#ITS NOT WEIRD IMO ITS NOT A BIZARRE STORY

[cowboy-robooty]

physically holding back my rage when i go get my weekly uchuujin no kakushigoto update and see people bitchin and moaning about it. I WANT TO HURT YOU AND IM NOT FUCKING AROUND. YOU SHOULD HAVE BEAR MACE SPRAYED IN YOUR EYES SINCE YOU OBVIOUSLY HAVE NO FUCKING APPRECIATION FOR GOOD LITERATURE. S2G SHUT YOUR DUMBASS UP BEFORE I GO AHEAD AND SLICE OFF ALL YOUR FINGER TIPS TOO AND PUT YOUR TONGUE IN A BAG CORPSE PARTY STYLE CUZ YOUR OPINIONS ARE ACTIVELY MAKING SOCIETY WORSE.

[ouidamforeman]

R.e. discussions abt the new Good Omens season being polarizing on whether it’s good or bad writing, I think just saying it’s bad writing is weird and dismissive of what actual problems someone would have with it, and is just dismissing what it’s trying to do because it wasn’t to your taste. I think it more or less succeeded in doing what it wanted to do, which is an entirely different metric of judgment than whether or not you LIKED the effect of what it was doing. Regardless of what issues I personally have with it, I still think overall it effectively did what it set out to.

The thing is, it reads less like a traditional season of television and more like half of a novel. It’s weird. It’s directionless and meandering not because it’s poor storytelling but because I genuinely think it’s doing those things on purpose for other reasons. This is a single chunk of a larger story and I believe the overall purpose of season 2 isn’t to like, actually have a big plot or complete character arcs? If I look at it solely from where it is and what it’s presenting to me and let go of my preconceptions and expectations it appears that this season is just trying to put a few plot set pieces in place for the continuing story, and to nestle those plot pieces in a nonlinear narrative solely focused not on character Development but on character exploration and revelation. I feel like that’s why the actual moving plot this season was a very basic mystery, because it isn’t really the point? The actual story events are just backdrop for revelatory character vignettes, and I think that if this piece of storytelling was part of a novel that included whatever season 3/the actual story conclusion is going to be then people wouldn’t have nearly as many criticisms about the writing as they do when it’s presented as a season of tv. That’s also why it reads so fanfiction-y imo. My honest opinion is that s2’s biggest flaw that isn’t something incredibly subjective is that it’s let down by the fact that it got trapped in needing to present itself as a television season with all the baggage that medium has and not something more unconventional that would be kinder to its weird beginning-of-a-novel-ish meandering. Is this something a season of tv SHOULD do? I don’t know. Is this a fucking weird piece of television story wise? Yeah. Is it now officially a different story from the original novel? Absolutely. Does it have flaws, maybe even flaws that amplify the issues already present in season 1? Yeah. Does it accomplish what it sets out to do though? More or less yeah, I genuinely think so. Now if any of that translates into “badness” for you that’s fine. I think it was an immense risk to do this kind of thing for a tv season and it’s not going to click for everyone. But that’s fine. This is a bizarre and novel-y piece of tv media that’s just sort of doing its own thing, and whether you think that’s bad or not is secondary to how interesting that is I think. I just wish the criticism was more engaging with it instead of judging it, because I think what’s happening here is both much more simple and much more complex than most people are implying with their critiques. It’s much more interesting to meet it where it is imho, even though I do strongly wish it didn’t have to be released in this technically incomplete form.

TLDR I think ppl pointing at this season and calling it bad writing are partially not actually engaging with it on its level and partly confusing objective badness with personal taste. Regardless of whether you LIKED what it tried to do or not it was at least trying to do something, something that it mostly succeeded at, and that’s all i can really comfortably judge a piece of art on

[aihoshiino]

So in regards to Ruby randomly becoming the new center of B-Komachi offscreen (😭? ), do you think it would've been better for her to become the new center between mainstay & scandal, so that it adds more weight to Kana's feelings during Scandal and her outburst during her fight with Ruby? Or would it be better to leave Kana as the center during those moments (and leave her as center until she graduates) so that it adds more to Kana's frustration that despite being the center, she's the least popular? I assumed for the longest time that Ruby would become center after Kana leaves B-Komachi, to signify her growth as an idol. As of now, its weird that Ruby found out that Kana was resentful of the current B-Komachi situation, and then just...doubled down on it lol

YEAH LOL… A big issue I have with the B-Komachi stuff currently is how much time the main story & Viewpoint B + 45510 spends on communicating just how shitty the environment of gen 1 B-Komachi was for everyone while also being careful to get across that it wasn't the fault of anyone actually in the group, but the management and the generally miserable place the entertainment industry is for everyone but especially the young girls in it. It's bizarre, then, to see the story basically repeating all these same mistakes with gen 2 but never drawing attention to them… but I've ranted enough about how I dislike the way Ruby's idolhood is being handled lately that I'll hold my tongue for now.

So IMO, I actually think Ruby officially becoming the B-Komachi center and having it happen earlier in the story would have really strengthened and given better foundation to both Kana's insecurities and the blowup that happens between her and Ruby as a result. Kana feeling down about not being popular despite being the center is a good idea, but it's one of those things the story kind of talks about w/o really doing anything interesting with it. It spurs Kana to take action, yes, but it's largely an issue that just sort of takes place in the margins between panels and we don't get to engage with it much as readers. But I think if Ruby's popularity (resulting from her BH era) leading her to take the center from Kana would both emphasize Ruby's callousness towards the other two members of the group and make the reader really understand why Kana feels so helpless and at a loose end in B-Komachi. Not only is she unpopular but now the one thing she actually meaningfully contributes - acting as center - has been taken from her. Kana is a character defined largely by how desperate she is to be of use to other people, so I think that would make the spiral she goes into that leads into Scandal feel a lot more weighty.

It would also make the RBKN-AiNino parallels the Movie Arc tries to force feel a lot more grounded. By having Ruby usurp the center position from Kana just as Ai did from Nino, we would have an actual sense of these dynamics fully replicating themselves in this new generation of the group. It'd feel more organically woven into the story and thus it wouldn't feel quite as much of a plot cul de sac as it does in the main story.

[yardsards]

reading the things you post/rb while not knowing what the adventure zone is is kinda funny. I'll be scrolling my dash and see "NAH 'CAUSE BEANIEMAN GOT SO SCHLORPED WHEN THE PIANO FLAVORED STICK OF DEODERANT GOT SCAMMED" and I'm so tempted to get context, but it feels like life would be funnier without it

okay so like. the adventure zone is an actual-play ttrpg podcast (aka they record themselves playing dungeons and dragons and similar games and then edit down the recording so it's fun to listen to)

and it's kind of like 5+ different podcasts in a trenchcoat. cuz there's 5 completely separate games (well, 5 plus a couple way shorter games, but 5 main ones). and since each game is already pretty wild on its own, the fact that there are FIVE OF THEM definitely makes it sound extra bizarre to outsiders lol

there's:

1: balance: a standard fantasy world with some minor sci-fi elements. it's about heroes tracking down and neutralizing dangerous magical items and uncovering secrets about their own pasts. by far the most popular season and imo the best, but it gets off to a slow start

2: amnesty: a story about cryptids and magic in a modern day appalachian setting. been a while since i listened to this one tbh and i don't talk about it as much

3: graduation: young adults going to magic college and getting wrapped up in a demon war. this is the least popular one but not actually bad imo

4: ethersea: freelance adventurers from an undersea city exploring the world in a magical post-apocalyptic setting. my fav behind balance

5: steeplechase: like a defunctland video meets a heist movie, secret crime rings operating within a theme park. very fun, still in progress

they're released kind of like different seasons of a show, one after the other, but each "season" doesn't actually need to be listened to in order (ie you can listen to steeplechase before balance, but you'd have to start at ep 1 of steeplechase and not just skip to steeplechase ep 32 or else you'd be really confused)

honestly i've been halfway considering getting different tags for each game but i'm too lazy to change now

ANYWAY

the thing about the adventure zone is that it's a *comedy* podcast first and foremost. so most of the weird bizarre funny bits are just as funny and batshit insane even WITH context. hell, i'd say a lot of it is even MORE funny if you know what's going on.

though there is also some buckwild shit that you just get desensitized to. like one of the 3 protagonists of balance is named *taco* (but spelled taako) because it was originally just gonna be a silly one-off episode, so the player was like "haha i'm gonna be XD random and annoy my dm with this zany noun name", not knowing that there were gonna be 68 more episodes and it would eventually grow into a deeply emotionally moving story. so by the end you're fucking sobbing over this character's love and loss and you forget that "taco" is not a normal thing for an elf/wizard to be called

it's absolutely delightful

[backseatloversz]

it is never ever lost on me. never ever ever lost on me. how brave it is, imo, for writers to write deeply personal things, and to just. go on and share it with the whole entire world. especially when its not the most kind about the person its about and its very obvious exactly who its about and that person is someone that is still present in their life and will Know that the unkind writing thats been put out for the entire world to see/hear is about them. and that its not painting them in the kindest light. and that its not untrue. and i always wonder what sort of conversations that brings to the dinner table. because clearly since that person is still in the writers life, their relationship must not be entirely horrible. right? just. more or less complicated. if it brings any conversation at all? if it is ever stilted or awkward or they argue about it or if it just goes silently unspoken forever and how does it feel? to want to congratulate a loved one on their success of their writing that is deeply personal and scathing and obviously about you? it must be weird. it must! IDK. must be so bizarre. i could never. writers who put out deeply personal stuff r so brave in my eyes its insane. maybe sometimes its easy when they arent already famous and they dont realize how many people might someday be reading/listening to their words, but like. still! yknow? yknow. to put something out there like that knowing the potential of total strangers someday trying to pick your true angsty life story apart...... augh. i could never. be that vulnerable. I dont think. <- guy who overshares on his tumblr blog all the time

[werewolfetone]

As somebody who watches Bridgerton and really likes hearing your thoughts on it, I was wondering if you know about the lore reasons behind the colorblind casting and what your thoughts on it are because if I'm remembering the Queen Charlotte miniseries properly, then I'm pretty sure it's that the white king of England married Charlotte, a black German woman (who for some reason has a British accent in spite of the fact that she was apparently raised in Northern Germany), and they fell in love afterwards, which resulted in their love basically ending racism.

First of all please keep in mind that I'm white and so I would encourage you to seek out the voices of POC if you want to know more abt this + I'm definitely not the expert when it comes to representation of POC in historical fiction. However that being said I will say that I do know about the lore + the thing about it is that it's still kind of... hollow? Like, even if George III had married a Black woman and it had instantly ended racism in the UK, British regency society as it is reproduced in the show literally could not have existed as it did without 1. slavery and its legacy; & 2. the British empire colonising places in SE Asia + Africa + Ireland + the Americas etc etc. If one removed the British Empire and its atrocities from the world of the show everything would need to be different -- they would have to either straight up not set it in Regency England or create the most convoluted and complex alternate history worldbuilding imaginable to make it so that something even kind of similar could have been created without any racism. Which is possible and would have been really interesting, but they don't do that! They just stick actors of colour into the world as-is, creating the very weird situation of Black people standing in houses which historically were built with wealth brought to England from the colonies, drinking tea with sugar which at that time probably would have been made on plantations, occasionally bringing up a war which was ultimately the result of hundreds of years of tensions including conflict over colonies, and yet... declaring that racism has been ended. Unclear if the writers are unaware of the fact that racism is really still present in the world of their show due to this no matter how much they deny it or if the viewer is meant to assume that the characters just don't care about the suffering of people who one would think they would find solidarity with; neither option is good.

Secondly, and far more importantly imo, the idea that one must create an artificially diverse British upper class in the most bizarre way possible to have representation of POC in historical fiction about Regency England is deeply unserious. There were real notable Black people in Georgian England, not to mention the many communities of working class POC which existed in Europe at the time. So they really didn't need to decide that racism had been ended to tell the same story -- they could have had a fictional Black duke as the love interest anyway, because as previously stated, the idea of Regency Britain as a wholly white society is completely wrong. And the fact that Bridgerton kinda perpetuates this (racist) idea by pretending that their fictional world was necessary for diversity™️ and not just a result of lazy writing and lack of research... well. Not that you can't still enjoy Bridgerton but I'm personally not a fan

[thebuckandeddiething]

hi! i was wondering what you think of tommy’s character in general?

like ignoring him w/ buck, i feel like its weird he goes from being an AH to Hen (even though he was ‘covering his own ass’) to super cool with no on screen progress so i’m wondering if i’m the only one who finds his reintroduction really bizarre? from a writing standpoint itd only make sense if he is there as a plot device imo. even if eddie and buck don’t end up together i think its really weird for tommy to be with buck… he doesn’t even really seem to like him?

am i overthinking this bc im a media/writing scholar or do other people feel this way?

cheers :)

HI! I'm sure a lot of people feel that way and your degree certainly influences your perspective. I kinda can't put my thoughts on his character coherently, but I'll try lol

I feel like you have to pick a lane when it comes to Tommy:

take his whole presence in the show at face value from the flashbacks to the introduction in S7

take the past into account, but treat him as a sort of a positive rewrite specifically for Bathena's/Buck's stories

What I mean is that (before season 7) Tommy was a finished character = he had the bigoted past (Gerrard and stuff but still not really an excuse), a reconciliation into at least cordial relationship with the 118 (shown on screen as much as it was needed at that time) and was left alone somewhere so he can be mentioned in passing if need be.

Now, since Lucy's actress couldn't come back, Tim and the writers had to dig him out of that finished narrative and try to incorporate him back in. That's when we hit the wall of problems/behaviors resolved supposedly off screen and the plot device feeling. Basically, he was never a fully fleshed-out character and last season didn't have time to do it.

His interest in Buck is when we get to subjective opinions. People "hold a grudge" about the begins eps, dialogue may be shaky, plotlines (like the date disaster) may be interpreted differently, might like/dislike the actor, and for me again, it's the lack of time, so some interactions (juxtaposed a lot with Eddie, whom we know and love, or Buck's bubbly personality) feel disingenuous or plainly not that romantic.

So depending on what lane, as I put it, you start with thinking about his character, you will arrive at different feelings towards him. At the end of the day, I personally don't see Tommy staying because, as of 8x04, he is not integrated into the 118 in a significant way + is still not developed much = we know almost nothing about him or his relationship with Buck.

[sorry it turned into a an essay 😭 thanks for your question, tho!]

[freakywizard]

hiii r&m anon here again!!! i noticed you mentioned liking season 7, so i was wondering if you had any favorite or least favourite episodes, plotlines, all that jazz. season 7 debrief, if you will. would love to hear your thoughts!

ram anon gracing my inbox once again (always a pleasure)

huge rant below the cut (talking about rick and morty triggers the longwinded newspaper art critic in me sorry)

s7e2 and e4 were the best episodes in my opinion. absurd, darkly funny, overall just so perfect. i was especially excited about s7e2 since the rick/jerry dynamic has intrigued me since episode s3e5. i love that that episode basically just confirmed Rick and Jerry may be foils but are also perfect complements? they can only understand / appreciate each other when they are literally existing in each other's flesh? i try not to wax poetic about ram but this episode was tempting meeeee

and re: e4, i think this show's writing is at its best when the writers come up with a stupid concept and treat it seriously. i love that this episode saw the concept of 'what if corpse spaghetti' through to the end. classic dark comedy, absurd, wacky goodness. lovee it

one thing i do hate about this season (as well as seasons 5 and 6) is the number of callbacks to 'old' rick and morty. s7e3 and s7e8 were some of the worst episodes this season, mostly because they just reused old plotlines and developed them in the least interesting ways possible, imo. did the mid gag from s3e5 really need its own episode? it really did not. i think that this is one of the worst consequences of the show becoming less episodic and more serialized - the writers just endlessly milk the early seasons to recycle into plotlines, one-off gags, whatever. the self-referentiality and meta humor of newer seasons will always, always grind my gears severely.

also, s7e7 was almost unwatchable. it reminded me of s6e2 in all the worst ways - just dedicating an entire episode to a SINGLE movie reference, doubling down on the singular reference as the episode drags on. god that episode sucked. so boring, annoying, unfunny.

i have extremely mixed feelings on s7e5. On the one hand, I'm still annoyed that the backstory from s3e1 is even canon, and Rick is yet another entry in the long tradition of flawed male protagonists turned into a nihilistic depressed shitshow by the death of a wife. it's such a pat trope, imo.

HOWEVER, i really like how this episode developed Rick. I'll always be a fan of ruthlessness and revenge plotlines, so im biased. but i've come to appreciate Rick Prime as a villain, as a testament to how much Rick hates himself -- there's a version of himself out there that would torture himself across the universe by killing off his own loved ones, just to try to prove his own superiority? it's all very mindfucky but im super into it. Rick C137 killing Prime with his fists, all while Prime goads him? it was such a cool scene. i love when the show does selfcest

i also still have mixed feelings on the evil morty and his growing prominence in the series. it was nice when he was just a little treat, but it became clear in s4 the writers were aware of fan expectations for the character. i can't help but wonder if that's shaped the way they're writing him, especially giving him the centralized role in the story of possible-future-final-antagonist? that being said i've always liked evil morty, he's a fun character to watch on screen. although i'm extremely cautious of my enjoyment. he's already starting to feel like a fanfic rip-off of himself a little bit (that one line where he said 'well, they don't call me good morty' was so bizarre. evil morty was the fandom name for him, and the writers adopted it and made it a diegetic epithet for the character???????)

s7e10 was refreshing after a long season of Morty getting sidelined. I love how this one starts with a classic rick and morty set-up (what if *weird thing* in *random place*) but turns it into existential horror? really cool. i don't think it was the most subtle way to do morty character development, but it was interesting enough that i was invested. also, rick pinning morty's picture to the pinboard. so good

overall my reaction to this season is 'we're so back.' it was LEAGUES better than s5-6, which i think are like the ram dark ages. i don't think s7 was the best season yet (as some are suggesting) but I think that this season marks a positive turn for the quality of writing in the show.!!

here's my episode ranking in ( i mostly did this for fun)

E2

E5

E4

E10

E6

E1

E3

E9

E7

E8

Basically, e7 and e8 were irredeemably terrible. e9, e3, and e1 were mid/fine. e6, e10, e4, e5, and e2 were all varying degrees of peak rick and morty.

other mics. thoughts:

i felt like there was a lot of long, no dialogue, sad music montages that felt like references to the famous scene from s4e8? the one from s7e4 comes to mind immediately. but there were another few sprinkled in

s7e3 rick telling a scientologist "worship how you want" ??? he would not say that. who let that slide in the writing room?

the fight scenes and gore were all really well animated!! since s3 the animation has only gotten better and i love the gore

i actually love the new VAs. they're different from roiland, obviously, but i honestly think they're both doing a better job. the performances are more naturalistic, and less grating? i thought the change would weird me out, but it's subtle, and i like it

Rick canonically bad at eating pussy in his youth

[1800duckhotline]

what is vampire the masquerade and whats killer is dead. i assume videod games but i could be wrong... you seem to be having soo much fun im nosaayy 😁

omg hi mani im so flattered u would ask!! yeah ive been in the throes of videogames lately AHAH... oc brained but videogame about it sort of...

vampire the masquerade is actually a ttrpg originally published in the 80s i think, but it keeps getting updated so its not like. anything super old... whenever i mention "vampire the masquerade: bloodlines" im talking about the 2004 videogame created based off of the ttrpg! im biased in loving vtm and vtmb since well. it's about vampires. but i think it's an unique take on them that like makes the supernatural aspect not too boring compared to the classic supernatural vampire take. since it involves clans, a lot of vampire politics and societal aspects to it all, etc... Bloodlines itself is not a perfect game (ill avoid geeking out too much about the brief dev hell history it had) but i value it so dearly bc its so 2004 and is so gothic/alternative in its genuine influence. also the story is goofy but really good too (with um, simultaneously, the con that It Is a 2004 Game, meaning it has a lot of weird bigotries that were normalized for the time lol). Unforchy it's almost unplayable without downloading an additional patch mod that restores also a lot of cut content ^_^ but you make do... its so easy to make ocs for the game and the general ttrpg, sooo many ways you can go with your characters!! Bloodlines itself as a game is an action/adventure RPG mostly focused on combat (with stuff like stealth sessions) as well as various ways to resolve different quests. the variety of said outcomes is mostly limited by the fact the studio wasn't able to polish the game at all for release due to activision, the publisher, pushing troika games (dev team) to release the game early to compete with half life 2 at the time (yeah crazy i know). that said, the dialogues can be really charming and fun and offer a nice variety of things to do.. its not perfect but seriously is the best vampire RPG game around so far..

killer is dead is completely different (mostly because i can never focus on one thing for too long lmfao), it's an hack and slash 2014 game created by suda51 and grasshopper manufacture (same game devs behind no more heroes, lollipop chainsaw, shadows of the damned etc) and it's. an okay game. i dont even know if i can explain the story bc its like, a clusterfuck. and usually clusterfuck stories are goichi suda's specialty but this one goes over the moon (funny joke if You Know). it's a pretty mid game. I love it on one hand bc its easy to play and very stylish, tho the shaders sometimes can give you an headache. I also love the protagonist (mondo zappa) because to me thats a butch not just some guy. Unfortunately the game has the very strong cons of being too short for the kind of game it is, and also has an infamously bizarre minigame that's called "gigolo missions"... you basically go on "dates" with beauties (sexy girls basically), you give them gifts until they 'love' you and then you go have sex and they give you weapon upgrades as a result. the date though consists of you building up your "guts meter" by looking at their boobs or legs so it's like. REALLY STRANGE. CANT HASHTAG IM SORRY FEMINISM OUT OF THIS ONE I'M AFRAID.... it's so conflicting bc apparently suda didn't want to add this function but publishers forced him to. oh well. a solid 6.5/10 tbh. idk if i'd reccomend it tho maybe gameplays are better than getting it at full price imo (i got my game as a gift)

UM SO SORRY FOR GEEKING OUT...I HOPE THE EXPLANATION WAS CLEAR. My brain keeps jumping from media to media with no pause... i wanna focus on ocs again but this keeps happening hahaha

[aemiron-main]

time for more talk abt gay Mike: looking at how milkvan is set up is really interesting. because imo there’s absolutely no way in hell it was ever meant to be mutually romantic, especially in season 1, which is why it frankly baffles me sometimes that people point to S1 as evidence of Mike being romantically attracted to El. I’m not going to go through all of the evidence form s1 that he isn’t into her/is gay, but please just think about it for a second:

if you were a writer. and you wanted to set up a story that WAS about two people falling in love/even just being attracted to eachother in a puppy love way, two people experiencing any attraction at all even if it’s not “true love,” and you wanted to take your readers on the journey of falling out of love with someone or realizing that you like them but love somebody else more or realizing that you’re just not comparable as people, or anything like that, why the fuck would you have one of them ask the other if he’s going to be like her brother & then have him concede that he would be like her brother right before they kiss?

Like. There’s no need for it. Not only does it add NOTHING to a “falling in love/young love/puppy love/crush” story, but it actively takes away from that story (which it’s intended to do bc Mike is gay and never loved El romantically) and makes it weird and reinforces the association of that supposedly romantic relationship with platonic ones (familial relationships).

It would literally be one of the strangest (in a bad way) and stupidest ways possible to approach a genuine falling in love/crush/any form of mutual attraction scene and arc. It makes no fucking sense. Those familial parallels are not only pointless if Mike ever loved El (which would be bizarre for a show that plans out all of its scenes so meticulously that they basically never have unused footage) but they actively fly in the face of the idea of him loving her romantically/having a crush on her/any form of genuine romantic attraction because the familial parallels contextualize their bond as a platonic one.

It just makes absolutely no sense even just solely from a surface-level writing point of view. There’s no reason for it AND it would be actively detrimental to a “mutually attracted even if it’s just a crush” narrative. And so not only do we have those familial parallels ALONE hammering in the idea that Mike was never romantically attracted to El, but in addition to that, we have scenes of Mike being outright repulsed by other girls, so it’s not just El. He doesn’t like girls. He isn’t attracted to them. Gay gay homosexual gay!!! Like please seriously just sit down and really think about how absolutely bizarre it would be for not just one writer but MULTIPLE professional writers to sit down and go “yknow what’s really going to sell this puppy love? yknow what’s really going to sell the crush and the mutual attraction? yknow what’s really going to demonstrate the idea of falling in love with someone but then out of love with them/just not being compatible as people personality-wise? yknow what’s really going to make our viewers get hit in the gut by the feeling of falling out of love by building up the love first and then having it deteriorate? BLATANT VERBATIM FAMILIAL PARALLELS WHERE THEYRE ASKING EACHOTHER IF THEYLL BE LIKE SIBLINGS TO THE POINT WHERE IT MAKES THE VIEWERS PHYSICALLY UNCOMFORTABLE!”

Please be fr. Just think about how insane that is. It makes no fucking sense and it makes no fucking sense BECAUSE Mike and El were never meant to be romantic, Mike was never romantically attracted to El because he is gay, he never fell out of love with her because he never loved her romantically, if it was supposed to be a story about falling out of love with someone and then into love with someone else and trying to balance them, then they would’ve built up milkvan in a genuine, non familial way first. but they didn’t. the familial weirdness and platonic bond has been there since the start. since season 1. they have been tearing the idea of romantic milkvan down ever since Mike and El first crossed paths.

I am just. Begging people to really think about it because it would be such a comically ridiculous writing choice of they were ever meant to be romantic. Like PLEASE think about a room of writers going “gee what should this puppy love couple say before their first kiss? what really encapsulates the feeling of having a crush on someone even if it’s not true love? oh I know! “Will you be like my brother?” “No! Well, yeah, I guess it wouldn’t be any different.”���

Like holy shit. It’s literally hilarious to even consider it. It makes no fucking sense whatsoever if they were trying to set up a genuine romance/crush/puppy love/any form of attraction on mike’s behalf.

[minijenn]

Jen Tortures Herself With Every Dreamworks Animated Movie Ever: Flushed Away

So I think there's a reason why Aardman is best known for claymation above all else. Because when they try their hand at CGI, it turns out weird and uncanny, like Flushed Away here is.

But more on the animation in a bit, what's the story? Roddy is a pet rat who ends up, well, flushed away into the sewer, where he gets tangled up with Rita, a scavanger who is being hunted by a toad who plan on flooding the entire sewer city to get rid of the rats (So basically, to commit a Genocide). It's a.... mildly simple story with few surprises in it; bunch of action scenes, Roddy and Rita fall in love because of fucking course they do, bad guy is boring bad guy and our heroes save the day and learn the meaning of family or something idk I wasn't really paying that much attention.

Flushed Away, in its very nature, is kind of focused on that gross out toilet humor, so it immediately lost me with a lot of that. The rest of the humor that isn't that is just very bland and unfunny, and along the same lines, its action scenes don't really do a whole lot for me either and just tend to drag on way too long. I get the vibe that this, way more than the other Aardman/Dreamworks productions I've seen, is by and large the most focused at kids. Which hey, guess we're on a trend with that because so was Over the Hedge.

The characters are, fine I guess, not too stand out. Roddy is your typical protagonist who starts off all high-strung and stuck up until he realizes how lonely his previous life was and decides the sewer ain't half bad after all. Rita is ok, the usual Dreamworks scrappy "tough girl" love interest that we've seen before and will see again in this rewatch (I forgot to mention this in my previous list but so many of Dreamworks ladies are like this, Tzippoah, Chel, Marina, Fiona, hell even Astrid imo). As for the rest of the characters, they're very one note. Our villain doesn't even have an actual name, he's just called The Toad, and he's about as boring as you'd expect any power-hungry antagonist to be.

And finally, the animation. It is... weird. I respected Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit for how technically impressive they were, because claymation is very difficult and takes so much work to perfect. But this movie is CG animated, yet still utilizes Aardman's usual signature style. As a result, you get weird character models, with bizarre lighting and textures that look unfinished almost. The movement of the characters is smooth enough, I suppose, but this style just... doesn't lend itself well to anything other than claymation. It's just ugly man, idk what else to say.

So yeah, like I said in the Over the Hedge review, we're deep into Dreamworks' first "mid" era now. Kind of a shame the Dreamworks/Aardman teamup streak ends here because I don't actually hate Aardman's work, even if I do find their character models a little... uggo. Unfortunately, this is definitely the worst of the lot when it comes to the Aardman trilogy. No wonder that most people forget it exists because even after just one viewing, that's what I intend to do too.

Overall Rating: 4/10

Verdict: Flush these uggo rats into hell where they belong

Previous Review (Over the Hedge)

Next Review (Shrek the Third)

[gayspock]

OK SOMEEEE gripes

im ACTUALLY extremely conflicted on some of the present day stuff and i think its mostly down to the characters

like im very happy with jeff, and i think he's fine as is - brilliant, even, bc hes a genuinely refreshing take imo as opposed to what they could have easily done (i.e unlikable, distant from it all husband). not that he would be CRAZY or unreasonable to resent shauna, but like... its just fucking so much funnier + more interesting to me to see a character kind of just go with it, rather than to have them stew in angst. like i think its more interesting and allows for them to explore different beats than what you'd assume they would if you'd just known the basics of what shauna was up to. imo

similarly i was happy with adam as a character, too, and i think they developed him well enough for who he was and how he functions in this story. im glad he didnt turn out to be javi (if he was, i guess, bc he still could be technically that kinda suck wway more now tbh booo) and whilst there was nooo way he was gonna survive if he was just some guy which he was

theres also guys like kevyn. my jokes aside abt how scary he is im kinda fine with him, and i do actually makes some kinda sense that hes a cop + that he's now so straight-laced. some loser divorced dad. and it'd be a good comparison to natalie, and the lifestyle she lives now and how their paths diverged. however i kind of wish they'd... just let him go? like i wish he'd been at the reunion, and they'dhad that exchanged and then he'd just walked away to his wife and kids and her back to the yellowjackets no return no return no return huh what was that YEHA. my point is. i feel like there's no true resolution between them two thats organic and it just kinda feels weird to keep him around past that. i know they need a cop character for whats happening with shauna now but it just feels kinda ... bizarre to have him playing that role with that creep dude. bc whilst i do prefer limited characters in a show like this and to keep it tight and clean it just feels weird for it to be him and for it to be THAT insular AND, again, for him to keep sticking around when i dont feel like theres anywhere for him to go.... like its kinda DIFFERENT with the other cop dude, bc he isnt pre-established and he does kinda just function moreso as just. a fucking yuckhead fuckhead but instead its just this weird uhhhh. and kevyn is back! um. he will continue serving this purpose and we will never touch on him and natalie again. bc we shouldnt ofc but it also feels weird to have him there without ever mentioning it LOL

who else. fuck. like i am also very conflicted abt tai's wife and son like.... they do just feel a bit like- theyre just there? and i think that DEFINITELY makes some sort of narrative sense with tai, and with her whole deal- she has it all, she has everything but she has nothinnggg but... IDK KINDA SAD MAN. bc its weird i'll go back to this with jeff and callie, but it does make SENSE that the non-yellowjackets characters are always gonna be secondary with the story theyre telling in more ways than them just being secondary characters but with how fucking impossible it is to reconnect with fucking ANYONE after everything they did/went through BUT ITS LIKE... like i said i kinda like jeff and ironically his absolute lack of personality became a personality, whereas with simone&sammy i feel like theyre just kinda... SUPER functioning and that does kinda make me worry because whilst i know a lot of ppl are yelling for tai/van endgame... i dont know it feels weird to write them off fuckin completely which is what i feel like the show might kinda lean into at some point...😭like i want more for them, and from them. and i also sorry i also hate fucking "scary child who sees the supernatural" trope SORRYYYY its so tired to me and so lazy . give this kid some proper fucking development

and i think its also another issue im having with the present day stuff. theres too many characters rn and its being misspent. like do not get me wrong im not against quirky elijah wood BUT i feel like misty's ENTIRE. FUCKING. ARC. RIGHT. NOW. would be so much more fucking effective if she was alone and tracking down natalie by herself and kinda struggling with that. OR if they kept up her rapport with jessica- like have her tag along, whether it'd be under the guise of a fixer or not, and maybe have her cause some tension bc again if eel like.. ITS SO MUCH WEIRDER just having jessica's entire stint just come to an end in the way it did and it would have been a much more solid throughline into s2 than to bring in elijah wood whos just genderbent misty and its like . ok its just nott.... INTERESTING TO ME... SO WHAT. SHES FOUND A GUY LIKE HER? WHO CARES MAN. IM SAYING THIS AS A LITTLE FREAK WHO CANT CONNECT WITH OTHERS & YEARNS FOR KINSHIP, LIKE... I JUST FEEL LIKE ITS KINDA BACKWARDS AND REGRESSIVE AND NOTHINGGGG. jessica was a much weirder fucking dynamic and i think could have been interesting and i do think theres ways they could have had them both pursue natalie but now its just... ehhhhhh like

and i also feel like elijah wood is kinda bringing up the comedic parts of misty's story and dont get me wrong i LOVED a lot of the dark humour bits from her in s1 but i feel likw now its kinda getting too close to just. that. kinda like just oh funny joke funny dark humour. and losing a lot of the substance it should have, which is kinda necessary to the humour itself....AND he's sort of stealing her limelight like WHO CARES. GO AWAY DUUDE. have confidence in misty to be able to CARRY this shit, cmon, bc no offence elijah but SHE WAS WAY BETTER AT IT! bc thats whats so GOOD ABOUT THE SHOW OTHERWISE- you have the confidence to let all these girlies to carry their plotlines by themselves, so dont slip!!! GET BACK UP. and again im saying with the too many characters thing- its just... ehrhh. who cares to spend so much time on him??? whos just out of nowhere when its like.. again i'd prefer it if you spent that time with taissa or with .....

CALLIE. SHHES PROBABLY THE PERSON IM THE MOST CONFLICTED ON IN THE WORLD. bc in so many ways again i feel like we cant focus on her too much in shauna's little life that shes made for herself but I JUST... I CANT HELP BUT FEEL LIKE WE'RE IN THE MOST UNCOMFORTABLE SPOT IMAGINABLE WITH CALLIE, wherein we dont get enough of her and her side to really empathise with her but we get too much of her to find her on the wrong side of irritating-AND THAT. SUCKS. THATS THE WORST. EVER. BECAUSE SHES LITERALLY A TEENAGE GIRL. I FEEL LIKE THERES SO MUCH MORE THEY COULD DO WITH THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SHAUNA/CALLIE IF THEY PUSHED FOR IT MORE, BUT ITS JUST... again its in this such an awkwwaarddd position where they only bring her in to be difficult it feels like. and the thing is? shes being reasonable. MORE than. shes totally justified in all the shit shes doing. but bc of the unfortunate way its framed she comes off as...... sadly.... unlikable which . again AGAIN IT SUCKS. BECAUSE SHES A TEENAGE GIRL AND THIS FEELS LIKE THE FIRST SHOW IN A LONG TIME TO HAVE A CAST FULL OF UNLIKABLE FUCKING TEENAGE GIRLS BE THE BEST EVERRRRRR AND SHE COULD BE SO GOOD MAN SHE COULD BE SUCH A GOOD WAY FOR SHAUNA TO LOOK INTO THE PAST BUTEE..... they kinda just write her off too and bring her up to cause complications obly. thats all it is. and i dont know i do get it i dooo get it bc again it makes SENSE with shauna and who she is and where her life is that the presentation would thereforebe kinda more her perspective but also... i do just feel... ITCHES. LIKE IM CLAWING AT THE WALL

ok last thing maybe idk. idk how i feel about lottie at all. its strange. i felt like she..... was kinda not present enough in s1. does that make sense ever at all. i wish we had more from her and her whole visions thing, and she had as much focus in the past as the others did from the very beginning. bc i feel like in s1... we didnt see enough of her in that regard? like we got her- we got bits of her. but not enough of her-her. bc im fine with her kinda story on paper (ish) and how its playing out but i t does feel weirdly unba;anced across s1 / s2. and its throwing me a bit there

[ojacksonscohen]

love your review! I agree the back and forth was really annoying. I think the biggest failure was just not making it as believable that she would constantly take him back. they shouldn't have made will more villainous per se, but more ambiguous for us? like we as the audience clearly knew he was full of it which only made liv's decisions more annoying and stupid. we didn't see their journey or truly why she was so in love with him. that all came from her narration. all we saw was this smooth, rich suave guy with a sexy hotel job from the get-go. and yes liv had a load of issues stemming from childhood to justify why she fell for it but jenna I feel also played liv a little too...self assured? if that makes sense. also I didn't read the book and the trailer made me think the show would be about liv constantly trying to kill will in different ways in the wilderness but failing each time while he remained oblivious 😭 the wilderness barely played a part. And the prison scene was def sexy. If they leaned into a psychosexual dynamic with liv and will I would have been so into it.

thankyou bby!

wills a weird character, all the horrible things he does are revealed by accident (liv reading his messages, finding the sex tape, forcing will to tell her about the key, her mum finding the photos, and sending the tape to the police) so while he’s a shitty dude, he’s not Evil. he just never really came across as a fully fleshed out person?? he was just filling the role he needed to in the moment. i actually think we might have benefited from more time spent with will and cara together, if only to confirm that he:

a) really didn’t care about livs feelings or b) that he was just leading cara on

like obviously he’s our main antagonist, but then we have these weird pockets where we’re supposed to feel…bad? for him? the one off nods to that fact that he came from an abusive family, that absolutely bizarre story about the dead bird, his genuine grief for cara, and then a single line where he posits that he might actually have a really problem (with keeping it in his pants) but it never goes anywhere!!

100 percent agree that there is zero narrative to show WHY these two people are still together… like she wants him dead but all it takes is some puppy dog tears and hes back in bed with her…? but also why is he staying with liv? he loved cara, and even after she died and liv kept threatening him, why bother staying???

we know the absolute best scene was the prison scene, but i wish will had put things together sooner, like he knows she killed cara but can’t prove it and liv knows that AND knows that she could pin it on him so they’re just left hating each other and needing each other to survive!! HAND IN UNLOVABLE HAND AND I HOPE YOU DIE I HOPE WE BOTH DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

sorry i blacked out there.

im with you on liv’s overall self assuredness, even in her messy drunkenness she was always put together, one step ahead of everything and everyone (the scene where she recorded will confirming it was self defense was….. ridiculous imo) there was a taste of the female cop not believing her but that disappeared. and they definitely oversold her trying to kill him multiple times adfklasdjf even in the book she didn’t really want to kill him and tried to give him an out. will is also very stupid in the book, not really suave at all and it turns out cara was sleeping with a bunch of the men at the hotel and he was duped by her!

book liv also gives off a way more frantic vibe!! she was actually stalking cara, killed another boy when she was a teenager, went to a grief counseling meeting under false pretenses and ended up cheating on will (with garth). its also made clear in the book that after she kills cara (thinking its will) she realizes that she actually does still love him and works hard to keep them together (by providing him with an alibi and generally covering for both of them)

i think when the show removed her general insanity and internalized misogyny they made her boring :(

[artificialqueens]

🏳️‍🌈 Bitch Fight Ch.18 (Multi; JeLa) - Lita

Welcome to the world of Femme Fatale Wrestling. The future is female, and we’re here to prove it.

A/N: Heyyyyy….So, I’m still alive. Sorry about the nearly-a-year posting break, I changed jobs irl, got side tracked with an original fiction project, and have been generally super busy - but both I and this fic are very much still alive. I’m aware that it’s been a minute, so if anyone needs a refresher, the fic in its entirety can be found here. 

Anyway - this is the long-awaited Jinkx Chapter™ and the point at which the story (imo) reeeaaalllyyyy starts to get good. So I hope you all enjoy, and to those of you who are still here and sat through the nine month hiatus: Thank you &lt;3

______

CHAPTER 18: YOU’VE STILL GOT IT

Dela had already left the house before Jinkx woke up. That was weird. Usually she didn’t leave to do anything without pestering her to get out of bed first. That did drive her a little insane - not that she’d ever say that out loud. Dela was trying. The fact that Jinkx hadn’t come with some kind of post-injury instruction manual made things difficult for the pair of them - she felt guilty about it. But acting on that guilt required effort that she didn’t have the capacity for. 

She’s been bizarrely cagey and quiet since the show on Saturday, honestly - reluctant to talk about work, distant, inside her own head. Jinkx wants to help, but the part of her that knows how to is miles away; trapped behind some impenetrable wall held in place by surgical screws. 

Regardless, Dela is god-knows-where, and Jinkx is alone, which she doesn’t deal well with. Being awake when she’s by herself is unpleasant - seconds drag on forever into minutes, and she feels agonizingly conscious of the time that she’s wasting. She’d set up camp in the living room, and more than likely wasn’t going to move until it was an acceptable time to go back to bed - coffee on the table, and Macho sitting on the couch a few feet away from her, stirring from his nap every few minutes to claw at the couch or glare at her like he wants her dead. The TV is on, but she isn’t exactly watching it. She scrolls through her texts, blankly waiting for Dela to respond to her and tell her what exactly she was doing, and trying her best to ignore the litany of unread messages from Bill. She’d deal with him later. 

‘Later’ was becoming an increasingly nebulous concept. She missed him, in a way - it was like he’d stopped caring when she got hurt. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him face-to-face, and the text correspondence she got from him to report back from the events of shows tended to be curt and impersonal - a couple of words, nothing more. Well, he was busy. And he was serving his purpose, she guessed. She hoped. In all honesty, she wasn’t really sure. She felt guilty about that too. 

She feels like her body is constantly heavy; doing anything is difficult, in a way that she struggles to justify. On the days where she’s physically in pain, it makes sense at least. Or when she’s depressed - when something’s happened, when she’s actually struggling. She hates feeling like this - like a shell of a person, but without an excuse. On paper, she should be okay. 

She’s spent the bulk of the last year mentally torturing herself like this. Being angry with herself when she feels like shit, and equally angry when she doesn’t and yet still can’t bring herself to function. The promotion had become a real point of shame. A few months of absence felt understandable - but a fucking year? She knew that she was letting people down, and in some way or another she’s lulled herself into thinking that maybe they’re  better off without her. She didn’t have much faith left in her abilities as a promoter, or a booker - and if she couldn’t wrestle, then what was the point in her? She’d fucked up before. 

She didn’t know how she felt about Manila being back, even if it was just for a night. Her gut said she didn’t like it. 

That night barely held a coherent shape in Jinkx’s memory - the blood pooling on the mat, Raja’s seizure in the hallway, the unblinking terror on Manila’s face. Jinkx had gotten home from the emergency room at four in the morning, after spending all night picking up the pieces as best she could. She’d sat staring at the living room wall until the sun came up - still in her ring gear, blood that wasn’t hers drying in her cuticles, feeling like the walls were closing in around her. She recalled this horrible sense of foreboding overtaking her, like she knew that this was only the shitty start of something that was about to get much, much worse. 

Her last exchange with Manila had been awful - Manila had been angry with her, and she had every right to be. She’d been on her way out the door regardless, but that didn’t change how terrible Jinkx felt about the way it ended. The situation with Magnolia was an embarrassing, shitty mess. Going off-script like she had was a problem on its own, even without the state she’d left Raja in. And yet a month down the line, she’d still been under contract. 

Moreover, Magnolia had been holding the title - a position that Manila was furious about. She had made an absolute point of refusing to listen to any excuses Jinkx tried to give. They’d been flimsy at best - maybe it was a good thing that she’d been unable to get a word in edgeways. Anything she could have said would have been far too easy to poke holes in. 

Jinkx has been put in a shitty position; being strongarmed by her talent, apparently incapable of growing a backbone and doing the right thing. She didn’t have any concrete proof that what Magnolia had done to Raja was deliberate, and Magnolia had made it crystal fucking clear that if Jinkx fired her, pulled a screwjob, or interfered in any other way, she’d go straight to every dirt-sheet that would listen to her and drag both her and the promotion’s names through the mud. That had terrified Jinkx to her core. 

About five years ago, someone had put it together that the Jinkx Monsoon who now had tits and ran an all-women’s promotion was the same one who’d appeared as an acne-ridden sixteen-year old boy in an ancient TLC documentary about pro wrestling bootcamps. Maybe using the same ring name since she was a teenager had been a bad idea after all. There’d been a minor shitstorm on R/SquaredCircle - apparently it had been a slow news week, because then Pro Wrestling Insider ran a story about her. That had sent a few assholes in her direction but equally gave the promotion some free publicity. Then WWE had fired Jim Ross two days later, and everybody moved the fuck on. 

It hadn’t been a big deal - she couldn’t exactly be outed if she’d never been in the closet in the first place. Her being trans had always been something of an open secret. For fuck’s sake - she’d used ‘Dude Looks Like a Lady’ as entrance music for years, she’d never exactly been subtle. 

And then some mid-tier ex-WCW guy had started a Twitter rumor that she was lying about her gender identity, and she’d only founded FFW to enable her to perv on women. The allegation effectively ruined three months of her life. Some of the things she’d read about herself were downright fucking vile - they’d been forced to cancel two shows; she’d had to shut down all of her social media, and even then found herself getting death threats sent to her business email. Femme Fatale had been in its infancy, up and running for a little under three years, and it had nearly killed the entire promotion. 

She’d had an awful, terrifying gut feeling that it would only have taken one bit of crappy press to reignite that level of public hatred, towards both the promotion and her personally - crappy press that Magnolia was clearly more than happy to provide. If it came straight from the mouth of someone who’d worked with her, rather than unsubstantiated crap from some bastard she’d never met with too much time on his hands, then Jinkx would have been definitively screwed. She’d learned the hard way how fragile her standing was. The threat had gotten to her, in a really fucking horrible way. She wasn’t sure if that had been Magnolia’s intention, but it had definitely worked. 

So, she’d spent weeks handling the situation with kid gloves and waiting to see if a solution jumped out. It didn’t - and in the end, she’d fired her anyway, and lived to tell the tale. 

Not that there hadn’t been consequences. Bianca, Morgan, and Detox - the three people originally tasked with trying to get the belt off of her before Courtney eventually succeeded - had all threatened to quit; her relationship with Manila had been irrevocably damaged. Raja’s career was over, and Jinkx hadn’t been able to look Courtney in the eye for weeks after that fucking massacre of a match. She couldn’t unsee the blood trickling from her nose, or the missing front tooth. It only twisted the knife in further. 

Not to mention the guilt over feeling relieved that Magnolia had been stupid enough to shoot on someone twice. Maybe on some subliminal level, that had been her intention in letting the whole mess fester for as long as she did. Jinkx had known it would only be a matter of time before she tried it again. Firing someone over a botch wasn’t the done thing; deliberately injuring an opponent was entirely different. It was an easy out; one that didn’t put her neck on the line. 

But it was her failure that had gotten them there in the first place, and her price to pay to fix it - not anyone else’s. It should have been Jinkx in that match instead of Court. It should have been her blood on Magnolia’s hands - her tooth on the ring canvas. Her pound of flesh. 

Jinkx been reckless, and stupid. She’d endangered her talent by putting them in the ring with someone who had shown their capacity to be deliberately fucking evil, and for what? 

Every stupid mistake she’d made in that couple of months had been haunting her for the last two years. It was undeniable proof - she sucked at her job. She’d put people in harm’s way to save her own skin. And if that was how she’d been before everything had happened, she didn’t even want to think about all of the ways in which she’d probably fuck it up now. Back then, she wasn’t a miserable shell of her past self. She’d still had passion; she still cared. 

She glances over at the TV, trying her level best to fucking distract herself. UFC. The fight looks pretty bizarrely matched, a dark-haired beast of a woman with a shaved head getting the shit knocked out of her by some skinny kid with bright green hair. Buzzcut is bleeding all over the place; there’s barely a mark on Green Hair. Jinkx winces.  

MMA had never made a lick of sense to her; she’d been in her share of messy matches, but that damage was always superficial. Busting someone’s face open with your bare hands is a completely different ballgame, and it’s always made her feel a little bit sick to watch. Plus it just seemed boring - maybe that was the sports-entertainer in her. What’s the point of having a cage there if nobody is gonna jump off of it? Where the fuck was all of the pomp and circumstance? What she was getting here was glacially-paced punching and kicking - no flair, just blood-sport. 

Buzzcut takes a kick to the head and immediately hits the deck. Jinkx shuts the TV off. 

Legitimate knockouts scared the shit out of her. She hated watching them happen; hated thinking about what kind of state they left people’s brains in. Jinkx had suffered through two concussions in her career - one when she was a rookie; the second the night she broke her neck. Dela had had four. Every time it was terrifying, and thinking about it for too long kept her up at night. 

Watching Dela get hurt had been a kind of pain that Jinkx hadn’t been fully prepared for. Every time anything happened, she found herself wracked with a sense of sickening guilt for being the one that led her down this path in the first place. The night she’d come home after the hardcore match with Morgan - broken nose, swollen lips, tears cutting streaks through the dried blood all over her face - Jinkx had barely been able to look at her. 

Jinkx had been in the ring with Dela the night she broke her leg - she’d watched it happen, horribly aware of exactly how bad it was, but glued to the spot, unable to do anything. Everything about it - the sound of snapping bone; the twisted, terrified look on her face as Bill trying to cinch in that stupid fucking ankle-lock - had haunted her for weeks. The sound of her voice was what had cut her the deepest; the pain and the panic behind her words, thumping the mat with the palm of her hand, screaming ‘I quit, I quit’ over and over. 

Jinkx hadn’t spoken to Bill for almost a month after that. Dela had been the one to insist that they patched things up - she was okay, it had been an accident, he didn’t realize. Given that she’d been the one that had to go through three hours of surgery and six months of recovery because of his stupidity, she’d been the authority. Jinkx had been furious; after watching him treat Dela like an inconvenience at best and a personal affront to him at worst for as long as they’d been together, her patience for his shit had worn thin. 

Bill and Jinkx had turned up at the same run-down training school for the first time on the same night, and had been joined at the hip for about four years as perennially single high-schoolers. He was a little abrasive, and had a tendency to talk over her - but underneath it all, Jinkx had sensed a kind of insecurity in him, veiled by this performative, hypermasc bravado. He’d clung onto her from the moment that they met and refused to let go. She didn’t mind - he’d never cared about the fact that she was a little weird, and he didn’t make her feel like an outcast the same way that other guys did back then. 

He’d been the person responsible for the chip in her front tooth; a slightly overenthusiastic superkick during their first match in front of a crowd had taken a diagonal chunk out of it, which she’d then proceeded to accidentally swallow. She’d refused to get it fixed - in the first instance because she hadn’t had the money, then later because her response to Bill ribbing her for her fucked-up smile had always been to remind him that it was only like that because he was a shitty wrestler. It was a part of their personal history. 

Bill and Dela had never exactly gotten along. Well, Bill had never exactly gotten along with Dela, and had never tried to. He’d never really learned how to share Jinkx - he got jealous and clingy in the locker room when she tried to talk to other people for god’s sake. Dela gatecrashing their little bromance had seriously rubbed him the wrong way.

Dela hadn’t been a wrestler when they first met - a recent college graduate, she’d worked in the bar that Jinkx and the other guys frequented after shows, since the staff seldom kicked them out for being too rowdy. They’d both crushed on her for weeks, from afar - Jinkx had been the first one of the two of them to make a move, and it was like Bill resented Dela for picking the wrong guy. Not that he’d ever said that out loud; not that he’d even really tried to pursue her. She’d just been supposed to telepathically know that he’d wanted her too - he was the better man, or rather the only one that succeeded at being a man. It was like he hadn’t even viewed Jinkx as competition. 

Once he got to know her, besides thinking she was hot, he couldn’t stand her, or at least he claimed he couldn’t. Her voice was like nails on a chalkboard; she was too fake, too immature. Before she became a wrestler herself, she didn’t understand ‘their’ world - he called her a ring-rat more often than he used her actual name - but when she started, she sucked at it and wasn’t trying hard enough. She was pretty much incapable of doing anything right. For fuck’s sake, he even hated the fact that she didn’t argue back when he tried to start shit with her. It had always driven Jinkx quietly insane, but Dela insisted that she didn’t mind. 

Jinkx feels bad for Dela more than anyone through all of this shit. She tried - she fucking tried, so hard. With everything; with him, with the promotion, with her. Jinkx still felt just as consumed by that incredible, overwhelming love for her as she had back when they first got together, and that made the guilt and the pain so much worse. Dela was suffering because of her - she could see it. Knowing how much of a horrific, draining burden she’s become on everyone she cares about disgusts her. 

Five-percent survival rate. That sentence had haunted her since she got injured. Why did she get to be one of that five percent? It doesn’t feel fair. Better people have fucking died because of the same shit, and the ones that lived didn’t waste the time they’d stolen by rotting away in their own misery and self-pity. 

Jinkx’s phone starts vibrating in her hand, jolting her back into the real world. The name on the caller ID makes her stomach drop. MANILA LUZON. 

 “Manila? What’s going on? Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Manila’s voice on the other end of the line is clipped and guarded. Jinkx feels uneasy. “Look, I’m gonna cut to the chase - Mateo got a developmental deal with WWE, so it’s looking pretty likely that we’re gonna be moving back sometime soon. I need somewhere to work, and I-“

“That’s kind of not my area anymore. Dela said you were at the show on Saturday, did you talk to Bill?” Jinkx says. Her voice feels like an answering machine; verbally shitting out the exact same thing she has to tell Dela, or any of the girls, when they try to come to her about shit, without any kind of conscious thought. Talk to him, I can’t deal with this right now

“No, I didn’t - why the fuck would I? I’m not asking a referee about a new contract deal. It’s your promotion,” Manila’s tone spikes. 

“It is, but-“

“Jinkx, come on.” Jinkx can practically hear Manila rolling her eyes. “I didn’t see you around once the other night. What the fuck is going on?” 

“What?” Jinkx says absently, barely paying attention. She doesn’t want to deal with this right now. Manila had always been spectacularly talented at being a bitch when the situation necessitated it, even before the whole horrific mess with Raja. That had just honed her ability to focus said talent in Jinkx’s direction. 

“You were at the show, right?”

“No,” Jinkx says flatly. 

“What the- why?” Manila sounds astonished. Did she really not know? How the fuck did she not know?  

“I’m retired, Manila,” Jinkx feels like she’s stating the obvious. Manila pauses for a second. Jinkx hears her swallow. 

“As of when?”

“I…Shit happened last year,” she doesn’t feel like explaining herself right now. Manila doesn’t respond, leaving a pause in the conversation that begs for an explanation. Jinkx grits her teeth. “Botched piledriver - I broke my neck, triple fusion surgery, whole career down the toilet in five minutes.” 

“And how is that stopping you from being backstage?” Manila asks pointedly, moving straight along from what Jinkx had just said without any kind of feeling. Jinkx feels like she’s smacking her head against a brick wall. She stays silent. “I’m serious, Jinkx. It’s a mess - how did you let things get this bad?”  

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I told you that you had a goddamn laundry list of issues to work out two years ago when I left. It’s bad enough that you let Magnolia stick around after what she did to Raja - it’s bad enough that you let her keep the belt. I’d thought things would have improved by now, and somehow they’re worse.”

“You’re still mad about that?” Jinkx groans, exasperated. She wasn’t about to give away the fact that she herself wasn’t even remotely over it yet - the only person who didn’t seem to be holding onto any resentment or guilt over the whole thing was Raja. Though that was probably because she didn’t remember most of it. 

“Raja nearly died, and you let the person responsible get away with it - I care about her, of course I’m still fucking mad. You can’t do that to somebody.” 

“How the hell are you guys still not fucking?” Jinkx mutters under her breath. She really hopes Manila hadn’t heard her - that would do less than nothing to help her case. 

“You know that Courtney went off-script on Bianca, and that Adore kid, right?” Manila asks, sharp and confrontational. 

“I- what?” Jinkx sits up - pretty certain that she’d misheard something. “What the fuck did she do?” 

“Ran in during their match - she hit Bea with a chair, slapped Adore around a bit, then demanded a title match. Dela and Bianca tried to convince me it was a work, but it was super obvious.”  

“Manila, I- look, are you sure? Like, this was definitely Courtney?” 

“I’m not stupid, Jinkx.”

“I never said you were, but Courtney’s the champ. Why would she need to-”

“Uh, no she’s not,” Manila says disbelievingly. She pauses for a second. “Jinkx, do you seriously not know who your world champion is?” 

“I thought I did - there was a bit of a hiccup a few weeks ago, Adore botched the finish and accidentally won the belt, but Courtney got it back.” Jinkx pauses. Someone isn’t telling her something. “Are you serious?”

“Of course I’m fucking serious. This is ridiculous, Jinkx. You’re in charge, and you can’t let any of this crap fly. You can’t let people run around shooting on each other, you can’t not pay attention to what’s going on in your own company.” 

Jinkx nods along with her. She’s fucking right, and she’s the only person around Jinkx right now who can’t see the ‘HANDLE WITH CARE’ sticker that’s been plastered on her forehead for the last year. Slowly, quietly, she feels that heavy lead ball of depression she’s been carrying around within her chest for the last year starting to crack.  

“You need to get your information from someone who wasn’t just there for a night. All I’m saying is I’m looking to re-sign, and I’m there if you want me - but not if something doesn’t change,” Manila sighs. “I know how much all of this means to you, and I don’t wanna see it fail, but this is not the promotion I left two years ago. Half of the locker room is gone - the audience is barely there. You need to fucking do something.”

“You’re right,” Jinkx says. She chews the new information over in her mind; still reeling from the well-timed sucker punch to the jaw that Manila had just landed on her from miles away. “You’re right, and I’m sorry. I’m gonna get this shit in hand. Give me a call once you’re back home and we can talk about you re-signing. I mean, if you decide that things are up to your standards.”

There’s a little hint of the old bite in her voice. Hi, Jinkx Monsoon - nice to see you. It’s been a while. 

Manila gives a surprised little laugh. 

“Okay,” she sounds taken aback, before adopting that serious, stern mom-tone she’s been using for the rest of the conversation. “But seriously though, figure-“

“You’re laboring the point,” Jinkx says. “Thank you - clearly I needed someone to kick me up the ass.”  

Manila chuckles. 

“Look, I have to go - I’m in a fucking bathroom stall at Epcot, Mateo is with the kids, but I couldn’t stop thinking about everything, and I had to talk to you,” Manila says. “I appreciate it. And I’m sorry about everything that happened to you. It sounds like it sucks.”

“Yeah, it does.”

Manila ends the call. Jinkx stares at her phone screen, a wry smile on her face. More cracks start to form. She’s not sure what this emotion is, whether it’s good or bad - but she’s gonna ride it out and see where it goes. That sea of unopened texts from Bill catches her attention. 

BILL SCARGILL:

UNREAD (14) 

Rematch sucked. One with the red hair keeping title. Courtney can’t fucking wrestle 

D throwing bitch fit about decision. Tell her to get her shit together. 

SERIOUSLY. Get your wife in check 

Jinkx??? 

Adore feuding with Bianca. Rest of show sucked - where tf did you find those jobbers?? Trinity Fame and the other blonde one can’t wrestle. Time to downsize?? 

Had to talk to Courtney about her attitude btw. Entitled as fuck. None of these girls have any respect for authority. 

Show was fine. Good crowd. Courtney no showed btw 

Courtney no showed again. 

Don’t know what’s going on with her and don’t care. Unreliable bs. No professionalism. 

If she doesn’t turn up tonight she’s fired. If you don’t answer this I’m assuming you don’t give a fuck. 

Call me ASAP 

Jinkx 

Jinkx?????

CALL ME 

That horrible, heavy ball in her chest explodes.  

She needs to talk to Bill. Wait, shit - no, she needs to talk to Dela. Find out what’s really going on, because the picture that this is painting from texts and Manila’s account alone isn’t fucking pretty. She can feel long-unused gears within her brain slowly, stiffly grinding into action again; powered primarily by the white-hot anger that’s sitting between her lungs where the bomb just detonated.  

Now that she truly thinks about it, Jinkx can’t say with absolute certainty how Bill ended up in the position of ludicrous roided-up power he’s currently in. Only that, when she eventually awoke from the walking coma of memory loss and painkillers her injury had sent her into, that was just the way of things. And then the depression had kicked in, and so too had her lack of desire to do anything. Dela had seemed to go along with it sans protest, but she’d been going along with his shit sans protest for years - that wasn’t an indicator that he was any fucking good at what he was doing. 

She pulls out her laptop, typing out a frenzied plan of action, trying to curate some of the mess in her head into something usable. Talk to Dela. Figure out what the fuck his problem is. And for how long it’s been a fucking problem. And then…

“Everything okay?” 

Dela’s voice breaks through the silence - she’s standing in the doorway in her gym gear, bag over her shoulder and stray hairs stuck to her brow with sweat. Her phone is in her hand, and she looks shaken. Macho barrels across the couch, using Jinkx’s chest as a launch-pad to greet his favorite mom at the door, mewing with his tail in the air until Dela picks him up.  

“I- uh…what?” Jinkx stumbles over her words after she gets done choking on the lungful of air that Macho had knocked out of her. She half-closes her laptop, putting it down on the coffee table. 

“I asked if you were okay,” Dela sits down on the couch by Jinkx’s side, putting a hand on her thigh as she cradles Macho like a baby. There’s a concerned little knot in between her eyebrows. 

“Yeah,” Jinkx nods solidly. Dela pulls a face that Jinkx can only describe as alarmed. “Are you?”

“Uh - not really, it’s a long story, I won’t bother you with-”“Please bother me with it.” Jinkx claps Dela’s hand in both of hers. Dela laughs nervously. 

“Well, I just narrowly avoided getting murdered by Bianca in the parking lot of the gym for one thing - I’ve never seen her that pissed, it was fucking terrifying. I’m…” she pauses. “Courtney got fired. Supposedly on your orders, which obviously isn’t true but it’s still…” Jinkx clenches her teeth. Dela sets Macho back down on the couch, turning to face Jinkx. “What is going on with you? You seem really…” Dela searches for a word, which Jinkx can only imagine is ‘insane’. She eventually settles on: “…Energised.”

“I, uh…I just got off the phone with Manila. Between everything she told me and now this, I need to take care of some business. The next show is this Saturday, right?”  

 There’s an unfamiliar kind of certainty to Jinkx’s voice. Dela looks at her with her eyes alight; her mouth hanging just open in surprise. 

And then, Jinkx is returning to Femme Fatale. 

Pride Challenge Points: 3589

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

hey! would you be willing to talk about your short story Eat Well? I read it and loved it, though I admit (very sheepishly) that I feel like i didnt quite understand the end 😅 I'm curious to know what the core of the story is, how it looks in your mind, what the intention is etc. maybe I'm also wondering how it works in the terms of your recent short story instructional video? anyway, big fan as always. you inspire me! ♡

Ahhh thank you so much for reading it!

This story is SO up for interpretation. Spoilers here about the end so for those who haven't read it, you can read it for free first! Though I don't think this is necessarily a "spoilable" story because of the nature of the premise!

Really, a reader can take what they want from the ending. If you're not sure about the end, I think I can assume it's whether or not the couple breaks up? Lmk if I'm wrong!

I don't actually know the answer myself, haha. At one point, I did, but the longer this story sits, the less I know and the more I like the idea that it's very up to interpretation. You can see the ending as the couple getting back together (them coming together over the chowder that brought them together initially and working together as a team to finish the bowl of "gross" food which which they wouldn't do before as the boyfriend refused to eat the girlfriend's "gross" food and the girlfriend refused to take suggestions--lack of compromise both ways being made up by this act of coming together).

You can also see the ending as a breakup (which I think was my initial inclination but it's been over a year since I drafted the story so I actually can't remember--not lying when I say I don't remember my own writing, HA!). In that case, the ending is a bit bittersweet! The characters both understand the other in this moment but also know that even though they understand the other, that's not enough to save this ending relationship. The girlfriend's "This is so bad" dialogue and the boyfriend's "Now you know" dialogue indicates it that they DO get the other--girlfriend finally understands, deeply, how her boyfriend experiences her cooking, where boyfriend has finally met her halfway and is willfully eating "gross" food (and perhaps understanding why she wants to share it with him because it’s an experience, even if the food is strange).

It doesn't matter to me in this case what people take from the ending. If it's just a bizarre ending to a reader, that's fine too! Usually I'm very for authorial intent, but this story I think has taken a life of its own where people relate to it in a very personal (and therefore different) way. I remember my workshop was floored by how much they related to this exact situation (minus the weird food), AKA, how much they related to being in a relationship that's disintegrating, perhaps, but not fully gone (an in-between state where you're not sure where it's going). That experience is going to differ from person to person, and is going to depend on if you've been in a relationship before (I haven't, so I have no idea what that experience is like so was bringing in my own experience elsewhere) & what the relationship was like, etc.

It's really a story about THAT, those confusing, unspeakable points in relationships where you have no idea what something is or is not, or aren’t ready to confront that! I think the uncertainty is something I love most about it, because relationships are not always easy to understand, especially when they’re changing or ending. I wanted to capture the messiness that so many humans go through (whether romantic, platonic, parental, etc).

This story is not a “traditional” or “typical” short story, which is the type I showed in the video (and arguably the easiest to spot/understand/write). But, you 100% can still apply everything I talked about in the video!

Here's the story broken down into the structure I shared in my video (tho a reminder that short stories are moldable so IMO, as long as a story hits the essence of these points, it’s most likely fine and a writer will develop this judgement the more they write stories):

1. Character in particular predicament

A couple’s relationship has grown tense, allegedly because of the narrator’s weird cooking (Peas and Pasta)

The predicament actually happens BEFORE the story, which is a touch different to what you usually see.

2. Event unrolls that disrupts this predicament

The narrator continues to cook weirdly (perhaps on purpose)? (Grass Julep, Four Almonds, Ramen Alfredo, Raspberry zoodles)

There are multiple little events in this case--the disrupting event really is the character continuing to cook this way even though she understands (or maybe doesn’t?) her SO’s feelings about it.

3. Event peaks

Boyfriend asks girlfriend if they should break up (Granola Cheese - this is probably the most important section in the story)

This is the first time they’ve actually truly communicated in the story. It’s a moment of heightened tension in their relationship because they’re seeing each other, I think, for the first time in a long time. She’s making granola cheese because she wants to, and he isn’t participating at all because he doesn’t--this is who they are and they’re both confronting it here.

4. Final revelation that changes the predicament

This is that exact moment: “My hand was sticky. I looked at it. I’d been clutching the nub of extra licorice, hadn’t even realized he’d given the last bite to me. I looked from his shoeprints, already half-gone, to the bit of candy. I stuffed it into the glove compartment where it would probably remain, forever.”

Narrator is holding onto licorice that she doesn’t even like that her boyfriend kindly saved for her (but does she even like licorice? - she doesn’t really know). She looks at his footprints that are disappearing in the snow fast (like he may disappear fast from her life if they break up). She shoves the candy into the glove compartment because it may remain there even if she does not. (Clam Chowder)

The story does continue past this point to resolve itself, but I’d say this is the moment where the narrator has a revelation!

This was a fun story! Thanks for asking!

[delphinidin4]

Actually, I'm not done talking about this.

Here is my reasoning for saying Dracula:

Muppet Moby Dick would be awful unless they changed the story beyond all recognition. Because Moby Dick is an awful story. Because it isn't a story. It's like, "I got on a whaling ship. A lot of metaphors happened. We tried to kill a whale. We failed. Then everybody died but me." That summary actually probably conveys more plot than actually appears in the novel. Please do not.

Muppet Hamlet: This could be interesting, but again, could only be a Muppet movie if they significantly changed the plot. Cause... uh... there's a lot of tragic dyin' in that thar play. The point of Hamlet (at least the way it is interpreted by modern literature) isn't the plot, it's the philosophizing, and philosophizing does not a good Muppet movie make. (I want that on a tshirt.)

Muppet Metamorphosis: Metamorphosis is even more depressing than Hamlet and has even less plot than Moby Dick. Seriously.

Muppet Count of Monte Cristo: Have you ever read this novel? It is a long-ass, weird-ass book. Guy gets screwed over by people, escapes from Alcatraz, then spends like a decade getting his psychological revenge on the people who betrayed him because he literally thinks he's the instrument of Divine Justice. And again, that conveys more interest than the narrative actually holds. A Muppet version of James Caviezel movie adaptation? Sure. A Muppet version of the novel? Ehhhhhhhhh please no.

Muppet Pride and Prejudice: This could work. There are enough silly and over-the-top characters that they could make it work as an over-the-top comedy, while at the same time, the story has some heart that they could be srs bzns about. My only worry is that too much of the story is one-on-one romantic stuff, which means either a ton of kermit and piggy trying to be srs bzns or a ton of the two humans interacting without any muppets. And I would definitely want kermit and piggy to play mr. and mrs. bennet. 100%.

Muppet War of the Worlds: Never read it; can't opine. From what little I remember about the plot, I think it might be simultaneously too scary and too depressing for a Muppet movie. I don't particularly want a post-apocalyptic Muppet movie unless it's going to be a parody of something entirely over-the-top, like Mad Max.

Muppet Odyssey: I feel like this could work. My only worry would be that the Odyssey is already so wild and fantastical that it wouldn't be funny enough: a lot of the humor of the Muppets is taking something relatively serious that has its ridiculous inclusions and making it absolutely bonkers. The Odyssey is already pretty bonkers. (Tho I want Circe to be played by Miss Piggy so she can turn all of Kermit's crew into pigs, AND I also want her to play Penelope, because that would just be funny as hell.)

Muppet Great Gatsby: I almost voted for this. Because this is EXACTLY the kind of story that imo good Muppet movies are made from: it is a story that takes itself Sooper Seriously Guys that is also kind of ridiculous, so the Muppets could mine all the ridiculousness out of it. The only problem is that, again, they would have to change a lot of it to make it less tragic, depressing, violent, misogynistic... Well, make it less Great Gatsby I guess is what I'm saying.

Muppet Dracula: This is the one I voted for. The story takes itself seriously but is over-the-top and bizarre and hilarious and just ASKING to be parodied. There's plenty of plot and action. There are a lot of fun characters. Kermit and Piggy are NOT Jonathan and Mina Harker, but Arthur and Lucy. They'd have to do something to the plot to deal with the fact that Piggy gets staked and her head cut off, but most of the rest of the story could stay, I think. Also, Dracula is a well-known and beloved story, just like Xmas Carol and Treasure Island. It's wild already, and the Muppets would have just the right sense of humor to make it truly hilarious.

(Bonus points if you explain how you would adapt it in the tags)