#but yeah i think a lot of people are way more unsympathetic to him than they would have been if he were not so distinctly asian-coded

[bancaishi]

didn't want to put this rant in the tags of that last post but honestly i feel like a lot of people hate toshiro disproportionately compared to what he actually did in-story. and if we're being real it's most likely because of racism

[numberonetacostan]

TACO'S TIRADE ANALYSIS

OKAY! It is time for the requested analysis of Taco’s Tirade. This is my first time doing a big analysis of like, anything, so I’m very sorry if this is the worst take on the song of all time or if everything I’m saying is obvious!! Can anyone tell i'm nervous about posting this lol. I have a lot of thoughts about Taco and her Tirade. I love it so much. Feel free to imagine me gesturing wildly with tears in my eyes as you read this. We’ll go in sections based on the lyrics and visuals :) Lyrics will be inside brackets, then commentary will be below! Please enjoy!! <3

Tw: slight discussion of suicidal ideation

[Any moment now...

Are you sure this is what you want?

(Scoff) Oh spare me your spin, you tablet tabloid. If you want to psychoanalyze someone, don't look at me.]

Alright, so we immediately see Taco still in a very emotional state. Mepad asking if she’s sure she wants to interfere with the challenge immediately provokes her, and starts her off on her entire tirade. Because he asked if she was sure. She immediately insults him and moves to change the subject and get his attention off of herself and her own mental well-being. She’s very in-denial of her own emotions and emotional pain in this song, as we’ll see going forward, and remains quite defensive for a lot of the song.

[Look at them! It's so pathetic,

How they run to fetch their sticks.

Sure, call me polemic, unsympathetic,

At least I know other tricks!]

We start here with her, as I stated, changing the subject and shifting the view onto the contestants figuratively and somewhat literally, as they’re all seen picking up the sticks for the challenge, although she still remains the main focus of the shot. We move to her dancing around Mepad, who takes up the center of the shot, but Taco is still the focus here!! She’s moved from deflecting conversation to the contestants to, in a way, defending herself, despite Mepad not having insinuated anything yet. Taco is calling herself polemic and unsympathetic here, not only because she thinks that of herself, what with her abysmal self-esteem that we see more of later in the song, but because she thinks that’s what Mepad thinks of her. Not only do her only other two friends ever hate her (I wouldn’t go that far for Mic, but that’s definitely what Taco thinks), but the rest of the season 1 cast don’t seem to think too highly of her either, yeah? Mephone certainly isn’t happy to see her soon after the song ends, and season 2 contestants like Mic and Suitcase have been shown to be wary of her before they’ve even met her. (She doesn’t know about the season 3 cast so they don’t really matter here.) The point being, Mepad is Mephone’s right hand (leg?) man, and Taco doesn’t know about their argument, so she’s pretty reasonably assuming that Mepad dislikes her just as much as everyone else does. So, she’s saying what she thinks he’s thinking about her before he can!! Forgive me for not knowing the technical name for it, but this is an actual way of deflecting criticism!! I’ll use an example. Say you made a drawing of a person, a little stick guy, but the proportions are off. One of their legs are way bigger than another, but you still want to post it anyway. To keep people from telling you that one leg is bigger than another, you might say “here’s my stick dude!! One leg is bigger than another but I’m too lazy to fix it.” By stating the potential criticism before anyone else can, it makes others MUCH less likely to comment on it themselves!! And that’s what I believe Taco is doing here!!! I hope I explained that well enough. She then goes on defending herself, self-justifying by saying she at least “knows other tricks.” I read this as her doing things outside the game, and it’s limits. That could be her acknowledging how she doesn’t play by the rules of the competition like they do, but I see it as a note of the hypocrisy/lying to herself we see from Taco in the song. And!! In the transition to the next verse, she has her eyes closed!! Which happens everytime we travel in and out of that purple-y space! We are seeing Taco’s inner image here people!!!!!

[Look at me and all you'll see is the debris of some defective outcast,

A frenetic, antithetic (if poetic) little iconoclast,]

Here we have Taco insulting herself more! Yay! She’s getting more emotional as we get into the song, and she becomes less and less able to keep her usually sturdy walls up. She’s just lost Mic, and as I’ll go over later in the analysis, is expecting she will be permanently dead relatively soon. Of course she’s having a lot of trouble keeping it together! You know how sometimes, if you’re trying not to cry and someone asks if you’re okay, it makes you burst into tears? It’s like that! Mepad asked if she was sure, and the dam began to break. So, the descriptors she uses tell us a lot about her view of herself!!! Debris. Broken remains of what was. That’s pretty accurate to how Taco is feeling right now. She’s drowning in debris, really! The debris of her old, broken friendships, the debris of her master plan to win season 1, and it’s to the point where she sees herself as broken and incomplete as well. She believes she’s broken!!! And that leads us right into her calling herself defective. Imperfect or faulty. She’s very separated from everyone else, yeah? Everyone else (to her knowledge) lives in the hotel. Everyone else is part of the group. Everyone else has people who care about them. Everyone else happily plays by the rules of the game. After everything, compared to everyone else? No wonder she sees herself as incapable of changing, she believes there’s something just, deeply wrong with her as a being. If everyone else can do this and have this, she has to be the problem. And almost right after she started putting forth that effort to get Mic to trust her, focusing on someone other than herself, Mic left her. Rightfully so, but please it is so important to think of it from Taco’s perspective rather than Mic’s in this analysis. Taco was trying to give Mic what she thought she wanted (recognition), trying to be a good friend, and it immediately lost her the most important person in her life. She’s been watching for years, she sees everyone else making strong connections, but she can’t do it when she tries. And before that, it’s her plan failing. Like Brian said in a stream, it was inconceivable to her that her plan would fail. Yet it did. And after a long enough time alone out in the woods, there isn’t anyone left to blame for that but herself. She was the reason her plan had failed, and she’d lost everything. Of course she’d see herself as defective. Outcast is pretty obvious, because she checks all of those boxes. Lives hidden, alone, and very much away from everyone else. She is very very much not part of the group anymore. 

Frenetic!! Fast, wild, and uncontrolled. Frankly, something you’d be more likely to describe Taco’s season 1 persona with, yeah? It’s quite different from how Taco usually tries to present herself, being cunning and calculating around others. But of course, the further we get into the song, the more honest Taco unintentionally can get about how she sees herself. She had her whole plan for season 1 down, but it was in the end where she lost control over the situation in which she lost control of herself in which she lost everything. It was in the ship, where something she didn’t and realistically couldn’t have planned for happens that she once again lost control of the situation and thus control of herself, and used violence despite Mic’s plea not to, in which she lost everything again. Of course she’d see herself as wild and uncontrollable, because moments in which she was are standout moments of her life! Not to mention again, how she’s the contestant who tried to steal the prize and cheated in season 2. For better or for worse, she’s much less controlled by the rules of the game than the other contestants. Just another thing that separates her from the group, yeah? Antithetic!!!! In direct opposition to something. And the following word as well, iconoclast, an attacker of a beloved institution or beliefs. She’s against the game that everyone else plays again and again, something that really matters a lot to them, but we see in the show and especially in the finale that the game isn’t good for them. As much as it’s not always for quite the right reason and exactly how she ends up going about it, she has a strong point about the game itself and what it can do to all of them. But she still sees herself as the villain. Despite her genuine, and correct, belief that ending the game will make things better for everyone, she still sees herself as the villain!! And it’s an image of herself that she’s had for a long time, and that she can’t shake after everything, because she doesn’t believe she can be anything else. And I did not forget how she mentions herself as being “poetic!” Whether that’s her believing in “karmic justice” or whatever and that she got what was coming with her, or believing her role as a season 1 finalist who’s come back out of the shadows to try and end season 2, it is one of the few neutral adjectives she uses for herself in the song. It might even be her previous popularity and persona she’s referencing here, that antitheticism and iconoclasm being how she went from a silly, well-loved character to a serious, well. She’s still loved out of canon but none of the people she knows like her at all. She’s the antithesis of what she used to be, and her coming out of the act destroyed the beloved image of who she had pretended to be.

As for the visuals here, how the scene fades back into her and Mepad is so important! She falls off of a cliff into darkness!! A very clear visual representation of how she sees things having gone. After her fight over the suitcase with OJ in the s1 finale, she kept falling and falling and falling, deeper down into the dark hole she’s dug herself, until she’s landed right where she is as she’s singing. Not only that, but this visual is another excellent representation of how she sees things as over for her. How she sees herself as incapable of changing, starting over, or getting better at all. Think about the cliff we know of on the island. Now think about who actually fell off that cliff at the end of season 1. Think about what happened to them. They all DIED!!! And she is picturing herself falling off this cliff!! I doubt this was intended to be a sign of suicidal ideation for her, since ii does have a younger target demographic (ex. Justy said in a stream that OJ and Paper sleeping in the same bed would be a bit too mature), but it can definitely be read that way. Seeing herself as “dead” in a way revolves around that disbelief in self-improvement she has, she thinks it’s too late for her in the same way it’s too late to save someone who’s died!!! And if anyone is questioning whether the scene is just a visual effect or if it’s definitely Taco’s inner picture-y thing, please note her closed eyes during the transition from her falling from the cliff to standing with Mepad!! She is picturing these visuals as she sings!!

[But I won't live in the past.

(Spoken) I almost won this game once, you know. But!]

So we all agree that Taco is totally living in the past, right? She’s saying she’s moved on, she’s telling Mepad and herself that the past doesn’t matter and that she doesn’t care about it, and then immediately she mentions how she almost won before. She has not healed at all, and is not over a single thing that happened!!! She is doing so awful I love her <3. She longs for everything she’s lost constantly, because she’s lost everything!!!!!

[History is rearranged just to credit those who win the glory,

So reality is changed in the edit when they spin the story,]

So!!! Interestingly enough, I think that these lines are quite a bit about the disparities between OJ and Taco!! So, Taco had a whole strategy going into season 1 that got her into the finals, and had it not been for Bow, she would have won! She’d planned meticulously, and in the s1 finale is shown to have great physical capabilities, at least to the point to which she was able to get way ahead of OJ. And, while this may be by great bias towards Taco speaking at least in part, OJ… did not go to such lengths. Don’t get me wrong though, this is definitely a thing. It’s brought up in the show that he wasn’t a huge player in the game! Multiple times!!! S1E15 “The Tile Divide,” after OJ wins immunity with help from Paper Mephone4 says “OJ wins! Wow, that hasn’t happened for a while.” And in S1EP16 “The Penultimate Poll,” Pickle says “-even though [OJ] barely actually won any challenges.” Yet after all is said and done, Taco is outcasted, has nothing, and is disliked by pretty much everyone, and OJ is hailed as the “King of Inanimate Insanity”, is rich, and becomes the de facto group leader with his hotel. The way the narrative has been spun does certainly glorify OJ beyond his actual performance in the competition. And with OJ having his massive ego problems, I don’t doubt that he definitely let that get to his head and contributed to that narrative himself. 

And in this shot we have Taco looking down at the hotel from the forest, the same way she’s looking down on everyone participating in the game and how she’s been watching Mic (and presumably Pickle) from the outside. Only now, she’s even further away from them. 

[And we choose, to feel this pain,]

Taco denying her emotions again!!!! She likes to be in control, and she can not control her feelings nor keep pushing them down as she has been, so she’s onto deny deny deny!! She is in a lot of pain, and she knows it, so she deflects by saying she’s choosing to feel the pain of her losses. She’s keeping up her act, her defense, by desperately holding on and pretending she has control over these feelings!! I’m certain she’s tried to control them!! To justify herself, replace loneliness with anger, but it hasn’t worked!!! And her defensiveness is reflected in the visuals as well, her putting her hand up to keep a distance between her and Mepad, her still stubbornly keeping up those walls and forcing him away as he looks concerned for her. 

[And we lose, more than we gain…]

OH BOY TIME TO LOSE MORE THAN WE GAIN. I use this phrase daily. I'm serious. A pretty obvious reference to Mic having said she gained nothing, and also an acknowledgement that their partnership truly meant something to Taco and is still greatly affecting her. Which is obvious to the audience, but not only is Mepad learning things about Taco and her issues through the song, but we really see Taco starting to fall apart, accidentally implying the feelings that she’s so desperate to keep down!! She’s like a trauma volcano <3. Anyways, Taco had gained a lot when she’d met Mic, even if it took her quite some time to realise, and by the time she did she’d lost it all, again. AS FOR THE VISUALS we once again move into Taco’s head!! The transitions here for the beginning and end of this short sequence have her with her eyes closed!! She’s walking, and hard stops when she sees Pickle and the time travel portal. You see her little feet slide to a stop on her heels! She leans away from him, leans towards him just a tad, and immediately turns and walks away, only to see Mic. She hard stops when she sees Mic too, though it’s less extreme than it was for Pickle. And when she does this, she reaches a hand out towards Mic. It’s for a few reasons I think. Holding it out to try and keep that hurt away, protect her from her thoughts of missing Mic and how much she must hate her, fully reaching out because she misses Mic dearly and that pain is so fresh, reaching out to the person she’s been so close to, closer than anyone before. Another part of it, I think, is how her conflicts with both Pickle and Mic went. With Pickle, Taco was the one who insulted him, claimed they were never friends, and cut things off. Thus, she hard stops when she sees him, only leans a bit closer to him, before turning around and walking away. With Mic, Taco was the one who was left this time. Mic cut things off with her. So she’s left reaching out to Mic, as Mic’s image leaves the screen, and Taco collapses onto her knees where she is. Taco’s left on the ground, squeezing her eyes closed and clutching her head as the darkness in the background, the darkness in Taco’s head closes in on her, until she closes her eyes and jumps straight back into her villain act, the song speeding up with her as she keeps trying to get away from all of her feelings!!! My queen with awful coping skills <3.

[But I will break this cycle,

Of mistakes, unlike all,

Of these snakes whom I call to condemn,]

So! We see Taco hard cutting from her guilt and sadness, straight into her evil plan. Right back into her villain front as she realises she’s begun to open up and get emotional!!! So she’s explaining her plan to Mepad, and projects her own self-hatred and experiences very hard onto the contestants. She’s upset about what happened between her and Mic and sees the game as at fault for what happened as she’s trying to justify things to herself, and push down the guilt she feels about their split. Heck, I’d say she’s probably blaming the game for what happened between her and Pickle right now, even if that one is more on her. And she sees the final four as complacent in what the game does, with them all continuing even though none of them are even enjoying themselves anymore. Most of them haven’t been enjoying themselves for a while now, but they still stay in line and play, as they’re programmed to. This is a bit off track, but it’s important to keep in mind that at this point, Taco has been acting more outside of her programming for longer than any of the other contestants. She was never in whatever sort of waiting-mode they end up in inside the hotel, and she’s cared less and less about the rules of the game as time has gone on. Her plot in the first season was done fully inside the rules of the game, but we see her having broken out of those constraints in season 2, with her encouraging Mic to straight up attack other contestants, which is implied by Taco to be against the rules. And she keeps interfering against those same rules of the competition. Like Marsh breaking the rules by leaving the show’s parameters, Taco explicitly goes against what is meant to happen in the game. And here she is at the peak of that, having gone from breaking the rules of the game to wanting to break the game, the cycle of mistakes, entirely. Her calling the remaining contestants “snakes” of all things specifically is interesting as well, since I’m sure plenty of the season 1 cast would use that to describe Taco. Part of it is her projecting, but another part of it is her actually seeing her own mistakes in the remaining contestants. Keeping secrets from each other (Knife), never properly talking out interpersonal issues (Suitcase & Baseball), and plain loneliness (Lightbulb). And she’s condemning them for their complacency in all of it, for their actions, most certainly in part with her efforts to ignore her own feelings and as well to call out how the game changes people and makes them act. 

[If I can't win the prize,

I'll play this last reprisal,

Just to bring their lies all to an end.

-Ack!]

The first line here is more of Taco playing up her villain act. She mentions later on in the episode, while she’s being more honest since it’s surrounding Mic territory, to the final four that she doesn’t care about the money anymore. And I really believe she doesn’t! She’s broken out of that programming after having connected with Mic. She was one of the contestants, if not the contestant, made to be most dedicated to getting that money, so of course she mentions it as she’s still desperately keeping up her front!!! But she says in the very next line that this is her “last reprisal,” she clearly doesn’t intend to interfere or interact with the game again, much less try to swoop in and steal the million. And the last reprisal line is very important!!!! Notice how in the visuals, Taco lets herself fall out of a tree as she says this and upon landing she’s hurt by her injury. There is symbolism here guys!!!!!!! She is letting herself fall here. In her eyes, she doesn’t have anything left to fight for anymore. She’s lost the people important to her, she’s lost any goals she’d had driving her forward, and she hates herself!! She knows she’s injured, and that her injury could very well be lethal, as we see later in the episode, but she’s doing nothing to minimize the risk to herself. She’s not going to sit away and let herself feel and process, she’s going to burn the game down and die with it!!!! This, my friends, is called passive suicidal ideation and self-destructive behavior!!!!! And her facade starts to falter again and she mentions bringing their lies to an end!! Because she is lying to herself, and she herself is not ready to stop holding on to her lies, either to herself or to others in her persona. Bringing the game and all the lies tangled up in it to an end means she would finally have to face everything, and just thinking about that is enough to wipe the villainous grin off her face. But she’s still stubbornly going through with her plot, because she isn’t truly expecting she’ll have to face it, again because she is fully expecting to die permanently in the near future!!!! 

[You need regeneration.

Unfortunately, I don't have much faith in that process.

Of course not.

Why "of course not?".

You believe yourself to be incapable of starting over, in more ways than one. I do not know who you lost, but is it not possible to get them back?]

MEPAD TIME!!!! Okay, here we have Mepad (rip king you would have loved the storyboards of your own death) urging Taco to heal!!! He’s looking out for her physical well-being, he can tell that she’s in pain and that her injury is quite dangerous, that being especially obvious the way he emphasises “need” in the line. And he is implying that she needs emotional healing as well!! He starts his Therapad-ing in his next line!! <3 He is very clearly worried about her, a lot of his presence in the first half of the song is just him looking at Taco with big concerned eyes!!!

And Taco has zero faith in the recovery process, between her, as Mepad helpfully says, believing herself to be incapable of starting over in more ways than one, her believing no one would want her to be recovered, her having a hunch of Mephone’s reluctance to revive her, or her own inability to see much of a future for herself, she does not believe she can come back!!! Angst!!!!! She is hurting so bad I love her <3

And Mepad is an empathy king!! And is probably the least biased against her out of everyone on the island!! And he can see beneath her crumbling exterior!!!! So her self-loathing and regret and everything she’s trying to push down is obvious to him. Of course she doesn’t believe she can be revived. And we see even Taco is surprised and even a bit miffed by this!!! Aside from Mic to a lesser extent, Mepad is the only person who can really see through her facade. Mic did try, and saw that Taco was hiding things, don’t get me wrong, but Taco was much more stable at that point and shut Mic’s attempts to see underneath her image down much harder than she is able to do during the song. 

And Mepad plainly spells out what she’s feeling. This is so important to why she opens up to him more in the next verse. Not only can she not hide her emotions from him, because he already knows, but having it spelled out like that means she can’t keep hiding it from herself either. She can’t ignore her feelings when they’re being clearly stated back to her. So all that she’s been pushing down comes springing right back up in the next verse!!!! She has to physically turn away from him and cross her arms in a final attempt to keep herself closed off, keep anyone from looking in, but after everything she just can’t do it anymore. 

["Clear the slate, start again",

Are you hearing how preposterous that sounds?

How do you not comprehend that for someone with my MONSTROUS BACKGROUND,

the whole slate has fallen apart!]

Oh my god guys Taco is being honest about her feelings it’s happening guys it’s happening!!!!! She’s turned away from Mepad for the first two lines, but as she really opens up to him, she turns back around, and gets louder along with the music. And we have Taco be like, the most emotionally open we see her!!! She’s putting Mepad’s rather succinct evaluation of her feelings into her own words. She doesn’t just think she can’t change or have a new start, she finds the notion preposterous!!! Forgiveness is inconceivable to her!!! Inconceivable!!! I can’t emphasize enough that this is the first time Taco has ever emotionally opened up to anyone ever and it is her telling Mepad that she is evil, unable to change, and will never be forgiven. We really get a feel for how everything has been weighing down on her for years, and how everything has built up to a point that she really can’t take it anymore!! But she doesn’t believe there’s any chance of a happy ending for her. Not only the whole slate, but her entire life has fallen apart!! She has lost everything and is fully confident she will never get anything back!!!

[Taco, that is not true.

There are other ways to-

It's too late-

It's not too late,

For me to restart!]

Mepad coming in trying to help <3 Notice how he comes in while she’s still holding the previous note!! He is immediately refuting her idea that she’s irredeemable!! He does the same to refute her when she says it’s too late!!! He is very concerned for her and trying to convince her that it’s not too late for her. He’s trying to tell her there are other options, that she’s not so far gone, but this sort of ends up backfiring, since not only does she not listen to him when he says these things but his interjection ends up snapping her out of the state of emotional vulnerability, and she pulls her facade right back up. Taco saying it’s too late for her kind of breaks my heart honestly, I love it when my blorbo is in pain don’t get me wrong but ow, my taco it’s gonna be okay I love you. She really sees no redemption or even future for herself, and at her lowest she’s finally expressed that to someone!!! Which is a very important step to healing!!!! She accidentally started the healing process by talking about her issues. I mean, she backpedals immediately, but still!!!! Great job Taco <3 And at the end of this line we head into Mepad’s face!! Because there’s a shift from Taco’s feelings to her pushing him away, literally and figuratively, after that moment of vulnerability!! The audience is going with Mepad, at the moment, chasing after Taco!!!

[But it's not I, its they,

Who deign to play this game, so,

Cruel and inhumane, base and uncouth,]

AND HERE COMES TACO WITH THE IMMEDIATE SUBJECT CHANGE!! She just did her first ever emotional vulnerability, and as per her usual strategy with her emotions she’s hard changing the subject!!! In this case, back to the final four and the game!!! She’s deflecting back on to both of them in quick succession trying to get a topic that isn’t her to stick! She is quite literally walking away from the topic in the visuals too!! She’s trying to get away from Mepad, who is trying to keep them on the subject of Taco’s feelings, looks back at him angrily when he keeps talking about it, and then is even more angry when he keeps going, before storming away from him again!!!

[Let us talk about it when your,

head is not so clouded. You're no,

menace, Taco, how did they hurt you?

Please think this through]

Mepad is trying to get her to go back to that emotional vulnerability!!! He wants to help her, he wants to talk through her issues with her rather than watching her self-destruct!!! I think this is where the idea that running the Truth or Flare challenge will help her comes from, too. He can tell she’s vulnerable, despite how hard she’s trying not to be, and she is talking things out, in a way, during ToF!! In a healthy way, no, but it’s Taco so we need to take what we can get. As he says, he’d rather do it when Taco has calmed down, taken a moment to not bury her feelings and even gets recovered, maybe. And here we get to a very important line!! Mepad asks her how they hurt her!!!! I genuinely don’t think Taco’s been asked this, yeah? Her whole schtick is supposed to be that she is the villain, she hurts people, not how she’s been hurt herself! And dare I say, me, the biggest Taco apologist and forehead kisser you ever did see, they have hurt her. She’s seen every other person who’s hurt the others be let into the hotel and accepted into the group, yeah? Balloon was accepted, after quite a bit of effort on his part. No one really seemed to care that Knife had killed Marsh for fun, Taco mentioning it in episode 13 as they’re arguing. Nickel and Taco are relatively similar in personality, but Nickel seemed to have relatively free reign to asshole all he wanted until Suitcase snapped at him, and even then it was just Suitcase who was angry with him. But not her. She hasn’t apologized to Pickle in person, at this point, but she had sent letters. She’d at least tried to contact him, and while he was well within his rights to ignore her, I can’t really blame her for not wanting to go inside the hotel either. Not to mention, Taco has been watching them all very closely, at least for the duration of the second season and likely after the first as well, for her to have found out about the second season and to have begun scheming so quickly. So every time they’ve spoken about her, every insult and awkward silence after someone mentions her name, she’s heard. That’s got to hurt!! Taco is very much not perfect and I don’t really blame the others for not reaching out to her given she hadn’t decided to make a change yet, but it also can’t be easy to make a change for the better when you are homeless in the woods!! Mic and Mepad’s willingness to help her is what really convinced her change would be good and possible, she hadn’t had anyone else reach out to her before, and to be fair, she folds pretty damn quickly in the grand scheme of things. Mic showed her she was likable as a person, and Mepad showed her she was redeemable, and with that support she is doing her best now!!! Anyways. Uh. There’s still one more line!! Mepad is pleading with Taco not to make things worse for herself, because taking over the challenge and such is only going to make them think she hasn’t changed at all and feed into the persona he knows is a sham in shambles at this point! Talking it out with him would be a much better way to do this!!! But alas, she’s dead set. 

[I think they're too afraid to,

Bear the bed they've made,

Can't bring themselves to face the awful truth.]

TACO & THE AWFUL TRUTH that she’s projecting. Yeah Taco is the one who is afraid to actually face her mistakes, the people she’d hurt. Though, she probably sees her isolation as doing so, yeah? She’s hurt people, so she has to be alone as punishment, even though that doesn’t give anyone closure. However! As for the awful truth, yeah, Taco really is one of the only ones who’s looked the competition in the eyes for everything it is and spat on it. She’s motivated by a lot of complicated feelings she tries not to feel, but she sees the game for what it is, and how it hurts the contestants involved!! And the final four are yet to take that look, until she gets everything laid out in front of them!!

[Feeling double-crossed is part of,

Dealing with a loss, yes, but the,

Healing is a process, that's the truth]

FEELING DOUBLE-CROSSED this line is also important because!! Taco does feel betrayed by Mic!! She feels guilty and blames herself for what happened, yes, but she still does feel that sting of betrayal, since Mic left her, yeah? Oh her part, she’d finally accepted Mic as her first true friend, someone who liked her for who she was and she liked being around, and almost immediately Mic left her. A lot of that is on Taco, don’t get me wrong, but from Taco’s end she still doesn’t even fully understand why Mic was mad at her!! She thinks it was all because of her getting violent, not because she didn’t listen to Mic. My low empathy queen is still struggling to fully grasp Mic’s motivations, her first friend that she could act “normal” around, so of course she’d feel betrayed! Taco is dealing with a loss!!!!!!!!! And she is NOT healing!! She is trying to push it down like always, but it’s become too much for her!!! And Mepad is telling her that healing is a process because it’s so much for her at the moment!! He’s trying to communicate that she’s going to feel better eventually, that she needs help and time to do so, instead of rushing into another scheme!!! He’s telling her the truth, that healing is possible!!! But as Taco rejects his pleas for her to reconsider and grabs him, we shift back into reality. Taco is unconvinced, and they’re more or less at square one, with Taco’s mask for the rest of the world securely back in place.

Everyone look at this shot RIGHT NOW I’m going to explode. All these cracks come from the ii logo that Taco stomped on, yeah? And those cracks in the game spread, and create the cracks in her. She has been broken by the game!!! Look at her face! Does she look whole and happy to you? I didn’t think so. And here we have Taco close to the camera, looking out towards the viewer, to illustrate how although she’s separate from the game, more of a spectator than the player anymore, she’s still trapped inside the competition that’s broken her!! And we have Mepad in the background, further away with his position as an assistant!! The cracks are all around him rather than through him, because he’s not being hurt by the game!! He’s not a competitor!! But the game is crumbling everything around him. He’s watched everything, just like Taco has!! Every betrayal, every fight this season, Mepad has been watching. And the more he’s been seeing, the more he’s been feeling, and the more he’s been able to see how the game tears people apart and breaks them, just like it’s broken Taco. 

[So I'm turning up the heat to "sauté",

I've a beef to get grilled,

But I fully guarantee that today all the beans that get spilled,

Won't be mine, no I'm fine,

Shhhh...

Now it's time…]

Guys I think Taco might not be fine. She’s shoved her facade right up and has closed herself back off, moving to continue with her plot. She’s going to grill the final four and 100% not get upset or feel any feelings, nope. Of course this is not what happened, and from Taco’s facial expression when she claims to be fine she has a hunch it’s not going to be so easy. She knows and has acknowledged to herself that she is not okay, which is a big step, but she still stuck in her ways in terms of ignoring it in favor of playing the role she’s been designated. Her mask is cracked, her confidence is transparent, but she’s still acting. Mepad is still trying to help her here, but she physically silences him. Not literally, per say, as turning him invisible wouldn’t stop him from talking, but she shushes him and he gets the memo. The window to convince her to stop has closed, and she’s going forth with her plan regardless of how well she is. 

She finishes the song settling back into her act and proclaiming she's fine, though by her facial expression we can easily tell that she can't fool even herself anymore. She knows she's falling apart, but shoves it under an evil smirk. Two last notable things are her adjusting her bowtie and the music playing as she does so!! Her adjusting her bowtie here is equivalent to her adjusting her metaphorical villain mask, yeah? The bowtie has been quite symbolic of her season 2 villain era, and this is her making sure it's straight for her last act in said persona. The music, as well, has symbolism!! I like to think of it as the sound of breaking away from the game, yeah? It's in Afterlife in the Limelight, in which Bow sings about how much she needs the game and Marsh sings about how it changes and ruins people, and in the end they both agree that it's really no way of living at all. Taco, here, is also going against the game, not just breaking its rules but recognizing that the entire game is broken and how that hurts those involved!!!

THANK YOU FOR READING!!!!!! <3 I HOPE YOU ENJOYED!!! I REALLY HOPE THIS DIDN’T SUCK. IT TOOK A WHILE TO WRITE SO IF IT SUCKS THAT SUCKS FOR ME. HOPEFULLY I DIDN’T MISS TOO MUCH. THROW TOMATOES AT ME IF I DID (i will be sad). GIVE ME COOKIES IF NOT (joy inducers).

[uboat53]

In light of the election, a word to those who voted for Trump.

I'll admit, I've run out of sympathy. It's been eight years of him being overwhelmingly in the public limelight and he was president for four of those. You all know who he is now and you still voted for him.

And I get it, you'll claim that you voted for him for "the economy" and that you don't support all of the ways in which he's a terrible human being, but I have a hard time believing that considering that the average Trump voter doesn't actually even know what Trump's economic policy will be. Look, America had a decent economy under Trump the first time, not because of anything he did, but because he inherited a decent economy from Obama and spent all his time doing petty things like the Muslim ban rather than screwing up the economy. Don't believe me? Find any graph you like of the US economy and show me where his policies changed anything dramatically from the pre-Trump trend (at least, before he completely screwed up the pandemic).

And, look, if he'd just been promising vague, back to normal-type things, I might believe you that it was the economy, but he hasn't. Since the start of his campaign he's been promising to implement massive tariffs on all imports; something he can do, by the way, without Congressional approval. Tariff, by the way, is another word for tax; he's going to add a 10% (and more!) tax to every single thing that the US imports, and we import a lot. Inflation, by the way, has been back down to reasonable levels for months, this is the type of thing that would cause it to spike back up again.

So, yeah, I don't believe you that you voted for him because you were very concerned about the economy; if you were very concerned about the economy you would know all of that already. No, you didn't vote for him "in spite of" the racism and the lawbreaking and the bigotry, you voted for him because of it. The economy was just a fig leaf.

And if that strikes you the wrong way, if you think I'm wrong about that, if you think I'm judging you in bad faith, sit for a minute with that feeling. Ask yourself, why did you vote for a racist? Why did you vote for a criminal? Because you did. Whatever reason you tell yourself you did it for, you still did it. And millions of people around the country and around the world are going to suffer for it.

And, if the economy, as just about every economist predicts, crashes under the weight of Trump's tariffs and other terrible economic polices, I'll admit that my reaction to your shock will probably not be what you'd like either. As I said, I'm out of sympathy after eight years. You voted for a criminal and a bigot in exchange for a "good economy" and the most likely result is that you will still not get it.

I hope that all of the women who will die because they're unable to access abortion care find peace and that their families will too. I hope that all of the immigrants who are deported and the communities they're ripped from are able to heal. I hope that all the gay and trans people who will be attacked and denied support by their own government find what help they need. I hope that all of the Jews and ethnic minorities who are murdered all over the country by white supremacists emboldened by Trump are able to find peace as well. I hope that all of these people are able to survive the economic shockwaves that are coming.

As for you, I'll admit, as unsympathetic as I am generally, I still have my humanity and that leaves me with at least a small bit of hope for you. I hope that you one day discover the humanity to, even if your assumptions about the economy were somehow correct, risk a little bit of what you have to prevent the suffering of others. I hope that you aren't one of the many people devastated by the economic policies you've voted for. I hope that you eventually realize what you've done. I hope that you'll take responsibility for what you've unleashed and work to combat the bigotry and crime that is coming. Ultimately, though, I hope, when you do realize everything that's happened and everything is said and done, that you can forgive yourself.

[gerbelx2000-blog]

i honestly really dislike the palace rulers being treated so drastically different from akechi in the fandom. even though there's still people who refuse to say anything positive about akechi because he's a terrible guy, the majority of the fandom still treats him like a character and read into his backstory, behaviour, and motivations.

but when it comes to the palace rulers, there's not a single ounce of that attitude for them. it's so strange because not even the story itself has such a crazy bias; the same amount of sympathy towards akechi is given towards the palace rulers too. madarame and okumura are my most obvious examples, with yusuke often expressing his conflicting feelings on the matter, and haru learning about her father's motivations through takakura during her confidant.

in that sense, joker and akechi's relationship parallels that of haru/yusuke and the respective father figure; the two mutually love and care for each other, but unfortunately, one cares more for themselves and it causes their bond to break.

the cut backstories for the palace rulers add a lot to their character, and maybe that's why i like them so much. it makes them feel as rounded out as akechi was (in vanilla, i know he's much more humanized in royal's third semester. that might add to the bias, actually) and it makes me feel kind of bad for those sick, twisted bastards.

but obviously, that content was cut, and it's not very widespread knowledge, unlike akechi's backstory which he explains in-game, right in your face, unavoidably.

there's also this thing i've noticed that i call "fandom activism" where any deep analysis into a good-written character that is a genuinely bad person is seen as condoning their actions because WE ALWAYS HAVE TO SHUN THE EVIL GUY!!! WE CAN'T TALK ABOUT THEM IN CASUAL CONVERSATION!!! WE NEED TO HOLD A FICTIONAL CHARACTER ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS EVEN THOUGH THEY'RE NOT REAL AND...... the way we treat them makes no difference in the world? huh.

personally, i was informed that the way i talk about kamoshida makes people uncomfortable. it's not like i said anything creepy about him, all i do is read into him the same way one would with akechi. he's a genuinely good villain, the same way akechi is! and his mindset is really interesting to look into!!!!! i think they're all missing out!!!!!!!!

my last line of defense is that the palace rulers are unfortunately made way less conventionally attractive than akechi is. that's something i don't like about them, and the fact that everyone lets that sway their opinions of them even less. i know atlus pulls the "make the unsympathetic character ugly" shtick a lot and it's suuuuuuuuuuck.

yeah. i'm kind of peeved about this and i thought you were the best person to send this to. kaneshiro isn't a cute twink but i'm still going to love him with the little attention he gets........... :')

FRICKEN NAILED IT THERE! NICE JOB!👍👍👍😭😭😭 AND I CAN RELATE TO YOUR PAIN AND STRUGGLES!

[crossguild]

i will preface this by saying that i LOVE buggy, he is a character that i'm always delighted to see on a page and i find him funny charismatic and entertaining and even sometimes sympathetic. but some parts of the fandom have completely lost the plot with buggy.

the thing is that everything that has ever happened to buggy is self-inflicted because he's a greedy, conniving little shit who abandons people at the drop of a hat. people seem to have forgotten that the reason he lost his ability to swim and became a devil fruit user is because he volunteered to eat the fruit when no one else wanted it, but rather than actually eat it as he claimed to want to do, he tried to sneak it away so he could sell it for personal gain, along with the treasure map that he hid away from his crew.

if he hadn't tried to hide that fact from shanks, he wouldn't have been startled into eating it and if he weren't such a treasure-obsessed little clown, he wouldn't have jumped overboard for that map and he wouldn't have needed shanks to save him.

in loguetown, shanks made a decision to hold off on going after the one piece and even invited buggy to join his crew! he did not on any level betray, hurt, or otherwise harm buggy, who decided that his own ambition and self-esteem issues were somehow shanks's problem to resolve for him. the one who abandoned his childhood friend on the most traumatic day (thus far) of their lives was buggy! shanks does not even owe him the time of day, much less an apology.

shanks does not think about buggy at ALL. whitebeard thought more about buggy and shanks than shanks thinks about buggy and shanks. shanks's reaction to being asked about buggy was oh yeah we split up and haven't talked since. i think he's still a pirate?

when they met up again at marineford, shanks gave absolutely ZERO shits about buggy and the first thing he did was manipulate him into giving luffy his hat. zero great pirates take buggy seriously, as they shouldn't, because he's a pathetic loser clown. if anything, shanks is completely confident of buggy's ability to lie, steal and bluff his way to prominence, which is the only thing he deserves any amount of respect for.

buggy has had numerous opportunities to make a compassionate, kind choice and he has rejected every single one of them in favor of being a self-serving, greedy bastard. and the thing is i don't even hold that against him-- i'm sure the pirate king's crew did nothing to discourage a pirate from being a self-centered survivalist. it takes a lot of strength to be a kind pirate, which i don't think anyone would blame buggy for not having. i LOVE that buggy succeeds by being the very essence of a PIRATE.

but all of buggy's problems are buggy-made!!! the fact that this is repeatedly emphasized in the series isn't a mistake by oda, buggy is very deliberately an unsympathetic loser because he fucking sucks! that's the appeal! if anyone holds the genuine belief that shanks is in any way at fault for buggy's terrible life choices, they have fallen for the clown's lies. shanks has made a LOT of bad decisions in his life but none of them are buggy-related. every time i see an essay about how buggy was deeply wronged by the people around him (especially shanks) i just think of those guys from impel down going like 'OHHHH OUR LORD AND SAVIOR BUGGY... HE'S SO NOBLE AND POWERFUL... HE IS THE SUN AND THE SKY HE IS EVERYTHING' like please 😭

but obviously i don't control what people do or how they engage with canon or characters or whatever. its just incredible to see. casting him as more sympathetic or having been wronged by others in some way is missing the point entirely. he's a guy who was given EVERY opportunity to succeed and he simply decided to suck so so so much instead and he STILL manages to fail up. it's HYSTERICAL.

[k-marzolf]

+Northern Lights

//meet cute in a convenience store, implied smoking, poor!reader, kissing, fem!reader.

//tagging; @e-dubbc11 @terry2227 @snowkestrel @oops89 @aoi-targaryen @firequeensposts @fireeyes-on-teller-dixon-grimes @vaguekayla @danzer8705 @rosaleenablack @firexfate @idaofinfinity @thejanecampaign

//I posted this earlier. I’m having trouble with the tags. Hopefully this time is the charm. Based on a good memory. Also, Billy is living in Maine here on the run from someone. x

//604 words.

You were barefoot as you ran across the parking lot of your apartment complex that morning with money you had found between the couch cushions in your living room. The pebbles dug into your feet, sharp and unyielding, but you didn’t care.

No thoughts about running around on your own as a woman in the early dawn, fingers clutching money obviously in your hand, or the eyes that could be following you.

The light of the convenience store was bright that evening, as you approached, and you pulled open the heavy door, noticing a handsome man buying cigarettes. His dark hair was slicked back, and he wore a red sweater, his beard neatly trimmed.

He was tall and lithe, and you immediately thought of a panther.

His eyes caught yours, and you looked down, face hot. You moved to the drink refrigerator, and found your frappuccino, caramel macchiato. The last one.

You closed the door, and grabbed a bag of Doritos. Something different than stale tap water, and ramen noodles. You could barely keep them down aymore, but still, you tried to be grateful for what you had.

You thought of homeless people, but you couldn’t help but think that just because you were only drowning in an inch of water, didn’t mean you weren’t drowning at all.

But when you moved up to the cashier, and he ran your items up, you were a dollar short. He looked unsympathetic as you counted and recounted, and dug around in your pockets. Maybe you’d missed something.

“I got it,” a soft New York accent said from behind you, making your insides feel warm.

You turned. It was the handsome man again. He was what Lucifer probably looked like before the fall, beautiful in the way the night sky was. “It’s okay, sir.” You said frowning, and about to take just the Doritos.

He put some money down, and the cashier bagged your stuff up while the man appraised you, a cigarette rolling between his lips. “No shoes?”

You shrugged, feeling excitement in your gut, “Wanted coffee.” You said, taking the bag, you couldn’t wait to get home and have your breakfast.

He hummed. “That isn’t coffee, that’s sugar.” He teased you.

“Okay, coffee snob.” You said, a smile playing at your lips. “And don’t you know cigarettes will kill you?”

He huffed a laugh, following you outside into the chilly and damp autumn air. “We all gotta die sometime, might as well enjoy the ride.”

You hummed, stepping over the curve. “Thank you…”

“Billy,” he supplied, eyes darker outside, almost looking like chipped onyx, and you wondered how you could repay him.

“Can I repay you in some way?”

He paused, still playing with the unlit cigarette between his long fingers.

After a beat of silence, you said; “I could split the bag of chips with you—“ He leaned in, pressed a kiss to your mouth, and could taste your lip balm, something sweet and warm like you. “That’ll do,” he said, sticking the cigarette back in his mouth, his cheeks flushed, fishing for his lighter in the pockets of his jeans.

Somehow you felt like you’d gotten even more out of it than he had. “Can I keep you?” You asked breathlessly.

“Yeah, frappe girl. You can keep me.” He husked, wiping your smudged lip balm on the corner of your lip, not missing how your eyes lit up. The way you leaned into his touch, your feet probably numb from the cold and gravel.

So he kissed you again, and there in that parking lot on a cold autumn morning, he was yours.

[mxtxfanatic]

As I'm reading and re-reading through your post, it just hit me that a lot of people have this idea that YZY and JFM were engaged for a long time. I've read many fics and some meta that try to excuse YZY a bit because they accuse JFM of cheating on her essentially. That he confessed to WWX's mom while they were engaged and already set to marry, uncaring of her feelings. When, in reality, he didn't say yes to the match until after WWX parents got married. I'm not sure if there were ever genuine feelings on YZY's side of things but the fact that she's that pressed over him liking other people before they were involved is pathetic and weird honestly.

On another note, what would happen if a sect heir was discovered to not actually be the leader's son? Specifically in C-novels, are there any common actions taken?

Yeah I already covered all that here. Idk why people invented some spurned lover backstory for them except because the donghua (and cql, maybe?) kept tryna make her seem unsympathetic by playing sad music around her. Like bro, I see her whipping a child, I promise you I do not care if her husband really cheated on her, a child abuser, or not. On the other hand, the idea that Jiang Fengmian "cheated" on her because he liked another woman (false) who went on to marry someone else at a time when he, himself, was not engaged is the type of possessive you'd see on a "signs your partner may be abusive" chart.

As for the second part, in a cnovel that includes a conflict where the heir is not actually the leader's biological son, either they are keeping that shit real hush hush (because the leader doesn't care, cares more about not being labeled with a green hat more than he does about revealing he's been tricked, or just really needs that "son" as an heir for whatever reason) and killing/imprisoning/divorcing his wife or, uhhhh, they're definitely killing mom and child. In a novel with this type of plotline happening amongst people of similar status and wealth as their mdzs counterpart? The man is definitely disappearing his wife and "son." His wife is gonna fall "mysteriously ill" so as to need to go to the countryside "for recovery," and his "son" is gonna have a convenient accident far away from home while the rest of the clan and probably the officials look the other way. But if this was just mdzs, I think Jiang Fengmian would just quietly divorce Madam Yu with an explanation to her family and an agreement that they both be quiet and Madam Yu never be allowed out of her natal clan again, and the kids still get to keep their "legitimate child" statuses, likely without ever being told the truth about their mother. If this was mdzs but written as a dogblood, the kids would definitely be told by the elders that they are not Jiang children, and if Jiang Fengmian fights for them to stay in the clan, he definitely could not fight for their right to inherit or else risk being outsed by another branch with accusations that he is trying to give up the Jiang Clan to the Yu Clan by allowing Yu children to inherit.

[allwormdiet]

Insinuation 2.1

In which I'm sure Taylor has no lingering troubles as a result of last night

Yeah no shit you feel awful, Taylor, you just had an awful night and then got maybe two hours of sleep if you're lucky. That's a wretched way to start things off, and the fact that she's gonna stick to her routine anyway feels like borderline self-punishment.

This is a little mean but a little funny. Bewildered And Defeated: The Danny Hebert Story. Poor son of a bitch.

And of course he's surprised, he knows how Taylor's night began and ended.

Points to Danny for trying here. And another little heartbreak centered on the Hebert family, that Taylor just doesn't trust him enough to tell him about her life, even if it might make it easier for him.

She's lied to him every day since she woke up in that hospital. This isn't new, this is just harder to dismiss immediately.

I remain shocked that there's even a union still standing here, given how awfully things have gone.

First time we hear about Uber and Leet, and outsider perspective both those guys seem to have rancid vibes; I don't really expect that to change.

More to the point though, this is a friend and work associate of Taylor's dad who's going to work for a supervillain team because he can't get money the honest way, because there's no fucking work in the Docks and nobody's coming to save them. Taylor seems to remain utterly unsympathetic to this plight, and she's even cracking jokes about it, and her dad is laughing. That... kinda sucks. Like someone two degrees of separation from you is throwing in his lot with organized crime because he can't put food on the table the way he could before, have a heart.

Whatever. Let's move on.

Hey, wow, Danny actually steps up to the plate here, good on him. I was expecting that to just slip past for another ten chapters before it came up in an argument or something, but he's pulling the trigger now.

(Also, further proof that Taylor lives in the same kinda "bad part of town" where all those crack whores and gangsters live, don't act so above them girl)

And the thing is that Danny is right, he's actually more right than he can imagine because he's thinking small potatoes compared to the big fucking dragon that almost turned his daughter into a charred pile of viscera on a roof. I don't know why Taylor bristles so hard at her father's concern for her, is it because she thinks he's as helpless as she is? That might be it but that doesn't feel like it covers everything.

Then Danny alludes to the bullying, and it sucks that she like. Can't even trust him with that. That he has to step lightly on this subject because his daughter can't deal with it head on. She doesn't even acknowledge his question and he lets it drop, again, and I just. God. Agony.

"Sorry" means you're gonna do your level best to not do it again. It's another lie, and it's another hurt.

This feels so much more alarming than how they're treating it. Taylor got hit with a fireball and her hair got singed in the process, that's maybe the clearest physical marker of how close she came to dying, and she manages to play it off as getting too close to the stove?

I don't think Danny buys it, but he doesn't call her on it either, and so he lets Taylor go and she starts running from it all as fast as she can. That feels intentional.

Current Thoughts

I am begging on my hands and knees for the Hebert family to get their shit sorted out, it is agonizing to watch this dance they do around each other, this avoidance and cowardice and just. Ugh. It's realistic and that makes it worse.

More little gripes about Taylor's perspective on people even marginally less fortunate than her, turning to criminal acts as a matter of desperation. I hope she gets better about that but I kind of doubt it.

Let's move along from here

[lumsel]

Reviews of movies I watched on Qantas flights this week

Poor Things: I expected this one to be more harrowing, actually. I got that vibe from what I heard about it? It's more like a weird fairytale about sex and sexuality though. I am good friends with @utilitymonstergirl of Replacable Parts though so that may be skewing my baseline for what most people consider a shocking lmao. I like how totally blase it is about its own problematic elements, it never blinks or tries to justify itself in any way, it just goes "lmao check this shit out". Refreshing in a moment that feels marked by overbearing didacticism in media. Not to say this movie doesn't have a very clear Point, mind you, which is basically "stop being weird about sexuality", but it tells that Point with a level of focus and confidence that I find satisfying.

Oppenheimer: There's a few seriously eye-rolly moments in here, like the one where he says the I Am Become Death line while his mistress is mid-insertion, but it's like a single digit number in a three hour movie. Very well paced too, it did not at all feel like three hours. I really like how it uses the language of film to get you understanding why Oppenheimer made the seemingly contradictory decisions he did during his career. When Oppenheimer is building a nuke, you're biting your teeth like "oh man, I hope Oppie builds this nuke in time!" And when he's trying to stop them from building more nukes, you're like "oh jeez, I hope Oppie can stop these nukes getting built!" Despite the expansive and star studded cast, this really does feel like a movie primarily interested in getting you to understand this one dude specifically, and I really respect it for that.

That One DnD Movie: Fun!!! It's a little jank, and the exposition can feel clunky, but it was a fun movie overall. God, though... the second act sucks so much ass. I feel like this happens a lot in movies, where the first and third acts are where the substantive parts of the narrative happen, but the second act feels like the plot is spinning its wheels while we set up the climax. This one is particularly bad where the cast just takes a sidequest in the middle of the movie to grab some inconsequential artefact and nothing that happens in that sequence matters particularly much. Anyway, fun as this movie was, I almost forgot entirely to add it to this list of reviews, which probably

Anatomy of a Fall: Yeah this was good. Very good-movie coded, like the foreign films I always see my mum and dad watching when I'm cleaning up after dinner at their place. I feel I don't even have much to say on this one because it basically just executed everything it was trying to execute efficiently and without any jarring mistakes. You can tell from pretty early on that this is gonna be one of those stories where you never find out the Real Truth of what happened, although I found one of the sides to have a broadly weaker case and I'm not sure if that was intended.

Dream Scenario: Ultimately was disappointed by this one. Thought there was gonna be a multilayered metaphor underlying this one but it turned out to be a pretty shallow piece on social media fame framed around some dude who really wants to cheat on his wife. Let down by the synopsis, I spose. I think the constituent parts work at cross purposes and make the movie undermine itself a little: the kafkaesque surreal horror is harder to feel the depth of when the protagonist is so obviously a shithead, but the unsympathetic protagonist is less compelling when the things that happen to him are an inexplicable nightmare scenario rather than his own decisions taking him down a dark path. There'd be a way to make it work but honestly I don't think this movie was pretentious enough to pull it off. It needed to be willing to get weirder and harder to parse with it rather than keep everything so broad and crowd-pleasing.

TMNT Mutant Mayhem: I liked a lot of things about this movie. The pacing is fantastic, and I found the character writing to actually be quite good. I actually found myself quite liking the density of pop culture references, because yeah, that's how teenagers talk. Makes it feel more real. And the animation. I'm glad more animated movies are incorporating actual fight choreography these days because it fucking whips every time. Unfortunately it really fell apart by the end for me because the pacing gets janked up to hell and it starts cramming in way too many unearned character moments. Something about it got kind of unbearable for me personally, I just stopped watching the movie.

Labyrinth: Technically a rewatch, but last time I saw this one I was like single digit aged. Thoroughly it despite it being structurally a mess. It's basically just Jim Henson's Creature Shop coming up with various Situations to put our protagonist into, threaded together in a very loose framework of a plot. The lead is not that good at acting, the jokes rarely made me laugh out loud, and yet! I was smiling the whole time through. There's an interesting contrast to the DnD movie for me, where that one has a fine first act, an awful second act, and a fine third act with divisions between them so sharp you can hear a clunk when the gears shift, Labyrinth is pretty much 80% second act, with a bit of intro at the start and a quick bit at the end to wrap it up. Makes it feel like a very storybook fairytale type of story, and I love that for it! And, unlike the DnD movie... I don't think I'm likely to forget I watched this one a week from now :P

[markantonys]

I'm curious how "Rand pushing his friends away 2.0" will go. First go round was cause he was scared of hurting them (which is book accurate). The second time in the books is a trauma response so it could go that way in the show too but I just wonder if they don't want to get repetitive of him pushing his friends away. But it is kinda important 🤔 one of the main things is Rand believing his friends aren't in his corner cause of his trauma and self hatred so maybe they lean into that more

yeah it's interesting to ponder! like you say, in the second half of the series it's less "rand pushes his friends away to protect them" and more "rand's friends are geographically separated from him for a long period of time and continue to worry about him despite not being able to see him, whilst rand's deteriorating mental state leads him to incorrectly think his friends have abandoned him and don't care about him anymore" - so if the show went that route in future seasons, i don't think that would feel repetitive with him pushing people away to protect them in s2! and the much stronger EF5 friendship they've established would make it all the more heartbreaking to see rand losing faith in his friends and all the more illustrative of what a bad place he's in (vs. in the books where most readers genuinely believe him when he says they've abandoned him, because the EF5 friendship was relatively lukewarm and the evidence that Everyone Still Cares About Rand was definitely there, but not too strongly or frequently)

it's interesting that rand appears to have actually learned the "pushing people away just makes you and them more vulnerable" lesson after s2 (judging by his Amateur Therapy Session with mat and his apology to egwene), so the approach on that front going forward would have to be either a) rand didn't genuinely learn this after all and is right back to his old tricks in s3, b) rand did genuinely learn it now, but backslides later due to trauma and his deteriorating mental state, or c) the "push people away to protect them" thing is all dealt with in s2 and rand's future isolation will be due to different causes (such as the plot-mandated separation i mentioned above). all 3 seem equally plausible to me!

(but i definitely wouldn't be mad about option C, particularly when thinking about rand's romances. good god the "aaaaahhh i can't be with you i'm soooo dangerous" got SO tiring in the books lmao, like it's not unreasonable for rand to feel that way given the Everything and i'm not unsympathetic towards him, but it just got so tiring! and it made the romances even more difficult to enact than they needed to be & made rand see even less of elayne and aviendha than he already would have due to plot reasons. it also caused a hell of a lot of cognitive dissonance and breaks in rand's own internal logic and characterization, where he's on the one hand going "aaaaahhh i can't be with you i'm soooo dangerous" & refusing to stay in caemlyn with elayne and avi for more than a night lest he draw the forsaken there, and on the other hand he's agreeing to be warder-bonded to everyone & going "come on min, time to bring you into an active warzone" & flaunting his relationship with her in public for all and sundry to see. so the show needs to do SOMETHING here, whether it be preventing his "push them away to protect them" attitude from recurring at all after s2 or making it recur only much later once his bonds & romances are all squared away or saving the bonding until after his epiphany or simply just equalizing his behavior towards each of the 3 so that nobody's getting exceptions to whatever show!rand's internal logic rules end up being.)

[lokisivy]

Look what you made me do - Eddie Munson

(Part 4)

Warnings: cursing, Henderson reader.

Since yesterday night, Eddie hasn't talked to you, and you guys shared some classes he was being cold you are starting to regret last night. you went to talk to Robin during lunch. Just a quick chat before you head to your tables.

"You actually had sex with him?" Robin said, surprised.

"Yes, I did, Robin, and he hasn't said anything since, and I'm sure that he wasn't having a bad time," you said sadness laced in your tone.

I was more angry than sad he was the one who wanted me to say yes to it why is it like that whatever fucked up shit he has going on he needs to fix it because I won't be a way for him to escape whatever shit he is going through he is making me play the role of the fool.

"Men are horrible, but whatever happens, don't show weakness to him, act like you dont care, he is trying to get to you." she instructed you. you nod. "I have to go to my band," she says "Okay see you later."

While you had your conversation with Robin Eddie and his club, it had their own discussion about you.

...

Eddie's POV

"Honestly, Eddie, why didn't you kick her out yet I know she is good at DnD, but we have Mike and Dustin now," Gareth said.

"Yeah It is like you gone soft for her ever since she joined." Jeff agreed with Gareth.

My blood boiled I've had this stupid feeling of making Y/N since the day I met her. Yesterday was just making me crave more she is mine but I have a reputation of being unsympathetic and the fact that my club members have noticed then I need to take it down

"I haven't gone soft she isn't even that hot for me to fuck around with" I lied. I enjoyed last night very much, but Ill ruin the dark, scary image I built throughout the years with everyone. If I become soft towards you, people will start swinging at him like they used to hell even his friends have noticed already.

"Now shut up she is coming with her brother." Eddie silenced them

during lunch, you felt very unwelcomed it's like everyone was trying to kick you out slowly. You never felt that in the past year, but now it's different. Eddie never meant what he said to the guys at the table. god, he couldn't even stop thinking about the other night he never liked someone enough to get scared like that. His childhood taught him never to show emotion, so he never did he thinks that hiding it makes life easier, but it is not his not doing anyone a favour.

...

"If you have something to say to me, Eddie says it to my face," you said, throwing your tiny action figure on the board, standing up, leaning on the table towards eddie. he has been throwing indirect insults the entire game at you.

"You address me as Kas in the game Lady Silverhand." He yells

"Suck my dick, Munson."

"You would love that wouldn't you," he smirks

"Fuck you Eddie you want to tell me something or coward away?" You said impling about the other night.

"I have nothing to tell you y/n you're just a random chick who can't even play properly. Maybe you should join something suitable more for your gender." He said venomously, laughing

everyone was looking at you Dustin was shocked he looked at you with pity. your brother who looked up to you pitted you.

"And you're just a drug junky who has been repeating senior year for the past 2 years" you scoffed.

"Get out! " he yelled.

"Good I am done playing your stupid little games." You take off your hellfire shirt and throw it at him, leaving flipping them off. You had a sports bra on that covered up a lot.

you left the room to go to the gym. Most clubs and practices happen after school. Eddie was never rude to you, and now he kicked you out of hellfire just after you both had sex.

You had sought revenge. You had a plan in mind. You knew what would happen if you did not act on it

I enter the gym, interpreting the cheerleaders. "Chrissy can speak to you alone," you called out for Chrissy.

she aproched you leading you outside the gymnaism "is everything okay?" she asked.

"i wanna be a cheerleader."

"WHAT!!!" She said surprised

"I know, but Chrisy, you're the cap, and i am done with hellfire. I'm so tired of Eddie Munson. i just want to join Cheer again." You pled.

Chrisy and I go way back she helped me join during sophomore year, but it was exhausting, so when Dustin asked me to join Hellfire, I left now I'm doing it for revenge Eddie will get more attention now that you left or got kicked out... Rumours will start the basketball team will give him hell. The world moves on, another day another drama, But not for me, not for me, all I think about is karma.

"ï don't know y/n i need to know if you're serious," She said

"I am very serious cheer looks better on college applications than fucking Eddie's Cult." I said venomously.

"I'm only gonna say yes because you, my friend, since childhood, but Y/N, I can't help you if fuck it up again."

"Oh my god, thank you so much Chrisy you won't regret it, I promise." I said happily

"Now go put on your outfit. we still have 3 hours of practice." She said, leading me to the changing room handing me my outfit again.

I put it on and look in the mirror. I look so pretty.

Oh Eddie, look what you made me do...

[ohblackdiamond]

Number 7 for the KISS asks, please?

absolutely! thank you!

7. What you dislike about each member?

woo, boy...

paul --paul is actually a buzzard. paul is defensive, needy, incredibly self-conscious, incredibly self-pitying, and an absolute master at driving people away. he has retained a level of bitterness against people he hasn't worked with in two or more decades that is nothing short of spectacular. paul will rework himself to whatever he thinks john q. public wants, because he doesn't like who he actually is offstage.

gene --gene's arrogance is not entirely a put-on. gene will say anything and do anything to get attention. gene's constant cheating on girlfriends and his attitude towards women in general is reprehensible. gene is unsympathetic to others and views or has viewed addiction and mental problems as character failings while excusing his own serious issues with infidelity/using women as a "what do you expect" rockstar schtick. additionally, i would not go into business with gene for all the tea in china.

peter --peter has created or exacerbated a whole lot of his own unhappiness. peter is hotheaded and probably a gigantic pain to deal with/work with, even now. peter is very unforgiving. peter makes or has made very poor financial and career moves and really spent those fifteen years post his first kiss firing talking about stuff he was doing rather than actually doing too much of anything (tiny handful of albums that went nowhere, that he didn't even try to promote, tiny handful of bands that for the most part, other than criss, never even played!), while continuing for a number of years to receive a cut from a band he was no longer in, per contractual obligations (i'm not saying he should've noped out of it, but it's very easy to see where paul's resentment of him comes from).

ace --ace has wasted so, so much potential that it's unfathomable. he has never been willing to strike while the iron is hot, to his eternal detriment. he has set fire to decades of his life via rampant addiction-- yes, he's clean now, and i'm proud of him for it, but the damage he did to himself and his relationships with family and friends is not necessarily repairable. ace also overrates himself and has proven willing to do slimy things for the almighty dollar (selling out peter and the empty threats re: gene and paul).

eric carr --as someone who has my own issues with insecurity, i could see where eric's issues there could get old to deal with very, very fast. i get his frustrations with the band/gene and paul, but i don't think he went about things in the right way. i think he played off of gene and paul too much-- i think had he been more accepting of his hired gun role, things might have played out a little differently. i think he could've gotten hired/more creative control in a different band in the mid-eighties and been happier.

vinnie --CREATURESFEST. i was there.

mark --... is there anyone besides peter criss who can corroborate accusation against him? just curious. i'm not sure why this one is believed so wholeheartedly when i've never heard it from anyone else (and when the fandom as a whole is pretty particular on what negative accusations are believed about the band). if it's true, then yeah, that's more than reason enough for him to be scum, but if it's not, then it's hard for me to really find something to dislike about him-- he was in the band for a grand total of one album and about three shows.

bruce --bruce is... staid. you know what you're getting with bruce. but where is the fun with bruce? bruce is not going to do anything unexpected. bruce's hair is nice, bruce's guitar is in tune, and bruce is going to let paul skid/slide under him and play guitar on his back so he can have all the attention during a solo, because bruce is just that guy.

also bruce's serious fetish for stockings is not something i ever needed to know about him and i resent him for publicizing it. thank you, @bangbangyou

eric singer --eric is wasted in kiss like f. scott fitzgerald was wasted in hollywood. it's like watching scott joplin play chopsticks.

tommy --see bruce's section. tommy is just not fun. there are no surprises with tommy. he'll shoot the rockets. he'll do the backbends. but a deer is never going to fall in tommy's pool and drown, causing him to nearly be late for a show. it's consistent. it's also mildly depressing.

[rikebe]

Hi! I was wondering as to why you think Akihiro would be more dependent on attention than Bobby (based on your ship meme)? Anyway I really love your x-men art! /gen /pos

OOOH this is a fun one!

as you can see i put akihiro so far on the left he almost falls of. i just really see him as someone who really, really needs positive attention. pretty easy to understand why too, since textually he essentially didn't have any positive relationships with anyone after he was a small child (and even before that his adoptive mother couldn't stand being around him because of his mutation and he got bullied for being mixed), and you can really see the way he, even if he'd never say it, craves positive attention by the way he interacts with the handful of people he has kind feelings for.

he builds a relationship with johnny and becomes his friend, presumably for ulterior motives but he sticks around for much longer than he needs to, talks to him on the phone and is just like.. his pal for a while. he didn't need to do that, and since it's pretty clear to me he had romantic feelings for johnny of some sort it it's pretty obvious why he'd be eager to spend more time with him. what's also of note is that akihiro pretends to be a much nicer, more sympathetic version of himself around johnny. yes, to manipulate him, but also because that is a version of him that johnny could easy like or even love. he's essentially roleplaying the fantasy of being the kind of person nice old johnny could love, and he keeps coming back to that well of positive attention.

the other standout to me is his relationship with donna, the cop lady he fixates on in D:DW. akihiro becomes obsessed with the idea that donna is "like him", someone unsympathetic and cold to the idea of killing, and he latches onto her in the hope that she could be that person who loves and understands him as he is. it's also pretty telling to me that he's aware of this "difference" between him and other people, and that he obviously feels that there's a wall between him and "normal" people.

then there's his relationship with his sisters, people he sticks around for without standing to gain anything from it other than... well, people he loves and who love him. laura and gabby are the only people that love akihiro unconditionally, that keep him around fully aware of all the dark nasty ugly parts of his past, who can relate to him due to their similar upbringings. he craves this love and attention from them, and that's why he seems to mellow out when he's around them. their love is a motivator to be better, rather than to pretend that he's better.

so while i don't think akihiro is necessarily super clingy or even always acts on this, because it's mostly a subconscious thing for him, he definitely deeply desires attention and love and acceptance, since he's, you know, human, and was abnormally deprived of all of these things most of his childhood and adult live. bobby is also someone who knows what kind of a nasty boy he is/used to be (i don't see a reality where they date without akihiro having worked through a lot of his baggage) and still chooses to love him and accept him, and i just think he'd really relish in positive attention from a partner where the cards are fully on the table. no lying and no manipulation, just the reality of who both of them are.

as for bobby i definitely think he really LIKES attention as he's very insecure about a lot of things, and he also really struggles with accepting himself as he is and presenting a false version of himself, it's just not as extreme as akihiro.

on a less analytical note akihiro is just a massive diva and loves being the center of attention. remember when he died that one (no, the first time, not that other time) time and made it all of new york's problem? yeah. bobby's just a lot less vain so he can handle not having the spotlight better LMFAO

[anghraine]

A few bad but fairly typical P&P takes got me thinking about ... Mako from Legend of Korra, actually, and also, just fandom dynamics.

Many of you weren't in that fandom (or perhaps any fandom) back when LOK aired, but I was very active in it. I actually liked—and still like—some aspects of LOK better than ATLA, and I certainly liked the fandom better than ATLA's.

That said, LOK fandom was still less a dumpster fire than a landfill explosion. To this day, I couldn't even identify the single character who got hit the hardest by LOK fandom's approach to discourse, which like most fandoms today, painted a thin veneer of social justice over good old-fashioned stanning/ship wars, but did it much more transparently.

In any case, if I were going to try and pick the character who got hit hardest by the LOK discourse truck, Mako would at least be in the running. The later days of LOK fandom can give the sense that the basic ship war from Day 1 was Korra/Mako (Makorra) vs Korra/Asami (Korrasami). But my strong impression back when the first book aired was that the ship war dynamic was much more Korra/Mako vs Korra/anyone-but-Mako.

There were plenty of not-Mako options. Korra/Bolin was pretty big for awhile. Korra/Tahno had a substantial following during/after Book 1—Tahno was the waterbender from the rival pro-bending team who got curb-stomped by Amon. There was, of course, Korra/Asami (seemed like no chance in hell at the time, but sweet). It was even a good fandom for hero/villain shippers like me.

I think a lot of this activity ultimately coalesced around Korrasami. But at the time, it hadn't quite happened yet. The fandom was wanky (sorry, discourse-y) about virtually every character, but a lot of people really, really, really hated Mako in particular—Mako haters could encompass people who liked or hated the first season, people who loved or hated Korra, people still mad about Zutara, whatever. I didn't like him at the end of Book 1, myself, though I couldn't buy into the screeds about how abusive and exploitative and otherwise problematic he supposedly was.

Since I didn't actually have much of a stake in the main ship wars, I've always found this dynamic more interesting than anything else in terms of fandom behavior, because I've seen it happen many times, but I hadn't often seen it at the level that Mako hatedom took it to back then. So I was thinking about how this happens, and the particular way it happened with Mako back in the aftermath of Book 1.

Early in Book 1, Mako is revealed to be a tragic, brooding orphan with a slight edge trying to support his sweet-natured younger brother and himself through a mixture of industrial work and magic sports. He gets swept off his feet (literally and metaphorically) by a beautiful, very cool, very rich girl (Asami) and enters a romantic relationship with her, only to feel increasingly drawn to his beautiful, very cool, very powerful friend Korra, our heroine.

Some people pointed out that "which awesome and hot girl do I choose :( it's really hard :( :(" is not the most sympathetic quandary for a character to be in, and for the target audience, particularly unsympathetic coming from a young man. And the choice to repeatedly cut from shippy Mako/Korra moments to Asami looking upset didn't help (especially since Asami lost almost everything when she chose to stick with them and turn on her father). And Mako's eventual apology to Asami was genuinely a bit underwhelming—it's basically "mistakes were made."

And, yeah, those things are true. But fandom is not always so OTT hostile about the man in that kind of love triangle taking awhile to get his shit figured out, even when the man is much older than Mako, a literal teenager. Like, I never thought I'd compare Avatar to Bridgerton, but the Edwina-Anthony-Kate dynamic seems roughly similar and most of the fandom came away from it really invested in Anthony/Kate and sympathetic to them. It depends on the fandom and on the depiction.

It's not that Mako didn't screw up in Book 1. It's that the reaction—he's an awful person for pretty ordinary missteps and some poor relationship choices, he's an abuser, he's the worst character in the show, whatever—just seemed wildly disproportionate.

And also, yeah, overreacting to minor misdeeds and reducing a character to ultra-exaggerated versions of their worst selves out of sheer annoyance is a fandom staple (especially when the misdeeds take up as much air as the early LOK love triangle seemed to for many people, with other aspects of the story crammed into limited space). But the extent of the hatred still struck me as rather extraordinary, especially since he seemed to go from reasonably well-liked to feverishly hated in a short period of time.

My theory after B1 aired was that this really came from the intersection of a fandom that was very prone to this kind of exaggeration and poor faith readings with the actual structure of his characterization in B1. We quickly discover his tragic past with his parents being murdered, and that he's been struggling on the streets, and has to look after a cuddly but clueless brother who doesn't seem to get the urgency of their problems. He uses his prodigious lightningbending abilities to make just enough money in a sort of magic power plant to get by in combination with pro-bending successes. Essentially, we're given far more than the minimum required to sympathize with him and tolerate the occasional asshole moment.

But later on in B1, a lot of his characterization and scenes are directly tied up in the love triangle, and many of his original, somewhat more ... pressing concerns, end up getting pretty much resolved in one way or another. So a lot of those original sources of sympathy that were so concentrated in his early scenes are no longer a concern, while others are no longer being emphasized by the narrative.

And it's certainly the case that Mako was much less widely and disproportionately hated later on, at least in my fandom experience. Some people still hated Makorra with a passionate fire, but Mako himself seemed much more endearing to many people once the narrative dialed down the love triangle, explicitly paid attention to his loyalty as a friend, his basic heroism, his close yet sometimes difficult relationship with his brother, and a certain adorkableness that was not absent in B1, but which wasn't as heavily emphasized.

I don't mean to argue that this later narrative treatment was necessarily better, but I do think the more even distribution of sympathetic qualities or revelations about him alongside his flaws made him much more palatable to a lot of the fandom. It's like people ... just kind of forgot why many of them originally liked him unless the narrative went out of its way to remind them.

This is really long, but I did feel that B1 kind of overplayed its hand with Mako early in the season, and then underplayed it in the later parts of the season, and fandom being fandom, people enormously overreacted to their sense of what was going on in that phase of the story (for many: ARGH!!) and not all the information they actually had.

This isn't a hill to die on for me, exactly. It was just how I saw what was going on—this kind of toxic mix of fandom bullshit with some peculiar choices in the structure of his characterization and what got emphasized (or even mentioned) where. That is still my general impression, though—that the fandom's response wasn't coming from nowhere, but that we were getting this kind of intersection of a fandom even more prone than most to over-reaction and poor faith assumptions + some genuine oddities in structure and emphases in his characterization during that first season.

What does this have to do with P&P? Well, I'll get to that. But this post is honestly long enough already, so I'll do the follow-up tomorrow, probably.

[jakowskis]

Day 23 - Discuss Tosh. Opinions? Favorite moment? Least favorite moment? Any unpopular opinions? Any fun headcanons?

tosh my babygirl my princess light of my life angel darling… shes so good. shes so good 🥺 i love her dearly. she’s so damn underutilized i hate how the show regulates her to a supporting role + only uses her for romantic plots. WACK shes so much more than that. i want a plotline about her cyberterrorism like hello??? i want a plotline about her warped little mind.. i want a plotline about her finally learning spanish ;-; that show did not do her justice and it did not deserve her. i often say torchwood’s characters are too good for the show; tosh is probs the best example of that. no other character gets screwed over as badly as she does by the narrative (not even ianto!) she’s so tragic and lonely i just wanna give her the biggest hug ever. 

fav moment… every time she smiles. (or smirks. hrgh. tosh call me.) also every time she geeks out about smth. im tryna think of a specific moment but idk if i have one?? i just love her overall i smile every time she’s on screen she’s my girlie. when i rewatch i might rmr one though

least favorite moment, the absolute only thing i can think of (hell, my only complaint with her as a character other than i wish she’d get over owen cuz bad taste queen pls u deserve sm better) - it’s always bothered me how she goes over to owen’s flat in aditd and just starts babbling about her own problems. she even says something like “you think everything’s about you”, and in that ep it’s like ??? why are they all acting like he’s unjustified being miserable and angry when he's fucking dead?? like they're all so unsympathetic and mean, even tosh, and out of her it's especially weird?? tbh it just strikes me as ooc (+ kind of misogynistic highkey) writing. i mean, by all means, let tosh bitch, she deserves to blow off some steam + esp deserves to be rude to owen tbh fhsdkjfsd, but the way it’s done in that particular moment feels ooc and, like, how men write women as talking too much and never listening lmao u kno what i mean (owen’s tuned out in the actual episode but you can see her full ramble in the original script, on page 23). tosh has never troubled anyone with her issues before, why would she choose now to, and when she knows owen’s struggling? yeah, on second thought, i don’t hold that against her actually, that’s ooc to me fhdkf. thts just the writer being a wiener.

my only unpopular opinions (slash hot takes) are that 1) towen fucking SUCKS get her away from him, and 2) most people like tosh but she’s highkey underappreciated, esp in fanfic, because of fandom racism + misogyny. she’s not bashed like gwen is but she’s ignored completely which is nearly as bad, and a lot of it’s cuz she happens to be in a show with two white men in a gay relationship who are overwhelmingly prioritized 💀 i will never not be petty about the way that ship dwarfs everything else in comparison. also throwing towen into the background of janto is so gross n cheap. if ppl cared abt her they'd do smth more interesting. and it's never well-done either. ugh.

i have a few hcs that are gonna end up in my owento verse (gwen and tosh are prominent characters in it bc i love them, and their relationships w owen and ianto and each other also have value lawl). tbh a lot of em are just things i think they should introduce into their lives to be happier. i want them happy ;-;

she starts coding video games recreationally!! nothing fancy but she rlly enjoys it + also gets into the swing of making little storylines n getting to express herself that way which is good for her. owen playtests shit for her

her and gwen go on spa dates sometimes. they put it on the torchwood credit card

she gets into fish tanks and fish tank care!!! esp like aquarium plants. shrimp and moss balls, that sort of thing. maybe plecos or loaches. she loves it + it’s grounding, which is good for her bc shes otherwise always got her head in her computers yanno. she’ll sit by her tank while she codes her games and the water sounds are calming. 

she also sits by it while she studies her spanish books which she does finally do. she doesn’t get around to the piano, though; doesn’t prioritize buying a keyboard. maybe one day (this is a nobody dies au btw so she will in fact eventually get around to it ;-;)

oh she’s autistic have i said that. the fish tanks absolutely become a spin. she has a few we know of from canon - math and computers, obviously, but also history (gbg) and the uk’s rivers (from gooseberry; i think it was just the uk maybe it was europe’s rivers. or the world’s! i don’t remember). she also loves trivia like she knows a fair amount about quite a lot of things + loves accumulating random info

lowkey also. giving her a kitty. i think tosh should have a lil fuzzy kitty to keep her company 

well this is smth from my owandy verse but i think it should happen anyway. so it kind of kicks off bc gwen mixes up a blind date (it was gonna be tosh & andy and then owen & a friend of hers, but shes an adhd icon n bungles the invites <3)... tosh ends up with gwen’s friend, who’s straight, but they hit it off and she invites tosh to have drinks or maybe come to a bookclub meet or something with some friends of hers?? point is, tosh makes some casual friends. maybe meets a pretty girl there or smth 👁️ but mainly i want tosh to have girl friends like i think she grew up very lonely i want her to have some normalcy

also sometimes i like tosh x andy maybe they have a little meet cute at a torchwood crime scene or smth fshdkfd. i think they’d be cute and he’d treat her well. she'd babble abt tech stuff and he wouldnt understand a damn word but he'd listen very intently

i also like tosh x ianto for similar reasons. i think it’d be a kind of friends to lovers sitch... they should just be close in general tbh, platonically or not yanno, and in my owandy verse i like the idea of smth kicking off between them i just think theyd be so sweet

she’s a very sleepy drunk and also a lightweight. if the team goes out to drink she’ll get two glasses of smth moderately fruity and then fall asleep against someone’s shoulder it’s very cute (this is just cuz i like the idea of a sleepy tosh 🥺 my baby my baby shes so precious to meee)

[angelamontoo]

Wait I wanna hear about ur Mortimer Brewster hate.

I never cared for him personally but I wanna hear ur reason, if you don't mind.

Oh I probably shouldnt have called myself a hater, that's a bit too strong and negative a word for how I feel about Mortimer. Tbh with how unsympathetic and just plain boring a lot of leading men(aswell as other characters who we, the audience, are expected to have some automatic, unearned liking for)are in a lot of these old films, I can't truly hate Mortimer just cause hes at least consistently genuinely funny and interesting to watch.

Still, Mortimer has a lot of pretty unlikeable characteristics that it took multiple rewatches of the film for me to really notice, or at least think about fully. It's definitely partially my opinion being influenced by other AAOL fans who's post about why they hate Mort got me thinking more about just what a massive douche he is in the film, but plenty of it is stuff I kinda noticed myself and then focused on more with every rewatch while I was waiting for Einstein to appear.

The most obvious shitty trait about Mortimer is ofc the way he treats Elaine, ignoring her, berating her, stringing her along and being a condescending dickweed, all because of his own internal conflicts and as a Lorre fan, I'm obligated to be somewhat offended by how needlessly mean he is to Herman, but what really bothers me personally is the way he treats his aunts and especially Teddy. He talks down to his aunts like they're little kids instead of the people who raised him, essentially his mothers and has 0 gratitude for everything they've done for him despite Abby and Martha treating him like their golden child, being thrilled to cart them off to happydale with Teddy. Speaking of, the utter lack of empathy Mortimer has for his own brother, who has never done anything more harmful to anyone else than blow a bugle too loud, is vile. He has no moral qualms letting Teddy potentially take the fall for murder when he's never shown signs of violence before just because "everyone already knows he's crazy" and Mortimer was always planning to shove Teddy into a nuthouse when his aunts croaked anyway so it's no skin off his nose.

Also, while I'm happy that Herman makes it out of the film unscathed, the fact that Mortimer let's someone who he knows was at least an accomplice to multiple murders walk free just because he helps Mort unload his inconvenient relatives into somebody else's care, is proof that Mortimers eagerness to be rid of his family has nothing to do with him being worried that they'll hurt more innocent people. For all Mortimer knows, Herman's every bit as dangerous as Jonathan.

So yeah if I was gonna make a tiere list for leading men in Lorre films(not including the few where Pete fills that role ofc) Mort would probably rank relatively high for being fun to watch and having some sympathetic moments, but that is not saying much

Also thanks for this ask. My blogs mainly about pete characters ofc, but I like having an excuse to talk about some other characters I'm interested in from his films