#the ending didn't happen though

[smile-2-be-happy]

Just watched the teen wolf movie:

The beginning: this is corny as hell 😂

The middle 80%: am loving it, feels like returning to an old friend. Exactly what I wanted from this movie

The end twist: I recognise that the creators have made a decision, but given it's a shitty decision, I have elected to ignore it.

[supjello]

"Your son?" "My apprentice, but I think of him like a son."

[decarbry]

yabureme, having his brain being called dark and empty (like a cat!): wow i have such good friends!

the league: lmfao look at this stupid zombie it has no feelings.... probably.... i'm sure this is fine

friends.png

[rotisseries]

what if they do the "came back wrong" trope with max in s5

[counterspelling]

day 2 of non-stop thinking about the return of vax. i'm rotating the orb in my mind. i'm trying not to let more than 1% of me hope that this is matt's way of bringing him back and finally giving vax and keyleth the happy ending they deserve bc i simply cannot!!! live through that heartbreak again!! if it doesn't happen!!!

[handonhaven]

alternate ending where Landon escapes limbo and comes back to life as a phoenix (with his soul/emotions restored) and he and Hope leave the school to go live their lives together

[aquietgirlsmess]

I’m not upset about Scott and Malia breaking up because tbh I didn’t really care about them as a couple. I didn’t mind them but I wasn’t really into them.

But I am upset about what this means for Malia’s character. I mean it annoys me that they’re sacrificing one of her relationships again for the sake of fanservice because yes bringing Allison and making Scallison a couple again is fanservice and not fanservice that I mind, mind you, because I actually love both Allison and Scallison.

[mundifinis]

i pray the day never comes when tiktok discovers gregg araki's films (specifically the teenage apocalypse trilogy ones) because the amount of discourse i can already picture.... oh my god

[lucalicatteart]

Poll adventure (paventure? lol) Day 8: !!NOTE: this is different from the past polls - rather than choosing a story action, you're picking supplies to craft a little makeshift boat (EX: wood will be the main platform, so there should likely be the most of it, however, if there were 100% votes for branches and 0% votes for rope, then it'd just be a pile of wood held together by nothing - keep them balanced reasonably, etc.))

(✦ see past poll results + further information HERE (link) ✦)

The winning option of yesterday's poll was that the adventurer should get around the barrier by crafting a little boat to take a river detour….

~

Finally crawling out of his hiding spot in the brambles, he meticulously brushes the leaves from his clothes and composes himself, now fully focused on his generic traveler's map of the area... After checking it about 500 times just to make sure he isn't confused, he determines that going down the nearby river would likely still get him where he's trying to go, and hopefully be much less treacherous than wandering through haunted forests or confronting the stern gaze of the barrier guards..

It only takes about 10 minutes of following a narrower rocky path off the main road to reach a nice shaded spot of land next to a small river. He kneels in the grass, eagerly rummaging through his backpack for supplies, in addition to whatever he can scavenge from the edge of the woods. The rush of excitement slowly dissipates however, once he realizes that he.. actually.. might not know how to make a raft as well as he thought... Surely it's quite straightforward, no? Just.. make it look like it does in picture books?? There are no rules, as long as it floats, it works! Probably anyone could build one on intuition alone! ... maybe...???

.. Once again sinking into a cloud of anxiety, he slumps over, staring at the pile of materials with teary eyes, doubtful what to even do next.... How should he build the raft? Help him by using the poll to choose the appropriate amounts of materials (determined by final % of votes in that category)!

[wally-franks]

So, this is gonna be a bit corny but.. Thank you. Just thank you.

I wish to thank everyone who has left a kind comment and shown their love for my character designs and just my art in general... I wish to thank everyone that engages with my stuff. I with to thank everyone for just everything. It means so much to me that people take the time of their day to appreciate and share my work. And it even means more to me whenever people want to know more about my designs and interpretations of the characters. (I'm unfortunately too shy and too ashamed to share much but.. Maybe someday..) I'm so grateful whenever people talk to me and stuffs..

You are all are such kind souls and all your sweet and loving words have touched me deeply. I truly appreciate the support and I am extremely grateful for everything that has happend the past months. (time flies by so fast.)

Not just that, but I also appreciate the people I met during that time. I want to take a quick moment to express my gratitude for the amazing friends and mutuals I've made over the past few months. You all have made such a positive impact on my time being here and I truly appreciate your presence and support.

Thank you for being there for me and for sticking around. I feel lucky to have you all in my life and I'm excited to see where our friendships go from here!

Thank you.

[elytrafemme]

also btw. just wanted to point out how Boundless Sands and the Las Nevadas Finale (no matter HOW u feel about them) both made attempts and imo did a GOOD JOB at handling the conversation about recovery. neither c!Wilbur nor c!Quackity were perfect and clearly in the beginning or in the midst of a messy road to healing but w the letters and w Friend being in limbo + c!Wilbur going home we see like. the characters were WORKING on healing and being better as people. and that to me was not only a testament to how much cc!Wilbur and cc!Quackity loved their damn characters, but was also something that really reassured me. you know as someone who has had their own mental health issues too (clearly) and has been in the throes of the recovery process for a while. shits messy and shits unclear and you relapse but you TRY and cc!Wilbur and cc!Quackity did a good job being both gentle & real about the trying part.

versus the fucking “DSMP vol 1 finale”, aka a stream that was clearly coordinated (bold word choice of mine, implying anything here was really planned) by Dream and only included some of the biggest streamers (For all the DSMP season 3 / prison break stream had faults, at least more than 5 fucking people were on the server doing things !!!), had HORRIBLE messaging about the process of healing. Ppl have gone back and forth about how bad the whole Tommy Dream “reconcilation” thing was, and I didn’t watch the stream so I only know bits and therefore can only be taken w a grain of salt here. BUT i think that the fact that (1) Tommy was even entertaining the thought of making amends, or if you think that he was making amends at the time, with Dream NOT APOLOGIZING and no follow up to show that forgiving abusers doesnt absolve their guilt and also u dont have to forgive abusers and also Tommy wasnt at fault  . and also (2) that the finale involved THE ENTIRE SERVER BLOWING UP which not only signifies that these characters NEVER got a chance to heal but also ensured everyone excluding like c!Q and c!Wil NEVER COULD. Is fucking horrific and disgusting to me. 

and not to even talk about Dream as a person bc I have so many fucking thoughts about how all that makes the messaging surrounding power dynamics in the finale So much worse (and is the reason I have yet to watch the stream bc I will just trigger myself thinking about that). 

So fucking disgusting to see how the dsmp finale happened, with NO regards to the majority of other streamers, just Dream and whoever could mindlessly tag on that happened to have pretty big viewer counts (shocker), and completely throwing out the characters and the story that have been built for YEARS. Versus how streamers like Quackity and Wilbur handled things, INCLUSIVELY and COMPASSIONATELY and fucking EXCELLENTLY, in my opinion.

[kikuism]

i lived

[itspileofgoodthings]

A Jonathan Byers Meta

I’ve been thinking so much about Jonathan Byers and I have some thoughts (again). (Feel free to reblog if you want but please be nice if you do so!) Jonathan is a person whose core trait, one of them at least, is that he responds so strongly to context and specifically to the kind of context he understands and wants, a trait of many oldest siblings I think. And in that context he can be so many things he is not necessarily in every area of his life. So much of that forward moving momentum he has in the first couple episodes of the show where he’s doing so much so powerfully is caused by it being a context he understands and has chosen to embrace and live out to the fullest- the context of him being the most responsible/capable member of the family. He loves Joyce and Will; he hates Lonny and is going to keep him away from his family at all costs; he considers himself the one in charge. And there is a softness and strength to that that feels absolutely luminous, that feels like nothing can shake it. And so as the show goes on and the lens widens to include more characters and perspectives it feels like Jonathan loses power/feels a little lost/drifts out of the center of the story. And for a long time I considered that a failure of the writers. They paid attention to him at the beginning, I thought, but then dropped him and that wasn’t his fault. But I rewatched Stranger things (seasons 1 and 2) this past spring and actually the thing I saw that surprised me is it makes sense on a character level that he loses that central ground and power so to speak because he is put into a context he no longer really understands or just as importantly doesn’t really want to be in. And yeah I’m talking about his dynamic with Nancy. His dynamic with Nancy in those first few seasons confused me the most and for the longest time because it began so powerfully and then felt like it veered off course. I loved it so much, shipped it so completely, and then lost interest as the show goes. And again I blamed that on the writers (in a way I still kind of do because they’re clumsy but more on that in a minute.) But I think there’s more going on on a character level.

The first beats of Nancy and Jonathan’s story feel so powerful because it’s actually part of that same context of compelling power in which we first meet Jonathan (and if you’re me fall in love with him fast). Will is missing and Nancy steps in to not exactly his place in Jonathan’s family but the position he occupied--and that’s because a) she is trying to solve a problem that is connected with Will’s disappearance, b) she needs help while doing so. Jonathan responds to that context effortlessly and powerfully. He joins forces with her and without any question or hesitation takes care of her physically when she’s in danger. It’s surprising and it’s moving and it feels at first like just an extension of that quiet competence and force of personality we witnessed in the first couple episodes but this time in a romantic context. But actually, it still isn’t romantic with him. It isn’t for him for a long time. Basically until the writers force his hand. And that’s because ---and this SHOCKED me when I rewatched the first two seasons a month ago, almost to the point of anger and quitting the show forever--the show never actually succeeds in establishing that he likes Nancy as a person! It’s clear that the writers intend the audience to pick up on that subtext (or I think it’s clear that that’s what they want) but they bungle it badly if so. The actual basic cues that would tell us Jonathan has a crush on Nancy and have us buy it as a believable emotional experience are missing. There isn’t a scene or even a moment where in any way Jonathan expresses any kind of romantic interest in Nancy at the beginning of the show. It’s not part of the establishing his character. His reasons for taking pictures at the party are muddled from the perspective the show is trying to force and it doesn’t work because all Jonathan has done is be vaguely polite to Nancy at school, caught her eye (quite frankly ACCIDENTALLY that one time), and disappeared down the hallway at the speed of light every time she turns around. She was far more intrigued than he was. The show gives us that moment with tears in his eyes where we’re supposed to believe (I think?????) that he’s so upset she’s with Steve but it’s incongruous and feels so weird and jarring you kind of have to throw it out. Because the show hasn’t done any work of telling us why that would be the case at all. No pining gaze! No mention! No conversation! The conversation they have in the hallway doesn’t communicate longing on his part, only a desire to be away from the cool kids. There isn’t even a time where someone else teases him about his crush on Nancy, the easiest way to introduce the fact of one character liking another. It’s not much of a stretch to believe that he hasn’t really thought about Nancy romantically at all. In fact it’s honestly a stretch to think he does. And there other reasons for his being there that make more sense--though I do think it’s bungled from a writing perspective. He misses Will, he’s out looking for Will, photography is his passion (lol), he doesn’t like the cool kids, he stumbles on their party “eh might as well take a picture and be the cool outside observer that he is.”

And because the writers didn’t give us a clear and unambiguous liking of Nancy from Jonathan as a starting point everything that comes after between them, even romantically or romantically-adjacent in that first season, hits differently once you watch it patiently and closely. It becomes clear that all of Jonathan’s care-taking of her is response not to her as a person he is romantically interested in, but response to context, to being the responsible one, the helper. He gets out her sleeping bag and puts it on the floor because he’s really not thinking with any part of his brain about how he’s in the room of the girl he likes. Because he’s not! He’s there as a larger part of the context the show established for him in the first couple episodes--his family, his role as caretaker. And of course that doesn’t mean that Jonathan couldn’t fall in love with her later just because the story never actually established that he liked her romantically when it thinks it does. Of course that could come later, come OUT of their interactions. but .... it doesn’t. It never really comes through. The most powerful part of their story together is the first part because it’s the only time in their relationship where Jonathan is moving with that characteristic firm decision making and competence. He’s very powerful when he’s saving her life. But everything else feels flat. And part of that is because he’s not a person who changes easily or very much at all. There are things about him that feel powerful and real and RIGHT and then there are things that just feel like him doing what the writers want him to do and those aren’t the same. Everything having to do with Nancy romantically feels like the second thing, like something the writers are making them do. The show even has to use Murray to get their romance actually jump-started because these aren’t really characters electrically drawn together. And so some of the stuff he says, the romantic stuff--it’s easy to handwave. And/or to find other reasons. And no this doesn’t have anything to do with shipping bias, though my shipping has been influenced by paying close attention to his behavior and actions. Because despite the power of Charlie Heaton in a gray sweater backlit by the red light of the darkroom with his hair falling over his face, nothing about it hits the way a Jonathan emotion should hit. And it should hit! The right stuff does! He’s brilliantly and truthfully acted and he’s layered and the right Jonathan moments SING. He’s not really a talker, not fundamentally, he doesn’t show his heart that way but in actions and only some of his actions with Nancy, the ones that really are just part of the context he’s comfortable with, really ring true. The point that I’m trying to get at is that when you look at those first few episodes really closely, emotionally there are only really three things that are actually--in character and in truth-- established about Jonathan’s heart. 

They are. One- he loves Will. Will is his person, his world, the center. The one he’s always going to protect first, think about first. Will tells us he doesn’t have friends and Jonathan protests it but that probably came from somewhere. His favorite person in the WORLD is Will. The context of Will’s disappearance highlights that so clearly of course but I think we’d see it even without that. The second thing is that he loves Joyce but he doesn’t particularly trust her judgment, considering himself more of an authority on what this family needs than she does. This establishes a distinguishing quality in him, a pickiness and choosiness and prickliness that is essential. He won’t love blindly and he certainly won’t let just anyone in. (When he says he doesn’t like people we should maybe perhaps believe him and not pass him off as a secret softie.) Joyce is part of his inner circle (I love their relationship a lot actually) but he is not uncritical even of her. This is someone who likes to keep people out because this is someone who doesn’t have endless patience for people and the way they do things. He wants things HIS WAY. His way is domestic and so is the context- he’s frying an egg and it feels so homey and good you want to say he’s a softie and a cinnamon roll- but it comes out of a character who knows what he wants. And the third thing, hilariously enough, is that he hates Steve! Somehow the Duffer brothers DO establish this in a far more convincing way than they establish him liking Nancy. He tells Nancy “he doesn’t like most people” and this is true but Steve is a little bit of an exception in a worse way, as the leader of the popular kids. He’s the figurehead for all that Jonathan dislikes and despises and wants to keep out of his inner circle. The fight that Jonathan and Nancy have in the woods feels far more about his disdain for the cool kids than it does about him really liking her and wanting to rescue her from that. The nerd lecturing the girl who wants to be cool and telling her she’s better than that is a stupid trope and one far less romantic than it thinks it is but because the show has established, intentionally or not, that Jonathan doesn’t really care about Nancy romantically all that comes through in a truthful way is that he doesn’t like popular kids. That emotion, that dislike and almost disdain that lives at Jonathan’s core, is expressed far more authentically than any warmth towards Nancy and it’s so telling that it’s that dislike that collides with the other strongest feeling of his life, loving Will, and leads him to half-killing Steve in the street. The warmest Jonathan ever acts towards Nancy is the warmth of context and the warmth of Will (in his absence) and when those reasons fall away you’re left with something curiously cold. And Jonathan, when he loves, is not a cold person. He’s not a chill person. And so watching him do things like give Will Nancy’s gift to him (a hilarious moment), make Nancy leave out the window (actually very dark and strange considering that Joyce knows they’re sleeping together), literally forget Nancy exists when Will comes back and it’s him and Joyce and Will again, ---you can try to tell yourself that that’s just how he loves. But it isn’t. Because we know his warmth in his hatred and in his loves. And for Nancy it really is just kind of “ehhh.” It’s indifference. 

tl,dr; the show thinks that it’s telling a convincing love triangle for sure. But because they don’t establish liking Nancy as a person as part of his character early enough and because he isn’t a character whose fundamental traits change or change easily they don’t actually build a convincing enough romance. It’s because Jonathan is a person who responds to context, even the wrong one, and because Nancy has her own journey and insecurities to work through (a different meta) they stay together for a long time. But it isn’t satisfying and it doesn’t work because it doesn’t actually strike deep enough in Jonathan’s heart. It’s not a context he really wants at his core. If he falls in love it’ll have to be with someone he wants to allow right into the very center of his life and heart and right now he’s not interested in anyone being in that place except his family. And so because he’s kind of stuck in this situation (of his own choosing, I’m not absolving him of that) because Jonathan likes routine and to keep doing the same things and is not self-motivated in the most powerful way to be able to get out of this romance—-he drifts to the edges and stops really doing anything interesting at all. He starts doing pot, won’t go visit Nancy on her spring break etc. He’s not really the boyfriend he could be in any way because I think fundamentally he doesn’t want to be. And the show may put other words in his mouth about this, I kNOW that the show doesn’t completely agree with everything I’ve written here. But it seems to me the only true way to read him in light of what he actually does and how different it is when he’s acting with his whole heart and when he’s not. 

[serotoninarts]

I do not fear our tumblr overlords anymore (but I still cropped and darkened the drawing lmao)

[rotisseries]

i love that every time I see the general audience hating on mike, it's always because of will? like they'll be like ''oh mike's a shitty friend, he's awful to will, he only pays attention to his girlfriend'' there will be the occasional "he's not a great boyfriend" but it's like, an add-on, like an afterthought? which is so funny, because even at his WORST mike treats will way better than el actually. like I'm a mike apologist obviously but if I was going to be listing reasons to be a mike hater, I would START WITH "his girlfriend got humiliated by an ENTIRE roller rink, and he only gave a shit about his friend not paying attention to him, AND THEN freaked out on his girlfriend for retaliating towards her bully"

[icewindandboringhorror]

I think the hardest thing in writing for me sometimes is the like “show don’t tell/let people communicate through subtext/Normal People don’t just walk around openly explaining their motivations for everything That’s Unnatural” thing because like.. I literally DO walk around openly explaining my motivations for everything, that is how I talk, I am an analytical detail oriented over-communicator who explains everything as thoroughly as possible and and will give a fully detailed 2 minute long answer to something simple like “how are you doing today?” .. like it’s hard to make things sound Natural and Normal when you yourself are inherently unnatural and abnormal in your methods of communication to an extent lol