#ain't that interesting?

[thereareeyesinsidethetrees]

so. ae was thinking

what happens to fiddleford in the (nightmare realm possessed) evil ford au? cause he doesn't follow after him like stan does. and it happens in gravity falls, and it happens while the niblings are in piedmont cause it's post weirdmaggedon, so they have a reason for not following (aside from stan just. not letting them come with)

our current idea is that fiddleford is the second fatality of the event (cause ford was the first). maybe, not knowing the severity of the situation, he tries to get through to ford and evil ford plays along until fiddleford gets close enough to grab

but...like. there's probably better stuff we could use him for, y'know? so that's still a work-in-progress

[akanemnon]

Meanwhile with the bicker brigade...

FIRST - PREVIOUS - NEXT

MASTERPOST (for the full series / FAQ / reference sheets)

[pigeonclaw]

Power of Three will always hold such a special place in my heart. every one of these cats is such a disaster in wildly different ways.

[laurellala-comics]

A Shakespearean comedy of errors

bonus:

[seventh-district]

Making Incorrect H:SR Quotes Until I Run Out of (hopefully) Original Ideas - Pt. 4 - Nuthin' but Boothill Edition

[Pt. 1] [Pt. 2] [Pt. 3] [Pt. 5] [Pt. 6]

[artilite]

PARTY ROCK IS IN THE HOUSE TONIGHT 🔥

Loop x Porty MK, idea courtesy of isatcord!

[darkmuffinstudios]

Strange train of thought but

I sometimes wonder if Killer actually sees the people around him as people. Like thinking, sentient people.

Kind of when you're in a public place, and you look at someone near you and think, "Oh wow. They have their own life and their own journey that just so happened to cross my own."

Because I'd like to think that part of the reason his SOUL became something neither human nor monster is because he adopted the POV/mentality of the PLAYER.

After enough resets (doesn't matter if its genocide, neutral, or pacifist), I wonder if Killer would start to slowly see people as the player does. The same lines of dialogue. The same reactions. The same habits, routines, everything. It becomes monotonous. It starts to feel like a dream. Like all of this isn't real, because he is outside of the loop.

That's why he can be apathetic when he cuts people down. Why he can be attached to certain characters/people if they make him happy. Why he is so hellbent on seeing how different "characters" tick. How they work, what they'd look like in this situation, how they would respond to this, etc.

He is used to predictability. He is thrilled when something different or something unexpected happens, like a person playing a video game and getting surprised by a sneak attack or change in dialogue.

There's no tangibility, nothing to ground him to this place because he already doesn't see the people as people.

When his SOUL unwinds and becomes unstable, he's like... in his body but not. He's in a weird, daydream like state where nothing is real. The disconnected feeling he feels towards his peers and enemy escalates, to the point that his own senses don't feel like his own.

The pain he feels isn't real. The people dying aren't real.

And his SOUL allows him to essentially disassociate.

Other times, his SOUL elicits horrible dread and agony. I mean, if he was daydreaming all the time, he'd forget that he was alive in the world he lived in. His actions still had consequences.

He's either feeling near nothing or every horrible thing imaginable.

[canary3d-obsessed]

Restless Rewatch: The Untamed Episode 41, part three

(Masterpost) (Pinboard)  (whole thing on AO3)

Warning! Spoilers for All 50 Episodes!

Brotherhood of Man

Somehow, after the multi-layered shit sandwich of betrayal that happened in Nightless City, Lan Xichen manages to convince his two besties to swear brotherhood with him and each other. Lan Xichen's Polyamory 101 class apparently didn't tell him that forcing a vee to become a three-for-all is a bad idea. Nie Mingjue and Jin Guangyao are bonded by only two things: 1. loving Lan Xichen 2. hating each other.

Nie Mingjue is great at letting bygones be bygones, as we can tell as he glares all the way through Jin Guangyao's skull.

Next we jump to Lan Xichen and Jin Guangyao playing the song of clarity for Nie Mingjue, with Lan Xichen in a particularly sexy set of ultra-fancy robes.

NMJ keeps his eyes shut so he won't have to see the extreme eye fucking that's going on right in front of his salad.

Check out his cool candle holders, by the way.

I can't help but think...is this how Lan Xichen is spending his time while Lan Wangji is in forced seclusion? Lan Xichen didn't attack any elders, so there's no reason he shouldn't be enjoying himself, but he's gone all in on the fuckboy life while his brother is seriously struggling. The Lan brothers seem a lot less close after Wei Wuxian's death interlude and I wonder if this is part of the reason.

(More behind the cut!)

We take a tiny break from empathy during this section so that Lan Wangji can check Wei Wuxian's qi.

He does, and goes to play healing for him. He does not react like WWX is lacking a core, despite doing the magic wrist check that would tip him off if that were the case, so I add this to the pile of evidence that WWX 2.0 does have a (shitty) core in his new body.

I like this little scene because Lan Wangji is clearly worried, emotional, upset - he's doing his little sour-lemon frown and he's intensely focused on Wei Wuxian while he plays healing - but he's not trying to wake him, and he doesn't say anything about his own concerns once Wei Wuxian is awake.

Grown-up Lan Wangji is still not a fan of these unorthodox cultivation activities, but he respects WWX's choices and focuses on supporting him, not stopping him.

Play Misty For Me

Next, empathy shows us Jin Guangyao playing for Nie Mingjue in a 1-on-1 session in JinLintai. I guess this is like dialysis, where Nie Mingjue has to waste a shit ton of time going back and forth between home and JinLinTai to get cleansed.

It seems like Lan Xichen could have picked a better person to train in playing the song of clarity. I know Nie Huaisang's wussy core might make him a poor candidate, but surely there's someone in Qinghe who could do the job? Or send a series of Lan disciples in an exchange student arrangement? But Lan Xichen would rather force these guys to hang out together.

Lan Xichen may seem like he's being wilfully blind, or plain stupid, but I don't think that's what he's about. He's aware that both of these guys are, from a certain point of view, bad people. Nie Mingjue is driven by rage and a rigid sense of justice and social hierarchy; Jin Guangyao is consumed with self-interest and will use any means to achieve his ends.

Good guys Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji will also use any means to achieve their ends - attacking elders, raising the dead, and whatnot. What all four of these not-Lan Xichen people have in common is that they go to extremes, too high or too low, there ain't no in-betweens.

Out of the darkness, into the light Leaving the scene of the crime Either I'm wrong or I'm perfectly right Every time

Sorry, but Billy Joel is part of my cultural heritage as a Gen X person.

Lan Xichen embodies a combination of Confucian and Buddhist values, I think; he wants the people he cares about to chill the fuck out and find the middle way, and also to be truly brotherly toward each other. He tries to achieve this through gentle nagging and also by modeling the behavior he wants to see, creating opportunities for peace and balance. Unfortunately at the time Empathy is showing us, he's unware how extreme and unbalanced his own feelings for Jin Guangyao really are.

At some point, Jin Guangyao starts playing the altered version of the music, and we have a series of kind of weird cuts where 1. the Song of Fuck You is playing on the soundtrack while Lan Xichen is teaching Jin Guangyao 2. NMJ starts to hork up some blood in the 1-on-1 session but finishes horking in the trio session. I think this is meant to show that it was a progression.

Meet Me Outside

Empathy jumps ahead to Lan Xichen trying to warn Jin Guangyao about Nie Mingjue's declining temperament, saying that if it wasn't for JGY playing for him every day, it would be super bad, or words to that effect. He is interrupted by Nie Mingjue showing up to yell at Jin Guangyao. Was Nie Mingjue eavesdropping so that his head could recall this later in Empathy?

I'm inclined to see the dynamic among the three of them at this point through a lens of domestic violence. Lan Xichen stands by helplessly while Nie Mingjue makes it clear that he's in a rage and wants to take it out on Jin Guangyao; JGY calmly tells Lan Xichen to stay behind while he goes outside to take a beating. That's not just optics; Nie Mingjue attacks him the moment they're alone. The fact that NMJ is drunk on resentment is only partly the fault of Jin Guangyao's musical poison; a lot of it is his own choice to do saber cultivation.

Lan Xichen may remember similar interactions with his parents. He's certainly having a trauma reaction instead of stepping into this situation from a place of strength. He's protected Jin Guangyao from NMJ before without any difficulty, but the changes in NMJ's temperament and possibly the loss of Lan Wangji's companionship have put him in a weaker state of mind, it seems. And he himself may have been the target of Nie Mingjue's anger at times, too.

The Ragening

After dodging the first swing from Nie Mingjue, Jin Guangyao asks him why he's mad. The gist of NMJ's beef is this: Xue Yang escaped from the unclean realm. NMJ (correctly) blames JGY. Now Xue Yang is imprisoned by Jin Guangshan after a trial or something, in which Chang Ping retracted his earlier accusation. So they can't execute Xue Yang because there's no evidence against him. (Why can they imprison him for life with no evidence, then? Seems sketchy).

Nie Mingjue says that Xue Yang has a piece of Yin metal, and that's why Jin Guangshan is keeping him alive. JGY doesn't affirm or deny this, but he has to obey his dad, so he can't kill Xue Yang just to please Nie Mingjue.

Nie Mingjue tells him to stop doing that thing he does.

You Doing that thing you do Breakin' my heart into a million pieces Like you always do And you Don't mean to be cruel You never even knew about the heartache I've been going through

Jin Guangyao has to intuit what Nie Mingjue is talking about, which is apparently that JGY is being calculating and manipulative.

He proceeds to rip NMJ a new one for believing that everyone can be as rigteous as him when he has his noble birth and high cultivation to depend on. JGY points out that he himself doesn't have early cultivation training or a good family background to draw on. He also gives us a little bit of specific info about his position in the clan, saying that Jin Zixuan's death didn't give him a clear path; Jin Guangshan would rather bring back another bastard son than allow Jin Guangyao to succeed him.

Presumably he's talking about Mo Xuanyu. Before you feel sorry for JGY, remember that he caused Jin Zixuan's death specifically so he could claim his place in the line of succession.

Nie Mingjue says, dismissively, that he's only refusing to kill Xue Yang because he doesn't want to risk his position in the clan. Nie Mingjue says this like it's a bad thing: like Jin Guangyao, who he fired quite a while ago and totally doesn't work for him, should go against his father's express orders and kill a guy, without evidence, because Nie Mingjue thinks that would be more righteous. I gotta say, Nie Mingjue is a real piece of work.

Nie Mingjue acknowledges that he himself has killed a fuckton of people, but never for his own advancement. Jin Guangyao challenges him with words that have a little flavor of Wei Wuxian's way of thinking: did everyone you've killed deserve it? Are your standards fair?

Then he heads firmly back into villain territory by saying "sacrifices must be made for greatness" which has Nie Mingjue asking why he doesn't sacrifice himself, instead of killing other people? (Shades of WWX challenging Wen Zhuliu) Jin Guangyao replies with an emphatic nope, which inspires Nie Mingjue to kick him down the stairs and attribute his poor character to his mom's line of work, for not the first time. If I was in charge of Jinlintai, I would put a safety gate up there.

The bottom of these stairs is kind of an important place for Jin Guangyao; he's been kicked down them twice (that we know of) and each time he stood up 100% ready to kill the guy at the top of the stairs. Although he took a super long time to actually do it in the case of his dad, I'm pretty sure JGS's fate was sealed in that moment....just like Nie Mingjue's is sealed here.

Side note: In the show, JGY starts musically poisoning NMJ while they are still ostensibly getting along fine, whereas in the book he waits until NMJ has kicked him down the stairs and insulted his mom. CQL Jin Guangyao is just more forward-thinking, I guess.

After fixing his hat, Jin Guangyao walks up the stairs calmly explaining to Nie Mingjue how he fucked with the song of cleansing. This causes Nie Mingjue to qi deviate while the Department of Questionable Visual Effects messes around with extra copies of Jin Guangyao in AfterFX.

Not to be outdone, the Department of Questionable Practical Effects has loaded up the front of Nie Mingjue's torso with exploding blood squibs, because apparently that is how they interpret "all his meridians were broken." (We won't talk about the various non-cultivation-aware translations that say "all his veins were broken.")

Nie Huaisang shows up - running up all of the steps at Jinlintai. From where? Did he run from Qinghe? How did he know Nie Mingjue was in trouble? If Lan Xichen told him, why isn't he here too? Presumably he is still busy checking the guest list for the next conference, per JGY's request.

Jin Guangyao grabs Nie Huaisang and holds him out of harms way while vigorously pretending to be upset while Nie Mingjue points his saber at them. Nie Huaisang interprets this as NMJ not recognizing him (and if you've seen Fatal Journey, you know this is a fair interpretation) but it might be that he's pointing it at JGY to encourage him to let NHS go.

This Is The End

Next we see NMJ all tied up on a table in Jinlintai, with corpse poisoning marks on his neck. Someday I will learn exactly when these happen, what they mean, and how everyone who has them gets them, but today is not that day. (Remember when Wen Qing got them while WWX was playing angry flute at the rocks behind Qinghe, and then they went away when he stopped playing? And how this was never explained?) Xue Yang is walking around him with Baxia and half of the yin tiger seal. He can't control him without the whole seal so JGY says to kill him.

In case all of Xue Yang's behavior seems super random, it's actually not; his project is turning high-level cultivators into controllable fierce corpses. Where Wei Wuxian controlled his fierce corpse Wen Ning with kindness and turnips, Xue Yang uses fancy brain nails. With Nie Mingjue, he presumably hadn't developed the technique yet, which is why they can't subdue him to use him. And he failed to get the nails into Xiao Xingchen or Wei Wuxian's heads. So basically the entire project was a bust, given that he didn't deploy Wen Ning for anything, and Song Lan just followed him around an empty town. This is what happens when you get too attached to a particular creative vision.

Camera Operator: hey now!

Xue Yang uses Baxia to chop Nie Mingjue's head off, which has to piss Baxia off. Xue Yang says Nie Mingjue is finally obedient, which is only sort of true, since he'll be coming back for revenge in sword-spirit form in the live action, or in naked dismembered corpse form in every other version of the story.

Friendly Neighborhood Paperman

This murder causes Wei Wuxian to snap out of empathy back into his paperman body, and accidentally pull NMJ's head's eye covers off, revealing eyes that don't look a goddamn thing like actor Wang Yizhou's eyes, but this head has had a rough few years.

Jin Guangyao is right there in the storeroom with him; it's a good thing he didn't think to have one of his chats with NMJ's head during the 30 minutes WWX spent communing with it. He chases Paperman around slashing his sword through the furniture and knocking shit over.

Among JGY's many evil traits, perhaps the worst is the way he wastes storage space. Look at all these shelves with 2 or 3 books on them.

Paperman makes his way over to Suibian where it's displayed on a shelf, and hops onto its hilt while JGY watches. He smirks at WWX's failure to draw the sword, but eventually Paper WWX does draw it, surprising JGY. Suibian fights him remotely for a bit while WWX gets away and makes his way back to Lan Wangji.

Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji trade arm clasps while Wei Wuxian gives him a sitrep, and then they run off to find Nie Mingjue's head.

Because there is no limit to Wei Wuxian's sex appeal, Lan Wangji instantly beats up everyone who gets in his sweetie's way. Lan Xichen shows up, a little alarmed at the attacks on the guards but still on board with their plan.

Lan Xichen deploys his most dramatic stair-climbing flourish to show that he means business.

Eventually Jin Guangyao shows up, and they ask to see his secret chamber. Jin Guangyao tries to explain that it's not, like, a secret chamber any more if you let people come in and look at it.

Apparently there IS a limit to Jin Guangyao's sex appeal, because Lan Xichen puts his foot down for the very first time and tells him, not asks him, to open the room.

...while Wei Wuxian smirks like a kid whose sibling is the one getting yelled at for a change.

Before Jin Guangyao can answer, Su She shows up, saying it's not cool to demand entry to a clan leader's bed chamber, as if Lan Xichen didn't have his own embroidered bathrobe alredy hanging on a hook in there.

Lan Wangji and Su She greet each other nastily, and Wei Wuxian calls him out for copying Lan Wangji, which ends the episode.

Soundtrack: I Go To Extremes by Billy Joel, That Thing You Do from the movie That Thing You Do

Bonus: Liu Haikuan's beautiful hand

[unicornpopcorn14]

Isn't it interesting how teen skk are like... way more tragic than their adult selves?

[aliusfrater]

ive talked about this before but it's kind of crazy that bobby treats sam's psychosis as an extension of dean's issues rather than something sam is actively experiencing

[chaos0pikachu]

"gmmtv's 25 lineup is just branded pairings and it's killing the bl industry"

baby where have you been this has been gmmtv's bread and butter since 1000 Stars. by gmmtv's own admission they're building idols not actors lmao branded pairings are for selling what makes them actual money in merch, fanmeets, concert ticket sales. Their lineup today got 4 million tweets on twitter. They ain't changing shit and they never wanted to make art this is capitalism to a T. gmmtv is freeform meets HYBE.

gmmtv is just living by that Michael Eisner philosophy:

“We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make a statement. But to make money, it is often important to make history, to make art, or to make some significant statement. We must always make entertaining movies, and, if we make entertaining movies, at times, we will reliably make history, art, a statement or all three.

We cannot expect numerous hits, but if every film has an original and imaginative concept, then we can be confident that something will break through.”

rip the tags of these shows tho for fans I'm rooting for my pals who are gonna be watching some of these shows to be able to enjoy them in peace

[queenvhagar]

You know, I think one of the reasons why Rhaenyra was so incompetent in handling political matters is because she never had to play the game of thrones properly. The premise of the game is that if you make a mistake, you die, and as long as you win, you have one more day of life. But our pampered princess could make mistakes, create scandals, and disrespect whoever she wanted, whenever and however she wanted, without any problem because her dear father was there to save her, mitigate the damages, or protect her. That's why, when Viserys dies and she has to take control, she fails. She can't control her husband; her few political victories were thanks to her husband, son, or Hand, and when she takes the capital, she doesn't know how to handle the people properly, and they rebel against her. She has a council full of incompetents who care more about their own interests than hers, and she doesn't know how to get rid of them because she's afraid of losing their support. Yet, the fans TB claim that she was going to be a legendary queen when, most likely, her Hand, husband, and advisors would have made the important decisions, as happened with Viserys. What do you think?

The problem with Rhaenyra comes down to a couple things, in my opinion.

First, she's never really meaningfully had to play the game of thrones due to her unique position in society as a Targaryen dragonrider, the king's favorite princess, and heir to the throne. This leads her to be sheltered from real world consequences to her actions. It reminds me a bit of the line from Succession about how their father made them a playground and they think it's the whole world. She lives in an incredibly privileged bubble, and within that bubble, protected by her father, she is emboldened to act how she likes with little thought or care to how others perceive her and how her actions would be interpreted by others. Once she marries Daemon, he becomes another reinforcement to that bubble. He encourages the idea that people should fear them and submit to them. Within their bubble, and due to their unique positions as Targaryen dragonriders with the king's favor, he suggests they make moves in the political game that silence dissidents and inspire fear. However, still these actions in the "game" are somewhat divorced from the actual game of thrones that others are playing, where if you lose you die.

And second, and in this I see her paralleled with Cersei... Rhaenyra thinks she's smarter than she is and that she can play the game better than anyone else. It's the classic Targaryen superiority complex coupled with privilege. She sees her unique position of power and uses it to "get away with" a lot of things. She knows she has influence over the king, and she uses it. She knows she has Daemon, and she uses him (as he uses her). But once again, the moves she's making are in this protected bubble. And even though she thinks she's truly getting away with all of the things she is, for good and for the long-term, the reality is really something different. Back to that quote of thinking the playground was the entire world... Rhaenyra thinks she's being clever in passing obvious bastards as trueborn heirs. She thinks she's being clever in leveraging her father's and Daemon's favor to her benefit. But she's not. She's detached from the political reality of the world. And by the time she's set to be handed the grand prize from her dad, there are actual real barriers to getting what she wants, because she finds that others have played the game better than her, and she's absolutely blindsided and shocked that this is the case. Because she never had to really, meaningfully play the game before, and she really doesn't understand how the real game is played and what the stakes are. She truly thought she was playing the real game perfectly for so long, and then she discovered that the actual game she needed to play was different and that others had played it better. Her actions during the Dance are her attempting to grasp the reality of the real game of thrones and failing to play it well, demonstrating her incompetence and resulting in her loss of power.

[pianokantzart]

I TOTALLY CALLED IT THAT BOWSER WAS GOING TO HELP FIGHT THE BIG BAD (whether he is willingly or just coincidentally fighting alongside Mario and Luigi is yet to be seen)

@terrorfrying robot arms confirmed!

[canisalbus]

For fart (fan art) purposes, what weapons are Vasco trained in? I assume he's a skilled swordsman, but I'm wondering what types of ranged weaponry he knows, if any. As for the anxious tissue, Machete, I know he's sickly and frail, with staggering amounts of catholic guilt weighing him down but, hypothetically if he did train in any weapon, what could you see befitting him?

Hmm, you're right, Vasco is primarily a swordsman and like many nobles of his time, his sword of choice is the elegant and lightweight rapier. He was trained thoroughly and knows how to use it, but most of the time the sword serves as a fashion accessory and a status symbol, he isn't the type to get into duels left and right.

Vasco enjoys hunting. There's no reason why he couldn't use traditional bow and arrow but I think he would prefer a crossbow. Early firearms had already become common at the time and I could picture him with something like a wheellock or flintlock pistol or rifle. I'm sure there's people who could tell you a lot about 16th century guns but I don't know enough about them to give an in-depth answer myself.

Machete carries a hidden stiletto for self defence. He isn't completely useless with it and luckily you don't need to be terribly athletic to wield one, but his technique leaves a lot to be desired. And since he's chronically anemic any physical activity tends to get him winded and woozy pretty quickly. He's extremely risk-averse (others could say cowardly) and he does his best to not get into any dangerous situations to begin with, or leaving as soon as things start to escalate.

[lifemod17]

Hi, I'm unwell, nice to meet you!

'The Offering' breakdown on Drumeo

[logansgaar]

Okay but what if Bucky gets found out by HYDRA and Zola after capture because Dugan and Gabe are always ushering him to the back away from possible notice, to the point it backfires and draws suspicion. When they pick him out HYDRA orders him to recite the Lord's Prayer and Bucky recites what he always remembers Steve saying. The Prayer he made sure to remember before he was shipped out just in case something like this happened.

Only... Steve is Catholic. The Prayer that Bucky's heard Steve and some of his fellow soldiers recite is different from the one a Protestant would recite and his dog tags say he's a Protestant. He didn't even know they said the Prayer differently.