous and vile people ever to step foot in that house. Due to an insanely misjudged opening week task, Helen won a pass to the final. This meant that her bullying and nasty behaviour was left unpunished for weeks. Nobody could nominate her. Decent people were stuck in a house with her and it was genuinely unpleasant to watch. Without the pass, she would have been evicted very quickly but with it she was able to gain popularity with people who found her bullying “entertaining” and she ended up winning the show. It was BB’s lowest point. The next year, the house was full of reality TV rejects again. It was a weird series and BB seemed to be changing the rules all over the place. Twists were thrown in at an alarming rate. Someone was evicted on the first night. Then on Day 18, 4 housemates were evicted and replaced by another 4... essentially starting the series again because the entire house dynamic changed. This was unbelievably alienating for viewers and it went down terribly. It was completely dreadful. Then, as if the series wasn’t enough of a mess, they put Helen Wood back in the house as a guest. Helen spent her time being vile again, to the point where Brian Belo (another guest) escaped after she drove him to tears. Afterwards, Helen ended up having some sort of fight backstage and she’s since been banned from all BB shows and events. Quite right too. Mental that they ever put her back in. BB17 was a slight improvement but it was still full of reality show rejects and still had weird twists like letting Jason evict Lateysha without a public vote. Madness. But the series did feel like BB was finding its way again and I enjoyed it more than I had for a while. Then we had BB18. I really really liked BB18. Unfortunately, the house probably had the most reality rejects it’s ever had. With about half the house having been on Ex On The Beach or Ibiza Weekender. All these crappy cheap reality shows clearly being the easiest place to grab a housemate from. Easier for producers than sitting through thousands of audition tapes, I suppose! Anyway, despite this, the series was pretty great. Going back to the classic two bedrooms created two camps and I absolutely love BB when it feels like there are two camps. We had Rose Cottage and Thorn Cottage and I was fully Team Thorn all the way. Brilliant housemates like Raph, Hannah, Deborah, Chanelle and Isabelle really made the show watchable again and I loved it. It still had a lot of flaws but it was a really enjoyable series and I was so pleased to see so many of Thorn Cottage in the final week. Then the wait for BB19 began. It was a longer wait than usual as we all heard rumours than Channel 5 didn’t want BB anymore. Celeb BB ended and then another came around and still there hadn’t been a civilian series. The second CBB had been pretty great and BB fans had high copes that the next civilian would deliver and be what we’ve hoped for for such a long time. Then the news broke on the day of launch night. Channel 5 were cancelling Big Brother and Celebrity Big Brother. Big Brother 19 would be the last series ever. The news was upsetting but not surprising, it was only made worse when BB19 started and it was so instantly incredible. The housemates had been chosen properly and they were great, the launch night had so many nods to the old days, the house looked wonderful and the launch night twist introducing Big Coins to the game was amazing. Then we were blessed with so many brilliant and inventive tasks. The show was back doing what it should have been doing the whole time. But AGAIN, it was too late. For the second time, BB had been axed and then decided to pull its socks up and be brilliant. Why does it always have to be too late? I’ve loved this final series. There have been one or two issues towards the end but ultimately it’s been a really brilliant bunch of housemates who I think have been worthy of possibly being the final people to call the Big Brother house home.  So now it’s gone and I can get on with my life. BB does take up a lot of my time when it’s on and I have watched every single series since the year 2000. That’s a lot of time so part of me is glad, I won’t lie. If it comes back though, I’ll be here and I’ll watch it because I’m a FAN. Being a proper fan of Big Brother means you don’t give up when it’s dull or when the producers seem to be losing their minds or when the rest of the country moves on to Love Island. We love Big Brother, not the genre it spawned or the countless, meaningless reality shows that wouldn’t exist without it. People often label me a ‘reality TV fan’ but I’m not. I just love Big Brother, that’s all. It’s the original and it will always be the best. People may say it’s not what it used to be but those people aren’t watching it anymore so I’ve no idea how they could possibly know. The show has always been the same deep down. It’s about watching and connecting with a bunch of strangers for a few months. Loving them, hating them, learning from them, feeling for them and generally being fascinated by the different ways that human beings interact. There are now hundreds of shows like it but none of those shows do it quite like Big Brother does it.  Big Brother is a very special television programme and I love it unashamedly. It’s gone for now but I have a feeling that one day, Big Brother will get back to us.

[koganphrancis]

Camless Episode 5

All The Writers Of This Show Are Shit

We had us a brand new writer this week and all we got was the same old same old: OOC, Retconing, and Repeats of Old Story Beats.

I’ll attempt a recap, but this episode really sucked the will out of me.

(gif credit: gallavichlovies)

I’m not going to do my usual character by character recap because frankly some really awful shit went down this week that I’m just going to refer to and not go into in depth.  Plus, so much of the episode was tedious repeats of shit the writer had JUST TRIED to say.  

We had both Debbie and Ian go knocking on the wrong doors for advice. We had two endless Lip scenes where all that was happening was he was running and riding a motorcycle.  Maybe next week he can paint a fence and we can all watch as the paint dries. Liam is sexually molested (off screen, but still) by another child who had been sexually molested. Carl and Frank both get slapped around in sexually-adjacent situations just as the show is once again trying to drive home what’s unacceptable for men to do to women-hey, Shameless, that goes for what’s unacceptable for women to do to men, women to do to other women, and men to do to other men as well.  They tried to make “going Fiona” a thing-twice.   There were at least four scenes where Frank tried to get an erection. There were endless retcons (more on those to come).  

My notes are all over the place and the show’s such a shit pile I can’t even begin to make a smooth narrative out of them, so here’s a list of my observations, saving the Ian shit for last.

Debbie had a running thread through a big part of the episode where she’s literally bored to the point of falling asleep listening to Alex-that is exactly how I feel about their relationship/the Debbie thinks she might be gay storyline.  Also, if anyone cares, Debs has completely dropped her equal rights/equal pay fight.  She doesn’t even seem to go to work anymore. Later, Debbie goes to visit the lesbians in Fiona’s building (rather than, I don’t know, talking to Vee about her experiences with Svetlana, since that seems maybe more in line with feelings Debbie is experiencing?) and the scene was clearly written in lieu of Shameless ever showing sex scenes anymore.  

The blond lesbian, Mel, exposes herself to Debbie in the doorway of her apartment (but sadly for the Netflix fans, her back is to the camera), without establishing if Debbie is not a minor, and then she kisses her in a sloppy slo-mo saliva string sharing close up.  Debbie is supposedly stunned stupid by this, but the whole “you like what you like and you don’t have to justify your sexual orientation to anyone” message falls flat.  Debbie has ALWAYS been starved for attention, and she misreads any attention she gets from anyone of any sex.  Since Matty she’s always equated someone trying to be interested in her as being interested in her sexually.  And that kiss wasn’t sexual at all-it too was a form of molestation-it wasn’t asked for or consented to.  This show is shit.  

Carl meets a young woman at a West Point mixer, the daughter of the scary military officer who is throwing the party.  Hello, we’ve done this already with Dom and her scary cop dad.  Yawn.  Carl films them not having sex after she passes out drunk so he can prove he didn’t molest/rape her, should it ever come in question.  At first the young woman is mad (and jumps on him and starts slapping him around, just like Katey Sagal will do in a scene with Frank), but then later she returns Carl’s phone and says she saw he didn’t film them having sex, but there is a recording on there of him having sex with someone else.  He says that’s Kassidi, his ex, but fails to let Kelly (the new chick) know she’s dead and he’s an accessory to her murder.  And how fucking creepy is it that Carl’s kept sex with his dead ex on his phone?  Is that something he’s still watching?  Does he get off to it?  This show is shit.

Kev and Vee get stuck with Frank in a few scenes, foreshadowing the boring seasons to come, should the show get renewed (why are they still sitting on announcing that, btw?).  There’s a subplot for Kev where he’s going to speak at a women’s rally in his new-found position of Vagina Safe consultant, but he wisely bows out when he hears the real hell women face on a regular basis.  Why this show is trying to be socially conscious this late in the game I’ll never know.  Especially since they’ll keep pulling their bullshit and defend it with “it’s Shameless!” like they’ve always done in the past.  This show is shit.

There’s the weekly Fiona/Bored disagreements-this time they’re about little things like music preferences and whether or not Fiona should care about her brother going to prison for up to two decades.  Bored winds up singing along to a song to Fiona at the end-it should’ve been Gus Pfender’s Fuck You, Fiona and they could’ve had a cute discussion about Gus being Fi’s ex-husband.  This show is shit.

Now Ian.  Sigh.  Nothing makes sense.  Everything’s either a lie or a retcon and we the audience still don’t know which.  At breakfast he’s telling the family his plea options, and when Liam questions temporary insanity, Ian rattles off, “Bipolar, off my meds.”  So is Ian saying that’s just the definition of the defense he could use, or is he saying “I was off my meds”????  WHY won’t the show give us any answers?  There were two significant scenes in Season 8 where he staunchly said he was taking his meds and that he (rightly) was entitled to feel emotions and be angry at times.  Are we supposed to think that right about then is when he stopped taking them and then Gay Jesus happened?  But if that was the case, why did he stop taking his meds, and now how long has he been off them-or did he start taking them again and now they’re working after being off them for all the GJ stuff PLUS when he was in jail for 9 months?  IF he was off his meds for any amount of time but especially a long amount of time (pretty sure an argument could be made he’d been off them since leaving Mickey/Monica dying/stalking boring Terror, blowing that old couple for money), why did his manic phase seem so different than when he was back from the army?  Can the show try to explain anything?  

Ian and Fiona and Geneva all go to the lawyer’s office-why?  There IS such a thing as client-attorney privilege and the lawyer, at least, would ask them to wait outside once the screaming began if not sooner.  But oh well.  Ian finally says, “Does anyone want to hear what my lawyer has to say?”  Me at home: YES!!!  Lawyer starts to talk, “I know this judge-he’s under...” Geneva starts yelling again and what gets lost in her bullshit is that later on, the judge is not a he?  

Outside Fi asks Ian, “Are all lesbians that dramatic?”  I asked last week, I’m asking again: Is Geneva a lesbian?  Is this just another retcon?  Her initial interactions with Ian seemed like she was crushing on him, that she wanted him, and there’s been nothing about her being a lesbian in canon.  I know it’s not important, but the lack of attention to detail on this show contributes mightily to its shittiness.

Suddenly Ian has a question, and he can think of only one place to get an answer (even though Liam was able to Google “what is cocktail attire?” and get an answer in seconds.  Ian should’ve asked him to look up his question as well).  

Ian goes to the Milkovich house and it’s so fucking OOC I don’t even want to think about it.  For whatever reason, Ian politely says, “Hi, Mr. Milkovich,” when Terry answers the door-why would he even bother?  Terry’s not big on manners, for one thing, and for another, the last time Ian saw Terry he was flipping him off as he was being carted back to prison.  Don’t think Terry’s going to be warmed over by a polite greeting.  Anyway, Ian asks him about being in the pen, and Terry says there’s ass and mouth rapings that Ian would probably enjoy, shitty food, and beat downs from the guards.  Ian asks if Terry was mouth raped (I think he specified that, I didn’t put it in my notes) and Terry indignantly says that Milkoviches don’t “bottom”.  Ian says, “Was Mickey adopted?” and I can’t tell if he was trying to piss Terry off or if he was genuinely curious, but as a joke it didn’t work-Ian knows (or the old Ian did, anyway) better than anyone that Mickey was absolutely nothing like Terry, in any way, not just in sexual preferences.  Another OOC comment to just make the viewer weep thinking about the old days.  Also, having Terry know, let alone USE, the term bottom was also OOC in the extreme.  He might as well have said, “All Milkoviches are cishet.”  It would’ve been just as believable.  

But back to the scene.  Ian says, “Rapings, food, guards-I can handle that shit.  I just need to know...” Terry interrupts him.  “Anyone can handle that shit.  (Again, me at home: Really?)  It’s the boredom that’ll kill ya...Start reading books, lifting weights...”  (Mickey already told him that about juvie AND prison-how dense is Ian that he never got it?)  “But you’re in the same place, with the same assholes, doing the same shit, every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every god damn year.  If I was you I’d pack my shit and run.”  

Ian’s face while he’s running down all the segments of time seems to look like Terry’s getting through to him.  And Terry telling him to take off is actually the best advice Ian winds up getting-in the long run Terry seems to care about keeping Ian out of prison more than his own family.  Terry easily could’ve slammed the door in Ian’s face and ignored him.  Does that mean I forgive Terry at all for everything he did to Mickey, Mandy, and Ian-not to mention his other sons and Svetlana?  FUCK NO.  But how telling is it that this show is now so bad that a villainous piece of shit like Terry is the one character we are listening to and agreeing with?  

One last thing about Terry-he just got out, but he knows Mickey’s in Mexico?  How?  I’m hoping this is a set up for Ian being able to find Mickey next week (or at the end of the season if we have to wait that fucking long), but this show doesn’t do continuity anymore, so I’m sure there’s no logical explanation for Terry knowing that fact.  

Fi goes to the Gallagher house looking for Ian and finds an empty box of hair dye, and a towel stained with hair dye, and that Ian’s drawers are empty.  I also noticed that his pillow was gone-did he pack that up too?  If so, I’m hoping it’s because he and Mickey shared it and he wanted to keep some part of Mick with him always, but we know this show ain’t about that anymore.  Anyway, Fi goes and tells Lip she thinks Ian skipped bail and they have to go find him.  Lip says no, Ian’s an adult.  This conversation also just took place with Debbie-or takes place right after, the show was so boring I couldn’t keep the repeated scenes straight if you put a gun to my head.  

WHY are the siblings so uncaring about Ian going to prison-or getting caught as a fugitive and spending even more time there?  WHY is everyone so stupid about whether prison is “bad” or not, especially for their apple cheeked, puppy-eyed brother who is dealing with mental illness?  Who may or may not be off his meds at any given time?  Ian couldn’t even handle VISITING Mickey in prison, why does he suddenly think he could do a stretch of multiple years if not decades?  All those years stealing cable and watching bootleg DVDs, did none of the Gallaghers ever watch Oz?  In a prior season it was established that Lip has read so much he was able to determine a Louis Vuitton purse was authentic by the stitching and the lettering-he’s never read about prisons and how they affect young men that are in them for a period of time?  “Hardened criminal” is a phrase he’s never come across?  Lip doesn’t realize how hard Ian’s future as a convicted felon will be when he gets out?  Trying to find a job (especially one with medical benefits), a place to live, all that stuff?  This show is shit.

There’s a meaningless shot of Ian at the train station (we don’t even get to know where he was planning to run to-as if we didn’t know-show us he’s at least headed south, you bastards!) and then there’s a scene where Lip comes home in the dark to find Ian at the kitchen table eating ice cream right out of the Edy’s carton.  (They don’t show us the flavor-it looked like it might be chocolate chip?  I didn’t see any chunks of cookie dough or anything.  Again, this is only important because everything else is so boring that actually knowing what kind of ice cream Ian likes would be interesting in comparison.)  

I guess the ice cream is sort of a metaphor?  Ian’s last sweet taste of freedom?  Or maybe I’m reading too much into it and they just came up with something for the brothers to share and it couldn’t be beer-because of Lip, not because of Ian’s meds because god knows they never cared about that, plus we STILL don’t know if he’s just magically back on them-if he is, how is he paying for them?  Anyway, after Lip’s earlier attitude about Ian being an “adult” and not caring all that much about him ever, he doesn’t deserve ice cream!  Here’s a snippet of their dialogue: 

Lip: So you didn’t run. Ian: Oh no-I ran.  I just...ran back.  (well, at least that’s in character since he ran away to the army and came back, and ran away with Monica and came back, and the fucking Mexican border, but I’m not happy about that fact)

They start listing the things Ian will miss if he’s gone for the next ten years.  Debbie may be married to a woman (I would think her being divorced is more likely, but whatever, I won’t be around to watch it either, I’m gone as soon as Ian’s back with Mickey), Carl will be a war criminal, Liam will be the father of a ten year old, Frank, dead.  Ian asks Lip, “You?”  “Still in AA, if I haven’t drunk myself to death.”  Ian says, “Do me a favor?  Don’t.”  IAN CARES MORE ABOUT LIP THAN LIP CARES ABOUT IAN.  Always has, always will.  “Lip deserves to get out of the ghetto.”  But Lip’s fine with Ian going off to prison because of the whole Gay Jesus thing that he never even began to try to understand or help Ian find a way out of.  This show is shit.

Next there’s a scene of Ian in a suit, dressed for court and talking to his Bible that’s on his bed (still no pillow-weird).  He’s asking Shim to talk to him one last time, maybe give him a hint what he should do.  His voice is soft and pleading and he’s almost in tears and all I can think is he needs Mickey to talk things out with.  Lip comes to the door and says something like they’re all downstairs, it’s time or whatever.  Ian gives the Bible one last look and seems to do a little wink-did he hear something from Shim?  Would it kill this show to let us in on some things?  This show is shit.

His plea hearing was so factually inaccurate it hurt.  His lawyer doesn’t say anything, and when asked what he pleads Ian launches into his entire defense.  And the judge lets him.  OMGJ.  

Again I’m pretty sure I’m witnessing a retcon when Ian says “A young man was being forced against his will into a van to be taken to a conversion camp.”  Um, as I recall (and I won’t rewatch the episodes to get all the exact details, they were too stupid), a young runaway came to the Church of Gay Jesus and claimed his parents were trying to make him get conversion therapy and they were giving him drugs so he couldn’t get erections because they didn’t like the fact that he was gay, but when Ian talked to the dad he said the kid ran away on his own because he suffered from mental illness, was off his meds, and was living on the street and prostituting himself.  As I recall the dad/parents didn’t say anything about conversion, they just wanted him home.  Maybe the dad sought help from the guys in the van because there was no other way to get the kid home-none of this has been established for the court, if nothing else!  This show is shit.

Ian gives a speech in a voice like wimpy Jeremiah trying to convince everyone Jerome was the bad one and it was just lame.  He claims his family loved him unconditionally-since when?  They only gave him crap about being with Mickey, or ignored him.  And then when he became “like Monica” there were definitely conditions on loving him-mainly that he be on his meds.  Right up to this episode they were all going around saying it’s time to let him go-they didn’t love him enough to want to keep him at the house and try to help him!  

Anyway, he then states in open court he was off his meds and in a manic state when he torched the van.  Then he looks back at Fiona and starts to give a tiny smile right before the credits.  Was he lying to get a lighter sentence and he’s smiling because he got away with it?  Or does he look to her like that because he knows she’ll be proud of him for finally telling the truth even if it disappoints/ruins the GJ movement (that is so implausible as a concept it makes my head ache)?  

By next week the show will be in another writer’s hands and I’ll never get the answer to that question either, I bet.  IF this means the-fucking finally-end to the GJ storyline, I’ll have to be happy enough with that. 

In conclusion let me say that once again the only “great” thing about the episode was ZERO mention of Terror!  

But the rest of the show was shit. 

[winderlylandchime]

1/2 And we are at 5x04! And this is where I officially start dying inside: the episode starts with the foursome ‘OH? OKAY! Look at them living their best life. You go boys! 4 years? 4 weeks? brian? Where have you been for the past 4 seasons? THEY FUCKED A COUPLE? Oh these two have it figured out. Nice. See this is what their finale will be: Together fucking couples.’ ‘OKAY WHERE THE FUCK IS HUNTER? Did they just forget about him? Its all about Jenny Rebecca now and no Hunter?’ ‘TED IS GETTING PLASTIC SURGERY? brian sees right through people. (brian says gay men are obsessed with youth and beauty and calls it pathetic) Bri Bri, you wanted to kill yourself because you turned 30.’ And we are at Justin/Mel/Linds scene ‘okay Lindsay this victim act you got going on is so fucking tiring. Yeah, where the fuck is Gus? I don’t know why but something about Justin being with JR is so weird to me. Give him Gus! He’s his step dad dammit!’ ‘HUNTER, HE’S ALIVE! Im glad someone remembers he exists. Look at him being the next Olympic swimmer’ he just saw Loretta/Rosie looking like Deb at the diner and pointed to the screen and yelled ‘IDENTITY THEFT IS NOT A JOKE, ROSIE’ and then went dead silent. And we are now at the Brian/Mikey scene in the comic store ‘why is Mike being a bitch about superheroes party? He’s having a dinner party and wants Brian and Justin there? Sounds boring but at least Justin is invited.’ ‘Wait, Justin is gonna have a gallery show? That’s so fucking cool! Oh for fucks sake Lindsay, cry a fucking river. Not to be a horrible person but this whole victim act she is on needs to be called out by someone. Preferably Brian. Is she for real trying to start another custody battle over Justin?’ And we are back to Britin! ‘Why is Blondie suddenly hung up on other people’s relationships? If they cant make it? Blondie, mel and linds were the worst couple from the beginning. I actually agree with Brian, i hate when couples finish sentences for each othe- look at Blondie mocking him. I love my boys..*he goes dead silent while Brian talks about marriage* is it just me or does he sound very…*waves his cast in the air all awkward* season 1?’ And we are at the dinner with Monty and Eli ‘i was right this dinner is boring as fuck. I cant stand these two. You’re gonna actually tell me that Justin would enjoy them? I’m having war flashbacks to Ethan’s party. (Eli/monty mentions a petition to put in speed bumps) he said that to Brian as if that man cares. As if that man didn’t drive like he wanted to hit every kid in the pilot episode when he dropped off Justin at school. LOOK AT JUSTIN BRAGGING ABOUT HIS MANS JOB! I am living for him not remembering people’s names. Fuck these two. Justin wouldve HATED them, i know that for a fact so i don’t know why hes acting all mannered. Also fuck Mike, what kind of a friend just sits there and watches his best friend get attacked like that by two randoms?! (Brian just gave Mikey the swing gift) *starts laughing* oh fuck all of you that was funny, look up the word humor and add it to your personality because that was good’ And now we are at Hunter’s swim meet ‘i cant believe im agreeing with Ben but hold the fuck up. In front of our friends? And what is Brian? I thought he was your best friend? You’ve only reminded us of that every fucking episode. GO HUNTER! SWIM YOU LIL SHIT! (And the blood/callies parents moment happened) WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCKING SHIT JUST HAPPENED?! I AM GOING TO KILL HER PARENTS! WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCKING SHIT WAS THAT?! FUCK EVERYONE.’ ‘Okay this is gonna sound weird but i swear Mel prefers the baby over Gus. Give gus to Brian and Justin for the night. I want to see how that would go! Why haven’t i gotten that yet?’ And we are back to Britin at babylon ‘i love that Blondie is just randomly visiting his man at work. Would’ve loved it even more at the office but i learned something with this show *looks at me and points at me with his cast* take what they give you cause they hate me for some reason. Why is Michael a topic of conversation with them? Fuck him.’

See this is what their finale will be: Together fucking couples. Cries in Britin.

*he goes dead silent while Brian talks about marriage* is it just me or does he sound very…*waves his cast in the air all awkward* season 1? AGAIN your brother sees it. I do sometimes wonder if as a fandom we just get into these vacuums of opinion that encourage us to see what we want to see (which is valid, art is up for interpretation) and would be completely nonexistent to someone watching for the first time without all the knowledge about the ship and the show. But your brother really sees how the writers erased Brian's growth and revert him to S1.

The comment about the speed bumps is hilarious. He really did drive like he was playing bowling for kids and his Jeep (rip) was the bowling ball.

Also fuck Mike, what kind of a friend just sits there and watches his best friend get attacked like that by two randoms?! MMHMM

That dinner is so awkward and cringe, I can't watch it. The secondhand embarrassment is too much and I die. (Seriously, I close my eyes and plug my ears and sing "la la la" and make my spouse tap me when the scene is over.)

[leftlovetragedy]

Moffat and his final problem with women

I can’t help but notice that Steven Moffat does have problems with female characters on his shows. Maybe when you watch a lot  of his works, only then you’ll notice it, but it is what it is. And the problem is? He writes Faux Strong Female Characters (FSFC). Why Faux? Well, here is why: 1) Irene Adler  

In ACD’s canon she works for herself, has her own personal life and doesn’t care romantically for Sherlock, is the one who outsmarted Sherlock, departed on her own terms into sunset and made Sherlock actually have respect for women ( “He used to make merry over the cleverness of women, but I have not heard him do it of late” - Watson about Sherlock in ACD’s lore). ACD wrote this Irene in XIX c. In BBC Sherlock? Yeah, on the surface  she is that cool dominatrix, comfortable with her sexuality, who blackmails powerful clients,  has a hold of  state secrets and even whips Sherlock at one point. But in the end? She doesn’t outsmart Sherlock at all, in fact she loses to him because of her feelings for him! That’s right, Sherlock is so damn cool and special dude, that Irene loses because of her emotions, using his name as a password for her very important mobile, which contains all the important info she uses as her protection. In a blink she is begging Sherlock, with tears in her eyes, saying that she is  toast without her mobile. At the end of episode it gets “better” when Sherlock actually rescues her from terrorists in Pakistan in a total classical damsel-in-distress trope. Not only that, but we learn from this episode that Irene works with Moriarty and in fact her plan to trick Holmes brothers wasn’t her plan (”I had all this stuff; never knew what to do with it. Thank God for the consultant criminal. Gave me a lot of advice about how to play the Holmes boys” - says Irene in BBC Sherlock). So Irene in BBC Sherlock needs consulting  from Moriarty to work out a cohesive plan, loses to Sherlock in the game of wits because her wits were very much affected by her sentiments towards Sherlock and needs to be saved by him with wielding sword action. Steven Moffat wrote this Irene in XXI c.

2) Mary Morstan | Mary Watson 

In ACD’s canon she and Watson met because of the case, she worked for some time as governess, they married and then she died. 

In BBC Sherlock on the surface she got an upgrade in badassery. She is  a former assassin, who now tries to have a new, normal life  with John Watson and has a baby with him, very skilled, very clever, with quick reactions,  quite an intellectual match to Sherlock and often more clever than her husband John. Yet in attempts to make a strong skilled character Moffat  screws up, cause this really smart, professional trained ex-assassin  uses perfume while she goes out to kill a guy who blackmailed her; can’t figure out that her USB flash drive has a tracking device and goes to a meeting with a person, who is responsible for her  fellow assassin  ex-colleagues being taken down, without any weapons or protection (you know, there’re such things as bullet-proof body armour that could be worn under your clothes in the situation like this, surely ex-assassin should know this ). And the result? Mary is killed in a most ridiculous fashion by some bored secretary, because she jumped in front of the bullet trying to save-you guess it right - Sherlock from being shot. ACD also had Mary dead, however without fanfare, silliness and without  Mary dying for Sherlock or without giving Mary a little baby girl, leaving this girl motherless as a result of Mary’s death in the name of Sherlock. Steven Moffat wrote Mary as this super pro,  smart and experienced, who at the same time makes spectacular dumb decisions which undermine her supposed smartness and proficiency, who gives up her own agenda, her new life with her husband and daughter, the new life she wanted after retiring and worked for and finally got - because of Sherlock. Because Sherlock is so special and important here, that female character must die for him.  3) Eurus Holmes

The secret sister of Holmes brothers made up by Moffat and Gatiss.   Locked in a secret prision (facility), she is a genius from childhood, killed Sherlock’s best  friend when they were little kids, manipulator (can actually hypnotise people with talking or something and make them dance to her tune), master of disguise, can arrange wild games of survival, can escape her prision at her own will, etc. On the surface she is uber nemesis to Sherlock, maybe in some ways more dangerous than Moriarty himself! But all her talents and wits in the end were all about getting attention of her brother Sherlock and hanging out with him. Yeah, in the end it was all about Sherlock being so special and important that his super smart sister didn’t really want anything else and as soon as Sherlock got a proper hold of her, Eurus was tamed, cause she pretty much didn’t have any other agenda in life. She has visits from her brother now and they can play their violins together.  Awww. That’s it! Apart from making it all about Sherlock (again!) the whole twist with super secret sister who suddenly appeared out of the blue was just bad writing on the level of juvenile fanfiction. But Sherlock is not the only one of Moffat’s title characters who is that damn special  and cool, so female characters must bend for him in that way or another. Look at Doctor Who! 4) Missy

Missy, female regeneration of The Master, the old nemesis of The Doctor. On the surface she is dangerous, smart, cunning, with evil glee and no boundaries. She can kill and mock, and scheme.   Yet her  first plot in the series was to raise the Earth's dead as an army of Cybermen - and give this army as a gift  to The Doctor!   Missy then suggests that she and the Doctor can still hang out together again and return to Gallifrey together. Eh? Missy’s last plot in the series was to be saved by The Doctor from execution. Then The Doctor locks Missy in his vault under the university campus - and Missy begins to reform and see errors of her ways! Apparantely nothing helps a woman to reform like being put under lock and key by a guy in his basement and giving guidance to this woman! Her arc ends with Missy wanting to help the Doctor and getting killed because she chose The Doctor’s side.  In other words, the first ever female version of the Master aka Missy died for the Doctor, was tutored by him and basically wanted to hang out with him more than anything else. Riiight. Cause The Doctor is that special, you know. 5) River Song

Professor River Song. Archaeologist, child of Tardis, has a Time Lord DNA, time traveller. On the surface brave, witty, smart, strong-willed. Still she unfortunately got the shades of Moffat’s treatment of his female characters. She was raised by the Silence to kill the Doctor but fell in love with him and became his wife.  In her childhood as Mels she was obsessed with the Doctor, when she regenerated into River Song  she entered the University to become archaeologist  in order to find the Doctor  through time and space. She was ready to screw time and space and history, by defying a fixed point in time because Doctor meant too much too her . As a result time shredded into a reality where all history happened at once. She finally fixed it by fake-killing the Doctor, but then she was sentenced to several life sentences for this murder and served the sentence to make the Silence believe him dead, and though she often escaped her prision to spend time with The Doctor, she always returned to her cel. Like another gig of female character being locked up for the sake of main male protagonist. Okey dokey. In the end River didn’t allow  The Doctor to sacrifice himself in the Library in order to save people there, and took his place, dying as a result of this. The thing is Steven Moffat here has a female character who is very much emotionally fixed on his main male protagonist, who can easily  become putty in his hands at times because of this. And dies for him. See the trend?  That’s why it can be called FSFC. Sure, Moffat’s female characters may use guns or whips, act dangerously and independent on the surface, throw around quirky and  quick-witted lines, have some adventures, use word “sexy” a lot , go against main male protagonist, even go after his life - but in the end they get upstaged by this main male protagonist either because it turns out that  they have real strong emotional attachment to him and it makes them lose or give up or join his side, or because this main male protagonist is so special and important in general, that they just feel obliged to make sacrifices for him. Or combination of these variants. As a bonus: many of those  FSFC can be really flashy and have a “bad girl” vibe. Moffat obviously has a kink for “bad girls” and likes to write them, so the main male protagonist, be it Sherlock or Doctor Who, can get an upper hand over those bad girls. IDK, probably it makes it all the sweeter for Moffat.   Irene, Missy, River, Eurus all have it in them. Irene is a dominatrix and string-puller and flaunts it; Missy, while cosplaying Mary Poppins in her looks, openly refers to herself as “bad girl” and surely acts like one; River a playful time travelling criminal/scientist/adventurer has enemies-to-lovers trope played out with the Doctor in spades ( “ They engineered a psychopath to kill you -Totally married her"). Eurus  has a lot of very, very bad girl about her. Heck, even Mary Watson has some of it in her, due to her dark past as assasin for hire. This whole thing is very troubling and it seems many of Moffat’s  female characters can be "strong” only until they submit (in one form or another) to or in the name of main male protagonist. Because Moffat’s main male protagonists are that cool and special and awesome, so it must be about them and their awesomeness in the end, when the dust settles.

[voxvulgi]

&&&

send ‘&’ for 3 blogs i recommend

So, 3 times 3 is nine. Here goes:

@ribbedxgloves

I’ve known Ari since before Hailey came to life. She’s known me since I was king of the smols and will hopefully continue to be my friend and write with me until a terrifying global virus do us apart. (I sure hope that’s never!) She RPed with Dawn briefly and then took my Hailey and turned her into a real Disney princess. Not only that, but she brought Althea back to me, helped me make Adonis, and fuels my creativity every time I speak to her. She’s an amazing writer, and even better plotter, and an even better friend.

@elysiahellfire

MY SATANMON ROLL. I’ve known Vee even longer, and she’s the reason Zoran developed into a round character and is still good and around. She stuck with me through the time where I was smol and a newbie who knew nothing about RP manners (thank you to the moon and back; oh my goodness how did you deal djksnhadosijfo). She’s there when I need her, and more importantly, not there when she knows she needs to be elsewhere. Vee is an example I hope to imitate as I grow. She’s an amazing role model. You’ll almost never guess how she managed to make such wrecked muses with how well she has herself together. She’s a master time manager and a master writer. An absolute damn snail, but nothing good ever came out of haste (i’m looking at you sara what a nerd). Every time a reply posts, I have to take a moment to wonder how I came upon such a wonderful partner.

@floralgardenswitches // @aworldfullofmuses // @dysfunctionalmasons

MEL IS MY WIFE. She’s such a lovely cinnamon roll, all enthusiasm and love and talent. I haven’t RPed with all her muses yet (there are sO MANY HOW DO YOU EVEN MANAGE OHMYGOD) but if I get the chance to, no way I’d say no. They’re all so different and seriously amazingly thought out. Mel’s writing is so PERFECT and I get too excited not to reply as fast as I can because she also thinks up such amazing storylines and creates the best character dynamics. I love her with all my heart

@anomaliies // all the other blogs

I know I’ve said this a million times, but Savvy is my beautiful, talented, insightful, amazing smol twin. She has the most beautiful soul and can breathe life into any character she writes, canon or not. (Honestly, what’s the difference?) Her portrayal of canon is even better than actual canon, and her OCs, though I haven’t gotten to RP with all of them yet, are AMAZING to put it lightly. I love hearing her talk about them, I love writing with them, and I love every time I check my notifications to find a reply from her. She’s an amazing RPer and a very hard-worker in general, and I’m beyond glad I met her.

@warrioroflondonbelow

CHRISTINE IS THE SWEETEST. Hands down. I mean, I have a ton of sweet friends but??? I can’t? I just can’t???? She’s so full of love, always throwing comments and memes at me, always up for new ideas and any general rambles. I love the brief chats where I just get to know her better. I love every thread we have, even the ones we lost, and I endlessly want more. I haven’t even read Neverwhere (YET!!!) but I’m already so very in love with Richard Mayhew because of this amazing RPer’s representation of him. She gets into his littlest quirks and loves to break him down in many situations to explore his character, and if that isn’t good character study, I don’t know what is. I love you, Hannah!!!

@growinguphartless

I’d just leave this here and say “NERD” and move on, but even the endearment “nerd” wouldn’t do Mary justice???? I’ve first seen her RPing with one of my partners, and I was a little intimidated by her because she’s so perfect and her muse was so perfect and I was (and still am obv) a potato. But me, the potato, finally approached her at some point, and MAN DO I NOT REGRET IT. She’s so easy to talk to, easy to explore characters with, easy to hypothise with, and so dAMN EASY TO CRY WITH??? IF SHE TELLS YOU I AM NOT CRYING FOR AT LEAST 50% OF OUR CONVERSATIONS, SHE FUCKIN’ LYIN’. Dudes, I just love Mary and talking to Mary and don’t get me started on her OCs because OH MY GOD. If the love she gives them was sugar, they’d all be dying of diabetes rn. Not even insulin will help them. Nothing will. They’re so well-rounded and thought-out and so very very very LOVED by her that it’s difficult not to love them yourself and I. Just. Cannot. Bye.

@dangerous-smoll

Wanik and I met when her lovely muse Nita killed Hailey’s brother. It was a full moon, very spooky, so many ghosts, very cold. I saw the Flying Dutchman that day. Actually, that’s not how we met, but the time I first saw her, and I’m very glad that I did and that we approached each other because oh mY GOD. I don’t even know how to put it into words. Wanik puts so much work into her muses, her threads, her blog in general. And she gives so much love and attention to her partners it’s like…HOW? How do you manage to be so nice and supportive and run such a lovely blog with such a great variety of such deep muses? I die.

@the-storm-within-me

My Eve???? My love???? My beautiful bundle of awesomeness? How do I even explain how much I admire Eve???? She’s an amazing human. Nika is amazing. Nick is amazing. Eve and her interactions all bring me joy (and pain let’s be real) because she portrays such amazing, loving and caring muses who have their flaws and quirks. And the thing is??? You can’t even help but love them WITH their flaws and quirks?? Because they’re the perfect combination of characteristics. Honestly, they have the positive traits people admire and the vices people love. I wish I can meet Eve, Nika, and Nick in person. But for now I guess I just have to settle for tHIS AMAZING WRITING THAT I DO NOT DESERVE.

@endlessdrifter

Do I really need to do this again? I mean, if y’all didn’t hear me the first 9732481273 times: Dave is awesome in all the ways that count. Purely fantastic writing. He always gives me something to work with (even the times I suck and give him nothing to work with lmao) and something that surely gets a response from my characters. His muses are endless (ba dum tss!) and all distinct and unique and so very loveable. I love even the ones I haven’t met yet (because obv) and treasure the ones I have. You can rip Scoot, Jorge, Asher, Dane, Ray, Max, and Luke from my dead cold fucking hands. Lastly, if you’re ever in the mood for good conversation, definitely hit up Dave. (Unless you burped and want a high five. Apparently, this guy believes in ETIQUETTE OR WHATEVER.)

Bonus for the people who really love nice things on their dash (also did you really expect me to recommend only 9 blogs wtf guys???):

@altrxistisms

LOTTIE PATOTTIE MY BABY. This girl is under my protection, and so is my baby Jolie. I may have -1 fighting skills but you have to get through me if you wanna do so much as look their way, okay??? Okay. Now that we’ve cleared this up, I just need to stress the fact that Lottie (mun) and Jolie (muse) are the most precious people in the world. You’re gonna fall in love with them whether platonically or romantically. They’re gonna bring light to your life because they’re literally stars that fell from the sky and since they can’t bring happiness to heaven anymore they have to bring it to you.

@cupido-periculosa

Cip, I’m pretty sure I talked to you more than anyone else in the past few days, and you can honestly blame this on Vladimir Tod and his antics. But you have to blame THAT on yourself and D’Ablo because you had me go back to the bookstore and buy the box set after explicit instructions from my mom not to buy anything. I’m young, dumb, broke, and emotional because of you. (And Adonis is just young, dumb, and emotional. And let me tell you that choosing Dan Stevens as an FC for D’Ablo is probably the best thing anyone did ever. You know, right after that other thing you did where you breathed life into an underrated middle school villain and made him one of my favourite fictional characters of all time.)

[eliasbookshelf]

Elias’ Book Review #1: The Weight of Our Sky

In an attempt to be more diverse in my reading, I’ve dedicated this year, 2019, to reading more books written by local Malaysian writers or, at the least, Asian writers. 

So my first local author read this year was a debut novel by a new novelist, Hanna Alkaf, The Weight of Our Sky. Being Malaysian, I was ecstatic to see another local author having their book published internationally (along with Zen Cho, Felicia Yap, Tan Twan Eng, and Yangsze Choo, among others). I found out about the book on Twitter, and got a copy of it as soon as I found it at the bookstore. 

**SPOILERS**

The book starts with an author’s note, introducing the story, and potentially triggering factors for readers. I find that interesting; not every author would put a disclaimer in the very beginning talking about triggers. There’s OCD and racism, among others. I don’t really understand OCD (because society overuse it out-of-context) but racism is something very current in the local society. It’s also interesting, that racism is still somewhat an issue now as it was in 1969 (the story’s setting), but it’s very much less violent now than it is then. 

We get to the main character, Melati, who has visions of her mother dying due to images triggered by a djinn in her head. She also counts to calm herself down. This is interesting; is this how a person with OCD thinks and feels? Like, a constant flash of imagery in the mind of things which didn’t even happen but simply a running thought triggered by somebody or something? Because I have to be honest, I find myself having the same thought patterns some times.  Do I have OCD? Maybe??? IDK. 

Then we meet her friend, Saf. Oh, Saf. She’s so adorable, like Mel’s personal portable sunshine. She sounds like a very cool friend. They decided to watch a movie, when all hell breaks loose (which actually happened! OMG!)

At this point, the story picked up, and it very rarely drops in terms of action and motion. The story moves so much, with so many things happening, that it’s all very tiring to read but also very exciting, and also triggered my anxiety a bit. So many nail-biting sequences, many close calls, and a few shocking moments here and there along the plot. 

We get to know a few other endearing characters, like Aunty Bee (my heart goes out to her), Uncle Chong (he’s very dad), Vince (who is a total hero, and won my heart), Frankie (a rebel heart but has a true heart still), and Jay (a minor character, but plays a significant role).  Dynamic characters who are not there just to move the plot, but to have a role is how things play out. I love the interaction between Vince and Mel, I thought it was cute. I was certain they had a crush on each other. The scene where they listen to records in Vince’s room is quite a memorable scene. 

I think that was perhaps only the few light points in the story. There’s also a funny scene when they try to get a man pass through security. Most of the story is quite intense. Riots, hospitals, curses, yelling. The curses and name-callings were definitely triggers, I would say. I did unconsciously flinched once or twice when some words were thrown around.  There’s also one part when Mel was shamed in public by Saf’s father, which broke my heart; I was definitely taken aback by that. 

Although, at some points in the story, I did get annoyed by Mel’s incessant need to count to appease the djinn in her head, but at the same time I feel bad for her for going through that. It must be so hard back then to live like that, without any resources to turn to, to know what is going on in your head.  

As the story draws to a close, Mel’s mission met a satisfying end. I was getting anxious that she may never end her quest to find her mother, but she did. Naturally, I cried too. Even after than sweet moment, the story didn’t let go of its intensity in one final hurdle to end the book. Just, wow.  

Then comes the epilogue. So here’s the thing: I know what the epilogue would be, but it still shook me that after the first line, I left the book for about a week before I finished the last four pages. Again, it was expected, but I was not ready for it. Why? I don’t know. 

In short, I love this book. The real-life incident? No. But the writing, the main characters, the emotion, the intensity? All very good. Definitely one of the most memorable reads ever, and in my top 10 list of favourite books ever. 

Stars: 4 1/2 Recommended: YES, highly. 

[asalegend]

Note to self.

This is a note to myself. About her. About Martha. God Damn, it hurts. Y'all have no idea. Let me tell you this story from the beginning dumb ass. So that when you do doubt it, you remember everything. You met Martha in March, while all that’s dumb shit down there with Mel and natalie and even Naomi was going on. And you liked her since then. There was something about it and you just didnt know what it was. And she liked you, and you knew it after that day she kissed you goodbye. And from there it happened. You took her to the movies and for ice cream. Then you took her for wings 3 days later on was an actual date, where you both knew you were interested and you both were already invested. And it was super fun, and amazing ( side note, she fucked some random dude that night after she told you she was Home and asleep… But you found that out later) and thats how it went. On september 23rd, y'all had a real ass date, and you lost your virginity to her, and that might not sound important now, vut remember that it was super important to you Then. Remember that she told you she would only be with you exclusively if you had sex with her, even though you were technically a couple. Dont you ever forget that she literally, fucken forced you to have sex. That she threatened with pretty much cheating on you .Then she spend 3 days living with you at home while your family was out. And You both had a huge fight about Monica, and what she meant to you. And she wanted to break up with you, and incase your worthless ass forgot. You got on your knees and begged her to stay, and you told her you would never lie to her again. And guess what bro, you didnt. Not about important stuff. Not about being loyal to her. Not about how much you fucken loved her, and I’m proud of you for that, and you should be too. And remember that same fucken night, some girl text you. Asking your for dick pics and sending you fucken pictures so you’d go fuck her. And yeah nigga you were tempted as fuck, and yeah nigga you texted back. But then it hit you, the time you had just spent with Martha, and how amazing that felt. And how incredible she was with you. And you sent that bitch a text that said you had a girlfriend, and you loved her (even if you hadnt told her yet) the next weekend, was pricillas birthday/Halloween, y'all went out to tipsy, and Martha got fucken hammered. So hammered that she couldnt go home. So you called your mom and begged her to let Martha stay. You told her youd sleep on the couch or whatever. And that night, Martha told you how much she loved you, and how by not telling her you love her you were hurting her. And you realized what your fear had done to you, so you decided to deal with it. You both fell asleep and that morning you looked at her and said “Martha, tu eres mi Amor…. Te amo mi Vida” and you meant it. You meant it more that you meant it when you said it to larissa or Naomi. And things were going good, you had broken up with her over dumb shit, but the next day you were back together. And you realized that you were in a real relationship, so you became and adult about it. But she always held that against you, even if she had broken up with you because you lent her 20 bucks and was petty. Then one day, while you were in the car and she was having a panic attack she took it out on you. She told you that She could cheat on you whenever she wanted, she bragged about all the guys who hit her up, and how she could fuck one whenever. She told you that you would never fucken know if She did it too( she knew since day one…, what Naomi and larissa had done to you)…. She made you shake in fear, she made you beg her never to cheat…. She broke you emotionally… Then laughed and said to never break up with her over dumb shit again…. She thought it was a joke…. Exploiting your fears and insecurities. Then, it was holiday time… And terry slammed you with hours cause you were kicking ass… And she was slammed with hours… And you started to notice how much she like jose…. How she always said he was super cute and how shed get weak in the knees…. And you tried explaing to her that stuff was avout to get tough. You were working 22 hours a week at pho. 30 at LC and going to 4 classes in the mornings…. And she was working 40+ and getting out at 10pm. You didnt have time to work out or anything. And what little time you had, you gave to her, and all she wanted… It seemed was sex… But you were tired… Your were stressed…. You were exhausted…. And uncomfortable with how much she Needed it… You wanted a hug and she just wanted to fuck. So, you were going soft…. And she made fun of you because if it…. And she made it worse. Then, the second week of December she went with you to the lc party… And you never loved her more. You bought matching sweaters, and you were so deeply inlove with her, you thanked god ever day for blessing you with her in your fucken life… And a few days later, she went to her party, wearing your sweater. She told you “nilda said no couple baby, sunny is gonna give me a ride back, I wont drink ok” and you dropped her off… And you we’re worried… You could feel something was wrong… Very wrong…, you didn’t sleep that night, and she kept sending you pictures…. Telling you what she was doing… And the next day, she showed up at work, that moring she told you she left her phone in Jose’s car…. But, you thought sunny was giving her a ride. And that day she fought with you, and complained and tried pushing you to leave her…. And you could feel it in you soul that she did something…. Then you kept going. But things were different… She didnt care about you the same anymore… Fast forward past xmas (which was amazing tbh, she spent it with you and gave you great presents.., and you gave her everything she wanted) and your taking off xmas lights. Martha is complaining about how she’s itch and had a rash. Then has sex with you like its nothing( btw, her and jose were still besties here. Dont forget that)….. A few days later, you get a call to work, its her crying… She has hpv… (She knew that rash wasnt normal…. Yet, she still did it with you) and there goes your life…. 3 days later, its your birthday.you have an incredible time at LC, and when you pick her up she looks amazing, and she gives you a big gift she made, the basket…. And it almost made you cry… Because it was beautiful… And she got fucked up at your party….she insulted your mother and embarrassed you infront of your friends… But that wasnt the worst part… That night, you laid her down to bed and you saw her phone. And you knew…. You knew you had to check it, your heart was screaming it….. And whatd you find out…. She cheated on you… Tge night of her party, she fucked jose. And she was bragging about it to alex, she even sent her pictures of him and went off about how good it felt, how many times she came how big (or small in this case… That’s the only win you got that night) he was. And you woke her up, you confonted her about it. And she got violent, she pushed you and punched your and scratched you begging you to stay… And all you felt was cold and emptiness. And you took her to work the next day and disappeared. A few days later, she had her LEEP and texted you, and you stood by her that day even though you were hurt. And she went and saw you and you both talked… And you put your pride aside and got back with her, no matter how much it fucken hurt, no matter how much your friends and family saw you suffer and tried helping you…, because you loved her. But she started to poison you, against your family. And she was selfish. But you stood by her during the hpv. You didnt leave her alone, you helped her and you helped her move her life foward, you did her taxes and helped her with school programs and her diet and everything she needed for her hpv. All while you bottled up the fact that you thought you were gonna die because she got you sick(your fine now thankfully, and the doctor cleared you and told you that it was super lucky)…. And then your family forced you to leave her, in their way. And you did, and she got violent again… But you were dying, everytime you saw her… You saw what she did… What she described to Alex…. You saw that she didnt love you…, and you left her there, the next day she left to San Antonio. You were fine for a month… Then in April she reached out to you, and you let her in. She was “different” and you went for it. But this Martha was selfish, this Martha made you do things for her, this martha tried turing you against your family. This Martha didn’t support you ever, this martha believed that it was your fault things went bad, because you told your family she cheated. She called you a coward for how you dealt with the pain she caused you. And she started tons of problems with you family through facebook…. This Martha, was the worst one…. This one… Abused your love and made you feel like the bad guy…. This Martha…. Was a monster. And then Angie came to town, and gave you the examples of how a couple fights together. Because at the moment, going to san Antonio for her birthday was going to be a huge mistake at home. You never had peace at home, and every day you fought with you family about her. And she wouldnt support you, she would leave you to burn. So you told her, you couldnt go with her for her birthday…, and she broke up with you. So you left. Until last week…. Last week, after 2 months of her texting you, you broke…. You reached out and told her how much you missed her. You explained that you were afraid to love her cause of how much she hurt you…. And she told you you were the only one still, and how much she loved you and how she only thought about you. But it was all lies dude…. She was fucking Justin, who was her best friends man and baby daddy. And she messed around with other too…. She didnt even last a month with out doing it…, and yeah, she came clean after she build you up with lies and made you hope again…. And then she broke you one more time…, the last time remember that. Because remember that you werw going to move in with her this time..,, that she was coming back to be with you…. Remember how much you were going to risk based on her lies…. Remember… That all this… Is why you cant love her.., and it’s why your not gonna send that text, or make that call…. Because this^ is enough pain… All this,.. Is not love….

[ageofzero]

Aight so music! and Fah Mel... except you can only use the Crystal Chronicles soundtrack (because I wanna know which songs would relate to her the most from the game)

W O W  so rude telling me how to do my own askbox meme! /fake huffs of annoyance

But fine here I go.

Fah Mel tunes (in the flavor of the Crystal Chronicles OST):

I Don’t Want to Forget 

This is the big one actually. Probably the first CC song I assigned to Fah Mel way back in 9th grade or something. Granted, this isn’t the true ~experience~ that the song gave me, because my file is glitched a little bit and stutters on like the third repetition of the haunting notes going up, and that stutter was what clicked a scene of her story in my mind. But this song. So like, when she was young and in her time, she got it in her head to find the source of the miasma plaguing the world and end it. Because the myrrh trees were going to inevitably die off, towns were already dying because the road a caravan of young idiot kids needed to take to any remaining myrrh trees was hard and there’s no real guarantee that there’ll be enough myrrh for all who need it. Someone’s gotta do something, right? And now that she’s been like a decade or so removed from her town, she’s got nothing much to lose in trying. She tries, and she fails. But, idk, I decided after some vague reading of what happens in the game, to make it so miasma could be fueled by memories, if one knows how to extract them and harness that power. (something something, you better have a lot of journal entries for the final boss battle in game because they start getting deleted as the battle goes on by Raem.) The point is, she spends x amount of years being preserved by Raem and slowly sapped of memories. She’s lived a pretty full life, all things considered, so she had a lot of memory to give. She didn’t know she was kept for that purpose, and certainly doesn’t remember it until some accident happens, but. I had a whole scene play out to this song, where she dreamt of the day before she left and who she talked to. Except the dream gets corrupted and the person she talks to becomes dark and corrupted himself. And turns out he’s been the one making miasma worse for no reason but for the sake of power and the end of life. So, yeah. this was an important background music for the scene.

A Gentle Wind Blows

 I have vague impressions that Fah Mel was a sweet girl as a kid, with a pretty good life even with the knowledge that she’d one day set out to protect the town by gathering myrrh. She loved her parents and brother, and her brother especially made time in his day to sit with her at the riverside and teach her how to fish. And perhaps this is the kind of song feeling she has when remembering what she can from those bygone days. At least back then, the races were more united and Selkies weren’t so closed off to the world.

Something Burns in the Heart

I haven’t decided how it’s gonna affect her, but something dark got into Fah Mel during her time spent as a miasma catalyst. Even before that, maybe; how did she get that stray crystal she wears around her neck? It was clearly part of a chalice, but she wouldn’t have taken her home’s only means of survival. Regardless, something lingers in Fah Mel that comes out “good” in her passion and desire to see the world free of miasma, but perhaps also comes out “bad” in the way she’d fight to see the job done. After the whole imprisonment thing, it’s become personal. She doesn’t know quite why it’s personal for a while, assumes it’s because that monster beat her and had the audacity to keep her alive well past the time she should’ve died, but yeah. She has a struggle internally between her morals and her mission.

Across the Divide

This is it, the moment where there’s no turning back for Fah Mel, or any of the kids who wanna join her in the battle against Raem. This is the final battle time, though I don’t think this song is at all part of the game’s final boss. I happen to like its urgency for my purposes, though. It sounds like Raem is actively trying to stop Fah Mel from taking the path she knows leads to him and the miasma, and suddenly a slightly eerie trek through a branch of the miasma river is very dangerous and hurried. So this is just one of the songs that gave me a good idea of the scene I wanted to play out for her story. Still, for Fah Mel, the trail leading to the battle was always going to feel like this. She knows what’s waiting for her.

Nostalgic Profile

Fah Mel remembers the way the people stood in front of the village’s crystal, offering their chalice so that the myrrh would protect their home for another year. She never got to this point in her caravan journey. Fah Mel’s first foray into the wilds of unprotected land in search of myrrh led to a friend’s death and her running away in pure terror. So others from her village took the chalice and went out, and she left the village soon after in a mix of shame and defiance. But when she was younger, she always wanted to share that... prestige, I guess, that the crystal caravan had within the village during that yearly ceremony. But her path in life was meant for something different.

Bonus: Moonless Starry Night

If I had to pick one of the songs with lyrics, english or japanese, I think this would be a good one for Fah Mel. Her whole life within the story is pretty much a finale. She doesn’t belong in that time, she’s at the final stage of her journey, and I don’t know if she’s gonna survive the confrontation. She’ll go to the end anyway, because that’s what she does. She can close the final chapter of miasma killing the world she grew up in, and let the kids from her town start a new book of their own.

Ask me about my OCs

[adambstingus]

5 BS Celebrity Stories We Need To Stop Clicking On

We are currently drowning in a sea of entertainment news. For every one event in Hollywood, there are 500 articles written about it. This means that in order to get hits, some websites find themselves bending the truth eeeeeever so slightly. Or in the case of headlines like these, they take the truth, put it in a paper bag, and light it on fire on your doorstep for you to stomp out.

5

Your Favorite Star Just Teased Their Next Big Movie! Or Not!

Before the internet, you mostly found out that a new movie was going to be released when you saw a trailer which confirmed that yes, Batman would be returning. Now, you can learn such information years in advance, due to headlines screaming that the star or director has proclaimed a movie is “in the works,” or something to that effect. Then, two years later, you’re like, “Wait, wasn’t that thing supposed to be out by now?” That’s because those headlines are usually manufactured bullshit.

For example, while I was writing this, Rotten Tomatoes said the biggest story of the week was Steven Spielberg revealing that after Harrison Ford goes scowling into retirement, the next Indiana Jones would be played by a woman:

Stuff

Complex

CNN

But Spielberg didn’t really say that at all. He said the upcoming Indiana Jones film would be the last for Harrison Ford, so the series could only continue in a different form (i.e. as a reboot). A tabloid straight up asked him about going with a female lead, and he said that there was nothing wrong with it and joked, “We’d have to change the name from Jones to Joan,” revealing that, while he is a master filmmaker, he is first and foremost a dad.

Throw in the fact that Spielberg doesn’t own the rights to Indiana Jones (Disney will decide where the franchise goes next), and you realize that asking about anything beyond his personal involvement is futile. But interviewers do this all the time. They give a leading question about a film, get a vague “sure,” then run with the scoop. For example, interviewers have been asking Scarlett Johansson about a solo Black Widow movie for years, resulting in headlines like …

Polygon

… which is misleading, because there is no “Black Widow movie” set in stone yet. Or they’ll ask Marvel captain Kevin Feige, leading to the headline …

Empire Online

… even though an exec saying they’re “creatively and emotionally … most committing to” Black Widow but not actually putting it on their three-year schedule is the exact opposite of a commitment. It’s like when your parents said “We’ll see” when you asked them to buy you a drum kit.

No matter what project it is, whether it’s a TV show or a movie or a stick figure flipbook of a boy hitting a can with a stick, you’ll find the same bullshit. Asked about a Family Guy movie, a producer said, “There are no specific plans,” but also, “if I were a gambling man, I’d say within the next five years,” and joked that he was putting money on that. Thus, headlines read:

Independent

This is a pattern you’ll see throughout this article — celebrities will say vague shit off the cuff, and journalists will dig through it for a headline. In fact, it’s pretty hard to find an actual article about an interview that feels honest. One of the few that I found concerned Daniel Craig, who, when asked about playing James Bond after Spectre, said, “I’d rather break this glass and slash my wrists.”

The 25th James Bond film stars Daniel Craig and hits theaters next year.

4

A Celebrity Admitted That They HATE Their New Film! But Not Really!

When an actor hates life on set or hates their famous role, that makes for a hell of a story. But you’re probably only going to hear it years later, because no actor wants a reputation for sabotage. So every time you see a headline about an actor badmouthing their movie, there’s a good chance that they … didn’t badmouth anything. For example, apparently, the lead actress in the new Tomb Raider began literally taking a dump on a film reel when asked about her experience playing Lara Croft.

Bounding Into Comics

Wow, Alicia Vikander trashes Tomb Raider? Let’s see this clip, in which she says … the previous movies were good, hers is also good, the video game’s realism was good, a sequel might be good, and, in the last 15 seconds, she agrees with the interviewer that it’s weird that the film has so few women in it. Huh. She didn’t trash anything.

OK, well then how about when Jennifer Lawrence spontaneously burst into flame when asked about playing Mystique one more time:

Refinery29

Lawrence’s first quote in the article is “I love these movies.” She then says that she loves the director, and loves fans, and that Dark Phoenix is her best experience yet. So what does she hate? “The paint.” Getting into costume is difficult. You might notice that this isn’t bashing the film. Very few people like to be doused in paint and latex for 16 hours a day. Most people don’t like wearing pants for 16 hours a day. So it’s not unreasonable, and it sure as hell doesn’t mean that she “hates being in X-Men,” as the headline proclaims.

OK, fine. So it seems like a lot of these sites are blowing minor things out of proportion. But how about the time that Batman v Superman was so boring that it caused Michael Shannon to slip into a coma?

GQ

First off, Shannon wasn’t in Batman v Superman. They used a rubber model of him. He was never on set, and though he recorded a few lines, they weren’t used. Also, he fell asleep while watching it on the tiny screen on an airplane, because it was an international flight and he was tuckered.

But what about actors who hate their characters? That’s got to be something that happens in real life. Actors who find the characters they play to be so morally reprehensible that they have to shout it out loud. Actors like Jamie Dornan, the guy who portrayed Christian Grey, who was apparently doing something to the extent of burning copies of Fifty Shades Of Grey on set.

The Loop

Nope, he only says that Christian’s “not the sort of bloke I’d get along with. All my mates are easy going and quick to laugh.” And who would want to hang out with the characters they portray? Jack Nicholson doesn’t sit around waiting for homicidal clowns to buy him a beer, and Dornan probably won’t be chilling with any sociopathic billionaires in the near future.

3

This Celebrity Is Fed Up With Political Correctness! Maybe?

Hollywood is known as a bastion of liberalism, but if you believe clickbaity headlines, aging actors with no stake in the matter are calling press conferences to loudly tell they world that they’re not going to take it anymore. You tell ’em, boys!

Express

AOL

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Create A Jetson’s Future With This Machine Learning Bundle

Almost always, a site is reprinting one extract from a much longer interview some other outlet did on a bunch of topics, such as John Hurt’s terminal cancer diagnosis, or Eastwood doing family friendly films against his lawyer’s advice. “70/80-year-old thinks younger people are different” may be the least interesting part of the interview, but it’s the only part the sites highlight, so they can scratch a specific itch. I’d love to tell you the movie stuff John Rhys-Davies told Adam Corolla or Mel Brooks told BBC, but the full recordings are gone, and all we have left is:

Hollywood Reporter

DailyWire

But that’s all old news. Here’s the latest on Seinfeld and Alec Baldwin literally calling the #MeToo movement shit!

Page Six

Famous News

Must Haves

By “bowel movement,” Seinfeld meant we’re expelling something we must be rid of — the harassers are the shit in this metaphor. It’s a #MeToo endorsement. The story could really have been just about smarmy Baldwin being an ass (watch Seinfeld alternate between agreeable and then dying inside, realizing he must tactfully fight Baldwin on this), but the twist here is that Baldwin was the interviewer. He was luring Seinfeld into making their conversation controversial. Jerry didn’t take the bait. The media did.

When Matt Damon was interviewed about #MeToo, one line got quoted again and again. “There’s a difference between, you know, patting someone on the butt and rape or child molestation, right?”

Huffington Post

Boston

Out of context, it comes off like his entire cause is to defend butt pats, proclaiming it loudly and defiantly with a sword and shield in front of the Damon family crest. But Damon was talking about an actual person who’d touched butts and an actual person who’d molested children, saying there’s literally a difference (one so obvious, you might call it self-evident) — but noted that both acts “need to be confronted and eradicated without question.” He also said a bunch of other pro-#MeToo stuff, and then a really interesting bit on NDAs.

But the headline’s going to be whichever part grabs the most outrage. If manufacturing disagreement and drumming up hatred is what it takes to pay the bills, then that’s what they do.

2

Holy Shit, The Star Was Injured On Set! Or Maybe They’re Just Joking!

Acting can be physically challenging. And like any activity that requires movement, you can get injured while you do it. SERIOUSLY injured. Like Jennifer Lawrence in Mother! levels of injured:

Indiewire

LADBible

Indy100

Given that rib dislocation isn’t a real thing, I wondered whether this was a joke (specifically a reference to the movie, in which Ed Harris loses a rib). Or they might have meant some other rib injury, and Lawrence also supposedly tore her diaphragm. Diaphragm rupture is a real injury … one usually caused by stabbing, gunshots, or car accidents. If someone ruptures their diaphragm and hurts a rib by “hyperventilating,” that would be an extreme medical oddity, not a cute anecdote about how method J-Law is.

But no one apparently cares enough to clarify. Also, “breathing so hard she ripped herself open” is apparently a whole genre of on-set accident:

Express

US Magazine

A ripped stomach muscle is generally not caused by yelling a bunch. Was Theron even being serious? It’s reported seriously, but in the interview, everyone’s laughing throughout. She gave the stomach story in another interview too, and the interviewer immediately changed the subject to her wardrobe.

And wait till you hear about poor, afflicted Gary Oldman:

Screenrant

NME

Independent

He did say that. But actual nicotine poisoning is a big deal — as in phone poison control, because it can be fatal. And it’s caused by swallowing a lot of nicotine at once, not by smoking for several weeks. Maybe Oldman only meant “I went through a whole LOT of cigars”? That’s not dramatic enough. Gotta hint that the toxic cigars have brought him one step closer to the grave.

I’m not calling these celebrities filthy liars. Maybe something crazy did happen to them, or maybe they’re indulging in a little hyperbole to liven up some interviews. And that’s fine, as this is the film junket and not 60 Minutes. But unexplained anecdotes shouldn’t end up as headlines, not without additional reporting.

So when Jonah Hill talks for 25 seconds about being hospitalized for bronchitis due to snorting Wolf Of Wall Street‘s fake coke, maybe 800 sites don’t have to share that in a headline. Not until someone asks, “When you first said this a couple years ago, you didn’t mention hospitalization and weren’t so sure it was bronchitis, and also, bronchitis doesn’t lead to hospitalization, unless you’re like 90 years old. So what I’m asking is this, Mr. Hill: Are you secretly 90 years old?”

1

A Celebrity Confirmed Your Favorite Fan Theory! If You Twist Their Words A Bit!

Fan theories are so prevalent now that they’re getting back to the actors involved. For instance, someone sat Neil Patrick Harris down and asked about the popular fan theory that How I Met Your Mother‘s Barney wasn’t really a womanizing jerk — we just see him that way because unreliable narrator Ted wants his kids to hate Barney so they’ll prefer that Robin be with Ted. Harris said that the theory made a lot of sense. So we were all treated to headlines saying:

Pretty 52

Digital Spy

The Sun

But Harris didn’t confirm anything. He didn’t offer insider info about what the writers intended, or about how he played the character. Nor did J.K. Rowling when she said a convoluted fan theory about Dumbledore being the physical embodiment of Death is “beautiful and it fits,” yet headlines reported that she too had “confirmed” a huge fan theory. And nor did the Jar Jar Binks actor when headlines said he released a “Bombshell” about Jar Jar being a Sith Lord. (He said, “That’s really a George Lucas question. I cannot answer that question.”) At this point, it seems like literally any combination of words would have been interpreted as a confirmation.

The reality is that celebrities will almost always cheerfully nod along with a fan theory if it’s interesting enough. They’ll even jokingly accept balls-out absurd theories, and don’t count on websites spinning their amusement into truth bombs. So no, no one on iCarly seriously confirmed their character is half-bee (but headlines say they did). Tom Holland didn’t confirm that he keeps a frog in his mouth (but headlines say he did). And Steve from Stranger Things is probably not the father of Jean Ralphio from Parks And Rec, despite the headlines that screamed that the genealogy lined up.

Headlines about fan theories are next-level bullshit because they’re lies about fiction. And besides, the coolest fan theories are so weird and so involved that they’ll probably never be confirmed. Let’s say your theory connects all the Pixar movies, and it later becomes the most famous theory of our age. Don’t wait for Disney to “confirm” it. If you like the theory, believe it, and to hell with anyone who says you’re wrong. To return to Star Wars again, Mark Hamill said of a fan theory, “I’d say it is meant to be interpreted by the viewer … You should not be ashamed of it.”

Vanity Fair‘s headline about that interview with Hamill:

Vanity Fair

CONFIRMED! THANKS, MARK!

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5 BS Celebrity Stories We Need To Stop Clicking On

We are currently drowning in a sea of entertainment news. For every one event in Hollywood, there are 500 articles written about it. This means that in order to get hits, some websites find themselves bending the truth eeeeeever so slightly. Or in the case of headlines like these, they take the truth, put it in a paper bag, and light it on fire on your doorstep for you to stomp out.

5

Your Favorite Star Just Teased Their Next Big Movie! Or Not!

Before the internet, you mostly found out that a new movie was going to be released when you saw a trailer which confirmed that yes, Batman would be returning. Now, you can learn such information years in advance, due to headlines screaming that the star or director has proclaimed a movie is “in the works,” or something to that effect. Then, two years later, you’re like, “Wait, wasn’t that thing supposed to be out by now?” That’s because those headlines are usually manufactured bullshit.

For example, while I was writing this, Rotten Tomatoes said the biggest story of the week was Steven Spielberg revealing that after Harrison Ford goes scowling into retirement, the next Indiana Jones would be played by a woman:

Stuff

Complex

CNN

But Spielberg didn’t really say that at all. He said the upcoming Indiana Jones film would be the last for Harrison Ford, so the series could only continue in a different form (i.e. as a reboot). A tabloid straight up asked him about going with a female lead, and he said that there was nothing wrong with it and joked, “We’d have to change the name from Jones to Joan,” revealing that, while he is a master filmmaker, he is first and foremost a dad.

Throw in the fact that Spielberg doesn’t own the rights to Indiana Jones (Disney will decide where the franchise goes next), and you realize that asking about anything beyond his personal involvement is futile. But interviewers do this all the time. They give a leading question about a film, get a vague “sure,” then run with the scoop. For example, interviewers have been asking Scarlett Johansson about a solo Black Widow movie for years, resulting in headlines like …

Polygon

… which is misleading, because there is no “Black Widow movie” set in stone yet. Or they’ll ask Marvel captain Kevin Feige, leading to the headline …

Empire Online

… even though an exec saying they’re “creatively and emotionally … most committing to” Black Widow but not actually putting it on their three-year schedule is the exact opposite of a commitment. It’s like when your parents said “We’ll see” when you asked them to buy you a drum kit.

No matter what project it is, whether it’s a TV show or a movie or a stick figure flipbook of a boy hitting a can with a stick, you’ll find the same bullshit. Asked about a Family Guy movie, a producer said, “There are no specific plans,” but also, “if I were a gambling man, I’d say within the next five years,” and joked that he was putting money on that. Thus, headlines read:

Independent

This is a pattern you’ll see throughout this article — celebrities will say vague shit off the cuff, and journalists will dig through it for a headline. In fact, it’s pretty hard to find an actual article about an interview that feels honest. One of the few that I found concerned Daniel Craig, who, when asked about playing James Bond after Spectre, said, “I’d rather break this glass and slash my wrists.”

The 25th James Bond film stars Daniel Craig and hits theaters next year.

4

A Celebrity Admitted That They HATE Their New Film! But Not Really!

When an actor hates life on set or hates their famous role, that makes for a hell of a story. But you’re probably only going to hear it years later, because no actor wants a reputation for sabotage. So every time you see a headline about an actor badmouthing their movie, there’s a good chance that they … didn’t badmouth anything. For example, apparently, the lead actress in the new Tomb Raider began literally taking a dump on a film reel when asked about her experience playing Lara Croft.

Bounding Into Comics

Wow, Alicia Vikander trashes Tomb Raider? Let’s see this clip, in which she says … the previous movies were good, hers is also good, the video game’s realism was good, a sequel might be good, and, in the last 15 seconds, she agrees with the interviewer that it’s weird that the film has so few women in it. Huh. She didn’t trash anything.

OK, well then how about when Jennifer Lawrence spontaneously burst into flame when asked about playing Mystique one more time:

Refinery29

Lawrence’s first quote in the article is “I love these movies.” She then says that she loves the director, and loves fans, and that Dark Phoenix is her best experience yet. So what does she hate? “The paint.” Getting into costume is difficult. You might notice that this isn’t bashing the film. Very few people like to be doused in paint and latex for 16 hours a day. Most people don’t like wearing pants for 16 hours a day. So it’s not unreasonable, and it sure as hell doesn’t mean that she “hates being in X-Men,” as the headline proclaims.

OK, fine. So it seems like a lot of these sites are blowing minor things out of proportion. But how about the time that Batman v Superman was so boring that it caused Michael Shannon to slip into a coma?

GQ

First off, Shannon wasn’t in Batman v Superman. They used a rubber model of him. He was never on set, and though he recorded a few lines, they weren’t used. Also, he fell asleep while watching it on the tiny screen on an airplane, because it was an international flight and he was tuckered.

But what about actors who hate their characters? That’s got to be something that happens in real life. Actors who find the characters they play to be so morally reprehensible that they have to shout it out loud. Actors like Jamie Dornan, the guy who portrayed Christian Grey, who was apparently doing something to the extent of burning copies of Fifty Shades Of Grey on set.

The Loop

Nope, he only says that Christian’s “not the sort of bloke I’d get along with. All my mates are easy going and quick to laugh.” And who would want to hang out with the characters they portray? Jack Nicholson doesn’t sit around waiting for homicidal clowns to buy him a beer, and Dornan probably won’t be chilling with any sociopathic billionaires in the near future.

3

This Celebrity Is Fed Up With Political Correctness! Maybe?

Hollywood is known as a bastion of liberalism, but if you believe clickbaity headlines, aging actors with no stake in the matter are calling press conferences to loudly tell they world that they’re not going to take it anymore. You tell ’em, boys!

Express

AOL

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Almost always, a site is reprinting one extract from a much longer interview some other outlet did on a bunch of topics, such as John Hurt’s terminal cancer diagnosis, or Eastwood doing family friendly films against his lawyer’s advice. “70/80-year-old thinks younger people are different” may be the least interesting part of the interview, but it’s the only part the sites highlight, so they can scratch a specific itch. I’d love to tell you the movie stuff John Rhys-Davies told Adam Corolla or Mel Brooks told BBC, but the full recordings are gone, and all we have left is:

Hollywood Reporter

DailyWire

But that’s all old news. Here’s the latest on Seinfeld and Alec Baldwin literally calling the #MeToo movement shit!

Page Six

Famous News

Must Haves

By “bowel movement,” Seinfeld meant we’re expelling something we must be rid of — the harassers are the shit in this metaphor. It’s a #MeToo endorsement. The story could really have been just about smarmy Baldwin being an ass (watch Seinfeld alternate between agreeable and then dying inside, realizing he must tactfully fight Baldwin on this), but the twist here is that Baldwin was the interviewer. He was luring Seinfeld into making their conversation controversial. Jerry didn’t take the bait. The media did.

When Matt Damon was interviewed about #MeToo, one line got quoted again and again. “There’s a difference between, you know, patting someone on the butt and rape or child molestation, right?”

Huffington Post

Boston

Out of context, it comes off like his entire cause is to defend butt pats, proclaiming it loudly and defiantly with a sword and shield in front of the Damon family crest. But Damon was talking about an actual person who’d touched butts and an actual person who’d molested children, saying there’s literally a difference (one so obvious, you might call it self-evident) — but noted that both acts “need to be confronted and eradicated without question.” He also said a bunch of other pro-#MeToo stuff, and then a really interesting bit on NDAs.

But the headline’s going to be whichever part grabs the most outrage. If manufacturing disagreement and drumming up hatred is what it takes to pay the bills, then that’s what they do.

2

Holy Shit, The Star Was Injured On Set! Or Maybe They’re Just Joking!

Acting can be physically challenging. And like any activity that requires movement, you can get injured while you do it. SERIOUSLY injured. Like Jennifer Lawrence in Mother! levels of injured:

Indiewire

LADBible

Indy100

Given that rib dislocation isn’t a real thing, I wondered whether this was a joke (specifically a reference to the movie, in which Ed Harris loses a rib). Or they might have meant some other rib injury, and Lawrence also supposedly tore her diaphragm. Diaphragm rupture is a real injury … one usually caused by stabbing, gunshots, or car accidents. If someone ruptures their diaphragm and hurts a rib by “hyperventilating,” that would be an extreme medical oddity, not a cute anecdote about how method J-Law is.

But no one apparently cares enough to clarify. Also, “breathing so hard she ripped herself open” is apparently a whole genre of on-set accident:

Express

US Magazine

A ripped stomach muscle is generally not caused by yelling a bunch. Was Theron even being serious? It’s reported seriously, but in the interview, everyone’s laughing throughout. She gave the stomach story in another interview too, and the interviewer immediately changed the subject to her wardrobe.

And wait till you hear about poor, afflicted Gary Oldman:

Screenrant

NME

Independent

He did say that. But actual nicotine poisoning is a big deal — as in phone poison control, because it can be fatal. And it’s caused by swallowing a lot of nicotine at once, not by smoking for several weeks. Maybe Oldman only meant “I went through a whole LOT of cigars”? That’s not dramatic enough. Gotta hint that the toxic cigars have brought him one step closer to the grave.

I’m not calling these celebrities filthy liars. Maybe something crazy did happen to them, or maybe they’re indulging in a little hyperbole to liven up some interviews. And that’s fine, as this is the film junket and not 60 Minutes. But unexplained anecdotes shouldn’t end up as headlines, not without additional reporting.

So when Jonah Hill talks for 25 seconds about being hospitalized for bronchitis due to snorting Wolf Of Wall Street‘s fake coke, maybe 800 sites don’t have to share that in a headline. Not until someone asks, “When you first said this a couple years ago, you didn’t mention hospitalization and weren’t so sure it was bronchitis, and also, bronchitis doesn’t lead to hospitalization, unless you’re like 90 years old. So what I’m asking is this, Mr. Hill: Are you secretly 90 years old?”

1

A Celebrity Confirmed Your Favorite Fan Theory! If You Twist Their Words A Bit!

Fan theories are so prevalent now that they’re getting back to the actors involved. For instance, someone sat Neil Patrick Harris down and asked about the popular fan theory that How I Met Your Mother‘s Barney wasn’t really a womanizing jerk — we just see him that way because unreliable narrator Ted wants his kids to hate Barney so they’ll prefer that Robin be with Ted. Harris said that the theory made a lot of sense. So we were all treated to headlines saying:

Pretty 52

Digital Spy

The Sun

But Harris didn’t confirm anything. He didn’t offer insider info about what the writers intended, or about how he played the character. Nor did J.K. Rowling when she said a convoluted fan theory about Dumbledore being the physical embodiment of Death is “beautiful and it fits,” yet headlines reported that she too had “confirmed” a huge fan theory. And nor did the Jar Jar Binks actor when headlines said he released a “Bombshell” about Jar Jar being a Sith Lord. (He said, “That’s really a George Lucas question. I cannot answer that question.”) At this point, it seems like literally any combination of words would have been interpreted as a confirmation.

The reality is that celebrities will almost always cheerfully nod along with a fan theory if it’s interesting enough. They’ll even jokingly accept balls-out absurd theories, and don’t count on websites spinning their amusement into truth bombs. So no, no one on iCarly seriously confirmed their character is half-bee (but headlines say they did). Tom Holland didn’t confirm that he keeps a frog in his mouth (but headlines say he did). And Steve from Stranger Things is probably not the father of Jean Ralphio from Parks And Rec, despite the headlines that screamed that the genealogy lined up.

Headlines about fan theories are next-level bullshit because they’re lies about fiction. And besides, the coolest fan theories are so weird and so involved that they’ll probably never be confirmed. Let’s say your theory connects all the Pixar movies, and it later becomes the most famous theory of our age. Don’t wait for Disney to “confirm” it. If you like the theory, believe it, and to hell with anyone who says you’re wrong. To return to Star Wars again, Mark Hamill said of a fan theory, “I’d say it is meant to be interpreted by the viewer … You should not be ashamed of it.”

Vanity Fair‘s headline about that interview with Hamill:

Vanity Fair

CONFIRMED! THANKS, MARK!

Follow Ryan Menezes on Twitter for bits cut from this article and other stuff no one should see.

Start collecting your own sound bites for the world to misinterpret, get yourself an audio recorder.

Support Cracked’s journalism with a visit to our Contribution Page. Please and thank you.

For more dumb news that shouldn’t be news, check out 5 Stupid Things We Need To Stop Clicking On and 6 News Stories Everybody Needs To Stop Sharing On Facebook.

You SHOULD click on THIS LINK and follow us on Facebook.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/5-bs-celebrity-stories-we-need-to-stop-clicking-on/