#bc like even prisons have yard cats

[bright-eyes-strawberry-lies]

I've said it before and I'll say it again, it is super weird that no kid showed up to CHB with like their dog or their lizard or whatever pet they've got.

[cognitosclowns]

in the spirit of the holiday do you have any hcs for the gang on halloween?

THIS FELT THEMATIC <3 TYSM FOR THE LOVELY ASK

AAAA I LOVE HALLOWEEN

Brett absolutely leaves a bowl of candy out if he can't be there in person. usually he personall dresses up in the most,, well-detailed costumes? his favorite is a Ventriloquist dummy!! he has a whole little routine he does for greeting kids at the door. this man LOVES halloween.

Reagan never really had any halloween traditions growing up? aside from her dad batting away children from their yard with a baseball bat smsdns

It becomes tradition for Andre, Gigi and Reagan to go to shops together on november 1-3rd to get all the cheap candy <3 they literally have pounds of the stuff, The War Room has an infinite candy bowl now

Brett : 'why isn't JR dressed up :('

Myc : 'hes a capitalist that's already scary enough'

If JR does dress up, it's something Classic like Dracula!!

OH YEAH Brett is totally gonna dress up. Gigi helps convince the rest of them by starting an office vote for Best Costume(s) and they're immediately in bc they're all competitive as hell

(besides, it'll make brett happy <3)

Group costume : Wizard of Oz. Brett is Scarecrow, Gigi is Dorothy, Reagan is Lion (complete with little cat ears and a fuzzy sweater smdns), and (under threat of physical violence) Robotus is Tin Man <3

Robotus is embarrassed, Reagan is Itchy, Gigi looks the best but shes regretting the choice of heels, Brett is absolutely beaming and there is straw in every crevice of his body. Collectively they will have the best fucking time ever.

Glenn is always too shy to dress up <3 ppl are already scared of him during the year. he'll probably just put on his old army uniform and be a Solider!!

Im not sure how old Glenn's daughter is?? If shes a kid then he'll absolutely go out trick or treating with her!! People compliment how scary is mask is even though he's not wearing one :')

Gigi will absolutely change costumes so that they can do a King and Queen look, bc <3 friendship. He gets all flustered bc,, Gigi makes him a gorgeous outfit and he feels <3 kinda handsome tbh <3

Myc + Andre? Little Shop of Horrors with a twist. Myc is Seymour, Andre is Twoey!! They put Myc in overalls for each of his tentacles, glasses and everything. Andre is covered in leaves and vines he stole from the horticulture lab. They get unreasonably drunk

The Great Halloween Bar Brawl of 2021 will not soon be forgotten (Myc insulted someone, like he always does, and it kinda devolved from there. There were probably no casualties)

<3 i love these mfs so much aaa

-

MYC AND ANDRE HORROR EXTRAVAGANZA IN THE BASEMENT <3

Everyone's invited. they completely deck out the basement area with cushions and shit?? They even disable the wifi and plug up all the charging ports so they can let Robotus out of his prison for a bit smdns

Brett is huddled up with his knees to his chest. Myc and Andre are constantly cracking jokes to both make him less scared and,, because that just how they are. Most tense moments are ruined by them making silly noises and jokes

ex : (someone falls out a window, 'and he sticks the landing!' 'im giving in an 8 on execution, the pole in his head really redacts points', etc). Robotus joins in with Full Snark Activated. It's absolute chaos in the best way sdnms.

'Madam. Miss. Mademoiselle. RUN. HE IS RIGHT THERE HOW DO YOU NOT SEE HIM.' Reagan, Gigi and Robotus are weeping over the incompetence of the characters smdns.

Everyone's screaming at the screen. Brett is cheering on the Final Girl, while Myc is hoping she gets mulched smdns.

Nobody goes home, they all just end up falling asleep in piles down in the basement. Robotus stays up for a while (definitely not to make sure everyone's sleeping soundly + they aren't gonna be woken up my anything. because he definitely doesn't secretly care about them), but eventually he powers down for the night too <3

all in all a successful halloween !! <3

[twdmusicboxmystery]

TWD Holiday Special Clues

Hey Everyone! I watched the holiday special last night. I know not everyone can. At least not yet. (Not sure if they’ll air it eventually.) So I’ll report what jumped out at me from it.

The first thing is that I definitely noticed a “return vibe” running through it. But first thing’s first.

They mentioned “reuniting the Greene sisters” at least twice. Maybe three times. Chris said it in the intro. I’m paraphrasing but something like “Emily Kinney and Lauren Cohan are here. We’re gonna reunite the Greene sisters!” And then he repeated that again during the episode. So yeah. Side-eying that.

Then Emily sang her song, Up on the Housetop, pretty early. I wasn’t sure about this at first, but it did occur to me that they chose to have her sing a song about Santa returning stealthily in the night. And yes, I know that’s pretty weak on its own. I mean, it’s a Christmas special. Any song they sing is either going to be about Santa or the Christ child. But even so. It wasn’t Jingle Bells or anything more generic. They picked the song about Santa returning stealthily (he does that every year, after all) when and where no one was looking for him to be. I’ll talk about this more at the end.

(Just recorded this oon my phone, so not the best quality. ;D) 

 There were a lot of small things that MIGHT be clues, but also might not be. Things that we COULD read into but we really might be reaching. Things the actor (such as Josh McDermitt) said while telling stories about childhood Christmases, for example. I’ll skip those, for the most part, as they aren’t all that compelling on their own.

So then there were two 10-season things they did. They had the actors who play Ezekiel, Yumiko, Jerry, and Lydia sing a rendition of The Twelve Days of Christmas, except it was the 10 seasons of TWD. It was fun, and I want to read into some of the lines, but it’s hard to read into all of them. They basically picked one thing from each season, and they were all pretty random. They skipped over Beth entirely, and I’ll admit that IS kind of suspicious (I’ll tell you why in a minute) but at the same time they skipped over a LOT of important things, so I’m not sure we can call it a pattern.

So, for example, the season 2 line was “Hershel at his Farm.” That makes total sense because it encapsulates the gist of S2. So, if they’d stayed with that theme, you ‘d think s3’s line would have been about the prison or the Governor or Woodbury, right? They went with “baby Judith’s birth.” And obviously that was a big deal but it doesn’t exactly bring across everything that happened in S3, you know? So, kind of random. For S4, you’d think they would talk about the downfall of the prison, but they went with “look at the flowers.” 

So, they didn’t mention Beth or Grady at all for S5, and I find that suspicious bc Coda was definitely the biggest thing that happened in S5 with the biggest fan reaction. But again, they weren’t exactly breaking pattern here. For S5, they went with “Morgan Jones returns.” S6 was “Scary Saviors arriving” or something along those lines. (Understand I’m paraphrasing most of these because I didn’t write down exact words.) S7 was “Abe and Glenn in heaven.” S8 was Carl getting bitten. Sufficiently a big deal, of course, but there was also that burning Phoenix. Must not have been very memorable, lol. S9 was “Rick in a copter” and S10 was “Negan killing Alpha.” I think.

Not until they’d sung several more verses did the part about Morgan returning start to jump out at me. I mean, in terms of S5, that literally happens the last two minutes of the season. And yes, it was a big deal to the fandom, but it hardly represents all of S5, right? But using him as the “5th day of Christmas” part of the song automatically puts emphasis on it. If you think of the song, it slows down considerably and emphasizes “5 golden rings.” And for this it was “Morgan Jones return.” So it felt like there was a heavy emphasis on that.

So, an emphasis on the return of a character who hadn’t been on in a while before that. And of course there are all those DC al Coda parallels between Beth and Morgan. Just saying. Later in the special, they do another “return thing.”

Then they did an “In Memoriam” that covered 10 seasons of walker kills. This one was much more suspicious in a TD way to me. Like the song, they basically chose one iconic, epic walker kill to represent each season. And there are a lot more of these I think we can read into as Beth symbols. So, for S1, it was Teddy Bear Girl. For S2, Well walker. (Water.) For S3, that walker they killed when cleaning out the prison yard whose face slides off. The thing about this walker is that it’s wearing black riot gear. A lot like what the CRM soldiers wear. For S4, it was the Big Spot walker that falls through the roof. That one made me happy. For S5, that walker Daryl killed at Terminus with the crow bar. You know, the famous one whose face he caved in against the brick wall? 

For s6, it was the sewer walkers Maggie and Aaron ran into under Alexandria. Definitely side-eyeing that. For s7, they showed Winslow. And what was great about that is that it specifically showed the part where one of Winslow’s spikes when through Rick’s hands. (Stigmata, making him a Christ figure.) For S8, it was where Daryl was riding around on his bike shoot boxes with his gun that then blew up. He blew up one of the walkers that way. For 9, it was the walker that came up out of the river while Daryl was fishing (long hair after Rick left). And for S10 it was the walker horde hitting the electric fence before the Hilltop battle.

So yeah. We can definitely read into some of those as Beth parallels.

The end of the special had some weirdnesses in it, and my favorite TD reference.

First, Chris asked everyone to say what their character would bring to a holiday party. Lauren said Maggie would bring the turkey. Kaylee said Judith would bring the games. But we didn’t hear Emily or IRonE’s answers. I just thought it was weird because it cut very abruptly and we didn’t get to hear what their characters would have brought. I mean, it’s obvious they edit these, because they often jump suddenly to the next question and you don’t hear the segue. I don’t judge them for editing. They have to do this in a certain time frame, and there can lots of white noise when conducting zoom calls. But still, I have to wonder what, exactly, they’re cutting out.

So then Chris asks, again, as though he’s going to ask each person, with the show ending, who they think will be the “last person standing.” He didn’t say man, I don’t think, but the echo of Beth’s line was painfully obvious. And he asked Emily first. And who did she say? She said Norman, or Norman and Melissa.

So, she didn’t actually say Daryl, and the “Norman and Melissa” thing is pretty obvious given the spinoff. But we literally had them asking who the last “person” standing would be, and she said Norman/Daryl. Just saying.

Then Lauren did this mock, I-can’t-believe-you-didn’t-pick-your-sister thing and they all started laughing and Emily said something like, “just kidding. If I were writing the script, they’d kill all the walkers and Maggie would be queen.” I think IRonE answered the question as well, but I think what he said got lost in all the goofing around.

But yeah. Obvious Bethyl reference and they indirectly tied it to the spinoff. Just saying.

So, before I get to the final one, they they took Emily and IronE away and brought on Angela and Gimple. That part was kind of meh. Just nothing that really jumped out at me. Chris asked Gimple to give us some tidbits about the Rick movies. And Gimple did his usual, “we’re working on it but can’t say much” thing. So then Chris asked AK to talk about the bonus episodes. She talked a lot more than Gimple and Chris gave Gimple crap about that. But honestly, she pretty much just repeated what we already know from the episode synopses that were released: A Daryl/Carol episode, a Negan episode, with Hillary Burton, more on Eugene’s group, etc. So yeah. Nothing knew or exciting there.

They showed a very short clip of the table read from the episode where Daryl and Carol go their separate ways. I thought it was interesting that they used that particular moment. But I suppose they’re doing it to hype the spinoff.

Finally, they ended with Chris reading a TWD rendition of Twas the Night Before Christmas. Most of it was cute little rhymes about the various characters, but one part REALLY jumped out at me.

“And that’s when they saw it high up on a shelf:

A new walking talkie. Was it left by an elf?

They heard static and crackling but nothing made sense

The room became quiet, so SERIOUS, so tense.

Together they gathered, a closer look they did take

When a helicopter overhead made the entire house shake.

And then a voice on the walkie was heard so clear and so bright

It was Rick grimes wishing “Peace unto all and to all a good night.”

 Now, there were other passages I found suspicious as well. Stuff about Daryl and Dog, and Connie and Kelly receiving tons of cats for Christmas. You’ll have to tell me what part stands out most to you.

But here, we have a voice on a walkie, Rick in a helicopter, and a serious mention. Of course they were never going to put Beth’s name in here. It would be too obvious, but given the parallels between her and Rick, I know I don’t have to explain why this makes me happy. AND in the story, it’s happening on Christmas Eve. The return of a character they think is dead.

So I think it also works with the Up on the Housetop theme I mentioned at the beginning. As I said, I wasn’t sure about that at first, but after hearing their poem, it made me think I was barking up the right tree there.

So, because there was such a heavy “return” emphasis here, it got me thinking of the weirdness of having a holiday special at all. I hadn’t really questioned it before now. Just something fun to tide people over. Because Covid, you know?

But now it feels like a clue that THIS is the Christmas after which she’ll return. They’re doing it this year, where they haven’t in years past, because THIS is the year Daryl will get something from Santa Clause.

Also, about a week ago (before the special aired) @wdway​ sent me an article about it. It was obvious this was filmed early, not live, because the article actually talked about some of what would happen in the holiday special. And the part they talked about was where Emily said Norman would be the last man standing.

So what we found suspicious about that (apart from what I’ve already talked about here; the blatant echo of a famous Bethyl moment) is that the article ONLY talked about Emily and that question. It mentioned who else would be on and such, but the entire emphasis of the article was Emily and her answer to that question.

So it felt like the special was entirely geared toward featuring Emily.  

Thoughts?

[crocoguile]

I’m actually going to jump in here! It’s somewhat of a cultural divide as much as it is a generational divide from my experience!

I was born and raised in what at the time was a very small suburb of Colorado Springs/Pueblo in colorado and then when OSP left Pop and we moved to the Cincinnati area I really got experience in this.

In Colorado, I was young enough that if I were to show up at a friends house, I was welcomed in and there was always a cursory call to OSP from Kenya and Tanya’s mom like “your kid got out of your yard but we’ve got [him] and the [kids] are gonna work on their dance stuff and then play for a while I guess if you don’t need [Russ] for a while.” If I had shown up at Justine’s that would have been a little more concerning because I’d have had to hoof it a lot further, and back in the day we were taught to lock our doors at night and always keep a dog in eyesight in the yard when we played because we were close to several prisons.

In the suburb of ‘Nati that I loved in, when we were in apartments it wasn’t odd for us kids to go and knock on one another’s patio doors because the front doors were locked in the later apartments, but in the first set I lived more at Danny and Alan’s than I did at home, especially during school breaks because they went “no you’re our [brother] now” because it wasn’t hard for them to realize something was up about my safety and sanity at home, I think.

Once I was in a house, one of my best friends lived two doors down at her grandmas for a while and at that point, she had a key to OSP’s and her doors were never locked so we came and go as we pleased. If I were at dad’s, you could always walk in because biologically or by marriage, I’m 1 in 8, but I had two godbrothers my dad adopted when their dad passed away (boy’s ma died when we were all kids and there was a solid six months the twins could be found on OSP’s living room floor in a state of despondence) and then my two oldest friends who basically lived with us as much as we basically lived with them.

Mom can show up at her sister’s and let herself in if she needs to and absolutely will if it isn’t a bad day, and they don’t give a shit bc OSP tends to just... boredly tidy up and then get high with Molly (the dog, not the drug lmao but can you imagine) or go swimming in the summer at the other house and hang out with the cats. When her brother was still alive, that was p normal too, and then Billy’d be stoked because SISTER and there’s always a food to be had.

Any of us grandkids can appear at any grandparents and they’d be like HEY HI TIME TO FEED YOU and with Audrey you’ll just watch perry mason for six years and eat candy, or with Elder pop or Feru you’re put to work doing shit their old bodies aren’t as great for (like replacing roof tiles or helping moves plants around in the garden when it’s Time).

But I refuse to just appear places without a cursory note if I don’t have a key. Trey won’t go to OSP’s without calling first. Spork will but that’s because he’s never had qualms about walking in like he owns the place because he’s usually got at least an eighth on him and can bribe my mom off with it. 

But I won’t even show up to my older sister’s unannounced if I’m in the area despite still having a key because I always feel uncomfortable being in other’s spaces without them there.

There are a few exceptions to this, mostly having been my friend Cryo’s because I was in his basement and later apartment so much, and if Iwi were to be in my apartment I’d just be stoked to see her because we basically shared my bedroom for a year and a half on weekends. 

IDK TL;DR in our generation it takes a very long amount of very close familiarity to give no fucks the closer to the Big City you live. 

So, my cousins just showed up at my house. One lives a few hours north of me and has a cold, and the other lives to the south in a city with way more cases than where I live. I had to kick them out of my house and be like “Sorry! I’m immunocompromised so we’re quarantining. Good to see you! Love you! Bye!!!”

They got like three steps in before I said they had to leave. It’s kinda sad because they are some of my favorite cousins and I don’t get to see them very often but also who goes on a road trip right now???? And WHY WOULD YOU GO VISIT PEOPLE WHILE SICK????