#but if you’re giving kids grief for liking dumb internet things you’re stupid

[billcyphersballsack]

Hey just wanted to let everyone know a new law just dropped. Yeah it basically says you’re not allowed to make fun of gen alpha kids who like skibbidy toilet if the following images elicits any nostalgia in you whatsoever

[darker-soft-starker]

I just thought of cult leader!tony and his willing to a fault follower!peter send help

GIRRLLLLLLLL I hope you don’t mind that I publish this ask cause D A M N I need this one like breathing.

Ok, so, let’s say Peter and Aunt May have moved to a new, small town after Uncle Bens death. They’re both looking for a fresh start, both still deeply grieving, getting used to an entirely new way of life after moving away from a big city.

May throws herself into her new job, tries to be an active member of society, wants to impress the locals and really acclimate into this new town. Wants to move on and up, so she finds herself clubs to meet at, neighbours to befriend, places to be. It’s a new life, she reiterates. 

Peter starts at the local community college but struggles with making new friends. He misses his old ones a lot. It’s hard to keep in contact with Ned and MJ though, they’re busy with college and their social lives on top of being on the other side of the country.

He finds himself increasingly isolated. Being witness to Ben’s death has led to anxiety attacks, prone to melancholy, Peter finds himself agitated at the smallest thing. He’s tries to focus on study but it’s not enough. 

May notices that Peter is becoming more withdrawn, quieter than before, if that were even possible, sees the way his hands tremble sometimes, how he stares out into nothingness for long periods of time. She worries, even as she is starting to feel more like herself again after the trauma. So she suggests he join a local group, find a therapist maybe. She’s heard great things about some guy who runs meditation workshops from his estate two hours up north. 

Peter, although wary, takes her up on the latter, books himself in for an initial consultation. He meets with the guy - guru? - call me Tony - who is warm, charismatic and effortlessly charming. His eyes are soft and he doesn’t speak to Peter like he’s broken or stupid, he smiles a lot and says to Peter, we can work this out, I’m going to help you.

He runs a spiritual retreat, some people come and go, others stay there long-term. Everyone seems to work hard. If you follow the rules, you’ll get rewards. No phones, no internet, first and foremost. The first step to healing is detaching from the outside world that wants to commodify you, to brainwash you. Second, report any misbehaviour from others but most importantly: treat each other with love and respect.

It’s a family business, Tony says. Everyone here is part of the family.

Peter starts going to weekend retreats. On his first one, he’s nervous, but he gets along okay with everyone, mostly keeping to himself between workshops and meals. Being without his smartphone is like having a missing limb, but, like getting into the meditations, is something he gets used to.

He can see what Tony means, though, by family. He see how the man is surrounded by people who treat him with love and respect because he does the same for them, always reaching for a hug, providing for those who put in the effort and giving out praise when deserved. When Tony’s not in a session he’s always surrounded, always seems to be far away - but never far away enough to not catch Peter’s eye and give him a wink and warm smile, a half hug or a hand shake. 

After a few weekends Peter is starting to feel a little better, feels more separated from his old life as he latches onto the new philosophies he’s been studying. The grief no longer swallows him whole and he doesn’t think about all the bygones that used to ache.

He starts to look forward to his new one-on-ones with Tony who repeats his class mantra. You are loved. You are capable. You are an integral part of a network who support you. You are needed. Peter finds it easier to believe what the man is saying, feels the vice around his heart starting to ease off. Similarly he finds himself becoming closer to Tony and it makes him feel included, worthy, for the first time in a long time.

He somehow must have proven some kind of worthiness because he starts to get invited to lunches, dinners, drinks with some of Tony’s inner circle and Tony himself at his personal compound, surrounded by good food and laughter. The others marvel at how far Peter has come and Peter can only catch Tony’s fond gaze and think, it’s because of him, this perfect person, this good man and his heart swells so much that his ribs feel like they’re going to crack with the strain.

Peter keeps studying, stays longer at the retreats each time, helps out where he can. 

They get close enough that one night after dinner it’s just Peter and Tony, curled up on the couch and Peter, overcome with such affection for the man, presses a courageous kiss to the mans bearded cheek. Tony looks at him, eyes soft with the firelight glow, and presses his palm to Peters cheek, leans in to catch Peters lip in a sweet kiss.

It’s different after that, better. His stays become longer, and the longer he is gone, the worse he feels. He begins to understand the outside world less and less, feels disconnected from May, from the texts his friends send when he gets his phone back. It’s like this is all a dream and the retreat is the real world.

Eventually Peter moves in to the compound at the retreat completely. He misses May but he’s allowed one phone call a week with her on the communal retreat phone. It’s enough. She worries about him, about him being so cut off from the world. But when she hears how happy she doesn’t say more, just makes him promise to see her every now and then.

Two months after moving into the compound, two policemen show up at the estate gates, asking after some woman. It’s a name that Peter vaguely recognises as one of the first people he’d met at the retreat but hadn’t seen in a while - he figured she was done with the program and had left. Apparently she’d gone missing.

Peter feels bad that he hadn’t known - there is only one TV in the compound and it’s used for their weekly movie nights. No one needs to see the endless cycle of death, rape and destruction, Tony and the other senior members had said, it was that kind of narrative kept everyone down the rabbit hole, from true healing, and Peter believed it. After all this time he didn’t miss his phone or his laptop, not when he had a whole community and other ways to fill his time, not when he had Tony in his life. Anyway, the police didn’t have a warrant and didn’t get further than the closed gates.

That night when Tony slips out of bed Peter sees him get angry for the first time ever. From the slight opening of the bedroom door he sees Tony getting up in Rogers face with a snarl, whispering furiously about not being careful and making mistakes. But Tony comes back to bed not long after, cuddling up to Peter from behind and burying his nose at the nape of his neck, body wrought with tension. Tony whispers to him, tells him don’t worry, i’m always going to keep you safe, I’ll look after our people. 

He turns around in Tony’s arms and smooths his hands down the mans bare back. Peter has never felt more secure and cared for in his whole life and he wants Tony to feel the same.

The next time that he speaks to May she mentions that a policeman came around to the house, asking what she knew of Tony and about Peter and if there was any connection to the missing woman. Peter plays dumb, says he has no idea who she is, which isn’t too far a stretch from the truth. May seems to buy it. It’s the last he hears of it for a while.

When he tells Tony about it later the man smiles and kisses him fiercely, tells Peter he loves him and that he’s family - and Peter honestly feels like it, helping in the gardens everyday, teaching some of the kids of the families that stay here, helping out with chores. He’s never felt more part of a community in his whole life, not back in Queens, not like before. He’s never felt more desired than when Tony reaches for him, sits with him at breakfast in front of everybody, only takes him to bed. Like a normal family, not everyone gets along perfectly and there are arguments, scuffles, personality clashes, but for the most part it works. Everyone looks up to and defers to Tony in the end. 

A month after his conversation with May, Peter finds a shallow grave in the outer fields. He’d been digging up soil to start planting some trees for the coming seasons as a surprise to Tony. Frozen, Peter had instantly recognized the cheap, beaded bracelet on the decomposing body, mind flashing back to his first weekend here. 

He looks over some ways away to the chapel where he knows Tony is reading aloud to a group, knows the sermon off by heart. You are loved. You are capable. You are an integral part of a network who support you. You are needed. 

Gingerly, Peter places the soil back above the corpse, looking around to make sure no one has noticed him. On his way back to the compound he thinks about asking Tony to build a concrete outdoor space instead.

When he tells Tony precisely where they should build it, the mans eyes crinkle around the sides and says, good idea Pete, this is why you’re my best boy.

Yeah, Peter thinks, he’s home.

[captain-flint]

(1/2) Buck really is the best 😍 this has been my main takeaway from 911. Kinda frustrated that his team seems to think he’s stupid (Maddie wrote the essay for you; you can’t do math) and that he doesn’t really get to do any of the EMT side of the job since Eddie came along. I hope Buck Begins establishes that he actually is smart (like an old teacher/professor can come by and be like “my best student!” and the firefam can be like 😦)

(2/2) Also hope at some point the lawsuit stops being about “forgiving” Buck & starts to be something the firefam accepts responsibility for. Like Bobby treated buck unfairly compared to the others. Buck fought so hard to get back & nothing about his health changed when he was allowed back on active duty so we know it was BS. Eddie blamed Buck for his anger & stopped Chris from seeing him. Chim & hen were forgiving but still Buck didn’t get a welcome back party like Hen insisted on for Chimney. 

YOU’RE RIGHT AND YOU SHOULD SAY IT! 

the thing that hurts me the most is the firefam mocking buck whenever he doesn’t understand a pop culture reference or gives off the ‘dumb blond’ vibe. i really don’t think he’s an idiot, he’s the one who always thinks outside the box and comes up with foolproof solutions to  certain problems. his eagerness to please or simple frustration sometimes make him do or say something before he thinks, but that in no way means he’s stupid. he reads a lot when he’s on his own, even autobiographies, or goes through borderline obsessive internet researches to familiarize himself with whatever is currently going on around him. he has great memory and he wants to know more! i think him not knowing popular references has a lot to do with his upbringing, which i hope we’ll learn about more. there’s no way he wouldn’t know who rambo was if he was growing up like a normal kid. i hope the writers don’t make buck 1.0 his actual personality in ‘buck begins’, bc it felt more like a coping mechanism for whatever fucked him up as a kid/teenager, rather than who he really was, which is what we’re seeing now. buckaroo is SMART and he deserves to show it!

as for the lawsuit, i feel that too. after rewatching it a couple of times, i now firmly stand on buck’s side, even though the rest of the team didn’t really deserve to be brought into it and dragged as they were, so i understood their anger. i understood bobby’s overprotectiveness too, but i think he grossly underestimated buck’s ‘newfound’ maturity and devotion to the job. it was so frustrating watching him keep buck at arm’s length and denying him work over and over to the point it just became mean and vindictive. eddie on the other hand, yeah i think a good part of his anger stemmed from the lawsuit. buck wasn’t there when eddie needed him and he lost some of that impulse control. eddie went through a lot of pain and grief in a short period of time, so i understood his anger and frustration and why he couldn’t see that buck was struggling too. but he thought bottling up feelings was the best way to deal with problems, meaning he didn’t exactly realize that buck lived through five months without the job and his family on an almost daily basis. we don’t know if eddie was there for him all the time, or enough to make a difference. we know buck has abandonment issues, and then all of a sudden he learned that his family was seemingly moving on without him, replacing him with another firefighter who became eddie’s new friend. that must have hurt. what really messed me up is that at that point buck thought so little of himself that he didn’t even realize eddie and chris might miss him once he filed the lawsuit. he was so broken up about being left out that he convinced himself he’s not a part of the diaz family anymore. i think that’s what hurt eddie the most and why he was so upset at buck, but instead of working it out with buck he just yelled at him. i was also super bummed that buck then threw himself under the bus and stomped his own feelings and problems because he felt he owed eddie an apology for not being there. like he actually believed eddie should’ve punched him for it. i mean ???? excuse me but buck had every right to stand up and fight for himself. maybe it wasn’t the best course of action, maybe he should’ve been more patient, but that boy became desperate. he deserved to be heard and he deserved to be treated equally, if he was then none of it would’ve happened

[whatisthisnonsense]

Okay you know what I am gonna talk shit in a proper well-thought-out manner because I’m salty and stressed and I may as well channel it into something fun like yelling about anime in an over the top display of angery as befitting this cesspool of a social media platform. This being said I’m gonna do it under a read-more ‘cause most of ya’ll ain’t got time for no negative nonsense and some of you genuinely enjoy Tri, and you know what, I respect you, you’re valid.

Okay so to explain how much I want to throw Bandai into a dumpster, we first need to go back and explain Adventure and the fiasco that was 02.

Digimon Adventure came out in 1999 (March 6th in japan and August 14th in the states, which coincidentally means this show came out exactly on my sixth birthday!) and lasted for about a year, with 54 episodes. The plot was simple; seven punkass grade schoolers turned out to have been chosen by fate to defend the Digital World, an alternate plane of reality created by various forms of digital information (the wee baby internet of the era, for example), mostly to kind of justify Bandai’s V-Pet (Tamogatchis but they’re gross and can FIGHT) and sell toys. So like, Transformers but with more human characters and kickass monsters and sometimes a lesson about the Power Of Friendship. Later, they find out they were chosen because they saw their neighborhood get wrecked by two monsters and Inexplicably Forgot This, as well as the fact there’s actually a missing member of their group (which less than surprisingly turned out to be the leader character’s little sister, who had already been seen in a prior episode and had also been involved in that early monster attack). It was hokey, the english dub generally bordered on that of a proto-abridged series if not aggressively sanitizing things (turning sake into green chili sauce, for example) and it was just good dumb fun and in the end everyone was crying anyway because dammit, while it was dumb fun you still cared about these characters and loved how they grew up. And then came 02.

Hoo boy. Digimon 02 came out in 2000 (April 2nd in japan and August 19th in the states) and lasted for another year or so. While sometimes listed as a second season, in truth it was a sequel series and it had...some interesting ideas, lets say. And I mean that sincerely! They did have some good ideas! But it was pretty clear from the lack of direction and the constant roller coaster of serious and stupid that it was being a sequel for the sake of being a sequel. For example, a whole new super secret crest turned up out of nowhere, which brings up a lot of questions in the lore but is mostly used to prove Ken isn’t irredeemable because he’s a Chosen Child ,as well as the questions about how this Crest is still present and useable and then literally gets no use. No Ultimate Form Wormmon for you, folks, NORMAL digivolution is out! I think I and @yunisverse have made our opinion on how to use that crest better clear while we’re being salty over Wizardmon, ha People have said that it’s big draw was that it had a heavier focus on character development and...yes and no? On the one hand, Ken and Cody’s arcs were genuinely enjoyable, Kindness shenanigans aside, as was occasionally exploring TK and Kari’s trauma, something often brushed over in the original series. On the other hand, more or less the whole of Adventure centered AROUND character growth where in 02 it’s...sporadic. Sometimes even random. However the main two reasons everyone was mad at 02 were these;

The original digidestined that were not Kari or TK got shunted onto the backburner, usually using excuses as they had given up their crest powers sometime between Our War Game and the present (despite that A) this is otherwise disregarding the fact they were supposedly not able to enter the digital world again until 02 and B) the power is literally inside them as part of their core, not something the digiworld actually gave to them, and while it could be diminished it could never actually be removed) or that it was the New Kids turn, often with wildly out of character personality developments. (Looking at you, Sora’s new docileness and Mimi’s lack of involvement in most of the plot period.)

The epilogue, which not only gave everyone really weird future jobs (why is Matt an astronaut?!) but also seemed pretty much out to be as aggressively Happily Ever After without actually stopping to think about any implications or actual lead-ups.

02 usually gets a pass from riding on the Adventure coattails, but everyone still tended to be at least disappointed in what had occurred. Also, more serious takes on Digimon, such as Tamers and some of the games, had been growing in popularity.

Thus Bandai, in it’s infinite wisdom, decided to cash back in on Nostalgia by focusing on the Adventure kids, making them closer to 02 so they’re older and they can therefore do more serious mature takes like Tamers, while also trying to rectify how they would even begin to come around to their epilogue jobs. They do this by killing the 02 cast in the first two minutes.

Welcome to Tri folks! Okay, so the 02 cast isn’t actually dead, but we don’t know where they are for six movies. Six movies!! The most we know for a few years is Ken, for some reason, has reverted to evil! And he has Imperialdramon, which implies Davis is brainwashed too!

He is basically doing this most of the series (which was initially going to be a mini-series before becoming a series of movies which then proceed to often be cut up into episodes, which that alone should tell you the problems BEHIND the scenes much less on screen) and we find out what he is (not actually Ken but an evil Gennai clone which is also out of nowhere) and what he’s doing (apparently bringing Yggdrasil, long time lore big bad of various digimon continuities and also god, into the Adventure storyline) not by efforts of the kids. Oh no. They’re too busy playing with their new friend Mei!

God I wish I was joking. The original squad literally shows no concern for where the 02 gang is until halfway through, and it’s a handwave at best and quickly moved on from. Hell, they barely react to “Ken” and CHEER on defeating Imperialdramon! More gravitas was given to having to kill the plot coupon of the day, Meicoonmon, than someone they actually know and should be upset about. Also making Tai NOT want to rush into a fight (what?), Turns Out Homeostatis Is Also Evil Or At Least Amoral (why), a reveal one of the backstory five original digidestined went mad with grief (no), and also I guess for some reason the kids and digimon were separated again given their reactions despite 02′s ending? That’s. That’s not even keeping your own continuity. Why are you like this. Also connecting to the epilogue just seem to be on a whim (not metaphor, Matt decides to be an astronaut on a whim), the general lack of gravitas in most moments followed by moments of SEVERE gravitas (which is the 02 problem but Worse), and bad jokes. I don’t mean Good Bad Jokes like Adventure, just really not funny jokes. And the real bitch of the matter? It had a few things that should’ve made it AWESOME! Like listen, I miss these idiot kids a lot, and the concept of a virus forcing a reboot on the digiworld and thus having to explore, finally, the digimon as characters and what they would be like without the kids? That’s cool! The idea of undoing all the Perma Digideaths (like WIZARDMON goddammit, and in this own show friggin’ Leomon again) with said reboot and thus having a pretty legitimate reason to allow it? Also cool! Worldbuilding about the previous five digidestined? Neat! And lets be real, you all cried at the cast version of Butter-Fly. You know you did. But the thing is they didn’t DO anything with most of this, or did it in a sloppy way. Example; the virus was basically a means to an end for waking up Yggdrasil (I’m not calling him King Drasil, that’s stupid), right? Why? When the Adventure-verse, often to it’s own detriment, is actively tied to the Milleniumon mythos, you could just pull in that eldritch horror and finally have Ryo make sense everywhere not japan. Or heck, the Dark Ocean! Remember the Dark Ocean? Where literally cthulu is and also Daemon now? Apparently neither do the script writers since that would’ve been a golden opportunity.  Of course, this would be asking for continuity, which Tri has issues with within its own narrative. Remember when I said the reboot should’ve undone all permadeaths? Yeah, Wizardmon still shows up as a ghost later to lead Kari out of trouble. No lines or anything, just pops up facing away from the audience and leads her out, and then vanishes, despite the fact that according to the rules they made up for the reboot, he should be a cute little Mokumon in Primary Village at the moment who remembers nothing. Also it kind of low-key has the vibe that growing up is terrible and results in having to make awful decisions? Which I’m not sure is what they meant to do, but it does pretty much have that end result. And that sucks! Even Tamers didn’t do that! Growing up is HARD, sure, but there are GOOD things about it too, and being Adventure one would think that would be the main focus! Nope. I just. This should have been good and when it was announced I was super excited and now I’m pretty much exasperated by its mere existence. And now we’re getting a sequel after ANOTHER timeskip.

Bandai if this is how you give us a nostalgia feels trip, do us a favor and let Adventure die. You’re just making the sugary memories of childhood have a bitter aftertaste. Or, if you must, just do a proper reboot. Tie up things that actually WERE wrong with the original series and do some clean ups but otherwise leave it untouched. We all know you’re trying to capture the magic twice, guys, you’re not even trying to hide it now. TL;DR, The only parts I like about Tri are Butter-Fly (cast version) and the fact Tai and Matt are gayer than ever