#this is definitely not who i expected

[deifillun]

[otaku553]

Haha

[thatqueerbat]

catching up on docs streams, and he's talking about religion/spirituality and how it guides people's beliefs etc. he mentions how (generally) people like to be outraged by things [that dont affect them], like who other people are, and then immediately says 'if you're lgbtq you'll know what im talking about'

and i absolutely do. and its so wild to me how he just. drops that in. then starts talking about how it shouldn't matter who you are, how you can still do be incredibly religious and respect queer people, that the most important thing is that your beliefs don't hurt other people. how you should respect pronouns, that being 'indoctrinated' into being queer isn't a thing.

all whilst he's mining for diamonds using a freaking mega tunnel bore. like its any other conversation you might have

which it certainly is, for me. but a 40 something cishet man? not your standard casual conversation topic, not usually. and even though i already knew he was a supportive guy, hearing a conversation like this outside of an explicitly queer space, unprompted by a queer person. just solidifies what kind of person he is. and gives me faith that even outside of queer specific spaces, important conversations are happening, its not just us protesting and yelling into the wind, no one giving a shit. and its happening in some pretty unexpected places. which id say is pretty neat. its nice to have some hope for a change.

(all that to say, this is a docm77 stan household)

[ingravinoveritas]

I know most folks have probably seen this already, but I really need to talk about how insane it is that David mentioned Michael as a possible Doctor on an episode of DW Confidential in 2007.

This was ten years before filming GO season 1, and there was absolutely no reason for David to be saying Michael's name. Julie and Jane did not bring Michael up in any capacity, nor was he specifically relevant to the conversation. Yet of all the names David could have said, out of all the countless UK actors in the business...he said "Michael Sheen."

There is this idea that soulmates are "loud." That it means seeing someone from across a crowded room as music swells dramatically in the background. But soulmates are also quiet. A soulmate can be someone you talk about when no one is listening. Someone you think about and who makes you blush for no real reason at all. Someone who lives in the back of your mind, vibrating at a steady hum that you don't even hear at first.

Until it gets louder.

Until they're suddenly a part of your life in a way you never expected.

Until you can't remember anymore what life was like without them.

From BYT in 2003 to this DW Confidential in 2007 to Good Omens in 2017 on into the present. Call it the invisible red string. Call it Fate. Whatever it is that's between them, I am and will forever be in awe at Michael always being on David's mind (and vice-versa), and how they finally found each other...

[commsroom]

eiffel and lovelace have approximately 80% similar personal styles, which would delight him and horrify her. like, tank tops, cargo shorts, flannel jacket, same kind of old sneakers and sandals, etc. lovelace's fashion sense is just a little sportier; some basketball shorts, jerseys, and new york liberty logo tanks in place of eiffel's walmart discount rack selection of pop culture tees. that kind of thing. if hera could dress the way she wanted to, she'd have a very... folk festival woman at a farmer's market type of vibe. colorful, flowy, nature-y patterns. but minkowski is so much harder to imagine in casual clothing. a big part of it is how much she's separated her work life from her personal life, but even then... she just feels like someone who is practical about it to a fault. she doesn't dress badly, she's always put together, she just dresses. kind of like a mom in an old navy catalog.

[zxal]

So you guys have just been coping with this since 2019. Okay.

[szollibisz]

underappreciated thing about Benoit is that Lieutenant Elliott consistently calls him Benny, while his husband just calls him Blanc

[milkbreadtoast]

OH GOD OH FUCK

[spiritsonic]

I absolutely get if this is one you can't really answer, but as they say, nothing ventured nothing gained.

I remember hearing once upon a time that Shadow has all the various locks and red tape over his character that makes him particularly difficult to write for. Call it wishful thinking, but with his recent appearance in Prime - with a prominent role no less - I'm wondering if some of those restrictions have been lifted or changed? I know you aren't involved in Prime, but I figure if those rules have changed, you'd know about it.

tl;dr - have the rules around writing Shadow changed, and is there any shot we'll see him again in the spotlight soon.

Yup-- We've gotten some clearer, more workable guidelines for how to handle him! I had very little trouble writing his part in the upcoming issues, and SEGA's notes actually freed me up to write him more how I'd like to.

[herotune]

so much shadow around us. to think we almost missed the light...

(a belated entry for wyll week day 6! favorite ship...i adore them ok)

[paper-starz]

CALLING EVERYONE IN THE "HELLO PUPPETS" FANDOM MORTIMER HANDEE HAS A VERY IMPORTANT MESSAGE!!!!

VOTE! VOTE! VOTE!

Vote for the poll! It contains these 5 lovely fandoms!

Amanda the Adventurer

Welcome Home

Hello Puppets!

Smile for Me

Poppy Playtime!

Oh? What exactly are you voting for? A crossover special of course! A crossover between the 5 fandoms above and My Friendly Neighborhood!

And in case you don't know what My Friendly Neighborhood is, lemme explain!

My Friendly Neighborhood is basically what happens when you mix Resident Evil and Sesame Street together! You play as Gordon, an old handyman who is tasked with taking down the antennae in the My Friendly Neighborhood studio (which has been broadcasting old episodes over the news!) and ends up getting chased down by some slightly unhinged puppets....

Go Check MFN out if you have the chance! It's a lovely game! If you like puppets (which I'm sure members of the Hello Puppets community does) and if you like a very valuable lesson AND a subversion of the ole' mascot horror genre, then you will LOVE MFN!

OH AND THE POLL (click below!)

WE ONLY HAVE 5 DAYS AND 19 HOURS LEFT SO YOUR JOB IS TO SPREAD THIS INFO FAR AND WIDE!

REBLOG REBLOG!

MAKE MORE PROPAGANDA FANART!

IDC WHAT YOU DO! GET THIS TO SPREAD LIKE WILDFIRE!

[frobby]

what is more homoerotic than the fact that rin and bon would have both literally died at birth if the other didn't exist

[chiprewington]

hi. chip revvington casual-wear

[idkaguyorsomething]

susan foreman initially being baffled by 1960s english gender roles but slowly warming up to them over time as a means of self-expression that was never available to her on gallifrey while her grandfather stubbornly ignores all that nonsense as soon as he figures out which set of pronouns people expect him to use.

[wakeupthemembersofbylernation]

Based on the way the story has been written, especially following season 4, I do believe mike is likely gay atp. But “It’s not my fault you don’t like girls” still makes sense as projection if Mike is bi because lots of closeted bi teens are confused about their feelings, especially in the 80s where terms like “bisexual” wouldn’t have been as readily accessible to kids from Hawkins, Indiana.

Simply the fact that Mike likes boys/Will could make him worried that he’s gay and cause him to hyperfixate on the concept of not liking girls more often, especially if his feelings for El were waning, or if his feelings for Will were overwhelming, even if he did in fact have a crush on El at the start of the show. Nothing says being a closeted bi teen like bouncing back and forth between “I can’t be gay, I like girls” and “Oh no, I like boys, am I gay?”

I think there’s a common misconception that the bi Mike view necessitates oversimplifying the story as “Mike used to be into El, and now he’s into Will.” That isn’t necessarily the case. A bi Mike reading can still involve internalized homophobia, projection, the heteronormative pressure to conform and date girls, repression, and most of the things we talk about here.

(I didn’t really wanna get involved in this, but I feel like this is important to add).

[dr3amofagame]

I find it strange that a lot of people are coming forward and saying that the staged finale was a bad play for one reason or another but it really isn’t and I don’t understand where the hate is coming from.

yeah i've seen some of this the last few days--staged finale has always been somewhat "controversial" in the lorehead scene, so a measure of disagreement/discourse about it makes sense. especially bc it was honestly a very big change to what people thought was the story and required people to go back and reevaluate a lot, which. people are naturally resistant at doing

but while obviously i think that some healthy discussion about these things is good, and i feel like i have seen a level of...misunderstanding? about it?? which has gone into the ways that people disagree

staged finale refers to the decision to stage the finale. that's it. staged finale just asserts that based on preexisting foreshadowing and based on the sheer level of suspension of disbelief in order for genuine finale to be real, it made more sense for the finale to be staged than for it to have been genuine. how the finale was planned, when the finale was planned, and to what ends it was planned are all things that you can disagree on w/ other staged finale believers/supporters while still being a staged finale believer/supporter, ykwim? if you believe that c!punz faked his betrayal to c!dream, then congrats! you believe in staged finale. oftentimes i see people say things like "i don't believe in staged finale, i think that c!dream faked the betrayal and all and always had c!punz on his side but i think that the reason behind why he did it is [X]" and it's like. staging the finale is one (1) event, not a comprehensive explanation for everything c!Dream does. that would be more in line with something like the "strategist dream interpretation," which in itself does have different readings as well.

people have listed all of the inconsistencies in the staged finale before, but just to summarize--the guy literally could've dipped when everyone came to "defeat" him, c!tommy leveraging his own life is basically no leverage at all when the mans has the revive book, skeppy cage is a joke, c!dream revealing all of his plans when they were maybe 10% carried out (the entire damn attachment vault was empty of items besides stuff that was literally faked, his own damn stuff, and stuff that he stole recently from c!tommy such as the Axe of Peace and the discs) is ridiculously stupid, why the hell does he have blackmail against c!punz included in a bunker that c!punz clearly had access to???? the list goes on.

(as someone who took awhile to be fully convinced in staged finale, what really tripped me up was the stream punz did the day before: here's a post breaking it down that definitely helped me to see it in a different light.)

as far as foreshadowing goes, just off the top of my head: the original prisoner is a constant question from the day of the prison's creation, being something that's even highlighted on the day of the staged finale itself. c!Dream saying he has "the biggest house on the server" and how it's full of redstone. the entire conversation he has with c!punz, obviously. his holding back on the favor with c!techno, the connection between the revive book and the prison that he establishes the day they begin prison construction.

from a logical perspective, the plan as c!Dream establishes it doesn't make any damn sense. c!dream had opportunities to escape that he didn't take for illogical reasons (if the only reason why he allowed himself to stay in a fucking possible kill chamber was to keep c!tommy from committing suicide, then? what about the revive book? what about the fact that he literally kills c!tommy just a few months later????) -- a level of plot contrivance is expected in the medium, but for a lot of people this was just. Going way too far. Unless he literally lost his whole mind (which, to be fair, was the persona being played) there's just. really no other way to make sense of what was going on there, if it was all genuine.

the other argument is a narrative one--people claim that the story established by a genuine finale is cleaner than the story of the staged one, and honestly. it's like. like that's...a feature, not a flaw? the reason why the genuine finale worked isn't because it was logically believable. dream is Dream Manhunt. he's famously hard to nail down, famously good at escaping sticky situations, famously a man that can outsmart his way out of crazy disadvantageous situations--like. just in terms of minecraft skill, i'd wager that most people would think that dream would've technically been able to pull off an escape even when facing down the collection of enemies that were there. like he had 2 stacks of pearls.

narratively, though, the staged finale has a story that's quite appealing on the surface. the "story" of the events from the spirit speech onwards is one that revolved around the idea of "attachment." c!Dream rejects attachment in favor of control in the spirit speech when he says he refuses to let his love for his dead pet control him anymore, and he focuses on the ability to use the discs to control c!Tommy. the fact that c!Dream's relationships deteriorate at this time seems to support this point, and c!Tommy's strength in his relationships being what saves him and damns c!Dream ties everything off into a neat bow. c!Tommy wins because he has friends and c!Dream loses because he doesn't, moral of the story established, hip-hip-hooray. And so it goes.

but when we look at this more in specifics...? it does start falling apart a bit, doesn't it?

although c!Dream supposedly begins his rampage over his existing emotional connections with the spirit speech, his reputation had been in shambles long before that point. c!Dream-as-villain is first established as part of the greater story in the lmanburg revolution, and that's a title that he never really sheds (this point being emphasized in inconsolable differences and the book c!Wilbur has c!Dream write.) Dethronement happens within a day of Spirit Speech, iirc, and on that day c!Quackity specifically points out that c!Dream has no one on his side but c!Punz. the moments where he is more specifically isolated go back to events such as november 16th, where his alliance with c!Wilbur involved blowing up L'manburg, his deal for the revive book, which involved his publicly betraying Pogtopia, or his opposing Manberg to the literal Manberg cabinet. etc. all of these events in the Manberg/Pogtopia era had c!Dream's loyalties erode to end up as just c!Wilbur and later c!Schlatt for the book, two dead men. (and i say eroded loyalties as if pogtopia really believed dream was on their side, like, ever? like he was never trusted in their ranks, even by c!Tommy, who was definitely the person he worked the closest with outside of c!Wilbur.)

if we look at Dethronement itself, it doesn't actually fit the pattern of "c!Dream cuts off his attachment to people in order to make himself uncontrollable" -- in fact, what it does fit the pattern of is. Staged finale? Faking an end in a relationship with people that he does consider important to him, making a public appearance of betrayal + anger to mask an existing connection, drawing attention to their being enemies to hide the fact that they're actually friends--that's not c!Dream cutting anyone off. That's just the exact same ploy that he uses to make people think that c!Punz betrays him (only c!Sapnap and c!George ended up deciding that Nah We're Gonna Kill You Now. Fuck You It's Coup Time. so that's how that ended up.)

Otherwise there's...the Badlands, who were perfectly happy to agree to joining the coup on the day of dethronement if it got them more power and land. c!Techno, who c!Dream wasn't an ally of until later on with the favor established and then doomsday, and who was someone c!Dream was quite openly wary of + afraid of due to his combat skill. c!Dream was alone literally before exile even happened, his remaining "attachments" of c!George and c!Sapnap turning against him like the day he goes on a whole spiel about ohhoho from today onwards i DONT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT MY ATTACHMENTS !!! I ONLY CARE ABOUT THE DISCS !!! like congrats you don't even have a chance to cut off any attachment at all dingus they all hate you and want you dead already.

further, with c!punz, he literally says that they're more than just employer/employee in the infamous conversation they have about planning a betrayal. if the whole point of the story is "attachment good," then why is it that what takes down c!dream is...his one remaining attachment? if his fatal flaw is that he didn't trust people enough, why is it that he loses because he trusted someone too much? it's not like c!tommy had any attachment to c!punz--c!punz explicitly "has a reason" to betray c!dream because of money. he helps c!tommy because dream "should have paid [him] more." none of that reflects that spirit of "attachment" that people claim was c!dream's downfall.

(not to mention how the people present in the staged finale to take c!dream down included people who literally hated c!tommy's guts. like. what brought them together wasn't the power of friendship, it was the power of we hate this green bastard.)

this isn't to say that c!Dream didn't have some relationships that go up in flames because he starts acting particularly cackling evil villain (with the green festival being the specific moment where he really goes full in with that persona, going from someone that was framing himself as having a Reasonable Complaint to literally the joker as soon as he gets the disc from c!Tubbo. It's purposefully played as a "mask off" moment that is meant to make him look like a crazy fucking villain in front of a large audience--whether or not you think that was a choice that he made in character or not, the way his personality changes as soon as he receives the disc is jarring.) In particular, his relationships with c!Puffy and c!Sam come to mind--c!Puffy burns the house she made him when she decides that he's too evil (but, uh, c!dream really wasn't even there for that and didn't ever have a particularly close relationship with her) and c!Sam is among those whose opinions of c!Dream become drastically more negative around the period of time that spans green festival->doomsday->staged finale. but it's important to note that c!Dream's relationships on the server aren't...great, at the time of spirit speech. They're uh, really fucking bad, actually. dethronement only makes them even worse, and all of this happens pre-exile. c!Dream had significant reason to be paranoid and afraid for his life long before exile happens, which is Quite Significant, Actually, when you consider that that paranoia is literally what goes into his decisions to carry out the staged finale + put himself in the prison (which isn't the case for genuine finale, where he's more motivated by a desire to control the server without being controlled himself.) staged finale does solidify c!dream-as-villain for a lot of people, but it never would've worked if people didn't already see him as a villain in the first place. c!Dream doesn't make people hate him with the staged finale; he uses hatred that he already knows exists to put himself in what he sees as a safer position.

and look we could go into a whole discussion about manberg/pogtopia c!Dream (which i do think is way overdue to be fair considering that that's where the paranoia + isolation that motivates him post-november 16th comes from in the first place) but this post is long enough already and i still have to figure out a better way to articulate my thoughts on the matter. anyway. carrying on:

people still have different feelings on why he carries out staged finale in the first place, but what we do know for sure is that it was meant to protect punz and protect the revive book. by firmly establishing that c!punz and him were on opposite sides, he keeps the revive book safe and both of their lives safe by extension: as long as no one would kill both of them at the same time, they had a means of reviving the other if need be and obviously had the information on how to raise people from the dead secure. which was important to them. and otherwise...c!Dream is paranoid. c!Dream is very, very paranoid, and this paranoia goes back at the very least to when he learns about the revive book. the prison, for all the dependence that it required of him, was tailor made (and the construction process controlled by dream every damn step of the way) to make sure that whoever was in the main cell would be safe from external threats. the security of the prison and the prisoner was the POINT. i've seen some assertions that staged finale implies that he predicted everything that happened after he was put in prison and...no? i'd say that c!dream's behavior indicates him being thrown off by c!sam as early as bad's prison visit, c!sapnap's prison visit for sure. c!Ranboo being banned from visitation pretty damn obviously fucks him up, tbh. he has c!punz explicitly out there to keep an eye out on the server while he's in the prison, where he was meant to remain for a period of time that was supposed to be much shorter than how long he ends up being there. likely because, you know, he was supposed to have a consistent and reliable source of information with the outside world in the form of c!Ranboo, and c!sam wasn't supposed to fall off the fucking rails as soon as the prison started. people have also talked about how having the staged finale be true means that c!dream doesn't lose, which...i mean. gestures at the prison arc? that whole thing is a loss so catastrophic it literally destroys him. he's never the same after the prison happens. the false betrayal of c!punz is deliberately like ironically described to c!sam, who was the REAL betrayal that fucking. ruins him. he loses SO MUCH over the course of the prison, which was something he literally designed to keep himself safe from external threat. as far as losses go, i definitely find that a lot more compelling and a lot less contrived than watching c!dream go "whoop de doo guess i have to die now" when he's like 3 pearls away from making a clean escape in the disc vault, tbh.

at the end of the day, i think having some conversation about staged finale is fun! and it's always good to reexamine what you believe to make sure that it still holds water. but i've really not seen much staged finale crit that makes the genuine finale feel favorable as an explanation: logically, it makes a lot less sense. narratively, it relies on a story that the audience wants to be true and acts as a "clean" explanation for everything while not actually taking into account a lot of what was ACTUALLY going on for c!dream (cutting off attachments for the sake of control versus watching people turn against you and becoming increasingly paranoid, for example). and believe them or not, the content creators involved have always asserted that staged finale was the plan from the beginning, not any form of retcon. (and we do know that people have been dodgy about stuff like the "original prisoner" literally since the week that c!dream was imprisoned, so take that as you will.) (okay to be fair theyve been dodgy about the original prisoner since the day that the prison began to be constructed, but the QnA from that first week of imprisonment sticks out to me in particular because cc!Sam had the biggest fucking smile on his face and staged finale would've been planned out and then carried out in entirety by the ccs and the c!s by that point.)

this is a longass post but uh hopefully it makes sense, lmao. tried to touch on most of what i've seen recently 😅