#and she's also the only character who isnt a broadcaster of her own to have done multiple broadcasts. yes its always with Kevin but shes

[mudstoneabyss]

I love peoples hcs for the weather being a Town Voice Power tm because yeah it's canon that the weather plays when Cecil says it but technically doesn't necessarily mean that every time we hear the weather that's what happens- though that's of course what is supposed to be assumed i think, so naturally people also assume that it's the same with Kevin even though there's not that same canon confirmation for it with him right. but he's a parallel to Cecil and the voice of his town so naturally he has those same Town Voice Powers. now if it's the word from The Voice that triggers the weather playing, what's peoples reasons for why Lauren can do it

[sledge-in-space]

You know, I've debated writing this for a long time. Because I know it's going to sound incredibly stupid.

But for a character who seems to matter so little in the grand scheme of things, Joey Hudson matters so much to me. She was our friend. She endured so much. And when we come to rescue her we can see that she broke out of her cell with a shank as her only weapon.

We can see that she killed at least three peggies during her escape. That she was laying low and most likely waiting for John.

She thought she was going to be trapped down there forever, and that eventually she was going to be killed. But she still fought at every step of the way, because she was going to go out fighting. We can see her resilience, tenacity and anger in her voice lines. And despite how much she suffered, she wasnt going to leave the other prisoners behind.

And I know she's just a character in a ubisoft game. We get glimpses of her personality but she isnt nearly as well rounded as some other members of the cast. In the end she dies anyway, so what does it matter?

It matters to me because it feels like a lot of people don't seem to care about what happened to her.

I think it's sad and honestly a little sickening that most of her worst moments have been gifed to hell and back, all the while there are people who wish they were in her position. Because if it were them, they could fuck John or get fucked by him.

I already feel like John is portrayed as being a bit of a creep, with the level of obsession he displays and how fulfilling he finds the act of hurting others. But when people wish they were in her position, or download shirtless mods for John in cutscenes where she's also present, it suddenly feels like Joey is in danger of something more sinister than torture.

I'm not blind. I understand why people like him as a villain and a character. But excluding Joey from the story or trivializing the cruel, sick torture she went through so that John gets full, unrestricted access to your dep?

It just doesn't feel right or fair in my opinion.

Which I know sounds ridiculous because it's a video game and none of the characters are real. It would be completely audacious of me to say that no one should like him, or that it is somehow morally unjust to ignore his cruelty.

I don't think liking "bad guy" characters is indicative of having no morals or empathy. I like a lot of characters from different media that have done terrible things. Plenty that are even worse than John. And you shouldn't have to justify why you like something, because your reasons are your own. I firmly believe that fiction is the perfect place to explore whatever you want for whatever reason you want.

It isn't my intention to police anyone.

But there's something about how Joey was treated that feels very wrong to me. John hurt her brutally and we can only specualte as to what he actually did, but we can see and hear the toll that it took on her. And for as long as the game has had a fandom she's been routinely ignored - I believe this is because John is by far a fan favorite, though I acknowledge that this is speculative and accusatory. Or, she gets made into some damsel in distress. All because she has an ungodly amount of mascara on her face in some scenes.

Quick tanget: For the amount of makeup she was wearing when the Sheriff's Dept. stormed Joseph's Compound - which was minimal at most - the runny mascara is just way too extreme (just a small detail that I personally can't stand).

But back to the point.

At least in fandom, if she isn't a damsel, and if she isnt discarded, then her friend and partner - the player character - is fucking the man who tortured her and broadcast her agony across the entire county. In front of her community, so she could be humiliated and broken in front of everyone. It didn't work - unlike like Pratt and Burke, she didn't break (though it's not a contest and I'm not trying to diminish their strength either) - but that didn't stop John from trying.

There's no shortage of people in the fandom who love her, who've showered her with girlfriends and boyfriends and made sure she had a happy ending somewhere. There's been fan art and fic, mods on pc that let her fight alongside you. I've seen a lot of people order commissions of her, myself included. Even my best friend has drawn her so many times it's hard to keep track.

Still, it feels like people are so quick to forget or disregard what happened to her. It was the same in 2018 as it is now, and with so many years having passed I don't anticipate she'll see much of a fandom resurgence.

I think thats a shame. I think her potential was wasted. And that sucks especially hard because of how strong she was made out to be.

[prompt-master]

Would you be willing to share how you might rewrite Yukizome, Sakakura, and Munakata to make them likable characters (if not ppl Bc there’s a big difference)???

ahhhhhhh this ask got me so stupidly excited that I was like wavin my hands around. I think about how to rewrite their characters OFTEN. very often. I’m gonna go with likeable character over likeable people because I think they work better where they’re actually not that likeable people. 

The one I think about the MOST is Munakata. He was SUCH wasted potential and I partially blame the medium for that (a single season anime is too constrained for future, it needed more time and care to be a proper story). But Munakata is actually so close to being a compelling character but they made some MAJOR mistakes with him. This ended up getting really long and more like a 3 page ADHD ramble essay. SO IM VERY SORRY to anyone who cannot read this but TYTYTY if you did because these ideas make me very happy! Oh it’s only about Munakata btw because of how long it got

The thing about Munakata is that he is designed to be a foil to Naegi. In fact a majority of dr3 future FOCUSES on this foil dynamic. It is Naegi’s hope vs Munakata’s hope. The World’s hope vs The FF’s hope. And more importantly it is True Hope vs Corrupted Hope.

This is a fantastic concept...so why didn’t it work in canon? I think that the biggest most glaring issue with Munakata’s hope is his logic. Munakata is meant to be a logical man, although with corrupted morals that lead him astray. Yet in canon his logic is laughably infallible. For example as a major figure in the FF and someone who wants to spread hope....why would he tell Naegi to kill himself? More importantly why does he continue to try and slaughter Naegi? The issue here isn’t from the fact that he wants him dead but from the fact that he is under the IMPRESSION that this entire game is being broadcast to the world.

Think about this for a second. In Munakata’s eyes he is going to kill the Ultimate Hope, an international symbol of a better life, live on TV. He doesn’t just want to kill the Ultimate Hope..he wants to do it BRUTALLY as a MAJOR FIGURE OF THE FF. IMO this should have happened later on as the game furthers the emotional turmoil in Munakata’s head and he eventually snaps and gives in to the desire to kill Naegi despite the fact that this is live. And then there should be CONSEQUENCES for that. I wanted so badly a realization where Munakata realizes that he is hurting the Ultimate Hope in front of what he believes is the entire world. 

Another issue with Munakata’s logic is saying things such as...implying that the HPA KG was...just a game. I mean...people DIED. it's not hard to see how wrong that logic is. you can't say “this is the real world now” when what Naegi experienced WAS the real world. I think that this could be fixed through a bit of world building. DR3 Future is rather isolated from its world. We don’t really know much about the world and its dynamics. I think it would make perfect sense if the general public viewed the HPA KG as a tv show, they got numb to the sight and even those untouched by despair had a hard time connecting that these are REAL people suffering. With this previously established Munakata expressing that the KG was not real would make a lot more sense and play into his corrupted idea of hope. 

There is also Munakata’s connection to his other friends. Now I’ve talked about this before but the game was clearly designed to BREAK Munakata and Naegi. This way the FF would die, both the FF and World’s hope would be broken, and upon seeing this Mitarai would have no choice but to deploy his own forced hope. So it makes perfect sense that Yukizome’s death would break him (in fact if she hadn’t died in that way, her NG code was designed to be Munakata’s fault). But something about it felt...superficial. Again I think this is the mediums fault but it almost feels as though Munakata just forgets about Yukizome until later. I think they should spend more time establishing his pain and what he has lost and why this pushes him to kill. In his eyes if she can die then nothing else matters. It should be THE breaking point, not the first push. I do like the betrayal he feels towards realizing she had despair but it needed more time to fester. 

And his relationship with Sakakura also felt weak. In all honesty it was hard for me to feel as though they were ever friends. Sakakura is written as though he just follows Munakata like a loyal dog and Munakata just orders him around. Establish their relationship more! Why are they such good friends? Why is Sakakura important to him? And more importantly why did Munakata decide to cruelly gut Sakakura knowing he was about to confess? This is because he believed that Sakaura was despair and that his confession was more manipulation, but they didn’t show this well at ALL. Munakata just comes across as a major a-sshole who does not care. I also personally found it distasteful that when changing his heart Munakata only seemed to cry for Yukizome. I understand that was his love interest but Yukizome at the end of the day killed herself. Sakakura however was an unnecessary betrayal he took into his own hands AS HE HIMSELF KILLED HIM. He should have more guilt over that! Not just in that moment where he runs to Sakakura, but ahead of time as well! Maybe even DURING his rampage they could have shown him having moments of guilt but he is so absorbed in the idea that all despairs have to die that he doesn’t even realize he has become despair in the name of hope.

A BIG weakness on Munakata’s part comes with interacting with other characters. He is a man who should know how to take charge, lead, and doesn't know what to do when things are getting too crazy even though he THINKS he does. Munakata is heavily flawed, OBVIOUSLY flawed, but many of the interactions with him are as tho his rampage isnt a big deal. There should be reasons for this! Why do people trust Munakatas guidance so much? I dont know! All ive seen from him is that hes insane! Maybe even pieces where around others hes a lot nicer so you can understand why they follow him, even though hes ready to gut Naegi alive with a flaming katana. His interactions with others feel like the writers just wanted to see the next big evil thing they could think of, but for Munakata’s character this doesn't make sense because he was appointed a high status in the foundation for a reason. Maybe even have people say they disagree with some of his methods but at the end of the day he gets the job done!

There is another major missed opportunity here and it's why Muanakata wants Naegi dead so badly in the first place. The remnants. Hiding terrorists in the apocalypse is a PERFECTLY valid reason to want someone dead and think they're a bad guy! But I think since Naegis initial arrest was already so hostile and violent we get the sense that the FF is simply just...crazy. 

And let’s think about what Munakata WANTS from Naegi. He does not just want Naegi dead he wants something worse. He wants Naegi to suffer first. He thinks that Naegi doesnt understand his own personal pain. He thinks that because Naegi protected the remnants he must also not care about the suffering the remnants caused. He wants Naegi to feel despair and then die. This is important to his corrupted hope. He thinks the suffering must be shared in order to understand who must die, but he is creating a cycle of pain. Tie this back to the broadcasting issue. He wants Naegi to break for everyone to see. I think..and this is just a concept..I think it would have been a great idea for Munkata to force Naegi to watch the despair video so that he has no choice but to understand. 

AND themes are majorly important to Danganronpa. And I don’t think its a stretch to say that there are parallels between Munakata and Naegi. In fact I would say that there are aspects of the og trio in this new trio. I think it would have been really cool if they showed how our favorite trio could have ended up if they had been corrupted as well. But the parrellels dont stick strongly. I think it would have been cool to show a past where Munakata’s idealism lies more strongly than Naegis. As the student council president there was a time where he himself had to use his words to solve problems. Perhaps he learned that sometimes his words made things worse. Munakata does not have Naegi’s talent of emotional intelligence. He is a man of action over words. So he interprets this as WORDS being the problem rather than understanding he does not have these skills. Especially when the apocalypse breaks out, it becomes all action over words. So he sees Naegi who is all talk as a genuine threat who will let everyone die through his “weak ineffective” idea of hope. 

Another parallel could be drawn from the fact that they both have hope based careers. Their job is too keep things hopeful. Maybe Naegi stays safe doing public broadcasted speeches, while Munakata is on the field weeding out despairs. This would cause Munakata to feel as though Naegi is doing no real work yet getting all the credit for being a savior.

Munakata constantly complains that Naegi does not know true pain. But he and we as an audience have followed Naegi through his entire process of trauma. We know he is in the wrong. But what do we as an audience know about Munakata’s suffering? We are shown almost nothing! There are some implications, but for how intense he is implications are not enough. We need to see his suffering. We should see how he has witnessed death. Yukizomes death is not nearly enough for this because he talks as though he has suffered for years. How can we as an audience understand that when we have never seen it? How can we understand Munakata when he is outright denying Naegi’s trauma that we KNOW existed with no proper justification for his reasoning?

I also believe that Munakata should have died. It actually upsets me a bit that he was PLANNED to die but didn't. He should have died protecting Naegi after all that suffering and relentless brutality he offered him. Munakata again is a man of action over word, and protecting Naegi with his last breath is the perfect way to show how in the end he changed. Especially when all he wanted initially was for Naegi to die. I find that much more satisfying than just…...walking off to who knows where.

So lets recap some changes. Munakata needs a proper display of his past traumas and his relationship with Sakakura and Yukizome. Munakata needs a proper display of his work relationships and the respect he has earned. Munakata needs to fall into corruption at a better pace, and have geniune reasons for his illogical attacks on Naegi. Munakata needs to care more for his friends. Munakata needs to deal with the turmoil of wanting to hurt Naegi while he believes the world is watching. Munakata needs to die for Naegi

This has gotten long...and I still have things to say. There is so much to make Munakata a good character. Future had a lot of potential and is amazing for a rewrite concept. As for Sakakura and Yukizome since this has gotten long feel free to ask for another round of this individually when asks are open again! If you read all of this somehow….TYSM

[oleanderblume]

Okay more spinel

Because her character is cool and I like her.

So let's get on with this.

I know a shut ton of people heavily relate to spinel because she has an ostensibly relatable backstory, but also because she represents BPD to a rather miraculous extent. And I am in the mood to explain WHY.

So, when a lot and I mean majority neurotypical folks hear of BPD they think "this person is abusive and dangerous" obviously that's not always the case, the ironic contrast I have been seeing is that despite spinel's character typing, people are falling head over heals for her while at the same time; if faced with someone who actually does have BPD they would probably feel threatened by them. More on that later.

Anyways, how does BPD work? Why is spinel a decent example for someone with bpd?

Bpd or borderline personality disorder is a trauma based disorder characterized by extreme paranoia, fear of abandonment, social withdrawal or lashing out, excessive emotional eruption (feeling everything very loudly and all at once, but only short periods of time), general lack of identity and purpose, and spiraling among other things.

Because borderline personality stems from trauma and abuse, usually neglect of some sort, the person who has it has an innate urge to please others, a desire to be seen and heard and cared for heavily contradicted by their unstable fear and paranoia surround the people they most care for, that contradiction is what causes emotional outbursts and spiraling.

So, let's apply this to spinel in a way that's understandable aside from just pointing out the similarities in the disorder and her characterization.

Spinel has a history of prolonged abuse, despite gems living for thousands upon thousands of years, spinel is relatively young in comparison to her primary abuser, pink diamond. (Because spinel was made for pink and thus existed after pink)

Pink diamond is also her primary source of companionship. To put it into time relevance, pink is like a twelve year old, and spinel is like a 6 year old.

Spinel's only goal is to entertain and be a friend to pink, but she relies heavily on pink to be consistent in her approval of what spinel does as entertainment (truthful) and she relies on pinks companionship for the relationship to function as it's supposed to. She gives entertainment and companionship in return for approval and companionship.

The balance became off kilter due to pink wanting other than that companionship, a colony, and lack of proper communication leading to her manipulating spinel into playing a game she could not win.

Pink didnt communicate her disapproval of spinel's behavior, which in turn exasperated her own enjoyment with spinel, leading to that manipulation.

This lack of communication spurs the desire for approval in spinel's character, she wants to be good and a friend, was lead to believe she was, when in reality she wasn't, in her eyes. The realization of this began to dawn on her after pink left, but likely before Steven's message ie:

"Is this how it goes, am I doing it right?"

Spinel spent 6000 years in the garden waiting for pink to come back, under the impression that if she continued to play the game, correctly, that she would eventually return. Hence, her desire to be seen as a good friend who obeys and entertains above all else.

This is why she displays a deep desire to be a good gem be good at her job, and why she feels that she inherently isn't.

After she receives Steven's message, she is forced into the realization that the game didnt matter, pink wasnt ever going to come back, from her perspective, pink didnt care for her or want to be her friend, which causes spinel to feel like she is a bad gem, that she doesnt do her job, that she isnt good enough.

Spinel has received only the information from the broadcast (I am including the book reading in this because it sets up the broadcast scene and white diamond speaks to the screen directly after) she knows very little about the rebellion, or the war, only that pink made new friends, had a son and didnt come back for her withing the numerous perceived opportunities she could have. This aspect is important, as if the broadcast told the whole truth, spinel likely would have understood a bit more of the gravity of the events that had taken place.

After spinel learns of pinks new friends and Steven's existence, this is when her severe neglect and abandonment as well as a loss of identity kick in, she is filled with rage, despair and self loathing.

Spinel has lost her identity, her purpose, because she feels she isnt good enough for what she was made to do, despite being a perfect cut, she is nothing, all she will ever be is nothing, nothing to pink, nothing to anyone, nothing to herself.

After having no companionship and no means of safe emotional outlet, spinel is effectively blindsided by the sudden and impactful amount of pain and hate she is feeling. She has no way of confronting this emotion, and she doesnt know how to confront it so she does the next best thing, vent it out on people who were closest to pink, her best friends.

Essentially spinel cant focus her rage on pink diamond because she is gone, so instead she will focus it on the people who, to her, took pink away from her.

Now, given spinel's self deprecating nature, she likely had no real plan afterward, more than likely, she fully intended to be poofed, rejuvenated or shattered. After all, she is nothing to pink, and she is even less to Steven, she doesnt deserve to exist.

From observation, the speed at which she arrived on earth from after she heard the broadcast, she was likely having a severe mental breakdown and spiral, which can be incredibly hard to get out of when one has low self esteem and no proper means of emotional release.

A spiral is when a person (or in this case a character) becomes self deprecating and an increasingly more volatile rate, they are incredibly hard to get out of because the mental illness doesnt allow positive thought, the person will feel bad for their actions or feel bad about trauma or failures and will continually throw insults at themselves or those around them for trying to convince them differently.

Spinel spirals twice in the movie, the most excellent example is her paranoia of being abandoned leading to irrational thought and self depreciative spiraling and lashing out as a means of emotional protection.

I'm not really going to speak on the middle of the movie because it essentially rehashes that emotional trauma and neglect I mentioned earlier, the only difference is that is is comparable to a person with BPD who has effectively repressed those traumatic memories and is slowly reliving them, which subsequently causes a major relapse.

What I will say however, is that some other common symptoms appear in spinel like they do with folks with BPD. Spinel has an fp. A favorite person basically.

Folks with BPD often pick a companion of theirs and become extremely attached to them, they care incredibly deeply for them, and can also feel incredibly betrayed by them when they dont act in ways that the person is comfortable ie; displaying traits that can, to the person with BPD lead to abandonment.

Folks with BPD also tend to tailor their personalities for their companions in order to receive that approval they desire most.

Spinel displays this fairly effectively when she lashes out at Steven when he tells her to stay with the new crystal gems, she also displays the tailor trait when she mimics amethysts actions during the nobody else duet.

Finally, when spinel reverts back to her dark form, she displays the other symptoms of BPD, hesitance to trust, then blind trust and desire to please, her paranoia over Steven leaving her, and the subsequent spiral leading her to lash out in effort to protect herself from more emotional trauma and eventually dropping out of her spiral and then the final, trying to leave before abandonment can happen.

This is a fairly important one, as a lot of folks with BPD tend to feel that abandonment is an eventuality, and another form of protection from that is purposely distancing oneself and leaving before that abandonment can take place.

Spinel, after her second spiral is still very much traumatized, and still very much self destructive, has low self esteem, despite wanting to be better, so to spare herself the pain of facing people she has actively harmed in her worst moments, and to spare herself from what she believes is an eventual abandonment, she desires to leave and start over.

Do I think this is healthy? Mmm..no. mostly because I know that folks with BPD have an incredibly hard time breaking paranoia, low self esteem and self destructive behavior. I definitely dont think that spinel should have left with the diamonds because they have no idea what she is capable of and what she has been through, or how to deal with her self destructive behavior in a healthy way. They arent even able to completely overcome their own abusive behavior so..no, I dont think it was a good decision to have her go with them. But that doesnt really matter right now lol.

What matters is; spinel is a good example of what it is like to have BPD, she is a good example of the low self esteem and self destructive behaviour people with BPD have. She is a good example because she isn't seen as a completely lost cause by Steven and the others, despite what she herself believes. She has an acurate portrayal of the trauma that develops bpd, the symptoms of BPD in an easily digestible way and she isnt portrayed to have these issues completely resolved by the end of the film.

She very VERY quickly jumps into another relationship that can very easily be destroyed by either the diamonds or herself, and still struggles with low self esteem and the desire to be approved of by Steven, and the diamonds.

She isnt fixed by the end. But she doesnt get treated as a terrible person either.

Most people who talk about BPD who dont have it themselves very often say that they are inherently abusive, and overlook that persons trauma. That doesnt happen for spinel, Steven sympathizes with her trauma, despite largely being sidetracked and not fully indulged in helping her for her sake, rather than helping his own needs.

It's understandable and infuriating at the same time. Because the type of person spinel is, requires a different approach and a far more delicate one at that, something Steven hasn't had the same quite of experience with yet. Which is what largely caused her to spiral the second time. And it wasnt until Steven realized how selfish he had been that he was able to even make a proper and not misleading connection with spinel.

So there you have it, my analysis of spinel, why she portrayed BPD very very well, and how bod is a largely misunderstood and stigmatized disorder.

[journal-three]

Honestly White's reaction just felt like insight into her still being kind of shit. She's all high & mighty on her powers, got so overwhelmed by Steven's emotions she got blown back and was immediately ITS NOT STEVEN ANYMORE, the only one like this. I can understand being bummed we dont get more insight into Worm's thoughts but that's the vibe I got. You can see it again later on when she kind of apprehensively touches & puts on a nervous smile in the big hug out while everyone is hugging n crys

(Same anon as before) I also think they had it this way since either way we’d probably get the pity party that gets broken up by Connie, but now we streamline it and can have mroe room for the pity & connie’s speech. If they really wanted they could’ve Worm broadcasting it on all the electronics or something but we did kind of already do that the episode prior so just seems like diff priorities. Maybe if it was a 20 minute ep but idk, that’s a lot of repeat ground to cover maybe?

That’s a good point. I’m not really mad about how they handled it, I understand they got the point they wanted through in the amount of time they had (except the idea that a breakdown means the person isnt themselves anymore which is kinda weird but that’s a whole different conversation.)

I did like how apprehensive she was about hugging Steven, I thought that was appropriate. She’s aware she’s one of his biggest triggers, and I think they showed that she didn’t want to abuse that. 

I wish they had covered some ground repeatedly. I know they didn’t have time for it, but it felt like there was a lot of stuff set up with no payoff. Rose’s portrait, Steven’s speech in Little Homeschool about “making decisions from the heart,” and his apparent conflict with his gem half, to name a few. I’ll concede it makes a sort of sense, because it’s an epilogue series with an open ending. We’re supposed to wonder how stuff plays out because these characters are still “alive,” their story is still going. 

Mostly it’s that this story has always been told from Steven’s perspective, and his breakdown especially should’ve been about him, from his perspective, about his feelings. We got that from Connie, who literally told that to all of the gems, but at the same time the show dropped its own moral? And focused on the gems’ feelings and perspectives over Steven’s? 

eeehhhh I don’t know, something about it just rubs me weird. 

[frankendykes-monster]

@ligaratus asked me for Superman recommendations, which presents the rare opportunity that someone other than my girlfriend has provoked me to pull out my extensive knowledge of great Silver Age (1956 - 1969) Superman stories. Now, Superman has been in publication nonstop since 1938, but if we're being realistic, if you want the best of the best with the character, you're just going to be reading that decade of comics from beginning to end, but here are my highlights:

Action Comics #162 (November 1951) - "It!": Superman fends off a seemingly incomprehensible fourth-dimensional entity. This one gives a solid basis for what Silver Age Superman is like, in that he lives in a world where hes already taken extensive measures in making it a better place, and so you really arent going to see him fending off the various forces of evil, but rather do increasingly weird and complex problem solving. Of course that sort of status quo gets us to now, where the only half-decent Superman villains are Lex Luthor, Brainiac, Bizarro...Mr. Mxyzptlk...Metallo...?...yeah.

Superman #76 (May 1952) - "The Mightiest Team in The World": This one is a pretty easy recommendation, as it's the very first team-up between Superman and Batman. Even though we had been getting Superman and Batman stories since World's Finest Comics started publishing in 1941, we had never gotten a story starring both of them until a decade later. This one is mainly interesting for historical reasons, but I'm not going to mention any more stories involving DC characters outside of the Superman mythos starting now.

Superman #101 (November 1955) - "The Rainbow Doom": Superman has a rainbow stuck around his body that causes whatever physical objects in his close proximity to turn to glass. This one is pretty solid because it's an early example of how engage in incredibly preposterous hoaxes to get the edge in an ongoing battle, which is to say that this is a story that involves Superman tricking everyone into thinking he's turned Lois Lane into glass i.e. killed her as one of the steps that allows him to win.

Adventure Comics #247 (April 1958) - "The Legion of Super-Heroes": This isnt a Superman story, rather a SuperBOY story. Which is to say that Superman started his heroic adventures as a child in Smallville. Anyhow, I motherfucking LOVE the Legion of Super-Heroes. This story is their first appearance, and essentially they're a club of children from the 30th century that love and adore Superboy, and go back in time to put him through arbitrary trials to see if he's cool enough to hang out with them, which they intentionally sabotage, because these are the shenanigans that elementary schoolers frequently engage in. I'm not going to bring up any other Legion appearances here because honestly I'd say read every Silver Age Legion story.

Action Comics #242 (July 1958) - "The Super-Duel in Space": This is the first appearance of Brainiac, and he's a great science fiction/horror concept of a super-intellegent computer that must learn everything and shrinks down organisms so as to extensively study them, that also just happens to fight Superman on a regular basis. This is also the first appearance of the Bottled City of Kandor, the last piece of Kryptonian civilization, and it presents one of the great dilemmas of the Silver Age, in that Superman cant figure out how to restore it in size.

Action Comics #252 (May 1959) - "The Supergirl of Krypton!": This is the first appearance of Supergirl, and she's going to occupy a similar niche as the Legion of Super-Heroes on account of the fact that I have an intense love for the character and am not going to mention any more stories involving the character because then I'd have to mention all of them.

Superman #129 (May 1959) - "The Girl in Superman's Past!": Clark reminisces about a girl he was in love with in college, Lori Lemaris, which makes the third ongoing love interest of his following Lois Lane and Lana Lang. The difference being that Lori is a mermaid from Atlantis.

Action Comics #254 (July 1959) - "The Battle With Bizarro!": This is the first appearance of Bizarro, there's not much more to it.

Superman #141 (November 1960) - "Superman's Return to Krypton!": Superman travels through the time barrier and ends up being stuck on Krypton and struggling to find a way back before it explodes; basically one of the great tragic stories of this era.

Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen #48 (November 1960) - "The Mystery of The Tiny Supermen!": Jimmy Olsen's solo series is ANOTHER case of me having to restrain myself from mentioning every issue, but this is a special case for introducing an important part of the mythos, the Superman Emergency Squad, which is where a group from Kandor all dress up like Superman and do his regular duties while he's incapacitated.

Superman #143 (February 1961) - “Bizarro Meets Frankenstein!”: Now THIS is a great Bizarro story.  Bizarro sees in a television broadcast that Frankenstein’s Monster is referred to as “The World’s Scariest Monster” and seeing as that title should belong to him, he decides to do something about it.  Which manifests in Superman having to protect the actor that plays the Monster from Bizarro.

Superman #147 (August 1961) - “The Legion of Super-Villains!”: I know I said I wouldn’t mention the Legion again but I’ll make an exception for here, where Lex Luthor travels to the future to get the assistance of their counterpart team.

Superman #149 (November 1961) - “The Death of Superman!”: This is the first Imaginary Story I’m bringing up i.e. one that isn’t “canon”.  As much as I’m not a giant fan of this incarnation of Lex Luthor, I can’t deny that this is the character at his very best.  Luthor pretends to have finally reformed so as to get an opportunity to get in close to Superman and kill him, which he actually does, leaving the rest of the world to pick up the pieces.

Superman #156 (October 1962) - “The Last Days of Superman!”: All the wacky shenanigans I’ve already written own aside, this is without any doubt the best single-issue Superman story ever written.  Superman is infected with Virus X from Krypton and given 30 days to live, and spends that time carrying out all the missions he planned to officially make the world a better place.  The moment where he carves his final words into the Moon?

Action Comics #300 (May 1963) - “Under The Red Sun!”: This is another great tragic story.  The Superman Revenge Squad (I’m not getting into them after talking at lenght about Comet) sends Superman into the year 1,000,000 A.D., with him being unable to return to the past on account of how the now red sun has stripped him of his powers.

Gets me every fucking time.

Action Comics #293 (October 1962) - “The Secret Origin of Supergirl’s Super-Horse!”: Yeah I just wanted to take this opportunity to talk about what is undoubtedly the strangest comic book character I have ever seen, Comet the Super-Horse.  He was first introduced as one of the Superpets, a legacy that got started with Krypto the Super-Dog, but here we, uh.  Learn that Comet was actually a centaur named Biron from ancient Greece who was accidently turned into a horse by Circe who tried to make up for it by giving him the powers of “ Jove, Mercury, Athena, and Neptune”, and then he’s sent into the distant future (our present) and outer space by an evil wizard.  Also sometimes a comet comes by the Earth that turns him into a complete human with amnesia that goes on to date Supergirl even though most of the time he’s a horse that she owns.  Yeah.  Any time someone tries to bring up how weird comics are without knowing who Comet is, they ain’t seen shit yet.

Superman #162 (July 1963) - “The Amazing Story of Superman-Red and Superman-Blue!”: This is probably the most famous Imaginary Story, with Superman being fed up that he can’t solve all the world’s problems, so he uses a machine to increase his intelligence that ends up splitting him into two separate Supermen that are now capable of doing everything Superman wanted.  Also one marries Lois and one marries Lana.  It’s great.

Action Comics #304 (September 1963) - “The Interplanetary Olympics!”: This one is pretty simple, Superman is chosen as Earth’s representative in the Interplanetary Olympics where it seems everyone is stronger than he is.

Superman #164 (October 1963) - “The Showdown Between Luthor and Superman!”: Another simple one; Superman and Lex Luthor engage in a boxing match on a planet with a red sun.

Superman #167 (February 1964) - “The Team of Luthor and Brainiac!”: Says it in the title.

Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #51 (August 1964) - “The Three Wives of Superman!”: Last Imaginary Story, and this one’s a doozy.  Superman marries and becomes widowed to Lois Lane, Lana Lang, and Lori Lemaris in a quick succession.

[everypieceintoafire]

my homestuck fics on ao3 - a smallish masterpost

I realised I only had these linked on a custom page, which isn't very mobile-friendly, so here they are.

Let There Be Light

An Earth-Shattering Confession was the first fic I ever finished and, aside from an abandoned Star Trek story, the first of my fiction to see the light of day since the mid-00s. I wrote the first chapter on our netbook, sleepless, sat up in bed, uploaded by morning, and I had no idea where I was going with it. Two days later I was uploading chapter two. I had so much fun.

It's about a trans girl who comes out to her friends. That's pretty much it. It's like fifty percent pesterlog.

The amazing thegeekgene has performed the whole thing!

TT: I've been meaning to ask you for a favor. And that favor comes with a confession. TT: It's rather a large favor. GA: I See GA: How Does It Compare To The Size Of The Confession GA: Are We Talking Mountains And Burrowbeast Hills Or TT: The confession is, if anything, larger. TT: Earth-shattering, if you will. Or possibly Alternia-shattering. One way or another one of our planets is going to get caught in the shockwave created by my horrifying secret. TT: The moment I open my mouth to speak the terrible truth will be remembered in the histories of advanced civilizations as the origin point of the bizarre spatial anomaly that erased this world, burrowbeasts and all, from the universe. TT: You may wish to bring a portable transportalizer so you can escape to a less doomed planet once I've opened my heart to you. GA: I Am Afraid I Have No Such Device GA: But As A Troll I Am Capable Of Surviving The Vacuum Of Space For Several Minutes Without Suffering Harm GA: Its Entirely Possible My Mysterious Rainbow Drinker Powers Will Extend That GA: And According To The Book You Loaned Me Two Weeks Ago A Mere Thirty Seconds Is All You Need Before A Helpful Soul In A Passing Spaceship Arrives To Affect A Rescue GA: Provided Said Ship Is Powered By An Engine Sufficiently Humorous And Improbable GA: So We Can Assume I Will Live Through This Momentous Event GA: And With That Assumption Safely Made And Acknowledged By All Parties Move On To The Confession Itself TT: Ah.

The Other Girl came next and is a one-pager about dysphoria.

On Bananas followed that and is basically about how I don't understand Spironolactone.

These stories are grouped together in a series called Let There Be Light. There's also the unfinished stories Growing Up Again and We'll Stand Up Together, which may well continue at some point!

Prompts

Finding the Path was written (mostly on trains and in a great hurry) as a pinch-hit for Homestuck Ladyfest 2013. It's patchy, but the dialogue is kind of fun (primarily because I only had about two days to write it so I wrote the dialogue first and filled in everything else after).

AG: Where did you land? GA: I Am Stuck In A Tree GA: It Is Not Dignified GA: The Branches Are Poking Me GA: The Matriorb Is Okay Though The Future Of Our Race Is Still Assured GA: So GA: You Know GA: Good AG: Stop ram8ling and tell me where you are! I don't like the look of these woods. GA: How Can You Not Like The Woods Isnt Your Lusus Literally A Giant Spider That Eats People GA: Are You Not By Definition The Scariest Thing In Any Given Set Of Woods GA: Oh No A Spider Troll Come To Feed Me To Her Enormous Monster Parent GA: Isnt That You GA: And Yes Of Course I Am Rambling I Go On Like This When Im Nervous GA: For Some Reason Dropping Through A Weird Glitch In The Side Of A Hill Into A Wood That Wasnt There A Moment Before Has Put Me A Little On Edge

Little Blue Heart was written for Homestuck Rare-pair Swap 2014. It's a Rose/Vriska story set a while after the end of Homestuck (which is a thing that hadn't happened yet when I wrote it) when the characters are adults and finally old enough to fuck up their own lives without any outside assistance. It contains the only sex scene I've ever written.

Your name is Rose Lalonde, and something inside you makes it rain.

A reporter came out to the house a few weeks ago looking for a story in the stormclouds that persist over Rainbow Falls, but what was there to say about it except, it's always raining? She asked questions; you lied. She got some footage you doubt ever made it to TV. You deliberately wore a borderline-offensive shirt for the interview, not because you thought it would make them omit you from any potential broadcast—pixelization is a thing, after all—but merely to express your feelings on the whole process.

When she left for the last time, Kanaya told you that your growing contempt for other humans was an unbecoming quality, that your whole attitude towards people and the planet you ended up on was evidence of a bruise on your soul she was on the verge of giving up trying to heal. Things could have been so much worse, she'd said; you could, after all, have all reincarnated on a recreation of Alternia! You shouted back that that would have been better because maybe some troll there would have been willing to take you apart and find out what's wrong with you, and that was what prompted her to slam the front door on her way out. It still doesn't close properly.

Kanaya's staying in town, for now, and occasionally pops up on Pesterchum. She worries. You wish she'd go further away.

But it's true; something inside you makes it rain. The weather responds to your moods as if auditioning for a horror movie, and in the lightning flashes of your anxiety attacks you see writhing shadows in the forest, reaching for the clouds. They match the wriggling and itching under your skin, and what began as a creeping dread grew in the weeks of your solitude into a horrified certainty: when your head aches and the storm breaks the sky in half above you, you feel them as the limbs of something that crawled inside you long ago.

You can put a name to its tendrils, to the things curled around your spine, to the smoke that gathers in your head: horrorterror.

You are almost insulted to be so comprehensively invaded by something with such a stupid, stupid name.

Skylighter was written for When Worlds Collide: Crossover Fanwork Exchange, and is a Homestuck/Pacific Rim crossover. It's also kind of rushed, but it's okay.

AG: This is the 8est one yet! CG: YOU ALWAYS SAY THAT. IT'S ALWAYS THE BEST ONE YET AND JAEGER PILOTS ARE ALWAYS 'ULTIM8 8ADASSES' AND YOU'RE GOING TO BE A PILOT ONE DAY. AG: Yeah, just as soon as I find someone awesome enough to Drift with me. AG: And none of that ever stops 8eing a thing that is true. Look at that punch! CT: D –> This is e%traordinarily gratifying GA: Yes Oh My Goodness I Am Enthralled GA: Left Hook Right Hook Oh My CG: YOU'VE BEEN PRACTICING SARCASM AGAIN, HAVEN'T YOU? GA: I Dont Know What You Mean CG: SOLLUX SHOULD NEVER HAVE MADE THAT INTERDIMENSIONAL TRANSCEIVER, ALL IT GETS USED FOR IS APPALLING HORNLESS ALIEN SOAP OPERAS AND DEPRESSINGLY PERSISTENT BONE-POLISHING OVER ALIEN PORNOGRAPHY. TA: hey fuck you. TA: iif the iimperiial navy ii2 goiing to hang a hiighly 2ophii2tiicated panuniiver2al trackiing 2y2tem diirectly over our head2 they 2hould equiip iit wiith a better 2ecuriity 2y2tem and 2taff iit wiith troll2 capable of fiindiing theiir 2hame globe2 wiithout a map.

[linkspooky]

hello there! i was discussing the recent events of the manga with my friend and he was saying that ishida has wasted his time, seeing the hyped awesome villain Eto fall against Furuta, when she could handle her own vs Arima himself, and then apparently disappeared ever since without a trace, supposedly dead, in addition to Arima dying for Kaneki's sake and the result is Kaneki completely destroyed vs Juuzo and Hanabe, which is imo really underwhelming and ridiculous even if he hasn't eaten...1

..2 and then Furuta becoming this all powerful villain out of no where feels kinda silly as well, and kaneki's fail in winning his fight just felt very underwhelming for his character, do you think Furuta being this op villain really is fine and kaneki just easily getting crushed isnt gonna make us slowly dislike the manga? (and yes its ishida's story after all but im just discussing) wouldnt be a there another route for the story to take other than this ?

This is an opinion question anon, but I’ll try to give you a meta answer as this really isn’t an opinion blog. 

I know a lot of the fights don’t make total sense in terms of shonen power levels, and I understand why that can be frustrating. I know a lot of people call shonen stupid but I actually like shonen, like shonen fights, and like the way mangas devise power levels and have to cleverly plan out fights. The fighting in Tokyo Ghoul is definitely a let down at times, I can think of the Urie and Roma fight for sure as a conclusion that made so little sense I was unsatisfied with it. 

However, as I’ve discussed previously in this meta here, fighting and power levels aren’t that important [x]. In fact Furuta himself as a character is not that strong, except for his one offscreen victory against Eto. We saw him even parody the shonen notion of gaining strength and a power up at the last moment only to totally fail in that fight.

So, rather than viewing Furuta as a character whose somehow all smart or all powerful, it might be better for you to view Furuta in a narrative sense. I’ve made this meta in the past as well, but Furuta seems to have taken over as the narrator [x]. 

In a meta sense what that means is Furuta is always the one setting the scenarios in these situations. Furuta acts, and everybody else reacts to him. However, Furuta retains control because he’s always the one plotting the scenario. He is the author, and the others are characters.

As we’ve noted several times, the current scenario basically follows this. Not only that, but the video that Furuta broadcasted to everybody was basically once again him narrating to them what is happening and what the current scenario is.

Reporter, Media, Script, Playwright, Casting, Last Boss these are all terms that describe narrative. When Furuta won so to speak, the words “Game Over” along with a glitching effect appeared on the screen. We’re meant to read Furuta not only as a character existing within the world and restricted by its rules, but also a character in a narrative sense.

Then the question is why exactly is Furuta able to seize control of the narrative even though he’s a character who came from relatively nowhere? This answer too is tied to the idea of narrative, and narrative foiling. The reason is simple, Furuta is the main villain because Kaneki is the main character.

The two of them are near perfect inversions of each other. Remember that word you used to describe Furuta, that he came out of nowhere and became the most powerful ghoul in the manga?

That is quite literally exactly what happened to Kaneki. He’s not the chosen one, he’s just some poor unfortanate soul who got ghoulified and happened to have  body suited for it. Three years later despite having nothing at all to do with the conflict he’s now completely at the center of it, with all of the ghouls literally moving for Kaneki’s sake alone.

Whereas Furuta’s backstory places him at the exact center of the conflict. He was born into this, he’s been plotting this his whole life. He’s even far more connected to Rize, who was the woman who brought tragedy upon Kaneki, than Kaneki ever really was.

In this story of Washuu and fighting V, in a traditional narrative Furuta who was born at the center of it all, who destroyed the Washuu, who plotted his revenge for his whole life would be a more traditional main character.

However, we follow Kaneki instead and our perspective is centered on him. Therefore we, much like Kaneki, view Furuta as having come from nowhere, and therefore having no discernible motivations.

However, Furuta is Kaneki, and Kaneki is Furuta. The reason that the final antagonist is Kaneki’s greatest foil is because Kaneki greatest enemy is ultimately himself.

Kaneki’s own choices, his limited viewpoint of the world are often what end up damning him again in again in tragic circumstances. Kaneki will not conquer tragedy until he conquers himself and looks at himself honestly so to speak. In the same way, he won’t conquer Furuta until he accepts Furuta, his shadow. 

That’s why what brought about Kaneki’s sudden downfall had more to do with Kaneki than Furuta really. The reason Kaneki was weak was because he starved himself and refused to take care of his body. The reason he lost so easily is because he got overconfident and charged in against Juuzou entirely on his own.

Furuta overcoming Kaneki didn’t come about by Furuta being a brillaint omniscient mastermind. He simply had to know what Kaneki’s weaknesses were and account for that. Furuta knows Kaneki so well because Furuta is, ultimately, Kaneki, the narrative embodiment of all of his flaws.

It’s Kaneki himself however who took a complex situation and narrowed it down to two really predictable choices. It’s Kaneki whose thinking is almost entirely reactionary, where Furuta will often have two or three plans going at once so he can adjust. 

Kaneki’s thinking is linear. He sees something and then tries to decide between one or two options, he even describes himself as being on railroad tracks. It’s as black and white as you can get. 

Kaneki’s always had extremely black and white ways of viewing things.

Furuta himself always blurs the lines between things. His thinking is lateral, he’ll often float two or three plans. You can tell there were several options to entrap Kaneki, he might not have even initially planned to rely entirely on the 24th ward raid. 

He also had back up plans. He promoted Mutsuki himself and Mutsuki devised their own plan to entrap Kaneki. He was also the one who made a public anouncement, and he probably was aware that Hajime was being sent down to the 24th ward. 

Kaneki wasn’t just trapped in one plan, he was in the midst of several but decided to narrow it all down to a binary choice. Either attack or retreat. He was, clearly and obviously outgambitted and the manga does a good job of explaining how Furuta won in practical terms without relying on just him being the villain or being super smart or something. 

Ultimately though, what sabotaged Kaneki is Kaneki. He wasn’t taken the role of king seriously. It didn’t need to be Furuta who took him down, Kaneki was doing a good job of sabotaging himself. 

Narratively though, as Furuta is Kaneki, the embodiment of his urge to die, his entitlement towards others, his need to have everything revolve around him, all of the worst parts in one package having Furuta be the final boss is in a way a way for Kaneki symbolically to confront his own flaws and overcome them, or at least accept them. 

[personalpsycho]

Death note netflix review.

The soundtrack fucking sucked, lights actor is a pussy, why does he fall for the girl so quickly, why is mia such a fucking sociopath, light clearly has some morals in this version unlike the anime version so why does he forgive her after she tries to kill his fucking father. The whole reason he started using the deathnote is when he gets revenge on the man that killed his fucking mother so why does he let Mia pass Why are there so many fucking rules that they never even touch on, every time they need some stupid plot convenience they just put it up to a rule that just happened to be in the book Mia is fucking creepy why is light chasing after her pussy so much, like why even do that to a character even if it isnt supposed to be misa why did they take the evil of light and put it in her and then have neither of them have the smarts of light. Also why the fuck does light immediately go for decapitation for the first death, just to be fucking gorey i guess. Kenny was just some stupid bully, killing him like that just proves how much of a snowflake pussy he is. Also that whole you are 18 so if you hit me its child abuse that was fucking stupid. In the anime Lights first kill was a fucking rapist not some stupid bully that was pushing around some random girl. Dont have light act all nervous and worried about who he is killing and if they are actually bad if he has already killed some stupid kid for just being and idiot bully. Like atleast give us some backstory on what he has done in the past instead of having Mia just up and tell us he was a sociopath, shes the fucking crazy one she has no right to call Kenny One. Also WHY DIDNT LIGHT JUST KILL MIA AND BURN HIS OWN PAPER, instead of doing the whole Convoluted plan of killing her in the ferris wheel. Also if he already knew she was going to take the death note because he wrote she would. Why the fuck did he do that stupid act of being all sad and stuff. He already wrote exactly what she was going to due, shes going to do it why make yourself look even more like a pussy Also what was the point of him misdirecting the blame of being kira away from him and acting all high and mighty about his stupid plan with the doctor and pedophile, and then just come out to his dad about being Kira right after. And then what supposedly being killed by L, or what What was that ending! Anway i can get behind how L finds out that Kira is in Seattle, but when ge goes and speaks on tv and light dosent kill him he say "now we know he wants to kill us" How do you know he wants to kill You if you didnt do the lyondon b taylor thing. Without the test to see if lyondon was killed they dont even know if Light was even watching the fucking broadcast. Hell he wasnt until Mia told him to. How DO THEY KNOW KIRA WANTS TO KILL HIM?? Just to get the plot moving they make L automatically know that Light is kira, and i was like ok thats kind of like the anime and i guess to save time they dont have to explain it, but then when they meet and L accuses him Light just fucking falls under pressure and basically admits to it. And i actually thought them working together to defeat Ryuk or mia was a cool idea but L is so unreasonable and Lights such a pussy that nothing comes from that making the whole exchange pointless. Id Also like to point out that ryuk says nobody has ever gotten two letter of his name in the death note, but literally there is a message from the previous holder that says dont trust ryuk like six times so... And whats the problem with mia seeing ryuk anyway, if she could see him it literally wouldn't change anything, she believes he is real so why cant she just see him instead of having her ask light who he is talking to and what ryuk was saying every fucking time light responds to him. Worst of all Watari wasnt his real fucking name. Really? Why did the do Watari dirty like that i actually felt bad for L during that time. We also never get to hear L's real name so there is no satisfaction from that. Mia apparently had this whole hangup about her life being terrible because she was just a cheerleader and for some reason that meant she had no meaning in life, like what? We only see her cheerleading once and she never complains about it once until she tries to get light back with that stupid " i love you" which is so poorely acted it comes of more un geniuine that proablay how ite was supposed to sound. Yeah its obvious she really didnt mean it but she cant even pull of sounding like she even cares to sound like she didnt mean it. Jesus im fucking done, i think i made very little comparisons to the actuall anime. People saying this movie was actually good like what? Just because it looks nice and has lots of cool gore dosent stop this movie from being a confusing poorly acted mess at the end of things. I saw you person who gave it a 7 out of ten are you trying to tell me you werent confused about anything that happened at all during this movie, Also stop giving the excuse that they had to Americanise it. That isnt a fucking excuse we arent all idiots over here im sure some people can handle some fucking japanese lore to help move the story along.

[vampire-core]

terrarianresh

I know i’ve sent you like 4 things in the past 24 hours, but this is what I’m going to say for my english presentation and i’d like you to give some feedback (anyone else who sees this can too)

The reason I’ve chosen to do communications, is because communications has a diverse cast, featuring people who suffer from mental illnesses, and instead of representing these in a negative light, instead they are shown as the main characters of their stories.

for example, i will begin with case 1. case one features three characters, frances elsner, henry elsner, and nancy elsner, formerly nancy o'connell  (was that her name?)

the case begins with henry’s childhood. he experienced abuse from an early age from his mother, frances. due to frances’ achromatopsia, she couldn’t see colour, and it was quite hard for her to live on her own.

as soon as he could, henry married his childhood friend nancy, who had synesthesia. nancy found that henry’s voice was black and white.

previously, the story stated that nancy killed henry when he tried to run due to an emotional dependency on henry, and noticing how easily he managed to cut frances off from his life, fearing that he would do the same to her.

then, after a while of being teased by the radio, hearing the black and white of henry’s voice, hung herself.

however, ghost is changing the story, due to the fact that it sounds like nancy’s emotional dependency and mental state is the reason why she killed henry, and that she’s “crazy lololol”. instead of henry managing to cut frances off, frances plays a literal game of telephone with the couple, telling nancy that henry is contemplating divorce due to her clinginess, and telling henry that nancy is dangerously clingy and overbearing.

this causes awkwardness between the two, which eventually becomes too much. henry runs, this time his plan thought out, leaving a note behind for nancy so she knows why he’s run.

however, nancy doesn’t understand how frances had used her year of “nice mom treatment” as a coverup for her atrocities and took everything out on herself, further believing what frances had told her.

while out on his “vacation” henry gains the confidence to call frances out, and frances lets something slip, so henry immediately returns home. this is where either nancy could have hung herself, or she could still be alive.

case 2 features 2 main characters, kennith and stephanie. following with the cast having a diverse amount of what would be considered “problems”, kennith has bpd, abuses alcohol and drugs, self harms, and due to the fact that he’s gay in the 1970s and 1980s, suffers from a lot of bullying. stephanie, who doesn’t have this veritable plethora of problems, is deaf, and became so progressively through the course of high school.

case 2 begins with kennith performing the COLORBARS broadcast, a broadcast specifically designed to brainwash america using finely tuned frequencies and pulsating imagery, something that is actually possible.

prior to this, kennith and stephanie’s friendship turned sour after miscommunication on both their parts, and due to the fact of stephanie being kennith’s fp, and him being dependant on their friendship, turned him to do the broadcast.

since stephanie’s deaf, she isn’t affected by the broadcast, and she tries to get help for kennith.

the broadcast lasted for 24 hours, and kennith had originally planned to perform mass suicide, making everyone in america kill themselves due to the fact that no one seemed to care about him, even making people watching the broadcast experience these emotions.. however, as the hours ticked past, kennith became unsure of himself, and eventually ended the broadcast by slitting his own wrists

unfortunately, by the time stephanie had gotten help to him, he was dead.

now i’ll reach case 3. case 3 features 3 characters again, bri, avery and simon.

bri is an autistic, nonbinary lesbian, who’s special interest is photography. avery, is a bisexual black teenager and is going out with bri (after bri offered to teach her about photography).

now, you’re probably expecting simon to have some sort of complex mental illness, but…

he doesn’t.

hes just a bigot

case 3 begins with bri, posting edited images of herself and the area around her onto a forum, where she gets harrassed for never posting actual pictures of herself.

simon, being a hacker,  hacks into her webcam and takes pictures of her, before posting them on the forum.

bri gets excessive amounts of harrassment and hate from this, and she completely cuts off from the internet, locking herself in her room and eventually starving to death.

avery, being bri’s girlfriend, finds out about this and contacts simon, knowing him to be the one who posted the pictures of bri.

they agree to meet atop a tall building, and they try to have a civil discussion about what had been going on, however, simon being like that had brought a gun, and when avery reached out as she was getting angry at him, he shot her.

she grabbed hold of his shoulder before falling from the building, dragging simon with her, to their deaths.

then comes case 4. case 4 features just one character, known around the fandom as [Spoilers]. Spoilers is cynical, sarcastic, bitter and spiteful, and occasionally goes into periods of intense dissociation and numbness. they are revealed to be the Storyteller, the one who had created communications as entertainment, however, the audience was really the ones who made the story come to life. Their motives for this are unknown, perhaps to raise awareness for people living with mental illnesses and those minority groups who are often oppressed, but that cannot be confirmed.

HEYA first of all sorry that i was offline, i was spendin yesterday w my qpp!!!! :00

second of all, this is rlly good!!!!!! there are only a Few small errors i spotted:

- bri is nb and uses they/them pronouns, plus theyre biromo and not sure abt their sexuality!!!

- avery is a lesbian who also isnt sure abt her sexuality

- bri also gets Doxxed tm by simon i believe!!! dont trust me Fully but from what i can remember :00

otherwise this looks rlly good!!!! the things i mentioned are Small Details which i only know bc Hyperfixation™ but otherwise this is lookin rlly rlly good!!!!!! :00

[trendingnewsb]

Zach Galifianakis Denounces Celebrity Worship: This Is How We Ended Up With Trump

HOLLYWOOD, California Ill have the McWhopper, Zach Galifianakis jokes as he settles down into a booth at the Arbys on Sunset Boulevard at 10:30 a.m. on a Tuesday morning. They dont have Dr. Skipper, do they?

Along with his Baskets co-star Martha Kelly and co-creator Jonathan Krisel, Galifianakis is at Arbys to schmooze with Emmy Awards voters. Later, after speaking with a group of journalists, he will spend hours both taking and delivering drive-thru orders to lucky members of the Television Academy who will ultimately decide the FX shows Emmy fate.

Louie Andersonthe only actor on the show to win an Emmy for his portrayal of matriarch Christine Basketsstrolls in late wearing his signature dark blue dress shirt and bright red tie. Sorry, you guys, I was making fries, he deadpans.

The decision to hold the For Your Consideration day at Arbysas opposed to say, the lavish theater at the Ace Hotel where NBCs This Is Us held its event that same nightis a perfect reflection of this understated, irreverent show.

I mean, its just a TV show, have it in an Arbys! Galifianakis, who spends as much time as he can on his farm in North Carolina, jokes of these FYC events. God, this town and how it takes itself so seriously, it makes me sick. Were dumb actors! Thats how we ended up with Trump, celebrity worship.

This Arbys location is the same one the show has filmed in periodically over its first three seasons, including the third seasons Thanksgiving episode, which found a troupe of French clowns joining the Baskets family for a fast-food dinner. Anderson calls it one of the greatest moments in the shows history.

I know you probably think we shoot at Arbys headquarters, Galifianakis jokes. And I had been here a long time ago, as a customer.

Similarly, Anderson recalls coming to this Arbys drive-thru every night at 2 a.m. after performing at The Comedy Store in the mid-1980s. I got an Arbys special, two different types of fries, a Jamocha shake, and then Id drive though again, he says.

We wanted to show the dirtiness that TV doesnt show a lot, Galifianakis says of the decision to make this particular chain, which also became a frequent punchline on Jon Stewarts Daily Show, such a big part of Baskets. You dont really see real fast-food places being used. And unfortunately, the country has turned into this sort of fast-food mentality and we wanted to highlight that and show it.

Arbys was originally written into the pilot as a throwaway joke, but once they started writing the first season, they realized it could be a recurring location for the characters, including Galifianakis Chip, who has to keep returning to his job there after failing in his quest to become a successful clown.

How many questions will be about Arbys? Galifianakis wants to know before the press conference officially gets underway. You know, we have a show.

And that show just got picked up for a fourth season, despite what can generously be described as modest ratings. Galifianakis, who plays twins Chip and Dale Baskets on the show, explains that he set out to portray characters who were not exactly likeable, to use a favorite term of network executives. But three seasons in, he has started to allow them to approach something resembling redemption.

Over the course of the shows run, Anderson has undoubtedly become the breakout star of Baskets with his Emmy-winning performance as Christine. What could have been a one-note joke has evolved into a nuanced and emotional portrayal of a woman finding herself in her golden years.

While Christine may seem like the opposite of her artist, weirdo kid, Krisel says he strives to show that they are not so different. Shes sort of an artist in her own right, he explains. These types of ladies are magical, too. Its not just beautiful models who, like, romp through Paris. These are interesting, poetic lives, too.

All the silly, traditional, buttoned-up stuff in sitcoms is never happening in Baskets, Anderson adds, which is beautiful. When Anderson refers to himself as a really pretty woman, Galifianakis shoots back, Look, Louie, whatever you keep telling yourself

Families are messy and their problems arent fixed by one quirky line, Galifianakis adds. From the beginning, we wanted it to be a lot of things. And I think now that were going into our fourth season, we know the show better than we did during the first season.

Life isnt all jokes or all drama, he continues, noting that when he watches dramatic shows hes always hoping that someone will make a joke. I just havent seen a show like this that has dramatic elements and then goofy jokes. Galifianakis did admit later that hes never seen his fellow FX show Atlanta, which could be described the same way.

Christian Sprenger, who served as the director of photography for Baskets first season, notably left the show to do the cinematography for Atlanta, a fact Galifianakis still seems a little salty about.

Ive seen Atlanta and I love it, Martha Kelly chimes in. I just want to get that on the record.

This past season of Baskets was the first one produced without the participation of another FX auteur, Louis C.K., who co-created the show with Galifianakis and Krisel, but stepped aside after the revelations about his history of sexual misconduct. Galifianakis has described C.K.s exit as disruptive in a harmful way to so many people, chalking his behavior up to the poison of celebrity culture: The fact that someone can think that just because theyre loved, they can do what they want.

Anderson told The Daily Beast earlier this year that he was so sad and a little shocked by everything that came out about C.K., who had first pitched the idea of him playing Christine Baskets. Its still a very emotional thing for me, he said at the time. I feel bad for everyone involved. Its a terrible thing.

The recent season finale ended on a double cliffhanger of sorts. As the family counts down to midnight on New Years Eve, Chip gets an unexpected phone call from his estranged wife Penelope and Christines boyfriend Ken says he has a question for her. As her face lights up, the screen cuts to black.

Krisel and the cast confirm that they had no idea if they would be given the chance to make a fourth season when they decided to end it that way, but they all seem excited by the opportunity to continue the story.

That being said, they still dont know what they want to do next. Galifianakis and Anderson recently had dinner to discuss some storylines, and as Krisel says, There were some terrible ideas that came out of it.

I mean, the numbers on this show, Ive never looked at them, but Im imagining theyre below average, Galifianakis says with a laugh. Thankful for FXs ongoing support, he suggests that if the show had been on a broadcast network, People would have walked out of the pilot.

We really are lucky, Anderson adds.

So are the shows fans.

Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/zach-galifianakis-denounces-celebrity-worship-this-is-how-we-ended-up-with-trump

from Viral News HQ https://ift.tt/2xuD4TD via Viral News HQ

[foursprout-blog]

61 Juicy Details From The ‘Bachelor Nation’ Book That Prove The Show Isn’t All Champagne And Limos

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/happiness/61-juicy-details-from-the-bachelor-nation-book-that-prove-the-show-isnt-all-champagne-and-limos-2/

61 Juicy Details From The ‘Bachelor Nation’ Book That Prove The Show Isn’t All Champagne And Limos

laureneburnham Instagram

LA Times reporter Amy Kaufman wrote an engrossing and in-depth peak into all things Bachelor in Bachelor Nation: Inside the World of America’s Favorite Guilty Pleasure. It’s required (and enjoyable!) reading for any fan of the series. Here were some of the best things I learned:

What goes into each episode

[*] Each episode has a budget of $2 million.

[*] Production keeps costs “down” by writing to hotels and venues and exchanging a mention of their name for free stays and services.

[*] During casting, the producers pick two girls they think the Bachelor/Bachelorette will really like. The other 23 contestants are cast only because they will make good TV.

[*] The people the producers think has the best chance of winning will be the first and last people out of the limo.

[*] Producers will influence who stays and who gets in the limo ride of shame by introducing certain contestants to the Bachelor/Bachelorette and making sure they have time, through which information they feed to the Bachelor/Bachelorette about each contestant, and by telling the Bachelor/Bachelorette directly of a few contestants they’d like to keep around for TV.

[*] Former co-executive producer Scott Jeffress would ensure they made good TV by rewarding producers who created drama with $100 bills he kept in his pocket. Producers would get the cash by causing a contestant to cry, getting the Bachelor to kiss someone, or catching someone mid-puke.

[*] The other executive producer, Lisa Levenson, is the character UnReal is based on. She was making $10,000 a week.

[*] The production staff often drinks with the contestants, especially expressing faux sympathy and then offering to do a shot with them prior to an interview so that they’ll be less guarded with their answers.

[*] Production staff would routinely function on as little of an hour a sleep a day because they were staying up so late partying.

[*] After years and years (and a lawsuit) of public criticism for not casting diverse leads ABC announced their first lead of color, Rachel Lindsay. Ratings went down about a million viewers from the previous season (Jojo Fletcher’s): “Fletcher’s audience was 86 percent white and 7 percent black; Lindsay’s was 80 percent white and 12 percent black.”

[*] You don’t own the Neil Lane ring unless you are together for two years.

[*] For two years after the show you can’t get married unless you let ABC film. They only pay you $10,000 per hour of TV. (It wasn’t made clear if this was per person or per couple).

[*] The bachelor mansion has 6 bedrooms and 9 bathrooms and the family that owns in it actually do live there. Production pays to move everything out of the house and for the family to stay at a hotel for 42 days each season. Here is the house’s (weird) website.

How to get on The Bachelor

[*] If you make it to the final interviews, you’ll get flown to LA, a $50/day stipend, and unlimited alcohol.

[*] There is an STI test you need to pass to get on the show and it’s one of the top reasons finalists don’t get cast. This was the most confusing part of the show for me because the author doesn’t specify which STIs and herpes is so common that doctors don’t even test for it as a standard. It would be hard for me to believe they have SO many casting options after eliminating this pool. Really wish the author would have followed up here.

[*] The producers say they won’t take people with borderline personality or who have had suicidal ideation in the past, but former contestants like Rozlyn Papa have struggled with depression, so it’s not clear what the line is.

[*] The contract you sign means you have to go to “After the Rose” reunions if they want you to appear for up to three years.

[*] It used to be the case that contestants would go into debt buying dresses for the show. Now people get them discounted or free with the promise of showing them on social media.

[*] On the show, you might sleep up to twelve people per room in bunk beds. You will have to do your own laundry and cook your own food.

[*] You’re not allowed to bring music or magazines, but for the most recent seasons contestants were allowed books. Prior to that the only book allowed was the bible. Contestants also usually bring vibrators.

[*] The contestants are so bored that production can bribe them with music or a movie in exchange for gossiping about someone on camera or doing something else that builds the storyline.

[*] Sometimes the cast members will say things in interviews just because they are tired and want to be done with the interview, but they know the producers will keep going until they get something juicy.

[*] One producer explicitly says the show is formed around a storyline the producers create, vs editing what actually happens. They’re quoted as saying “There’s no allegiance to what happened in reality.”

[*] You can read one of our former staff writer’s detailing her audition experience here.

Past Bachelor/Bachelorette drama

[*] The very first winner of The Bachelor, Amanda Marsh, broke up with the bachelor (Alex Michel) when she learned (months later) that he slept with the runner-up, Trista Rehn, in the fantasy suite.

[*] Sharleen Joynt from Juan Pablo’s season is one of the few former contestants interviewed in the book. I think both Sharleen and the book’s author think she comes off well but each time one of her quotes appeared it made me cringe. Every one was about how she was somehow different/better than the other women on the show. At one point she bragged a producer told her she was the most “analytical” and “reflective” contestant they’ve ever had on the show… which seems like the exact kind of buttering up that a producer says to lots of people over the years to get them to open up more in an interview.

[*] When Desiree Hartsock was on Sean Lowe’s season she was living paycheck to paycheck and didn’t have a plan for if she ended up missing a lot of work for the show. Eventually she had to ask producer’s to pay her rent for her (which they did).

[*] Meredith Phillips was the second Bachelorette. She was paid only $10,000 for the whole season.

[*] Now, the bachelor or bachelorette typically receive $100,000+.

[*] The author, Amy Kaufman, has a viewing party in her Los Angeles apartment. Robby Hayes (a castoff from Jojo’s season and purveyor of diet creamer #ads on Instagram) promised to come and made her buy supplies so he could drink Moscow Mules and then ghosted her.

[*] Andrew Baldwin, the “officer and a gentleman” former Bachelor had a somewhat shady response to Kaufman’s request to interview him for the book. He asked for a percentage of the profits in order for him to “spill all”. (I don’t think anyone should spend time doing something for free but he should just decline or not respond. In journalism it’s generally considered unethical to pay someone for an interview because it gives that person an incentive that isn’t truth-telling).

[*] Matt Grant had a better response: “unless your business opportunity can help my daughter’s university fund then I have little interest in getting involved.”

[*] Chris Bukowski only found out he was cast on Emily Maynard’s season 3 weeks before it began. He frantically started working out and kept chicken in his pockets because he was trying to eat so much protein and build muscle. He said: “I would work out before work. I would work out when I got home from work. I’d run, like, six miles before I went to bed. It was ridiculous.”

[*] By 11am on his first day of Bachelor in Paradise Chad Johnson had already consumed 7 shots of Jack Daniels and an entire bottle of wine. Production let him pass out in the sand and allowed crabs to crawl over his face. He eventually was asked to leave after Sarah Herron gave production an ultimatum.

[*] Clare Crawley recalled her famous conversation with Juan Pablo. In the helicopter she was trying to discuss the proposal/ending of the show with him. She asked him how he was feeling about it and he responded, “I don’t know. I liked fucking you.”

[*] The sex Juan was referring to didn’t take place in the ocean. Clare tells a pretty sad story about wanting to go for a midnight swim to celebrate being able to travel and being at a good place in her life after a battle with anxiety when the producers forced her to ask Juan Pablo to join her, made it look like they had sex in the ocean, and then filmed and broadcast a scene where Juan Pablo shamed her for being a bad example for his daughter. (Fuck that guy).

[*] The insane part of being on the show is that you don’t even know what you feel anymore because it’s so disconnected to reality. Chris Bukowski was pressured by Elan Gale and production to propose at the end of Bachelor in Paradise to Elise Mosca. Despite being aware enough of how bad of an idea it was that he told his mom “I don’t know. Should I propose to her? I don’t, like, love her or anything.” he was very close to going through with it.

[*] There was so much negativity about Chris Bukowski on the internet that he and his dad stopped talking for awhile because his dad was so embarrassed by it.

[*] Rozlyn Papa claims she never had any kind of inappropriate relationship with a producer (she was kicked of Jake Pavelka’s season for this reason). It seems convincing enough in the book that it could have been totally made up by production to create a storyline. In retrospect, Papa says “You go on that show and you are meat for the grinder.”

[*] Ben Flajnik basically broke up with his pick Courtney because of what he saw once the season started airing (she was “the villain”).

The Bachelor

[*] Ben was the runner-up on Ashley Hebert’s season of The Bachelorette. He said of proposing to Ashley “I liked Ashley enough. You’re not really in love with a person. But Ashley was super cool, and I was like, ‘Who knows where this is gonna go?’ If she says yes, I’ll just do a very long engagement.”

[*] Lauren Bushnell’s $100,000 Neil Lane ring was the most expensive in the series history. She had to give it back when her and Ben Higgins broke up.

Lauren Bushnell Instagram

[*] A lot of couples don’t get to know each other much more than we see on TV when they get engaged. Melissa Rycroft says when she started talking to Jason Mesnick after the show ended (and they were engaged), they’d never discussed his job, or whether she would move from Dallas to Seattle.

[*] Donnie Wahlberg told the cutest story about being a Bachelor fan: “I will literally walk on-set after lunch and say, “OK, it’s Monday. Bachelor in Paradise tonight. Let’s get the hell out of here so everyone can watch it.”

[*] Of criticism Catherine Lowe has faced for turning her happily ever after/family into #ads, she says “As much as I don’t want to do the ads, it’s like, ‘Well, I have a beautiful home and a child that I have to pay for, and I don’t have to go to an office every day,’”

[*] Ashely Iaconetti defended her sponsored Instagram ads by saying she uses it as her “day job” while she tries to create her own career: “Yes, I get money from ads, but I’m also working every day on jobs that don’t pay anything.”

[*] Bachelor alum can basically quite their day jobs and live off Instagram if they play it right. They can arrange vacations around which places will pay them for appearances, comp a stay, or pay them to post social media tagging the location.

Mike Fleiss

[*] Mike Fleiss is the producer and creator of The Bachelor. His second cousin is famed Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss.

[*] Mike is a decent writer and started his career as a journalist. However, he was jealous of people like Howard Stern, who had more creative freedom. He discovered that he didn’t like to be “restricted” by facts.

[*] Fleiss got his start in raunchy reality specials like Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire, a precursor to The Bachelor that he pitched as like a “Miss America pageant”.

[*] Mike sounds exactly like the character on UnReal based on him: a total nightmare to work with. His former assistant said of working with him:

“We’d refer to him as ‘The Dude,’ because he was just like The Big Lebowski in his slippers and his sweats and his leather jacket, smoking and playing the guitar… Keeping a conversation with him in his office was a challenge, because he’s on the other side playing the guitar, feet up on the desk.”

[*] ABC originally passed on The Bachelor when it was pitched to them. They only bought it when Fleiss added on a proper ending for the season: the bachelor would propose.

[*] After the show became a big success, Fleiss would smoke a joint during meetings with ABC and no one would say anything.

[*] He named his son Aaron, in part after Aaron Spelling.

Chris Harrison

[*] Mike Fleiss’ first impression of Chris Harrison was that “He looked like a guy barfed on by an 8-year-old.”

Elan Gale

[*] He became Twitter famous after he got caught making up a story about a woman on the same flight as him and the story went viral.

[*] After seeing him in person coaching a contestant to cry on camera and reporting on it, the book’s author was “no longer invited” to Bachelor events by ABC.

[*] Many former cast members spoke to her about how they protected (and feared) the status of their friendship with Gale.

Why we watch

[*] From a young age we learn that the most valuable feedback (says our culture, not reality) women get is about their attractiveness to straight men.

[*] Dating is something basically everyone has in common. We love to share dating “war stories” because it’s a way to bond, discuss, and check-in with each other about social norms. The Bachelor makes this an even more social experience.

[*] The fantasy of the show is that it subverts the expectation women have for me, instead of “no expectations” the men talk about their emotions, “plan” fantasy dates, and are all looking for commitment.

[*] Allison Williams has a good argument in the book (each chapter is bookended by celebrity essays) about how we don’t just learn about feminism from pro-women content, but from watching and discussing real life scenarios that aren’t exactly intended to be intellectual.

[foursprouthappiness-blog]

61 Juicy Details From The ‘Bachelor Nation’ Book That Prove The Show Isn’t All Champagne And Limos

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/happiness/61-juicy-details-from-the-bachelor-nation-book-that-prove-the-show-isnt-all-champagne-and-limos-2/

61 Juicy Details From The ‘Bachelor Nation’ Book That Prove The Show Isn’t All Champagne And Limos

laureneburnham Instagram

LA Times reporter Amy Kaufman wrote an engrossing and in-depth peak into all things Bachelor in Bachelor Nation: Inside the World of America’s Favorite Guilty Pleasure. It’s required (and enjoyable!) reading for any fan of the series. Here were some of the best things I learned:

What goes into each episode

[*] Each episode has a budget of $2 million.

[*] Production keeps costs “down” by writing to hotels and venues and exchanging a mention of their name for free stays and services.

[*] During casting, the producers pick two girls they think the Bachelor/Bachelorette will really like. The other 23 contestants are cast only because they will make good TV.

[*] The people the producers think has the best chance of winning will be the first and last people out of the limo.

[*] Producers will influence who stays and who gets in the limo ride of shame by introducing certain contestants to the Bachelor/Bachelorette and making sure they have time, through which information they feed to the Bachelor/Bachelorette about each contestant, and by telling the Bachelor/Bachelorette directly of a few contestants they’d like to keep around for TV.

[*] Former co-executive producer Scott Jeffress would ensure they made good TV by rewarding producers who created drama with $100 bills he kept in his pocket. Producers would get the cash by causing a contestant to cry, getting the Bachelor to kiss someone, or catching someone mid-puke.

[*] The other executive producer, Lisa Levenson, is the character UnReal is based on. She was making $10,000 a week.

[*] The production staff often drinks with the contestants, especially expressing faux sympathy and then offering to do a shot with them prior to an interview so that they’ll be less guarded with their answers.

[*] Production staff would routinely function on as little of an hour a sleep a day because they were staying up so late partying.

[*] After years and years (and a lawsuit) of public criticism for not casting diverse leads ABC announced their first lead of color, Rachel Lindsay. Ratings went down about a million viewers from the previous season (Jojo Fletcher’s): “Fletcher’s audience was 86 percent white and 7 percent black; Lindsay’s was 80 percent white and 12 percent black.”

[*] You don’t own the Neil Lane ring unless you are together for two years.

[*] For two years after the show you can’t get married unless you let ABC film. They only pay you $10,000 per hour of TV. (It wasn’t made clear if this was per person or per couple).

[*] The bachelor mansion has 6 bedrooms and 9 bathrooms and the family that owns in it actually do live there. Production pays to move everything out of the house and for the family to stay at a hotel for 42 days each season. Here is the house’s (weird) website.

How to get on The Bachelor

[*] If you make it to the final interviews, you’ll get flown to LA, a $50/day stipend, and unlimited alcohol.

[*] There is an STI test you need to pass to get on the show and it’s one of the top reasons finalists don’t get cast. This was the most confusing part of the show for me because the author doesn’t specify which STIs and herpes is so common that doctors don’t even test for it as a standard. It would be hard for me to believe they have SO many casting options after eliminating this pool. Really wish the author would have followed up here.

[*] The producers say they won’t take people with borderline personality or who have had suicidal ideation in the past, but former contestants like Rozlyn Papa have struggled with depression, so it’s not clear what the line is.

[*] The contract you sign means you have to go to “After the Rose” reunions if they want you to appear for up to three years.

[*] It used to be the case that contestants would go into debt buying dresses for the show. Now people get them discounted or free with the promise of showing them on social media.

[*] On the show, you might sleep up to twelve people per room in bunk beds. You will have to do your own laundry and cook your own food.

[*] You’re not allowed to bring music or magazines, but for the most recent seasons contestants were allowed books. Prior to that the only book allowed was the bible. Contestants also usually bring vibrators.

[*] The contestants are so bored that production can bribe them with music or a movie in exchange for gossiping about someone on camera or doing something else that builds the storyline.

[*] Sometimes the cast members will say things in interviews just because they are tired and want to be done with the interview, but they know the producers will keep going until they get something juicy.

[*] One producer explicitly says the show is formed around a storyline the producers create, vs editing what actually happens. They’re quoted as saying “There’s no allegiance to what happened in reality.”

[*] You can read one of our former staff writer’s detailing her audition experience here.

Past Bachelor/Bachelorette drama

[*] The very first winner of The Bachelor, Amanda Marsh, broke up with the bachelor (Alex Michel) when she learned (months later) that he slept with the runner-up, Trista Rehn, in the fantasy suite.

[*] Sharleen Joynt from Juan Pablo’s season is one of the few former contestants interviewed in the book. I think both Sharleen and the book’s author think she comes off well but each time one of her quotes appeared it made me cringe. Every one was about how she was somehow different/better than the other women on the show. At one point she bragged a producer told her she was the most “analytical” and “reflective” contestant they’ve ever had on the show… which seems like the exact kind of buttering up that a producer says to lots of people over the years to get them to open up more in an interview.

[*] When Desiree Hartsock was on Sean Lowe’s season she was living paycheck to paycheck and didn’t have a plan for if she ended up missing a lot of work for the show. Eventually she had to ask producer’s to pay her rent for her (which they did).

[*] Meredith Phillips was the second Bachelorette. She was paid only $10,000 for the whole season.

[*] Now, the bachelor or bachelorette typically receive $100,000+.

[*] The author, Amy Kaufman, has a viewing party in her Los Angeles apartment. Robby Hayes (a castoff from Jojo’s season and purveyor of diet creamer #ads on Instagram) promised to come and made her buy supplies so he could drink Moscow Mules and then ghosted her.

[*] Andrew Baldwin, the “officer and a gentleman” former Bachelor had a somewhat shady response to Kaufman’s request to interview him for the book. He asked for a percentage of the profits in order for him to “spill all”. (I don’t think anyone should spend time doing something for free but he should just decline or not respond. In journalism it’s generally considered unethical to pay someone for an interview because it gives that person an incentive that isn’t truth-telling).

[*] Matt Grant had a better response: “unless your business opportunity can help my daughter’s university fund then I have little interest in getting involved.”

[*] Chris Bukowski only found out he was cast on Emily Maynard’s season 3 weeks before it began. He frantically started working out and kept chicken in his pockets because he was trying to eat so much protein and build muscle. He said: “I would work out before work. I would work out when I got home from work. I’d run, like, six miles before I went to bed. It was ridiculous.”

[*] By 11am on his first day of Bachelor in Paradise Chad Johnson had already consumed 7 shots of Jack Daniels and an entire bottle of wine. Production let him pass out in the sand and allowed crabs to crawl over his face. He eventually was asked to leave after Sarah Herron gave production an ultimatum.

[*] Clare Crawley recalled her famous conversation with Juan Pablo. In the helicopter she was trying to discuss the proposal/ending of the show with him. She asked him how he was feeling about it and he responded, “I don’t know. I liked fucking you.”

[*] The sex Juan was referring to didn’t take place in the ocean. Clare tells a pretty sad story about wanting to go for a midnight swim to celebrate being able to travel and being at a good place in her life after a battle with anxiety when the producers forced her to ask Juan Pablo to join her, made it look like they had sex in the ocean, and then filmed and broadcast a scene where Juan Pablo shamed her for being a bad example for his daughter. (Fuck that guy).

[*] The insane part of being on the show is that you don’t even know what you feel anymore because it’s so disconnected to reality. Chris Bukowski was pressured by Elan Gale and production to propose at the end of Bachelor in Paradise to Elise Mosca. Despite being aware enough of how bad of an idea it was that he told his mom “I don’t know. Should I propose to her? I don’t, like, love her or anything.” he was very close to going through with it.

[*] There was so much negativity about Chris Bukowski on the internet that he and his dad stopped talking for awhile because his dad was so embarrassed by it.

[*] Rozlyn Papa claims she never had any kind of inappropriate relationship with a producer (she was kicked of Jake Pavelka’s season for this reason). It seems convincing enough in the book that it could have been totally made up by production to create a storyline. In retrospect, Papa says “You go on that show and you are meat for the grinder.”

[*] Ben Flajnik basically broke up with his pick Courtney because of what he saw once the season started airing (she was “the villain”).

The Bachelor

[*] Ben was the runner-up on Ashley Hebert’s season of The Bachelorette. He said of proposing to Ashley “I liked Ashley enough. You’re not really in love with a person. But Ashley was super cool, and I was like, ‘Who knows where this is gonna go?’ If she says yes, I’ll just do a very long engagement.”

[*] Lauren Bushnell’s $100,000 Neil Lane ring was the most expensive in the series history. She had to give it back when her and Ben Higgins broke up.

Lauren Bushnell Instagram

[*] A lot of couples don’t get to know each other much more than we see on TV when they get engaged. Melissa Rycroft says when she started talking to Jason Mesnick after the show ended (and they were engaged), they’d never discussed his job, or whether she would move from Dallas to Seattle.

[*] Donnie Wahlberg told the cutest story about being a Bachelor fan: “I will literally walk on-set after lunch and say, “OK, it’s Monday. Bachelor in Paradise tonight. Let’s get the hell out of here so everyone can watch it.”

[*] Of criticism Catherine Lowe has faced for turning her happily ever after/family into #ads, she says “As much as I don’t want to do the ads, it’s like, ‘Well, I have a beautiful home and a child that I have to pay for, and I don’t have to go to an office every day,’”

[*] Ashely Iaconetti defended her sponsored Instagram ads by saying she uses it as her “day job” while she tries to create her own career: “Yes, I get money from ads, but I’m also working every day on jobs that don’t pay anything.”

[*] Bachelor alum can basically quite their day jobs and live off Instagram if they play it right. They can arrange vacations around which places will pay them for appearances, comp a stay, or pay them to post social media tagging the location.

Mike Fleiss

[*] Mike Fleiss is the producer and creator of The Bachelor. His second cousin is famed Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss.

[*] Mike is a decent writer and started his career as a journalist. However, he was jealous of people like Howard Stern, who had more creative freedom. He discovered that he didn’t like to be “restricted” by facts.

[*] Fleiss got his start in raunchy reality specials like Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire, a precursor to The Bachelor that he pitched as like a “Miss America pageant”.

[*] Mike sounds exactly like the character on UnReal based on him: a total nightmare to work with. His former assistant said of working with him:

“We’d refer to him as ‘The Dude,’ because he was just like The Big Lebowski in his slippers and his sweats and his leather jacket, smoking and playing the guitar… Keeping a conversation with him in his office was a challenge, because he’s on the other side playing the guitar, feet up on the desk.”

[*] ABC originally passed on The Bachelor when it was pitched to them. They only bought it when Fleiss added on a proper ending for the season: the bachelor would propose.

[*] After the show became a big success, Fleiss would smoke a joint during meetings with ABC and no one would say anything.

[*] He named his son Aaron, in part after Aaron Spelling.

Chris Harrison

[*] Mike Fleiss’ first impression of Chris Harrison was that “He looked like a guy barfed on by an 8-year-old.”

Elan Gale

[*] He became Twitter famous after he got caught making up a story about a woman on the same flight as him and the story went viral.

[*] After seeing him in person coaching a contestant to cry on camera and reporting on it, the book’s author was “no longer invited” to Bachelor events by ABC.

[*] Many former cast members spoke to her about how they protected (and feared) the status of their friendship with Gale.

Why we watch

[*] From a young age we learn that the most valuable feedback (says our culture, not reality) women get is about their attractiveness to straight men.

[*] Dating is something basically everyone has in common. We love to share dating “war stories” because it’s a way to bond, discuss, and check-in with each other about social norms. The Bachelor makes this an even more social experience.

[*] The fantasy of the show is that it subverts the expectation women have for me, instead of “no expectations” the men talk about their emotions, “plan” fantasy dates, and are all looking for commitment.

[*] Allison Williams has a good argument in the book (each chapter is bookended by celebrity essays) about how we don’t just learn about feminism from pro-women content, but from watching and discussing real life scenarios that aren’t exactly intended to be intellectual.

[tumblunni]

Quantum Devil Saga is SO GREAT

Oh my god, I’ve only read ten pages into this thing and I’m already being blown away by how much more intense the situation is and how much worldbuilding is written into absolutely every word. Holy SHIT this is gonna be an amazing retread of one of my fave videogames! Random stuff I’ve noticed so far that rocks:

* The printing quality of the hardback cover is AWESOME! It has this really soft plastic cover that feels almost fabriclike, its such high quality. And the cover illustrations are amazing, to see familiar characters with their original designs that we never even saw before, i mean WOW! I adore this version of argilla!

(More under the cut)

* Serph actually having a personality and thoughts and a voice immediately makes this all better. The strength of this setting is that it feels like it’d be so mysterious to be PART of it, its all about the identity struggle of people who live so far away from our concept of reality and things have only just got even tougher on their path to finding peace. So as much as we got all that from the character development of the other party members, it works so much better with an actual inner monologue of our hero experiencing these things. * An example is how we get to see Serph’s monologue getting away with him, how he mentions ‘a cat’ and then backtracks upon realising he has NO IDEA what ‘a cat’ actually is. And apparantly these memories and emotions bubble up often enough that he has his own word for them, he just calls them ‘signal noise’ and has grown used to putting them out of his mind so he can focus on battle. * Also it must be incredibly disarming to find a signal of something on your scanner that has ‘unknown data’, when you’re used to fighting the same way every day for all of eternity. I understand now why the mysterious cat was so much of a hook for these guys, when it wasn’t so much for the player. * ALSO, we get some immediate worldbuilding on the technology of the setting! Apparantly everyone’s strange cyberpunk suits are actually necessary to their fighting, they’re like bio augmentation. And everyone in the junkyard is apparantly created with heightened senses in various different forms of fighting roles, and we get some expanded detail on those. * Like, Argilla isnt just someone who uses a long scope gun in a game where everyone has a gun anyway, she’s specifically the team’s distance sniper and is a prodigy in her field to the point that her senses can outpace the scanner headwear everyone else uses. In the game all you even know is that in the first cutscene she’s using a gun, that’s it. And the game doesnt give her very good treatment for like the first three missions, so I’m glad to see she’s getting screentime and being established as a useful team member immediately! * And apparantly Gale is specifically a ‘bishop type’ who is able to receive and broadcast signals using that headgear of his, which explains the speaker ears aesthetic. These units specialise in scanning the battlefield and reporting tactical data to everyone else's headsets, as well as receiving admin messages from the Karma Temple. There’s a noteable moment in the first few pages, where the unidentified object has interrupted the battle and Gale is standing there yelling ‘Team [Embryon], please remove your unauthorized weapon from the battlefield or be penalized, Team [Vanguard], please remove your unauthorized weapon-’ So, like, does this mean the ‘bishop types’ are unaffiliated and act as referees to both sides? Does he join the heroes later? Or does this mean that them receiving Temple signals is more like channelling, and they just act as a vessel to say it all regardless of whether they want to? i suppose it would be fair if both sides constantly had a feed of equal info on the Temple’s opinion of both sides, with no private messaging. * The colour markings on everyone’s armour actually have a function beyond just being a cool aesthetic ‘tribal’ effect to contrast the future tech. Apparantly marking the teams is a mandatory rule of the Karma Temple’s organized deathmatches, to avoid friendly fire. There’s a very cool description of Serph identifying enemies escaping cover by their flashes of colour against the otherwise grey landscape. I wonder if thats also why everyone is created with these vibrant hair colours and someone normal-looking like Sera is an anomoly? * The player’s team being party-sized when every other tribe is an army is actually a plot point! Embryon is stated to be relatively new, and to have only just carved out their own territory and taken one of the six keys to the Karma Temple. I suppose thats why everyone’s going after them, then! * Its also badass how they describe Embryone’s small size being a disadvantage but also a chance for a new and confusing strategy. Everyone’s used to hiding their leader away in their base and sending out armies of relatively untrained interchangeable soldiers who dont hold any great loyalty. The rule is that if the leader is taken out, all the members of that tribe must join the one who killed them, so this strategy generally works well. And Embryon seems like an easy target because they CANT protect their leader, he HAS to fight alongside them! But that also means Embryon can completely control their enemy’s every move! Serph specializes in being the bait to divide and conquer far greater armies. He’s said to be talented enough to stand up against so many enemies, but its not like he’s a cliche super strong muscle man, he’s just so fast and sneaky that he can lead them all on a wild goose chase while his teammates do the fighting. * Also, Embryon isnt actually just five people, there’s around fifty of them. You KINDA see maybe eight npcs around the base in the early game, but you dont really get a sense its like that. It makes a bit more sense now that serph could narrow down five prodigies in their relative fields, if he had that many underlings to begin with. Also its mildly more believeable that 50 versus 400 could win. * But anyway, the main team of five do the majority of fighting and act more like a split group of multiple generals, instead of a single leader who never even fights. Serph is still the unquestionable actual leader, but like... at least here we get a sense of the reason WHY he is, and why everyone trusts him! He’s not only a badass but his strategy puts himself at the most risk above everyone else, and entirely relies on trusting his comrades to be able to cover him. Even before he fully understood human emotions, he was being the Team Dad! And even back when everyone was merely assigned to him by a higher power and knew they could switch teams any second if he died, they were still being loyal to him! Both sides would absolutely deny this, of course, yknow... * There’s a really good description of how looking at the Karma Temple amidst the grey clouds is like ‘someone painted over it in watercolour’. i dunno, thats just a great metaphor to describe someone straining to see the top of the tower but it dissappearing into the haze of unforgiving weather. You can really see how everyone could believe that a better world is right there above the clouds, its like a really literal depiction of christian heaven. Also, i like that the new translator made it more clear that there’s some christian metaphors along with the hindu ones, the place is still called the Karma Temple for continuity’s sake, but the organization is now called Church of Karma like it was in japanese. And it fits with the referee type units being called bishops instead of like priests or shamans or something. Its really surreal imagining a world thats this stew of badly remembered various religions from our world, all mushed into one!

ANYWAY only ten pages in already so much to talk about! i dunno even if some of my theories and observations are even correct, lol... BUT ANYWAY i love digital devil saga and now I REALLY LOVE quantum devil saga! I was worried it might not stand up to how much I loved the videogame, but so far it just seems like the same BUT MORE. More of everything that was ever vague and I really wanted to learn about! Aaaaaaa!! And the style of it, focusing on the experience of being a person born into this alien kind of existance, actually reminds me a lot of Haibane Renmei. I mean clearly it has more action and its not really intended to be a slice of life but it still kinda captures the same feeling?? I DONT KNOW I JUST KNOW THAT I LOVE IT Also I wanna draw fanart of argilla’s wildly different design, and im curious to see how the others look!

[viralhottopics]

Susan Sarandon: ‘Its an easy place to put your frustrations, to blame me’

The actor discusses playing Bette Davis in the new small-screen drama Feud and why shes tired of people criticizing her for refusing to support Hillary Clinton

Susan Sarandon is here to talk about a much-publicized feud between two successful women. But, as the Oscar-winning actor and activist had made crystal clear the week before I spoke to her, during a tense interview on MSNBCs All In, shes not interested in talking about that feud.

Rather than yet another over-analysis of her role in Hillary Clintons shock election loss, shed rather turn the discussion to talk of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, two women also pitted against each other, this time in 1960s Hollywood. In Feud: Bette and Joan, the latest FX show from Ryan Murphy, creator of American Horror Story and American Crime Story, the intricacies of their famed battle are brought to vibrant life with Jessica Lange as Joan Crawford and Sarandon playing Davis. Its a fun, snappy eight-episode behind-the-scenes reveal (the next season will focus on the feud between Prince Charles and Princess Diana) and provides a worthy reminder of the destructive influence that meddling men had in tearing the two women apart.

This is a really blatant example of trying to control two people by making sure they dont join forces, she tells me on the phone, dog yapping in the background. I think that mentality and lack of imagination you can see in all the reality shows. Thats the entirety of their plots: just turning women against each other and getting them drunk so that something dramatic happens, even if its a fight over nothing. Its always easier, I think, to suck people into drama when its negative as opposed to something thats constructive.

Susan Sarandon as Bette Davis and Jessica Lange as Joan Crawford in Feud: Bette and Joan. Photograph: FX

If thered been a Real Housewives of Hollywood in the early 60s, Bette and Joans on-set sparring while making Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? would have made for a ratings magnet. There was a pay dispute, nastiness in gossip columns, petty pranks and even physical violence. But over 50 years later, the business is different: studios no longer own stars in the way they once did and women are making headway towards equality. Competition is not what it once was.

I think that happened just in my generation, Sarandon says. I see examples of actresses just a little bit ahead of me who really saw women as their enemy and had no intention of forming any kind of alliance. Now, thats certainly not true. You might be envious of a part you didnt get but its switched to understanding that you need women as allies and that were stronger together, not divided.

Its an ethos thats been reflected throughout her career, with roles in a number of Bechdel test-smashing films, including The Witches of Eastwick, Thelma and Louise, Little Women, Stepmom and last years acclaimed comeback vehicle The Meddler. Shes also been keen to work with more female directors, having recently worked with a set of them on the production of Feud, but one area of equality that shes less sure about is that awkward matter of who gets paid what.

I dont think it matters that Jennifer Lawrence is paid 70 times more than what I am, she says. Its a business that is so subjective and I feel so lucky to be able to earn a living, and this is why to go after pay equality is a really chancy subject because if Tom Cruise has a leading lady thats in the movie as much as he is, should she get the same amount of money if shes been in the business a shorter amount of time? And should a character actor thats been in the business for 50 years not get paid more? Its a sin what happens to these supporting actors through the years where they can barely exist on the pay they get. Theres no equity in terms of value, and who knows how these decisions are made. So you cant apply that to feeling unfair because the whole fact that actors get paid as much as we do is ridiculous. I mean, what a fabulous life. I cant bitch about whatever my pay level is. I dont focus on that.

Susan Sarandon in The Meddler. Photograph: Sony

But as content as Sarandon seems, theres no denying that shes been frustratingly absent from the spotlight in recent years. Shes not stopped working but more often shes been taking on small, little-seen roles. Its not simply a dearth of scripts for women of a certain age in the industry, its also Sarandon being understandably picky. Unlike many other Oscar-winning female actors, shes resisted the urge to take on thankless roles in franchise fodder. She chose not to play the doomed female president in last years Independence Day: Resurgence (When I read the script, I couldnt understand what was going on) and the only sequel youll see her in any time soon is John Turturros Big Lebowski spin-off (something she calls a crazy film that she still cant believe they got the money for).

After the success of Thelma and Louise, many thought it would be a game-changer, showing Holly-bros that theres a sizable audience for a film about female friendship but as Bridesmaids has since shown, these hits are often seen as unlikely exceptions and fail to cause the seismic shift predicted. I think that a woman can look at a story that has a male protagonist and can identify that she could do that or be in that situation, she says. But I think its harder for male executives to imagine that anybody is really gonna get into a female lead because its hard for them to imagine. I dont think its meant to be a mean thing, I just think its a lack of imagination.

Its meant that, while shes starred in a number of aforementioned female-fronted films, shes still been paired mostly with men throughout her career. Its been a generally harmonious time, but Sarandon recalls the closest shes got to having a Bette v Joan situation. There was one gentleman, she says. He hadnt really done films, I dont think, and he was in the midst of a very successful TV run and was a heart-throb. There were definitely some problems and hed developed some habits, because in the atmosphere where he was working, he wasnt used to women challenging him in any way and was spoiled by the rules that they set up. At one point, they allowed him to leave on my reverse at the end of the day, so I was suddenly expected to do my lines with the script supervisor and him gone for my close-up.

She wont give me a name but she counts it as a rare occurrence. I dont thrive on tension or any kind of aggression, she says. But its an unavoidable part of the job, especially, depressingly, for a woman who chooses to speak her mind. While men might still be seen as brave and refreshing, women who speak out are still often painted as difficult or bitchy. Sarandon knows this all too well.

I think it is more annoying to have a woman with opinions for a lot of people, she says. I couldnt give you any solid proof that has hurt my chances in the business. Today in the New York Times, they were talking about the Academy awards and the fact that I was one of the people who didnt get a nomination for The Meddler, and [it] mentions that it might have something to do with the Clintonized Hollywood, when I supported Bernie Sanders.

Bernie Sanders and Susan Sarandon in April 2016. Photograph: Brian Snyder / Reuters/Reuters

Which brings us to the elephant in the room (or over the phone). Sarandon was a vocal supporter of Sanders as he ran against Clinton to become the Democratic pick for president. When he lost out on the nomination, she expressed her frustration and publicly endorsed the Green candidate Jill Stein instead, stating that she did not vote with her vagina. She had previously called Clinton more dangerous than Trump.

I have had a huge amount of backlash, she says. Theres been a really strong blame for a lot of things that are obviously not my fault.

A cursory scan of Twitter shows a stream of bile all the way from the Will & Grace star Debra Messing to the author Kurt Eichenwald. Sarandon remains defiant, unapologetic and frustrated with Democrats who suggest that shes let the party down.

Theres no valid argument, she says. Its just an easy place to put your frustrations, to blame me. I mean, if you read the list of people who voted Hillary Clinton and then I think its me and Viggo Mortensen on the other side. Youd have to be delusional to actually think that Beyonc and Jay Z and George Clooney and Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep, and the list goes on, were actually overpowered by the two of us.

But shes unperturbed, still hyper-aware of the daily failings of Trumps government. And despite resistance, shes continuing to show up at Democratic events, such as a recent anti-Trump rally in New York. Im focusing on reaching out and forming a coalition not only with all of Hillarys people but with people I know that voted for Trump, because we have serious work to do now, and we cant indulge in blaming or depression or any of those things, she says. There isnt time any more to look back. We have to look forward.

Feud begins on FX on 5 March at 10pm with a UK broadcaster yet to be confirmed

Read more: http://bit.ly/2mnLjtT

from Susan Sarandon: ‘Its an easy place to put your frustrations, to blame me’

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Zach Galifianakis Denounces Celebrity Worship: This Is How We Ended Up With Trump

HOLLYWOOD, California Ill have the McWhopper, Zach Galifianakis jokes as he settles down into a booth at the Arbys on Sunset Boulevard at 10:30 a.m. on a Tuesday morning. They dont have Dr. Skipper, do they?

Along with his Baskets co-star Martha Kelly and co-creator Jonathan Krisel, Galifianakis is at Arbys to schmooze with Emmy Awards voters. Later, after speaking with a group of journalists, he will spend hours both taking and delivering drive-thru orders to lucky members of the Television Academy who will ultimately decide the FX shows Emmy fate.

Louie Andersonthe only actor on the show to win an Emmy for his portrayal of matriarch Christine Basketsstrolls in late wearing his signature dark blue dress shirt and bright red tie. Sorry, you guys, I was making fries, he deadpans.

The decision to hold the For Your Consideration day at Arbysas opposed to say, the lavish theater at the Ace Hotel where NBCs This Is Us held its event that same nightis a perfect reflection of this understated, irreverent show.

I mean, its just a TV show, have it in an Arbys! Galifianakis, who spends as much time as he can on his farm in North Carolina, jokes of these FYC events. God, this town and how it takes itself so seriously, it makes me sick. Were dumb actors! Thats how we ended up with Trump, celebrity worship.

This Arbys location is the same one the show has filmed in periodically over its first three seasons, including the third seasons Thanksgiving episode, which found a troupe of French clowns joining the Baskets family for a fast-food dinner. Anderson calls it one of the greatest moments in the shows history.

I know you probably think we shoot at Arbys headquarters, Galifianakis jokes. And I had been here a long time ago, as a customer.

Similarly, Anderson recalls coming to this Arbys drive-thru every night at 2 a.m. after performing at The Comedy Store in the mid-1980s. I got an Arbys special, two different types of fries, a Jamocha shake, and then Id drive though again, he says.

We wanted to show the dirtiness that TV doesnt show a lot, Galifianakis says of the decision to make this particular chain, which also became a frequent punchline on Jon Stewarts Daily Show, such a big part of Baskets. You dont really see real fast-food places being used. And unfortunately, the country has turned into this sort of fast-food mentality and we wanted to highlight that and show it.

Arbys was originally written into the pilot as a throwaway joke, but once they started writing the first season, they realized it could be a recurring location for the characters, including Galifianakis Chip, who has to keep returning to his job there after failing in his quest to become a successful clown.

How many questions will be about Arbys? Galifianakis wants to know before the press conference officially gets underway. You know, we have a show.

And that show just got picked up for a fourth season, despite what can generously be described as modest ratings. Galifianakis, who plays twins Chip and Dale Baskets on the show, explains that he set out to portray characters who were not exactly likeable, to use a favorite term of network executives. But three seasons in, he has started to allow them to approach something resembling redemption.

Over the course of the shows run, Anderson has undoubtedly become the breakout star of Baskets with his Emmy-winning performance as Christine. What could have been a one-note joke has evolved into a nuanced and emotional portrayal of a woman finding herself in her golden years.

While Christine may seem like the opposite of her artist, weirdo kid, Krisel says he strives to show that they are not so different. Shes sort of an artist in her own right, he explains. These types of ladies are magical, too. Its not just beautiful models who, like, romp through Paris. These are interesting, poetic lives, too.

All the silly, traditional, buttoned-up stuff in sitcoms is never happening in Baskets, Anderson adds, which is beautiful. When Anderson refers to himself as a really pretty woman, Galifianakis shoots back, Look, Louie, whatever you keep telling yourself

Families are messy and their problems arent fixed by one quirky line, Galifianakis adds. From the beginning, we wanted it to be a lot of things. And I think now that were going into our fourth season, we know the show better than we did during the first season.

Life isnt all jokes or all drama, he continues, noting that when he watches dramatic shows hes always hoping that someone will make a joke. I just havent seen a show like this that has dramatic elements and then goofy jokes. Galifianakis did admit later that hes never seen his fellow FX show Atlanta, which could be described the same way.

Christian Sprenger, who served as the director of photography for Baskets first season, notably left the show to do the cinematography for Atlanta, a fact Galifianakis still seems a little salty about.

Ive seen Atlanta and I love it, Martha Kelly chimes in. I just want to get that on the record.

This past season of Baskets was the first one produced without the participation of another FX auteur, Louis C.K., who co-created the show with Galifianakis and Krisel, but stepped aside after the revelations about his history of sexual misconduct. Galifianakis has described C.K.s exit as disruptive in a harmful way to so many people, chalking his behavior up to the poison of celebrity culture: The fact that someone can think that just because theyre loved, they can do what they want.

Anderson told The Daily Beast earlier this year that he was so sad and a little shocked by everything that came out about C.K., who had first pitched the idea of him playing Christine Baskets. Its still a very emotional thing for me, he said at the time. I feel bad for everyone involved. Its a terrible thing.

The recent season finale ended on a double cliffhanger of sorts. As the family counts down to midnight on New Years Eve, Chip gets an unexpected phone call from his estranged wife Penelope and Christines boyfriend Ken says he has a question for her. As her face lights up, the screen cuts to black.

Krisel and the cast confirm that they had no idea if they would be given the chance to make a fourth season when they decided to end it that way, but they all seem excited by the opportunity to continue the story.

That being said, they still dont know what they want to do next. Galifianakis and Anderson recently had dinner to discuss some storylines, and as Krisel says, There were some terrible ideas that came out of it.

I mean, the numbers on this show, Ive never looked at them, but Im imagining theyre below average, Galifianakis says with a laugh. Thankful for FXs ongoing support, he suggests that if the show had been on a broadcast network, People would have walked out of the pilot.

We really are lucky, Anderson adds.

So are the shows fans.

Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/zach-galifianakis-denounces-celebrity-worship-this-is-how-we-ended-up-with-trump

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