#but the show has its own arcs

[teh-inggris]

pvp civ nation...... this aint much but pls take my contribution for this series bc im going insane i love hate this man so much get him out of my head

[maybe-boys-do-love]

Someday someone at GMMTV will wake up and realize that Force Jiratchapong, who keeps getting cast as the alpha male seme, is actually meant to be...

the Regina George...

the Sharpay Evans...

the Carla Santini...

Let him be THAT GIRL, the diva he can deliver. Let him be the spoiled nepo princess. Let him be petty and fashion, the cattiest gay bitch in the club. Make Book his service top (and actually put in effort to the relationship for once). Let him use his actual speaking voice and kill every girlie who thinks they're at his level with just a glance of his side-eye. He was not gifted with this face and attitude for us to waste it on boring traditional ideas of masculinity!!!

In short, #freeforce

[stagefoureddiediaz]

Something something about the cursed mummy working at a rodeo and the connection to lassos and wrangling bulls and foreshadowing. Something something about buck wearing a moustache when he dresses up as billy boils which connects things to Eddie.

How rodeos are connected to Texas in the general psyche. The idea that Eddie needs to go and wrangle with his bull in the next episode - Helena.

That she has been constantly trying to Buck him off but he needs to hold on in order to break the curse she has been on his life - the play on Buck being a massive support to Eddie - that gives him the strength to stay on and win the fight and pen the bull.

That he needs to break free of that curse in order to transform into his true self and how the werewolf is a representation of that happening and also a foreshadowing for the shaving off of the stache

[moeblob]

OC again gomen ... (her name is Yuma)

[ruvviks]

it's been a hot sec since i've talked about cyberpunk and i was initially working on a fic that would tell the story of this whole thing, but i've abandoned it many months ago and cannot say when i'll be picking it up again SO! i've decided to instead make this timeline. sorry in advance for how much information is in this thing the cyberpunk extended blorboverse essentially refers to the story parallel to the in-game events of cyberpunk 2077 that @mojaves and i came up with. we don't really have a better name for it but at this point the term has been used so many times that i feel like everyone here knows what it is by now, but at the same time we've never really explained the full scope of what the story is by now (it's a lot sorry). so in an attempt to get you guys a little bit more up to date with it all, here's a semi coherent timeline that describes the core events of the story and every branching story that came out of it! for additional background information, you can check out the following posts (timeline 1 / timeline 2 / timeline 3) to catch up with the continuation of the in-game storyline that's referenced in this timeline, but it's mostly irrelevant to everything here save for a couple of referenced events that cross over between the stories. it all ties together very intricately sorry about that. don't worry too much about it i've included my taglist down below to make sure people who are interested won't miss this post, but feel free to skip over this if it's not your thing! won't be doing a lot of this kind of stuff in the future but i'm trying to get back to the cyberpunk roots so this is kind of like, a good starting point and reference point for later posts!

The story starts in early 2077 and is centered around Sebastian Vidal, gang leader of the Cobras and previous test subject of Arasaka Special Programs (the linked page is a lot of information but gives the most coherent overview of what the branch actually is). The current director of the SERPENT projects, Andrew Colton, and Dr. Alana Cartier, both want him dead, to tie up their last loose end before the rest of Arasaka can find out and shut down Special Programs once and for all.

Over the past months they’ve been hiring various assassins in secret, to try and get Seb killed; however, these assassins keep failing, and their latest attempt lies in the hands of Cassidy Shaffer, an ex-corpo turned assassin with a strong moral code and plenty of experience to his name. With little to work with, as his mysterious client doesn’t give out much information, Cassidy starts with what he thinks is gonna be a quick and easy job– but he ends up hunting after Seb for essentially a year.

During this year, the two men have a series of wild encounters that get more and more insane the longer it goes on; it includes, but is unfortunately not limited to, Cassidy biting off a chunk of Seb’s ear, the two of them running over the highway, the two of them getting handcuffed together and chased by the NCPD then hit by a car right in front of the hospital, and Seb sensually licking blood off Cassidy’s face after having stabbed him when Cassidy wanted to strike at a concert Seb is visiting.

All of it comes to a sudden stop when Cassidy learns his client has been lying to him the whole time, and since he does not appreciate lying clients he ends up jumping sides and teams up with the Cobras to do some cleanup duty in Arasaka Special Programs. He and Seb work together to go after a list of targets to get the still ongoing projects mostly to a halt, while remaining in the shadows themselves as to not draw too much attention their way; and during this collaboration they meet several people from their past, bringing back both good and bad memories.

One of these people is Hanan Chisaka, the Head of Security at Special Programs. She ends up becoming the next test subject of Project Cobra after the last successful subjects, Xavier and Gabriel Mason, end up escaping in the midst of the chaos of Hanako Arasaka’s capture in mid-2077. Once Seb’s best friend and Cassidy’s mentor, she’s now forced to hunt the both of them down; but in their final confrontation she snaps out of the controlled mode Arasaka keeps her in and runs away with them, effectively leaving Special Programs without any test subjects. Another one of these people is Reid Bennett, Cassidy’s ex and ex-coworker back at MaxTac. He still works for the corporation and has been on an ongoing investigation into Arasaka Special Programs; seeing Cassidy alive and well, working together with Seb no less, piques his interest and he continues to look further into the case, which will cause him to make a very big mistake later on in the timeline.

By September 2078, Seb and Cassidy have successfully taken down all their planned targets and retreat back into the shadows, leaving Special Programs with many losses and no test subjects. With the APEX program discontinued a month earlier (incident discussed in this fic, which is a continuation of the in-game events), and Hanako Arasaka recovered and ready to take the corporation back from the hands of her corrupt brother, Special Programs ends up having to retreat for the time being, and cook up a new plan in the background.

Special Programs by this point is run by Andrew Colton, Alana Cartier, and Kaida Akiyama, three players who have been in the game for a long time already in the SERPENT projects’ runtime. Colton and Cartier are married– Cartier used to be married to Seb and cheated on him for a good amount of time when he was still at Arasaka– but their marriage is starting to fall apart. Akiyama has had to watch over Special Ops agent Ambrose Hawthorne for a while during his chase after the Mason twins, which ended up with the twins dead and Hawthorne going into early retirement (Arasaka doesn’t know the twins faked their death and Ambrose is now dating one of them lol), and xe is now determined to help Colton and Cartier get Seb back into Arasaka so the projects can continue.

Cassidy’s initial plan was to leave as soon as the collaboration would come to an end, but he has found his place with the Cobras and instead ends up officially joining them.The next chapter in the story is a more laid-back and easygoing chapter, in which Cassidy learns to be part of real life again, and in which Seb learns to let people get close to him again after spending years trying to convince himself he doesn’t need any help. Over the course of a little over a year (all the way to November 2079), the two grow even closer than they had already done, going on gigs together and, you guessed it, slowly but surely falling in love until they inevitably end up together at the end of it.

Not long after the two get together, Reid returns into Cassidy’s life. He wants to try and be friends again and Cassidy gives him a second chance, though this soon enough turns out to have been a mistake, with Reid trying to create distance between Seb and Cassidy and then going as far as trying to sell Cassidy to Kang Tao (one of the few corporations that have been hunting Cassidy down for a while now) in exchange for his own freedom from MaxTac (where he would have otherwise been stuck at for probably the rest of his life). Naturally, Reid can’t watch Cassidy get tortured for long and leaks his location to the Cobras, who find and free Cassidy and take Reid into captivity instead– he does not get killed, but instead has to sit out some time at a safehouse somewhere in solitude, where he gets to decide what kind of person he wants to be in the future.

This brings us to Elysium; a gorgeous spaceship which was supposed to be a relatively cheap escape from reality for everyone who wanted a refreshing break from Earth, but through Arasaka sponsorship has become just another cash-grab project to compete with the Crystal Palace– and considering the megacorporation has its greasy hands all over it, the secret labs in the spaceship are used for a series of very unethical experiments. Naturally so, it would be the perfect place for Colton to continue his SERPENT projects without the risk of Hanako Arasaka finding out and shutting the place down. He sends forces up to Elysium (obviously after his other attempts at relocating the project to space have failed tremendously, having lost contact with every single crew in the smaller Arasaka stations in orbit around the planet), but since he’s not there himself his cousin (one of the CEOs of Elysium), Maxwell Crane, unbeknownst to Colton, takes control of the SERPENT projects in space instead. From the earlier linked Special Programs page: “Project Eryx used the technology of previous projects, but took a completely new approach in the hosts it used; rather than focusing on the human psyche it attempted to create a new type of cyborg which would lack the humanity that caused previous projects to fail. The Cobra chips were no longer used and the software was instead installed directly onto the host’s mainframe. The flexibility of the new hosts– more robot than human, and in some cases the entire human aspect was lacking altogether– allowed for experimentation with highly advanced cybernetic enhancements and military grade tech and upgrades, turning the test subjects– dubbed ‘prototypes’– into dangerous, unstoppable killing machines.”

Things settle down for Seb and Cassidy, but this moment of peace does not last long. In January 2081 the two find themselves traveling to the spaceship Elysium, to investigate a curious situation in the laboratories– they’ve been hired by Arasaka without their knowledge and it’s a setup to get Cassidy killed and Seb back in Cartier’s control.

While in space, they learn that the secret labs have suffered an outbreak of the above mentioned prototypes. They quickly connect the dots and realize Special Programs is back in the game, and they work together with security guards Aubrey Valentine and Leon dello Russo to try and fix the situation before it gets out of hand. Obviously this fails tremendously and Elysium ends up on a complete lockdown after a ship-wide outbreak, which is eventually contained in late March of that year, with CEO Maxwell Crane dead, leaving only his wife Kinsley Osborn behind.

Elysium continues to exist and is rebuilt after the crisis, and Kinsley Osborn can now finally turn it into the retreat it was always meant to be. Previously, most Elysium employees were to be stuck in space for the rest of their lives; however, with Arasaka out of the picture they are free to leave as they please, which results in a gigantic cut in total employee count in the months that follow.

Seb and Cassidy return to Night City and take Aubrey and Leon with them. Aubrey reunites with his sisters; Becca, James, and Rikki, and soon after his return to the city he opens an LGBTQ+ nightclub called Bodytalk with them, found Downtown, City Center, in June 2081. Not only is it a fun place to hang out at, it’s also his main hub as a fixer, and he starts a collaboration with the Cobras to get business going between the gang and the club; and soon enough it grows into a large and powerful network of connections, which is the foundation on which the rest of the stories are built.

After this point in time, many many more things happen but it would take me another hour or ten to go into full detail of all of that, so instead here’s a quick rundown of some of the other things that Bodytalk gets involved in:

Reid Bennett is handed over to Aubrey and he starts working at the club, and he becomes a very valued employee as well as a good friend to many now that he’s no longer fucking insane

Kaida Akiyama returns from Elysium and shows up to Hanan’s doorstep, to ask for her help with getting out of Arasaka for good; much later on, xe starts working for Bodytalk as well, in an attempt to put xyr past behind xem and become a better person

Urban Dynamite starts performing at the club regularly, and it becomes their home base

Luna Serratos, Cassidy’s ripperdoc friend from all the way back to killing era, gets involved in the Harbinger case from Maelstrom (one of the gang’s most feared members); turns out the Harbinger is in fact Reuben de la Rosa, a by then 22-year-old kid who has ended up in Luna’s care with his friend Noah Telavera after the two got caught up in an explosion. She requests the Cobras’ help with getting Maelstrom to let Reuben go

Officer Michele Diaz from Militech (who used to be Cassidy’s boss) is demoted following the lawsuits after the Elysium incident, and her investigation into the incident in hopes to get her job back leads her to Bodytalk; she begins threatening them and sends the whole club and their allies into uncertain times

Many people get married. There’s so many fucking guys here we went a little insane with the numbers but there’s several weddings and there’s a whole polycule going on too feel free to send asks about this if you’re interested

Cobra Cybernetics releases a new line of cyberware, which is incredibly buggy and dangerous to the public; it’s brought to the club’s attention and it makes them realize that Luiza Vidal (Seb’s sister), who not that long ago asked them to kill her husband (William Colton (Andrew’s brother), CEO of Cobra Cybernetics), has gone missing; they now need to get involved without getting the news out that they actually didn’t kill William and that he is still alive somewhere, while also balancing out dynamics between Biotechnica (angry at Cobra Cybernetics for stealing their designs) and Arasaka (the actual reason why Cobra Cybernetics’ designs look like Biotechnica’s designs, because William stole designs from Special Programs after halting their partnership after the Elysium incident, but these designs had been stolen by Arthur Jenkins from Biotechnica even BEFORE that to be able to hijack the European Space Council’s cybernetics following the Frankfurt incident. Are you still with me)

Vitali Dobrynin (fixer and main character from the in-game events storyline and the continuation of it; Vincent “V” Mayer’s boyfriend) ends up visiting Bodytalk after meeting Aubrey at a Fixer Council meeting, which happens in late 2083; this essentially ties the two main storylines together, which means that yes, a lot of the characters from the two separate storylines end up meeting :]

Officer Ulysses Dimakos (used to work with Reid at MaxTac) is sent to investigate Bodytalk following the Cobra Cybernetics scandal, and ends up teaming up with the club to get MaxTac on a dead trail in exchange for his freedom of the corporation

On top of the Bodytalk / Cobras centered storyline, there’s a couple of side stories that are still connected to the whole thing but are more of a standalone thing with only a few touching points to the rest of it all:

This obviously takes place a lot earlier because it’s already mentioned above, but Special Ops agent Ambrose Hawthorne is tasked with chasing after the escaped Mason twins; naturally he lets them go and ends up going into retirement, and Xavier Mason later on ends up becoming Bodytalk’s part-time repair guy on account of knowing Kaida

Gabriel Mason ends up in a car crash with retired security specialist Ames Ortega, who was also in Elysium during the incidents there, and the two end up babysitting Ambrose and Xavier’s kids together while those two are helping Hanan with getting Kaida out of Arasaka (Are you still with me. Blink if you can hear me)

Mercenary Frankie Sayyad gets a promotion from his fixer, Vulture (real name Diana Crane, Maxwell Crane’s older sister and cousin of the Coltons), and becomes one of her Bloodhounds; he works together with Evelyn Harris, Nimue Nkuna, and Beckett Rydel, the latter being one of the very first test subjects of Arasaka Special Programs, and the four accidentally get themselves mixed into a mystery concerning their secretive fixer

Caleb Harris, ex-security at Biotechnica, ends up back at Club Bodytalk not long after the conclusion of the Cobra Cybernetics scandal, and starts working for Aubrey; he is partnered up with Ramiel Al-Masri, a mercenary who has been working for Vitali Dobrynin for a while and has recently joined Aubrey’s mercenary roster too, and together they dive into a series of gigs neither of them had expected

Journalist Bodhi Shankar has finally found more evidence and information surrounding the mysterious cult gang Umbra and its so-called Prophet, Thiago Salazar; however, his antics have led to him accidentally becoming part of the gang himself, and he has to figure out a way to get Thiago to stop listening to the supposed deity that the gang worships known as Scintilla, before she makes him do things that will get many people killed

taglist (opt in/out)

@velocitic, @deadrlngers, @euryalex, @ordinarymaine, @gurathins;

@mojaves, @shellibisshe, @dickytwister, @mnwlk, @rindemption;

@ncytiri, @calenhads, @noirapocalypto, @florbelles, @radioactiveshitstorm;

@strafethesesinners, @fashionablyfyrdraaca, @aemondtargeryen, @radioactive-synth, @katsigian;

@estevnys, @elgaravel, @aezyrraeshh, @carlosoliveiraa

[artsycooky13]

top 3 fave bbys in the burrito show (bonus SUPER LONG tags on how i feel bout the characters)

[rocker-socks]

On one hand the Slade design is REALLY funny because it’s such a total subversion of his intended design and is pissing off his diehard fans that thinks he’s the shit but on the other hand it completely fucks with the timeline and removes his absent father dilf swag that makes his character so interesting in the first place

[finalgirlsamwinchester]

part of the many many bits of heartbreak over the jack arc is just sam and dean replicating their childhood dynamics from different places. jack is now sam. sam is now dean, jack's ally but at the end of the day, that means nothing when john's word is the final rule. and john is now dean, determined to keep his family under control, bc to lose control is to invite further death and despair into your home.

[bitchthefuck1]

you know what, I actually will talk about this because it's bothering me. The issue with focussing so heavily on syd and carmy's potential for a romantic relationship isn't that there's something inherently unintellectual about romance or whatever, it's that a lot of people seem incapable of doing that without immediately flattening the story and ignoring or intentionally misreading any and all nuance for the sake of that romance. Every scene suddenly becomes about how it impacts their relationship, every analysis is done through a romantic lens, every frame or line of dialogue becomes about finding some easter egg or hint that "proves" these people should start dating. Their dynamic is absolutely a fundamental part of this show, but if you can only see it as a will-they-won't-they, you miss so much of what the story is actually trying to say with these two.

There are good versions of this story where their relationship is romantic and there are good versions of this story where it isn't, but as soon as you decide them being together is "the point," you lose the ability to actually judge the story for what it is, not what you want it to be.

[bulbabutt]

so me n sibling finished rise rewatch with all the newfound turtle lore after our big tmnt media binge......... many feelings i wanna get out

firstable........ how anyone watched this show and didnt think those were the ninja turtles in purest form i will never understand. like you cannot deny any of these characters being the same characters but with new roles to fill. raph is the protector. mikey is the heart. leo is the strategist. donnie is the brain. it just created a new dynamic, but never strayed very far from what came before

second....... take the ninja turtles and just hammer home a story about generational trauma and healing from it, giving them strength from how much they love and trust each other.... you break my heart wide open i am crying

to me they are the best amalgamation of all the turtles who came before them like: silly and sweet like 87, they have this close familial understanding unconditional love like 03, and this overarching story of bringing a family back together like 12

started this watch of all turtle media because rise on its own felt so good, but having gone back and seen all the other pieces i was missing makes me appreciate what it was doing more, because i felt every other series and movie in this one in spirit, but with the ideals of the modern cartoon saying: hey kids, its okay to ask for help, youre not alone, your feelings matter, and the people around you should support you

and on top of that, obviously the most visually stunning version to date, utilizing years of lessons learned from western cartoons and anime, meshing together in breathtaking action, but also having the most hilariously snappy comedic animation that uses what seem like cheap movements of a frame to make every line of dialogue all the more hysterical, and having these very expressive characters be able to be very subtle in the touching emotional moments.

i genuinely love this show so much and i feel really stupid for not having watched it sooner, and the fact it is the shortest of all the shows that never got the chance to finish its story makes me so sad. but at least what story it did get to tell was beautiful.

[simcardiac-arrested]

no actually I’d like to hear your thoughts on the isat ending

Like i said it felt really tropey and by that i meant that it’s just Everything Good Happens forever and…..that’s it ? like idk we were building up to this huge catharsis sort of thing and then we got to it and it was so sudden and not a good payoff and just kind of nothingburger of an ending . the fact that everyone just forgives siffrin bothers me, or at least the fact that they don’t confront them about the shit they’ve said and done. call me a mental illness villainizer but i think if you’re a fucking asshole and doing the most insensitive things to the people you care about then hey, i think those ppl have a right to fucking tell you off for it. likeeee idk being at your lowest point …… not an excuse …. not feeling it chief ……. like sure the message is to move past your mistakes or whatever but ? that doesn’t mean just getting away with it ??? and i just really don’t understand Why everyone forgives him. honestly at the end of the day the ending is just one problem, the root of which are the characters. everyone feels like trope cardboard cutouts. oh, this is the smart one. this is the smol bean. this is the himbo. and they all care for each other btw. Did u hear that? they all care for each other. we’re not really going to explain to you why these people are so close or what they went through together but just trust me man they’re sooo found famy. like …. okay. i’ve played 30 hours of this game and not once did i buy that any of the characters really cared about each other. like??? why???? You’re telling me everyone super cares about siffrin even though they barely know them?? you’re telling me siffrin cares about everyone sooo much even though he never even bothered to find out their problems before ? Wat ? and this just breaks the ending more because literally whyyy do these people care about him so bad. and then it’s just whyyy does siffrin Have to tell them anything he doesn’t even seem to know them that well. everyone feels like colleagues and Just Friends at best. and so the ending just seems really forced. like it was written by that type of tumblr user who’s always talking about aww why does the found family have to break up after the end of the journey :( which is like fiiiiine. i guess. but u guys know that u have to build up to it right?? you can’t just tell me they’re Family Members(tm) 102829 times and that they super care about each other source: trust. you can’t just do that and then expect me to believe it ….. It feels unearned. the ending feels unearned and i don’ttttt understand what i’m supposed to take away from it . that it’s ok to fuck people up because you’re traumatized and insecure?? that you have to talk about your deepest problems with people you barely know??? i just dont know. Like i said if im being honest the problems with this game’s writing are more than just the ending, it just stands out so much because there’s a lot of build up and then just …… That

[p2ii]

I feel like there's something to be said about the way fandom will treat characters who's trauma they can personally relate to Vs characters who they cant

[waywardsalt]

with my phantom hourglass replay, there are two things i noticed;

a possible theme you could glean from the game is action vs inaction, and i think it's especially prevalent before you even leave mercay the first time, with oshus frequently urging link to not go after the ghost ship, then to just wait until the broken bridge is fixed, and seems reluctant at every turn while link and ciela are more than eager to go and do something about this problem, and the people of mercay in general talking about things and their problems but never seeming to act on their fears or desires, as well as the mention that due to the ghost ship, very very few people are still sailing around, while linebeck is one of the only people we see in the game actively going after the ghost ship and still sailing around. i might make a longer post just talking more about the action vs inaction in phantom hourglass but i just noticed it a bit and thought it was a bit of an interesting sort of theme you could find in the game.

linebeck moves so fucking much. i think he moves more than any npc in the rest of the game. not just in his intro cutscene where he is very animated, just in how much he moves when just standing in his little idle post, it's damn near distracting when the camera is focused on him, he moves a lot. i don't think i've really acknowledged how much he moves, and it really gives the impression that he's antsy or eager to get going, both of which fit him pretty well with how he acts.

[navree]

unfortunately i do think this was kind of a weak season finale, there's a lot of stuff from overarching story arcs throughout the season that feel really unresolved (not in a 'this story is gonna keep on going' way, just a straight up 'we're not addressing this any longer' kind of way).

like, have sam and lois talked? she has a lot of abandonment issues and the last time they interacted he abandoned her and it sent her spiraling, have they communicated about this? why did waller go on the run? did checkmate turn against her? why are slade and lex apparently on the same side now? they hated each other and slade should be thrilled lex's metallos failed, why are they suddenly apparently pals? do they even still work for the government? clark and lois's "break up" and the issues involved in it on both clark and lois's side hasn't ever actually been addressed and it needs to be, are we ever gonna see that? where tf are clark's little shorts????? are they gone forever?????

combining that with the fact that this episode feels really padded (given that there was just this constant circular 'they're up they're down they're up they're down' for like 90% of the fight with brainiac), i do really feel like the story would have been better served if they cut the padding, resolved the brainiac invasion at the end of ep 9, and devoted ep 10 to addressing these myriad loose ends in a tight enough way that the season doesn't feel incomplete but still leaving doors open for season 3. because some of the loose ends are fine, 'oh we don't know what happened to hank henshaw', that's just a good teaser for whenever he shows up next season as metallo, that's a good loose end to have for a season finale. but a lot of these just feel like unresolved plots that aren't getting any resolution ever. sam lane went through an entire character arc and we didn't see any of it and it feels jarring, it feels like a writing fail. which is unfortunate because i really love this show and most of the writing has been very good, especially this season.

so i hope that they're able to be a bit tighter and more cohesive for season 3. and also pay chris parnell a hundred million dollars so he can voice anime slade wilson in every single episode.

[problematicsubmarine]

Ok so I'm most of the way through the live action ATLA and no it's not perfect, some of the acting is a little oof but overall it's pretty good? The costumes, the sets all the older actors for the most part. Some of the cg needed a little more time and all of these streaming shows could benefit from a few more episodes, but the way they've combined storyline and episodes to try and fit things in in a coherent way, some of the changes they've made I like quite a bit.

Yall trying to act like it's the same level of bad as the movie are actively delusional and need to take of the nostalgia goggles.

[fromtheseventhhell]

Where do you think jon and arya will reunite in twow? Castle black or winterfell? I personally think arya is the girl in grey so they will reunite at Castle black or eastwatch by the sea.

Well! For starters, I am not entirely positive that Jon and Arya will reunite in TWOW. As much as I would like to see it there's a lot of plot to get through and we might not hit that point until ADOS. That being said, I think either Winterfell or Harrenhal are the likeliest options, since I do believe the Long Night will bleed into the riverland. The girl in grey isn't Arya though, Alys Karstark is and we've already seen that particular plot play out. How she ended up at the Wall won't have any impact on where/when Jon and Arya reunite.