#actually nah you deserve it

[salem-sapiens]

Oh look, another piece of these two, how original.

No context behind this, I just wanted to draw Frollo shitting bricks 🫠

I leave to your imagination what or who might've got him clutching his pearls (or rather, Phoebus) like this.

+ lil bonus under the cut

I mean, Phoebus, did you really have to ask?

[kelin-is-writing]

How… Do I recover from this…?

[shanklin]

AU in which Stan fakes his death way ahead of schedule and keeps on surviving alone until one day years later he turns on the TV in his dirty motel room and sees his 17year old self grinning back at him.

“The Stanley Pines Home & Shelter Project for Wayward Teens was founded almost 8 years ago by Filbrick Pines and the rest of the Pines family after the tragic passing of their beloved son and brother.”

WHAT THE FUCK?! What kind of scam is this? Stan would be almost impressed if he didn’t feel like throwing up.

As it turns out, while Stan completely forgot about that one time he faked his death his family built up a whole charity in his honor. They can’t get Stanley back but at least they could make sure his story wouldn’t repeat again. 

Stan's whole family is on screen talking about how great Stan was and how they failed him.

Filbrick is crying.

Sobbing about how he killed his little boy and how he never expected Stan to leave for real.

Stan throws up.

Definitely a scam. His Pa figured out a way for Stan to make them money after all. All Stan had to do was die.

[Stan vehemently ignores the voice in his head telling him that neither Ford nor Filbrick could act to save their lives. And that no amount of money would be enough to convince his Pa to cry on camera.]

So it’s a scam. And they put Stan's name on it. Which means all the money they make from his sob story belongs to him.

Robbing a charity for homeless kids isn’t even in the top 10 worst things he’s done.

[khaoala]

A Guide on How to Be Incompetent with Captain Christ

Step 1. Disturb your target's peace and quiet by calling him everyday. He can't refuse me. I have his criminal record and I can very much so fuck with his life.

Step 2. Say you're going to clean his criminal record, but only partially, because there's still work for him to do, and I need that sweet sweet promotion that will come my way if I get a big boss killing big names.

Step 3. Threaten to reopen his cases if he refuses me.

Step 4. Threaten the safety and well-being of his baby brother when he has been under Kant's care since their parents died when he was like, 10.

Step 5. Tell the civilian (!!!) to get involved with hitmen.

Step 6. Follow Kant to places where the assassin might notice a white dude just hanging out and doing NOTHING because that's my job. Doing nothing.

Step 7. Tell the civilian (!!!) to get in the house of two very well-trained assassins.

Step 8. He gets me all the information I need about the hitmen's next target, but you can't let him go so easily. No. Because he still has to figure out who their boss is. That's right. Not me, the police captain. The civilian (!!!).

Step 9. Make fake promises of safety because we're definitely so competent.

Step 10. Lose track of the assassins after their attempted murder fails. Detail, I didn't even know they were in the bear costumes. If Bison hadn't interfered, Ruerat would be totally dead.

Step 11. Tell Kant I don't need his services anymore after he did everything by himself.

Step 12. Remember when I promised to keep him safe? Lies. I couldn't even recognize the assassin taking him away in a wheelchair, unconscious.

Step 13. Fail to make a correct assumption at all.

[wyvernity]

sss day my favorite national holiday WOOOOHHHH

bonus

[apocalyptic-byler]

and if i said byler’s first kiss deserves as much passion as jancy’s first kiss then what

[novelconcepts]

Do you ever just lay awake at night, turning over in your head the stark difference in delivery between Hewson's Van saying--steadily, unshakably--"it's just something that's happening to you...happening to us" and Cypress' Taissa saying--imploringly, whiningly--"this was not just my dream, this was our dream"?

Do you ever just turn it over and over, how often Tai tried to scare Van away, and how it only made Van set her feet more firmly? How Taissa's first love was this person who saw a problem fall into Taissa's lap, a problem that was quite literally trapped inside Taissa's body, and decided unflinchingly: No, that's an us problem now? How she refused point-blank to walk away even with blood in her mouth, how she flatly informed Tai "I'm never gonna be scared of you", and promptly turned a moment of pain into a declaration of love? And how this would etch itself into Taissa for the rest of her life? How she'd take these things that worked with Van--with the person Van was, with the bond they shared--and try so hard to run through an identical script with Simone?

Except Simone is her own person. A completely different kind of person. A person who hasn't been offered any of the context, any of the realities going on inside Taissa. So: naturally she doesn't respond the way Van did at eighteen--and will go on to do all over again in her forties. Naturally, she hears our dream as the excuse it is, not as a plea for connection. Naturally, she is scared away when Taissa pushes, and shouts, and begs. Because there isn't blood in her mouth, not yet, but there will be. And they have a son to worry about. And she isn't eighteen and a special kind of immortal, a special kind of romanticized. She's a grown woman with responsibilities, with priorities, with an understanding that you can't fix someone just because you love them. And Tai can't just perform a revival of the play she and Van had memorized twenty-five years later with a whole new performer in the works, and expect it to shake out the same.

Of course it doesn't work. But look at Taissa trying it. Look at Taissa trying to reframe her first love through a new lens. Trying to recast it. Trying to play it through again. Van taught her love was sticking out the blood, shaking off the pain, making a you problem into an us problem. Does it ever just eat at you, how tragic it is, watching Taissa try to shape her marriage around a woman who isn't even wearing a ring?

[andorerso]

always thinking about Jyn choosing to die with Cassian despite not being critically injured instead of like… trying to find a way to survive. after like a few days of knowing him? their codependency is insane. idk what they'd be like if they actually had the chance to know and love each other, but I just know they wouldn't wanna live without each other

[cdroloisms]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[twobellsilence]

Anyway this might be the hottest take I've ever posted on here but I just want to say that if Karla Sofía Gascón wins an oscar for Emilia Pérez it should NOT be celebrated. "oh but she's the first openly trans woman to be nominated!! That's historic and very cool!!!" yeah it's historic or whatever but the movie she's in is actively offensive and repulsive towards Mexican people (and many other Latam countries by extension as well, but mainly Mexico) and pushes transmedicalism and has an all around weird understanding of transness and is also weirdly positive about Israel????? And also if you have eyes and watch it you'll realize that 1) the director or the publishers or whoever the fuck MOST DEFINITELY bought out the events it's nominated in, because jesus fucking christ, the only way for this shitstain to be nominated for any serious award is plain old corruption, and 2) her performance is just okay. Not bad, but just okay. I suppose she Is the best actress in this, but that's not the highest bar in the world.

Also, her statements. She's literally gone on record actively diminishing Latin American people's criticisms about it and also implying those who hate the movie do so because she's in it (so using the transphobia card to deflect EXTREMELY valid criticism, very classy Miss Gascón) instead of the other myriad issues it has... Have I mentioned the fact that she's a Spaniard, claiming to be "mexican by adoption" because she's gone there for work a couple of times, thinking that she knows better than the entire country of Mexico and its natives? Do you see the goddamn issue here????

Listen, I would be lying if I said I have nothing against this woman, because as a Colombian who's had relatives disappear and never be found during FARC raids and is also worried sick about a part of my family living in danger zones now that guerrillas are starting to occupy towns again, the message of Emilia Pérez and the sheer arrogance that most of the people who've been at the front of its development, Gascón included, are actively offensive and so enraging it makes me want to cry out of frustration if I think about it for too long. So you could very well accuse me of being biased. But let's be real - objectively, this would NOT be a deserved victory, and glorifying Gascón's performance when it hinges on the complete misrepresentation of very serious Mexican issues that actively harm people TO THIS DAY is just wrong, dare I say even disgusting. She does not deserve the award just like Emilia Pérez doesn't deserve ANYTHING else, period. Trans people deserve better. SHE deserves better, even. Let her win when she gives a killer performance in an actually good movie, not here.

[azrantimes]

I hate when people who I just told about my condition start to reprimand me for showing off my "party tricks" cause it will hurt me. Like duhh, don't you think I'm aware? If able bodied people can have a few drinks and it not being considered harmful I can crawl over the floor like the girl from the ring for a minute and still get the applause a contortionist would get.

[asofterepilogue]

I apologise for the person I'll become when "would you fall in love with me again" is released

[passthroughtime]

yagami, WHY do you have to be such a bitch around kuwana. i'm going to strangle you.

(P.S.: he didn't tell kuwana that tesso said not to feel bad about it. obviously.)

[constarlations]

been playing emerald for the first time on and off as of late and RSE Brendan is so different from ORAS Brendan it’s funny like you’re NOT my son who is this bratty kid 😭

[theflyingfeeling]

yes it's just me whining about the same thing for the billionth time, pls just scroll past nothing new to see here 👋

[evilkitten3]

the absolute worst thing in fanfics is when itachi betrays the akatsuki and kills kisame. like my man did not spend three-eight years politely babysitting itachi's 5'7" emo ass for this kind of disrespect