#but I can’t help but still feel INSANE looking at the screencap like

[msenglishgent]

why not yell about this here huh

So I’ve been in a metalocalypse rewatch binge on MAX (just finished today) but idk what’s up with the source files they used bc some of the episodes have doubled audio or weird flickering issues in the first couple seasons. Also they were half the time censored and the other not super randomly. Like it would be one episode guitar riff bleeping and black bar on genitals the next full fuck bombs and genitals.

It was bc of this I think this error even showed, but in the pickles rehab episode there’s no censoring on anything, like u see Skwisgaar with full dick n balls out. And you see, then this happened:

That’s just his beard, like that’s just the asset thrown where they probably would have censored n yea absolutely just a throw away production joke they thought was never gonna be seen or something, but-

I’m just saying if we instead assume he shaved his hair in the shape of his beard on purpose bc that would absolutely just be something they’d do on the show, we have my new headcanon:

✨Trans Man Pickles✨

honestly it tracks with his backstory it tracks a lot, like the leaving as a punk teen flashback? His mom issues? very trans masc coded. any dick seen after one can assume was just off screen bottom surgery.

anyway bc of all this I just have to say;

this was very gender of him

[aerielz]

Here's a lb of the When We All Vote special because I just needed to talk about it I guess?

I mean, it really is just me geeking out about the filmmaking and quoting my favorite lines but be my guest

-----------------------------------------------------

It's always amazing to me how Brad's voice haven't changed at all but he looks like a qtip, it's great.

OH WAIT THIS IS A READ THROUGH. THEY'RE ACTUALLY GOING TO READ THE SCRIPT THIS IS A DREAM COME TRUE. and smart too.

And it's great because Aaron's earlier scripts read exactly like a play, like, it's really is three lines of stage direction and then just... dialogue all the way down.

Oh God the staging and the direction is so solid damn you Tommy Schlamme. As far as a staging goes this is solid. I mean, the blocking is SO nice??!! And very theater-y! Going minimal was one hell of a good idea, specially considering the time frame. Ugh damn this is a smart production.

"I was thinking how much things change in sixty seconds"

Tell me about it.

The titles! Crying? No I'm not crying you're crying. THIS IS SO PRETTY! I love how they decided to put in moments of the making of, this is a THREAT

I’m gonna screencap the shit out of this episode and cycle the shots as desktop background, it’s decided.

The lines between the act breaks are actually pretty funny and I love the fact that both Eli and Aaron wrote these inserts, because Sorkin is hilarious but then Eli comes with the I Know What I’m Doing with the politics and the speeches are solid.

THE CUTS ARE SMOOTH IN WAYS THAT DON'T MAKE SENSE HOW THE FUCK MAN

OKAY I AM SORRY BUT I'M GONNA GO FULL GEEK OVER THE FILMMAKING HERE OKAY just skip to the next bolded line after this one if you don't wanna read about it.

LET'S TALK ABOUT HOW THIS SHOW WORKS (as far as craft is concerned):

You have a classic Hollywood filmmaking style for most of the time: smooth and invisible tracking shots in dollys (little carts that push and pull the camera over a track for smooth movement), beautiful close ups and focus racks (when you pull focus on something on the foreground then change it to the background, or vice versa, without cutting) to make use of your entire depth of field. That by itself ties nicely to Aaron's 40's-ish scripts: heavy plot and lots of fast talking require you to keep moving so things don't get boring, but it can’t be overwhelming because the writing is already like ok wow too much; the jokes need that precision in timing, too, it all needs to be like clockwork. And the atmosphere all of that creates is just right too: the precision and the damn fine acting you need to pull this kinda shit off are a testament to the very themes and setting of the show so *chefs kiss*

AND THEN ON TOP OF THIS YOU HAVE THE SMOOTH STEADY-CAM AND THOMAS SCHLAMME PROVES HE KNOWS WHAT HE’S DOING. because it's so good. The camera floats through the west wing as if it was a character itself, you’re dropped right in the middle of the action. the way the camera circles the characters puts you in their mindset: things are HAPPENING decisions needs to me made. it’s what’s next in visual form. and it pulls the show right into the 21st century, because it’s such a modern thing, such a technical achievement, to be able to stage and 

THE THING IS, THIS IS A STAGE. THIS IS NOT A FULL SET, like they had back in the day. so the staging needs to make sense and the movements have to be thought out to match the next cut. they blocked the staged to allow for continuous long shots of the more complex sequences but some cuts here are still kinda tricky. this is by no means impressive by Hollywood standards but it’s still not really trivial? might be after you’ve spent 8 years filming like this, but all in all it’s not nothing. 

I talked once about how it’s kinda funny that almost half of the shot/reverse shots (dialogues are usually shot like that: you have once person talking, then the other, and you usually shoot the entire convo one side then the other, and then cut them in together so it makes sense. it’s p much the first thing you learn if you go to film school) are out of focus, and about how it’s prob because the schedule must’ve been insane. but I say this out of sheer respect. you naturally spend more time and effort on set pieces and difficult shots but half of this fucking show is a set piece.

I mean IT’S SO SIMPLE. BUT IT’S SO GOOD. There’s nothing extraordinary going on but it’s so beautiful and so well done and I'm constantly blown away by how much this show does with what ends up being just basic filmmaking.

it really all just comes down to great scripts, great acting, and a handful of techniques to bring it all together. and in this day and age when everything became a desperate and artificial attempt to make the audience respond, that is impressive.

ok I’M SO SO SORRY. end of me geeking out about filmmaking

"DONNA!"

My first reaction to this one single line was omg- I missed this so much. and I’m actually rewatching the whole thing it’s been 0 days since I've heard josh screaming at donna. I can only imagine what it was like for them.

I just don't have words anymore to talk about how much I love this show.

God fucking damnit THE ACTING.

JANEL'S ACTING. THE TINY REACTIONS.

On stage you don't have the realism, you don't have anything to help you believe it so it's SO MUCH CLEARER how GOOD these guys are.

Okay I understand if everyone ends up pissed because this is not at all new material, etc etc, but I GOTTA SAY I AM THROUGHLY ENJOYNG THIS THING. Sorkin writing is made for stage and having the chance to see these guys actually doing it on stage is a blessing if you ask me.

You just know this exchange is gonna become gifs that people will subtitle with whatever else line of dialogue they want and I can't wait for it.

I really want to to back to the episode later and compare the acting (which is kind of a dick move but I'm inconsequential to them they'll never know), because Janel is fucking NAILING young Donna after all this time and this is just insane.

"Give it up, tiny"

that's a bold line when it comes to Allison Janney

"I moved my pawn..."

"Well, it's as popular today as it was back then."

Please please please please tell me the bit about the stuffed animal is true. Please. it’s probably not but I don’t care it’s in my head and it’s not gonna go away

"I think if my dog could pull that off his vote should count."

Oh my God.

"Did Aaron write this?"

Oh my God.

I'm-

"You're a sap?"

"It's called poetry, me bucko."

Can you tell that at some point I stopped thinking and just got really into the show?

"He's not gonna-- that's the other guys! He's not gonna gonna privatize social security. he'll privatize New Hampshire before he privatizes social security."

I remember that this line made me actually stop the episode to laugh back when I first watched it and guess what yep I did it again

UGH.

I really love how this episode ends. I really love the feeling of how Bartlett is pretty much teaching Sam how play the game on a higher level, I love the feeling of ‘oh okay this guys is GOOD we get’. I think a month ago in one of those interviews they were doing to promo the thing Sorkin said people respond to the sigh and sound of competence and he’s absolutely right.

oh, and that ending right there was an definitely an "I have no idea what to do about that" solution, but it wasn't a bad one? it clashes, but it’s not bad at all.

I LIKED IT. I really really really liked it. This was really fun and the only bad part is that we're gonna gonna get to see them just doing everything else too. Like, it ended and i was half expecting to see he next episode but it wasn't there and that was the one disappointment tbh

[malarkiness]

Finished Nier Automata, and I have many.... many thoughts.

I just want to start by saying that this game is aggressively bleak once you hit Routes C/D. Endings A/B are really the last bright spots in the story, and then it's just tragedy after tragedy from that point forward, and the worst part of it is that none of these tragedies result in anything good or even decent or even narratively satisfying. They just happen, and you're left thinking "wow, that fucking sucks" before you shake it off and proceed with the game.

Despite that, I kept playing because I thought all these tragedies would eventually result in something that would've made the characters' suffering worth it because that's just how a good story works, right? But that never really happens (at least, not within the context of the story itself), so when I finally got to Endings C/D, I honestly felt like I'd spent ~27 hours playing a game just to watch the leads die terrible deaths. It just felt really hollow and pointless.

But then I got Ending E, and that kind of changed my entire way of looking at this game.

So this ending shows the PODs deciding to try salvaging the androids' data rather than deleting it all as ordered. The game warns you that saving the data is risky and unlikely to work, then says "Knowing that, do you still wish for them to survive?" Choosing yes turns the credits scroll into a hacking minigame that is UNFORGIVABLY!!!!! difficult, but each game over screen reels you back in with something like "IS IT ALL POINTLESS?"/"DO YOU WANT TO GIVE UP?"/etc.

Now if you're connected to PSN, you'll also get little encouraging messages from players all over the world on each game over screen, but I wasn't connected for my first playthrough lmfao, so I just suffered through it for like 20 minutes and was starting to think the whole thing was deliberately impossible just to give the player one last kick in the teeth and show that yes, it really was pointless and that they're wasting their time trying to fix something that can't be changed. With the way this game's storyline played out, that really wouldn't have surprised me.

But then I restarted the segment and connected to """The Network""" when prompted, then died a few more times before getting a screen asking me if I'd like help. And I really wish I'd screencapped that prompt because that was when I started noticing all the little messages that other players left. There was one from someone in China that really got to me for some reason, and I can't even remember what it was lol, but it made me tear up. Once you restart after that, a bunch of other players' cursors will join in the fight to help you and the solo singer turns into a chorus, and I just.

😭

Every time you lose a player, though, you're told that "[name]'s data has been lost," which I thought was kind of sad, but it wasn't until I finally beat that segment that I realized what they all had actually done. After the credits wrap up, you learn that all the players who helped you finish the game gave up their save data to do it, and then you're asked if you'd like to do the same to help someone else. And while I've since learned that all this actually does is let you leave an encouraging message for other players and have your username show up during the ending sequence for someone else (sort of like an arcade game's scoreboard), the game presents it as an opportunity to really help other players finish the story, so of course I said yes. It wasn't a hard decision at all, and making that choice after playing through the credits was easily the most rewarding part of the entire game, or really any game I've ever played.

And I know I've spent like... 75% of this post talking about a credits sequence lmfao, but that really did change how I look at this game. When you finish the storyline with Endings C/D, the answer to this game's whole thematic question of "What's the point of living?" seems to be "There ain't one, chief." But finishing with Ending E, the answer leans more toward "The point is hoping for and working toward something better because you believe it's there." Add in the fact that you're given the option to "sacrifice" yourself to help someone else continue, and that the game makes this such a painless decision despite what an actual pain in the ass it is for you as a Gamer™, and it actually makes for a more satisfying ending than the in-story ending.

SE could've just had that one sequel-hook scene play at the end of the credits without the minigame at all, or just gone the typical RPG route and made that scene unlockable if you got 100% or whatever. But instead, they took this really creative meta approach that not only pushes you to do a task that's seemingly impossible, but also asks you to sacrifice something you've worked hard for just to help someone else get through that same task. And the fact that so many other players made that choice is just really sweet and honestly kind of touching. Like I'm sure plenty of people just got around it by saving their data on a usb lmao, but still. It's a nice thought. And for the record, my username is Larkey, and my message was "I bet you're having a tough time right now. But we've got this!"

Anyway! Other things about this game:

2B's history of killing 9S over and over or A2's backstory with Anemone and the YoRHa troops definitely should've been given actual screentime, and not just stated in the last 2 minutes of the story or shoved into some optional text. Watching 9S's grief-turned-madness was fascinating, sure, but 2B and A2 deserved just as much focus on their grief (which would've been way more interesting, just for the record. 2B purposefully distancing herself emotionally from someone she has to repeatedly kill, and A2 feeling betrayed by her own creators after watching her friends die needlessly, are storylines that would likely have a lot more emotional weight than "angry teenage boy goes on murder spree before finally getting his revenge only to fall on his opponent's sword and die like a dumbass." I know the Nier franchise has approximately 93 trillion pieces of supplemental material that fill in the gaps from the games, so it's possible that some of those cover 2B and A2 more, but come on. These characters are just as important to the story as 9S; They should've gotten actual in-game screentime devoted to contemplating their existences/grief/etc.

I talked about how bleak this game's storyline is, but the real kicker for me was the scene where all the children in Pascal's village commit suicide. That just seemed so needlessly cruel, and the fact that it happens (depending on how you play) maybe an hour after A2's shown to have warmed up a bit towards the machines is just... cheap? It really did feel like emotional string-pulling just for the sake of it, like the kind of silly edgelord shit I wrote when I was 14. It's so over-the-top that I almost couldn't take it seriously. And if all that wasn't 3edgy5me enough, Pascal then asks you to either wipe his memory or kill him because he can't live with the heartbreak. Fuck's sake. I think what really annoys me about this whole scene is that... This game introduces us to A2 by having her kill a defenseless baby machine, right? So you'd think there'd be some kind of reflection from her after Pascal loses all the children in his village. She fought an insane battle to protect them, too, and she's clearly horrified when she finds out what happens to them, but... that's kind of it. This incident is never brought up again, despite the huge impact it should have on her character. The only thing this scene really does for the narrative, I think, is set up a parallel between Pascal and YoRHa troops like 2B and 9S. And in that way, it does fit into game's overall theme of finding meaning for your life, especially after you've lost what you were living for in the first place (so Pascal's community, and YoRHa's "god worth dying for"). But like I said, the game never really seems to resolve that thematic question within the context of the story itself. And even if that parallel was the point, you could've accomplished it by just having everyone in the village die during the cannibal machine attack and Pascal + A2 failing to save them, no baby suicide needed. I dunno, I've gone back and forth on how I feel about this scene, but honestly, more than anything, it just comes off as a try-hard, eyeroll-worthy way for this game to earn its M-rating. And the fact that A2 gets 0 character development out of it just makes it seem lazy.

Characterwise, I'd definitely say A2 is my favorite. Her ending on the C/D routes was probably the most satisfying just because she essentially gets the only thing she's really wanted ever since she lost her friends, and I thought her unusual relationship with 2B was interesting (and again, deserved more screentime). 2B's also great, especially on the second playthrough when you know why she purposefully tries to get 9S to shut up anytime he innocently wonders something out loud. And I like 9S too just because he's so endearing in Routes A/B, making his stark personality shift in C/D that much more jarring. I'm a little annoyed that he never finds out why A2 killed 2B, though by the end of C/D, he's probably too far gone to actually take that in. I liked most of the NPCs, too. Anemone and Jackass are my favs, but 6O and 21O have some good moments, too. And while a lot of the female YoRHa designs are just... embarrassingly male, there are some really creative character/boss designs here and there. Simone's corpse dress is probably something I'll never forget.

The soundtrack is incredible. "Weight of the World/End of YoRHa" is a standout track not just because of the ending it plays through, but also just because of how cleanly it blends together the 8-bit sound from the hacking minigames and the English and Japanese versions of the song, and how it ends with the game's fictional "Chaos" language (which is apparently meant to be a futuristic blend of English, Japanese, Gaelic, and a few others). I definitely want to check out more of Keiichi Okabe's work, and that of the singers for all three languages. Some other favs are "Vague Hope," "Wretched Weaponry," "Alien Manifestation," and "The Tower."

I enjoyed most of the gameplay. The hacking minigames could be a little tedious sometimes, but overall, I found myself enjoying 9S's gameplay more than the other leads' because of it. I also actually liked most of the sidequests, too, and I normally don't like those all that much in other games (well, okay, I mainly just hate them in FF7R). I think I liked the machine quests the most because so many of them were just silly and low stakes, which was a nice change of pace compared to the main story. I remember the Father Servo one making me laugh a few times. And as for the androids, I liked 11B's memento quest and the Amnesia one (partly because 2B and 9S bicker so much through it, and partly because it's the first we hear about execution models).

I loved the voicework in this game, especially A2 and Anemone's. And whoever voiced 9S did his job perfectly.

I was crying through that whole Ending E sequence, but the part where the POD asks you something like "You put all that work into unlocking Chapter Select. Are you SURE you want to delete all your save data?" made me crack up. I'm doing a replay now, and Chapter Select is probably what I miss most from my original save data lmfao.

So... yeah? Overall, I liked it. I really do think that credits sequence was what sold me on this game as a whole, as weird as that sounds. I'd say the game's biggest faults are the unbalanced focus on the leads and its tendency to throw in pointless angst here and there, and I really wish those two things could've been smoothed out to make a good story even better, but eh. I'm enjoying my replay now, and I'm taking my time doing more quests and exploring areas. I'm going to try to get more of the joke endings, too.

[frenchtoastpanda]

The Leverage finale

Gonna rant in public because @rainaramsay expressed interest. I have no theme this is just my thoughts as I rewatch this episode. Idk why I’m doing this. (Also I don’t know how to format, so sorry about that)

Oh right I forgot that this is a fucking sad episode why am I doing this to myself

Ooh the return of the Steranko! I am very glad they brought that back

I just love when they bring things back in general, like in the white rabbit job all of the companies looking to buy dogson are previous marks and how they have like three brand names for safes that they reuse a lot. It just makes it feel like a real world that people live in.

The theater! Perfect for Sophie! And the mentioned the tunnels, which I believe we encountered in the gold job

Sophie says “I have just the thing” and my immediate response is always “the play’s the thing” even though I know it’s from a different play than the one they are doing

And can we talk about how they are doing the same play as the pilot? Actually I will probably yell about that closer to the end

Parker being all emotionally cognizant and Nate just reciting physics formulas in response

God I love this bit (and I love that they are still including references to Nate’s alcoholism)

Just, Parker, the new mastermind, who doesn’t “let feelings get in the way” (like Hardison - this is the reason he can’t be the mastermind, much to his chagrin. He’s too much of a cinnamon roll)

Nate says she spins problems like puzzle pieces until they click, but I think it’s more like juggling all the fiddly bits inside a lock until it clicks open

HE TRUSTS HER HE TRUSTS HER HE TRUSTS HER!!!!!!!

Zachary is the lead! Love him!

Sophie saying she doesn’t miss acting at all 😏

She is a good director, though

"I'm exactly where I belong" I'm gonna die I am so happy for all of them

Oh no here we go

Cut right to Nate covered in cuts being interrogated about the mistakes he made

"Mr. Ford, how did your friends die?" CUT TO COMMERCIAL

This must have killed me the first time around

I do love this investigator though. I think I remember from the commentary that it wasn't originally supposed to be her, but it worked out really well

Nate looking around like he's confused (and trapped) while not being able to put together a full sentence (I'm not sure if I ever developed a solid headcannon for how much of this scene was him faking and how much was actual injuries from the actual crash) (I'm open to ideas!)

Ellen giving a vicious predatory little smile when she says that she's here to help him

I wish I could do gifs or screencaps or something. This is one of my absolute favorite callbacks! Parker in that little black bonnet thing jumping off a building having the time of her life and the boys do their "twenty pounds of crazy in a five pound bag" thing (whuch my autocorrect recognized as a phrase for some reason? Do I really yell about that but enough for it to suggest those words in that order? Fantastic)

But this time their faces and voices are full of affection. She may be an insane thief/mastermind, but she's OUR insane thief/mastermind

And coming after the white rabbit job where we had that line about how she's not and never has been crazy, the fact that you can tell they are saying this as a callback without meaning the crazy part is just perfect

It makes me wonder how many other times they have repeated this, because you can't convince me they haven't

Aah Sophie's horrible rendition of Lady Macbeth! Same speech, different ways of doing it just as badly (props to Gina Bellman)

Is this the same outfit? Hold on I need to check.

Y'know, I didn't think they changed that much physically over the years, given that they are adults, but going back to the pilot, I keep going awww look how tiny they were! (Especially Aldis. Like I know they had problems because he was getting too hot and ripped, but Damn)

Anyway, the dress is very very similar, same color and pattern, but it very slightly different. I will maybe post my very very horrible pictures after I finish this

Parker is so good at computers now that she has this adorably bored face when hacking! I love that they taught each other their stuff!

Using chaos as a distraction and co-opting the expected response as a cover! One of my favorite tricks!

Parker changing in the elevator! And the boys turning to give her privacy! And this isn't even the first time they did a callback to this! I love my respectful boys! Remember when Hardison turned the David around? So pure!

Ah, we are setting up for competency porn and then it all goes bad! Aah!

I love Eliot's little "wassup?" Before fighting the guy. Points for intimidation, Spencer

My stronk babies opening an elevator with their fingertips

And Hardison's recurrent fear of heights combined with Parker's love of them

She says "I got you" (twice)

Oh god Beth's acting in the elevator shafts

Oh I'm gonna cry

Oh and a "dammit Hardison"

Oh Gina's face

Even in a situation as tense as this, Eliot still takes the time to empty the gus and toss it away

I don't think I've ever seen him check for an ankle piece, actually. How has that not come up before now?

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

"Age of the geek, brother" I'm sobbing

I mean, so is everybody

Look at this acting!

I love that they didn't go for the clichéd established couple dying in each other's arms, but instead put Eliot in the middle, giving us our yummy hurt ot3 goodness

And Parker sitting up so she sees the other two go

Ugh. Where's that poetic cinéma image when you need it?

Anyone remember the perfectly timed bridge from the pilot?

What number Lucille are they on?

I love that they actually stop in from of the barrier at the bridge, then take a moment to decide before just going for the crazy impossible stunt because why the hell not at this point

Ah Nate and Sophie are holding hands on the way to death too!!

And cut the scene before they reach the top of the bridge. Time to see Tim show us why he's an academy award winner

Ooh and here's where we find out she was lying! (Should this be the part where I started wondering if Nate knew? Probably. Did I? Not even a little)

There was a big twist where the person Nate was facing off against was playing him in the pilot too

But John fucking Rogers didn't play ME in the pilot. I take that personally.

Ooh hints at the true story are being dropped

Ellen is almost adequately suspicious

JUST WALK TWO FEET FORWARD ELLEN! LOOK AT THE STAGE! COME ON!

"You loved them very much" Yeah he did. They all did! Aaaaaaahhhhhhhh!

She knows he's lying, I love that (just like Dubenich knew Sophie was manipulating him)

"The only thing I ever had"? That's intense, Nate

God Tim is a good actor

(Like I low-key don't like Nate at all, but Damn he is well acted)

And he just turns it off, just like that

Wow

I am really into her little impressed face when he goes all Sherlock and explains how he knows they are at interpol

The glass! Of course Sterling brings him the glass! Not a pilot callback, but a good callback nontheless. The commentary says it's literally the same exact glass every time. I will have to go back and verify that at some point. I swear it didn't have those ridges around the bottom in at least one episode, but I also trust John Rogers, so idk

I love how sterling knows everything from the moment he appears, and Ellen doesn't even know what the black book is

"That's why you joined Interpol? Screw justice. You're the order guy?" What a good line for Nate and Sterling's relationship

Nate's not even interested in hearing Sterling's evil speech of evil about the bailouts

I actually really love the little exposition flashbacks

Her look of horror and dawning comphrension when he explains why he is there is fantastic. If we bring this show back, can we have more of this lady?

Yeah, Ellen, why IS he still lying to you??

Sterling remembered to be cautious about the coroner's van, but not cautious enough!

That's some timing. How did Nate arrange that ? Oh right, this was triggered by the arrival of the van, which he probably set the timing of

Nate's face after "Parker's still in the server room." Yes, sell that fear to Sterling! Make him believe he's right! I wouldn't have thought to fake a reaction to that. But that's why I'm not a griffer

And he trusted sterling to have a snark remark so that he could have an attention-stealing reaction to distract him

I try every time to see the kids going in, and I never manage to catch all of them

Why does Nate turn away here?

God, that really is a terrifyingly lifelike Hardison face

I gotta say, the first time I saw sterling shoot the Hardison corpse, I was really convinced that he was right and he was really killing Hardison for the first time

"Second question... No, Nate, why don't you tell her what my second question is?"

Honestly, the first time around, I had forgotten about that secret meeting between Nate and Hardison

"The plan's the thing" A callback to earlier in this episode. I'm dying. I love this show so much

And they can do that without being annoying because every leverage episode is like three or four episodes rolled into one. Sometimes more!

That's one of my favorite parts, but also one of the very few downsides

I get so excited watching the flashbacks that show how it all happened

Omg I love the thing where they stack! Parker crouching, Eliot just above her head, Hardison looming tall! It reminds me of the princess bride for some reason

Sterling is the Trojan horse, the way out is the way in...wait, didn't they do that with at least one other episode, where the floor was a horrible way in, but last minute they used it as a way out?

Are these callbacks or parallels at this point?

Sophie taught Nate how to act! "She found her calling." Yeah she did! So proud of her!

"Your ride to a life sentence in a secret prison has arrived" So dramatic for someone who knows Sophie is behind the wheel

Ooooooohhh he called him James!

"You and I are not the same" okay sterling

"Justice is always easy" YES GO STERLING wait that's a callback to the justice vs order thing earlier in this episode. I just got that

I have seen this so many times and I still notice something new every time I watch it

Does John Rogers have a tumblr? I want to tag him but I don't think he does

What is Parker wearing? Why is one sleeve randomly yellow?

I can't believe Nate is proposing in a hoodie

I love how the kids pop in with insults and Nate just agrees. He knows it's true

That's a huge fucking rock

"Did you steal it?" "No." "Oh, cause that would have been more romantic"

"I'll steal the first anniversary ring" lol I love these guys

Parker insists he follow the proper procedure

Oh wait, the ot3 are gonna branch out with other crews?

Y'know, in an alternate universe I could have shipped Eliot and Sophie

GOD

I'M CRYING AGAIN

"You're the smartest man I know" where have we heard that before?

Parker recognizing her feelings! (And they've been preparing her for this the longest)

Aah, the circle shot from above and the breakaway, but this time not everyone breaks away!!!!!!!!!!

"You do know that Laura is not my real name, don't you?" Sophie I'm gonna kill you

And then the big obvious callback to the pilot, where Beth meticulously studied Tim's acting to recreate it

Loving the look of this scene. The costumes, the blocking, all of it

And they made sure to switch which parent was crying

Very excited for leverage international. Gimme!

[icewindandboringhorror]

Another set of responding to asks lol.. As usual I have them numbered and will also write out the ask in the text, especially since the screencaps are all blurry and taken at various times/compiled together badly and probably hard to read ghghhggh..... answers under the read more ~ 

-------------------------

1. "Hi I don't mean to bother you at all, but I was wondering where you get your rocking horse shoes? (I think thats what they're called) I've been looking everywhere and I can't seem to find any :(( "

I don’t entirely remember, since I got them like 6 or 7 years ago.. I think maybe at some point that place ‘bodyline’ or something had some cheap ones? But I don’t see them on the site anymore, they were like $50 or $60. Now when I google it I can only find these insane like $600 ones from vivian westwood or whoever, or ones that are platform shoes but not necessarily the same type. Maybe you could find some on aliexpress or ebay or something? Usually you have to use weirdly specific search terms and look for a while, but you can often find stuff like that on those sites. Sorry I couldn’t be of more help!!! 

2. "I've been sick for over a month and my doctor tested me - everything came back fine. After some discussion it appears that my ptsd symptoms came back and the stress on my body is making me fatigued, sick and dizzy. I don't want to say that this could be similar to you situation, but if you have a therapist or someone to talk to about any stresses/your sickness, it might help relieve the pressure a bit. Good luck, I'm so sorry you feel so unwell"

Thank you for sharing! Yeah, I think stress definitely plays a part in why I feel sick so often. Currently I’m not still having the same problem I was having a few months ago when you sent this, so that’s good at least!! 

3. “Hi! Do you plan to ever have more sculptures for sale? Or would you do commissions? I haven't seen any in a while but wanted to buy one! :-O”

I have plenty that I want to sell, I guess it’s just hard for me to get set up. Since so much of the reason I procrastinate selling stuff is because I hate the stress of deciding on a price, I’ve thought for a while now that maybe I can just auction them (so I just set a base price, but people bid whatever they feel is fair and I don’t have to decide myself). But I’m just not sure of a good way to do that.. Ebay has auctions, but I don’t want random strangers buying them, I’d rather stick to just the pool of people who follow my art blog and are already familiar with my sculptures or etc. I could do them on here ?? (like, ‘reply to this post to bid, bids close 8am EST, whoever said the highest number sends the money through paypal and then I send the sculpture’ sort of thing???)   But I’m not sure if it’s legal to sell stuff through tumblr, or if there could be any other problems with doing it so ‘unofficially’ like that.. I don’t know, I have a vague idea, I’m just having trouble deciding the best way to set up something! I do want to sell some soon though, if I live through the pandemic and anything ever goes back to normal, of course (I wouldn’t want to be having to leave the house to ship stuff in the mail right now). 

As for commissions, I have actually done sculpture commissions for friends a few times, so I feel confident-ish that I’d be able to do something like that, but I also wouldn’t want to get overwhelmed since it takes a lot of work. Custom sculptures may also be more expensive, and again.. I always feel guilty and strange about pricing. I’ve thought about doing very limited sculpture commissions though (like, maybe just one at a time, first come first serve or something..?). If it seems like there’s actual interest in that sort of thing, I could definitely consider doing it in the future! 

4. " *picks up that smol blue kid and throws them across the room* "

ghgh .. the smallness is an advantage... they could just skitter back down your arm like a tiny squirrel the second you tried to pick them up.. Ythrili survival strategy is to be too small to catch in the first place 

(also forgive every sketch in this post, my screen that you can draw on broke, so I’m either drawing stuff in ms paint with a mouse, or drawing stuff on paper and coloring it in firealpaca also with a mouse ghghh.. not going to look Good)

5. "it sounds like you feel pressure to only post good content on the internet, and so you end up psyching yourself out of posting at all. Am I on the right track? "

Not necessarily, like I mentioned in the tags I think it’s more just that everything is complicated by my brain. I can’t just do something effortlessly. Whether it’s for an audience or not, I get caught up on every little detail and adding so much complexity to everything that all tasks take me longer than they take other people lol. I think I just tend to take everything very seriously?? 

Like for example, I’m often accused of ‘turning things into a discussion’ when someone was just intending to make an off-handed remark, because if someone is bringing up a topic to discuss, I end up engaging with it 100% and putting full effort into it, and it’s hard for me to be ‘’casual’’ about pretty much anything (so if someone was like ‘My day yesterday was a bit weird’ I wouldn’t be able to just respond ‘aw man, that sucks’, I would just be like ‘Weird how? what happened? what made it weird? Are you okay now? Are things still weird? Have you found a solution?’ etc. etc.). I was also bad at essays/open answer questions in school (despite usually being great at the class otherwise), because no matter how hard I tried to filter my speech and cut things out, I was always far too long-winded  and would get almost too engaged with the topic and lose the clear cut thought organization and focus that you’re supposed to have I guess. Even like, playing video games or something that’s supposed to be relaxing, I can’t just ‘jump into them’ and do whatever, usually any game I play (large ones at least, small 25 minute  point and click adventure games don’t count of course), I have 7 - 10 pages of notes, do hours of research, look up most of the main spoilers, plan out and organize exactly how I’m going to play it and this and that, etc. lol... 

So, that personality trait carries over into posting things online as well, I can’t just type something out quickly and hit ‘post’ without a second thought. Social media is hard for me because you’re supposed to use it casually, but I spend a long time re-reading drafted posts, thinking about them, etc. etc., and end up never actually getting around to posting anything. It’s not that I’m perfectionist about it and want it to be ‘good’ or appear a certain way, it’s just that my mind becomes preoccupied with things I guess.  I’m a natural information gatherer, part of my natural way of processing things is to learn everything possible before acting, and I want to make sure I’ve fully thought about everything always, and know as much as I can (so I wouldn’t want to publicly say something without giving it a lot of consideration first, or post a picture without really thinking about if I want to post it, what my reasons behind posting it are (like if I’m posting something just for a validation of a certain aspect of myself VS. genuinely because I like it, etc.), if a few months from now I’ll still like that I posted it, etc. lol.. even with like silly cat photos or something, I have to analyze it and be like ‘hmm.. will I still stand by this picture in 4 months? why am I posting it publicly vs, just keeping it privately to myself on my computer? what’s important about it?’ etc. etc. ghgjhgjh.. like.. shut up lol.)

ANYWAY, yeah, I don’t know if it’s about wanting online content to be “good”, as much as it’s just like... I take everything way too seriously and am detail-oriented, contemplative, and analytical to a fault, which means it just takes me 10x longer to do basic ‘’simple’’ things that it would for other people. Though I can still be quite quick-thinking and decisive (I don’t often waver back and forth between things too long), it’s usually because I have years of thinking about the same exact things behind me, so I already am very clear on my opinions on stuff, to a point. But when it’s new things I’m less familiar with (like playing a new game, or posting regularly online), I’m still in a phase where I guess I have to give it a lot of thought. I just process things in a different way than other people I guess? Or have some inherent inability to be brief/concise/careless? If you’ve ever read any of my worldbuilding posts (where I usually start off wanting to explain one thing but then have to derail into 400 other misc. details and explanations and it ends up being a novel), then maybe it’s more evident what I mean, where it’s just like... my natural manner of speaking is Too Much.. I guess? Even this answer is winding and rambly, and I feel like other people could have answered this ask in only a few sentences lol.. 

 If any of that makes sense? I don’t know how to describe how I am lol.. I just know it's hard to me to use social media in this ~~casual effortless~~ way most people seem to, since my brain is just inherently incapable of anything ‘’casual’’ or ‘’effortless’’ lol..  T u T ;; 

6. " Hi! I hope this isn't weird to say, I'm designing a race for my DND campaign and some of the aesthetics are a little bit inspired by some of your costumes and makeup designs. You're awesome and your art is awesome so thanks : ) "

Thanks so much, I appreciate it! It’s always cool to hear I can inspire people~ 

(I usually don’t include many compliments in these ask compilation posts, but I always try to include a few, just to let people know that even if I don’t respond to all of them I do see them, and appreciate it!) 

7.  ???

I ended up cropping out this ask and not answering because some of the content was questionable (the reason WHY/how they wanted to make the character) in a way that I didn’t feel like getting into a long thing about, but part of it was relevant to making OCs in my world, so I will just make a quick comment:

I do state that this is a closed world, so I don’t want anyone making OCs of my species or etc. at least not at this point. Once my game is finished (if ever lol), or I write a few books or something, then I feel it would be understandable if people like, made up a background story for their player character and thus maybe could have some form of OC in my world and etc.. So I may be more relaxed on this in the future as I create content that people naturally would want to engage with , but for now, I’m still a very tiny creator with a closed world and it just doesn’t feel the same as like.. making an oc based on some thing in a big TV series or something. My worldbuliding and etc. is still very personal to me. Unless we’re directly collaborating on things (like mentioned here (link) a bit), or you’re a personal friend of mine who’s gotten involved in the world with my own guidance (meaning I could tell you lore things you’d need to know to make it accurate, etc.), then I don’t feel it’s appropriate for strangers to do at this point. 

Especially since I don’t even have enough world info out for people to be able to reference (most species have half-complete guides, I’ve only ever talked about like, one continent, etc.). There are so many necessary details which I have only in my head and have never typed out, so again, idk, it’d just be weird. I’m not okay with it until I have a lot more lore published, and maybe a few actual works out there that people can reference/stories/games/basis for OCs to exist in the first place. If that makes sense? 

8. "Hey, is it ok to use your outfit posts as inspiration for a dnd character? I love them so much, you have such a unique way of combining crazy patterns and fabrics into something that gives off a good vibe”

Yes, that would be fine! Thank you for asking, and I appreciate the compliments~ Hopefully I can get back to posting that sort of thing more often lol.. I’ve gotten WAY off my routine and haven’t done many outfits lately.. aaa

9. "hi Luca! i just wanted to say i really love all of your costumes and fashions and dress ups, its all so cool and pretty and interesting. i actually wanna dress up for fun for myself, and now that i know about the bins i think i'll try to convince my mom to take me to similar places for cheap clothing pieces, since my mom is worried about how much all this costume stuff costs. anyway, please keep posting your cool and beautiful stuff! "

Thank you so much! I wish you luck with your costumes! Yeah, I think there’s a common idea in a lot of fashion communities (like with makeup, costumes, etc.) that you have to always have high quality things to look nice, and even if sometimes you can do more with a little extra money, really you can make anything look good with what you have if you just combine it right. As I’ve always been quite low income, being into fashion and stuff has be discouraging at times, that I couldn’t afford certain materials or items, but you just have to find a niche where what you’re able to do works. For example, a lot of even ‘cheap’ lolita style clothings are too expensive for me (like $30 - $50 for a dress??? then the more pricey ones can be over $100???) lol.. BUT, then stuff like mori kei, cult party kei, fantasy costumes, etc. you can do with nearly any fabric you can find, and it’s still just as fun and creative. Most of the outfits I take pictures of probably cost me no more than $1 - $10 for every single item combined. Obviously it depends on location - I have better access now that I live near a place like the bins, which I understand there may not be similar resources in small towns or etc. But even with generic thrift stores (which may not be as cheap as the bins), you can still find pretty good alternatives to all the money it costs to buy things brand new. There’s still some stuff I legit just can’t do because I don’t have access to the materials, but for the most part I can manage everything I’d like with $3 eye-shadows and 15 cent tattered curtain fabrics lol. You can still do really cool stuff on a pretty nonexistent budget!

10. “do you have any tips on growing your hair long? is it expensive to up keep? i wanna grow mine out but it grows so slow!”

Well, I know nothing about hair and am not a hair stylist or etc. so I really don’t have any tips lol??  And I think hair maintenance depends a lot on the type of hair you have, not everyone’s is the same. I assume we must have similar hair  (my natural hair is thick kind of coarse very dark brown/black hair, which is a bit wavy in some parts but mostly straight, but most of my hair currently (aside from the overgrown roots at the top) is altered because of damage from bleaching and etc., it’s more brittle. so that’s what I’ll be referencing) if you’re asking me this instead of someone else, but just know that whatever I say may not apply to you.  

Anyway, I really don’t do anything to my hair to make it grow or etc., it’s just that I’ve gone a long time without cutting it lol. I used to cut it all the time or change styles, and now I’ve kind of just left it for 5 or 6 years or so. Because of my mental illness I have trouble maintaining personal care and etc., so I do sometimes go a week or more without washing it, even though I’m trying to work that into my schedule more (luckily I don’t have stinky head, I’ve heard some people’s scalp oils and stuff can smell weird if left for too long, I have the privilege of being able to like.. skip on hygiene a lot without it severely impacting my ability to do things or etc. since it’s usually not obvious if I haven’t bathed in a week or two). 

My cat also EATS HUMAN HAIR for some reason, so I have to keep it up all the time, so that when I shed it doesn’t actually just fall loose onto the ground lol. Literally all I do to my hair is just keep it in two braids at all times and wash it with normal shampoo and conditioner occasionally, when I can. I really only think it’s gotten long because I’ve been leaving it alone and not messing with it, not really because of anything I’ve done (like I don’t use fancy products on it or etc.) And because of that, no, it’s not really expensive! It absolutely WOULD be if I were like..a normal functioning person and I regularly bleached it and dyed it and put products on it and styled it and used shampoo and conditioner every 1-3 days on it and etc. lol.. But I guess because I don’t do anything to it to maintain it, I’m not spending money on hairspray or dye or shampoo or etc.  I used to bleach it a lot and straighten it and use hairspray and stuff on it, and it seems healthier (at least on the new top parts) now that I’m just ... ignoring it basically lol. But I don’t really know what to do to make it grow faster! I’m bad at self-care, and even if I do costumes and stuff, I really am not into beauty and hair and nails and makeup and stuff, so I’m probably the wrong person to ask hghjhb.. My upkeep routine is just... eat and sleep. wash face with water daily.. do extra stuff if you can manage to despite your functioning issues, etc. I’m definitely not a Beauty Advice person, I barely brush my hair even once a week lol

11. "Maybe you should reduce the number of races if it's too overwhelming? A world can still be immersive with only a few races in it."

(sidenote - Not to be nitpicky, but I make a specific point that the groups of fantasy creatures I create are species, not ‘’races’’, even though it is a commonly used term in fantasy worldbuilding, I think it’s inaccurate/weird )

I know I don’t have to make so many different groups, but, I guess I just really want it to be a broad setting. Part of the point in creating Nanyevimi (aside from worldbuilding just being extremely fun and a hobby greatly suited to someone with my personality traits lol) is to have an established world that I can do anything within, a framework already built where it'd be super easy to just drop a character anywhere on the map and already have an idea of what their culture, background, experiences, etc. would be based on pre-existing details about that portion of the world, etc. But I also want it to be broad, and varied, where every area kind of has it’s own dynamics going on there, so if you’re in a different place, you get a different kind of story. (like in an elven alliance city, you’d be better suited to tell an adventure story centering around complicated local politics, or city life, or etc.. whereas out in some isolated mountains in the south, it’d be more suited for a mystery story about stumbling across ancient ruins, or running into a mysterious traveler, etc.) 

Which I guess doesn’t matter much, since I'm better at setting, world design, character design, planning, and details than I am at plot, so  I probably won’t actually ever do anything with it (god forbid I tried to write a book or something with my utter inability to be concise/brief in any imaginable way). I can craft settings/characters/history/world-details all day endlessly, never losing inspiration or etc, but my weak point is actually telling stories within those settings and formulating a solid plan, organizing plot structures long term and etc.. Setting up everything for something to happen/creating a place where many interesting premises could occur is fine, but then actually thinking of how those things should OCCUR, or how the set up should play out, is where I get kind of lost. I guess the ideal at some point would be to have people working with me, helping when writing stories in my world/outlining games/etc, to add more cohesion/structure and reign in the unfocused stream of ideas,  but that’s very unlikely since I don’t have any close friends that are good at organizing or plotting either, etc. BUT anyway, even if I can’t ever manage to do anything with it, the whole “having a setting I can use for anything I want if anything ever comes up, which is already established and thus makes it much easier to formulate ideas because all the background work is already done for myself” thing is at least a nice goal.. in concept...theoretically lol..  

And, it’s not really too overwhelming, I think the overwhelming part is actually just formatting and producing those ideas in a consumable form. It’s not hard for me to keep track of 20 different groups and make backgrounds and every imaginable detail for them, but it IS hard to actually take all that information that exists in my head, type it out as a worldbuilding post, format and organize it, draw pictures to go with it, etc. If I could just post long stream of consciousness style 300,000 word long posts with no paragraph breaks, 4000 typos, barely any punctuation, etc., then I’d have A LOT more world-building info publicly available (since that’s what all the initial documents on my computer look like lol), but that’s just so inaccessible it’d be pointless to have public in the first place. The hard part isn’t really coming up with or managing the information, it’s just... organizing it all, and finding a way to share it. 

12. "oh PLEASE tell me what boing peach beverage the elf looks like"

a quick sketch of them.. mysterious peach (and other produce) salesman   

13. "fun question: what are ur fashion pet-peeves?"

Well, basically none because I hate when people are rigid over Fashion Rules or etc. Like, people who take pictures of others in public because they “look weird” , or who constantly trash on what people are allowed to wear, what patterns can be mixed with others, etc. etc. I get that some stuff can look kind of bad sometimes, and it’s not that I think nobody is allowed to criticize fashion trends or etc. (especially if they’re legitimately problematic, like of course someone wearing a homophobic t-shirt or doing blackface should be criticized), but I mean just like... that sort of trivial bitter criticism that doesn’t do anything but make people feel bad about the way they look or make them afraid to dress in ways they feel comfortable. Like taking a picture of someone and posting it online to make fun of them because they wore socks with sandals, or bullying 14 year olds who just started doing makeup and haven’t totally gotten their look sorted out yet, etc. etc. (ESPECIALLY since this can often intersect with classism, racism, etc. if you really examine what people mock as 'ugly' or 'unacceptable' styles, it's often stuff like men wearing dresses/makeup, women not shaving, clothing associated with poverty (like wearing “”cheap”” clothes), physical traits commonly associated with poc, making fun of people who look a certain way likely due to mental illness (like fidgeting, dirty mismatched clothing, carrying stuffed animals or comfort items in public etc.), etc. etc.

I find costumes and makeup and outfits to be a very cool and fun way to express myself. So when people are complete freaks about it and set out to just relentlessly make others feel bad for no good reason, it’s like... obnoxious... How can you take something with so much potential and limit it and close others off and turn it into this rigid hateful thing, when it should be something that everyone is able to be passionate about and appreciate?? Outside appearance isn't everything, but it's a tool of expression for so many people and can relate to who they are as a person, people should never feel uncomfortable to be who they are or look how they look just because some dumbass rich person writing for a style magazine has the gall to declare some random thing to be 'Unfashionable' despite not having a genuinely creative bone in their body, or some bigot thinks that certain things are ‘ugly’ or ‘unprofessional’ due to their own mental associations, etc.

But anyway, I guess if I had to choose a few things that I just think look kind of odd to me personally/are generally off-putting...  

--- the overdrawing lips thing when you can see the persons actual lip-line and it almost looks like they have two mouths or something? (if not done intentionally for costume makeup). It can look a little strange to me sometimes, like an optical illusion where you see multiple mouth lines at once?? idk like this?

--- freckles that are just round circles and really heavy and don’t look realistic (though again, I also realize this could just be the person’s first time drawing them on or something and I’m not  mocking for lack of skill, etc. I just mean that it’s a little strange to look at, not actually BAD though) (and it can also be intentional, like for a cartoony costume look) ---- People adopting cutesy/childlike fashion and clothing and sexualizing it or using it as part of their sex/kink stuff.. I just feel like anything associated with children should not be sexualized..? If the first thing someone thinks when seeing children's school uniforms or frilly little girl’s doll dresses or whatever is that it could be a Hot Thing then hhh... like why is your brain making those connections lol.. People can dress how they want for whatever reasons they want, but that’s always personally creeped me out a little. Similar to our culture’s obsession with looking young being ‘hot’ (like a grown man wanting someone who’s a legal adult but still “looks 16″ or etc.), where it’s like.. okay, I guess yeah outwardly you can make that choice, and maybe aren’t directly causing harm, but.. the underlying tones of it and etc. still make it very unsettling to witness lol... ---- anything appropriated obviously, as well as fetishization or bastardization of cultures, like t-shirts with Japanese writing on them Just For Aesthetic, or taking certain culturally or religiously significant symbols or etc. and adopting them as ‘just a silly fashion’ thing when you’re actually being disrespectful, etc.  ---- those shorts or whatever that go up extremely high on the hipbones always look a little weird to me lol, like they give a person funny proportions, 

(you may have to right click open image in new window and zoom to see the text, but it’s like.. the blank space makes it look kind of weird to me? Like there’s too much where there’s just nothing going on? idk. That’s just my personal preference though, obviously I tend to lean towards busy designs lol)

That’s all I can think of though, like I said, I’m really not picky or judgy about fashion since I think people should be able to do whatever they want for the most part. I’m not like a “omg stripes should NEVER be worn with plaid!!” type person or something lol. 

14. "Hey Luca! I love when you post about your world. Do you have a favorite species you've made up so far? Also, I hope you're holding up well during the crisis!"

AAaa thanks! I’m okay mostly. It’s distressing since because of my particular mental illness I already have constant paranoia and obsessions about health, so of course hearing about so much illness can be really triggering constantly and I’m preoccupied in never-ending anxiety spirals about mortality and etc. etc. etc. , but situationally, I’m just very thankful that nobody in my household has gotten sick yet and I desperately wish that will continue to be the case. *** *** *** 

(ignore the *** *** *** , this is a text version of a physical compulsion (a hand movement) that I have to do when I mention certain topics lol.. the little man in my brain that controls my obsessive compulsive disorder says I must do certain things after saying or thinking certain things,, You Know How It Is ) 

And I really love worldbuilding questions, so thank you so much!!!!! Hghgh maybe it seems weird to favor any over the others, but of course I really like the Avirre'thel. Conceptually, I think their origin story and connection to ancient elves and their abilities and etc. put them in a really unique position in the broader world (some of the only truly immortal people to exist, the only people who can still decipher ancient elven texts in a way that makes sense, etc. etc.). Since Nanyevimi (my world) is really just a setting being built so that in the future I can set things within it (games, short stories, etc.), I think I'm drawn to the aspects of it that have the most potential to make interesting characters, and there are definitely a lot of pre-established dynamics with the Avirre'thel/in Navyete (their home country) as a whole that would make it an good place to set certain things, or a good group for a main character to be from, etc.

I do really like the Jhevona as a species overall too, even if I haven't developed them as much, they also kind of stand out as having some fairly unique features that put them in an interesting position in the world (being one of the most magically capable groups that exists but that also having downsides (health issues and infertility from magic exposure, etc.), how the necessity to keep control over their magic influences their culture, being some of the only natural shape-shifters, etc.). Within that, I REALLY love the Thastanri (a subspecies of Jhevona), like their connection to dreams, the Imkasyn, being one of the last few peoples in contact with real dragons, etc. etc. There are a lot of complex things going on in their area, so there’d be a lot of potential to tell a variety of stories or have interesting characters from that group. 

AND, though it's supposed to be Unknown in the world so I won't talk about it just in case I ever write a book one day or something and need to preserve at least a FEW mysteries that I don't just outright explain in worldbuilding posts, Jhevona do have the most interesting origins of any species in my opinion. There are some things from before the timeline break sort of thing (where all recorded history was seemingly wiped and everyone had a big memory loss about 50,000 yrs ago) that people aren't aware of anymore... but Jhevona used to have a cool backstory and quite interesting function in society prior to that. There are some remnants in the genetics of the species and how their magic works (at least for certain groups) that kind of hint at how ancient Jhevona used to look and what they used to do, even though in the modern day things are very different.

15. "Top 10 songs you've been listening to lately?"

I don’t have a top 10 since I listen to everything for different reasons, and don’t have as deep a relationship with music the way some people do (like I don’t really have a favorite band or group I have a connection with that’s “gotten me through hard times”, or music I cry to/any songs that are specifically personally emotionally meaningful to me, etc., etc.), but here’s a quick playlist of a few favorite-ish things I’ve had in my head a lot recently - 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPmQ4SZdFFHNkgKo7nAiEMgVvLcycX5Qc

the last song on the list specifically I’ve been replaying a lot for some reason, I guess since it’s good background music as there’s no words. Particularly the part that starts around like 38 seconds in, something about that melody reminds me of something distant, in a dreamlike way. The past few days I mostly alternate between that song, Outstanding, and And The Beat Goes On  lol

16. " Do you ever sell sculptures? I really like that little fawn!"

Yeah, I hope to eventually! Like I mentioned in question number three, if I can set up some sort of way to do auctions or etc, then maybe I can sell that one! 

17 & 18 : '"aaa yay!! i missed your outfits!!!" / "can I just say love ur outfits! They're so cool and inspire me to draw my ocs with new outfits > o < and I love your cat too, please give him a big ol pat!"

Thank you!!!! more compliments posted just to show I appreciate them lol, even if I don’t publicly respond to every one~ And, the Boyes appreciate the pats.. here is them.. big babbeys... 

[aesthetic-survivor-of-twd]

Episode 4 Trailer Analysis

Okay so first off, because Tumblr has a maximum of 10 screenshots per post i’m only going to be able to show the images that I feel are most important to show with a visual reference, and then explain the other scenes purely with text (so you may need to rewatch the trailer to understand wtf i’m referring to at some points, my apologies for that).

I’m gonna do my damnedest to keep everything in order, so let’s begin.

(This turned out to be really long, so i’m hiding it under a spoiler bar - my apologies ^_^;)

1) The Beginning

Okay, so in this picture we see Clem and AJ running from the boat which seems to have somewhat crashed into the dock after the explosion. Which makes sense given the proximity.

The reason I believe this image to be important is because it debunks the theory that any of the characters (at least Clem and AJ) end up falling overboard into the water after the explosion.

It seems that the episode is going to start with us directly after the chaos of episode 3 and we are going to need to QTE our asses out of the ship in Act 1 where we will be thrown into action right away.

You’ll notice that we can’t see Tenn, James (if he survived), ect with us during our escape. 2 people that most likely would be running out with us given that we were within the same location as each other during the explosion.

So I feel like they either were in front of us out of frame here, or they maybe did fall overboard and when we see them later on it’s because they’ve washed up on land.

Some people believe this to be a bridge Clem is jumping over, but i’m personally skeptical about that.

If anything, I think this is a hole created on the ship after the explosion which we need to jump over to escape. The wooden flooring has been broken away by something that must have exploded, because it doesn’t look like a normal hole created by rotten wood throughout the years. Plus, if you look behind Clem, there is a wooden structure with panelling that seems similar to the walls within the ship.

Also, notice how tall the bridge must be after this scene when we get a bird’s eye view of Clem leaping over the hole and seeing the water beneath her.

If you look back to previous episodes as well as the map Marlon shows us in episode 1 (which I would provide here if not for the 10 screencap limit) you will notice that the only bodies of water other than the ocean/bigass river off the edge of the map, is smaller bodies of river or streams.

Any time we have seen a bridge in this game it’s been a small one above a stream of some kind (even the title screen for ep4 with Clem’s hat seems to be a small bridge like the one near the fishing shack).

To have a bridge this big, we would have to travelling far off to the left side of the map beyond the ship, and I can’t see any bridges in that direction given how big the body of water is there (or maybe Marlon is just shit at drawing water to scale lmao).

Also you can see land in the background that seems similar to the hills Clem, AJ, Willy and Louis/Violet were spying at the Delta from.

Okay, so this one does seem to give more of a bridge vibe with the metal structures (reminds me of S2 Ep2), but i’m still going to assume it’s the ship for now since we haven’t really got any other reason to assume it’s a bridge beyond a bridge being a focus point in the title screen (which btw, I wouldn’t get too heavily focused on since the previous title screens haven’t been too literal either with their subject matter and have mostly been used to represent the episode in general - like ep3 being a view from a porthole in a boat to represent the Delta ship, ect).

Notice the reflection of the water is bright orange as well.

That’s not just a reflection of a setting sun or something, that’s a light source close to the water - something on fire.

And there’s no way a shit ton of walkers would be crowding the middle of the water unless they were drawn to a loud noise. Like they are determined creatures, but there has to be something big that happened in order to provoke them into water where they can barely even move.

Okay so more related to Act 1 which I can’t drop screenshots for (so you may need to watch the trailer again.)

Okay so this is the point where my huge wall of text from above may fall flat, and I could be 100% wrong depending on the context of this scene (In which case if I am, then i’m gonna do my best to forget this analysis ever happened after the episode drops lmao).

At the very beginning of the trailer we see Clem waking up from where it seems to be the dock instead of the actual boat itself.

This implies that the beginning of the episode actually happens OFF of the boat as opposed to on it like I mentioned above (which could also make sense given Clem was literally near the railing of the boat when the explosion happened).

BUT typical to the usual Twdg trailer fashion, we can’t 100% assume that’s what actually happened since the person making these trailers is insanely good at piecing stuff together in a way that fucks with your perception of events.

So it could mean practically anything. Here are a few basic theories:

1) Clem wakes up on the dock at the beginning of ep1 and then rushes back on the ship to find AJ or something. Because there has to be some reason her and AJ are running from the boat that close - because Clem definitely didn’t wake up that close to the boat as if you rewatch the beginning of the trailer, when Clem looks up to see the walker the ground isn’t wooden - it’s gravel. And if you look at my first screenshot you will see it’s the EXACT same terrain outside of the dock. Which means Clem is on the ground at the start of the dock.

So either Clem went BACK to the ship, or she and AJ already escaped from it which means:

2) Another explosion happens (either the boat or a grenade) and Clem gets knocked to the ground not long after her and AJ flee the ship. You’ll notice that Clem doesn’t “wake up” from the explosion as if she passed out and that the scene is shot in a way as if she just toppled over from impact and is now looking up directly after it and seeing the smoke.

What helps make this more credible is that the split second before the trailer cuts away from the scene of her and AJ running from the boat, you’ll notice that the explosion catches up to them at the exact moment Clem makes it from the dock to the gravel area of the ground (where we see her “wake up” at the beginning). 

You can see Clem reaching for AJ but not exactly grabbing him in time as it happens - which is why AJ isn’t there at the beginning with her.

LILLY APPEARS!

Okay so obviously this is determinant depending on your choices from the previous ep (AKA, why i’m fucked this episode lmao). But as you can see in the trailer, we get a bit of a showdown between her and Clem.

I think it’s safe to assume that this takes place near the boat in Act 1 as well, however you can see AJ right next to Clem so it can’t be directly after the beginning of the trailer. It must be a good few minutes afterwards when we get AJ again.

Not really much else to say about it, besides the fact that episode 4 definitely seems to be throwing us into frantic QTE spamming at the very start for a change of pace.

Our baby boys, Tenn and AJ have been caught within the sight of walkers and shit’s getting more real.

This in my opinion, seems to be happening a little bit more to the side of the dock (so close to the boat still, but maybe closer to where Willy went sailing with the supplies if you told him to take them).

I feel like this all happens AFTER the (potential) Lilly confrontation and when we are now just trying to high tail it out of the dock and away from the Delta.

AJ at some point seems to run up and stick with Tenn to protect him and it seems that the both of them only now just realize how many walkers are getting drawn to them.

At this point, this is probably where we as Clem have the moment of using the bow and arrow to shoot at them OR this is where Minnie steps in since her brother is in danger (which might lead to a potential Minnie redemption that i’m not entirely certain of given how a lot of the Delta still seem alive - so she might still be after us, especially if this is Act 1)

You see a few shots of the Delta members still alive, but the thing I find interesting about this screenshot in particular is that it’s the area from which the docks/gravel lead to the woods.

This also seems to be from a similar location where the grenade gets thrown and Clem protects AJ as a barrel explodes.

I think this either might be closer to the end of Act 1 or at the very least, the end of the “boat area” as we are nearing the woods, where the rest of the trailer seems to be located.

So I think this entire scene is literally us escaping into the woods OR where we end up in that cave together which explains why we have Tenn with us (as well as James potentially). The cave would make most sense as well given that the only rocky area where a cave could work is near the dock where they have those big rocky cliffs.

I think what backs up the possibility of the cave being close is that you can see behind the walkers some trees (so it’s in the woods most likely but I don’t think it’s too far from the docks).

The 3/4 of us most likely run into this cave to avoid the Delta, but the walkers sniff us out and end up following us in here as well.

So now we have Clem, AJ, Tenn and James(?) running through the tunnels of the cave most likely (assuming it IS near the cliffs, then there is a good chance that much like in real life there will be another passageway further into the cave that leads out somewhere.)

I’m not gonna post the picture of James since we’ve all seen it and I need to save screenshot space lol but the cut on his hand definitely isn’t anything like a walker bite or anything. I think everyone is theorising about it and honestly, I don’t really have anything new to add to it ^^;

BUT something not many people have mentioned yet is the scene of him dropping his mask to the ground.

I don’t know if I 100% buy him sacrificing himself by cutting his hand to attract the walkers to him or not, but if that IS what’s happening. The dropping of his walker mask would also be a nice way to subtly symbolise that happening as well.

Alternatively, maybe he drops it to the ground as we all sit in the cave and take a short break from all the madness.

I feel like this will be the moment where James goes off about AJ killing Lilly and where we might get a little bit of team drama going on - which then later gets cut off by the walkers entering the cave and us needing to escape.

(ASDFGHJKL MY HEART)

Okay so this is very clearly set in the woods.

I think this is when we escape the cave and we end up travelling through the woods keeping a lookout for the Delta.

If you chose Louis, then we will bump into him now and as you can see from the animated clip, that it seems like AJ goes up and hugs him first and then Clem hugs him (ayyy ninja family hug).

I have a feeling that Louis might actually be alone here.

Given that Omar is probably still sorta injured, I wouldn’t be too surprised if Aasim took him back to the boarding school (which would also make sense since in Violet’s route we also have an injured Louis with them - so it would only make sense for Aasim and Omar to be gone at this point either way).

I have a feeling that when Louis, Aasim and Omar left the boat, Louis probably told them to go on ahead while he looked for Clem. Especially since in his route he seems really hesitant about Clem going off to save Lilly herself after they all escape from their cells. I can’t see him at this point in time just leaving her, regardless of how badass Clem is.

(Unless Aasim and Omar are just out of frame - but I doubt it).

Also, not that anyone probably doubted it but I intentionally took a screenshot before Clem hugs him just to show that this scene is definitely during Louis’s route since in the screencaps where Clem hugs him you can’t actually see Louis’s mouth (where he would be bleeding if it was Violet’s route).

OKAY SO THIS IS OUT OF ORDER.

This scene should technically be near the top since it seems like the boat has sank even further at this point and we can see Clem and Violet near it.

Okay so, i’ve been seeing some people say they think this is Louis’s route because Clem isn’t wearing her badge Violet gave her (I can’t remember where it’s meant to be so I can’t really tell ^^:) but personally I still think it’s Violet’s route.

It would make sense for it to be Louis’s route if we assume the trailer is from 1 gameplay of the episode (since the wood’s scene is deffo Louis’s route), but I don’t know if I can see them not having at least one scene from a Violentine playthrough here. Especially since it’s the final trailer and how much the fans have wanted equal screentime between both characters.

In my opinion, I feel like Violet in this scene is just upset over everything that’s happened (she might not know if Minnie made it out since the explosion could have sent them flying in different areas) and Clem is comforting her.

I don’t think it’s to do with Violet distrusting Clem or anything like some people brought up.

I feel like if this was LouisRoute!Violet then she wouldn’t be as calm here with Clem, at least I think the body language would be different.

(I could easily be wrong though, i’m actually sure about this screenshot the least tbh)

The only question I have about this scene is that if it’s at the beginning, then where is Violet during the cave scene? does she just try to look for Minnie? I don’t know... I feel like there is a lot of ways this scene can be perceived both from the trailer clip and whatever the heck happens after it before we end up in that cave.

This is definitely our McCarroll Ranch flashback.

Her hair is shorter than what it is in the present (and it’s not just a weird perspective, that ponytail is definitely short).

Also, notice that we don’t get to see her outfit much?

And we also get the return of the ominious red lighting from the nightmare she had in episode 2.

Finally we get daylight! (look at the gaps where there is sunshine).

This is the morning after the shitstorm, and it seems that we end up in a barn given the hay and structure of the building (maybe James’?)

Yet again we get attacked by walkers as in another scene in the trailer we see Clem trying to block a door with walkers trying to break in, that’s also set in the daylight with interior similar to this screenshot.

ALSO, unrelated to this screenshot but we also have another small scene set during the morning where Clem and AJ look at eachother in fear/”Fuuuuck” which i’m assuming is what lead to them ending up in the barn.

Okay so this is the winning shot of the trailer where everyone freaks out and thinks Clem is probably gonna die or something.

I’m gonna treat this screenshot with skepticism like I did with the other scene of her in episode 3′s trailer holding her hand where everyone thought she got bitten for some reason, because it looked so dramatic.

I’m not saying that it’s not something serious that’s gonna happen (especially since every trailer has a clip from the end/final act of the episode and we haven’t seen one for this yet which i’ve noticed). But i’m not going to assume it’s 100% major either since I doubt they would be this obvious with it.

What I will say however, is that wherever Clem is dangling off of, I genuinely can’t see AJ pulling her up to safety. Like for AJ - a 5 year old, to successfully pull up Clem is nearly “Season 2-Clem-kicking-down-the-solid-trailer-door-in-ep4″ levels of insane strength right there. 

Clem is gonna fall and maybe pass out (maybe that’s how we get our Clem nightmare?) and we will need to find AJ again, most likely.

What’s worth noting however, is that it’s set during night time.

And given how time passes in these episodes i’m willing to be it can only happen either:

1) In act one where all the insane shit with the boat happens

2) In act 3 since it turns to daylight at some point for Act 2

-

ANYWAY THAT’S ALL I HAVE FOR NOW.

Sorry I took forever posting this, I got carried away.

(Just wait till episode 4 proves me completely wrong with everything lmao)

[sebastiianstan]

Tumblr content school: why you don’t always get notes and how to (potentially) get a bit more

So in recent weeks, I’ve seen quite a few posts floating around that centre around the same subject: content creators, mainly gifmakers, not gaining followers as quickly as they would like to and/or not getting as many notes on their original content as they would like to. Most recently I’ve seen people share their like-to-reblog ratio, with a call to users to also reblog content instead of just liking it, which would result in more exposure and recognition for the creator.

Now, while all of those feelings are perfectly valid and you’re obviously allowed to post whatever you like on your blog, the conversation around this is quite unnuanced and, at times, a bit uninformed. I’m not claiming to be some kind of expert, but having been a content creator (gifmaker) on this platform for quite a few years, with my own small share of popular gifsets floating around and having built both my own blog an two fansites/group blogs to at least moderate success, I do think I have a certain degree of insight re: getting notes, so I thought I’d put in my two cents. Please note that I’m not making this post to be condescending in any way, or even to tell you what to do/how to create content, but I thought I’d help as much as I can, based on my own experience.

Below the cut are 1. reasons why I think gifsets don’t always get the number of notes you wanted/expected them to, and 2. tips on creating and posting content in a way that will potentially get you more notes.

Why you might not be getting (a lot) of notes

So let’s start with some general trends re: gifsets not getting as many notes as you’d like/expect, and not as many as they would have maybe a few years ago.

1. Tumblr is past its peak

Based on experience, I’d say fandom Tumblr reached its peak in 2015-2016, and was riding that out in 2017. I’ve mainly been a Marvel blog in recent years, so I can’t speak for other fandoms, but Tumblr was... wild in the lead-up to and aftermath of Captain America: Civil War (2016). Wonder Woman (2017) was a similar situation on the DC side of things. 

New Marvel releases (like Ant-Man & The Wasp, Avengers: Infinity War and probably most notably, Black Panther) still get a lot of traction and fandom definitely isn’t dead on Tumblr, but I feel like 2015-2016 were definitely peak years. I only recently returned from a year-long hiatus; I stopped being active in late 2017 and even then my dashboard wasn’t quite as active as it was a year before that. Upon returning here about a month ago, most of my mutuals from back in the day had also become inactive and a lot of gifmakers I used to follow were not creating content anymore.

So it boils down to this: I think it’s very likely that the amount of active users within your fandom has diminished significantly as compared to two years ago. A set that may have gotten 10k notes within a few days in 2016 might now only get half of that.

2. The URL thing

This is a sad truth, but it does seem that having a semi-canon or canon url does at least help with getting a larger amount of notes on your content. I have no tips on getting a canon url (I got very, very lucky with this one), but this is a simple observation I have from over the years. Url trading/selling has basically become a genuine business due to this - canon urls are in high demand.

More importantly, what I can say is that it’s smart not to change your url too often. Becoming a popular content creator on this platform is basically the same as building a brand - and a brand has an easily recognized name. Once you have a url you are happy with, try to stick to it for a while. When you change your url, links break on reblogs of your old gifsets, by the way.

3. The like-to-reblog ratio has always been unbalanced

For as long as I can remember, posts have gotten more likes than reblogs. If your ratio is 2-to-1 or 3-to-1, trust me, you are doing perfectly well for yourself! Again, as with my first point, this might have gotten a bit more extreme since 2016, but it’s not a new thing.

4. Popular users support each other

Obviously there’s nothing wrong with this (in fact, I love that we all support each other), but yes, in general big/popular blogs are friends with each other and tend to reblog each other’s content, which can be discouraging for smaller or aspiring content creators on the platform.

However, please be aware that these big blogs built up the following they have by posting content for years and it just takes time. Also, know that most users on here actually really enjoy being tagged in your posts - so if you gif a movie or tv show you know a popular user (that you follow) likes, tag them in it and if it’s high quality content (I’ll touch on this later), they’ll probably reblog it.

Tips on getting more notes

Alright, on to part two: my personal tips on getting more notes. These are strictly based on my own experience, and as a repeat of my disclaimer earlier: I am genuinely trying to share my knowledge; none of this is with the intent of being a condescending know-it-all.

1. Don’t look like you’re complaining

No matter what the intent behind your post about your lack of notes and/or followers is, it’s very likely you’re going to come off entitled or ungrateful. I’ve personally unfollowed multiple users who post consistently about reaching their next thousand, who make angry/frustrated posts when their followers don’t increase as quickly as they’d like to, when they lose followers, etc. I understand that the hustle is frustrating, but posts like these are really quite annoying for your followers; you’re complaining about followers you don’t have to followers you do have, who are then more likely to unfollow you because it looks like you’re complaining. Your mutuals might understand why you’re posting this, but others probably don’t.

When it comes to posts about like-to-reblog ratios, which I’ve seen a fair few of recently, please consider a couple of things. 

When you ask people to reblog your post instead of liking it, you are essentially telling them what to put on their own blogs.

A lot of users on here have carefully curated content; while some users simply blog about everything they like, others stick to a certain set of subjects/movies/tv shows. If they see a post they like that doesn’t fall into those categories, they’ll give it a like to keep track of it and show their appreciation, but won’t put it on their blogs. You can’t tell people to reblog something they don’t want to.

You’re essentially asking people that you do not really personally care about to do something for you. Most of the likes you get on your post are likely from people that you do not follow yourself. I’m not saying that you hate your followers or don’t care for them, but you can’t really ask anything of a user that you don’t even follow yourself.

Look at it this way: Tumblr is basically a mini society, with its own market in the form of content creation. The ones who have a few thousand followers, and who get a few hundred or a few thousand notes on their posts are already the lucky ones. If you’re a user who gets hundreds/thousands of notes on their posts (even if it’s not as many as you like or deserve), you should keep in mind that the vast majority of users on here are small blogs that don’t have the traction that you have. If you post a screenshot of the like-to-reblog ratio on a post that has 2k notes, they’re going to think, “what on earth are you complaining about?”

Posts like these can really only backfire. I don’t think it’s likely that a lot of users will suddenly start reblogging instead of liking because of them. I know those posts are getting traction, because your mutuals and fellow content creators understand your frustration (believe me, I do too!), so they reblog/like/comment on it, but you’re essentially in an echo chamber of content creators. Anyone outside of that circle will not understand it and might unfollow you because of it.

2. Quality

Another disclaimer: I’m not implying that the people who have made posts about notes/followers don’t make HQ gifs. This is simply the “tips on getting notes” section of this particular post, so that’s what I’m doing. Veteran gifmakers can skip this section because I won’t be presenting anything new here.

Here’s the thing: high quality gifsets get notes. I know that what constitutes a HQ gif is subjective, but there is a consensus on this amongst big blogs, so I will summarize it below.

Make gifs from high-quality video sources. If 1080p is available, use that. Don’t gif from videos below 720p. Also, the larger the t*rr*nt file, the higher the quality. If a 1080p t*rr*nt from a movie is under 2GB in size, it’s probably not decent enough to gif from.

Use the new dimensions. Tumblr changed from 500px to 540px over 3 years ago now I believe, and all the big blogs use these dimensions. I rarely see sets like this anymore, but some users do still hold on to the old dimensions. Obviously, you should do what you like, but know that you’ll get more notes if you make the switch.

Do not skip frames. If you use screencaps, extract 25 frames per second. If you are an ‘Import video frames to layers’ kinda gal, like me, import all frames.

Sharpen your gifs! It makes an insane difference. My faq section links to a sharpening action.

Your frame delay should be 0.05. If you have a low amount of frames, you can get away with 0.06, but do not make your gif any slower than that. It will look unsmooth.

Go for natural coloring, where you simply brighten up the gif and enhance the colors (beware of whitewashing tho). I know that using PSD’s from resource blogs is tempting, but it’s very likely they will not work for the particular scene you’re giffing. It’s best if you learn to color yourself and adapt your coloring for every set. Also, it’s up to you what you think is pretty, but extremely vibrant and extremely pale coloring isn’t very popular anymore. Natural is the way to go. (This is with the exception of those gorgeous color edits people have been making recently. Y’all are queens & that shit is hard to make yo!)

If your gif is larger than the 3mb limit, NEVER sacrifice colors in the ‘Save for web’ window. Always delete frames to lower the size of your gif.

Just saying, but Photoshop CS5 has been known to make the best gifs.

For beginners out there, please don’t be discouraged. I’ve been making gifs for years, and they were absolute shit in the beginning. It just takes time to learn, but if you stick to it, you’ll get there.

3. Concept over quantity

Allow me to draw a comparison with YouTubers here - I think we all prefer YouTubers who post one well fleshed out video a week (for example, Safiya Nygaard) over YouTubers who post an okay video every day.

I think a lot of users think the way to get notes and followers is to post a gifset every day. This probably does work to an extent, but I personally think it’s better to come up with original concepts that you post every few days.

When you watch a movie, you can make five gifsets out of scenes from that movie, or you can come up with a concept. For example, parallels between scenes, parallels with other movies, the best lines of a certain character, etc. This takes more work, but sets like these are highly appreciated because they’re original, and they tend to get more notes.

This doesn’t apply to new releases, as you are probably among the first to gif a particular scene, but if you’re giffing a scene from a movie that’s been out for a while, you’re very likely not the first to do it. People will see it, realize they’ve already reblogged something very similar, and keep scrolling. But if you come up with a new idea, that’s what’ll get you more traction.

To give you a personal example; I recently rewatched all of the cap films. Now, I could have giffed popular scenes like “I could do this all day” or “I’m with you ‘til the end of the line”, but that’s been done before... a lot. Instead, I came up with this, and got 6.5k notes. I haven’t posted that many new sets on my blog recently, but posting content like that has gained me some followers and new mutuals.

4. Timing

All this requires is keeping an eye on your dashboard and taking note of when most of the people you follow are online. I sometimes see European content creators posting their sets smack dab in the middle of the day. Lemme tell y’all something: the Americans are sleeping.

I’m in timezone GMT+1. My dash wakes up around 5pm. I never post before 6pm - I’ll post anywhere between then and midnight, so feel free to convert that to your own timezone. The scheduling feature on posts comes in handy if you’ll be asleep or at school/work around that time.

If you post when Tumblr isn’t active, your set will drown in all of the other content, so be smart about timing.

5. Strategic tagging

It seems that a lot of users still don’t know this: only the first five tags on your post show up in tags on Tumblr. Anything past the first five will only be useful for your own tagging/archiving system, but will not show up in any tracked tags.

So first point: always use the most prominent edit tag for the fandom you’re posting in. Examples are #marveledit, #hpedit, #filmedit. These are frequently used, and often tracked by big blogs.

Second point: figure out who the big fansites/group blogs are, and if they track a tag, tag them. Make sure you follow them, obviously. If your post is funny, you might wanna tag bob-belcher (#bbelcher) as well - this blog is popular across fandoms and posts content from all over!

Third: tag users who you think will like your post. Don’t be thirsty with this. Again, only do this if you follow them. Tagging 2-3 users is ok, but don’t be out there tagging 8 to 10 blogs on your post. Not only is that a little pointless (because only the first five tags will show up), it also makes you look thirsty. Users might not appreciate this, and ultimately might not reblog your post because of that. Also, try not to tag the same users on every single one of your posts.

6. Popular content

If your fandom is niche, so is your content. That’s perfectly fine; don’t feel pressured to post about anything that isn’t your passion.

But if your goal really is to get more notes and followers, create content from fandoms that are big on the platform. Examples are Marvel, Harry Potter, Star Wars, film blogs, etc.

7. Join a fansite/group blog

Every big fandom on Tumblr has one or multiple fansites/group blogs. I recommend you figure out who they are for your fandom, and apply to one that’s accepting new members. You’ll likely get in if your gifs are HQ.

I know this sounds a bit counterintuitive, as you’ll be posting content on another blog that will be getting the notes and followers from it, but it actually is a good way to gain more exposure. These blogs have large amounts of followers, and they usually allow you to reblog your own content to them, as long as you’re active. I think it’s a great way to get your content out there.

Alright, time to wrap up this post. I’m not personally calling out anyone who has made posts about followers, notes, like-to-reblog ratios, etc. I’ve seen at least 15 of those posts in recent weeks so I’m just reacting to a trend I’m seeing, by presenting a potential solution to a problem people seem to be having. 

My last tip is this: if notes and followers on Tumblr are making you feel down or frustrated, maybe it’s time for a little hiatus or a step back. In the end, you are not getting paid for this and your popularity on the platform has no bearing on your real life. This is supposed to be a fun outlet for your passions and interests, not a source of frustration and anger. Don’t take it too seriously! You’re doing amazing sweetie.

[storiesbeyondthestars]

Okay, so I read through a bunch of different spoiler free, S7 articles, and I’m going to give my opinions on things I read, and I did take some screenshots of different articles, so this ends up getting kind of long because I am a long-winded person. (Edit: I lied. This got super long.)

First of all, the consensus is that this season is going to be a wild one that focuses more on personal interactions and relationships, which is awesome! 

What we can see from the two above parts of an article (or a couple I can’t remember at this point where I screencapped what from -10 for research habits), is the truth we’ve always known that family is the real story behind Voltron. Lauren said it was about love. It absolutely is. I’m excited to see that this concept is really taking hold here, especially since we’ll be seeing all different kinds of love and family. 

As much as I love my ships, I love the story between everyone has a whole even more. To see this directly is going to be amazing.

Just throwing this out there, I’m like 95% sure they’re referring to Lance here. He’s easily the most sacrificial one of the team, and we know that Jeremy had a hard time voicing something because it was mostly crying. I think we found what it is.

While I’m a bit sad that the girls get pushed aside a bit, I always remember that it doesn’t mean they’re not there, not important, not doing stuff. They are. I get the feeling that they’re not going to go on the same kind of emotional journey as all the boys are this time around, which is kind of telling? 

I’m okay with Shiro not being a Paladin anymore. In fact, I think it’s the best possible thing for his character. He was the perfect leader and comfortable as a Paladin, and the best way to show what a character is made of is to put them in a situation where they’re not in their element entirely. So I am SO excited for Shiro this season.

Also, Hunk focus? Hell yeah. And my little, biased shipper heart did backflips at the last part involving Lance and Keith, though with the acknowledgement that the ‘crush or two’ thing may not at all have to do with them and it could just be about being leader and right-hand of Voltron. Plus...

I’m not quite sure I hold much value in an article that can’t spell Allura’s name right, but if Lance is a focus this season, and Allura’s not, but they show signs of a stronger bond...? 1 + 1 ≠ 2 in this case. Keep in mind, I’m not saying that Lance’s endgame isn’t Allura, I’m just saying that there’s some contradictions here.

Also while on the topic of specific characters...

I saw someone saying ‘oh look Shiro IS going to be a Paladin’. No. No he’s not. This is in reference to Season 3/4 when Shiro returning cut into Keith being Black Paladin. Of course we know the REAL Shiro wouldn’t have pushed Keith and stepped on his toes as much as Kuron did, so I think he’s going to feel bad about that. There may be a little awkwardness to it, but I think we’re going to see Shiro really actively be pushing Keith to lead, taking a step back. It’s what he wanted originally. 

I really, genuinely think that the line up for the lions with this team is final. However, it could hint towards people taking over for them in the future, or moments where they pilot other lions, but not permanently.

This is SUPER interesting. This roadtrip to Earth is going to focus a LOT on interpersonal relationships and I am HERE for that in every sense of the word. I’m very curious about the characters who’ll pull apart, since I honestly can’t see it being the core team, but that doesn’t leave much room, does it? It’s not going to be Keith and his mom. It won’t be Allura and Coran. I COULD see Shiro kind of purposely pulling himself away from the others a bit, including Keith (kind of a stepping off and ‘go be great’ thing like he did with Pidge in S1E1). These don’t HAVE to be negative things. I can’t see it being Keith and anyone, because he’s been gone for a long time from his point of view. So I don’t know.

Gimme all the matchups. Gimme Keith and everyone (since he’s been gone so long). And I genuinely mean everyone. Gimme Keith and Pidge on their field trip or something too. Don’t let them be the Zuko and Toph of the group. ALSO Hunk and Allura. I wanna see them be awesome together. Hunk, Allura, and Romelle side trip please!

Plot lines long thought abandoned. Okay, my shipper brain went towards Klance. I’m sorry, it did. My logical brain, however, says that this is not in reference to that at all. I think that might have to do with Hunk and Shay, whether to say ‘yes this is a thing’ or ‘no sorry but we’ll acknowledge this for you’.  

The second part, character development people have been hoping for with certain PaladinS. Okay, this one does scream relationship-wise to me, but it also CAN still be platonic. It really, really can. I really think this is in reference to either Lance/Keith, or Lance/Allura. And yes, it could genuinely be either one of them. 

This just is sort of reinforcing to him that they’re talking about Lance/Allura, Keith/Lance, or potentially, maybe even Keith/Allura but the last one is less likely to me (that’s the key here, because even watching through again, Keith and Allura being together romantically doesn’t make sense to me, but that’s a personal interpretation. You may very well see something I don’t.)

The way paragraph structure works is you group like things together to make a single point. If something is in the same paragraph, it should be related to other things in it. First episode in season 1 we established that Keith and Lance were going to be tied to one-another’s stories in some form. We also established that Lance was attracted to Allura (he was flirting with her). 

‘Arguably been on that path all along’. They think people are going to argue about it. It’s a romantic ship one way or another, and it has been planned since day one. No amount of screaming, threatening, or crying from a loud, small, nasty part of the fanbase has changed a thing.

I actually can’t find the article where this one came from. Now, first, we need to look at what could possibly be seen as a controversy, since that has a negative connotation to it. It’s also a very interesting word choice. Is it that the majority of the online community is going to lose their shit? Or is it the parents of kids watching it might stop and say ‘wait, what’? 

I genuinely get the feeling that this is either going to have to do with a relationship, or a personal sexuality arc. 

I think if it had to do with Shiro and Adam, they’d say it. It’s not a spoiler anymore. We KNOW they’re going to dive into it more. 

The online fandom is going to be generally super excited for LGBT+ portrayals on this show. It wouldn’t be a controversy at all to show Adashi (I like this one more because Adam called him Takashi), or for Lance to have a bi-arc.

Klance, maybe a little more-so, because shipping in general can be very touchy (if the backlash of calling Adam abusive says anything). It’s still possible though.

Also as much as I don’t want to say it, that small, loud, nasty portion of the fandom that flips out may do just that if Allura and Lance end up being a thing, but honestly, I don’t think either of these last two things would be considered a controversy.

Keep in mind, the core audience of Voltron is not teenage/adult fans online. It’s created as a family show, meaning that it absolutely is made to appeal to older and younger audiences a like, but the core audience are kids.

Kids who don’t spend time on tumblr/twitter freaking out over ship, and their parents that are going to be spending the money on merchandise.

I think many people would be excited to portrayals of LGBT+ relationships, we know that there are those parents that will swear off the show because of it. We know there are people that will scream about it ‘forcing representation in everything’ as if media content in and of itself hasn’t always been informed by political or personal opinions and issues (spoiler alert: it has). 

The ONLY thing I can think that would be considered controversial (which I don’t personally agree with but here we are) would be more LGBT+ rep. Maybe it is just Shiro and Adam’s relationship, maybe it’s Klance, maybe it’s just a bi-arc for Lance. Maybe it’s something else. 

It’s all about perspective. 

OKAY SO THIS PART. THIS PART HERE. They’re going to spend like at least a year and a half getting to Earth. Holy shit. There’s so much room for character moments here and growing together in ways that they couldn’t in the castle. The castleship was HUGE. I mean, the lions are massive and they’re always shown as teeny-tiny compared to it. There was lots of space to get away from one another. Camping in lions? Nope. All together all the time. This is absolutely Why relationships are going to be front and center.

It also means that they’ll be gone from Earth for two years at minimum. That’s insane.

Time itself playing a narrative is amazing too! I get the feeling that everyone’s going to think Voltron is gone. There are going to be aliens on Earth. They also had blueprints nad plans for Altean tech and they had examples of Galra stuff as well. People think Voltron is gone, but they’re not going to completely lose hope. In fact, Voltron will be like martyrs probably. Almost a legend again. ‘Legendary defender’. 

There was also one saying that Voltron might almost be outdated, which is wild but makes so much sense. Lotor made his own that almost beat them, after all (with Allura’s help). Haggar’s been to Oriadne too. Voltron is going to need some kind of boost in the end to go back to being the legendary defender it always was.

And finally...

LESS MOTHERFUCKING TRANSFORMATION SEQUENCE FUCK YEAH.

[calliecat93]

My Top 10 (Current) Favorite Ships

Happy Valentines Day everyone! I am once again single and have still never so much as held hands with another person! GO ME AND HOW MUCH I SUCK AT LOVE! HAHA... wow I just made myself sad. But hey, just because my love life sucks doesn’t mean that I can’t celebrate it. So to celebrate the holidays, I am going to talk about my Top 10 Favorite Ships... at the current time anyways.

I have a... complicated relationship with ships. I don’t like getting into them much. I have several, don’t get me wrong, but they’re normally either canon ones or ones teased hard enough. But because of shipping wars and stuff, shipping has become a tainted subject for me. The A:TLA and Voltron fandoms alone have made me concerned about creators personal safety cause how dare these two specific characters not bang. But this isn’t about that, this is about the ships I have enjoyed. Ones I grew up on, ones I got into recently, and ones that have stuck with me throughout the highs and lows. Which can perfectly describe true love, sticking together through everything throughout the good and the bad.

So without further ado, let us begin!

#10. Tommy Oliver and Kimberly Hart (MMPR)

Even before I knew what shipping was, I loved these two. Like a lot of 90′s kids, I grew up on Power Rangers, and I still keep up with it form time to time. Even with my faded childhood memories (MMPR came out when I was like... six months old), I remember adoring these two. No specific reasons why, I just remember seeing them to all the stuff that even as a kid, I knew that couples did. GO on dates, give gifts, kiss each other, all that cute stuff. They were happy together and while the characters are kinda bland, their chemistry worked really well. Even now as an adult, as cheesy as the original show was, I still squeel whenever I see Tommy and Kimberly just talking or kissing. It was just sweet, and I loved them... even if after Tommy became the leader, Kim fell into damsel in distress mode more and more, but hey she still had her awesome moments.

It was also the first ship I had that got royally screwed up by the writers! Kim left the show because her actress wanted to quit, which is fair enough and it was handled very well. What wasn't handled well was in the Zeo season, they had Kim send a Dear John letter and break up with Tommy off-screen cause she found another guy. Why? To That Tommy can hook up with the current Pink Rangers. Now I have nothing against Cat, she was a perfectly fine character... bUT THIS WAS STUPID. No build-up, it’s done out of nowhere off-screen, it caused a rushed/forced romance that no one wanted, and considering Tommy appeared in the future and was single, it went NOWHERE. If they wanted a romance, they had plenty of other options. This was a HUGE middle finger to everyone who cared about the characters imo, and I am still bitter about it. In my mind years later, Tommy and Kim hooked up again and IDC what that one Christmas episode said. That is my headcanon, and I am sticking to it until I die.

So yeah, Tommy and Kimberly. My very first ship and it still holds a special place in my heart. Couldn’t make this list and not mention it.

#9. Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable (Kim Possible)

Tommy/Kimberly was my first ship... but as a little kid, I wasn't that invested in it. I just saw them do cute couple stuff and found it cute. But Kim and Ron? I watched Kim Possible since the day it premiered. I got to watch their relationship form beginning to end. I imagine that most have seen KP, but for those who don’t, Kim is a spy why can do anything while Ron is her buffon best friend/sidekick. Kim is confident, strong, and popular while Ron is goofy, easily scared, and very clumsy. But Ron is also more grounded to reality and capable of normal things like working in fast food or cooking, while Kim constantly stresses over things like romance and at accomplishing everything. Two very different people, yet they complete each other. Kim can get Ron to stand up for himself, and Ron can bring Kim down back to earth. It’s really funny when we see how they met, where Kim was very insecure and Ron stood up for her, and it was that act that provoked Kim to fight back.

Throughout the series, they bicker a lot but are there for each other. Ron helps Kim on her missions despite his incompetence, and Kim appreciates him for that. Ron supports Kim through situations like talking to a boy, even if he doesn't necessarily get what she sees in them. There’s always been this underlying theme that they might have feelings for each other with things like A Sitch in TIme and the episode Emotion Sickness really emphasizing their relationship/potential feelings. It finally came to a head in So the Drama where Ron fully realized his feelings when Kim got a ‘perfect’ boyfriend. It has Kim stressing over prom and not wanting to go with he r’just a friend’ Ron, Ron feeling alone cause Kim barley pays him attention in a way that’s sympathetic and not asshole-ish, and it ends with Ron helping Kim back up at her lowest point, Kim realizing how Ron had always been there, and... well look at the screencap I used to see how it ended.

Kim and Ron complete each other. They bring out the best in each other and bring them back down when they go too far. They bicker, but they also support each other, even if they don’t always like what the other is doing. We get to see them together at their best and their worst, and it ends on a very satisfying note... and then S4 happened, but meh. It’s still a great ship with two really good characters, and ho boy do i still love it.

#8. Marinette Dupain-Cheng and Adrien Agreste + all other subsequent combos (Miraculous Ladybug)

Probably no surprise to my followers that this is on here... but some may raise a brow that it’s only at eight. To put it simply, with how the show has been going as of late, I have a LOOOOT of issues with it right now. But I want to use this to praise ships I like, not break them down so I’ll save that for another day.

This one is cute. Marinette is a good-hearted girl who has a huge crush on Adrien, while Adrien is in love with Mari’s superhero identity Ladybug. And with his hero identity of Cat Noir, we have one of the most insane love triangles in history. Adrinette, Maricat, Ladynoir, Ladrien, you get so many flavors of ships with just these two people! My favorite version is Ladrien since it’s the most natural imo and the one with equal pining, but they’re all the same two people so IDT it matters.

The show is about these two’s relationship. That is the heart of the show. Again, there are problems that I’m not going to go into, but overall I like them together. Marinette can get a little... too into her crush, but we do see that her feelings are genuine and it’s because Adrien showed her some kindness. While Adrien doesn't know that Mari is Ladybug, his feelings for Ladybug are because of her confidence and strength, which he starts to see in Mari too. This is the longest Slow Burn story ever and tbh, I want them to just go ahead and get on with it. But hey, I will find them cute and I like their interactions, so there’s that~

So of course a TMNT ship was going to end up on here. Now I almost put Apritello on here... but nowadays after all the recent stuff in the news, it’s... a little hard to look back on. So I tried to think of someone else, and while I considered Ramona... I decided to go with this:

#7. Hamato Yoshi/Master Splinter and Tang-Shen (TMNT 2012)

One episode.

The show had one episode to show these two’s relationship. Shen had been mentioned in the past, but this was the one and only time we’d get to see her. And OMG, did they pull it off perfectly.

They sold me on this romance in a single episode. Yoshi is a loving husband, but also tied to his fmaily loyalties even if it contradicts what Shen wants. Shen wants a happy life with her husband and child, but has to put up with Yoshi’s indecisiveness and she’s understandably fed up. They do a very good job of showing Shen as a strong-willed woman whose first priority is her daughter but that she does love Yoshi and is understanding. Yoshi is a very flawed person, but he does try to make it work and his love for his wife and daughter are very clear. It’s not perfect, no marriage is. But that love is so clear, and you can feel it every second that Tale of the Yokai plays.

TMNT 2012 has received many critiques in how it handled romance. It went too quick, the girls were reverted to just love interests, the boys are creepers, plenty of things. And they are understandable. But they clearly recognized that if they wanted this episode to leave the impact that they wanted, they had to make YOshi and Shen’s relationship strong. And they did. From beginning to end, you feel for both of them. Shen isn’t just some woman that existed for backstory, she had a personality and independence, which makes you care for her and about her relationship with Yoshi. And therefore, even though you know how it’s going to end, when Shen inevitably gets killed and you hear Yoshi just sob in despair, you’re sobbing right along with him. 

So yeah, I love these two. It’s tragic, but beautifully done. I love it~

#6. Edward Elric and Winry Rockbell (FMA: Brotherhood)

For the record, I am specifically talking about the Brotherhood version, not the 2003 version where their relationship went nowhere.

Okay, Ed and Winry. God I LOOOVE them. I know that Roy/Hawkeye is the favorite... but most of their relationship is left implied and open-ended with no actual ‘I love you’ or anything. So even if it was obvious what Arakawa was saying, I... felt like there wasn’t enough to make me care about them as a ship. Not the case with these two!

Their relationship is just so sweet. They’re childhood friends who both go through crap. Winry lost her parents at a young age, and Ed and Al’s mother died of illness and then the alchemy stuff happened and.. yeah. Throughout it all, Winry supported Ed and Al, helping Ed with his automail even when he keeps breaking t and supporting him through his quest to restore his and Al’s bodies. Throughout the series, Ed tries to support and protect Winry, especially when she tries to kill her parents killer and he talks her down. Overtime, they start recognizing their feelings and it was funny, cute, and after all the Hell everyne goes through, something that they deserved. 

The ending to Brotherhood, with Ed’s dorky proposal, is still one of the most heartwarming moments in anime period. Ed got the happy ending that he earned, Winry got to be with the boy that she supported through Hell and back, and it felt natural and super satisfying. It promised a happy future for everyone, and like everyone had truly earned their happy ending. We had gotten to see these two together, through both the good and bad, and how far they were willing to go for each other and their well-being. It’s just a super sweet romance, and I thank Brotherhood for existing so that we could have it.

I REALLY wish that I had more same-sex ships on here. But many of the more popular ones either are fetishisized, the actual work never had that intention, or the fandom got so rabid over it that it killed any potential enjoyment for me (looking at you Voltron). Doesn't help that in animation, there’s so few same-sex couples even if stuff like Steven Universe has been helping. But... I was able to think of one that I liked.

#5. Avatar Korra and Asami Sato (The Legend of Korra)

YOu have NO IDEA how happy I was when this became canon. Okay yes, I know that it wans’t said in the show, but Bryke confirmed it and explained why they couldn’t do anything more explict (Nick didn’t want to anger international audiences). As such, I am forgiving of it and still happy that it’s a thing.

While I liked The Legend of Korra (more than A:TLA even if it is the better show), they... sucked at romances. Dear God everything they did with Mako in S1 and 2, I do NOT even want to think over it. Let sput it this way, I got tired of the live triangle so much that I started crackshipping Korra and Asami together because they deserved SOMETHING happy. When S3 had them getting closer, I liked it as I liked seeing two girls just be friends and not over a boy... but I didn’t see it as shippy since I thought that there was no way that Nickelodoen would allow it, plus after the previous mess I didn’t want them to touch romance EVERY again with this series.

Then the S3 finale and start of S4 happened... and I seriously started wondering. Asami was the one specifically reaching out to and helping Korra after what the Red Lotus did. Asami was the only one that Korra tried to reach out to after she went home. They both seemed very happy to see each other again, and much of S4 is focuse don them together as well as the previous one. And, of course, the series ended specifically with them, just as A:TLA specifically ended with Aang and Katata. Like... when Korra suggsted jus tthe two of them went away for awhile and them just looking into each others eyes... yeah, it was obvious what they were trying to do. And I was sold.

I love these two together. Even if it started sour int he beginning, the two grew into close friends as things went on. They were supportive, protective, and caring towards one another at their best and worst moments. They’re booth strong young women who play a huge part in the world and can take care of themselves. Korra may be more tomboyish and Asami feminine, but they learn to respect each other and that slowly shifted into friendship, and ended with two former ‘rivals’ (it was pretty one-sided on Korra’s part tbf) over Mako becoming lovers. For what they were able to do, I thinkt hat Bryke did a good job, and I still love these two to this day.

Alright, I have to put a Disney Princess ship in here. But of course which one to pick? There’s Ariel/Eric, Tiana/Naveen, Aladdin/Jasmine, plenty to choose from. Since Mulan is my favorite, you’d think I’d go with her and Shang... but that really doesn't play a huge part in the movie imo. I did some thinking... and I finally made a conclusion.

#4. Rapunzel and Eugene (Tangled franchise)

Words cannot describe how much I love them. I’ll even go ahead and say it, they are THE best developed couple in any Disney film. Why?

In the original film, they play off each other well. Rapunzel is a naive girl who wants to see the lanterns, Flynn is a smug thief who bolsters himself up. Rapunzel is idealistic and positive, Flynn is sarcastic and more grounded to reality. They’re interactions in the beginning, such as Rapunzel freaking out and Flynn just looking stoic throughout is hilarious. But the movie shows has them grow to understand each other and learn form each other. Rapunzel becomes braver and more independent, while Flynn becomes more selfless and honest, even going back to being Eugene. They both are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for each other’s happiness, their love for each other shining brighter than the sun. THat love saves them both, and that alone is just beautifully done int he film.

Then the series happened, and it became better. Eugene is ready to take the next step, but Rapunzel is scared to and then her hair becomes magic again. Eugene? He accept sit. He’s willing to wait for however long it takes because he loves Rapunzel, and he’ll support her through everything. Even in the series, they both go out of their way for each other and try to support each other in any way that they can. There’s the occasional argument/disagreement, as with any couple, but it’s never devolves into sitcom-esque antics where you wonder why the hell they’re still together. At the end of the day, they are there for one another. Int he S2 premiere, Rapunzel goes to Hell and back to save Eugene form a forced marriage while Eugene makes it clear that he loves her and only her. It’s just SO GOOD to see a couple in a modern cartoon that I like together. Now since Happily Ever After exists, we know that they’ll get married eventually, but I can wait for the show to get there. I love seeing them, and God I aspire to have a romance like theirs one day.

#3. Jaune Arc and Pyrrha Nikos (RWBY)

TIME FOR ONE OF THOSE TRAGIC SHIPS AGAIN

God this ship... THIS SHIP. This was probably THE biggest ship (that isn’t Bumblebee) during RWBY’s early days. Jaune is a loser who forged his way into Beacon and feels like a constant failure... and his lack of fighting skill doesn’t help. As such, he ends up attracting the attention of Pyrrha, a well known and tainted fighter who helps him start to grow out of the kindness of her heart. It became clear that Pyrrha was growing feelings for Jaune... but Jaune was oblivious and crushing on another girl. Despite this, Jaune respected and cared for Pyrrha as he started to learn to recognize others feelings and during a school dance, Pyrrha expressed how Jaune not knowing of her fame and talking to her like a normal person is what attracted her to him. He didn’t treat her like a celebrity who was above anyone’s expectations, but just as some other girl, and that was what she wanted more than anything. And it ended with Jaune asking her... and wearing a dress. It makes sense in context.

Their relation was mutually supportive and provided growth for both of them. Jaune grew into not just a better fighter, but a better person as Pyrrha taught him to be more considerate and to recognize others feelings outside his own. Pyrrha had someone who made her feel normal and accepted as she pursued her goals of being a Huntress to help people. Which resulted in V3 when the Maiden offer comes, and for Pyrrha makes her doubtful and scared of her fate. She can’t tell Jaune, but he realizes that something is wrong and he tries to provide comfort, even telling her that she was the first and only person to believe in him, even over his own family. While it sadly ended badly when Pyrrha’s fears make her hurt him on accident and Jaune feeling like he messed up, it still really showed how much their relationship had grown, and after the Battle for Beacon commenced, Jaune comforted Pyrrha and got her back onto her feet.

But of course, as we know, Pyrrha ended up being killed... but not before kissing Jaune before launching him to safety. It left Jaune not only losing his friend and mentor, but realizing what Pyrrha’s true feelings were as well as recognizing his own. As we see, he struggles with this. How his closest friend lost her life and how much pains he was really in, how he now has to pick up the pieces as he gets lead into something much larger than anyone thought, and having to accept that Pyrhha knew fully well that she wasn't coming back. Thankfully, by V6, he came to realize that Pyrrha did what she did because she was a Huntress and regained his will to continue on, thanking her for making him a better person.

Arkos, to this day, makes me cry if I just so much as think about the end of V3. The two’s relationship was super sweet, Jaune’s idiocy throughout aside, and it was just nice to see these two grow from each other. It’s sad that Pyrrha died, but she went out doing what was right, and Jaune came out as a better person who will keep living his life. If he finds love again, I’m okay with that and it’ll show how he’s moving on as Pyrrha would want him to. But no one is ever going to forget Arkos, and for what we had of it, I’ll always cherish it.

#2. Dexter Grif and Richard ‘D*ck’ Simmons (Red vs Blue)

Okay, we all knew that this was going to be on here. It’s the ship I’m currently most focused on, and even the first I think that I gave a shipping tag to. I have talked about them multiple times. IDK if there’s anything new that I can add because I’ve said just about everything. But I guess in the spirit of things, I’ll go over it again.

This ship has broken every issue with shipping I’ve ever had. I normally don’t ship non-canon pairs, but Dear God I love them. I don’t normally seems fandoms use them just to have hot boy/boy stuff and I have NEVER seen any shipping wars concerning it that turned me off. In fact, fandom is what got me into this ship. When I binged it, I just saw them as two guys who love to hate each other... but the fandom did a really good job in convincing me that they were in love. S15 helped with that with how Simmons reacted to Grif quitting, and Grif clearly missing Simmons more than anyone and even leaving him out when he says he hates everyone later. But since until then the writers seemed uninterested in developing Red Team, I had to turn to fanficiton for it. And many gave them so much depth and their relationship as a result felt so much stronger and meaningful to me. This is the very rare time where fandom concerted me.

These guys are assholes. Grif is a lazy jerk, and Simmons is a kissassing rule-follower. Yet they compliment each other perfectly. They argue and bicker frequently, but it feels so natural and it just... works. And overtime, we see their relationship go from just kinda being stuck together to being actual friends. S16 really showed how much healthier and positive it was as the two matured, Simmons becoming more independent and Grif starting to actually try and work through stuff. Their characters got stronger, and as such theyre bond got stronger. Even if that doesn't necessarily have a spotlight put on it, form just their interactions, you can just see it.

I cannot imagine these two without each other, at least for an extended period. They work great as individual characters, but are even better when together. They balance each other. They, in their weird way, support each other. They have been through nearly EVERYTHING in the series together and they’d absolutely do anything to protect each other. They may suck at expressing all of that, but it’s okay. We all know. I love them, and I just hope that RT will allow it to be canon one of these days... I’ll wait~

Honorable Mentions

Sakura Kinomoto/Syaoran Li (Cardcaptor Sakura)

Greg Universe/Rose (Steven Universe)

Ichigo Kurosaki/Orihime Inoue (Bleach)

Arnold Shortman/Helga Pataki (Hey Arnold)

Candace Flynn/Jeremy Johnson (Phineas and Ferb)

Yugi Mutou/Anzu Masaki (Yu-Gi-Oh)

Ash Ketchum/Misty (Pokemon)

Max Goof/Roxanne (A Goofy Movie)

Mickey/Minnie (Disney)

Various other Disney ships

Inuyasha/Kagome Higurashi (Inuyasha)

Jake Long/Rose (American Dragon: Jake Long)

Superman aka Clark Kent/Lois Lane (Superman franchise)

Robin/Starfire (Teen Titans)

April O’Neil/Casey Jones (TMNT 2003)

Chris Kratt/Aviva Corocvado (Wild Kratts)

Sunset Shimmer/Human Twilight Sparkle (Equestria Girls)

Shining Armor/Princess Cadence (MLP:FIM)

And I’m probably forgetting a lot but this post is already super long and I can’t remember everything, so... onto Number One!

Grimmons was VERY close to being Number One since it is my current obsession. But then I remembered one other... and I HAD to make it Number One. It is something that I have followed along since I learned what fandoms were, and whenever I think of true love... this is the couple that appears in my mind. I could not leave it off, or not give it the top spot. So my friends, I present to you my Favorite Ship:

#1. Usagi Tsukino/Sailor Moon and Mamoru Chiba/Tuxedo Mask (Sailor Moon)

Ah, Sailor Moon, my first fandom. My childhood. My love. The series that taught me about love... even when I didn’t care about Usagi and Mamoru’s relaitonship. So it being Number 1 is probably a surprise... but I shall explain.

As a kid... and for the most part as an adult, I am more invested in the girls relationships than about Usagi and Mamoru. It doesn't help that in the 90′s anime, it was the standard ‘these two bicker a lot’ scenario and then it felt more like they only loved each other cause they did in the past. Then R had that stupid break-up plot that I still despise to this very day. Fortunately it was better in the following seasons, S was especially overall super sweet, but... well, it felt forced, stereotypical, and like their love existed because of past memories. Even as a little girl... it just didn’t feel right.

Then I read the manga. And it was SOOOO much better!

While I do still find the romance rushed int he manga, it felt much mroe natural. The two don’t argue like five year olds. They took at least a little time to get to know each other, and uncovered each other’s identities BEFORE the memories came back. As such, when they did regain them after Mamoru got hurt, it felt more like the past just strengthened the love. it showed that it would last throughout the ages. They already recognized their feelings prior, rushed as it was imo, and made it feel more genuine. In the subsequent arcs, they don’t have stupid breakup arcs or a forced love triangle in the final arc. There are issues, very stupid opens (Usagi getting jealous of her future daughter for example), but their love stands strong, they support and protect each other, and they just grow stronger as a result.

This is probably THE most famous anime romance in existence, and it’s not hard to see why. Even if I have issues in how it came to be, their relationship is shown as equal and supportive. It has been something that I’ve followed since I was five years old. Flr what I said about the 90′s anime, I did still like it and I’ve only grown to care about it more over the years... even if I still care more about the Senshi. Still, it’s a classic and to me, is still the one and only Miracle Romance

And that is the list! Trying to go through every fandom I was ever into to remember what I shipped was HAAARD. But I really enjoyed making this list and getting to revisit all of them again. I might do more Top 10′s in the future, so if you guys would like to see me do anything specific, feel free to reply/ask me! Thank you all for reading, and Happy Valentines Day everyone! 💕💕💕

[todorokiprotectionsquad]

i need help!! i love todoroki as much as u do and i also love your posts, but for some reason i feel kinda bitter when i see todomomo, i appreciate the ship as a brotp and i respect it as a romantic one, but i want to get rid of my bitterness towards the ship :(( can you help me? (i'm a tododeku shipper tbh and for some reason i am fine with izuocha, but not tdmm)

ahh sure! i hope this helps, cute non~ 

(more under the cut!)

first, i want to say that i’m grateful that you still appreciate and respect tdmm!!!! that part is so important since there are a lot of people who don’t accept other people’s preferences..! that being said, i think an important part of being.. unaffected/not bitter (?) towards ships that you don’t particularly prefer is respecting each character individually. like, maybe do spend some time in the yaomomo tag? she and todoroki are individually great characters! 

momo is:

kind and cares about her classmates

part of the bakugou rescue squad despite not really interacting with him much previously 

committed to heroics and doing whats right! she has a strong sense of justice

really cool quirk. she’s so smart

has to understand the foundation of everything she creates.. her quirk itself has so much potential, but so much of it depends on a insane brain capacity. the fact that she can make any nonliving thing, from clothing to fullsized canons?? that’s incredible……

is doing her best!!!

absolute cutie

on todoroki’s end of this, i just.. love him so much. i like to see him happy and healthy, and so i don’t mind any relationship that supports his well being. i think that’s why i can accept so many todoships… even if i don’t really like them or actively think about them. for example!!!! i really like.. don’t ship tddk at all. but i understand that the basis for the ship is solid and they have a good relationship so!!! since it’s healthy and cute, i show support for it (:

so that leads into thiiiiis, the basis for tdmm! i’ll just list a few common reasons people seem to like tdmm. when you think about it, it’s actually similar to tddk. oh and i threw some headcanons in there because.. why not lol

trope type perks: rich kid couple. oblivious couple. aesthetic and fashion couple. iconic babies wearing each other’s turtlenecks. red n blue. pure

i like to imagine that momo knew todo before they started at yuuei. (iida too for that matter). with both their families in the sort of elitist class, i imagine little momo seeing little todo at parties and stuff. noticing when his mood changed. being scared to death for him when she sees that big bandage over half his body, and shocked when she sees the size of his scar. baby momo trying to befriend and comfort little todo after she hears his mama was taken away.. 

the end of term arc. that’s a turning point for a lot of people!!! 

todoroki turns around and throws his confidence and support to momo, similar to how deku did to him (on a smaller scale) 

momo is smart. she’s so smart, but she lacks confidence. todoroki is similar, incredibly powerful and tactic, but lacked trust in himself. it took a friend for todoroki to start reaching his full potential, and it’s the same for momo.. todoroki was that friend

she knew how to win, what to do when they fought aizawa. but she was so unsure of herself. it took todoroki telling her, hey, sorry for not hearing you out, your idea is great and you should go for it!!! it took a friend to push her forward, and that companionship was found with todoroki

todo gets so flustered and blushy when she actually plays out her plan!!!! like really!!!!! shy boy

TODOROKI VOTED FOR MOMO FOR CLASS PRESIDENT

and then u get the cute comfort scene, with him offering momo a massage and being totally oblivious to her blush

they seem to hang around each other a lot, and it’s comfortable. they seem to be natural friends

sit together in class

subunit for the bakugou rescue squad 

similar fashion sense

they live on the same floor at the dorm!!! fifth floor friends who can walk to the cafeteria and to classes and whatnot together uwu

thEY HAD THAT WHOLE AUDIO SHORT WHERE THEY GO TO THE FESTIVAL TOGETHER

i think todo even mentioned something about momo in her yukata.. cuties 

they sneak each other a lot of little… looks

there’s another few of momo shooting todo some looks but i can’t find the screencaps rn 

momo seems to worry for todoroki a lot, and likewise? after initially breaking the ice during the final exam arc, he seems to pick up on when momo’s gears are turning

momo is very observant and admires todoroki a lot!!! she respects his opinions and struggles and is always saying how impressive he is. they just seem close!!!! she is so sweet and shy and todo is so oblivious but kind towards her ajdfioajdf LOTS of potential for fluff here 

edit: i forgot to mention, but sometimes it’s fun to look through ship tags and you see that one piece of art, or read that one fic that really gets you. so i’ll recommend some todomomo content creators real quick: kitanoko (url used to be todomomo!!!! they’ve got a ton of tdmm and they write)!, altruisticshouto - they have a sideblog dedicated to tdmm too i think it’s antitodomomo or something, there’s also i-am-the-altman (writing), uhhhh selephi (artist), panchi-disco (artist), hazel0217 (artist), a lot of really talented friends!! also i have more tdmm on my main, (yaomomochi) and sometimes i write!!!! key word sometimes

anyway tdmm is my bnha otp so of course i’m like, over here overflowing with love and support for them both!!!!!!!!! there’s really nothing *bad* or questionable about this ship. it’s very straightforward and healthy imo, without any obvious critiques or controversy or potential strain on either characters. i like it a lot~ i hope this helped, a little?! i’m happy you’re trying to reach out to tdmm a bit!!!! ♡

[michelles-garden-of-evil]

Episode 15 Review: Diegesis in a Strange Paradise

{ YouTube: 1 | 2 }

{ Synopses: Debby Graham | Bryan Gruszka }

{ Screencaps }

Introducing Vangie’s father, the Conjure Man.

We open to the sound of some funky drums as a mysterious old man in a toga-like garment conducts a religious ritual, swaying his stiff limbs as strange lamps burn on an altar in the background. He lays down exhausted on a straw mat as Vangie enters.

“Good,“ says the old man, “you’re just in time.” In the background, the drums continue beating, which makes me wonder: can he hear the drums and, if so, where is the music coming from? If you’ve read my reviews of previous episodes, you’ll know that I like to analyze which elements on this show are diegetic and which are not--which, most of the time, is surprisingly hard to determine.

For those who don’t already know or who want a more in-depth explanation than I’ve previously given, diegesis is a mode of storytelling that shows the actions of a story from the characters’ point of view (the diegetic or intradiegetic level), as opposed to that of an outside narrator (the extradiegetic level). The narrator writes about what the character sees, hears, thinks, and feels, without stylizing it or filtering it through an outside perspective. In literature, this kind of narrative is easy to spot and usually takes either a first-person or third-person limited perspective--or, more rarely, a second-person perspective. A third-person omniscient narrative can be purely diegetic, but only if the narrator doesn’t add their personal opinions or interpretations of the characters to the story.

In theater, film, and TV, determining what elements of a narrative are diegetic is more difficult, because the dramatic arts all rely on extradiegetic storytelling to some degree. The writer(s) and director(s) take on the role of narrator and have to communicate the characters’ experience to the audience in a way that they will understand, often relying on theatrical conventions that aren’t realistic but help them communicate the characters’ thoughts and feelings better.* One example relevant to soap operas like this one is backacting**, which “is to stage a scene so both actors are facing the camera...The idea is that it has the benefit of getting both character’s [sic] faces full on in the shot, so you get the full impact of their acting and/or emoting.” Obviously, most people don’t turn away from the people they’re talking to in real life, and most soap characters probably wouldn’t, either, if they were real people. This makes backacting non-diegetic.

My favorite example of backacting on this show, from Episode 5.

So far under my diegesis tag, I’ve examined Jacques Eloi des Mondes’ vanishing portrait and his ring to determine whether or not those were diegetic. The portrait vanishing is diegetic in the Paperback Library novels based on the show, and we know this because multiple characters reference it. Take, for example, this scene from the first book:

They started to leave the room, but Diana stopped short to stare at the frame where the portrait of Jacques Eloi des Mondes was plainly revealed when she entered the hall. "That's strange," she said, frowning. "I'd have sworn there was a portrait in that frame." A hand took her elbow gently and words were spoken so close to her ear that warm breath touched her earlobe. "But no. It was taken out to be cleaned and will be restored shortly. How attractive you are when you look perplexed, my dear." ***

On the show, however, it’s non-diegetic. No one ever mentions the portrait disappearing and as early as Episode 6, the crew stop removing it when Jacques possesses Jean Paul. Less than two weeks later, his handsome face stays smirking inside the frame whether or not his spirit is inside Jean Paul’s body. When he possesses him, the camera still cuts to the shot of the blank portrait, but the portrait itself is still visible on the set and to the characters. In Episode 12 where Jacques controls Jean Paul for the entire episode, Holly has a short scene where she discusses how much he resembles his descendant, and the portrait is visible--and that’s just one example of many.

The ring, in contrast, is diegetic, which we know because Elizabeth mentions it in Episode 13. It later appears in Episode 68 where Raxl tries to sacrifice it to the Great Serpent. But it also appears for a short time on another character’s hand in Episode 59 before disappearing again, and I’m not sure if that part was intended to be diegetic or merely symbolic of Jacques’ alliance with said character. (I think that, in that instance, it’s supposed to be the latter.)

And now we return to the Conjure Man and the unseen drums in the background of his introduction scene. We know from Episode 12 that Raxl and Quito have tried contacting him through voodoo rituals, which involved (among other things) Quito beating a drum. While I doubt that a hypothetical ordinary human would hear the drums if they were to spy on him, it is possible that he can hear them (either literally or telepathically) thanks to his supernatural powers. If this is true, then the music is diegetic whether or not any other characters could hear it, because at least one character does.

Alternatively, the Conjure Man could have the power to make drums beat on his own, or create music out of thin air like the ghosts in this fun Dark Shadows episode. Kind of a stretch, but it is a fantasy show, and I’m willing to suspend my disbelief in any fantasy elements as long as I think they’re cool. I don’t understand why some other fantasy fans need a pseudo-scientific explanation for fantastic elements in stories; just tell me “this man, who is over 300 years old, has the power to summon drum noises at will” and I’ll gladly accept it, no questions asked. It’s a fantasy story; we don’t need to know the pseudo-physics involved.

Or maybe the music is just regular, incidental, non-diegetic music and I’m just overanalyzing again (which is probably the truth). Whatever. I’d rather spend my free time writing about Strange Paradise than have a social life. ;)

Vangie and the Conjure Man.

Anyway, the Conjure Man tells Vangie that he foresees that he will die soon and therefore she, his sole heir, must become the Conjure Woman. Vangie doesn’t want to, saying “I don’t believe.” However, her father insists that she is best because she “know[s] this modern world” and is “trained for the future when man will wake up to the network of his own mysticism.” (A possible reference to the idea of the Age of Aquarius or the New Age movement in general?) Vangie replies that, although she believes in telepathy and ESP, she does not believe in witchcraft because “its roots are in the past.”

“Where could you find roots, but in the past?” asks the Conjure Man, chewing the scenery. “How can a tree grow without roots? How can you deny your own destiny? Yours is a gift of giving, Vangie. Don’t deny that.”

“I don’t want it!”

“You can’t escape it!” He tries to stand up, but can’t, and tells Vangie the messages or “truths” that he has received. “On Maljardin, the Devil is loose again.” The drums intensify. “Your minister will be sent for. The forces of evil have drawn a battle line between God and the Devil!”

I like this screencap. Taken out of context, it looks like Alison is doing a Raxl impression.

On the cursed isle of Maljardin, Jean Paul and Alison meet in the Great Hall for some recap. Alison repeats her intention to stay, but insists that Jean Paul promise her some things. This pisses off THE DEVIL JACQUES ELOI DES MONDES, who decides to take over and listen to the conditions instead, making Jean Paul look like a fool in the process:

Condition #1: Jean Paul informs Erica’s and her father of Erica’s death.

Jacques’ response:

Trolling Alison by suggesting her father might help with his insane cryonics scheme.

Alison objects, saying that her father knows that cryonics is a pseudoscience. “There’s always a beginning,” Jacques replies, mocking her. “Aren’t you proud that your sister is one of its pioneers?”

This pisses her off, understandably. “I was a fool to stay here,” she remarks. But he just keeps talking, first about how no word of the cryonics experiment must leak out (again) and then about transplants (also again). They discuss a brain transplant experiment involving bird embryos by a Yugoslavian scientist named Pavlovic, which actually happened, but with a low survival rate. Clearly Ian Martin did some research on organ transplants, and one has to wonder if he knew of the failures and deliberately used them to foreshadow problems with Erica’s resurrection.

Condition #2: That he bring a minister to Maljardin to conduct a funeral service for Erica.

Jacques’ response: More denial that Erica is dead, plus this argument:

Insane troll logic: “If a man landed on the moon, that means we have achieved the impossible, which in turn means that nothing is impossible. If nothing is impossible, then Erica can come back to life.”

Alison accuses him of denying God, to which he responds that “He and I aren’t exactly on speaking terms.” (Gotta love Jacques dropping hints about his identity.) Cut back to the Conjure Man:

Any idea what any of this means?

The Conjure Man is busy serving Vangie a nice nutritious plate of word salad as he slowly passes over to the spirit world and YouTube’s automatic captions gleefully obscure the meaning of his words even more. The actual line doesn’t make much more sense than this, speaking of a “conqueror of mist” and other mystical-sounding stuff that is most likely nonsense. And he doesn’t deliver it well, because...well...he’s just not a very good actor.

Jacques: “We are not amused. No...wait...” *snickers* “...Actually, we are.” (Note: He doesn’t actually say this, but he should have.)

Jean Paul recovers and promises to bring Matt to the island, while the Conjure Man continues giving Vangie instructions. He tells her to bring the Knight of Pentacles--which Vangie identifies with Dan Forrest--to Maljardin. I need to remember to write a post analyzing all the Tarot symbolism used sometime in the near future, which I keep putting off doing, but I will say that the description of the card at the randomly-selected Tarot website I linked to does indeed sound like a description of Dan.

At the French Leave Café--otherwise completely deserted save for Quito and the bartender--Jean Paul meets up with Matt. He orders a gin and tonic, which suggests that he was already a heavy drinker before Jacques started quaffing brandy all the time while in his body. (Speaking of which, why do the characters on this show and Dark Shadows just leave decanters of brandy sitting out where anyone can slip poison, drugs, or magical potions in them? I can understand why Roger Collins on DS does it because he doesn’t have a brain, but Jean Paul allegedly has an IQ of 187, so he has no excuse.) During their otherwise rather dull conversation, Jean Paul explains that he retreated to Maljardin six months earlier because he had been stalked by the news media his entire life and wanted some privacy.

He asks Matt to come to Maljardin, which he assumes has to do with Holly and probably gets a little too excited (if you know what I mean) before Jean Paul disappoints him by refusing to tell until he promises to keep the real reason a secret. But Matt insists on knowing beforehand and is shocked when Jean Paul reveals that he wants him to hold a funeral for Erica “until the day she rises again and returns to me.” The Reverend decides to humor him, most likely because sailing to the island means seeing Holly again, and he leaves to pack.

Jean Paul is reminded once again that Jacques is slowly ruining his life. He may sit on the big, fancy wicker throne now, but soon enough, the handsome devil is bound to kick the throne out from under him.

After he’s gone, Vangie shows up and so does Dan, which pisses off Jean Paul. Dan confronts his boss about the signature that he left on those business documents back in Episode 4, and Jean Paul lies and claims that he signed Jacques’ name because he “didn’t like the deal.” Dan expresses his worries about both Alison (his fiancée, in case you have forgotten) and the warnings that Vangie gave him about Jacques’ return, which I think is when Jean Paul must realize that Jacques did something with the letter that Alison wrote to Dan that made Vangie concerned (although I doubt he knows what).

We cut to the Conjure Man chanting a spell about a “mild zephyr [that] shall conquer the mist” and a “cooling breeze.” But the spell is not effective, because look who just arrived at the party:

Jacques: “You’ve overstepped yourself, Dan. Go home; you’re not needed here.” *sips gin and tonic with affectedly bored expression*

Dan demands information about what is happening to Alison. Jacques refuses, saying, “That’s none of your business.”

"I am your business!” Dan shouts. “I thought you were mine."

"You presumed wrong!"

"Then let us end this business relationship.” (I see what you did there, Mr. Martin.) “What about Alison?"

“Alison is also no longer any of your business, either.”

“What do you mean?”

Jacques stands up, as though trying to intimidate him. “Get out of my life. And hers.” And he turns and begins to walk out.

“Take your job,” Dan shouts, “and I’ll take Alison!” Good luck taking her back while she’s Jacques’ prisoner detained guest.

“Don’t be a fool, Dan! You’ve worn out your welcome on Maljardin.” I didn’t know you could wear out your welcome before you even arrived.

“You won’t get rid of me that easily. I’m coming, too!” Quito stops him by holding stiff zombie fingers in his face.

Jacques grinning smugly while Quito keeps Dan from following them.

“It could be your last trip, Dan,” Jacques sneers and leaves Alison’s estranged and far less attractive fiancé behind to rant to Vangie about how he intends to find out WTF Jean Paul is hiding “even if [he has] to blow up his lousy island.” Meanwhile, Vangie reads her Tarot cards and reveals that the King of Coins is endangering Alison’s life.

“But who is he?”

What does this have to do with diegesis, you ask? Well, not much at this point, save that, if Dan could only hear Jacques’ minor-key leitmotif playing in the background right at this moment--that is to say, if the non-diegetic music were only diegetic--he would know exactly whom Vangie means.

Jacques cheerfully tearing up a letter after slicing it open with the world’s biggest letter opener.

Join us again on Friday for the funniest of this week’s bad subtitles, and then again next week for my review of Episode 16.

Coming up: Reverend Matt Dawson’s arrival on Maljardin makes shock-waves and Raxl receives an important message.

Notes

* For more information about diegesis (and where I first learned of the concept), see also Joel Schumacher’s Phantom of the Opera: A Video Essay by Lindsay Ellis. The video deals in part with diegetic vs. non-diegetic songs in musicals and why this doesn’t always translate well to live-action film. The segment on diegesis starts at 5:55.

** The author of the blog post I linked to cites Danny Horn of Dark Shadows Every Day (the direct inspiration for this blog) as their source for the origin of the term “backacting.” I can’t verify that Danny invented the term, but most of the few relevant results I was able to find on Google were from his blog, so it’s likely he did. On a random note, when you search “backacting ‘soap operas,’” one of the suggested searches is “dark shadows cat,” which I absolutely adore.

*** Dorothy Daniels, Strange Paradise (New York: Paperback Library, 1969), 66.

{ <-- Previous: Episode 14   ||    Next: Episode 16 --> }

[dukeofriven]

Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup, and I am going to try and make the words flow out of m and onto the internet as I continue my insanely popular Voltron liveblog. We’re knee deep in the bowls of depression right now - on top of everything else I just went from thirty five hours a week to five plus expenses - but damnit, I miss Pidge. I miss Pidge, and I feel like doing this liveblog is important. It’s a promise I made to myself, and even though writing feels like shit because everything feels like shit, I want to keep watching the show. So let’s keep going. (Picking up with these screencaps I took almost a full month ago.

I... suddenly can’t remember this guy’s name. No joke. He’s not Lance, Pidge, Hulk, or Shiro - I remember dull-ass Shiro’s name but this guy... his name is... .... Kevin? NO KEITH. Right, the worst sci-fi name around. He pilots the Red Lion, which has the power of being ambiguously faster that the other Lions.

I still don’t understand how those levers help you pilot these bloody things. The control system makes no sense.

STAAAAMMMMOOOOOSSSSSSS.... oh, Santos. Never mind.

I don’t remember if I had a funny joke to go with this image - probably something about Pidge running-in to the Junkions? - but it sure looks pretty.

Their they are. My precious, perfect young adult, who also clearly believes that all the Lions flying out of the castle because the doors weren’t closed is hella stupid. Did you know that ‘precious, perfect young adult’ sounds far creepier than ‘precious, perfect child’? It’s true!

Something something Wreck-Gar.

Pidge is already bored by this ‘let’s split everyone up because of Dumb Reasons’ plot.

Look! Look how done they are! So done. I love Pidge so much.

Season 2: The UI is still stupid and see-through.

Season 2: they’ve done nothing to justify their presence, but we still got the mice. Of course we do.

[pixelprinny]

Yet even more WoW thoughts

I’m back once again with WoW on the brain because I’m dumb. Watched a vid posted by Bellular, as I’m wont to do, about changes and things he’d like to see come 8.0 and he gave me a bit of food for thought.

The idea of ditching our artifact weapons and crafting a new even better weapon would be a cool alternative to throwing em away and going back to standard old weapons. Will they do that? We’ll just hafta wait and see, although it seems kind of pointless, doesn’t it? 

“Okay, you threw away yer old artifact weapon, now craft another one that’s basically the same.” Sure, they could open up more customization and different leveling or something, but they could just do that with the current weapons, too, no? Although considering a number of weapons are tied to old gods and such (like the shadow priest dagger) maybe it’s better to just get rid of em and not have weird story threads left danging (not like Blizz is any stranger to that, amirite?!) But yeah, that’d be cool.

Also, while I personally don’t see them ditching legendaries now that they’ve opened the flood gates, I’m in agreement that giving legendaries out as random drops was dumb (I think I said disappointing but inevitable) but the abilities attached to them are cool. I think I mentioned it woulda been better if the weapon relics had those abilities tied to them and it’d be nice to see that sorta system come with 8.0 if we keep artifact weapons of some sort.

-------------------------------------

MMO-Champ posted screencaps of some weird flavor pamplets that’ll be showing up in 7.3 involving doomsayers.... Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh. 

Please, Blizzard, PLEASE PLEASE PLEEEEEEEASE don’t bring back the fucking Twilight Cult. For the love of everything, please fucking don’t. They completely ruined Cataclysm even before Cataclysm was out. The prelaunch event with their little cult hanging outside Stormwind and Orgrimmar was so asinine and such a horrible harbinger of the things Blizz had in mind for the story.

The cult’s whole thing was, “We’re all doomed, so let’s just get it over with.”  Because all these assholes can’t be bothered with just drinking the fucking Koolaid and killing themselves, they gotta join the very powers that they say are going to end the world and help to bring about its end. Fucking what? The Twilight Cult was so horribly, horribly written.

The cult’s logic is essentially a bunch of suicidal people who, rather than forming a suicide pact, decide “Fuck the world” and try to blow everything up instead of just themselves. I dunno bout you, but I have a feeling that vast majority of suicidal people would rather just kill themselves. Sure, you’ll have one or two outliers that shoot up a shopping mall or a school before killing themselves, but these people are rogue psychopaths who don’t associate with well organized groups. They’d be just as likely to go ballistic in said group and would ultimately be a huge liability.

Worse still, the Twilight Cult came off the heels of the Cult of the Damned who reappeared in the Frozen Throne (after taking a break since WC3). Like all the fucked up “let’s just die people” went from one cult to another? It was so absurd. How is there ANYONE left with this kind of attitude after we’ve wiped out not one, but two insanely large cults? Not to mention all the fuckheads who joined the Burning Legion, itself!

Oh and I love the color purple, but with the Twilight Cult came all these hideous purple armor sets that were ugly as fuck. Lots of sickness green and putrid purples. Can we please not go through that again? Not all of us want our characters to look like fucking Cthulhu. 

Sorry, the Twilight Cult is one of those subjects that gets me really riled up, and it’s a shame, too, because in vanilla, when they’d show up, it was cool. It was like, “Who are these weird cultists and what are they doing around a giant sword in Darkshore or out in Silithus?” But then Cataclysm came along and suddenly there were more Twilight Cultists in the world than there were citizens of all the major cities combined, and apparently the majority of people on Azeroth wanted to help the world burn. *Facepalms*

In any case, I’m holding out hope that the Twilight Cult or whatever the fuck they call the cult this time won’t have nearly as big a presence as it did in Cataclysm, but we shall see.... We shall see......

Speaking of “how are there any of these kinds of people left”, I’m still wondering how there’s really many Orcs left after the Siege of Orgrimmar. It woulda been cool if the Frostwolf clan came to Azeroth to help repopulate Org after, yknow, we essentially purged the world of the majority of orcs, but that was never addressed. 

Same with how are the Forsaken still around when the main crux of their story is the fact they can’t repopulate. You’d think all the Horde vs Alliance and baddie invasions woulda thinned them out pretty significantly by now.  Better not to think about that kinda stuff in a fantasy game, I suppose.

-----------------------------------

In non-WoW news, had a weird dream where I was on a road trip with a buncha internet friends. Apathy and Ossi were doin something, dammit I forget what now, while JL and I were watching some weird Astroboy robot singing at this tennis court / Japanese high school class hybrid room...? At some point some of the girls came over to me and asked if they could touch my hair and then proceeded to braid it, while JL got up and sang with the robot and Ossi and Apathy continued doing whatever they were doing... it involved an RV, I think... and getting pancakes? Also, we were at the border of Canada/US going through customs just before this. 

It was weird, okay?! Baiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii~

[16-gauge]

27kra analysis frame by frame, turns out fake + turns out a footage taken from a horror movie - ???

Hello TJLC conspirators and all people still digging to find some explanation for all that season 4 mess. Although I checked out your blogs and read metas from a long time, I didn't have my own account, and the reason I decided to start one is something I recently noticed, which may or may not give some clues about something, i don't know. I may be right, I may be terribly wrong, whatever, but the whole conspiracy itself is already one big madness, so I might as well drop something which may seem crazy or irrelevant to me...

People probably already analyzed it a hundred times, but I'd like to come back to the subject of thelostspecial.com and the whole 27kra thing. It's unknow whether it's a real official site established to mess with our minds, or an incredibly well done and entertaining fan made, but I think there's something weird going on and the site's content is definitely worth checking out. When you type thelostspecial.com/27kra/ you get a rather spooky, The Lost Highway-ish kind of gif which consists mainly of VHS-type glitches. Since I'm a huge fan of VHS, super 8, analog formats and all those glitches and deformations related them, I decided to split the gif into frames and look at them closer. Here I'm going to analyze what is visible on those frames (or maybe, what I can see). I won't go on with guessing 27kra name, I'll concern strictly on the gif's content. There's something that I noticed that I didn't see mentioned anywhere on Tumblr (though I may be wrong and it could have been written already, and then I'm sorry for making sensations over old news). Okay, here it goes.

I'm going to post the frames in order. I'm going to write what I see on those pictures, which of course doesnt mean it's right or anything cause other ones might see it completely different, and of course we cannot be sure of anything at all.

First off, we see something that looks like an entrance, or an exit, and a chunk of the corridor behind the "door". That's the first thing that came to my mind. It somehow made me think of Sherrinford, all that simple architecture, corridors and portals, etc., probably because of those numbers visible on the top and the bottom of the footage, it all reminds me of some sort of CCTV footage.

Next frame is just glitches... or maybe something more? If you look closer it seems like some very blurry footage of some room. You can see the black doors in the right corner of the photo, and just next to doors (or maybe a window?) on the left you can see a dark rectangle which might be a tv screen. Then there's something dark on the left side, and on the bottom there's something like a... white bottle??? Or just a bottle-looking glitch, which seems more probable. I swear at first I considered it just a composion of glitches, but now I see it as a room.

Then there's THIS WEIRD SHIT. It appears at least four times in different variations, so I'm going to discuss it later. To see description scroll this writing. Now I'll pass onto the next frame.

Glitches... anyone can see something in there?

"TV room" comes back again.

What the hell is that. A table with some books/CDs/packages (with some metal holders?)? And with something round? And on the left side there's something like a floor and the wall? It seems as if someone took a photo of table (or whatever it is) standing just by this table. Table. Why am I even calling it a table? What the fuck is that? SOmEBODY HELP

Beautiful colorful smear of I don't know what. Althought some people claim to see something in there.

A more blurry version of the "table". I know it's not a table - I hope someone enlighten me wtf it is.

???

And then there's something that probably everyone already noticed. An eye. Or THE eye. I've seen people writing it's Moriarty, well, that's also the the first thing that came to my mind. I tried to find some photo of Moriarty looking down (sort of) so I could compare those pictures - I admit you guys are better at finding needed photos/screencaps, here's the best I could find:

I cut it just to have an eye in the center. Not exactly the same position, but it doesn't matter. I think they didn't show him with eyebrows cause it wouldn't be easier to see the similarity (IF there are some THEY, IF it is who we think it is.) Containing Moriarty in the footage would be a real sign that something wicked this way comes. But, I don't know. Someone told me it might be John Watson's eye, which would fit the shot-in-the-eye theory. What do you think about it?

Another (or the very same room). A kind of cluttered room...

This one seems like a look at the room from above, maybe another CCTV angle. I think it's the more visible version of the previous.What the fuck is that? A sofa? A coffeetable? Why am I seeing tables everywhere? And what's that purple thing?

AND FINALLY SOMETHING FUCKY

Please let me paste the frame which I passed Here's what follows just after the CCTV-looking frame

I may be going mad but ISN'T IT A FUCKING FACE IN HERE?! I mean-

That's how i see it. The face seems to be tilted back. If you look at the higher resolution screen you can see it seems nose-like and eye-like. The "hair" seem to be long and straight, so it's a woman? Not a woman? Eurus? Not Eurus? Whoever? Or is it just glitches? But if you look at other frames by the end of the gif you can see "the face" sort of MOVES:

It's tilted back a little bit more and turned in its left a little. Here's the same thing in negative:

The things that follow:

BUT! I just now got this one idea... a crazy, fucked up idea, it definitely is insane and probably wrong, but...

Of course, of course I know it might me fake, something put together by some Sherlock fan, or whatever the fuck else. But something tells me it's not. This COULD be the real thing, right? So, what does it tell us, fans/The Great Game players? At best: something's coming, something's happening, you're on the right path. At worst: someone's mocking us and though to me it's highly enjoyable, it's not Mofftis and we're seeing things (IT'S JUST THAT THERE'S TOO MUCH OF THOSE SUPPOSEDLY NONEXISTENT THINGS TO SEE, COUGH COUGH). Either way, we're being experimented on. I don't know about you, but either way it's awesome. For the first time from a long time i'm having real fun, and trust me, that's a lot. But, for real. If it's just a fake and we're all wrong, I would be highly disappointed. THIS ALL IS TOO GREAT, TO GENIUS, TOO ENJOYABLE TO RESULT IN NOTHING. And it means I've spent four hours on putting together a writing about something that doesn't exist. To be honest, I've spent too much time on analyzing unreal things and searching for subliminal satanic messages in something very fucked up just to aknowledge it was all in vain. And now I'm just too mindfucked over this and other things that all of you post every day... Maybe I got excited over something not relevant or already discussed, i don't know, you decide. But i needed to throw it out somewhere. Please tell me what you think about it, and if you have something new to add about it or ask me about anything don't be afraid to do it. I'm more than eager to discuss with you guys. Maybe I sound like a crazy person but it's their fault, not ours, right?

originally posted by allthesherlockgifs

I'm new here but I decided to tag people that I followed before I even made and account and that I consider awesome meta writers - I'm not asking for attention, I just want to get in touch with people interested in investigating this difficult and mysterious™ case. So here it goes:

the-7-percent-solution   tjlc    jenna221b   inevitably-johnlocked     waitedforgarridebs       marcespot   marcelock teapotsubtext      

Congratulations and thanks to those who got through it and are still with me. Don't judge me too hard, I'm shy and confused but yeah, here's all of that, maybe someone finds it interesting. - Bloody

---------------------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE: Guys it's solved. There's nothing in there. It turned out that most of those glitches can be easily found on Youtube as free samples of vhs glitches, except for the supposed "Moriarty's eye". I apologize for raising hopes and making some of you excited about the concept, but it all turned out absolutely fake. I'm sorry. So sorry.

To somehow not to leave you irritated/disappointed entirely, here's one last thing that still could be relevant...  There still could be some spark of hope because of the "Moriarty's eye". I couldn't find it anywhere in premade popular glitches so it still could be a thing, maybe they just decided to do it easier way and paste one important frame between some easily-found shit from Youtube. Though i would except more from them. But... isn't it all about spreading confusion? Maybe it's MEANT to be that way... It does make me wonder why is it just like that, and well, the aim of all this investigating is to make us wonder, so... you never know. Sometimes it's all about finding ONE IMPORTANT THING between irrelevant pieces and chaos, so if you want to believe this theory, we have this one important thing, we have Moriarty. I don't know what to think of it all, right now I'm a little upset, so i can't tell anything else.

That was my more positive take on all of this, at least i tried to find some proof it wasn't entirely fake/irrelevant, maybe you have something wiser to add here. But personally i'm disappointed. I feel like an idiot now. Seems I'm as bad wannabe-detective as Anderson. Or even worse. I apologize again. :(

________________________________________________

ANOTHER UPDATE

@peggymarsh

  Unfortunately yes, I've seen it there. Even more frames. People on YT were guessing

it might be one of those cheap old idiotically-colored porn videos. Hmm.

@gemfangirl

  asked if it isn't actually Mary's eye. Here's my answer:

Damn you might be right. The main recently reoccuring "secret" not secret villain is Mary, not

Moriarty, or Eurus, or Culverton. They seem to be almost minor compared to this hell that's

currently going on with Mary. You know, the Murderous Mary, cofusion about "happy-housewife-Sherlock's-best-friend-who-cares-i-shot-him" image presented in S4. She's actually a most hated

character in fandom (aside from Irene Adler, lol) and her so called "development" in S4 is one of these things that make no sense.

This is all the logical and thinking part behind it. Now let's have a look at photos for some comparision and, well...

I added the same sample of noise from the eye frame. The still is from Miss Me video message.

Glitches are confirmed fake but eye case is still open. What do you think?

___________________________________ UPDATE OF UPDATE

Guys there's something completely fucked up about this gif. It started from @memrysapendragon pointing out she found a short clip including vhs glitch stuff on twitter, this particular clip: https://twitter.com/secretcinema/status/793098416444375040  Then i found most of those trames on Youtube by searching "vhs glitches" tag. The video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUoA-dKQhtc

It doesn't contain Moriarty/Mary eye and I think it doesn't contain a frame with a "sofa and tables" from the CCTV angle above the room, which i compared earlier to Baker Street. Now i read the comment section again and i noticed some people claimed the footage was stolen from a movie called V/H/S/2. I googled it and it appears to be some shitty horror/gore movie made from a few separate stories, and one of them included someone finding old vhs tapes with "scary shit".

A really shitty movie, i can tell from screens i've seen in graphics, and what i read about it in general, so i don't recommend it, don't waste your time if you're not actually a fan of things like that. Couldn't bring myself to watch this shit, so i can't confim it's true but some people wrote it's from V/H/S/2. I don't know. Others however didn't even know the source of the footage and this youtube short is widely considered to be just a collection of samples which people download for their purposes. Hell, it's been used in some promo video on this Twitter account, while this whole "Secret Cinema" account has nothing to do with horror movies.

Does it mean thelostspecial.com is fake? Or there is some purpose behind this confusion? It's getting weirder and weirder tbh

[frogsgivemehope]

Watching notes: 12x11

Me looking at this episode.

- THEN: Dean and the poor bunny, recapping basically every witch ever (the notable exceptions that stood out to me was the married witches from 7x05 and Patrick from 5x07 - the connection here possible being that those were the ones that they didn’t kill?), and Rowena. ”Are we not a team?” Bless.

- NOW: This running through the forest business immediately reminded me of the opening of 12x06, with adult Asa running through the forest, leading to him being hanged. I think that’s the only such opening we’ve had this season, right? It is also the case of a hunter who someone gets the best out of, and where the one they first suspect turn out to not be the one behind it - the demon for Asa, and the lone witch for Dean.

- It is also jarring, because when we are introduced in-media-res like this to someone being hunted, our instincts as viewers is to sympathise with them - to suspect that the one chasing them is the monster.

- Dean waking up on the ground (WITH THE BUNNY) harkens back to the other times he has woken up on the ground. In 5x04, which deals with Dean, and how his memories shape him. Endverse!Dean was a completely different person than our Dean precisely because of the experiences he have had (And it really doesn’t matter if it was an alternate time line or a scenario conjured up by Zachariah, because Dean believed that Endverse!Dean would be affected that way by what had happened). And the other time he woke up on the ground was in 11x01, where he has just been freed of the MoC and that in turn influenced a shift in his behaviour, albeit to a more true-to-Dean!Dean (and now he has been freed from his memories).

- Speaking of the bunny, I really love the idea that it is a symbol of him having fallen down into Wonderland. My bubb is Alice.

- There is the white fluff cloud we all love and adore. Hi Kuma! And the guy who gives Dean his phone, after the woman with the baby  didn’t even listen to him explain.That guy is also wearing such lovely blue and pink colours, just saying. So, woman with a child symbolising Kelly, possibly? I just looked it up, and the woman Kelly was talking to on the phone in 12x08 was named Sheri. This woman is talking to someone named Stacey. Sheri-Stacey, quite similar no?

- Quick question: Is that how waffles are actually served in the U.S.? Because now I am hungry.

- There is a lot of childhood imagery in this episode: Waldo’s Waffles, Scooby-Doo cartoons.

- Sam always manages to hit me with sadness I don’t expect. I mean, they have been pretty clear over the season that it is mainly Dean that keeps in touch with Mary and with Cas, but the fact that Sam needs to let Mary know to get a hold of him in case of an emergency - shouldn’t she have known to do that anyway, in  case of Dean not responding?

- ”The Rat Pack partied until the day they died!” Okay, Dean, but according to Wikipedia they also had problems with alcohol- and  drug addiction. Doesn’t sound like a good idea to me, Dean. On the other hand, kudos for finding a group with someone named Dean and someone named Sammy.

- Dean replying ”I don’t think so.” when Sam asks if he’s drunk is heartbreaking to me - he knows that something is wrong but can’t put his finger on what.

- Sam ”all we’ve been through lately makes me want to crawl into a bottle too sometimes” Winchester at it again, breaking my heart.

- The memory loss this episode is more sporadic then I expected - based on the Reverse-scene in the sneak peek I was expecting something like Dean first losing his newest memories, then his oldest. Hmm.

- Dean doesn’t want to call Mary or Cas, contrasting with 12x09 where his first move was to call Cas again and again and again - there he needed to see Cas again before Billie came to collect, here when he still believes that he and Sam can solve this he doesn’t want to bother Cas or Mary. When we last saw them talking about Mary was in 12x10, when Dean had offered their help with a hunt and she had said ”Don’t bother” - as has been the case all season, Dean still isn’t sure where he stands with Mary, and doesn’t want to be a bother. Which also applies to Cas.

- Rowena scamming those guys at poker, so much better than attempting to live happily ever after with a guy that is way below her league.  

- Welcome to innuendo-bar where we have a giant pickle pointing at the mechanical bull riding - subtle they are not.

- Not to mention that they have a giant banana in the right-hand corner  with ”Chuck” written over it. Everybody remember Chuck, our bisexual God, right? And everybody remembers how Dean and him had uncannily similar tastes? And everybody remembers how Dean’s waffles earlier this episode were with bananas and blueberries? Just checking.

(Sorry for the lousy screencap)

- And R may stand for Reverse, but also for R-rated. Oh hey, El Sol and a pool table in the background!

- Dean calling Gilman ”big guy” only to later be mockingly called ”the Boss” - pfft.

- Elke seems to be the owner/manager of this place, and at a night they were slammed she had time to notice that Dean ”had the hots for Larry as soon as he walked in there.” It just makes me wonder how obvious he was. Oh Dean.

- This also makes it increasingly unlikely that they actually had sex. Her being the owner, that they were slammed and so on.

- The trash container in the alley look like it had an A with wings on it

- Sam telling Dean ”Witches, werewolves and vampires, they are all real. And we kill them,” and Dean’s reaction to it is the opposite of Yellow Fever (which this episode reminds me of so much).  Not to mention Dean saying: 

”Yeah but monsters are real. And we’re the guys that kill ’em, man. I mean, come on! Best job ever.”

It is the polar opposite to how he felt in 4x06

”I mean, come on, we hunt monsters! What the hell?! I mean, normal people, they see a monster, and they run. But not us, no, no, no, we – we search out things that want to kill us. Yeah? Huh? Or eat us! You know who does that? Crazy people! We…are insane!”

Even Sam’s reply echoes how Dean continued in Yellow Fever.

- The revelation that sirens aren’t all hot chicks doesn’t faze Dean in the slightest - his ”huh” sounds rather pleased to me, but Sam still doesn’t see the full picture - ”Sorry to break it to you”. It’s okay Sam, I think he’ll be fine with it.

- Dean being excited for being best friends with an angel is honestly so amazing to me, especially since we’ve known from 2x13 that he has steadfastly refused believing in angels ever since Mary died. But now Mary is alive, and he has forgotten that she ever died.

- So, Catriona and Lily as mirrors everybody? They are both doing it for family, both looking for revenge, but with completely different perspectives, given that Lily started out as a human and remained unwilling to hurt them, while Catriona had already been living for a very long time, and however she is staying alive it has been gnawing away on her soul?

- Dean is so cute with Rowena, I can’t. This is what he would think of her without knowing who she is: that her hair is ”bouncy”.

- And by watching cartoons we are reminded of 8x08, which are feeling I really don’t need right now, or ever.

- Sam’s and Rowena’s clothes so obviously connects them, and while I obviously loves this continuation of Sam being connected with witchcraft, what makes this sad again is how Dean’s clothes kind of makes him blend into the background, like he is melting away.

- I can’t believe that i predicted that this heart breaking speech would happen in a mirror, but put it in my queue so that nobody will ever know.

- Rowena’s doll is missing an eye (or rather it has an x for an eye which to me is how kids show that something has died), which makes three with Lily and Charlie. I know Yockey said it was an eye for an eye with Lily, symbolising revenge, but I like the thought of it being a reference to Odin as well, who gave up an eye to receive knowledge. Rowena’s doll also has a black heart however, which is more worrying.

- Rowena has a connection with the BMoL, and I can sense #witches for important plot season 12 coming along, or in season 13 even, if they are stretching it out.  I’ve seen complaints around that the Winchesters aren’t taking the BMoL seriously, but honestly it is not bothering me. They are prioritising and so far as they know, Lucifer’s child has the power for more destruction.

- Rowena’s face when Dean says that she has plenty of snuff is so genuinely pleased. Him not having any memories makes their relationship lack a power component - he doesn’t care for having power over her, and she has no use for the power she technically has over him.

- Rowena’s necklace looks like a Celtic knot to me, which apparently ”due to it’s infinite path, the Celtic knot can represent an uninterrupted life cycle” - which feels like it’s a theme brought up to the forefront lately, after being introduced several seasons back (I think was with Patrick, the witch in 5x07? From what I can recall most witches previous either had natural lifespans or were demons who had knowledge of witchcraft from their previous lives).

- The Loughlins resemble both Magnus and the Stynes to me - Catriona’s butterflies echoing Magnus need to collect everything and the Loughlin’s seem to be a mix of Celtic and Latin - they are collecting everything they find interesting, basically. The Stynes did that as well, not to mention the placing of Gideon’s body looked really familiar.

- That it is possible to swap one soul for another is new information right? When I first watched it I assumed that it meant they would take Sam’s soul and shove it into Gideon’s body, but maybe it was to summon whoever has taken Billie’s place and make a deal with them? Anyhow, repeated focus on souls.

- What is up with all the paintings hanging crooked in the Loughlin house? Some are knocked off course in the fight, but the one behind Dean when he comes in is crooked from the start. As is the one in the staircase.

- I knew the second he said ”who’s this hippie?” that he’d gotten his memories back, because honestly, most other times he didn’t even realise that he didn’t remember something until it was pointed out to him.  But shit, Sam’s face.

- I was bawling my eyes out first time I watched this montage, but I will get through it this time *steels self*. The song is so sad, but you know what? After the discussion Sam and Dean just had, asking when are you ever really happy, the answer shown here isn’t when you’ve lost all your memories. It is when you are riding a mechanical bull named Larry, because as we all know, that happened before the memory spell was cast.

The lyrics are being proven wrong, right there. And also, whew.

[randomnameless]

FE4 1st gen - Obituaries

They were all glorious warriors. 

Save for some of them who warmed our bench, or our main castle. 

Or some who just plained sucked.

Leif’s dad had been a racist asshat even in his last moments. But he rocked that cravat and had been a good crutch unit, very useful to weaken foes so randoms would be able to finish them off. And he had a promoted pony, useful to reach far off villages. RIP Leif’s dad.

Leif’s mom hold the idiot ball in her last moments, but she had been really useful. Even if the famed Ethlyn’s smash was more of a legend than a reality, she hold her own against barbarians, and was able to use staves and move afterwards. Or even rush to the frontlines, heal her stupid brother and return somewhere safer. You were a useful unit Ethlyn, you’ll be missed and not only for your pony.

Siggy... was a disappointment. Maybe I should have given him more rings (or other rings), he had difficulties to destroy people, even with his 50 kill tinfoil sword. He wasn’t the god that was promised, just a half-god. Note to self, never trust the fanbase ever again

Poor Siggy was our hero and he really lived through traumatic shit but he hold his own. He wasn’t able to kill people dead, but Noish thanks him because his lord granted him the honour to finish peons who only had 1-2 HP left. Thanks Siggy Sigurd.

Langbalt’s slayer and Raquie’s husbando, Noish was useful at some point, but by chapter 4 he started to lag behind. I gave him special swords and the pursuit ring, he was able to fight a bit better. A good unit, not a wonderful one but a good one nonetheless. You will not be remembered by your kids, but we will.

RIP Noish.

(forgot to screencap his face)

Alec was... a useful unit against barbarians, but that’s all. Maybe I should have given him Siggy’s steel sword because his damage output was ridiculous. But he had a horse and some HP so he could take one or two blows, even if by Chapter 4 onwards, he was warming Sylvia’s heart and the bench.

You gave me the pursuit ring. You warmed my home castle. One day I’ll use you. But not today, nor tomorrow. Even if it would have been cool to have an unit with BS.

I felt bad for letting him die without any kids, but they can’t inherit his axes anyways. Lex was a solid unit who could kill stuff dead, even if against sword wielding units he had some trouble. He hit hard and could take hits. A good unit in general. You’ll be missed Lex.

the loser everyone laughed at - Azel was useful in the first chapters where he could kill barbarians, and in the subsequent ones he could weaken the randoms, but his biggest issue was his movement. I won’t say “no pony = sucks” because Azel was more useful than Alec. And thanks the shield ring, he could take a blow before crumbling like the squishy mage he is. A good unit when he manages to see some fighting, it’s a good thing he learns how to ride a horse when he promotes. 

GG Azel.

a princess of Isaach Mareeta’s already born

I’m not going to lie, just like the Siggy overhype, I expected more of Ayra. If Astra doesn’t procc, Ayra has difficulties killing stuff dead, but the brave sword is here to save the day. I think glass canon units aren’t well suited to FE4′s huge maps and specific gameplay with a lot of mounted units going against you. And when Ayra doesn’t have the WTA, dodging becomes more risky and her low HP + low def give a dead Isaachian more often than you’d think. there is a reason i slap the dain scroll on mareeta as soon as dean joins

But still a solid unit. RIP Ayra, or not, who knows?

YOU’RE NOT DEAD - when Ethlyn was here, i confess, Aideen didn’t see much staff duty. Raquie had to heal stuff right and left for xp and Ethlyn was able to move further and heal the cavs before Aideen could reach them. But when Ethlyn ran home, Aideen made use of her mend and newly acquired Return staff. Aideen is a staff bot pretty good at doing her job. A good unit sadly crippled by her low move before promotion. Still good.

Midir is the counterpoint to everyone who says “horse in FE4 = god unit”. Maybe I got RNG screwed with Midir, but his low skill - coupled with low strength, pathetic def and low HP made for a sucky unit. Only useful for chip damage. Then came the brave bow. But it always missed. Then came the skill ring. Midir became the gambit unit against his former comrades of the Beigen Ritter - kill or be killed. In the end he managed to promote, but I kind of babied him. I won’t do it ever again.

The barbarian Prince on the other hand... maybe he just has a broken bow, idk. To me, when i sent Midir against someone it was pathetic, when i sent Jamke, the someone ended up dead. Jamke also has (a lot?) of def and HP, so even if he can’t counterattack, he was my “to go” unit when i had to make some sort of defensive wall or use a bait. Jamke is a superb unit!

speaking of defensive walls - when Raquie was just a Princess, she was only of staff duty (or stole money from Bridget’s former friends) and couldn’t take a hit for shit. Then she got a pony, her staff duty’s ability increased tenfolds and she became able to kill people reliably. Thanks to Eldie’s last gift, she could even tank some waves of enemy riders, even with the WTA. I feel like I didn’t fully exploit the Master knight’s versatility (i only gave her an old lance i could have gave her Lex’s old iron axe) but even with the mere sword+staff she was a more durable Ethlyn who could really be a force to be reckoned with, and not just a mounted healer. Raquie still needed babying, but way less than Midir. She’s a very good unit!

Beo had pursuit and a steel sword, he started as Alec and Noish’s love child, a mix of the two with all the good qualities. But I didn’t favour him, even if he managed to reliably kill some randoms. I guess i kind of forgot him since he wasn’t included in the bachelor’s list, and sometimes, when i look at Alec, I feel sad. Granted, I didn’t train him either.

THE LORD OF SOPHARA NOT a mere gladiator!

Holyn could tank, even if he couldn’t reliably kill people dead like his fellow Isaachian without procc’ing Luna. But for most of the time he was able to damage them enough for Midir to steal a kill, and unlike Ayra he had some defences, so it wasn’t really a risk to send him to bait foes, even with the WTA.

and he killed Reptor. GG Holyn. he also taught Bridget how to use a sword

I heard many things about Dew, and truth to be told, i didn’t promote him because his combat sucked. But damn if he wasn’t useful. Dew is a utility unit, without him no gold, and no gold means no holy weapons. Plus it’s fun to steal money from a boss! And the wind sword can steal at 2 range which is both ridiculous and hilarious. Dew is good at doing what he does best, steal stuff, but not for combat, or only for baiting axe units.

Fine. Forseti is a good tome, but without pursuit it isn’t the best thing ever. Lewyn hits hard and can dodge (unlike Azel) but before his lol!promotion he wasn’t killing a lot more than our favourite pointy hooded mage. After promotion though... the sage bonuses are insane. Lewyn was a good unit (even after receiving Forseti) but I never felt he was more than that like Siggy or Quan or Raquie.

Erin on the other hand was our only flier, and once she got her hands on Finn’s brave lance she became a force to be recknoned with. It was also nice to be able to give her a sword, so she could cover some of her weaknesses. She’s a useful unit (to save villlages) and a good fighter. Plus I like her character now than I did before playing FE4!

She’s like Rafiel? Dancers are broken in this game, and she also managed to get a barrier sword! Sylvia’s a very useful unit, but her haxx factor is kind of balanced by her low move, so she can’t dance for Siggy unless he doesn’t use all of his mov. But she’s still one of the most useful units out there! And she sometimes managed to dodge some stupid stuff (like meteors) unlike Rafiel! Sylvia >> Rafiel

Claude was a staff bot with Fortify. I didn’t bother to give him a tome because he wouldn’t use it anyways. Just like Beo, I feel like I ignored him because he was going to remain single, but he had one job and did it when he was called, healing. 

Ahh Taillte, the level 3 thunder mage. She was a pain to train, i had to make her rescue civilians and use the paragon ring. But there’s some trick, if you have a lot of time to waste, send her in the arena and hope she gets defeated, then she’ll start with 1HP thus will activate Wrath and get a critical - if she manages to hit her opponent before dying again. For a Tordo blooded gal, she sure liked to miss her targets. Taillte’s the worst kind of babying - but i don’t mind. It’s for Azel’s GF and once she promoted, she could reliably kill some people (she managed to take a good chunk of her dad’s HP, granted without a critical but still!).

Bridget is the rightful Duchess of Jungby, not a mere noblewoman! Who wrote those??

An useful unit from the start to the end, partly helped by her magic bow who restores her HP and destroys enemies. But Bridget, just like Jamke, also had some defence and that is really cool for a unit who can’t counter attack at 1 range. Bridget’s a really good unit, but she needs a lot of money! Hopefully Dew and her husband exist.

and she’s also Jugdral’s best mom