#season 4 ep 8

[stupid-2012tmnt-pics]

i love how mona lisa just picks him up from under the armpits like a big teddy bear

[thefirstwormonyourcorpse]

River Song first appearance, season 4 ep 8, writing this down bc i keep seeing her name and she finally came up!

feel like she's important so i want to remember

[tamsinbeybey-she-no-porcupine]

Rich making jokes about ceramics defying gravity and his especially cheerful, jokey vibe,

Rose and Siobhan swapping clothes.

It's already such a lovely episode.

Now all that I need is tears from Keith

[julykings]

by candlelight

[ra1nrei]

seeing zenitsu on serious mode gave me chills—

[littlespoonevan]

i know s7 is effectively a chess board in which tim minear is moving all of his pieces right where he wants them so he can get Back To Business™ in s8 but oh what i would give right now for an episode a la stuck or pinned or future tense with 3-4 low stakes calls that all somehow tie in with the name of the ep and link thematically with the main characters' individual plot lines

[stottlemonk-moments]

Stottlemonk Moments:

Monk s08ep04: "Mr. Monk is Someone Else"

[deliciouskeys]

The boys spoilers (by 1 day lol)

I was pretty sure that was Ryan standing with his back toward the camera but on closer inspection is it an adult? And the wardrobe doesn’t look like Ryan’s but maybe it’s just lighting.

Anyway, what I am pretty sure of is what Homelander is holding in his hand. 🖼

[yourdadsbasement]

i KNEW their asses did not check before they JUMPED OUT OF A PLANE (or a flying turtle ship, whatever)

oh yeah i know this white people dance

we're really not expecting enough from human men

sounds like the guys need to do some reading on feminism and the division of household labor

omg i finally figured out who he reminds me of it's Lurky in Rainbow Brite going "i wanna ride the pretty horsie!"

idk donita you didn't see her trying to design the crew jackets

do they know who Cris Angel is?

honestly it's making me hungry for a lox and cream cheese bagel

[they-breasted-boobily]

Steve Blackman prevented many umbrella wrist tattoos by making sure that last season was bad

[filmjunky-99]

s t a r t r e k t h e n e x t g e n e r a t i o n created by gene roddenberry [future imperfect, s4ep8] 'What's important right now, today, is that you have a son who needs you. Spend time with him. You may find part of what you've lost.' - troi

[stupid-2012tmnt-pics]

heart eyes

[racetheskies]

I'll never not be so impressed by hinata's work ethic. his ability to practice receives on his own is already a sign of how hard he works bc he knows exactly how to practice even when he can't be at the gym or with others. but the fact that he's working so hard on receives in the first place simply for the reason that he isn't good at them and wants to improve? literally nobody has ever been this hard of a worker or this passionate about anything

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

streaming tv is like the fantasy/fiction need for a mid list. big money thrown at projects expecting that big money can make anything too big to fail, when the reality is that there’s only so much profit to make in an oversaturated market and only so many properties that can be the number one most popular thing at a time, but no matter how many projects fail or how variable the quality of the art is, it’s never going to be acceptable again to shore up most of your projects with only SOME money and letting that “mid list” find longlasting audiences that provide your baseline business

i wish both streaming tv and the publishing industry would spend less money on more projects that cultivate good writing. i want good writing and long projects to get invested in so bad that i'm caring less and less for production

my thesis statement is that tv shows are being canceled because they cost too much money. a mid list would have saved most canceled shows. higher production costs don't mean better writing, and lower production costs don't mean worse writing

the publishing industry is asking for shorter fantasy books and is canceling series and leaving authors behind because it is throwing all its money at shiny new things that are not actually new and don't stick

all of this without investment in a "mid list" to keep baseline profits coming or to keep a foundation of writers paid and busy

if companies spent less money on shows, would they last longer? would they hone writers' skills more? does this extend to animation where the budgets are so much smaller? or is there no world where i could get multiple 25-episode seasons of arcane and i'm just deluding myself

fantasy books especially have had an oversaturation problem for years, but the biggest problem is an over-reliance on debuts without investment in originality or in authors’ futures. what this looks like is big money thrown at marketing shiny debuts or at a subset of the old familiar faces in fantasy that established themselves before the shift in industry mindset. everyone else either gets scraps or can’t find their footing after their debut. you either go viral somehow or you go home. to make money, the only acceptable projects are generic or are recognizable rehashes of previously popular but specific ideas. fantasy is considered a popular genre now, but in my opinion, fantasy has never stopped being niche, but the need to find bigger audiences and bigger investment has resulted in pushing fantasy series that don't do anything new or interesting and actively spurn good prose, but can appeal to as many people as possible (instead of weird fantasy freaks, aka me, i'm freaks, now most of the freaky fantasy i can find is in video games and a single tear is rolling down my face)

now tv. buffy the vampire slayer cost about 1-2 million per episode. star trek tng cost 1 million per episode

look where we’re at with streaming services. tv shows that cost millions and tens of millions of dollars per episode. the sopranos redefined what prestige tv meant and it cost 2-6 million per episode. chasing the new prestige mindset, game of thrones started out at 6 million per episode. today, early game of thrones’ budget from about 2011-2013 is joked about like it’s chump change, especially for game of thrones or hbo. but prestige tv reeled in that subscriber money. the streaming model today is the continuation of the prestige tv model, except that every show needs to be prestige, no matter the audience or genre or story structure. because prestige tv made money

now that the baseline model for helping your subscription/channel make money is to throw 6 million+ per episode, it's no longer a mystery why seasons are getting shorter and shorter. and the demand for higher and higher production will only mean that shows take longer and longer to make

netflix shelled out 6 million per episode - what an oddly familiar number, huh? - for stranger things season 1. season 4 cost 30 million per episode

wheel of time season 1: 10 million per episode. rings of power season 1: 58 million per episode. these are adaptations btw, not original IPs, but this is SEASON ONE money you’re looking at. i liked both rings of power and wheel of time decently, but my hot take is that both of these shows are under-written and over-produced. why so much money thrown at projects with writers at the helm who are inexperienced in the fantasy genre? rings of power in particular is bank-breaking and it was originally planned to run for several seasons

the mandalorian season 1: 15 million per episode. andor season 1: 20 million per episode. the acolyte season 1: 22 million per episode

remember that the subscription model requires subscribers to make money and requires NEW subscribers to satisfy the hunger for growth, and star wars is a single IP with established fans. the mandalorian, andor, and the acolyte all took major risks in different ways. the mandalorian actually fell back on star wars fundamentals (rather than being something net new in my opinion) and its risk was in being a show, not a movie, and the first of its kind on streaming for star wars

andor could be the riskiest fantasy/sci-fi show to hit streaming, ever. 12 episodes for season 1 that cost 250 million overall, not 6-8, explores marxist themes, and did not pull in new subscribers. what popularity it does have is purely due to word-of-mouth and plain old good writing, rather than marketing or by simply being part of star wars. it was originally going to be 5 seasons but is now going to be 2 because... 250 million dollars is a lot to spend on one season of television that didn't make you a lot of money. simple as that, even if andor is the best live-action thing disney has produced in decades in my opinion

the acolyte season 1 was 8 episodes and cost 22 million per episode, which armchair critics on social media are stating is the reason why the show has been canceled. haters will just say it was canceled because of bad writing, and fans are saying it was because of review-bombing and the diversity of the cast and crew

i disagree on some level that the acolyte is the first star wars show to be canceled, because again, andor was going to be 5 seasons and is now going to be 2, losing over 50% of the original story. even fans of the acolyte will agree that its writing wasn't the best. most fans who have seen andor will agree that it is the best-written star wars media ever on par with the best episodes of clone wars. both shows brought me over to disney plus when no other show or movie did

but in effect, both shows have been canceled

my take is that if a mid list existed, both shows should have been on it. they are part of an established IP with established fans who were going to watch the shows no matter what. most people with star wars fatigue would not have heard about the uniqueness of these shows until later and would have probably picked them up by their finales or by their season 2s

if they were not star wars properties and were original stories instead, both of these shows were still fairly unique doing things that appeal to "weird" subsets of sci-fi/fantasy fans. the mid list would have been perfect either way

i firmly believe that a mid list would have saved both of these shows. 6 million per episode MAXIMUM. ideally less. not because i dislike either show, but because i care about writing above all else. pay 1 writers room a fair wage and let them go fucking nuts for a few seasons. as long as everyone else in the production is being paid a fair and living wage, i don't care how little is spent on the show

stranger things should have been a mid-list anthology series that ran forever, wheel of time should have been a mid-list tv fantasy with at least 12 episodes per season to do any justice to those massive books but also to pay homage to the book series' roots as high fantasy that goes on and on without much of a plan and with often mid and sometimes junky writing but with appeal in that it was long-running, made readers familiar with the same characters every book for many hundreds of pages each, and is something of a comfort read now for many fans

i think that reality is catching up to streaming services and things are going to get worse before they get better

but i also think that the next "evolution" of tv should be the return of the mid list

[dnp-pet-rectangle]

You know it’s gonna be a good gaming video when they’re unhinged from the start, even during the sponsor read

[fukutomichi]

Just finished reading GRRM's blog post on HotD and oooohh he's piiiiissed! Straight up spoils Season 3 lol. Them erasing Maelor was a giant red flag for me at the beggining. I'll always be confused on why the showrunners decided to go forward with the story like that. They had everything set up for them. EVERYTHING. And still messed it up.