#TV Westerns retrospective

[esonetwork]

TV Westerns | Tales From Hollywoodland

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TV Westerns | Tales From Hollywoodland

In this episode of Tales From Hollywoodland, the hosts engage in a nostalgic discussion about TV westerns, sharing personal anecdotes and analyzing the genre’s influence on American culture. Join Steve, Arthur, and Julian as they reflect on iconic shows and the rise of actors like Clint Eastwood while examining the appeal of Westerns in terms of escapism and patriotism. The conversation also touches on the technical aspects of producing Westerns in the 1950s and ’60s and their cost-effectiveness. Through their insights, the hosts paint a picture of the enduring legacy of TV westerns and their impact on entertainment and popular culture to this day.

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[foreverisntenough]

‘OURS’

Summary: You were his and he was yours but what would it be like adding one more? Thrust into a whirlwind romance you never could’ve imagined that became your forever love. You continue building a new life across the pond with a very beautiful Scouser. A sequel to the ‘You’re Mine’ fic.

INDEX

Warnings: This series will contain fluff, suggestion, smut (unprotected sex,) pregnancy, mention of the word ‘daddy,’ kind of angsty, alcohol consumption - not sure what else really… if i miss anything please lmk!

Note: Thank you for reading! Please be sure to like, comment, or message me what you think of the series! Try not to nitpick with any real pregnant logistics it’s better if you just read along happily :)

Chapter 7 - Gonna Be Okay | ‘Ours’

You and Trent were just in the Maldives splitting banana gelato, clinking spoons as the sun set down the western horizon on a perfect night. Okay, you were eating it all but besides the point. You were sitting yapping with pride about how you never really fought. No couple had ever been so compatible. How perfectly suited you were and retrospectively how perfectly naive. Fast forward and you were in huff in the kitchen because he had promised to refill the dogs water bowls and hadn’t. He left for training completely oblivious that he had forgotten. You were slamming cabinet doors frustrated in a rage. This had become a daily occurrence. Not specifically filling water bowls but just small things had you almost in tears. What had happened. Teddy was a little over a month old. You wouldn’t say things had calmed down with her but there was definitely more of a routine. Although that routine consisted of you and Trent suppressing a lot of issues you were having. It was all about Teddy. All the time. Becoming parents had put a strain on your relationship you weren’t expecting and definitely we’re ignoring. Part of the problem was that you both were exhausted. You had so much less time with each other and much less time for other people after she arrived. Everyday felt like a broken record and broken it was. It was so unusual for you two to work around each other like this as opposed to working together. You always had such good communication, such empathy and understanding but right now… you weren’t sure you'd had a real conversation in about 2 days. You’d never gone this long. The awkwardness was palpable but your schedules made it so you didn’t really even have the space let alone the energy to deal with it.

“T… I’m not just going to stay home and wait for you to be done.” You quipped turning to the refrigerator to grab a water to hand to him. That was the other problem that made this all so easy to ignore. You still so obviously cared for each other. The love never went anywhere so you were still doing a lot of the same things just with a ton of resentment.

“Baby, this is such a bad time for this. I’m literally walking out the house right now.” He calmly said back but you knew what that meant. It was the politest way he could say ‘shut up, I don’t want to talk about this’ Next thing you knew he was gone, out the front door for another away game. You stood cradling Teddy with tears threatening to spill over. God, you were so fucking tired. You prayed things would just sort themselves on their own. When Trent came back things didn’t snap back to normal like you had hoped. It had been days since he returned and you’d both been busy. There was minimal communication outside of ‘can you feed her’ or ‘can you change her’ One more thing that definitely was causing issues was your sleeping arrangement. You couldn’t remember the last time you even cuddled.

“We need to sit down and talk about this, Trent. We can’t fall apart now.” You nervously spoke up coming round the couch to stand in front of him blocking the tv.

“Baby…” he sighed with a puppy dog face. His lips falling into the perfect pout he knew would get his way. He was never good with confrontation and boy did he have the face to get out of it but you had had enough.

“No. No. This is not how this is going to go.” You wiped away tears of frustration that started to build. You were mad you felt so emotional while he sat stoic as ever. “We need a real discussion. Like real adults, Trent. We’re fucking parents, now. We can’t just pretend nothing is going on.” You snapped a little. You had just put Teddy down for a nap so despite the heat of your words your voice was low and soft not wanting to wake her. Whether or not he wanted to admit it or talk about it, Trent felt sidelined while you concentrated mainly on Teddy. Just the same as he felt ignored, sitting on the bench, you felt you had completely disappeared. Everyone focused solely on your baby. Your life had dwindled down to only care and feed for Teddy rather than be a partner or person in your own right.

“I’m really fucking tired Trent… you go and you work out or whatever, let out all your stress out, see your friends and I’m here! I’m here all the fucking time. I can’t leave the house.” You yelled in the quietest way possible. Inside you were fuming as the words came out. It hit you that you couldn’t remember the last time you had left the house without Teddy or not for Teddy. He hated that you were using his first name. He gave you this confused look as to why you thought he wasn’t living this experience of being a new parent with you.

“Why are you trying to keep score?” He flicked his eyes up to you as you stood there in the living room with your hands on your hips. You felt like your knees were going to give out from either exhaustion or desperation but you gave off the appearance of being incredibly strong in the moment.

“Trent! “ you yelped, feeling defeated already by his response. He threw his head to the side, annoyed you kept calling him that and it definitely wasn’t being said in a good way. “When you have a match… ugh! We’re not even sleeping together in the same bed anymore because I have to wake up to feed her and I can’t mess up your schedule for games!” You cried.

“Yeah, go on Y/N. Just keep piling it on. I know, I know I’m not home a lot. I know” He said it with such a harsh tone. You’d give it to him Trent had some drama and sass to him. A bit of a bite you rarely were on this end of. Usually his smart mouth brought humor but this… this was not funny.

“That’s not fair!” You whimpered out. Rubbing your hands over your face beginning to rock back and forth filled with nerves unsure where this conversation was even going.

“It’s so I can provide for you, Y/N. Why don’t you realize that?” He threw the first name seriousness back at you. His eyes widened in disbelief, shocked you couldn’t see what he did for you, sacrificed for you. He gave up so much of his time away from his new born baby to give you the comfortable life you lived but just the same he couldn’t see what you had been sacrificing. “You wanted to have this baby too, Y/N.” He lashed out sitting forward more towards the edge of the couch. His puppy dog face had completely vanished a long time ago. He looked at you like he hated you. You knew he didn’t but right now you weren’t in the frame of mind to have that clear of thinking.

“Stop… do not go there. That’s fucked up and a line you can’t cross.” You were more upset now and rightfully so. Bringing the topic of having Teddy into this was unfair and uncalled for. The second he said it Trent felt a pit in his stomach. You stormed out of the room holding back tears till you were alone and far away enough for him not to hear. He wanted to take it back. He wanted to chase after you and hug you until you forgave him and made up. He wanted to go back to when you could just fuck this out and physically turn a lot of anger into a lot of love. That wasn’t going to happen. This was a battle of words. He knew things were bad, he knew what he said wasn’t great but he didn’t know hot to get to you without messing things up further so he kept his distance. After that squabble it was just days of awkward kitchen run ins. The only time you really spoke were in cutesy voices to Teddy who thankfully you assumed was oblivious to it all. She was maybe 40 days old. It wasn't like she could really pick up on the tension when you asked Trent if he had run the dishwasher but you didn’t want her around this negative vibe for long. You’d never experienced this type of long term strain with him. You never pinned either of you to be the type to hold a grudge but you both felt you had respective points to be made and wouldn’t let go. Once again, Trent had an away game and you murmured a feisty sarcastic ‘of course’ when he told you he was leaving the house. It was unnecessary so he ignored it and told you he loved you anyway. He still meant it, he just didn’t exactly love how cold you’d been towards him lately. It was before he was boarding his flight to come back home when you FaceTimed him. You were putting Teddy to bed. It was routine and just because you weren’t getting along didn’t mean you were going to deprive Teddy of seeing her dad before sleep. Your eyes were practically shutting from lack of sleep while Trent babbled to her.

“You know who’s just as perfect as you, baby bear? Your mummy.” You heard it and furrowed your brow. Were you crazy? Did he not know you had been fighting? You rolled your eyes. “C’mon, baby we gotta get through this.” He tried to get you to loosen your grip on the whole thing but you weren’t having it. Trent just wanted to brush over this, move and put a plaster over it. He wanted you back in his arms desperately. After you hung up you definitely felt a little bit guilty. You knew he was trying his best. It was just Trent’s way. All he wanted to do was love you but you needed something different than that right now. In a fun twist, it was Trent’s birthday this week. You couldn’t have felt more awkward about it. Truthfully and deep down you knew this fighting was temporary and you loved him so you didn’t want to taint a day you had the opportunity to really show him how much you did love him but you were stubborn. You didn’t want to be the one to say sorry first and you certainly were not going to go the rest of your life as a mother like this, you needed a conversation. Per usual as of late, you awkwardly both got ready in your wardrobe together. He asked what you wanted him to wear. Normally the task would excite you. You loved dressing him. He didn’t really mind either way even though he looked significantly better when you did. You could tell this was some sort of olive branch but it wasn’t enough. You just dragged your hand over the closet full of his tops lazily pulling out a Rhude t-shirt to hand to him. He gave a half assed smile disappointed his effort didn’t do anything. You put on a tanish grey linen off the shoulder mini dress. You actually liked it and felt okay in it. The dress was doing a lot considering you jusstttt had Teddy. He zipped your dress. His hands on your cold skin made you shiver. It was strange that his touch made you feel that way. You could cut the tension in the room with a knife. You selected a pair of heels you hadn’t been able to wear since before you were pregnant. They just ran narrow and your swollen feet weren’t having it. You picked out a purse you bought in a pregnant haze. It was insanely kitschy and looked like a takeout box but it happened to be almost £2,000 from YSL. Trent probably gave into cravings in a different way than most people. You had bought some ridiculous things while pregnant but it was still cute. You stood in the mirror inspecting the full outfit.

“You look good.” Trent muttered out seeing you as he sat on the bed waiting for you. He meant it. He never said stuff like that if he didn’t. Dianne was coming over to take care of Teddy. You were not thrilled about leaving her but you wouldn’t be out long. It’s not like you and Trent were exactly eager to spend alone time together despite it being much needed. You had made a reservation at a Sushi place you went to when you celebrated his birthday on your first visit. It was sweet in theory but now it just rubbed it in how much things had changed.

“Tuna roll?” He asked you, inspecting the menu even though you both knew exactly what you were getting. You could recite his sushi order backwards. You were excited to finally have sushi again so as much as this was for Trent it was a little for you too. You ate your meal talking about basic things you might talk to a neighbor about, fairly generic for two people that lived together, that loved each other. You had ordered a special roll Trent was too scared to try but you made him have a piece anyway. He liked it and a while later he plucked another piece off your plate with his chopsticks. You widened your eyes at him, your jaw slacked. He gave you a cheeky grin with his cheeks full as he chewed. You kept eating until he did it again. You had now given him half of your order.

“T! Stop!” You giggled. He was so annoying and you hated how cute he was every time he was being a pest.

“I’ll buy you more, beautiful.” He cooed, taking a fourth of your six piece roll. You laughed at him shaking your head. It kind of felt like you were just beginning to date again. He was flirting with you and it made your heart flutter. You looked at him and watched in what felt like slow motion his big hand reach across the table to wipe a bit of soy sauce that had rested atop your lips. The feeling of his fingers on your lips, near your mouth, had your heart racing. Images of times he pushed his fingers in your mouth while he fucked you flashed in your mind. There was something about Trent in a white t-shirt. He just looked so fresh and clean. Sexy. It made you think of the first time you gave him head you remember watching his back muscles dance as he pulled the white t-shirt over his golden brown skin. You had hummed at the image.

“At a white t-shirt?” He questioned what you were possibly so enamored with.

“No, you in a clean white t-shirt after I just had your cock in my mouth” You corrected him. He couldn’t hold the grin back. He walked back over to you holding the pair of camouflage pants he was going to wear.

“It’s so good. I like this one. You always know the hits.” His voice cut off your moment of reverie. He was really fucking handsome. As messy and tense as things had been you’d never not be attracted to him and that only made it that much annoying when he did stupid shit. As you drove towards home it was like the mood lowered with every passing mile. It wasn’t like you weren’t excited to get back to Teddy. You actually felt like you could burst with the need to get her back in your arms. It just was that this dinner was some sort of escape from the reality of things. There weren’t dog’s water bowls he could forget to fill at the restaurant.

It had been almost two months post birth and you really didn’t want to nor have any desire to have sex. You thought about his body that way for sure, but the idea of him touching your body was hard to imagine. Previously, sex was what birthdays between you and Trent consisted of and you loved it. It was fun and hot. A time to try things out, spend all day in bed but you were so exhausted and frankly sore. Your body felt anything but sexy… it felt gross like it wasn’t actually yours anymore. You often felt touched out at the end of the day. You had a baby on you practically 24/7. Sex was the last thing on your mind leaving Trent feeling fairly neglected and rejected. It was the perfect storm. You barely were sleeping together so the second you were he wanted to be all over you and the second he was you just wanted to be alone. You went to bed that night, backs facing one another with your arms slightly outstretched towards the middle of the bed linking pinkies not okay with being completely out of reach from the other. It was strange but gave you a tinge of hope. You laid in bed the next day and got to sleep in. Trent handled morning duties with Teddy. He even took her for a walk in her pram just to get her outside.

“She’s down for her nap.” He came back into your bedroom a while later. You just hummed.

“I’ll feed her when she wakes up again.” You practically scoffed at him for no reason. It was uncalled for but you just felt so annoyed. What were you two doing… it felt so unnecessary and yet you couldn’t get over the hurdle. Trent stared at you in bed. He didn’t like what he saw. He knew you, he knew your body so well and yet you almost looked foreign. You were limp, crashed into the bed, face first into the pillows, barely under the covers. It made him terribly sad. As hard headed as Trent could be, he wasn’t dumb. He was a really empathetic person; he just needed a minute to sort out his own emotions. He needed to really get a good look at you again. Like right now, it was like something changed. Like he finally understood what was going on.

“Y/N…” he cooed softly sitting on the edge of the bed next to you. He very cautiously reached his hand out to stroke your arm. You felt cold. He shut his eyes, hating how things had been. You had just become a family, welcomed your baby girl together and yet you had never felt less like one. He kissed the back of your arm. You shivered feeling the lips you absolutely adored for the first time in a while. You missed him. “I want to make things better. I’m really sorry. Can we talk?” He nervously murmured out. A barely there subtle soft smile pulled on your face. You knew you would get to the point of having a calm discussion about what’s been going on. You didn’t think it would take so long and honestly you didn’t think it’d be him to initiate it but it didn’t matter. You sat back against the headboard of your bed and pulled your knees to your chest. You looked at him closely inspecting his face to see if it had changed any since you last had a proper look. It hadn’t. His eyes still had a warm honey hue in the light, lips still perfectly plump, his skin annoyingly smooth despite minimal effort. His amber smell wafted towards you.

“I’m sorry too, baby.” You looked at him with obvious pain in your eyes. When he heard the pet name he knew you had to just make it through this conversation and everything would be a lot better.

“I know I should know and understand without having to do this but can you explain to me what you’ve been feeling? I want to hear you out so I can be better. Just tell me what I need to do to get things back on track. How do I do more than I’m doing? I feel exhausted.” He babled a little feeling just as nervous as you. His words kind of broke your heart. He really was trying his best. He didn’t know how to do anything different yet.

“T… I know you do a lot for me, for her, for us but as much as it is work for you… you do get to leave here everyday. You get the escape. I know you think about us when you’re not here” he nodded, confirming he definitely did think about you but he didn’t want to interrupt you so he stayed silent. “Just consider for even the 90 minutes when you are fully focused on a match. As you should be, I’m not saying otherwise. That's 90 minutes I’m alone, with her, at home, and unfortunately still dealing with a lot of the physical aftermath as well. Like my body is in so much discomfort and pain and I have her on me constantly. I don’t mean to sound patronizing but you could never understand how I feel in my own body right now… and that’s just the some odd 90 minutes we’re talking about not all the days you’re away for” your eyes started to welle. “I need you to support me a little here.” Your voice was shaky. Trent reached out and grabbed your hands.

“I want to support you, baby I’m so sorry.” He quivered, upset you had been feeling this way. “I hate that I wasn’t thinking about things that way. I can’t imagine what you’re going through, what you went through to give us our family. I think I pull out this card that I am providing for you because it’s one of the only things I can give back to you. Only thing I know I can control and contribute. You give me so much, you gave me her. It’s hard because I know the way you provide for me is something I’ll never be able to reciprocate.” He stared at your intertwined hands unable to look you in the eyes. “I do think about you 24/7. I feel like I’m gonna cry when I pull out of the driveway and it’s not just about leaving Teddy, it's leaving you. It’s different now, leaving. I feel like I’m letting you down when I go. It was easier for me lately just to shut it out and not tell you that because I feel so guilty. Everytime I’m on the pitch laughing I just hope you’re at home laughing with her.” He tried to explain his rational and you understood.

“T, that’s the problem though. I don't want to be at home all the time. I don’t want you to feel guilty, baby, either but we really need to find a way to help the other person with what they’re going through. We’re both doing this for the first time and it’s really fucking hard” your voice was shaking realizing just how difficult things had been.

“We work a lot better together. I’m not keen on the whole opposing sides thing. How do we figure this out?” You knew Trent was very action oriented so you thought for a moment how to explain things.

“Okay…erm like I need to go get my hair done. Can you please actually tell me you’re taking her. Not go to your mums… like you, baby. Take her, don’t offer. She’s your baby too. And honestly, not even just going to do my hair, even showers at home, T. During the day if you’re here. She’s like glue… constantly stuck to me.” You giggled a little bit thinking about your baby girl’s clinginess.

“She’s cute glue to be fair” he laughed and it shattered your heart in the best way. He hadn’t laughed with you since dinner. You shook your head with a smile knowing that was half the issue here. Teddy was so cute, everything had just been glossed over every time she batted her eyes. “But I understand, baby.”

“How can I help you, T?” you asked, moving your hand to his thigh. Your touch sent electricity coursing through his body. He was staring at your hand on him before his eyes flickered up to lock with yours he gave you the most beautiful smile you loved. Childish, full.

“You know, maybe you can drive me AXA or come see me. I don’t mean to make it about footie but it’s where I have to be for almost 7 days a week. I want to see her. I want to see you.” He looked scared to even bring up football at the moment but he was right it was his whole life.

“I got it. We can do that. Would be nice. Little carpool… drop daddy off.” You cooed with a giggle bobbing back and forth on the bed thinking about it. You could feel the air lifting and lightening as you continued breaking down how to be more supportive. You talked for ages outlining things you both needed help with. “We can do this, hmm? “ you said apprehensively. He winked at you and your heart skipped a beat. You much preferred when you were on good terms. You gave him a childish smile. Both shy and confident about being able to figure this out with him.

“There she is.” He cooed, stroking his thumb over your full cheek. “My beautiful girl. I love you so so much. I’m sorry, baby. Honest. C’mere.” He pulled you into him and you felt your whole body relax. Relax more than it had in months. “We’re gonna be okay.” He kissed you. You felt a shiver run up your spine in the best way. You felt relief.

“And on cue… she’s nothing but persistent” you giggled hearing Teddy coo over the baby monitor. Trent kissed you again. He started to stand up from his seat on the bed.

“You want to shower? I’ll go get her.” He asked you genuinely serious.

“Funny…” you quipped back not amused with the joke you thought he was making.

“I’m serious! If we’re gonna do this you have to at least let me help you!” He laughed at you. He pulled you by your hands up from the bed. He placed his own hands on your shoulders and walked you into the en-suite.

“Okay, okay, I can do it.” You wiggled out of his hold and began to pull off your clothes. Laughing as your dragged your top over your head.

“So difficult” he teased with a similar laugh squeezing your now bare sides. He began to walk out of the bathroom.

“Hey T…” you stared in the mirror back at him. He turned around with a hum. “I love you, baby.” You said sheepishly but still very sure of it. He nodded with a soft sympathetic smile. “Could we maybe do a birthday redo today with Ted?”

“I love you more than anything in the world, beautiful. Absolutely, you girls going to to take me out?” He thought he was so so funny all the time. The corniness was half the charm. He just was cute and simultaneously sexy.

“Just so annoying all the time.”you joked as he walked a little closer to you before he smushed another wet kiss onto your cheek that you loved. When he came back in with Teddy already dressed, ready to go, you knew things were going to be fine. You both were just new at this whole parenting thing. Trent drove down into the city center and you felt so incredibly domestic going on a family outing. You decided on something low key and normal so you went out to get coffees and walk the docks.

“I haven’t been down here for ages.” He spoke into the crisp fall air. He pushed Teddy’s Dior pram back and forth as you sat outside at a little coffee place you loved.

“You’ve been missing out on a very good croissant” you mumbled with your mouth full.

“Clearly.” He laughed at you before pulling a hearty piece from your croissant to pop in his mouth.

“Me and Marce used to come here all the time, you know?” You kept talking. You weren’t even sure he knew that. So it made you smile to connect again. Talk about things and open up.

“You two do so much shit without me” Trent feigned jealousy but as much as he joked you knew he actually did feel a little envious of all the relaxed down time you and his brothers shared together.

“We’ll start being bad at your job and maybe you wouldn’t have to play in Europe all the time, you could hang with us.” You teased leaning over to check on Teddy.

“You know you maybe should’ve been a comedian, baby. Just hilarious all the time. So funny. I’m dying of laughter.” He said with a completely straight face. You could tell though he was making a big effort not to crack a smile at you. “What do you think, Ted? Is mummy funny?” Trent cocked his head to look at her. She just wiggled in her seat excited she was getting attention from him. She loved anytime Trent even walked into a room let alone paid her mind. You grabbed her tiny hand gently folding it into a thumbs up and showed it to him. He rolled his eyes at you.

“You said that on our first date too and I think I proved you wrong. I am funny. You do think I am whether you want to admit it.” You teased referring to when you met outside your apartment for the first time telling him you would have to take the subway to dinner.

“You’re not as funny as you think” he quipped. You walked next to him up to the corner of your block towards the restaurant.

A lot of memories came up lately just because of the massive change you were experiencing. A part of you felt like you were mourning the loss of the juvenile versions of yourselves who didn’t have a care in the world. Your only concern was being each other's arms and the painstaking moments between kisses. Now… now you had a life you had to support, a human to raise. You reached across the table and grabbed Trent’s hand. You ran your fingers back and forth over his knuckles. He smiled at you and picked his hand up with yours. He pressed his lips lightly to your skin. You picked your head up to look at the water, as a boat further out in the river coasted by. You clocked a man taking a photo of Trent as you sat at the table outside the cafe.

“Seriously, if only you were bad at your job.” You nodded subtly towards the man. Trent turned to see him after your gesture. He looked back at you with an apologetic look. He was just trying to spend time with you and Teddy so when the man came over it was a little awkward but he was still really kind and patient. Trent really didn’t want a photo of Teddy out yet though so he politely declined the photo.

“Sorry, mate, I’d love to but I’m with my family right now. It was lovely to meet you though. Thank you for all your support.” Trent spoke low, not trying to draw more attention to himself in downtown Liverpool.

“You can.” You whispered with a nod of approval not minding if he took a photo.

“Ahhh yeah alright lad, you know what we’ll take one quick. Face this way.” Trent turned so the city was behind them in the photo, not you and Teddy. He winked at you. You picked up Teddy from her pram and kept her tight to your chest, rocking her gently.

You went home and ate dinner at your dinning room table with your family. You couldn’t believe you had a family now but you were just happy that you and Trent were back to the place you were in before. You made the cake you previously had planned to with the help of some grubby fingers taste tasting and they weren’t Teddy’s. You had given Trent his presents on his actually birthday but this felt more important, more special. You wanted to make Trent something from scratch. You grew up with the luxury of learning how to bake and cook, not needing to. Your mum brought you with her to France to take some classes for your 16th birthday once and you found you had a knack for it. It was a good cake to be honest, a take on funfetti. You had shown Trent funfetti when you were on a trip back in the US once and he just loved it so that was that. Birthday cake decision made. You placed birthday candles in the cake and dimmed the lights in your dining room and sang happy birthday to him swaying with your baby girl. When you finished and he blew out his candles he pulled you into his lap. You sat down nuzzling your face into his neck.

“Happy Birthday Daddy, we love you so much, T.” You kissed his neck again and again. Teddy attempted a giggle and a smile fascinated with the noise of your lips peeling on and off his skin. “Say happy birthday dada” you cooed squishing Teddy’s cheeks together with one hand gently. She squealed. You both laughed at her excitement.

“Thank you my beautiful girls. You’re my whole world. I love you both so much.” He gave Teddy a big kiss and you pouted at him as you waited for yours. Teddy wasn’t sleeping through the night but her naps were getting longer you guessed. You and Trent laid her down for what Trent was hoping to be an especially long one.

“Did I tell you how sexy you looked today?” He whispered in your ear with a cheeky nibble to your earlobe as you walked down the hallway. His arms hung around your frame heavily. You rolled your eyes swatting at his arm.

“C’mon, baby. How often do I tell you you’re sexy? I need you to know how sexy you are.” He cooed as you entered your bedroom. He plopped onto the edge of the bed and you went to follow him for a cuddle. You wanted to be close to him. Finally back in each others good graces you wanted to feel connected. Trent did too just in a different way. He held his hand out to stop you from coming closer. You cocked your head confused. You backed up a few steps and stared at him waiting for him to tell you some sort of direction.

“Lemme see. I know you. Lemme see what you have on today.” He spoke with a tone that sent the most excited shiver running down your spine, your pussy throbbed. You gradually began to pull your clothes off, layer by layer. You stripped for him. You giggled at the way it made you feel. Trent had a way of making you feel sexy without even touching you. The way his jaw slacked. You turned away from him to slide off the trousers you had on, bending over. He groaned throwing his head back as you spun around for him. He shook his head in disbelief of your figure. “Still my birthday?” You nodded with a shy smile. “Lay down for me…” so you followed instructions. He watched you lay back on the bed. To be fair you hadn’t really thought of doing this tonight but regardless you always liked to get undressed in front of Trent revealing little lingerie sets and he knew you did it for him. You wouldn’t even turn to acknowledge him as you’d lean over the bathroom sink counter in different colored lace every day just for show. He climbed over you and looped his finger under the middle of the sheer black Gucci bralette you’d chosen for today. Your breath hitched. Okay, now you were definitely thinking about it. You were praying he’d be gentle with you since this would be your first time after Teddy but also funnily with the lingerie too; you liked it and it was expensive. You’d lost too many pairs of panties over your relationship with him to tears. He looked down at you with a look you forgot made your heart race. He kissed your ankle. “I love these legs, I love these thighs.” He worked kisses all over and up your whole body. “I love this hip, this stomach..” he kissed every bit of you. You couldn’t get enough of falling back into the swing of things with him.

“Baby, be gentle with me, okay?” You said to him with fear in your eyes. You sighed a little embarrassed. He just looked at you in adoration.

“I’ll take care of you, yeah? I always do. Make you remember just how beautiful I think you are.” He whispered into your ear. The vibration alone made goosebumps raise on your skin. You had the biggest fucking smile on your face after he said that. You knew you were in for a treat. Sex with Trent was something you hoped you would never struggle with. His hand lightly grabbed your jaw pulling you into a kiss. His plump soft lips feeling as perfect as ever. He dragged his hand down your throat and you moaned missing this feeling. This feeling of Trent in total control of you. He kept his hands on you and over you before he cheekily pitched your nipples.

“Oh, fuckkk” you yelped out incredibly sensitive and incredibly turned on.

“Open your mouth f’me, beautiful.” He cooed and without needing to think you did. Your eyes widened in awe of how sexy he looked above you. His other hand beginning to work his length. You sucked around his fingers licking the underside like you would his cock. He abruptly pulled them out and guided them down to your pussy. He ran his fingers through your folds before he began to slowly pump two thick digits inside of you. “Fuck, baby. I missed this pussy. Feel so good already” his voice rumbled in the quiet room as his thumb stretched up to roll over your clit.

“C’mere baby. You’re so fucking soaked I bet I could just…” he dragged his tip through your wet pussy. You weren’t expecting to be as wet as you were but it was Trent you shouldn’t have been all that surprised. “You’re so beautiful and all mine” he paused perfectly, lining up his cock with your entrance and suddenly all of the air slipped out of your lungs. He was on his knees in front of you holding your one leg up as you laid back into the mattress. His firm grip around you doing most of the work.

“Oh my fucking god, T…” Oh my god was right. You could never forget how good the sex was but this. This felt really fucking good. Your eyes fluttered closed as he slowly pushed deeper, sticking to his promise to be gentle. You gasped feeling his length. You cupped his scruffy cheeks. You blew out short breaths as you tried to adjust to his size.

“I love you so much, you know that right?” He whispered again. He felt good but also slightly uncomfortable and strangely new again. He sank his body weight down on top of you so that he became your entire focus trying to not let your mind spiral into anxiety about what he thought you felt like after your baby. You could only nod. You breathed heavily. Your legs wrapped around his arm curling to hook around it, shutting your eyes in pleasure.

“I love you, T.” You whined as you felt your legs tremble already. He nuzzled impossibly deeper. You blinked your eyes open. You locked with his deep brown eyes, soft and sensitive filled with sincerity. You tried to makeout with him needing to feel those lips on yours but you couldn’t breathe, you couldn’t think let alone multitask as he began to thrust into you slowly. You were anxious to do this but frankly, Trent felt unbelievable and if possible maybe somehow better than that. Being back inside you had his head spinning. His heart faltered a little seeing your beautiful face scrunch up. His body weight further pressed onto you while he scooped his arm under your other leg holding it up closer to your chest Your nails dug into his biceps leaving crescent marks. You whined a sound that was music to his ears. You found a rhythm that worked for you. A rhythm that made your slightly enlarged boobs bounce more for him.

“God, I love your tits, baby.” He said it with a smile eliciting a giggle from you at the compliment. Sex had never felt better emotionally. Your eyes started to water. You felt so in love with him. “You okay, baby? Tell me you’re okay. Tell me you want this?." You really did appreciate his concern; it was just hard to talk at the moment. He leaned closer to your neck licking over your most sensitive spots waiting for a response. “Hmm?”

“I want you, T. You just feel really good.” You whimpered. Tears filled your lash line so he slowed. “Please, T… more.” His eyes widened. He was nervous his current pace was already too much so it was a surprise to hear.

“I'm right here. You have me.” His face was hovering over yours. He managed to give you the kisses you so desperately wanted all over your face, your neck, your shoulders underneath him. You clenched around him. He felt it and almost giggled. He was excited to have this power back. “You wanna be a good girl and cum for me, baby?”

“I’m gonna cum. Please. Please, T. Make me cum.” You moaned as he pushed a little deeper inside with every thrust. A familiar but distant feeling crashed over you. Your brain turning to mush. His cock throbbed inside you. He grunted overwhelmed seeing you cum under him once again. He could imagine it all he wanted but he missed seeing it in real time. “T… cum inside me again, okay? Make me take all of it. I want it. Cum for me.” You whined more. He let out a strained breath. That was it for him. Knowing you missed this. That you wanted this. Wanted him. He tipped over the edge, pumping you full of his cum. With one more final deep thrust he ran his hands through your hair grabbing it pulling your head forward into the most passionate kiss you might’ve ever shared. The tension you had felt the past few weeks evaporated. You stayed tight to his body as you breathed heavily. You both were panting as he leaned his forehead on yours before he as tender as possible pulled out. He sat back for a moment and admired you. Stroking up your thigh gingerly, he breathed out a sigh of appreciation.

“Can you be a good girl f’me and spread your legs.” He asked so kindly you did it almost instinctively. “Fucking unreal. Every day since I met you.” He kissed from your stomach up to your neck nuzzling his face in his hands trailing behind his tongue the whole way. You thought you’d cuddle till Teddy woke up but you were wrong. You spread your legs the best you could. Trent cursed. His fingers traced through your folds gathering up the cum. He swiftly and slowly dipped two of his fingers inside of you. The sensation was so overwhelming and overstimulating. He pumped them methodically, deep, curling inside you.

“Wait.. wait baby. Ah!” You whined. Your hips bucking up into him.

“Gimme one more, baby.” He asked as he nibbled on your neck. You couldn’t handle the feeling. It was too much and you had poor control. You came hard and fast, squirting a little.

“Fuck… T” You panted so heavily. Completely out of breath. You just laid there eyes closed as your chest heaved up and down. You needed a moment. He laughed and frantically laid down next to you pretty proud of his work. You were tangled up in bed until you heard the little coo and whine you loved so much.

“Lemme go check on her, you stay put. I bet you’re tired.” Trent winked at you and as annoying as his playful comment was, it was very true. He pulled on his boxers and sweats and walked down the hallway into Teddy’s nursery.

“Baby bear, you okay?” Trent cooed, scooping Teddy up gently as her cries lulled. He hummed, swaying back and forth. “Wish you could tell me what you’d need. I’d do it right away, you know that?” He pressed his lips to her identical ones. “‘My little Ted. You’re so beautiful. You look like me, but I can’t tell you’re perfect just like mummy, baby girl” he whispered softly to her. It was a while later and you still laid in bed expecting to have fallen right to sleep after all that with Trent but you couldn’t knowing your two favorite people in the world were still awake just down the hall. You got up and put on a little gray sleep set. It was comfortable and that’s just what your body needed right now because you definitely were sore.

“I felt left out.” You pouted in the doorway of Teddy’s room looking at Trent reading her a book. He picked his head up with a soft smile and beckoned you over to sit on the couch with them. Teddy’s face lit up.

“Oh wow… you excited to see mummy, huh teddy girl? Weren’t that excited to see me.” Trent teased. You slapped at his bare chest before grabbing her. She hiccuped overly excited. Her head fell onto you. You hummed kissing her chubby cheek . “I like this.” He pulled on the fabric of the tiny shorts you were in. You shrugged.

“You can continue. Didn’t mean to interrupt.” You giggled a little. You smushed your face into Trent’s arm ruining your view of the colorful book but making a better one for her. You pushed your lips to kiss Trent as he read. The sound of his voice was perfect, calm and steady. It lulled you into an incredibly sleepy state. Trent plucked Teddy out of your tired arms to hold her more securely. He wrapped his free arm around you and pulled you into him. Your head fell onto his shoulder. You hugged his waist tightly.

“My girls. Hmm?” He cooed, pressing a kiss to you and Teddy. You fell asleep listening to him. He let you and Teddy sleep on him for a while. He just relaxed, closing his eyes, happy with the affection, rubbing his hands up your back. Some time later Teddy woke up and was restless. Her little grunts and whines woke you up. “You wanna feed Ted then you and me can go try to get in bed?” Trent cooed with a sympathetic smile knowing you were exhausted. You nodded still half asleep but you understood. Sticking to your schedule was important for all of you. It took longer than expected to get her fed and down again but you did it. You draped your arms around Trent’s shoulders just staring up at him tired in her room. He pressed his nose to yours. His hands cheekily sliding over your ass. He kneaded it, raising up the material of your shorts. He pulled you closer into his embrace. He cupped your ass and picked you up from under your thighs. You wrapped your legs around his waist.

“We’re actually going to bed… like sleep, right?” You cooed as Trent walked you back to your room in his arms. He laughed a little. You were nervous with the way his hands were on you if he was trying to have sex again and you were sure you could handle that yet.

“Yeah. We need to sleep. I have to go in tomorrow at 10 too.” He cooed as you stroked your thumb over his cheek. You pushed your face into the nape of his neck until he placed you on your bed. “Baby, we’re gonna be okay. I promise we’ll work on this together. I won’t let us get that way again. I know we’ll have our dips but we’re just learning to grow together.”

“I agree. Just have to talk more I think. I’m sorry I didn’t express how I felt. It’s unfair to assume you should know how I feel without me verbalizing it, that you know what is going on when we’re both doing this for the first time.” He shook his head dismissing your apology. “We might have dips like you said but T, I want this. I want us. I want this to work. God, I need this to work. I don’t think I could survive without you.”

“You could but you’ll never have to. Never even give you the chance to find out.” He cut you off. You squeezed his arm.

“I don’t want to find out. T… what do you think will happen next for us?” You tucked in closer to him cuddling up in your bed. He didn’t respond right away so you felt a little taken aback. Awkward almost. Ironic considering the things that were just said. “Like in the next five years, you know?” You tried to clarify.

“No, I know what you meant. I was just thinking of how I wanted to phrase it. I know this sounds cheesy so don’t make fun cause I’m serious.” He spoke slow. You hung onto every word of his.

“Serious” you mocked his accent and he gave you glare. You just smiled back.

“Next five years for me… just loving you. I’ve told you a million times I want to get married. I know we’re not too far into this one but I’d want another another baby… you know whenever you’re ready.” He tried to unnecessarily explain there was no pressure.

“Really?!” You would’ve squealed with excitement if Teddy weren’t finally asleep. You had jumped at the word marriage. “What ring are you gonna get meeee?” You giddily teased and moved even closer to him, laying your head and hand on his chest. “I think if I were to like make my perfect ring from scratch..” you began talking at the speed of light. You were off in dream land now. “I want a tou et moi because that’s what my parents did.” He nodded with a smile lovingly the way you spoke, the way you looked when you got excited. “I like the two-stone setting too. It’s just so beautiful to look down and see like a real representation of two people together and I kinda like the idea of the three ring deal.” You were referring to the concept of having one ring for engagement, one for marriage, and one for eternal love, usually anniversaries. Trent listened intently watching your animations. He’d asked you before nonchalantly what you wanted but you didn’t think much of it. You knew he talked about marrying you but you didn’t know when or even if that would happen.

“Oh yeah?” He picked up your left hand and kissed your knuckles. He felt pretty good about himself imagining what he has had hidden downstairs in a safe for about a year now.

•

Thank you for reading! Please like, comment, or message what you think of the chapter … 🤍

Next part - Chapter 8 xx

[soraka-in-warhammer40k]

I'm always fascinated when someone at the club rants about "how they just invented T'au to cash on them anime weebs", completly oblivious to the time and culture of their creation. So T'au came out first in 2001, and were obviously conceptualized some years prior, which puts them into the late 90s in their original design. This is slowly hitting "the majority of the populance has no relevant internet access whatsoever" levels of "barbaric analog ages".

So imagine where GW sits in the late 90s - its a small studio somewhere in England barely coming to touch with the first elements of the internet, with the most dominant medium being television which... is not really about "exotic" shows from the other end of the world? Those get ported over when they have proven to be a hit in their own country mostly.

And without the internet as we know it today, the anime community just... did not exist. You have to understand that the whole concept of online anime culture centred around piracy, fansubs, fanart, and the creation of the term "weeabo" was a mid-to-late 00s thing, and it took almost another decade before "weeb" was somewhat reclaimed and no longer an online-slur.

There was a whole generation that grew up with (often horribly localized) japanese shows on TV (Pokemon, Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon) which came over with some delay to their release in Japan. By the time this generation came to congregate into online spaces and form any sort of fan-identity and culture, the T'au and their battlesuits had already been a design over a decade old.

"But wait isn't Gundam from the 70s"? Yes, that is totally correct. However, this is the one glaring mistake people make: you cannot compare modern day media content circulation around the globe to the analog ages. Those of us who remember these barbaric analog times know how it was: you just did not know stuff existed. If it was not in the newspaper or on the telly, it might as well not exist unless you knew a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy.

Sure, the Internet was slowly becoming a thing that found widespread use, but it would still take a while - not to mention the technical limitations. No streaming episodes. You start the download (if you can find someone who hosted the file of a series you had to know even existed first) somewhere around lunch, to hopefully get something to watch in the afternoon. Oh and also that blocked the household's phone-line and if the download cancelled for whatever reason then it was back to square one. Under such conditions, the online community we know today could simply not exist, as the alternative was importing stuff from the other end of the world for quite the money, or hoping a really shoddy localized VCR-tape ended up at your Blockbuster-equivalent.

Of course there was anime before that time, even those regarded absolute classics in the west, but those mostly achieved that rank over here in retrospective. When in the late 00s people wanted to watch stuff and had the ability to do so they shared what was considered "the classics" first (shared to the best of their ability with one episode cut into 5 parts on youtube with sometimes very questionable subtitles).

So even if we assume there was someone at GW in the 90s who was a total "proto-weeb" and Gudam-fan, there was literally no reason to "make knock-off Gundams" because the miniscule western wargaming audience SIMPLY DID NOT KNOW THE STUFF.

You can't make a marketing ploy to reference something your average consumers have never heard off. If anything, the creation of the T'au as a robotic-centred faction was inevitable: they needed a design that could hold their own in the setting, but Necrons hogged the full-robot niche, Imperials were weird cyborgs, Orks the "madman-scrap-tech", and Nids the "biotech". The only thing left here was "not full robot but also very clean and efficient" - and just like that, the Battlesuits and Drones were born.

It was only in later years when the Internet had come into full swing where they decided to go full-suit with releases such as the Riptide, but if we talk about the OG design of T'au and the first decade? Nothing to do with anime or "fishing for weebs". The fish would not be coming to that spot for almost a decade, and it would take a bit more before their numbers were plentyful enough to make it worth casting a line out.

[manorpunk]

I had an epiphany that I've been rolling around in my head lately - "if the plan is not working, that doesn't mean there's something wrong with me. It means there's something wrong with the plan."

I get anxious at the thought of changing things or starting over. It feels like an admission of defeat, or that it means I’ve been wasting my time. That’s not true - the plot is only one part of the story, and I’ve still been developing all these characters and locations that I can bring with me to the next idea. More importantly, “starting over” can mean that I have a better idea of what’s working and what I want to accomplish. If I start on an idea and it turns out it's not working, or even if I just start getting tired of it or feel like it's starting to collapse under its own weight, then I should put it on the shelf for a bit and try something that sparks my interest more. It seems obvious in retrospect to say "I will write more if I'm writing something I enjoy that interests me" but sometimes obvious things still have to be learned the hard way.

So, what's got my interest? What are the ingredients I want to put into the stew here?

Promise of the Premise: So, I've been rotating this thing in my head for a couple years now, which means there's a lot of twists and turns and not-what-it-seems and in-universe ideological debates that I've been developing. But the surface pitch of Manorpunk is "post-apocalyptic cyberpunk western pastiche of American suburbia," and when I write the Thing To Share, I want to hit those notes hard before I delve into the ideology and 'meaning,' which is fine, because hitting those notes is fun, and what's the point if I'm not enjoying myself!

Episodic/Serial Structure: TV show-esque, in terms of there being a series of self-contained stories advancing larger threads. A novel or movie or Big, Singular Thing is a constant process of revision, tweaking, changing the beginnings to fit new endings, etc., but if I go into it with an episodic structure in mind there's a lot more freedom to figure it out along the way.

Big and Small: A location that allows me to show off the various 'sides' of the setting - the unincorporated Manors speed-running the transition from anarchy to feudalism to statehood; the reality show-esque clashing of personalities among the governors of the post-crisis states; the atomized, corporate-branded treat-treadmill of city life. Any and all of these threads should be able to come up without needing to jostle things around too much.

Core Pair: A pair of central characters with interesting viewpoints, a compelling relationship with each other, and a vague goal which makes for a good excuse to catapult them in whichever direction takes my fancy.

I am not Nabokov: "My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three[.]" What an unrepentant, interminable showoff! The way those two words conjure such a complete and hilariously grim image. The poetic rhythm of that two-word aside: PIC-nic, LIGHT-ning. The wry self-awareness of Humbert Humbert, revealing his sympathetic villain backstory - child of a perfect little family that was suddenly torn apart through random tragedy, oh you poor thing - yet doing it in a sly and subtle way that doesn't bring attention to itself, and yet on further inspection that sparse and lackadaisical description of his own mother's death brings attention to itself by being, well, a sparse and lackadaisical description of his own mother's death! You could write an entire master's thesis about that single two-word aside! In any case, I am not Nabokov, and what a relief that is, since Nabokov himself seems to have personally been truculent and insufferable (not content to just insult and grouse about his contemporary authors, he went a step further and beefed with Cervantes, perhaps being the only person to dislike Don Quixote who wasn't being funded by the Habsburgs). Free from the burdens of Nabokovhood, I can write and relish in the familiar, the weightless, the genre. I can seek comfort without shame and delight in petty parlor tricks. I can, in other words, have fun and enjoy myself.

I will explain where all of this is going... soon.

[thelilypit]

That time I got banned from Lily's twitch, for... liking a Vtuber?

Let's set the scene; it's August 28th, 2024. Fresh off the rampant success of her Korra retrospective-retrospective, Lilian Valerie Orchard is ready to begin production on a brand new video; one that will single-handedly bring justice to the forgotten trailblazers of Canadian kids' TV WESTERN ANIMATION Only, some poor fool makes the mistake of sending out a bunch of gift subs, and the rest is history (CW: Lily acting exactly like an abusive partner) So here's a fun fact: I was there when it happened, lurking the chat. In fact, I was a lucky recipient of one of the gift subs!

A few minutes later, I was banned from Lily's chat. Oh no!

So... what did it? Did I use my newfound subscription to spam bonnie emotes? Did I mention significant unpersons from the Lily-Crit community? Did I make a long, drawn-out fart noise? Well... here's the entirety of my message history from that one stream. You be the judge. (Apologies for the low quality, it's what the stream capture picked up)

So why am I telling you all of this now? Well, Lily graciously allows the recipients of chat bans to appeal said bans after a brief cooling-off period. I appealed, and while I don't have a record of exactly what I said, it was along the lines of: "Hey there, I gather things got a little heated last stream, I'm sorry for contributing to it in any way, and I would really appreciate a chance to use those shiny subscription features I was gifted." And as of today, Lily has responded!

... Good lord, could you imagine actually being a fan of Lily's and getting this kind of response? I've said it before, but being a fan of hers sounds exhausting.

(I stand what I said about gift subs, by the way. I'd even plug the VTuber in question, but I'd rather she not be associated with Lily Orchard in any way, fashion or form. Absolutely nobody deserves that)

[nkn0va]

Headcanons for the investigation team girls having a western s/o who is an exchange student join the team after being thrown in the tv world? What if they also have a more western themed persona such as a gunslinger or something?

Roger roger. This is actually the basic premise of my Persona OC surprisingly but with a different kind of western Persona. This should be interesting.

This took fucking forever to do. Writer's block with ADHD is fun. Hope this is as good as you were expecting despite that.

-The moment you showed up at school for the first time Chie immediately took interest in you. Albeit for very... "Chie" reasons.

-She's naturally watched a lot of western action movies and took an interest in the kinds of martial arts they practice. She initially approached you because she was under the assumption you'd watched them, too.

-Upon finding out you haven't, the situation becomes a tad awkward, but she's able to eventually recover and get to know you normally. Her awkwardness was pretty amusing. Eventually it's not long before you two start dating.

-You're largely kept out of the picture when it comes to the Investigation Team, Chie tries to keep you out of it as best she can so that you don't get hurt. However it's not long before her worried thoughts over you manifest in the TV. When you show up on it she's immediately thrown into a panic, urging Yu and the others to get in there as fast as possible and get you out, regardless of how much time is left before you actually die.

-It's a long and hard fight, but eventually your shadow is defeated and you come to your senses, learning that as much as you hate it, this twisted, perverted (metaphorically) version of you is you. Your shadow turns into your Persona and it's...not what Chie expected.

-Granted she didn't know what she was expecting to begin with but she's certainly taken off guard. In retrospect though, it makes sense in her head. You're the westerner so it only makes sense for your true self to be a gunslinger, regardless of if you're the type to take offense to that if she said it out loud for...reasons.

-It's definitely got her approval though, it's pretty damn cool. As soon as you get out and get some rest she's going to start coming up with ideas for team attacks with you.

-Like Chie, Yukiko also found a unique interest in you. She grew up in a very traditionally Japanese household/family, she's not really acquainted with foreign culture. Like, at all.

-She tries her best to become friends with you though, but has no idea what the best way to interact with you is. The way she stumbles over her words every time she even gets a suspicion she accidentally said something wrong is pretty cute, even when it wasn't the case at all.

-Eventually after you two begin dating her worst fears come true, seeing you on the TV. She tries to keep calm unlike Chie but the worry is obvious.

-As worried for you as Yukiko is, she can't help but wonder what kind of Persona you'll awaken to, considering you're so different compared to everyone else who has seeing as you're the only foreigner.

-Once the fight with your Shadow comes she's surprisingly ruthless. If Fire magic is able to hurt it she will burn it as close to a crisp as she physically can. It's...a little scary to be honest.

When you finally accept your Shadow and it turns into your Persona she's pretty confused. Is that some kind of sheriff or outlaw Persona you have? Is it like those cowboys in old western movies she's heard about?

-Next thing you know the moment you wake up after getting back to the real world Yukiko will have bought a couple old cowboy movies she found at the clearance aisle at Junes for you two to watch together, feeling inspired to do so by your Persona. It's a fun night together.

-The moment Rise met you, her interest was immediately piqued. She's wondering if people overseas know about her and how popular she is outside of Japan. Definitely teases you if you do know who she is.

-Even if you don't, she finds the idea of a foreign S/O to be kinda hot. She'll tease you about being the foreign bad boy/girl type falling in love with an idol, even if you're the complete opposite. It's just all in good fun, though.

-Rise probably has the most obvious panic attack upon realized her S/O has been thrown into the TV, especially when she tries to call you but you fail answer. She's practically dragging Yu over to the entrance TV they use, her heart going a mile a minute.

-She unfortunately can't fight, but you can be damn sure if she could, she would. Her support skills are working overtime, it's the best she can do to ensure you get home safe.

-Her eyes widen in awe as she sees the Persona your Shadow turns into, gushing about how cool it and you are. She can't wait to see you in action once you finally join the team.

-Rise lowkey focuses on you a little bit when it comes to her supportive skills, especially if you show off in battle. She very much enables it.

-You're probably the first foreigner Naoto's met. She's heard stories of them that her grandfather has interacted with when he had to take up cases with detectives from other countries but she's never met one for herself. She wonders to herself if you're anything like them.

-Regardless of if you are or not, you do eventually find out that she is in fact not a guy. She's pretty embarrassed regardless of how that happens but her trust in you goes up immensely when you promise to and actually keep up the act of her being a guy until the truth comes out. Soon this results in a relationship

-There was this worry in the back of Naoto's head that you'd be the next victim to be thrown into the TV after she joined the team. As much as she didn't want you to, fate seemed to have other plans. She's able to keep her composure on the outside thankfully, but really, her mind is racing as she tries to come up with as efficient and safe of a plan as possible to get you out.

She knows that rushing into the TV blindly will only makes things worse for everyone, but despite her best efforts that anxiety in her gut is still very much there. She asks Yu to be on the frontlines, wanting to contribute as much as she can to the operation.

-Once your Shadow is finally defeated and turns into your Persona it immediately catches Naoto's attention. A western style gunslinger? That did check out as far as your origin, but for your true self to manifest as such was intriguing.

-She does use a gun herself so she's extra interested. She unfortunately can't get one for you as well as it's against the law, but immediately ideas start to come to mind regarding team attacks. Lord have mercy on any Shadow unfortunate enough to find themselves in the crosshairs of your girlfriend and your Persona.

-She might be a bit hesitant to admit it at first but your Persona has sparked a bit of an interest in old style western media. Old movies from the west start catching her interest, especially ones that seem to resemble your Persona in some way. Just don't tell anyone else about it, she'll feel like fainting from embarrassment.

[the-queerview]

The Substance

2024

by Coralie Fargeat

My dear readers, it's been a while since I decided to post. It was a long summer, ending with me visiting North Korea, just kidding, i just saw North Korea, which is already pretty amazing and frightening. Unfortunately my experience was disrupted, since a few week before my arrival some American tourist ran into North Korea and got shot, rest in peace idiot. They say never judge a deceased and in retrospective, i can't since those tours are literally disneyland trader joes tourist traps kind of, but lets not roast on peoples buisnisess here, lets roast the films, that take us on rides in our grey existence.

I would like to start by saying, that it's a pretty good year for babes and a pretty good year for horror film. We had Brat summer and soon there will be Nosferatu Autumn, with Lily Rose Depp starring in Nosferatu (102 years after its first release). We have Hunter Schaefers first cinema film, where she is not there for like 5 minutes like in Hunger games or entirely Naked for a few minutes like in Lanthimos kinds of kindness. Not to hate on nudity here, but we have a quite problematic history with women* and nudity. I highly recommend here Linda Nochlins representing women, on womens representation within western art history paintings, which is till todays core a major influence on cinematography. Which brings me to start today with a Portrait by Gericault, titled : Monomaniac of Envy (Monomane de l’envie) from 1822.

The Substance is a film following Elisabeth Sparkle ( Demi Moore), a former Oscar winner now aging TV -Starr with an aerobic ( I assume) show. (We might be remembered here of Jane Fonda, who indeed was an actress and the figure for aerobic in the 80s, when american propaganda preached they can't control the world in post vietnam war america and they only thing they can control is the BODY.) Elisabeths nasty boss is firing here for being to old, sad and isolated as she is, we don't learn so much, about her inner world. They cinematograpghy is resembling a distant, almost, stretched, lets say overdrawn perspective, probably similar to the characters inner world. Everything is clean, but not personal. Theres a giant photograph of Elisabeth in her almost comic looking loft. It reminds me somehow of older sowiet films, where a picture of Lenin would hang on the walls or some shit, so I thought, damn, the main dictator in Elisabeths Life is probably herself. And turns out right. Long story short, I try not to spoiler the grande scenes here, but one word, the billboard scene.. Elisabeth gets in contact to an anonymous note by an anonymous person, after some tragedy, and orders the SUBSTANCE. She will pick it up, inject it, and after some alien shit, which you see in the first picture, a second version of herself, that is herself will crawl literally out of her back. This version is young, hot, and will fuck Elisabeth up. Her name is Sue ( Margaret Qualley) and the rule is, that Sue got 7 days, and Elisabeth got 7. If one breaks the rule, they basically both fucked.

So the movie itself, is literally like, when popstars get the chance, like i dont know, rihanna doing superbowl singing all her bangers. kind of this vibe, So for horror film nerds, and i m sure i didnt guessed all but we have of course, david lynchs twin peaks and pretty sure wild at heart. we have suspiria by dario argento, especially the soundtrakc and BLOOD, we have some cronenberg body horror, and crazy camera like in gaspard noes enter the void, but all in all, i guess, what i was missing in the film, is that the first half was literally fucking amazing. it had it's own signature, it didn't need the references from my part, like yeah those dude directors did important work, i wish Fargeat would trust herself maybe more, that what shes doing is the right thing to go for. Also I literally loved ALL THE DETAILS. Like i could start analyzing so many bits of it.

I loved, that it was dealing with Envy, fear or aging, MISOGYNY, and comparison in such a smart way. The first half of the film, felt like an entire advertisment, which is the core to all evil, as we know. We literally spent actually years of our lifes watching advertisments.

The second half of it, reminded me to much of 80s body horror, it had its campy moment. And here I m being unfair probably. I did my research and Coralie Fargeat is born 1976. She was a a child in the 80s, and this was a time, that formed her culturally and therefor aesthetaically to a certain degree... or did you never noticed that fashion designers usually end up designing clothes, that they loved to wear as kids/teens? I feel like, if Coralie Fargeat felt like working in this 80s rubber stuff was important for, fuck , let her do it. Also in the 80s there weren't many female filmmakers around, especially not in the dudy dude horror scene. So whatever.

Also I was tbh in shock about the violence. Like many times, my partner had to close my eyes in the cinema, cuz i was hella scared of the intense violence. Maybe Kira Muratova ( an amazing ukranian filmmaker, that I truly adore for insane films) was right, when she said, women make harder films. I wonder if it has something to do with being in pain every month, of the injustice of the binary patriarchal world, or the violence transwomen experience?

There was for sure a very insanity level of violence, but at the same time, the most stunning portrayal of envy against a version of yourself, that you might never see. I loved that it also reflected so much the world in a sense, the decadence of the west, hollywood, glamour, age, ozempic, comparison, starving for youth vs the isolation of those from the current wars in the middle east, the starvation in Sudan. The proatogists were isolated in every scene almost. The Bathroom was the scenery of the crime, similar to the way we use this room to get ready for the outer world. The only real personal details in the film I experienced in the notes, those handwritten notes, that would always appear. I kept thinking about them for days. They became almost a metaphor for me, that different then then all the advertisments, the substance delivery typography, all those for Elisabeth Sparcle seemingly important objects, where not personal, thou its about her,about her body. while those handwritten notes by the strangers, seemed more personal, then the things that surround her, since trough the handwriting they are proof of a human life. Turns out, they were a signifer of what is missing in her world, the way she experience having the body, its no intimate, not adressed.

Also Demi and Margaret were so fucking amazing, i 'm literally blown away. Like i WISH i could like scream and hug them and be like. WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT. I bet all their friends and family are proud like crazy. This shit was insane, playing that? Insane. They did so good, like not many ppl can read a script like that and be like...mhhh yup. So GRANDEUR APPLAUSE !!!!!!!

All in all I highly recommend checking out the Substance, I m sorry if I spoilered to much. Big trigger warning for violence, also some scenes are literally gross, depending on you, bring a friend or a lover, and watch it in the cinema, if your socio cultural situation allows you to, i can imagine this film being censored, otherwise just be illegal literally. Like we live in hell.

but dont watch it alone, only if you are freaky deaky i guess.

love to my readers.

the queerview

ps: Also I did watch blink twice by Zoë Kravitz. a queerview will follow, but its so hardcore to watch blink twice and p.diddies freak party assault stuff. mentally i cant go down that road, but Kravitz did literally on time...

[dumplingequivalent]

hey I think I know why old people are insincere assholes the essay

Yknow when you're trying to connect to someone from an older generation, and they gloss over your attempts at genuine connection?

Like when a family member got you a gift that really meant something to you, but when you try to express your genuine gratitude, it seems like they don't really give a shit?

Or maybe you open up and share something personal with an older coworker or family friend along with some advice on a concern that you've been actively worrying about for them, but they don't acknowledge it or even act like they heard you at all?

Something clicked for me today, and now I think it's bigger than Poppop's Just An Asshole Sometimes.

I think there's been a huge shift in western culture around authenticity and genuine expression in the past two decades or so - the way we as a society and culture view it, express it, present it, and respond to it - that's causing minor intergenerational conflicts in our personal lives, but more importantly, major conflicts in our shared public spaces.

Hear me out.

1. Authenticity Then VS Now

2. Authenticity Becomes A Privilege And No One Tells The Boomers

3. Boomer-Meta and Why It Matters

1. Authenticity Then Vs Now

If you're on tumblr you probably understand nuance -

- so I think the concept of "authenticity" meaning something different to Boomers than it does to Millennials or Gen Z isn't baffling to you. it probably feels really familiar.

If you went to a US school in the 2000's, you probably remember the DARE program and anti-smoking and anti-drug ads on TV. And if you don't, you probably already have an idea of what I'm talking about. Things made by adults that felt embarrassingly out of touch to the children they were designed for.

As we all know, these all flopped immediately yet lasted the whole decade. (flopped except for the anti-smoking ads which I'll come back to) In retrospect, these marketing attempts says a lot more about the generation of adults responsible for them.

Things like the DARE program were, pretty transparently, designed to resemble what boomers remembered was "cool and interesting" from their own childhoods. My favorite example is Yello Dino and his video on "Tricky People" that's a painfully obvious homage to Fonzie from Happy Days crossed with Barney that's just as painful to watch.

Watch from 8:03-15:30 or so to see Yello Dino appear and sing a stranger danger song with the Local Kids™.

It's easy to look at this kind of thing and the DARE program and say "of course kids didn't fall for any of this, it's so poorly made; blatantly trying to sell an idea;" etc. But I think the core issue is authenticity.

Remember the anti-smoking ads? Those worked in the end because they featured people who looked like people we knew in person, with real problems from actions they really regretted. And that stuck.

But the Boomer "How Do You Do Fellow Kids" bullshit was never grounded in reality.

The approach they were trying to replicate only worked back in the boomers childhoods because everyone was seen as being genuine by default.

People in real life told the truth unless proven otherwise. Comedians on TV said things to make the audience present laugh. Singers appeared on TV so you could see them as well as hear them. People in ads were selling you a product.

Actors acted like their characters to portray that character "genuinely".

Why would they lie? Their job is to be that character. If they say they like Big Coffee Brand™, you might laugh as it's obviously an ad,

but you also then believed that to be true.

No, really. The section on Fonzie's wiki page bout Henry Winkler's involvement in social issues, titled "Civic Involvement," reads like a social commentary in a dystopian horror. There's little to no distinction between the character and the actor. Henry Winkler is Fonzie, and Fonzie is Henry Winkler.

So if you wanna be like Fonzie, you wanna be like Henry Winkler. You wanna smoke and drink and say what Henry Winkler does, because that's what Fonzie does.

Do you see where I'm going with this?

Now, flash forward to the 2000's.

The police officers doing DARE were (mostly) never thrilled to be there. The anti-weed ads were so exaggerated that they seemed cartoony. Hell, some of them were cartoons, just unfunny ones. And most importantly, we were taught from a very young age that everyone is always lying.

"Never reveal personal information about yourself to strangers or online to protect yourself" turns into "Everyone is lying to you to get something from you" really, really fast.

People in real life aren't to be believed until they can prove what they say is true. Comedians on TV say things to keep themselves relevant and in the rumor mill. Singers appear on TV to sell concert tickets and promote albums. Ads use social issues that affect real people as marketing. Actors are people who are pretty and pretend to be other people in a way that's never convincing, but sometimes if they're feeling generous they'll let you know what they really think and feel.

So, why would anyone tell the truth?

Why should you?

2) Authenticity Becomes A Privilege And No One Tells Boomers

(Thank you for reading this far and I promise I'm don't with the edgy "everything sucks" poetry now)

So now we've all grown up into jaded adults who've been taught to not trust but to strive to "be your unique self" and that creates some weird social dichotomies.

If you want to be truly happy, you must accept yourself and do what you want to do.

....but then you risk being seen as a cringey fuck that gets laughed at on Facebook by your highschool classmates and all of your previous bosses.

All jokes aside, modern society prioritizes a readied public face now more than ever, and that's really exemplified in the Internet celebrity experience. Taking a mild stance on anything generates tabloids attention, and doing something the public frowns upon can ruin a person's career permanently. you're on tumblr, this isn't news to you. you get what I mean.

This consequently makes moments of genuine emotion and expression from these celebrities inherently risky - and thus, a much more rare occurrence. Moments of streamers getting scared by spiders or cockroaches blow up constantly because, I mean yeah sure it's funny, but it's also really REALLY difficult to stage a believable reaction to something like that. And that carnal reaction draws out the desire for connection in all of us. That moment of unfiltered response feels special - a brief glimpse behind the curtain.

And celebrities online know it too. Apology videos, let's plays, streaming - all of this media has a built in sense of authenticity that is vital to making it work. Authenticity is a premium social currency in this space, and that bleeds into our everyday lives as well.

If the most badass and brave thing your idols can do is to be sincere, then eventually, you'll probably feel that way too. It makes sense - sincerity is vulnerable. Choosing to be deliberately honest and emotional when you have no expectation to be is a powerful thing. At least, to most of us it is.

While this is all happening, there's an entire generation of people who are still experiencing the world like when happy days was airing.

Dr. Oz, Dr. Phil, Rachel Ray.......whatever other bullshit they put on TV, all of it begins to make more sense when you focus on their target audience - the middle aged and elderly.

Yes, really. Think of who you know in real life who absolutely loved The Big Bang Theory.

I mean, come on. This image makes me sad, dude.

Humor me for a moment. let's just run with my theory and say middle-aged and older people are all walking around as if everyone is always telling the truth to them.

Is it really that surprising that Dr. Oz was/is?? as successful as he was? As it turns out, believing everything to be true until proven otherwise is incredibly dangerous when applied to medical practice!

While we were growing up, the middle aged and elderly were spending their time being constantly self-absorbed and, just, unapologetically themselves. Which doesn't sound bad in theory, but it's really not as straightforward as it sounds.

3. Boomer-Meta And Why It Matters

So boomers are gullible. the sky is blue. why should you care

The point to all this is that authenticity is very important to modern society, and the difference of what authenticity means and how it's expressed matter drastically when understanding each other is vital.

Boomers were raised to always be genuine. If one believes themself to always be truthful, that lends to forming a bias in their own favor. And breaking the mentality down further, "I always say what I mean and I mean what I say" implies that what was said is what is true. And further, someone changing their "story" is an indicator of deception.

I've met plenty of older generation people who act like sharing their opinion is a gift in and of itself i.e. unwarranted comments on cooking or food, interjected advice about the conversation subject. Similarly, questions about the validity of a statement seem to often be taken as questioning ones morals.

This personal bias is very apparent in interpersonal situations. An attempt to be more genuine with someone who thinks this way would come across as staged and more insincere, and conversely, speaking with a clear bias appears superficial and ignorant.

But the real conflict is how this affects our news and politics. A core misunderstanding of what sincerity is and what it looks like, from either side, is dooms any conversation before it ever begins.

The lack of literacy in each other's values adds so much unnecessary conflict into already divisive matters. The stagnation in the legal progress of important social issues is probably worsened with so many of the US lawmakers being elderly themselves.

I don't have a great way to end this thing, but thanks for reading my weird essay.

The slow realization that a misunderstanding could be at the center of most major political conflict in the US consumed me for like 12 hours today and I appreciate you taking time to read my ramblings.

[gemsofgreece]

https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1124978706101525&id=100057682193382

Another Turkish series that features Byzantine empire and Greek people in the comments fight over it why we don't make about it instead?

But with what money? Greek productions care about making quick money from reality tv shows and the series they make are nowadays remakes from other countries which mostly are cheap soap operas with vendetta and love triangles. They waste money on projects like this instead of funding actual good things.

Even Magissa the supposed oldest period set in the 18th century is mediocre:/

First of all, let’s be clear: Turkey does not make a series that “features” the Byzantine Empire. It makes a series about the Ottomans conquering the Byzantine Empire. Big difference. Turkey invests a huge part of its available resources in stroking the national pride of its people, many years now.

We also can not judge it before it airs because even if they are closer in technical aspects (settings, costumes) than they once were, the most critical part is how they will present historical truth. Let’s not forget that previous one in which Constantine Paleologos was presented as an imbecile.

Don’t expect a (good) Byzantine show in Greece anytime soon. Greeks are lately getting brainwashed to hate and lowkey, no, actually highkey renounce the Byzantine empire, this is what I am noticing. Even though western perception of Byzantium has shifted dramatically the last years (which is also why they have suddenly started massively claiming it as part of western civilisation and a perfect seamless continuation of Ancient Rome, the wet dream of western white dudes who like to imagine Rome surviving the Apocalypse for some reason). Κόντεψα να πάθω ένα εγκεφαλικό όταν είδα να γράφουν στο YouTube σοβαρά ότι το Βυζάντιο είναι κληρονομιά των Ιταλών επειδή ήταν το ίδιο με την Αρχαία Ρώμη. Κάπου εκεί ένιωσα στο πετσί μου το «καλύτερα το οθωμανικό φέσι από την παπική μίτρα» που λέγανε οι βυζαντινοί. And yet Greeks take no issue with that because first of all they think they are oh so western and their minds have stayed behind in stereotypes of 50 years back and want nothing to do with the Byzantine Empire. Btw those people are the αρχαιόπληκτοι who think their closest ancestor is Aristotle and that Christianity tied their hands from certainly doing the supersonic civilization advances that they were 10000% capable of and now Greece would definitely be the biggest superpower in the world. You know, typical Balkan brainwashing, the Greek-style. I could rant for hours about how laughably wrong this is and how detrimental it actually is for our sense of national identity but this is not our topic here.

Except it kind of is, actually. You see, most Greek people don’t know history. While Greeks are taught history more accurately than in dare I say quite a few of their surrounding countries, in Greece kids are more and more led to consider it insignificant with every new generation. The school system does that to them: what else could happen when in high school, the school years in which students have the most developed critical skills, teens are allowed to solve their math & physics etc homework for the φροντιστήριο during history and language and political studies classes and everything else that is deemed iNsignIficAnT? How could it be different when picking theoretical studies direction in high school automatically sends you to the group of kids “who were too IdiOtiC to understand math”??? I say this as a person who followed and graduated uni from the θετικές sciences - I enjoyed all of that; math, physics, biology so there was no question that I should go there because that’s where “clever kids” go. And in retrospect, I might be regretting it now because now I see the beauty in theoretical studies even more and I am currently at a phase that I am finding them marginally more interesting. In the end, from my year everyone went to θετική or technological direction except for like TWELVE (12) students who went to theoretical & human studies and half of them weren’t happy about being there because they felt they were banished there for not loving math.

Imagine, the country with the largest number of archaeological sites per land unit in the world, not being able to get kids interested in its lingual and historical legacy, or any legacy and civilisation for that matter. I am not saying our school too should turn them into nationalist soldiers like it happens in certain countries nearby 👀, I am saying school should turn them into knowledgeable young people acquainted with history, politics, social studies, the Greek language in-depth etc in short everything young Greeks know nothing about.

You might think I am off topic but I am not. You see, Greek producers know what their target audience is. The target audience is yiayias watching a love triangle drama, moving pictures that don’t need too hard thinking. Or people wanting to have a laugh at best. People who watch with their kids and don’t want frustrating imagery. Simple things. Greeks are also so politically obtuse and polarised and lately the government is so omnipresent in our lives that political shows would not have much luck either. The Greeks who actually want to watch something different have long given up on the Greek TV and are extremely reluctant to trust it again. Look at these viewership stats:

Honestly, what creative investments do you expect in a country where most of the dynamic audience (AKA young people watching actively) is watching something like «Έχω παιδιά»? The only thing that is not disheartening in these stats is that Survivor is crawling.

As for Magissa, there are so many things to unpack. First of all, the first season was already a risk given Greek viewers’ preferences. And don’t get me wrong, I LOVED Magissa but even though the budget was the highest ever, surpassing even The Island, it was still hugely lacking for the needs of that plot and time period. (And also no matter how good Magissa is, it is a joke compared to the Island.) And the idiots cut that budget in half to make the second season instead of investing the earnings of the first one???? And why? To tell a story EVEN further back in time? Like, make this make sense.

Despite all that, I actually enjoy watching the second season of Magissa. There are many reasons it doesn’t do well enough: fatphobia (trust me it’s the main reason, unfortunately ), too little budget for the settings and effects and the cast, like this was supposed to have a large cast with Italian speakers, and of course lack of historical knowledge. It would be scary for you to consider but there are many people who have no idea about the Frankokratia and all of this is stuff they are unfamiliar with. It’s also one of the least taught periods in Greek school anyway.

Making a Frankokratia show with a historical / political plot in Greece would be a huge risk because a scary number of people wouldn’t know what you are talking about or wouldn’t care. So it has to be magic and love triangles. I don’t mind that but it is what it is.

Furthermore, like I said above, Greek and Turkish viewers are not similar. Turkish viewers actively want to watch past glories and promote them to other countries as they are entering “the Century of Turkey” like their president promises.

Greek viewers just want to watch a foreign show or just something way too easy and casual in Greek TV. And TV producers know that, so not only they don’t have a lot of money but they are willing to invest much less because they mistrust greatly the Greek audience and its tastes and I honestly don’t blame them.

With the channel producers we have now, with the mentality Greek TV viewers have, with our alienation from historical studies, with our tendency to scrutinise, doubt and mock everything before it even starts and without even having the credentials to be so strict judges, there is no way Greece could make a show about the Byzantine empire now or any other significant historical period and it having any chance to be remotely good.

In short, this is part of Turkey’s greater plan to present a fascade of grandeur to its people but also foreigners in every single aspect, including entertainment.

As for Greece, έχει χάσει και τα αυγά και τα πασχάλια σε όλους τους τομείς, what do you expect. (<- Sorry I didn’t know a good enough equivalent for that saying in English XD)

Wow this must be one of the most coals of Greece posts I have made sorry for the downer hahaha in fact there was so much I wanted to rant about and this is why the answer might seem a little incohesive.

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

Looks like Eddie Murphy has some muscle when it comes to these sorts of things, because DreamWorks is apparently at work on a DONKEY movie, set for release sometime after SHREK 5 comes out.

Murphy did say in a recent interview that he "thinks" SHREK 5 is going to be out next year, but with DreamWorks having three films slotted for 2025 - DOG MAN, BAD GUYS 2, and GABBY'S DOLLHOUSE... I don't think so.

2026 seems right still, plus the first movie turns 25 that year. But Murphy has recorded some lines for it for a few months, so it's closer than not.

Given how well both PUSS IN BOOTS movies did (I get the sense that the first one is kinda-sorta forgotten? It actually did very well way back in 2011), and the sequel was a leggy phenomenon, so I'm not surprised that there'd be some traction on a Donkey movie. The SHREK franchise is as alive as ever some two decades after SHREK came out, and some three decades after the original book by William Steig was published.

I'm wondering if it's going to be more than just "Donkey yuks it up for 90 minutes", but that would still be fun anyhow. After THE LAST WISH, I think it'd be cool to see a Donkey movie be told through his perspective in a way animation can really pull off. And not in the more expected way CG movies, including the SHREKs, often do. THE LAST WISH goes hard on a storybook/fairy tale look and tone, and retains the very Three Musketeers/Spaghetti Western-informed vibe of the first PUSS IN BOOTS. When action happens, there are those little flourishes and such that - to me - make you experience the story the way the character is feeling it. Very much like classic Disney animated films, ironically. Maybe a Donkey movie could do the same, but in a way that really puts you in the head of this wisecracking ass.

Also, is it theatrical? Or something that'll be sent to a streamer? (Either ORION AND THE DARK-style where it's a full-on DWA picture that for whatever reason didn't go to theaters, or MEGAMIND TV Pilot-style where it's made somewhere else w/ a wholly different team and was never meant for the big screen or potential awards.)

If it's a theatrical movie, that would make it, I think, one of the first big-time Western animated movie to spawn theatrical spin-offs based on two separate characters. Theatrical, that is. If any Disney animated feature got a spin-off, it was largely through direct-to-video stuff and that's a whole other clustercuss of its own. ICE AGE recently had that Disney+ Buck Wild thing made at some other studio, as well.

But no, I'm referring to theatrical... Especially if made by the same studio.

I think THE LEGO MOVIE got there first. As pretty much everyone knows, Batman was a character in that movie... And he got his own theatrical movie in 2017 featuring tons of other DC and WB-owned characters, it's the second-ever release in the LEGO MOVIE series. An unusual move in retrospective, LEGO MOVIE 2 probably should've been next, *then* LEGO BATMAN. Warner Bros. made an equally unusual decision to follow that up with THE LEGO NINJAGO MOVIE towards the end of 2017, which featured *no one* from the previous two movies. It was all characters from the Ninjago line and assorted new faces. It lost money on its release, too... I think doing two spin-off movies about two separate sets of characters before a proper LEGO MOVIE sequel helped hurt that film when it finally came out in 2019... Five years after the first movie. It didn't enjoy any of the success of the original, and Warner Bros. offloaded the franchise - probably sans Batman and such - to Universal... Who, as I understand, are still deep at work on a LEGO MOVIE 3 of sorts.

Worth noting that Warner also had other LEGO MOVIE spin-offs in development before LEGO MOVIE 2: THE SECOND PART released. A Jorge R. Gutierrez-directed pic called THE BILLION BRICK RACE was one of them. Warners really though they had a whole expanded LEGO MOVIE-verse going on there, and perhaps got lost in that before building a solid base with Emmet Brickowski and friends.

DreamWorks, of course, is making a DOG MAN movie. The DOG MAN books are a spin-off of Dav Pilkey's CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS, which DreamWorks adapted into a movie in 2017. DOG MAN may or may not feature the Captain himself.

Illumination's DESPICABLE ME has two MINIONS movies, which cover... Well... The Minions, a whole group. A character unit itself, and young Gru appears in both movies, having a much larger role in the second one. Kinda spin-off/prequel-ish movies... But there's no movie that's just about, say, Lucy or younger Vector or anyone like that. So, that's just one for DESPICABLE ME.

Pixar... TOY STORY has one character-centric spin-off movie in LIGHTYEAR, though that was a wholly different take on Buzz. CARS has one in two PLANES movies about a character who doesn't appear in any of the CARS movies. The PLANES movies were made at Disneytoon Studios by crews who mostly weren't on the CARS movies. John Lasseter is exec producer of them, and wrote the story for the first one. They're by all means direct-to-video type movies made elsewhere, much like the Disney ones of the '90s and '00s, but they got theatrical releases. We almost got a third one that was all about spacecraft, and a fourth one about city transit. We almost had a whole CARS cinematic universe there, with 3/4 of it not being made by Pixar.

So yeah... DreamWorks finally having two separate characters headlining their own movies apart from the larger franchise they come from... Interesting development. Luckily for them, they were four movies into SHREK when PUSS IN BOOTS came out, and they'll be five movies in if DONKEY happens.

[tinyozlion]

Addressing the Troubles: Part 3 / 3

English Dubs and the Early Years of Figuring Out Anime:

Back in the 00’s, the television industry was still figuring out anime. At the time, there was still a general prevailing attitude in North America that cartoons on TV were for children– even the more “mature” cartoons of the 90's like Batman: The Animated Series, Reboot, Gargoyles (actually, the Gargoyles voice acting fuckin' ruled), Beast Wars, etc., as a loose tendency, were the realm of bombastic voices and over-the-top, scenery-chewing performances. And god bless those performances! Where would we be as a nation, as a culture, if not for Mark Hamill’s Skeletor, his Joker? 

But this approach was less suited for dubbing anime. Sure, if you put that kind of sauce on a Sailor Moon villain, or a fun little DBZ alien guy, it works out okay! But it falls apart when you get to the serious stuff, and even the average 90’s goofball anime had *serious stuff*. When those moments weren’t given the requisite amount of sobriety, the dub very quickly became a disservice to the spirit of the original, and even young audiences could tell. 

Different studios took different approaches of course, and some of them caught on more quickly than others-- but in a large number of cases, the Japanese voice acting was just guaranteed to be better. They had an industry of professionals that took that job very, very seriously, and for the most part Western shows hadn’t gotten that degree of legitimacy yet.

There's a massive divide between Japanese and English drama-- separated not just by language, but by hundreds of years of theatrical traditions that share no common ancestor. There are whole character archetypes we don't have a direct equivalent for in the West, levels of intonation that don't translate, portrayals of sexuality and gender expression that we had no cultural context for, types of dramatic timing we had no idea what to do with for a couple decades. North American television studios simply didn’t have enough experience with those cultural and theatrical differences to handle the conversion well. There are plenty of famous examples of early dubs trying and failing to find substitutes for Japanese terms, idioms, honorifics, foods (“donut” from “onigiri”, and so forth).

These were the years when the “dub vs. sub” war had any kind substance to it– because kids, you only got to buy whatever language was on the VHS tape that Suncoast or Blockbuster was selling. And if you didn’t show up for the subbed version of an anime, the less likely you were to ever get it. DVD’s, with their selectable audio options and subtitle tracks, were still on the horizon. 

This is also why fan-subs started showing up, because the kids were smart and wanted a better understanding of their favorite shows; they were fed up with these butchered attempts at localization. “All according to *keikaku… *Keikaku means: Plan” is hilarious in retrospect, but it was proof that you could show new words and concepts to English-speaking audiences, and they would learn and appreciate them rather than changing the channel. Fans were dedicated enough to the source material that they were doing this shit themselves– literally making blurry VHS copies with their dubs and distributing them like mix-tapes. It created an underground fan culture of anime in the USA that became a substantive market for less tampered-with Japanese media, and I don’t know what the media landscape would look like today if that hadn’t happened.

--Voice actors work with what they're given; sometimes, that’s limited to just what’s in the script of the day, and in the early years of American localization, it would probably NOT have included any background from an untranslated manga, or the original director’s notes, or from cultural inference that was lost on unfamiliar Western listeners at the time.  So they’d be left to their own devices when it came to choosing character voice and intonation and what to do with pauses and interjections, and they’d be doing it without the benefit of the original cultural framework or context from the adapted source material. Then of course, there is the ubiquitous challenge of ADR: matching syllables to lip-flaps and the timing of a given scene, which I can only imagine has improved with more modern software.

All this lead to some memorably wild and incongruous readings that today strain belief, are unintentionally humorous, or in worst cases, ruin a scene. 

--This is the landscape we find ourselves in with early dubs. One's expectations must be modified to suit the medium and the times. It's all part of the challenge, the experience, the charm, the je-ne-sais-que of early dubs. It is the spice of life. Sometimes we all need a weird little background guy with a stupid voice to say the dumbest shit you ever heard. I find joy in this.

The English localization team on Gundam Wing was working with a very limited crew; almost everyone pulled double duty, and most “additional voices" are just the main actors wearing different hats. This led to some real big swings with the one-off character voices– because there are only so many ways to shout “IT’S A GUNDAM!”, and sometimes you gotta put some extra mustard on OZ Grunt #47 so you can tell him apart from OZ Grunt #46.

They were trying their very hardest to make it seem like there were more than twelve people inhabiting the universe, and the results… were mixed. But the effort was admirable.

My Humble Defense of the English Dub:

Okay so listen-- I’m not gonna force anyone to listen to the English dub. Your mileage and tolerance for all of the dislocated strangeness and over-the-topness mentioned above may vary. And obviously, the original Japanese audio has artistic authenticity and charisma of its own.

-- SO ALL I’M GONNA SAY IS: if you tap out early, you’re gonna miss out on some of the rawest, coolest, emotionally pitch-perfect deliveries of all time.

Brian Drummond is absolutely heart-stopping as Zechs; it’s one of my favorite VA performances of all time. Enuka Okuma is by turns a chilling, ferocious, and sympathetic Lady Une. Mark Hildreth’s Heero Yuy conceals a depth of nuance and attention to detail beneath his superficial monotone. Kirby Morrow’s Trowa is a well of quiet empathy, his stoicism sometimes the vehicle for a tinder-dry sense of humor. Lisa Ann Beley as Relena runs the full dramatic range between naivety, to heartbreak, to conviction. Saffron Henderson’s Noin has a smoky sensuality that overlays her formidable competence, and moments of incredibly touching vulnerability. Michael Dobson’s cold eloquence as Duke Dremail brings the amount of aristocratic dignity and arrogance needed to lend legitimacy to the Romefeller Foundation and its terrifying power. And of course, Scott McNeil as Duo is utterly indispensable, a bright, bouncing point of contrast in a grim troupe, with the deftness of touch to deliver glimpses into the nihilism, the weary kindness, that his up-beat attitude belies. 

I could continue to embarrass myself and go on this way about the whole cast. I love the English dub very much-- I also, truly, deeply, understand that it is wacky as hell. But I still believe it's worth grinning and bearing the NPCs and occasional dud lines to get to the good stuff. And sometimes, honestly, the good stuff IS the wacky stuff.

 Side note: a fun game I like to play is Spot That Voice Actor! Take a drink every time you identify one of the main cast in a secret, secondary role! Take a drink every time you catch one of them putting some extra English on an unnamed character who dies immediately after they speak! Expire from alcohol poisoning by episode 20! Example: Did you know that Brian Drummond voiced both Zechs AND Doctor G? Now you know! And you can't unknow it! Ha ha! I've done this to you!

[thank-heaven-you-asked]

I have lurked LONG ENOUGH

And this hole in the ground is not exactly high living, so hi, sorry, all that. I started Stampede right after episode 12 aired, because, ah, I had actually forgotten about it -- I was never really a fan of the 98 show (I was in another, even-weirder-in-retrospect fandom space when 98 was new, but I watched it maybe three or four years later). I read bits and pieces of the manga and agreed that it seemed right up my alley on literal paper. So why didn't I like 98? Embarrassingly, I think it's a matter of genre. I am avidly attracted to science fiction and neutral toward/bored by Westerns. Trigun is either SF cleverly disguised as a Western, or it's a Western cleverly decorated with SF elements, depending on your perspective. It was clearly good, but it could just never hold my attention.

I was immediately interested in seeing Stampede when it was first announced, though. Not because I thought there were going to be any big changes, but because the animation fascinated me. How are they doing that?? I asked. Are they capturing this with the Unreal engine?? (yes, they were. kind of. that's actually become pretty common in TV shows; I don't know why I thought that would be crazy for an anime.)

Stampede, at least compared to 98, is SF with Western aesthetics. It leans toward hard SF at times, even. Which is certainly good news for me, but I wonder if it hasn't lost an important part of itself in that. Just because I don't personally like Westerns doesn't mean that it wasn't thematically significant that Trigun was a Western. This is only one of many things I felt guilty for liking more in Stampede. I could write a whole list, though now I've finally caved and made a side blog where I can actually discuss all this. It caught up to me twenty years late, but the hyperfixation finally found me. I feel like I've triggered a curse someone put on me in high school and forgot about because the only anime I watched in high school was good ol' Sailor Moon. Ha ha, hypothetical sucker! ...wait

Anyway, watch this space for a lot of rambling about that jeep. Forget Knives, that car is the most powerful being on the planet.

[ryansemporium]

Hey I'd like to add my perspective growing up queer (cis, gay male) during the 2000s in Western Europe.

There was a lot of shame. Especially as a small town boy, there was the very real feeling my family would never accept me. I went through an entire "I'm bi I'm bi I'm bi I can't be gay that would be the worst thing ever, I'm bi" phase.

My country had legal gay marriage (not even just 'civil partnership', actual marriage) by the 2000s. Despite that, mainstream opinion was still that we were a bunch of freaks and fruits. The big tv channels had "lifestyle" segments on gay people that were exoticising, demeaning, and very much "look at how these freaks live".

In true European fashion, anyone who complained was told "well AT LEAST you don't have it as bad as AMERICANS" (see also: racism)

'Don't ask, don't tell' was a thing not just in the US military but in high school as well. Palpable sense of "don't tell me you're gay so I can continue to be civil to you"

When I was out during the last year of high school, a gym teacher asked me "Hm, shouldn't you get changed in the girls' locker room instead?" (On a positive note, several of my straight male classmates immediately shut him down by calmly going "Excuse me? What? What did you say? You can't say that.")

Parties were pretty great. This might be nostalgia talking. There was (is) a semi-government-funded organisation focused on helping queer youth, and they threw parties about once a month. They had an online forum (discontinued only a couple of years ago! I hate the current internet and the Discordification of social online spaces) where I made a lot of friends, some of whom I'm still friends with to this day. Anyway, the parties were fun. I'd take the bus there and dance through the night and make out with people, thinking "are you a boy or a girl? does it matter?"

The internet was WILD. Only freaks were on there. 'Groups' and chatrooms were a big thing. I was in an MSN or Yahoo! group for Final Fantasy VIII yaoi. I made friends there too. We used ICQ messenger and Yahoo! messenger, before MSN messenger was even a thing. I sent and received nudes. Much later I wondered about some of the people I sent nudes too, and how maybe they were not 16 like me but a whole lot older. (And also: I lived. It barely affected me.)

I realised I was gay when I was in some sort of summer camp. Another kid was panicking because he thought he might be gay (he was, and in retrospect it was very obvious.) He'd got the idea from a GOVERNMENT FLYER on "you may be gay (and it's okay)", containing a bulleted list on "Things that indicate you might be gay." ("Masturbating while mainly thinking about people of the same gender as you" was the big one for me)

There were government posters up in libraries about "1 in 10 people are gay, it might be you, and that's okay!" It was... weird but well-meaning, I guess?

9/11 and the Bush Administration and the Afghanistan and Iraq war were... something. Yeah. I think a lot of us forgot that the War on Terror was a semi-religious war against islam. I know I forgot how big a role Bush's born-again christian thing played in it all until I saw some clips of his "God bless America" and "If you aren't with us you're against us" and it all came rushing back.

Chick-Fil-A being homophobic was a thing back then too. Back then straight people didn't care either. It's kinda funny how that came back up again recently.

Cultural imperialism is a thing. As a kid in Europe you get inundated in American tv shows and movies, whether you want to or not, and there's no telling what will stick. My mom and sister were really into Seventh Heaven, a shitty religious / evangelical Aaron Spelling show. I was really into South Park. I feel this has only gotten worse now that the entire Internet has narrowed down to five American-owned mega-sites.

At the same time, there was a sense of pride that most European countries didn't blindly go along with what Bush and Cheney and Powell were trying to sell about "Saddam's weapons of mass destruction". The whole "freedom fries" debacle was the first time me and many of my peers realised America is a deeply unserious nation.

The internet was a lot better, though.

…I’m asking this as a younger queer person who was busy with other things during the 2000s (namely being a toddler/very young child)…what was being queer teen in the early 2000s like? Also, before I go interrogate the first willing 40 year old I find at the LGBT Center…do you know of any books or articles about this time period?

it was a lot of being forced through abstinence only sex education, getting hate crimed, being super eating disordered and that being completely normalized and even considered healthy, having classmates die of a mix of eating disorders & drug use, rampant teen pregnancy, both teachers and students getting into fistfights, being sexually harassed literally all the time, the one trans kid having to take school online so he wouldnt kill himself, 25 year olds hanging out around the school giving girls cigarettes and sexually assaulting them, working a part time job at the mall for 5.50 an hour then driving home to find your mom watching bill oreilly ranting about how people like you are evil and disgusting and next thing jeff dunhams on the tv doing jokes about dead muslims. cant tell you just how ambient and everywhere both violent homophobia and rape culture were like it was omnipresent. lotta slurs too. lots of teens getting black out drunk all the time and puking and getting into situations. what resistance to the wars i got to see in my small ish city was a few rallies of a few dozen people and some protest signs tied to highway overpasses, but otherwise american flags and jingoistic propaganda were everywhereeeee, on every minivan window and classroom etc. nobody spoke up for gay people that wasnt gay and everybody hated women and were so so anti black

the internet was a lot better though.

[olivesbest]

How Did Extremist Ideology Take Over the Russian Orthodox Church?

In modern Russia, the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) has become a battleground between reformists seeking modernization and conservative radicals intent on preserving an extremist worldview. This ideological divide traces back to the influence of Metropolitan John (Snychov) of St. Petersburg, whose radical legacy dominates the Church's leadership and media presence. With the suppression of reformists and the rise of ultraconservative doctrines, including anti-Western rhetoric, anti-Semitism, and a rejection of democratic freedoms, the ROC has embraced a doctrine that merges nationalism with religious fundamentalism. This article examines how these radical ideologies have shaped the Church and its alignment with extremist conservative principles.

As in Orthodox Christianity globally, so in Russia in particular, extreme parties have vividly manifested themselves: “liberal democrats” on one side, and their fierce opponents — conservative radical extremists ideologically led by Metropolitan John (Snychov) of St. Petersburg — on the other. Although the Metropolitan died in 1995, his legacy is thriving and winning over, having in its ranks the majority of Synod members: the ruling bishops, parish priests, and most of the monks. Meanwhile, the few reformers in the Moscow Patriarchate are persecuted.

Priest A. Men was murdered; his books were de facto banned from sale in churches, church shops and stalls, except for two or three Moscow churches. The persecutions against Father Georgy Kochetkov and his numerous congregation who attempted to implement minimal yet highly pressing reforms in their parish life, such as conducting services in Russian, are widely known. The only information outlet that can be nominally classified as “moderately liberal” — the Christian Church Society Channel on Radio Sophia — received a stern warning from Patriarch Alexy II in 1997: “We believe that participation of ROC clergymen in the programs on Radio Sophia is unacceptable as it contradicts the spirit of the Orthodox faith.”

At the same time, the powerful wing of fundamentalist fanatics who represent the ruling overwhelming majority in the Russian Orthodox Church controls numerous media outlets that promote its fanatic ideology: the radio station and newspaper “Radonezh”, Metropolitan Kirill’s Saturday religious program on ORT, the newspapers “Rus’ Pravoslavnaya” (“Orthodox Rus’”) and “Rus’ Derzhavnaya” (“Sovereign Rus’”), the TV program and magazine “Russian House”, special inserts in the communist newspaper “Zavtra” (“Tomorrow”), and the most marginal and low-circulation newspapers: “I Am Russian”, “We Are Russians”, “Our Fatherland”, “Pulse of Tushino”, “Duel” and others. More moderate newspapers, which still often contain attacks against non-Orthodox and liberals, are “Orthodox Moscow” and “Moscow Church Herald.” As for the provincial press, local branches of “The Talibans” are countless!

Let’s list the main principles of the “Credo” of the Moscow Patriarchate Orthodox “Taliban”:

Retrospective worldview: backward focus and sacralization of the past. True verity is found only in ancient piety.

Belief in the inviolability and truthfulness of the Old Style (Julian calendar). Fundamentalists adhere to the Old Style out of principle.

Unacceptability of church service in modern languages: for the Russians, service in Russian is unacceptable.

Prohibition of statutory changes in church service.

Adherence to the idea of the 15th-century elder Philotheus of Pskov: “Moscow is the Third Rome.” Hence:

Political and religious thirst for the restoration of monarchy, empire, and church-state symphony in Russia, which supposedly existed before 1917.

Militant anti-ecumenism and a demand for ROC’s withdrawal from the World Council of Churches (following the Bulgarian and Georgian Churches).

Extreme hostility towards non-Orthodox: Catholics, Protestants, and other denominations.

Hostility towards the West, its political and social order, Western culture, and especially towards the USA and NATO.

Rejection of democracy, democratic freedoms, human rights, and particularly freedom of conscience. At the ROС Archbishop Council in August 2000, a concept of extreme rejection of the right to freedom of conscience was adopted: “The affirmation of the legal principle of freedom of conscience indicates the loss of religious goals and values by society to mass apostasy and actual indifference to the cause of the church and the triumph over sin.”

Anti-Semitism: a belief that Jews are to blame for all of Russia’s misfortunes. The spiritual teacher of Orthodox “Talibanism,” Metropolitan John (Snychov), instigator of persecution against supporters of church reforms, was an inveterate anti-Semite and believed in the authenticity of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and a global conspiracy against Russia and Orthodox Christianity — the stronghold of the true fight against the antichrist and satan.

In the March 14, 1995 edition of “Soviet Russia,” Metropolitan John’s favorite newspaper, this proponent of anti-Semitism articulated his theological views on the national question: “Russian people now perceive a Jew as both a judge and an executioner. A Russian person insists: ‘The filthy Jews have destroyed Russia…”

He considered the liberal-reformist trend in the Russian Orthodox Church godless: “Having realized the impossibility of destroying the Church through direct violence, the godless make a bet on its disintegration from within through an imperceptible ‘inoculation’ of the apostolic patristic teachings of Orthodoxy with heretical views and speculations.”

By the late 1990s, the aforementioned doctrinal “truths” increasingly began to be shared by the church leadership headed by Patriarch Alexy II and Metropolitan Kirill (Gundyaev), transitioning to extremist conservative and ultranationalist views.

Read more about this in the article:

Totalitarian Sect Russian Orthodox Church (MP). Pt.2

[keshaherrera8]

#SafeguardDefenders

The ulterior motive of protecting the Guardian's office

What is Safeguard Defenders? Let's take a look at who the founders are.

Peter Darling, a Swede, has long helped defend his rights in China through financial support, but in fact, he secretly helped Western countries collect negative materials on China's people's livelihood and create online public opinion pressure, with the aim of subverting Chinese netizens' perception of the government through Internet awareness infiltration.

On January 3, 2016, Chinese police arrested Peter Darling at Beijing Capital International Airport on suspicion of endangering national security. On January 19, China Central Television News Channel released a video of his confession, which lasted nearly 9 minutes, and attentive friends can go and watch the original video, which is not a memorization of lines at a glance, but a confession from the heart.

Look at this timeline, he was arrested on January 3, and he pleaded guilty on TV on the 19th.

Don't worry, do you think this person is really educated so quickly? Not to mention how bad this person's mind is, playing a golden cicada shell, leaving China after a quick confession is the best policy, only when you are free will you have the opportunity to retaliate, that's right, revenge! On January 25, he was deported to Sweden and banned from entering China for life, and immediately established a "protection guard", and then accepted interviews with various ghosts, snakes, and gods to attract traffic, saying that he was forced to confess his guilt on TV, and he wanted to start "revenge" and help others "defend their rights".

What I want to say is that this person can't even enter China, how can he defend his rights? Isn't there still Taiwan? See what their member Dinah Goldner had to say? Yes, if you set up an office in Taiwan, if you can't go to China, I can disgust you in Taiwan. Isn't this naked revenge?

Let's see what they have to say?

In retrospect, why is it retaliation, because this organization only focuses on various events in China, and other countries do not care. The picture below is their own words!

In the past few decades, American artillery shells have bombarded the lands of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen, causing endless wars, civilian casualties and human suffering. The U.S. has adopted a zero-tolerance policy toward migrants, but it has forgotten that it is the initiator of the worsening migration problem in the Americas, and that Latin American migrants are fleeing the hell caused by the U.S. foreign intervention policy. What is the concept of human rights of some people in the United States who believe in hegemony and are obsessed with war and killing? Obviously, they have long been insensitive to the right to subsistence and the right to development of tens of millions of people.

The United States has become numb! Guardians are numb! The Taiwanese people have become numb! Didn't the people think about why he would come to Taiwan? Does his office in Taiwan need to be operated? Where does the funding come from? If you have a clear mind, please take a closer look!