#ANYWAYS HES GOT VERY FAMILY TV SHOW LINES AND I LOVE IT

[dhmis-autism]

trying harder to pay attention to yellows dialogue so i can write him better and. literally. love that thing he does where he talks like hes in a sitcom

( “What do you think it means to have a job?” / ”Yeah, what an adventure. Yup,we really did have the laugh of our lives. But still, nice to be back at home,eh?”/ “Let’s go see this real family in action!” )

[justminawrites]

None of you understand Amber Bennett: She's just a girl, your honour. A review of the show writers' least favourite love story from Invincible season 1.

Now let me just preface this by saying I have 2 points to make. Just two, very long, super rambly points that does have mild spoilers for Invincible season 2. Read at your own risk.

Point 1: Amber isn't "understanding" enough is utter bullshit.

There’s no indication that civilians outside of the ones associated with the GDA have any idea how brutal fights are for superheroes. Amber quite literally has no idea what the hell Mark is going through, even after the superhero reveal. The only thing she has a smidgeon of understanding of is his dad beating his ass on live TV. And even that is a heavy maybe because we don’t know how much of the fight the cameras could cover and how much was broadcast to the general public. 

Point 2: Amber’s dated Losers before.

This is stated explicitly in canon, she's “been down that road." Furthermore, she’s also the daughter of a single-parent household. She used to hang out a community centre as a kid because her mom did late hours. Daddy Issues anyone? She’s got a lot of her own problems that we never get to unpack or linger on because the writing decided she wasn’t going to end up with Mark. 

What if she’d already dated an absolute bastard before Mark? Someone who seemed sweet and genuine at first, but then he started slacking. He’d be late to dates, stop taking an interest in anything she did, and just never show up for her in any way that mattered. Amber would make up excuses with her friends and family, oh he’s busy, he’s studying; he cares, I swear, he just has a strange way of showing it. 

Her friends and family don’t believe her completely but they humor her because she really seems to like him. And the ex-boyfriend isn’t a douchebag the whole time.. he brings gifts to make up for being late, he plies and pacifies her with honeyed words and promises to be better.

But each time the lies get more and more difficult to believe. Traffic and science projects, traffic and science projects, even when he shows up smelling like weed and alcohol. Her friends and family give her tight-lipped smiles when her ex-boyfriend gives her sloppy kisses and proclaims over and over “She’s too good for me, this one.”

She tries to be empathetic, she tries to be understanding when they’re alone, he can tell her what it is that’s wrong. But every-time she brings up giving them some space, he takes it as an indication of her not believing him and he guilts her with one sob story or another— she knows him, he was so gentle and respectful before they started dating, does she really think he’d do this to her if he didn’t have a good reason? Just a masterclass in gaslighting. So she gives him a second chance, third chance, fourth even. 

But then he begins cheating on her. Whenever she confronts him about it, he plays victim and accuses her of being “crazy” even though the entire school knows otherwise. She catches him one fine day, and dumps him on the spot. For a short while, Amber’s very proud of this but as time passes she starts to feel extremely embarrassed that it took that long for her to catch on. 

No one blames her, of course, but they all say something along the lines of “We never liked him anyway” which makes Amber doubt the perception of him she had. She internalises their support as a failing on her part to be vigilant, she didn’t want to end up making the same mistakes as her mom, after all. 

Amber becomes guarded. She doesn’t entertain male attention (from Todd, for example) but then she finds out resident wimp Mark Grayson takes a beating for her and she feels bad. 

So she gives him a chance. Mark was a nonissue, a nobody with no track record of being amazing or awful, just an in-between, normal guy who was maybe a little soft spoken and needed to stand up for himself more. 

But every time they try to hang out, something comes in between them. The excuses are laughably obvious this time and Amber is caught between trying to understand if Mark Grayson is trying to let her down easy because he’s not interested or if he’s just another douchebag taking her for a ride. 

He leaves her alone during their study date for an hour to do something shady and/or potentially related to Eve (I know she overheard him yelling at Cecil in his bedroom); Mark tells her he’s been to Mount Everest, but can’t tell her How he got there, and leaves on a non-specific trip for two weeks, right after their first date, and can’t even tell her Where he’s going or what he did when he was there?

So she does what she’d wished she’d done in her first relationship, she sets her boundaries. Firmly. She gives Mark multiple chances to come clean when she tells him she’s not riding that wave again. It’s been brought up a few times that Amber has lingering relationship-trauma.

During their study date Amber tells him she’s been in relationships with violent potentially abusive guys (“Met plenty of guys who were willing to throw a punch for me.”); or when he stands her up for the Dinner with her mom she tells him that he needs to make a choice because she’s “Been down this road before, and once was enough.”

But he still keeps at it and she starts getting tired of defending him to her friends and her mom. He’s just busy, he’s just studying; he cares, I swear, he just has a strange way of showing it. And this time they shake their heads and lightly imply that she’s stuck in a pattern. Amber can feel them comparing Mark to her old boyfriend and it all becomes a bit too much. 

Either he’s a no good drug dealing prick or he’s just wasting her time, whatever it is, Amber’s had enough of being left in the dark. 

The soup kitchen is the final straw, but then she finds out that he gets run over by a bus. He actually gets hurt, this is the first time Amber’s seen him hurt, and she feels awful because if she hadn’t pushed him to show up for her again and again maybe he would’ve been more careful. 

He doesn’t let her visit him in the hospital. A hit and run on the wrong side of town was the story this time— he can’t even tell her this, the specifics of his accident! Eve was his first point of contact after his parents?! At this point Amber is convinced that he’s involved in something violent or something to do with Eve, or both and she’s not sure she wants to keep going with this. 

Amber is confused and hurt but she also feels responsible for Mark’s injuries. Maybe she Was too paranoid, maybe she Was projecting all her relationship-trauma on him and he would tell her what happened at his own pace. So she backtracks, gives him another chance.

College is really the best of all worlds, Mark makes her promises that this time will be different, and Amber tentatively agrees to college together. (She’s still stressed out about his injuries and on edge the whole time though and asks if he has a concussion). 

This is really important because Amber ends up at Upstate U later. She decided to go to college with him, basically because of Him. This wasn’t any specific plan she had before, this was her making room in her life for this boy and potentially everything their lives could be together. 

Then the Reanimen Incident happens. And she loses her shit. Mark Grayson is not the flakey but well-intentioned boyfriend she thought he was.. Mark Grayson is not even a good person! He LEFT her and William at the drop of a hat to save his own slimy skin, that bastard! Her intuition was right, she never should’ve given him a chance. 

Amber was no longer going to give Mark Grayson the time of day, much less share a bed with the self-serving jerk; she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of spinning another tall tale. Or seeing her cry. She closes the door to the shower rooms behind her, and overhears Rick leaving to get them all some beer. Dorm room walls are thin, after all.

Then she hears something else.

“You’re Invincible!” William’s voice carries over excitedly, “And you never told me?”

Here goes the "problematic" bit.

I think Amber was lying when she told Mark she knew he was Invincible weeks ago. Amber didn’t even know who Invincible was until a few minutes after the Reanimen attack. She isn’t acting for anyone around her, she’s genuinely confused when the superhero jets off because she’s never seen him in her life. 

I think she overheard William freaking out about it in the dorm room and she pieced together Mark’s absences with his vague excuses and why couldn’t visit him at the hospital. She takes a shower to cool off but sitting and stewing on all of it just makes her angrier and she decides to go to the frat party just to get away from Mark for a while. 

Now why wouldn’t she just tell him she overheard them talking? 

Amber is an assertive independent character with a lot of pride. And that’s not a bad thing. Amber has a lot to be proud of. She has a strong sense of justice, she doesn’t take crap from anyone and she has too much self-worth to put up with liars. 

You can clearly see this in the way she approaches Mark in the beginning. She asks William if he’s dating Eve, and then instead of calling him herself, she gets Todd to give Mark her number so he can call her if he’s interested, despite the fact that she already is. She has too much pride to chase him. It’s one of her fixed flaws, and it’s consistent to her character. 

So finding out that Mark is actually Invincible almost by accident, is kind of embarrassing for Amber. Not only because she yelled at him for disappearing but for all the times he misled her and lied to her only to actually have a good reason for doing it. There’s a lot of mixed emotions there, shame, guilt, concern. Guilt.

Admitting that she overheard he was Invincible would be like admitting she was a stupid, nagging girlfriend who had no right to be a part of his life (the way the fandom perceives her) so she doesn’t. She tries to distract herself with the party, flirts with someone she just met not ten minutes ago, and feels awful because he immediately drops the girlfriend bomb. 

Now she’s forced to confront the fact that she has a boyfriend, and her flakey, well-intentioned superhero boyfriend is sitting and moping in the dorm room because she doesn’t have the guts to tell him she knows. Because telling him she knows would remove the choice he’d need to make when deciding whether or not he was serious about their relationship.

Amber was serious, Amber was going to change her life and potentially open her future to college with him, but was Mark really sure about Them if he couldn’t even tell her of his own accord? 

Telling him would be like giving him another out. And Amber was done giving him an out. 

When he finally confesses he doesn’t see why she’s mad at him, because he doesn’t see her at all. He can’t even begin to imagine what this roller coaster of a weekend has been for her because she’s been serious about him all this time and it took them breaking up completely for Mark to choose her back in the first place and go all in. 

Now it’s true that Mark is entitled to his secrets but Amber is also entitled to being upset that he can’t tell her 1 solid thing about his life. Not one thing does he trust her enough to explain, and at that point why should they even be dating each other? Why should she change the course of her future for a guy who can’t tell her where he was last weekend?

Then Omni-man beats him up on live TV, and now that she knows that he’s Invincible, she finally gets a glimpse into the bloody, gruesome world that is Mark’s. His Dad isn’t a superhero, his Dad is a Monster, and Mark is discovering this the same time as the rest of the world.

So she freaks out because she cares, and she’s so relieved to see him not beat to a bloody pulp like on TV that she kisses him. She likely had no intention of getting back together with him before that, but world-ending fiascos often come with heightened emotions, and they’re just kids at the end of the day. 

She’s not a manipulative, narcissistic villain, she’s just a proud girl, in love with a boy who can’t decided whether or not he loves her back. 

Now do I think Mark is a terrible jerk who doesn’t deserve Amber? No. I watched Invincible the same way it was intended, almost entirely through Mark’s eyes, and it’s hard to assign blame in this case because we see how horrifying and traumatic being a superhero actually is. But that’s the point, we only see one half of the story. 

We see Amber through Mark’s eyes and in his opinion she could afford to be more compassionate to his excuses the moment she finds out he’s a hero, the way Eve can, but that’s not true at all because Amber has no idea what being a hero is like. Eve does, and that’s the difference that Mark is wilfully blind to. 

But Mark also has no idea what Amber’s life is like and it’s easy to get lost in the sea of all the lives lost and villains fought, that he genuinely hasn’t spent any time with his girlfriend as a person beyond his Girlfriend. Amber isn’t a person to him, like William stopped being eventually; they became sort of tethers to Mark’s humanity, a way to distinguish himself from his Dad. A way to ground him. 

Seriously? When was the last time Mark even talked to William, his once Best Friend? They’re not his Mom, they’re concepts to him. They’re civilians, potential victims he could end up losing if he doesn’t police himself and his powers. Mark slowly becomes disillusioned to his own life as a human, the more the leans into the Viltrumite half of his parentage. 

It’s a little tragic but it’s the story we’re seeing. In season 2, when Mark and Amber break up and he gives up his dream for college, these two things are almost explicitly correlated. Mark is coming to terms with the fact that he’s going to outlive everyone he knows, even his new baby brother and that is just the most chaotic example of a slow-burn trauma if I’ve ever seen one. He’s giving up being human, but maybe not giving up his humanity. 

______________________________________________________________

TLDR: None of you understand Amber Bennett because the writers decided that Mark would outlive her before he ever had the chance to see things from her perspective and I am SALTY about it

[corrodedcoughin]

It’s a Friday night and Steve is fresh out of the shower, cheeks pinked with the steam and hair still damp. I’m days gone by he’d be starting the hair styling ritual to get it sitting just right but that’s not his biggest priority anymore.

Don’t get him wrong, he still parts it the way he wants, runs some product through it after squeezing out the water with a tshirt (no towel will ever be scrubbing his head, thank you very much) but after that he’s done. He puts on a comfy pair of sweats and a tshirt that has been worn into softness and sighs at the feeling of the material on his skin.

Steve still enjoys a party every now and then but that isn’t what he lives for anymore, no he lives for the ease that nights like these give him. He walks through the living room bare feet stepping over hard, cold floors and eventually finding worn down carpet.

‘Thought you fell down the plug hole and found a new family amongst the fish’ Eddie looks up at him from his seat on the floor, a small smile curling his lip and scar.

There’s a completely empty and available couch right above him but, as always, he’s curled up with his back against the couch and his foot underneath him, Steve can almost hear the complaints of a dead leg and demands to be lifted to bed already. He almost calls eddie out but thinks better of it.

‘Yeah, well, thought I’d try the mermaid thing out, might get one of those shell bras out of it’ he sits down on the couch, you know, like a reasonable person. He tilts into Eddie’s space, and watches over his shoulder as he delicately paints one of his mini figures. Steve braces his leg to support the weight of Eddie as he leans back into him, both of them finding comfort in the other person’s body being close.

Eddie hums, ‘I dunno if they got one big enough for your tits man. And anyway, I don’t think we should cover one of the eight wonders of the world’ it could sound like a come on or a way to start some jokey argument but Eddie turns his head and presses a kiss to Steve’s knee to show there’s no heat behind it.

Before Steve can answer back Eddie carries on ‘you want to do anything tomorrow? With your day off I mean? I was going to plan something but didn’t want to presume when you only get so many free weekends and I-‘

Steve doesn’t let him finish. ‘No. No, this is good. No plans is good. With you. I mean- Yeah, no plans with you sounds really good’ Steve bends down, pressing a kiss just to the side of Eddie’s scar and feels his mouth quirk up, knowing that if his hands weren’t busy he’d be pulling his hair infront of his face. The room is softly lit with only the table lamp and tv on for the light and the sun newly set. It’s all adds together to make Eddie glow and Steve’s heart aches for him.

Eddie brings the middle back up to his eye line before muttering ‘Love you Steve.’

It’s gentle and quiet but said with so much warmth Steve feels like he’s burning up from the inside, like somebody lit a match and is trying to smoke him out from his own body. The intensity never dimmed from the first time they said it and Steve’s hoping it never will. He leans back into the couch and give his attention to the tv, Mangum P.I reprimanding some criminal, and let’s the ease and familiarity wash over him. Doesn’t let himself question how he got to be here, how he got to have this. Just grateful for the fact that it’s real.

‘Love you too Eds’

[kookidough]

AGRGAGRGAV i always ponder how alenoah reunion would go because like . it could go So many different ways

like how do they feel about each other now?? i always feel like after world tour is over, noah’s irritation would fizzle out and he’d be back to winning the idgaf war, accepting that in the end it was just a game and alejandro ended up playing better than him

alejandro’s feelings on the subject feel more complex to me like. does he accept the fact that, while noah’s words were harsh, they held some truth?? i view his reaction to noah talking behind his back as very telling of how close they were (despite the relatively short amount of time they spent together)

personally i think that pre-london they were close friends because they could match each other’s humour/wit, like how they laugh at tyler on the runway and when alejandro tells a mean-spirited joke regarding lindsay’s intelligence he tells it to noah, and Cmon guys, i know it was a team challenge but they still spent like 18 hours traversing the amazon together i just know they bonded during that!!! i wont even get into the fact that they’re always standing next to each other / hanging out in the background because i will be a pigeon pecking at crumbs and ive already gone off topic from the original reunion idea

anyway i think alejandro was mad because he thought he could consider noah a friend but he can see noah maybe doesnt feel the same way + hes a threat anyway soooo bye bye noah, question is would he hold a grudge over it and if yes then how long for

and what r they doing in their lives now when they meet again?? is alejandro still with heather or did that doomed relationship crash and burn (again)? is noah with emma or did things not work out after the race? and of course this differs depending on which world tour ending you’re going for, because is alejandro finally a winner or does his family still view him as the runner up they’ve always seen him as, second place silver in a robot suit, never quite good enough for gold (had to go off topic again, burromuerto family angst Gets Me)

would they miss the brief friendship they had? does noah ever meet a contestant on another one of him and owen’s reality shows and get a fleeting reminder of alejandro when they flirt or flash him a smile? does he get tired of no one else being on his wavelength and cast his mind back to that one boy that was? does alejandro ever turn on the tv and spot noah on one of those dumb shows?? and if he does what does he think?

ough i got off topic so many times i love thinking abt them in the future, they dont even have to reunite i also enjoy the bittersweet angst of right people wrong time/place… i think things would’ve been better for them if a million dollars wasn’t on the line

also i am not reading all this before i post it so if there are mistakes or it doesnt make sense then . pretend u didnt see it ^_^

[very-straight-blog]

This might sound funny and cringey, but I feel like I lost something I cared about and now it's just sadness and depression. Like it's a TV show, I get it, but we waited 2 years and for what? To get the two worst episodes imaginable. I'm really starting to believe that Sapochnik was responsible for everything good in s1, bcz Condal and Hess ruined this show. S1 wasn't perfect and I didn't like a lot of things in it, but it still managed to keep me invested so I hoped that in s2 everything would be improved. And yet, I'm so terribly disappointed. Alicent's characterization makes no sense anymore, like they want so badly to show her as a bad mother and a hypocrite and really - after ruining bnc with Alicole sex now it had to follow with her not being able to console her son but hoping on Criston is a must do?? What sort of degenerates write this??

Aemond is also ruined for me and I would love to erase that crappy brothel scene from my memory. What was it for? To show his mommy issues, vulnerability... Idc. The dialogue was bad and they did him dirty with the angles and the pose. And now he's apparently going to be there *again* in e3 and we'll get full frontal nudity. Idk why the actor agreed to this since they are obviously making a joke and meme material of his character. Not to mention that he straight up lied in the promos about being loyal (if the RR leaks are true and I'm almost 100% sure they are). I get that they are told what to say, but a more general answer would have been much better than a lie. In brief, one of my favourite s1 characters is also destroyed.

Then Cole. My god, I only waithig for him to look at the camera and say "do you hate me enough already hahah?" He's the writers punching bag atp.

Helaena barely exists.

Otto is Viserys' fanboy and ofc, appalled by his grandson. It's not as he just has lost a son and was forced to take the crown in the first place by him and his mother, no less.

Aegon got more screentime and I love Tom's performance, but I'm not fooled. He is still depicted as weak, politically inept and rash. And he'll still be a bully, apparently. Just to justify his brother's treason. F*ck you Condal, Hess and whoever else is responsible for this mess.

Anyway, sorry for the rant. I just don't get how anyone can seriously praise this shitshow anymore. It could have been great, but the creators are obviously not up to the task which is now painfully obvious. I wouldn't mind the greens as villains, but don't write them as a walking joke. I'm quitting the show and would like just to forget about it. This adaptation of the Dance was a huge mistake.

I feel you! By the way, I haven't participated in any fandom life, I think, for 10 years or more, but thanks to HOTD, I started this blog, I write some critical (well, kinda) reviews, and English isn't even my native language. I've been waiting for the second season for two years and now I just feel tired and empty. So far, the only thing I've liked about these two episodes is Aegon's storyline, that's all. Everything else is bad, very bad, and judging by the leaks, it'll be even worse.

Firstly, the series has a very strange pace of the narrative. We didn't get a bunch of important plot scenes, and even those that remained were shown in a hurry, but at the same time we have many scenes like "Rhaenyra stares at the dust for three minutes", unnecessary dialogues and PAUSES between lines.

Secondly, again, an insane amount of important plot details are left behind the scenes and this is absolutely wrong. Aemond's return home, the family's reaction to what he did. Aegon's reaction when he learned of his son's death. Aemond's reaction when he finds out what his actions have led to. And so on and so forth. Many of the characters' actions are shown without context. Alicent fucks with Criston - cool, but can I have some additional information? How long has this been going on, what feelings do they have for each other, how have they developed, like, anything? The same can be said about the scene in the brothel - no context.

Thirdly, it's unclear what's going on with the characters, as if the screenwriters decided to make the greens the most unpleasant people in the world. So far, I only like Aegon and Helaena. I can't even say anything about Aemond, because his only dialogue scene is built around Daemon and Luke, damn them. I just can't.

Everything annoys me except Aegon lol. So yes, I understand you.

[elizabethshaw]

hm. thinking thoughts

under the cut for spoiler reasons:

this is literally just me writing stuff up in no real order so there is probably not all that much coherence to it. ah well

loved how unsettling it was having something wrong with the tardis! the tardis (in the tv show at least) is usually the one guaranteed safe place in any given dr who episode and so to have it suddenly a threat like that felt genuinely unnerving

the time window sequence was cool. really liked the fuzzy, there-but-not-quite-there visual effects

i also loved the monologue/prophecy/whatever, built things up very nicely and idk. i just vibed with it. i have more to say but the words are not coming to me right now

"and standing on high is the Mother and Father and Other of them all" i haven't even read lungbarrow but them saying "other" here immediately got my attention lmao

for an episode called "the legend of ruby sunday", it felt like (particularly in the last third of the story), there was remarkably little actual focus on ruby. while i do genuinely like her as a companion, i do feel like she's been one of the biggest casualties of the shift to a shorter series length with less time for "filler" episodes - we simply haven't had the time to get to know her on a deeper level, and i was hoping, given the title, that this story would do something to rectify that a bit. and then it didn't.

saying that, i did appreciate them giving her some more scenes with her mum this episode, i think she has a really nice dynamic with her family and we haven't seen enough of it since the christmas special imo

no trickster :( he got a mention at least but i was hoping he'd be the villain ngl

i have watched pyramids of mars once, four years ago, and barely remember the plot (my main memories of that episode are sarah with a gun ngl), probably going to have to rewatch it before next week. dailymotion you may have to be my saviour once again

not entirely sure how i feel about sutekh as the main villain. this is at least in part because my memories of pyramids of mars are hazy as anything, but i'm just... undecided. to its credit, the episode itself actually did a good job of getting me very excited about the reveal while i was watching, but as an overall thing? i don't know yet. i think i'm going to have to wait until i've watched the finale next week to form a full opinion

i reckon he must have hitched himself onto the tardis around/during "wild blue yonder" though - this is the first time where the tardis starts making The Noises, and is also the first time susan twist turns up, and that can't be a coincidence, especially given that, as previously established, it was likely fourteen's salt trick in this episode that let the toymaker back into the universe

i rewatched "the church on ruby road" earlier this week bc i figured it'd be a good shout and i hadn't watched it since broadcast, and during that i felt like mrs flood was maybe a "retired" companion, possibly a future companion (maybe of a future doctor) that we haven't met yet. after this ep though, i'm not so sure. she seems at least aware of sutekh in some way, and also seems potentially antagonistic, but i'm not sure she's actually directly linked to him. i'm fairly sure as well rtd said at some point she's more of a mystery for later series so. hm. it'll be interesting to see what more we get of her in part two

i can't shake the feeling that they are going to do something with susan further down the line. there have been more mentions of her in this series than in basically the rest of new who put together and i can't help but think that this must be for a reason even if susan twist wasn't her

anyway the real mystery for me: what is the vlinx. i have been thinking about this on and off since december. what is it. how did it get into unit to begin with. i need answers

[still-a-morosexual-help]

Here's MY thoughts on the love island the game's seasons, for no reason other than I want to:

Also because the majority of the people following me are here for OM! & I want to drag more people down into the litg hell with me :)

Season 1: why is everyone so bitchy for no reason????? Talia & Jake are okay but other than that it's meh... don't really like the art style either

Season 2: Immaculate. Chef's kiss. They hit a high they never reached again. Somehow managed to balance the drama & the found family aspect and created a dynamic where you can actually believe everyone is friends and having fun even if sometimes they try to kill each other. Characters are flawed but generally decent people who are allowed to grow throughout the season. You get the option to make MC a bi gym-bro who can devour an entire cake in one sitting and bench press her partner. There's a reason this got two sequels.

Season 3: It's fine ig. Short and kind of boring. Nothing much happens. AJ is so cute though she almost makes up for it.

Season 4: Honestly a close 2nd favourite. We get a lot of character backstory and like s2 it touches on some serious issues. The season with some of the funniest moments/lines of dialogue - multiple moments where I just laughed out loud. I'm still only half way through it but the "villain" is just straight up mean for no reason and doesn't get any character development like the characters in S2 but makes up for it by having some of the funniest interactions with other characters and I was so sad to see her go. Also the season where I desperately wish MC was allowed to be in an open relationship till the very end and finish off the season in a polycule with every other islander who was in the love "triangle"s of the the season because this was the hardest season to pick a LI - Najuma is just all around amazing, Bruno is sweet & funny, Tom is so pathetic* MC & Thabi's friendship is also the best thing? It's great seeing a platonic relationship that is as loving (if not more so) than the romantic relationships. It's literally:

Season 5: Psychological horror. The producers said 'hey wouldn't it be funny if we torture this woman on national tv' and then committed to the bit. My memories are hazy because even though I only played it earlier this year it upset me so much I did my best to block most of it out but also I'm 100% sure there was actual galighting happening. Don't know why MC stuck around till the end because all she's gonna be able to use the money for is to pay for her therapy. Anyway I think MC should have been allowed to brutally murder everyone, she deserved it <3

Season 6: I liked the concept but I think they should have utilised it more. I'm still right at the very beginning (around ep 9) and I KNOW the general consensus from everyone who has reached the last eps seems to be that Amelia sucks MAJOR ass. But look, this is the first time a game has given me a MC with a canon family member who is also part of the game so in my opinion Amelia could commit war crimes and she's still be the most precious little uwu ever because I'm activating MC's insanely overprotective oblivious to all faults ""big"" sister mode

Edit:

*I just played more of S4 and holy shit someone needs to get this man away from his parents and also maybe get him some therapy jfc

Edit 2:

** youcef, mc & valentina helping tom figure out he likes flowers and pink and tie-dye clothes and makeup and being complimented and called pretty and getting hugs is getting to me okay his parents better watch the show and see their adult son finally discovering himself and what he likes instead of what they think he should like and finally being able to let loose and have fun without worrying about what others think of him and finally being happy and they better get some sense knocked into them OR he should go to therapy and realise that no matter how much he loves his parents their love and regard being so conditional to the point that he's hidden his entire personality and is now so extremely self-conscious of it whenever it does manage to peak out, that he nearly cries on national tv after a practical stranger compliments those hidden bits is not good. Also the man has some of the most insane repressed queer vibes???? What do you mean he sees a canon nonbinary person wearing a floppy hat and is reminded of the floppy hat he loved as a child that his father threw away and replaced with a baseball cap and then when he "lost" the baseball cap his father bought him the exact same one again

Edit 3:

*** i was 100% sure i was going to get mc to stick with najuma (dorky mischevious goth who is so so bad at flirting hello!!!?) but i got caught by "sad & shy with serious self-worth issues hidden badly behind an overconfident exterior (who blushes & gets flustered easily because he so rarely receives genuine praise/compliments) experiences postive regard for the first time and loses his shit" for the third fucking time

Edit 4:

Okay but why does Dylan get (rightfully) called out by everyone in S4 for all the bullshit he does to MC from blatantly lying to her to not listening when she says "No" But in S5 when Suresh (admittedly, more subtly) pulls off the same shit no one says anything, even MC's "friends" don't believe her.

In S2 when Luke/Henrik gets a little too forceful after MC says no, he gets called out by MC's partner and immediately apologises

In S4 when Dylan does the whole "stop pretending you don't want me" routine after MC rejects him multiple times, the rest of the islanders band together and basically chase him off the island

In S5 when Suresh pulls literally the same thing from the very first episode itself but none of the other islanders believe MC, and Suresh keeps getting to do this until almost the very end while also managing to constantly play hot & cold with MC and chase away all of MCs other romantic interests

[enam3l]

rockstar!dad eddie is definitely not immune to the claims that dads baby the pets that they didn’t want in the first place .. the girls begged & begged the two of you for a dog and eddie was probably vehemently against it because all of you travel too much or he knew the two of you were gonna be stuck caring for it till the girls actually just showed up one day with one & now that’s his best friend for life

yes. just yes. so fun fact, i used to be a foster mum for dogs so i am definitely breed bias. idk if you know the actor joe manganiello but he's married to sofia vergara (gloria from modern family) and he is this huuuge man but has this tiny chihuahua he dresses up and insists on taking everywhere. i love that for him and eddie.

anyway i dedicate this one to my favourite foster child marnie who i got have for six months! it was her birthday the other day and she is finally living her best life 🫶

ps: if you want your parents to get you a dog, try what the daughters do. this is exactly how i got my dogs when i was younger lol.

there's something about marnie (rockstar eddie munson x reader) ficlet / fluff / smut

you can see all rockstar eddie x reader stories and lore at #enam3ls rockstar eddie or the masterlist! and check out my new series love, lola

'Dad, I want a dog.' Eddie is certain that is the only thing his daughters have said to him in the last two years. All of them are teenagers, all of them are hormonal, all of them are getting on his nerves, all of them refuse to speak to him... unless it's to ask that one question. Sloane was now eighteen and in a constant panicked frenzy over finals. Iris was sixteen and was convinced she was an adult. Maeve was fourteen and at the peak of puberty and peak of being a pain in the ass. 

Personally, Eddie had felt his reasoning on refusing their pleas for a dog had been very fair. Although he was not used to being bad cop and he didn't like it. You were always the firm parent and he was a soft touch who was wrapped round the fingers of his girls - you included. On multiple occasions he had given his daughters his reasons. 

Now the girls were all teenagers, Eddie was finally beginning to start touring with Corroded Coffin again. Something he chose to stop doing once the kids had been born. 

Even though you mostly worked from home, sometimes you did have to go away for work. He didn't want you to be left with the responsibility of the dog all the time whilst the girls were at school. 

Within the next five years, all of the kids would be out the house and at college, leaving the dog behind with you and Eddie. He had planned on using a child free house to his advantage and taking you away all the time. 

Yet clearly, his reasons continued to go in one ear and out the other as tonight he was victim to a well coordinated attack. All three of the girls cornered him as Eddie sat watching a film. His protests ignored as Maeve snatched the remote and turned the TV over. Iris plugged in a laptop causing a PowerPoint presentation to appear on screen. Sloane stood next to the screen like a weather lady as she began her perfectly rehearsed argument. Those damn girls are trying to convert me, he thought. 

Often at his own expense, Eddie realised all three of his children inherited the best of both you and him. Taking his street smarts and tactical logic and your academic skills and charm - it was a ruthless combination that he's certain if wielded incorrectly could be used for world domination. Once they'd finished, Eddie sat there gobsmacked as they filed out the room to go about their Saturday evenings. Sloane leaving him a printed copy of the presentation for him to as she described it, 'peruse at his own leisure.' Eddie scoffed at her sass, knowing Wayne would've whacked him round the head with a newspaper had he used a line like that when he was a teenager and probably now. 

That night, Eddie lay on his bed flicking through the papers. It's not that he thought they were incapable of looking after a dog. They'd babysat Steve and Marissa's dogs plenty of times and were great. It was just that life would be changing constantly over the next few years and that made Eddie nervous. His fretting was interrupted by you bursting through the door and jumping on top of him. You ripped the papers from his hands, chucking them across the bedroom, before pinning his wrists above his head. 

'Hey, what's this all about sweetheart?' he questioned, still slightly startled. But his question was quickly answered by your lips attacking his neck and bare chest. 

'Empty house,' you grinned between nips and kisses, 'want you Eds.' 

And who was Eddie Munson to refuse his wife? 

All the questions that had been plaguing his tired brain all evening were long forgotten. The only thing on his mind was you. What else could he think about when the love of his life was between his legs, plump lips tight around his throbbing cock. You'd been together for twenty-five years now and still Eddie felt like a horny teenager around you. He was putty in your soft hands - literally in this case. Your hands cupped and played with his balls as his thick cock hit the back of your throat as he chased release. The way the bedside light caused your wide eyes that stared right into his soul to twinkle, made his pulse quicken. The light also caught the ring he'd slid onto your ring finger twenty years ago. Eddie couldn't believe this was really his life now. 

'U-uh fuck, sweetheart...' he groaned, 'Bout to cum baby.' 

You could feel his balls start to tighten in and cock begin to twitch - he was seconds away from cumming. So you pulled your mouth away and retracted your touch. 

'AGH! What the fuck,' he whelped. 

You looked your husband right in the eyes. Eddie's big chocolate eyes, wider than ever in shock at the loss of touch. Letting him know you meant business, your face fell deadpan and nails dug into his hairy thighs. 

'You're getting them a dog, Edward.'

He spluttered in disbelief, hands waving around aimlessly. 'WHAT! I cannot - you really doing this to me right now?'

'Yes,' you smirked, 'and you'll never cum again if you don't do it.' 

Eddie knew you weren't lying so that's why he finds himself two weeks later stood in the dog rescue shelter. He couldn't deny it made him happy seeing the joy on his girls faces when he told them the news. His only condition which you'd also agreed upon was that the dog needed to be a rescue. The charity had thoroughly vetted you all and checked the house. Eddie couldn't believe he was just allowed to pop out as many kids as he wanted without approval and yet he had to go through so much to be allowed a dog. 

Shuffling along behind the rest of you, he peered into each occupied space, reading the little biographies of each dog. Eddie had always seen himself as more of a cat person. Cats were weird and a little spooky, something he could relate to. Plus, he had happy memories feeding the strays at the trailer park growing up. Today, he'd expected to simply be the chauffeur and bank, letting the girls choose their new friend.

Then his feet ground to a halt as he caught sight of a little presence in a cage he'd thought was empty. There in the corner was a tiny pile of dark fuzz, brown eyes blinking back at him expectantly. The little creature looked as if someone had drew a scribble and stuck a pair of googly eyes on it. Eddie approached the cage and the dog followed his move, coming closer towards him. It was a little dog of a thing, little legs sticking out of scraggily fur in varying shades of black and grey. The dog could've been mistaken for the animalistic form of a wise oracle from a game of D&D. 

'This one,' Eddie called out, surprising you and your daughters. You all double backed, not having noticed how far behind Eddie even was. Your gaze followed to what his finger pointed at. Instantly your heart melted. 

'It's this one. We're getting this one,' he insisted again. Iris squinted at the paper attached to the cage as she read it aloud to you all. 

'My name is Marnie. I look older but I'm only two. Please take a chance on me, I'm a quirky girl but full of love.'  

You let out a little sniff, your hand finding Eddie's to squeeze it. Immediately you could recognise exactly why he'd find her, she was a tiny dog version of your husband. It was meant to be. 

'Okay, Dad's word is final. Marnie is the one!' You exclaimed. Eddie's face lit up with glee, heart full that without him explaining it, you just knew why she was special. 

'Thank you sweetheart,' he mouthed silently.  

'Are you sure Dad? Did you not want something a bit bigger?' Sloane questioned. 

'She kind of looks like an ancient wizard...' Maeve remarked, bending down with her hand out, her fingers immediately being licked thoroughly through the metal bars. 

'I'm sure. She's perfect,' Eddie grinned. 

Marnie Munson was inseparable from Eddie. All of his previous concerns went straight out the window the moment he saw her. She fit perfectly into your lives. Completely unbothered by travelling or loud music, Marnie became an honorary roadie for Corroded Coffin. Eddie had her perfectly accessorised, frequently returning home from the shops with a new purchase for her. Matching him perfectly, she wore a studded pink collar and a pink and black bandana. And you're still clueless as to where he found it but in the winter Marnie was kept warm by a knitted Metallica Christmas jumper. Utterly spoilt rotten like all the women in Eddie's life. Clearly, Eddie's title of girl dad was not limited to human daughters. 

ps: i don't know if these books were only in the uk and new zealand but anyway this is how i picture marnie

my taglist angels: @whoahoney @lukewearingbeanies @esme-viridian @elysian-chaos @munsonology @mseddiemunson @kreepja

[ifihadtopickadad]

you've made a mistake by telling me to go read up on the au- (/j)

anyway. susan refers to nessa and gregory as her children, so i assume this means she adopted nessa?? either legally or just emotionally, and considering she was homeless before henry gave them the afton house i am going to assume the us legal system wouldnt give her custody of nessa at all so its the latter.

WILLIAM FINDING REMNANT AS A TEENAGER IS SUCH A COOL CONCEPT ?!?!? like. him finding it post cc (i love how you call him benny btw. really cool name) or charlie's death is interesting, but the idea that he experimented using animals (AND HIS OWN FAMILY DAMN) and then moved onto children/humans once he- presumeably- did everything he could with being that didnt have the same level of sentience?? amazing. very evil-scientist core. love it.

remnant working similar to radiation is also an interesting idea, having to be stored carefully or it will 'possess' the objects around it. (imagine william tried to store it in a bucket one time and the bucket just. got possessed. what do you even do in that situation-) are there some materials that remenant is physcially unable to uh. meld itself into i guess?? like some resources are just remnant resistant??

will susan tell the kids about remnant? about everything (or even just some things) the aftons had going on? or is she going to try protect them from the truth?? DOES SHE FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENED TO MIKE POST-SISTER LOCATION?? is the scoop canon to this au?? (if so my next question is how did faz ent get the sperm of a corpse but its faz ent. theyll find a way.)

the au seems great so far !! definately really interesting, will be Rotating It in my mind for the next several days and going mental any time you post something new for it lol

take care !! <3

It Twasn't a mistake. Twas a calculated risk.

I love people asking about the stuff I make. I'm out here stimming from excitement, you got me smiling so hard that my dimples are showing.

Emotionally and illegally. If there's one thing the lore has shown us about Henry beyond what we already know, it's that after William's bull-fuckery Henry had to be just as shady to bring the musty dusty purple Pringle down so paying someone to forge adoption papers was easy(I like to think he fnaf!Neil Caffrey to do it)

The concept of William discovering Remnant post-CC is nice but it never lined up quite right to me, I know way too much about how famous historical scientists studied the way stuff worked extensively to even begin experimenting with it to think that he discovered Remnant, and immediately started killing people to get results. William isn't on the Anti Social Personality Spectrum but he is an undiagnosed Narcissist with a God-Complex. So, William discovers Remnant as a teen and does smaller experiments to figure out how it works (this is one of my fnaf theories specifically around William's relationship to Remnant)

All the discourse about Remnant is actually what inspired the Radiation thing. Everyone, everywhere, was losing their minds over the insanity that is Remnant and I had a throwaway thought about how we've seen all this in fiction where Radiation is the given cause: the mutates in every Fallout game ever and the TV show, Spiderman, The Hulk, Corpse Mikey would fit right in in the Fallout-verse, etc. All fnaf does is take all of those concepts and shove them into one place and I love that. The only thing it doesn't do is bring you back to life and I think that's because you need internal organs for that. Mike lost his organs but not his brain so Remnant kept brain activity going.

The bucket thing did happen. It wasn't a bucket thought. It was one of those plain lunch boxes. He had one already but, he bought an extra to store the Remnant in. Long story short, it's early morning, and he's practically brain-dead as he gets ready for school so he grabs one of the lunch boxes without. Lunch in the cafeteria was legendary that day. The lunch box screeched, and he made up a half-lie about trying to invent a musical lunch box but grabbing the wrong one. He invented an actual musical lunch box that was fairly popular in UK for a while.

Yes! Funny enough Radiated materials are the only things Remnant can't meld itself to. He could never figure out why but, William's not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. He bought and repurposed multiple microwaves to act as radiated containers.

By the time they get to the house Gregory and Nessa are 10 and 14 respectively so she does tell them, they're also Geniuses ala Afton Genetics and they're also Peak Gremlins™️ so they'd find out anyway.

Everyone knows Michael Afton(legal name Mike Schmidt) as a Missing Person's case that's gone unsolved for decades by this point. The footage of him getting scooped was scrubbed as was his being worn like a meat suit. But there is footage of 'Mike' forcing himself up and to the Elevator. His organs were all gone by the time the Police got there but the blood muscle and other bodily fluids were still there. It's believed that Mike was lured to the scooping room through abuse and manipulation a fact further compounded by the bodies of the technicians being found hanging by police.

The general belief is that he died out in the wilderness but, his body was never found hence the Missing Presumed Dead thing. This all happened in 1986 when he was 17. Afton Robotics and Fazent shut down Circus Baby's officially and stopped renting out the Funtimes after this because they weren't fast enough to cover it up like with the Missing Children's Incident and the Bite of '83. And so began the downfall of Fazbear Entertainment and Afton Robotics.

So yeah, the scoop happened here, and since Remnant works with what's already there and Mike's practically made of the stuff because he grew up eating it, his sperm was kept intact ala Remnant(I mean he didn't lose his penis to the scoop.)

As for the name. I was watching the sandlot when I came up with it. (His middle name is Garret) I'm glad you like it.

[twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat]

hi ari!!!! hope you’re doing well!! 🐟🐟 these days the weather is so so nice and the sea is so tempting……………… i went ahead and took some days to swim like the fish i am! surprisingly the water wasn’t so cold and it seems i wasn’t the only one who thought of swimming because the beach was full of people 🙂‍↕️ it was really fun!

anyway!! i wanted to ask you, which films and/or cinematic universes you think your jjk favs would suit the most??? :33 if it is too restraining you can name tv series, of course!!

(p.s.: oh, i’m glad you liked my silly rant about statue!gojo TT 🫶🏼🫶🏼🫶🏼 it has been rotting in my mind for months now but i’m a procrastinator and i have too many wips… i think it might be that summer is near and i’m super inspired but i don’t know where to begin lmaooo. my notebook is overflowing with half-finished prompts and chapters that are waiting to be completed……. 😭😭) — 🐟 anon

HIIIII MY LITTLE 🐟 ANON!!!! :33

i’m so happy that it’s getting warmer where you are!!!!! the weather is starting to take a turn for the better here too hehe….. but wahhh!!!! beach trips!!!!!!! i miss them i do…. you’ll have to have double the fun for both of us!!! <3333

AND . GULP. that’s a super fun question and also super tough bc i don’t watch …. a lot of movies……… 😔😔 i’ve been watching more recently!!!! but honestly i have a lot of trouble remembering series and movies that i’ve watched….. my brain doesn’t store a lot of them. HOWEVER . yk what i do watch??? and adore????

……. musicals >:33

so here are some musicals that i associate w my jjk favs!!! I HOPE THAT’S OKAY… i got a little too into it i think 😭

gojo - legally blonde

I JUST THINK HE WOULD LOVE IT SO MUCH……….. i know him personally . honestly i would’ve given him the movie if i had followed your original assignment bc it just screams gojo to me either way!!!! i think he loves chickflicks. :3 and this is definitely one of his comfort movies…… the musical is also just SUCH a bop i knowwwww this man is terrorizing his coworkers by singing ”gay or european” in broad daylight (specifically to nanami)……

sugu - the phantom of the opera

THE PHANTOMMMMMMM OF THE OPERA IS HEREEEEEEEE 🎶🎶🎶🎶 …. <- sugu doesn’t sing along to musicals + doesn’t rlly like them that much in general but i know in my heart and soul that he would hum this part quietly to himself . what can i say….. this is just a very classy musical that i think would appeal to him <3333 he’d read the book beforehand too. he’s a lil pretentious but it’s okay :3 he’s veryyyy picky abt what musical renditions he enjoys tho…….

shoko - the guy who didn’t like musicals

MY PERSONAL FAVORITE MUSICAL OF ALL TIMEEEEE <333333 i just know she’d adore it. the blend between horror and comedy is soooo shoko and i feel like she wouldn’t like musicals at ALL lmao so she’d appreciate the meta commentary!!!! it’s just. suchhhh a good musical….. i love starkid so much it hurts………… AND THE WHOLE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE THINGGG she would eat that up!!!! pls watch this one if you haven’t 🐟 anon you can find the full thing on yt and it’s INCREDIBLE i’ve watched it like 10 times!!!! it’s my most beloved!!!!

kenny - beetlejuice

BEETLEJUICE 👏 BEETLEJUICE 👏👏 BEETLEJUICE 👏👏👏 okay so i actually lied this one is ALSO my absolute favorite . and i’m giving it to kenny solely based on vibes :3 HE REMINDS ME OF BEETLEJUICE OK…. and i think he’d love it a lot. the songs are so fucking good and i know he’d appreciate them. the theme of life/death is also very kenny obv !!!!

toji - black friday

ANOTHER STARKID MUSICAL. this one is just…… soooo good and funny and also . tragic. one of the characters reminds me a lot of toji :’3 former veteran w a dead wife…. who struggles to show his son how much he cares…… and the theme of capitalism and money and how it corrupts ppl also feels in line w toji’s character!! but above all else this musical is abt. Family. and that’s more toji than anything!!! :((( this is another musical that i rlly recommend checking out, it’s set in the same universe as the guy who didn’t like musicals but like . an alternate timeline. it’s not my favorite in the series but the songs slap and it made me cry so <3333 yeah.

nobara - heathers

was lowkey considering six the musical for my beloved nobara (bc of the gorgeous women and catchy fun songs) but . i think heathers fits her more!!!! i just feel like she’d ADORE it…… i know she’s singing along at the top of her lungs too LMAO especially to dead girl walking <3333 it’s just such a fun badass musical and i think she’d be obsessed. she does NOT like jd tho god bless 🙏🙏

[wwaddless]

Whose your favorite turtles and why?

omg hi!!! sooo like you have asked me a very detailed question, dear anon. get ready for like an essay haha

im going to go in backwards order of release in terms of the different iterations and then do like an overall :3 (not including comics i haven't read those :(( )

started with mutant mayhem/tales of the tmnt:

honestly don't have a real favorite for this one, they're all sooooo silly and i adored the teenage vibe they got. considering they just kinda let the actors go at it, lines-wise, they feel so authentic teenager (i would also know, considering i was mid-high school when it came out last year). however! if i did have to pick a favorite for this version it would probably be donnie. i LOVE the glasses design and how he seems to be more computer smart then building things smart. a lot of donnies tend to be incredibly advanced for their age (which i do love and enjoy, donnie is soso silly <3) so it was cool seeing a donnie that probably just does programming and who knows how to set up TVs and stuff. like realistically he also put all the electronics in the lair, since that is a classic donnie move, but i find joy in the idea that he's just a fucking nerd that makes video games for fun.

this might change when the series comes out. honestly i can find something i love about each of them cause i really think they were all so well written!

rise of the tmnt:

okay so rise was my introduction to the series and has a very special place in my heart. the people who actually got me into the series told me that donnie would be my favorite character and guess what! they were right lmao. however, leo is an incredibly close second. i think the donnie & leo dynamic of rise is overall my favorite dynamic across the entire franchise!

anyways donnie! i think my favorite trait of his is how blunt he is. in middle school i was also super blunt, so that's just a fun little trait i relate to. (especially since donnie is 14 in the series). i also think he tends to have the best plot lines in episodes. having his own villains that aren't really shared with his brothers (the purple dragons) is so cool and just shows off how smart and strong donnie is as a character, something that's kind of downplayed when all 4 of them are together. also father donnie owns my heart <3<3 (which is in reference to his plot lines with shelldon)

also his design slaps. i LOVE making him a softshell so he has to create his own battle-shell. i personally like the idea that protecting his shell, or trying to make his shell more like his brothers, is what got him into engineering (does it count as engineering?). the goggles are stunning, the tech-bo is GENUIS!!!!!!

tdlr: love rise donnie. he is my boy <3

bayverse:

"WOAH!" i hear you say. nobody likes the bayverse movies! they look weird and the plots aren't good!

WRONG! i say to that! i much enjoyed the bayverse movies. i loved the designs. y'all can pry the bayverse movies from my cold dead hands.

anyways, i actually don't have that much to say, it's been a minute since i watched the movies haha. donnie and raph though live in my head rent free (starting to notice a pattern...). raph is probably actually my favorite, i really enjoyed the balance between family loving and angsty teenager that they did. he's the "nobody can hurt my family BUT ME" and honestly? i love that for raph. good for you buddy <3

2012:

i think 2012 is my third favorite iteration overall. i'm not sure what's second (probably 03) but rise is solid first and 2012 is solid third.

my favorite turtle is 112% leo. not just for the transfem headcanon, though that might be a factor haha. i just think leo was written really well. he's balancing being the leader, being the best, and also just wanting to be a kid and i think they did good for the time. like, y'all remember when leo was going to sacrifice himself in season ONE (1). shit is crazy!! he just wants everyone to be happy and safe, and if that means taking things into his own hands he WILL, and it was a great way to show how leo was meant to be the leader of the team.

on the opposite side of that, he's also super nerdy. he loves his silly space show, leo creates the live mazes & mutants game and makes everyone dress up! like yeah, he's an amazing leader and holding too much for his age, but he's also just a silly guy.

anyways yeah, leo is amazing in 2012. i love him soso much <3.

TMNT 2007:

eyyyy that one movie that has one of the best depictions of the raph and leo dynamic ever.

surprisingly, my favorite is neither raph nor leo. it's actually mikey!! yippee mikey appearance. i know he doesn't get a whole bunch of screentime in the movie, but he was amazing in every part he was. mikey being a "costumed" character for birthday parties? still being a wicked ass skateboarder? DRIVING? he's so cool!!! and like despite everything he still tries to be positive and uplifting, which is such a core mikey-trait. idk, i just love him <3

cowabunga carl 4ever frfr

2003:

ahhh, the one i'm currently in the middle of watching (i haven't touched it in like two months but i've been busy alright lol)

i think my favorite turtle kind of changes between seasons, which makes sense because 03 i feel like focuses on one character for an over-arching plotline for a bit and then moves to a different character for a different arc.

overall, though, my favorite is probably raph. he's just so loving and caring in the version. like even though he picks on his brothers or argues with them it's still really easy to tell that he loves his brothers a lot and would do anything for them. also, he rides a motorbike which is rad as fuck. also also, donnie twin <3. also also also, raph is just like really funny in this version? i think raph and mikey make me laugh the most, and one of those characters is unexpected (raph).

the 1990s movies:

gonna be so honest, i don't remember these movies well enough to say which one is my favorite. it's probably mikey or leo though.

OVERALL:

(i've only watched like 5 episodes of 1987 so i don't have an opinion on that one)

no one is going to be surprised by this, but overall, my favorite turtle is donnie. there's just a lot of different ways you can go with his character and support/smart characters have just kind of always been my favorite when it comes to TV shows.

if i was to rank them it would be:

Donnie, Leo, Raph, Mikey

which hurts my soul a little bit because mikey does NOT deserve to be at the bottom of the list :(( mikey just tends to be the hardest for me to connect with and therefore he goes to the bottom. mikey i'm so sorry, please forgive me </3

anyways! i hope this isn't too long for you anon and i hoped you enjoyed my tangent. i love these turtles and have so many, but so few, thoughts.

have a donnie to go :3

[zemantler]

Hey Mac! I just saw the new video you made about episode 4 and 5 of Our Flag Means Death and wanted to share with you a perspective I thought might be interesting to you.

(p.s sorry its so long and wordy! I tried to condense my thoughts as much as possible😅)

I read an article recently by Screen Rant (https://screenrant.com/our-flag-means-death-season-3-release-date-cast-story-everything-we-know/) which says that our boy David Jenkins himself mentioned that if the show gets renewed for a third season then season 3 would be the final. He apparently also said that he has the entirety of the show beginning to end already mapped out, and this information kind of changed everything for me in terms of how I view the show and the way it is being created.

Shows that go for 5 to 10 seasons (roughly) are shows MADE for streaming, that being said their formula is usually to follow a storyline that can be started and ended every season and it's the characters that keep us coming back. OFMD isn't like that, I think the key is to think of it more like a long movie. and what we know about movies, or just classic storytelling in general (literally one of the first things you learn in elementary or middle school) is that a story has a beginning, a middle and an end. If you think about the seasons of the show like this-season 1 beginning, season 2 middle, and season 3 end-it kinda makes all the pacing issues and the ‘Ed problem’ make sense (or just seem more intentional-again David says he has this all planned out) and you can follow the trajectory of the show actually pretty clearly from there. Take for instance season 1, you said it yourself it's like season 1 (baring the last two episodes) is like setting up the story (love story) with rose coloured glasses on. That being said the show also lines up with a rough outline of what your classic hero's journey looks like-call to adventure (the opening of Stede and the crew in ep01s01 and the flashbacks of Stede and Mary's unhappy marriage), meeting with the mentor (Ed-who is also the love interest-and the whole 'teach me how to pirate i'll teach you how to etiquette' deal). You can think of the last two episodes of season 1 as like the crossing of the threshold (aka glasses come off) cause not only does Stede realize he wants to be a pirate indefinitely and leave Barbados for good, but also because season 2 opens with the next part of the hero's journey which is meeting new enemies and allies (Zheng Yi Sao, Archie, Richard Banes,etc.(Does Izzy count as a new ally?)). 

Again, it's all very classic in format, but usually just not how tv shows made for streaming choose to operate-cause most of the time network execs are literally just trying to make the most money by keeping a concept going probably longer than they should-but I digress. Also again, if you factor in the part where season 3 would be the last season it's not unusual at all.That being said I think the reason they decided to have the crews trauma and ESPECIALLY Eds issues only start being addressed in the 5th episode is because they are hoping to have this be one of the plot points that drifts its way into season three and subsequently have resolution occur at that time as well, instead of forcing hollow resolution in the final three episodes of s02 and then have nothing to work with in season 3-this is another point that Screen Rant made in their article.

Using the three acts/hero's journey formula, we can start making really rough guesses as to how season three might pan out and given the circumstances of season 2, it kind of feels more right to me. Not to mention our dude Taika is the guy who wrote the initial screenplay of Moana which focused more on family than the screenplay which actually got made into the Disney film, so I can't imagine him and David of all people just glossing over all of the emotional reconciling parts of the core relationships. Anyways I thought this was interesting to think about and might also help in easing the nerves over the last 3 episodes of this season, again there is always the possibility this might not be true, or work out this way, but I thought it clicked too perfectly in my own head just to not talk about it. Like seriously the hunch is hunching right now!

Anyways Mac, loved the video and hope you have a great night! 😊

Hi!! First of all, thank you, I'm really glad you enjoyed it. Hope you'll have a good day too. Wow thats a lot of text, sorry if I misunderstood something.

While I understand what you mean, series dont really work like that. There are lots of "series like long movies" -plot based, not too stretched out, character dynamic focused, few series long, etc. For example, Good Omens, Sherlock, Hannibal (i think, never seen it) and more...

Movies start plotline in the beginning and have to resolve them in the end. BUT that doesnt mean there cant be a cliffhanger at the end, to help a sequel continue the story. And thats how (good) movie franchises are born- multiple movies are made to elaborate on the first original story, because there simply wasnt enough time to tell it in its entirety in one movie.

Series like ofmd go hannibal etc.. Were made to be series, because they couldnt possibly fit the entire story in a movie format. But when you make the decision to make a series, you also have to comply to the series format. So if its not a limited series, it will probably have multiple seasons, overall theme and will start a plot in first season that will to some extent, continue until the last one, while at the same time having multiple sub plots that will end with each season. They have to end at the end of the season, otherwise the overall season experience wont be satisfying. You watched all that and for what? Just to wait another year to actually see anything happen?

Now i can finally explain what I meant by all this :D OFMD in its entirety cant be like a movie, for its a series. They are formatted differently. If we wanted to compare it to a film, then the only way to do so is to make each season a new movie in a franchise. Each season has to have a satisfying experience on its own while ending in a way that leaves stuff that the next season can work with.

You cant make a bad season and then try to excuse it with "Its only a filler between act one and three" because while that would be excusable in movie, it's not really in series. because then youre just left with a second season that feels unfinished and rushed.

But even story wise, it just doesnt make sense to start redemption arc of the protagonist in act 2, get him together with the love interest and then actually redeem him in act 3. Its weird idk

I'm not saying that this season is bad when it hasnt dropped in its entirety yet tho. Dont quote me on that. I love ofmd and i really am enjoying this season. It just has more flaws than the first one.

Sorry that i rambled a bit and also sorry if it doesnt make sense. Im in school rn its hard to write something sensible while trying to pay attention to geometry or whatever we're doing

[mayy-bby]

Idk if it’s just me, but I find that 911 has a hard time following through with their character arcs and this leads to redundant storytelling (in some cases). We’ve seen buck go through this journey of never feeling enough/wanted/loved time and time again and somehow we always end up right at the start of it? After buck begins is seemed like they’d keep us in the loop of buck’s therapy and do check ins to see where he’s at in terms of his belonging but they sidelined that and brought it back up now in season 6. Which some people see as them not forgetting the important details, but is that what it is? Instead showing his progress from last time, we get a whole episode on buck coming to the same realization he always comes to (that he is loved and wanted and enough/family is not always blood you you build it). And this isn’t to say I didn’t like the episode but we’ve seen this exact thing before, just with a different set up. And the thing is we always see this part but we hardly see what comes after that. The part he follows through with his realizations. The part where the progress is shown. I know some people are gonna “growth is not linear”. Well yeah, but first, it’s not completely stagnant either and two, this is a tv show and you have to move the story forward at a quicker pace and show progress for storytelling. This doesn’t mean the person can’t have the same issues arise again, but let’s not take the person right back to square one to where the lessons from last time become non existent. Now we have Eddie going on another date which most people are saying is going to be some sort of failed attempt at getting back into things and what will lead eddie to the final buddie realization. Ummmmm, what was Ana’s purpose then? That breakup was so pivotal but there was zero follow through/follow up. And I can already feel some people wanting to say, “well maybe the follow up will happen now after his date with marisol.” But no. We shouldn’t have to wait like this insane amount of time to see the the after math of something major. I can’t even recall if Eddie had a proper conversation about the breakup with anyone? Or even a decent passing mention? It’s like it never happened. Maybe if he continued to talk about it after it happened here and there, then him going on this date would make more sense. Like just knowing a little more about Eddie’s mindset when breaking up with Ana/coming to the realization (beyond the whole instant family thing which was sort of vague ngl) that she isn’t the one and why - it would be soo telling. I mean, they could have at least had Eddie mention something along the lines of “I don’t know exactly why, but I knew for sure Ana wasn’t the one for me. I think maybe because Shannon and I got together and then pregnant so young, I didn’t have that much experience with love and dating. I feel like I’m still figuring that part of myself out and dating Ana helped me find my footing even though she isn’t the one.” Blah blah, etc etc. By getting some insight into his mindset after the breakup, him going on a casual date like this one would make so much more sense. It still would be annoying but at least we’d have some insight into why he’s even trying this when things with Ana ended the way they did. But they just left us with a very ambiguous and coded breakup that said a lot but also very little. But anyway. I actually don’t know if this date will be a one time thing, but either they’re going to be redundant with his love life once again or they’re going to settle with her as the final love interest. Kinda annoying either way

[spaceorphanssecondbreakfastclub]

SO's Bookclub : The Duke and I

Title: The Duke and I Author: Julia Quinn Genre: Romance

Goodreads Summary :

Daphne Bridgerton has always failed at the latter. The fourth of eight siblings in her close-knit family, she has formed friendships with the most eligible young men in London. Everyone likes Daphne for her kindness and wit. But no one truly desires her. She is simply too deuced honest for that, too unwilling to play the romantic games that captivate gentlemen.

Amiability is not a characteristic shared by Simon Basset, Duke of Hastings. Recently returned to England from abroad, he intends to shun both marriage and society—just as his callous father shunned Simon throughout his painful childhood. Yet an encounter with his best friend’s sister offers another option. If Daphne agrees to a fake courtship, Simon can deter the mamas who parade their daughters before him. Daphne, meanwhile, will see her prospects and her reputation soar.

Review:

My mother made a bet with me - that if she watched the show, I needed to read the books. So here we are. I'm not a huge fan of historical romance as a genre, but I feel like light reading in this insane world felt like a nice escape.

I have to say - I went in with really low expectations and I was pleasantly surprised. This book isn't anywhere near the absolute horror show I expected it to be. (A mix of terrible writing with bad stereotypes and corny romance sequences...) It's a functionally decent romance novel.

I'm kind of surprised at how much of the book the TV show adapted, which was kind of fun. The series, of course, added a ton of side plots, but kept the main heart of the book relatively intact.

The book, in turn, almost feels a little thin on plot, but the intention is to be just a simple romance between two people in the early 1800s, and that's really what people read these books for. It's not ground breaking or soul searching. It's just fluffy fluff.

And, like the first season of the show, I like the premise of the plot more than the execution. Fake dating is the set trope here, and I love fake dating! But the fake dating part of it isn't that huge, and it's a lot of Daphne and Simon repressing their feelings for each other. Which I totally get is a staple of historical romance fiction, but okay.

Daphne as a heroine is fine. (I'll get to that one questionable thing in a moment.) She's somewhat of a reader insert, and I hate to say it, but most of the other characters have more personality than she does. She spends the first half of the book kind of moping around thinking about how men don't like her. And the second half being angry at her husband. And.. it's fine.

Meanwhile, Simon is really your quintessential historical romance hero with his broodiness and his anger issues and his insistence that he'll never take a wife because he won't can't have children. Honestly, I'm not overly fond of this archetype, so yes I found myself rolling my eyes a bit. But I can't say that it wasn't unexpected.

And, you know, a majority of the book really is not bad. I'm kind of surprised that there's less smut in it than I expected, and despite a few silly lines here and there, it's nicely done. I can't say that anything got me invested in the two of them as a pairing (especially since they spent a majority of the book on said repressed feelings of attraction and... what else exactly do they enjoy about each other?) but if you're looking for standard romance, this is it.

The last... maybe fifth of the book does have some questionable elements to it. Not only is there a sequence where Simon gets trashed then takes his anger out on Daphne, Daphne does some stuff in turn that, well, is very out of line, and kind of sours the end of the book.

I will say, the last chapter has them chatting about Lady Whistledown and her possible identity, and I kind of perked up -- LW was really fun at the beginning of the chapters, and we all know why I'm really here anyway. ;)

Meanwhile, I am looking forward to seeing how the other characters get fleshed out. There weren't a whole lot of other characters outside of Daphne and Simon, and we really didn't get to see much of the rest of the Bridgerton family; save Anthony and Colin (who surprised me, he and Daphne are rather close in the books - mostly due to age).

Overall, if you're looking for a standard, historical romance getaway, this book works. But I don't think it's one to be blown away by.

Rating: 3 Stars

[neopuff]

so i just rewatched Hunters (2020) on amazon over the weekend - little did i know that amazon had chopped up and reorganized the first season to make it over an hour shorter than it was originally

wish i'd realized it sooner cuz a lot of good scenes were removed, maybe not plot important but they emphasized the point of a show where the discussion is Nazis Are Still Alive and Well. but anyway. for anyone who wants to know what all was cut here's an incomplete list of everything i noticed as i skimmed through the original version of the show today:

ep 1:

jonah thinking about college letters/looking at carol across the street before ruth gets shot

travis introduction scene

nasa nazi lady choking on her food, stripping in the bathroom

jonah & friends looking at girls on the beach

meyer talking about chava and the human chessboard scene

jonah eating the soup and yelling that its not his safta's soup

some dialogue removed from meyers speech to jonah at the end

ep 2:

the whole team introduction scene??? with all the comic book-y styles

"im tired im hungry im in fucking florida" millie scene

holstedder holocaust flashbacks were completely removed?

lonny saying he'd fuck ruth if she was younger and that everyone scares him, jonah mentioning cheeks and bootyhole to him

movie opening changed to mix with team introduction scene

scene with holstedder at the piano felt very different

meyer picking up the phone

how many nazis were killed in nuremberg

maria introduction scene

biff and tobias phone call

schidler corp nazi writing July 13 on a map

ep 3:

ruth first night in the camps flashback was shortened significantly

lonny pissing his name on the ground

millie and maria scene w/ travis watching them (that acknowledges sommers)

eva talking to nazi employees, "darwin's offspring"

Know This Now: How To Find A Nazi

"no one wants to be robin" "robin's got it made" conversation. "there's nothing wrong with wanting to stay alive"

stayin alive boardwalk scene where jonah sees young ruth

bootyhole and jonah couch conversation

joe and roxy hand scene and conversation extended

some travis stalking millie scenes were removed

"homegirl is a jew"

eva talking about biff's weapon, then travis and eva phone call where he reports heinz' death. a bunch of lines were cut. including "we've got friends in the FBI"

"ruth chose the darkness" mindy @ jonah

lonny and harriet scene in the restaurant

ep 4:

travis looking at photos in jonahs bed

wolf/ruth conversation lines cut

a bit of harriet & contact man's scene cut

lines from murray and bank nazi were cut, criticism of meyer's character

"compensation from maryanne's family is prepared" money scene with tobias

lonny harassing the bank cops

millie/maria i love you scene

meyer gives jonah the ring

ep 5:

"i don't look that jewish" "you? jew." lonny and jonah scene

tilda sauer presentation and information

jonah being terrible to carol

lonny on the phone with his agent

some dialogue between biff and juanita

ep 6:

some of harriet's flashbacks were cut, small scenes

some dialogue between biff and juanita

ep 7:

some of joe's traumatic share time story was cut

the slinky on una's stairs

music box cipher with the lullaby to get the code

joe: "hi. you're little." @ roxy's daughter, lingering looks between joe and roxy

lonny on the ground bleeding

ep 8:

travis arguing back at eva

jonah apologizing to mindy

Game Show Sequence - Why Does Everyone Hate the Jews?

ep 9:

US tribunal was reshot as a serious flashback rather than an old timey TV screening, also many lines were cut. "yup, that shit really happened!"

carol finding jonah's college acceptance letters

lonny and harriet talking about lonny's dad

jonah's friends seeing him drive away with the hunters and discuss talking to the cops

biff and millie talking

travis drinking eva's blood milk

big soundtrack change while lonny's sneaking into the electrical part of the factory

lonny explaining his fake bomb

ep 10:

harriet fishing meyer out of the water

millie talking to travis in jail and he talks about orange and a bunch of other lines were cut

meyer and ruth flashbacks were shortened i think

travis' parents coming to see him in prison and then he asks for a jew lawyer

some of travis' conversation with the lawyer was cut

[butters-flower-mom]

Just curious, I'm wondering how you got into South Park since you don't fit most people's idea of somebody that would be a fan of the show.

I'm honestly not sure how I ended up into it myself since it's so outside all of my other interests. I watched it when I was far too young. A lot of things in it were disturbing but I watched it anyway because it was a show for adults and at the time I wanted to be mature, which in my immature mind meant watching things that were sexual and violent and not playing Pokemon anymore.

I was also going through major changes in my life with my parents divorcing, moving away from my best friend, being forced to go to a new school, and my mom instantly remarrying and getting pregnant. My mom also wasn't paying much attention to what my brother and I were getting into so it was easy for us to watch the show. At first we only had rented VHS tapes because our new house didn't have cable or satellite. A friend of the family would babysit us at her house and her older kids would let us watch episodes on TV with them.

I don't remember when exactly it happened but I became attached to Butters. He was my fave before he got his very own episode, I know that for sure. I don't know if I would have kept watching the show if it weren't for Butters. I was no longer watching it just to seem adult. The show became comforting to me somehow and only became more comforting as Butters got more and more screen time. I remember being terrified they were killing him off when his mom tried to drown him and I was fully prepared to drop the show if they did.

By Season 6 I was in high school which absolutely sucked. I had no friends. All anyone there seemed to care about was parties and sex and I wasn't into those things so I was a loser. My mom's new husband was an abusive drunk. It felt like my life was falling apart. I did things to hurt myself. But through all of this Butters was there. And he was suffering too with the way his friends and parents treated him. We were suffering together. He made me feel less alone. His speech in Raisins made me somehow love him even more. He got me through high school.

As I graduated from high school and entered my 20's my interest in the show began to fade. I'd watch episodes if I learned Butters played a big role in them but I stopped watching the show consistently. Eventually I stopped watching it all together. I think the last new episode I managed to catch was Where My Country Gone? while I was flipping through channels. I saw they gave Butters a long-distance girlfriend and it kinda felt like catching up with an old friend and finding out you're both in a better place than when you last saw each other. (I was blissfully unaware of how short-lived his relationship with Charlotte was and how ugly their breakup was.)

Then around March of last year I randomly got recommended a video essay about Butters on YouTube. By this point I had ironically become almost anti-South Park, maybe due in part because of the fact it doesn't line up with the rest of my cute and soft interests. But I clicked the video because I remembered how much he used to mean to me and instantly all the love I had for him came flooding back. I'm not sure if it ever really left. I might love him even more now. We both made it through. We're both still here. And we both found each other again.