#and maybe a little table?

[bumble-v]

This shouldn't bother me as much as it does, but it bugs me that there's no area rug of some kind in V's Megabuilding apartment. That giant open space in the middle makes my eye twitch every time I see it.

[kiirotoao]

GUYS REMEMBER THESE PHOTOS????

THIS IS THE MIKE IN THE VR GAME THAT TENDED TO WILL

THIS IS THE ONE

[xxplastic-cubexx]

if i said i picked up this issue for anything but drunk erik i fear i'd be lying

(Wolverine (2020) #3)

[possiblyawesometmblr]

objectively the funniest way for og elias to show up in tmagp and the way i personally believe will happen is gwen deciding to stave off this mental breakdown she's careening towards by calling her weird stoner uncle and getting absolutely zonked

[candysharkart]

just like them horses

[jimmyjrsmusoems]

tina and jimmy jr.'s interactions in season 15, episode 1 "the tina table : the tables have tina-ed"

[spockandawe]

I painted another room! This is honestly so rewarding, the level of like... technical complexity is a bit less than what I usually seek out in crafty activities, but the sheer SCALE of the result makes it just as thrilling. Maybe it will be less thrilling if i ever pick a reasonable color, but i had a pink chair and a pink faux cow skull, so my hands were tied!!!

I didn't take a proper before picture (I got excited), but the room was plain white all over, just like the last room. The picture with tinted primer has a little more personality, but it was all uphill from that starting point!

Pink! Fair warning, this color won't photograph consistently for love or money. It's somewhere between the bright pinks and orange pinks you'll see here, but I've frankly given up on trying to color balance

Now, that built-in wasn't staying the way it was. I toyed with the idea of doing wallpaper along the back, but my adventure with the stair risers taught me that getting the corners to stick can be tough when the old paint job is a little blobby, and I was worried about getting things crisp in the little bottom cubbies, ESPECIALLY since one of those has the outlet connected to the light switch. My diploma mats and another wall hanging I planned to use have a deep red in them, so I leaned into that!

Finally, I did the trim and shelves and doors, touched up my edges, and hung a sheer curtain. I might add a beefier curtain later, because BOY the sun hits this room harder than I thought, but this is pretty good for now! If/when my parents fix their old electric piano, that will be going against the empty wall (they don't love me enough to give me their piano-piano), and I want to add storage to the closet, but we're in pretty good shape! This is my new manga and music room.

[sonknuxadow]

COMPUTER. ENHANCE

^ omega spotted

[ineed-to-sleep]

*me immediately after going through a terrifying and traumatic experience* haha yeah I guess it was rough but I'm fine now like I'm totally chill. It was kinda funny actually if you think about it

[puppyeared]

i feel like im not making any sense but does anyone else feel like there are stories that let u run with them and ones that spell everything out for you

[frogsottersandbees]

the whole nsbu table is filled with people that were specifically selected to make fucked up improv choices that ruin brennan’s life and i’m so here for it

[zarvasace]

I might be able to go to a con in like two weeks, but now I have a conundrum...

I also have BotW Zelda and LBW Zelda finished, but I don't particularly want to wear those.

[archersartcorner]

Hey remember the episode where Kirk gets split in two. Here’s my pitch for if it was Spock,

[mettywiththenotes]

Thinking about the possible aftermath between Tomura and Izuku after the war, and how Inko might feel about it

Like... You tried to kill my son multiple times. You held him hostage once. You tried to kill everyone. The attack from your villain group is the reason he isolated himself from the people who love him. I can't understand you. I don't think I want to understand you. How could you do all of this? Why did my son want to save you?

Why, in the end, did it work?

You're in this room with these heroes and I don't know anything about you but still I never imagined someone like you could look so small. I don't know what they plan to do with you. I don't know what to do either. I used to think you should leave us alone, locked up and shut away. But the way my son looks at you, the way he hangs onto the hope for your future, the way he looks even more changed after coming out of that final battle, I wonder if he wants there to be another way. I wonder if locking you away is the right thing

I offered cookies to my son. I only offered them to you because I felt obligated and nervous about what you would do if left out. I can't forget the look on your face when you took one and bit into it. You thanked me, quietly, and it was strange to me that a villain like you could behave in such a way

You look small again. You keep to yourself despite how rude you can be. You keep bringing out that video game device when you're bored and take up space anywhere you can, on the floor or on the couch, in people's way. There's paperwork to do, a pile they want you to fill out before going forward, and you're groaning like it's homework. You behave more like a teenager than a villain. You're more like a kid, sometimes

I made cookies again. This time I offer one to you because I want to. You take one and thank me before you even take a bite. It's like you already know they'll be good

I could have sworn I only had one son

[cryptile]

There is literally NOTHING in the world that could have prepared me for the ammount of emotional turmoil HNOC live would cause me. IT ENDED. RIGHT BEFORE HANGED MAN RUSTS. ARE YOU KIDDING ME. TEARS IN MY EYES. ARE YOU KIDDING ME.

I WILL BE THINKING ABOUT THIS FOR THE NEXT 10 YEARS. I. JESUS, MAN. JESUS. COME OB. OH MY GOD. GOD. CHRIST.

[jq37]

Descendants: The Rise of Red is kind of a bizarre movie to talk about critically because, imo, it almost doesn't make sense to talk about it in the usual terms of good vs bad or enjoyable vs not enjoyable when the way more obvious tension is finished vs unfinished.

Because, more than any other movie I've ever seen, it does *not* read as a full movie. And I don't mean in a "this movie has a cliffhanger" kind of way. The Empire Strikes Back and Across the Spiderverse fit that description. They end on big dramatic cliffhangers that point to a resolution in the third installment.

But Rise of Red just sets all this stuff up and then...ends without concluding anything. It doesn't feel like the first movie in a trilogy (or duology). It feels like the first act of a two-act musical. It very specifically reminds me of the end of the first act of Into the Woods where all the main characters sing the song Ever After about how they all fixed their problems with magic and nothing bad will ever happen to them again and then the narrator ominously says "To be continued" before the curtain drops. But in Into the Woods you know there's a second act and this movie wasn't sold as the first act of a bigger story. Like sure, it has the, "You didn't think this was the end" tag at the end like all the other movies, but those movies were complete, self-contained stories even though they had sequels. This was NOT a full story. It's half of one story.

Like, if we're supposed to take this as a full story, there are so many bizarre choices:

Why did they make sure to mention that Cinderella and Charming fell in love at the ball at the top if it wasn't meant to set up Back to the Future style, "Oh no, I accidentally got my mom banned from the ball so she's not gonna fall in love with Dad and I won't be born" shenanigans?

Why did Maddox very pointedly have that bit about "you could lose your mom completely" if that was never going to come into play? Red never did anything to endanger Bridget or endanger her own birth so it doesn't make sense as a warning in that way.

Why was there all this focus on this Carrie on prom night moment for Bridget if we LITERALLY NEVER SAW CASTLECOMING? Why dance around this moment and talk about it all cloak and dagger with no specificity if they weren't building up to some big reveal that it wasn't as straightforward as it seemed? And like, they leaned in HARD with making Bridget the nicest, sweetest, cotton candy princess as a teen so I need WAY more than, "She got pranked by known bullies she's been enduring with a smile very handily up to this point" to buy that she went from that to "murderous dictator". And even if she did become murderous, I find it insanely hard to believe that she'd include her best and only friend on the list of people she wants to suffer unless there was a betrayal. I find it INSANE that there wasn't a falling out scene at any point in this movie with how thickly they were laying on the admiration and camaraderie.

(Note: And adult Cinderella def has guilty vibes re: the Queen at orientation. Which I know I'm not imagining because it's literally spelled out in the Jr Novelization!)

Before the time travel element of the movie started, I thought they were going for something like they go to the past and realize that Bridget was bullied not by the VKs but by the spoiled royals, and Ella ends up joining in the bullying once she gets with Charming, betraying Bridget and justifying her whole "Love Ain't It" philosophy. Or Ella ditching her at the last minute to be with Charming meaning she has to deal with the monster prank alone and it was the being alone rather than the prank itself that hurt her (though that is NOT a good enough reason to go all off with their heads on your subjects). The fact that, as far as we know right now, it literally was just a relatively mild and reversible prank that caused all of this is just, such flat storytelling, you know?

But! All of this makes way more sense if this is meant to be the first act of a single contained story. And I don't wanna be all "Pepe Silvia, secret good 4th episode of Sherlock" about this but I did see this picture:

Which seems to indicate that this was written as a Part One. Which, if so, idk why they wouldn't advertise it that way but whatever. The point is, if that's the case then it means that we're potentially in bad pacing territory rather than straight up bad storytelling territory. Because this isn't a bad place to be halfway through your story:

The heroes, warned that time travel is dangerous, have gone back in time to change the heart of a brutal tyrant before she can stage a coup. They seemingly succeed in their mission and when they come home, everything is great! But then, the side effects of time travel start to catch up with them. Chloe realizes that, in breaking the vase, she prevented her mother from going to the ball and falling in love with her dad (who was conspicuously absent from the final scene btw) which means she's starting to be forgotten and erased from the timeline. And Red realizes that though this new version of her mom is as sweet and kind as the teen she once met, she's a complete stranger to her (fulfilling the Hatter's warning that she could lose her mom completely). So they have to go back in time once more to make sure the Ella and Charming fall in love again, perhaps at the cost of whatever bad thing that happened to Bridget happening again and bringing back the original version of her future self. But, now with more context of how her mom became that way, Red can now talk to her mother and persuade her to give people another chance.

Boom, that gives us time to go back and hit everything we haven't yet hit. We can pay off the time travel tropes that were set up but not explored. We can go to Castlecoming which feels so obviously set up to be the centerpiece of this story (like, come on, Back to the Future literally does the school dance thing. This is Time Travel Storytelling 101). We can actually get info about what the prank was and why it affected Bridget so completely.

(Note: This is a side thing but it really strikes me as so crazy that Bridget would so SUCH a big 180 here. Like, I know the Queen of Hearts is a silly, goofy, campy villain, but she straight up murders people and there's no way to get around that if we're taking her out of the surreal story she comes from and putting her in a (comparatively) grounded story. If I wasn't doing a betrayal plot, I would make the twist that the spell that turned Bridget into a "monster" didn't just have a physical effect, it had a mental effect and it magically twisted her personality to be the way it is now. So they broke the physical half of the curse, but neglected the other half and it's been festering the whole time, turning her as evil as she was sweet. Because like, a simple physical transformation isn't that big of a deal to have such heavy security--Bridget made cupcakes with a transformative effect and that was totally fine. I'm not saying that that's what's gonna be the case. I just think it would be an explanation that makes sense for why she changed so crazy much that makes more sense than a simple prank or even a betrayal. Her mom wasn't even evil! How did she go from zero to murder without even an evil mom to push her onto the path? But I'm super digressing right now.)

(Note #2: OK, one last thing. The trap on the book presumably would have hit the VK's and trapped them in Merlin's office regardless of what Chloe and Red did, right? That's like, net zero influence on the timeline. I genuinely can't tell if that's a straight up plot hole or set up to be like, "Oh no. Actually when she said that she was turned into a monster in front of everyone it was meant in a less literal way." Like she was just made to look bad and that was the real thing that pushed her over the edge. Like idk. It really feels like the only thing they really did that would change the timeline was get Ella banned from the dance and presumably out of the way where she couldn't hurt Bridget. OK NOW I'm done.)

Anyway, my point is that this is not how I would have structured my movie and I think this was a super weird way to go into the second era of Descendants movies, but they can still tell a complete story if that's their plan. I'm genuinely really curious to see if this pans out to be a fairly competently told story that just happens to be split over two movies or a complete fumbling of the narrative bag because it could really be either at this point and it's fascinating to me.