I think on this fine Saturday afternoon it's a good opportunity to take a breather and remember that there are really no ethical paparazzi pictures. Every single one is inherently exploitative.
Just because photos were taken on a movie set, when someone is 'working,' does not make the practice any less invasive and creepy. Imagine just going about your day, doing your job and having some weirdo snapping pictures of you to sell without your consent for others to endlessly repost online.
There are thousands of pictures of your favourite actor online already. Plenty taken with his knowledge and consent. I'd really like to see more of them on my dash, rather than the creeper shots.
And don't get me started how disseminating these pictures directly leads to people going to said sets. What starts off as admiring how good someone looks has real world implications.
No, hanging around a movie set and disrupting people doing their jobs is not harmless fun or a way to show your appreciation.
If you hang around a movie set, you are a stalker.
Don't tell me that it's okay to take your online admiration for someone offline. You may admire him but he does not, and will never, personally know you. He will never be your friend/boyfriend/daddy. He is a stranger.
The only way meeting your favourite actor is going to happen is at a convention or maaaaaybe a movie premiere if you're incredibly fortunate. You know, places they appear specifically to meet fans (or not in the case of premieres, where the purpose is to promote a movie. Which is also completely understandable if actors don't stop. You are not owed an interaction).
Of course, you cannot help it if you randomly run into someone you admire in the wild. Even then, consider that they probably won't be all too thrilled to be approached in public by a complete stranger. It's up to you to gauge the situation, but remember there is a person at the heart of all of this.
Boundaries and respect are a kindness which deserves to be extended to each and every human being regardless of their looks/talent/fame/wealth.
Fandoms blur those lines a little too often for my liking and I think just scrutinising what you're interacting with, or what behaviour you could be possibly falling down that slippery slope towards is nice to do every once in a while.
I mean no malice with this post and it is not directed at anyone in particular. It's something I cannot help but feel strongly about because I've seen this destructive cycle time and again in fandoms over the years. It's not healthy and it makes us all a little bit more disconnected from our humanity for it...
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Once again, the latest update from @somerandomdudelmao has left me fully in my feelings, and so I come to you with ~900 words of emotion.
(This one is a rough one: content warnings for death, sibling death, self-sacrifice, and just general despair. Y'all have read the update. You know what we're doing here.)
~~~~~~~
It's supposed to be over.
Master Michelangelo-
(No, no, he's never thought of himself that way. No matter how many times he's been called Master Michelangelo, in his own head he's still just Mikey.)
-Mikey has given everything. He'd opened the portal, watched his own mystic energy - grown larger and stronger with each battle even as it consumed his youth and his very life as its fuel - tear through his arms, cracks traveling up his body until the force of it shattered his form, consuming everything that kept him bound to the physical plane in order to form one last-ditch attempt at setting things right.
He'd managed a wink and a smile, and then he'd died.
And yet he's still here. Why-
The promise. The caveat to the plan. Leo.
Leo had refused to leave him alone at the end, and Mikey will be damned before he refuses to return the favor.
Not that there'll be anything left to damn. The family's Ninpo is what connected them to the Hamato afterlife, and Mikey's is shattered, expended to give Casey a better chance at life. At this point, he's held together with the metaphysical equivalent of duct tape and spite - Donnie's favorite building materials when supplies ran short.
(Donnie's gone. Mikey failed him - failed to catch the infection, failed to cure it, failed to find his spirit amongst the Hamato ancestors. The Krang had obliterated him, and Mikey had failed to help until it was too late.)
(He can't find Raph among the ancestors, either. One more big brother failed.)
(He knows there won't be much left of Leo - not after Leo spent so long being Mikey's living shield, letting the Krang tear into his Ninpo time and time again in order to keep Mikey's intact - but he won't fail Leo. He can't. He can't.)
He's still here, for now, and that has to be good enough. He levitates, surveying a battlefield gone cold in the wake of an overwhelming Krang victory, and goes in search of his last remaining brother.
Leo's corpse isn't far - Mikey spots it near where the portal had been, face down in rock that had been blasted smooth and clean. Krang laser. There's no surviving those.
His gaze flickers upwards across the horizon, and he sees something glow near the corpse, a white outline coming into being before the color follows after, taking a familiar shape. It's-
It's Casey-
It's Casey, but he looks different. Better. His clothes are intact and clean - brand new, from the looks of it. His hair is washed and fluffy. His face and arms have filled out and his shoulders broadened, like he'd been getting good food and enough of it. He doesn't look like the Casey Mikey had made a portal for minutes ago; he looks like how they'd all wanted Casey to look, like he's finally getting what they would have killed to have been able to provide for him. He looks like a dream.
And that's how Mikey knows it's a lie.
It's the Krang. The Krang have done something, made one final twist of the knife that's been stuck in Leo's heart since the night they lost the Key - for all Mikey knows, they're going to use it to desecrate his brother's body, and he is not letting that happen. He zooms closer to Leo's corpse-
"We did it, Mikey, we got him out-"
-and feels the world tilt.
That's not Leo's corpse, because Leo's not dead. He's clinging to life, muttering nonstop in a voice barely above a whisper - he's not long for this world, but he's still here-
The lie cries out in Casey's voice and makes for his brother-
And Mikey lashes out, magic coming to his hands as easily as it ever did. It's not enough to incinerate the lie - the thing is too smart, too quick, and pulls back with only an injury to its arm. That's enough of an opening for Mikey to land in front of Leo, snarling at the lie wearing his nephew's face. "Don't. Touch. Him!" That's his brother. That's his brother. That's the only brother he has left, and he won't have him for long, but that doesn't mean the Krang can take him! "Whatever Krang trick you are-"
Spite, while fun, is no substitute for engineering. Donnie had told him that once.
The spite - and whatever else is holding him together at this point - gives out, the collapse manifesting as pain, and Mikey folds in on himself with a groan. He can fight - he will fight - but if the lie forces combat, then fighting will be the last thing he'll ever do, and Leo will die alone.
He can't. He just…he can't.
He drops to his knees, laying a spectral hand on Leo's head. Leo doesn't react - his Ninpo is shattered to begin with, and Mikey wouldn't be surprised if death's door has robbed Leo of his senses as it is - and just keeps talking.
"We got Casey through the portal, he'll be okay, he'll get to grow up without all of this, we did it, we- we- we did it, Mikey-"
Mikey kneels there, one hand on his inert brother's head as Leo's life slowly sputters out. Eventually he'll die, and what fragments are left of his spirit will disintegrate, too shattered by years of warfare to persist after death, and Mikey will let himself fade along with them. Together until the rapidly approaching end, like they'd promised.
He kneels, and waits for oblivion to come.
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