#the real rough drafts

[givemesweetspls]

please forgive the atrocious art but after reading

@havanillas au I couldn't stop thinking about meraven having his ariel moment and singing his little mer heart out, and of course, using Ratio's hair brush as a mic. Ratio, hearing noises from the bathroom panics that something is wrong with aven, only to walk in on his little performance.

of course rubber ducky is aventurine's biggest fan<3

[commandertartarsmoocher]

Guess who has been cooking stuff related to the professor

[xejune]

doodle idea: Bruce cookin up something good?

he's cooking a mystery camping soup (no one but him knows exactly whats in it but it's tasty!)

[crooked-wasteland]

Oops: Rushing to Catharsis, Dodging Accountability

There is much to be said about the latest episode of Helluva Boss, and it is a bit of a tragedy that the animatic release felt like a more complete version of the episode than the actual finished product. From losing out on the visual intensity of Fizzarolli's injuries to the complete erasure of Barbie in the background of the disaster, it feels like these small changes removed the visceral intensity of the scene and its repercussions. Especially as Barbie is now the obvious point of conflict in Blitz's storyline, it feels like the impact of that part of the story is now devalued by her absence.

But that is hardly the end of the issues at play.

Medrano and her team rushed this story arc.

There are clear parallels to Bojack's two major story beats of Bojack abandoning Herb and the Sugarman Summer Home season arc. It is obvious that Blitz and Fizzarolli have a relationship paralleling that of Herb and Bojack in season one. However, Medrano pulls back in a multitude of ways and fails to commit the plot to a natural conclusion. While Herb rejects Bojack due to the fact that the latter never came to check up on him following his public disgrace and outing, Blitz is absolved of even that.

In the Bojack episode, Herb makes it clear that he doesn't blame his old friend for not standing with him when he was removed from Horsing Around. While he may have been upset at one time, he had cooled off and recognized that if the studio had let them both go, that would have been terrible for both of them.

Rather, it was Bojack assuming Herb's desires and thus avoiding his best friend for years under the belief that he had betrayed Herb so completely that the other wouldn't want to see him anyway. Bojack's insecurity was his own undoing in that relationship, even though it showed that both Herb and Bojack were still very compatible friends. Bojack's background of conditional relationships from his own parents set the groundwork for his hyperavoidant personality and how allowing generational trauma to dictate your relationships in life is a good way to lose everyone you ever hope to keep.

Here, Blitz didn't abandon Fizzarolli. Skipping to the end, Blitz was kept from seeing Fizz in the hospital by a currently unknown third party. Which removes his flaws on a fundamental level. While one could argue ripping off the storyline wholesale would have been just as bad, at least it wouldn't feel like a fanfiction retelling of that Bojack episode. It feels like Medrano had a very negative opinion of Herb and how he rejected Bojack and that this reiteration with her own characters is her way of "fixing" that relationship. At the same time, what Blitz ended up doing is far and above worse than Bojack simply not risking his career.

The episode takes the sequence as dark as they'd dare, Fizzarolli crawling out of the explosion as his body burns and disintegrates. The show really does want to bank itself on the emotional impact this sequence should have, picturing how afraid Fizz must be. The amount of pain he would be in as his mangled body turns to ash as he forces himself from the fire. His flesh melted, his horns seared red and glowing like it would if they were made of real keratin, his bones themselves falling apart as he forced his body to escape the disaster. And he calls out to the one person he held such admiration for, his best friend since they were kids, who turns his back on him and runs.

And somehow, that is not the reason the relationship has become so bitter and vile. Not because Fizzarolli, most likely believing he was going to die, watched his best friend run away and "save himself" (from Fizz's perspective), leaving him to die alone in this calamity. It's because Blitz never came to talk to him. And even then, it wasn't Blitz's fault.

While that reveal worked for Bojack and Herb, it doesn't actually work for when a character almost actually loses their life. The figurative end of the world that comes with losing a job you love and a creative passion project stolen and bastardized can not begin to amount to the physical act of dying. That is actually the entire point of Herb's story as well, why Bojack's initial betrayal is forgivable, but his avoidance was not. It's because what felt like the end of life in the moment didn't actually end anything substantial for Herb. He still lived a full and complete life, minus his best friend who left him to rebuild on his own. And you can not, in fact, make up for lost time.

Speaking of comparisons, the dialogue of this sequence in particular feels quite off-putting. Blitz's line of "You have e no idea what I lost in that fire" is accusatory and draws up a direct comparison to what each character lost. Fizzarolli is physically scarred by the events as well as mentally and emotionally. Horns are shown to be a source of social pride for imps, adding self-esteem and identity to the list of things Fizz lost in the disaster. But because it is implied that Blitz's mother actually did die in the fire, that is a tragedy somehow beyond belief for someone like Fizzarolli. It would be safe to assume that Tilla's death would have been felt by everyone who survived the circus, or at the least for the kids. The dialogue sets up a divide that somehow Blitz watching how his careless moodiness almost killed his crush is not at the top of the list of traumas Blitz has to sort through from this sequence is hard to believe.

Speaking of crush.

And that gets to why this episode as a whole fails to work on a fundamental level. For what it is, what it wants to be, and what it is trying to set up, this episode consistently drops the ball. It is confounding to think that Medrano believed that the relationship for Stolas and Blitz was for more necessary to show than this.

This episode should have been a flashback.

The entire episode should have been the lead up to the disaster. Show us the relationship of Blitz and Barbie and Fizzarolli. Show us the way Blitz is treated by others at the circus even as he ages.

Show us Tilla for five minutes for the love of everything meaningful. It's so hard to believe this should be important to the characters or story when we are given nothing concrete about who Tilla was as a person or mother. We lived the flashbacks of Bojack, no matter how short a snippet they were. We experienced Beatrice's callous nature or his father's self-centered abuse. For as important as she is implied to be, Tilla is not so important as to be an active participant in the story.

At the end of all this, I believe that the greatest issues boil down to a set list

- Characters do not have any lasting responsibility to the situation, their actions or the outcome.

- Somehow a character like Tilla who has never been seen and lacks any personality outside of early Steven Universe Rose Quartz perfection is a loss that is elevated over the trauma we are allowed to very distantly experience in Fizzarolli's monologue.

- The fact that we still have no idea about who any of these characters were to appreciate the sense of loss that this episode was supposed to supply.

- Fizzarolli and Blitz make up completely by the end of a single episode.

- The lack of buildup to the disaster causes confusion as to why it ever happens. Blitz throwing the confession letter on the ground and walking away has no rhyme or reason to it.

This episode is a literal laundry list of bad choices and poor structuring. When a school teacher writes in the margin, "Show, don't tell," this is what they are talking about.

[stabbingandorbeingstabbed]

that fucking circus organ at the end of the leaked paper kingdom song im insane i always just assumed the band ditched the whole thing bc it was shitty on top of the emotional toll of the subject matter or whatever i didnt know it ripped :-(((

[strawbie-doodle]

i was getting behind on episodes but i heard that ashton back so i caught up immediately

[gynandromorph]

maybe it's just the context that i have? i'm sure i've posted this before

even then???!?!?? there are people who still go to church after God kills their mother!!! there are people who still go to church after the pastor drops dead during the sermon because God decided it was HEART ATTACK TIME!!!!!! THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO START GOING TO CHURCH AGAIN AFTER GOD GIVES THEM STAGE 4 CANCER

SO I CAN'T EVEN SAY "NO ONE WOULD DO THAT" CLEARLY A LOT OF PEOPLE WOULD DO THAT

[gayfour]

Practicing drawing these weird little space guys (with my new favourite brush (it's quite fun)

[landwriter]

You've Got Mail AU, lay it on me

Brand new scene for you, TJ! (Prev You've Got Mail nonsense.)

If my WIPs were unionized, this one would've been loooong done. But they're not, unfortunately for them, and after like four days after talking about You've Got Mail-verse, I got talking about the Tam Lin AU, and we all know how that went.

The other snippets were silly, this one is a little sad:

It feels like another ending. Hob is sick of them. Morpheus’ face is perfectly expressionless. He can’t take it. Won’t. Wants to greedily keep this for just a little bit longer. He always does. Even when everybody else around him knows it’s over, there he is, holding on past decency and reason.

Morpheus is absurdly beautiful in the morning light.

Hob says what he’s been thinking for weeks now. “You know, sometimes I wonder if you came into my shop, and you hadn’t been Endless Books, and I hadn’t been The New Bookshop-”

“Then it wouldn’t have been your shop,” interrupts Morpheus.

“No,” he says. “I guess it wouldn’t be.”

Isn’t, now. In any case.

Morpheus catches the look on his face and takes pity on him. He’s kinder, Hob thinks, than anyone gives him credit for. Including himself. “A cafe, instead,” he offers.

“Or Shakespeare in the Park,” says Hob. He can picture it now.

Morpheus’ lip twitches up the way it does when he’s trying not to smile. “Yes. If we met at Shakespeare in the Park?”

“I would’ve offered you a spot on my blanket. And I would have hoped it would get cold or rain, so you would lean on me.”

Morpheus ducks his head, and Hob wants to seize his face, wants to thumb over those perfect cheekbones. Fist his hands in his shirt and not let go ever. “You would have forgotten your umbrella, of course,” says Morpheus, quietly.

“Of course. And the sky would have opened up until we had to hide under a tree.”

Morpheus looks up. “And then?”

“And then I would have found the courage to ask a beautiful stranger for his number, and I would have asked you out that very night. And if you’d said yes I’d have done it again and again. Every day, actually, for as long as we lived.”

“Hob,” says Morpheus. His eyes are bright.

“If we never came up against each other. If the only thing you ever took from me was the blankets at night.”

“We’d need to have two sets.”

Hob swallows hard. “Yeah. Yeah, we would.”

The sounds of the city lap up against them, but Hob feels like an island alone with Morpheus, standing together on his stoop. He hears the jingle of someone walking their dog past. A siren in the distance. And all he sees is Morpheus, the square of his shoulders, his jaw clenched.

“Morpheus-” he starts.

“Hob, how could you forgive him?” he asks roughly. “How on earth could you forgive this stranger for standing you up?”

“We all make mistakes.” Easily. I forgave him just as easily as I’d have forgiven you, if you had only let me.

Morpheus stares at him. “Yes. We do.” His mouth twists a little. “Some more than most, I would say.”

“Maybe. But people are almost always better than you’d think. Mistakes and all.”

“Ever the optimist.”

Hob presses his lips together in a smile. “Ever the cynic.”

“Go, Hob,” says Morpheus. “You’ll be late.”

He goes. It’s a beautiful day to meet his stranger. How can it feel like his heart is breaking, only now, only after everything, on the threshold of happiness?

[possamble]

i feel like i need a transfem sensitivity reader at this point but i have nothing to offer as compensation lmfao

[ladysouthpaw1213]

More information about my Probie/Rookie

Name: Jonathan Kingsleigh

Nicknames: Johnny, Kid, Probie, Rookie, King(after the final mission of the game)

Birthday: October 8th, 1983

Age: 25(this is assuming that the game take place the year it came out which is 2009)

Birthplace: Los Angeles, California

Hair color: Medium Brown

Eye color: Light Blue

Dominant hand: Right

Four temperament personality: Phlegmatic

Family Members: 

Samuel Kingsleigh(Father- Deceased)

Jennifer Kingsleigh(Mother- age 45)

Michael Kingsleigh(Brother- age 17)

Abigail Kingsleigh(Sister- age 15)

Face Claim: Joseph Mazzello

Bio:

Jonathan grew up in Los Angeles along with his two siblings and his parents. His father was a firefighter and Jonathan’s hero growing up(which inspires him to become one as well) while his mother was the owner of a small cafe. Tragically, his father died in the line of duty when Jonathan was 12. He spend his teen years helping out his mom with the cafe and raising his siblings. When he turned 25, his mom convinced Jonathan to applied to the LA Fire Department academy like he always wanted. When he graduated early, he was sent to Engine Company 13 and it plays out from there.

Personally: Jonathan can be describe as a calm guy and can keep his head cool under pressure. But he does have somewhat of a daredevil streak to him(not to the extend of Match but it’s still there). Always willing to help whenever he can and will often take fatalities hard.  When with his teammates, Jonathan is often more often listening than talking and often get worried about them if one of them gets hurt during calls(especially Match as he had to rescue him at least 2 times due to Match’s daredevil attitude).  and is a loyal friend though and though. He can however be afraid to speak up at times and will often keep what’s troubling him to himself. 

[bugsbucket]

Thumbnails! Bc that’s all im good for LMAO

Every time i get this dialogue im always like a giddy teen getting a love note passed to me 🥰 so i had to draw it out with Bug 💕

(Please forgive my frogs im so bad at drawing them 🥲)

[purpurussy]

i log on to this site. i write essays about dnp and their gay little antics. i save them to my drafts because i am scared of being perceived. i log off again

[chaotic-orphan]

while we’re on the topic of shipping, could tides and sawyer be like..a thing? i just feel like that makes her being forced to hurt him so much worse 😈

Oh that is absolutely diabolical… i love it. Oh my god, that is awful, you maniac, oh no that makes it so bad!!! And then Kit begging to be swapped with Sawyer because he knew about them?🥺 NOOO WAIT! My heart! It’s canon, idc, I make the rules😎 oh nooooooo why does that make it so much worse?! Evil, evil anon. Not me retroactively stealing this, intoxicating fear is a collab your honour, we’re working out the plot as we go together — genuinely stealing this, thank you evil anon <3

No wait, because then it’s like a foil for Oskit shippers!!!! Because Tides hurt Sawyer, but she didn’t do it willingly, and she is so sorry she did even though she couldn’t control it and Sawyer FORGIVES her because if the roles were reversed he wouldn’t have been able to stop either. But with Ambrose and Kit, Ambrose WILLINGLY and MALICIOUSLY hurt Kit, and forced Kit to hurt himself, so how could he ever forgive that? Just a little extra sauce on top

[latestageyouth]

i imagine that while under the influence of the precursors, newt fell into a very doomsday cult-esque mentality, his perception distorted due to the isolation he had gone through.

i think the precursors didnt even have to do much to get newton to isolate himself. past a certain point, he just got into such a mental state that he started doing that on his own for the "safety" of his loved ones, and because the thought of them finding out about the precursors drifting with him and using him like an involuntary spy was unbearable to him.

i think that more than newt establishing a bond with the precursors, he instead placed trust into their plans of the world ending. a very like, milleniarism perspective, bc of all the stuff they fed to him over the course of years.

the precursors carried such a conviction of their plans into the drift that newt got subconsciously infected with it

[muchmossymess]

It might be the weirdo in me but imagine an anamatic to the song shiny from moana with an evil/antagonist revali as the crab and link trying to recover the master sword as maui and zelda as moana