#dakota is tired and gay

[thelasthalloween]

I may be a dumbass

[denimbex1986]

'It’s one of those odd April days in Los Angeles, the type that locals know well: Hours after noon, the sun still seems ambivalent about whether it wants to make itself known. An outsider wouldn’t think it possible for the gleaming capital of show business to feel so grayed out. But if you grew up on an island where colorless skies are the norm, it might feel familiar.

“It’s like, Will I? Won’t I?” the Irish actor Andrew Scott quips as he settles into his chair on the rooftop of the Edition Hotel in West Hollywood. He’s been in town promoting his Netflix series “Ripley,” which launched a few weeks ago, and the foreboding weather seems apt. On that limited series, the Italian vistas seem as unsettled as its antihero’s soul. The show’s vibe is “almost like L.A., what we’re looking at here now,” Scott says, as I begin to regret not bringing a jacket to our alfresco lunch. “It’s cloudy. I come from a place where the sky is normally like this.”

Scott’s “Ripley,” an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel about a grifter whose 1950s Euro-trip comes with a body count, is morally cloudy, too, and glamorously gloomy besides. Unlike the 1999 film “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” which placed an uptight Tom Ripley (then played by peak-heartthrob-era Matt Damon) amid the rustic charm of Italy and drew its charge from the contrast, this year’s version is a blunter object. Speedo-clad Damon romped through the Italy of your dreams; the baggily attired Scott staggers through a nightmare.

Written and directed by Steven Zaillian and likely to place Scott in contention for a limited-series lead-acting Emmy, it’s mesmerizing but cool to the touch, using Oscar winner Robert Elswit’s stark black-and-white cinematography to depict a landscape as forbidding as its central character. That may account for why the series got off to a slow start on Netflix’s weekly viewership charts. But “Ripley” has also attracted the kind of positive notices that suggest a potential long tail, especially as Emmy season looms.

The series was a crucial test for Scott, who, at 47, has proven himself a shape-shifter. The out gay actor, who in 2019 stole scenes as the “Hot Priest” on the second season of “Fleabag,” and who had an awards-season run for his lovelorn role in last year’s “All of Us Strangers,” knows how to win hearts. Even playing the villainous Moriarty opposite Benedict Cumberbatch’s Holmes on the 2010s BBC “Sherlock,” Scott became known for his loopy, outsized line readings. So what would it feel like to play a tamped-down sociopath?

But Scott didn’t see Ripley that way. “I found an enormous amount to like,” he says. “There’s something about that character that, I think, a lot of people see themselves in. And I think it’s to do with being an outsider.” Tom Ripley, plainly gifted, lacks the social connections of the wealthy American expats he meets (played here by Johnny Flynn and Dakota Fanning as layabouts and occasional boors). His flashes of rage — forcing him, later, to methodically dispose of multiple corpses — exist for Scott as a sort of frustrated creative impulse. “He probably is more of an artistic sort, but he doesn’t feel he’s got the class to call himself that.”

There’s something about Ripley, in other words, that’s tortured — a trait Scott can conjure with ease. On “Fleabag,” his unnamed Catholic clergyman struggled through a crisis of faith-versus-lust that was both funny and painful. In “All of Us Strangers,” his conflicted gay writer goes on a dreamlike journey to re-encounter his late parents, forgiving both them and himself for past miscommunications while falling in love with a character played by Paul Mescal.

“Fleabag” cut against, and “All of Us Strangers” leaned into, Scott’s rare status as a gay leading man. “And not afraid to talk about it and be open about it!” marvels Andrew Haigh, his “All of Us Strangers” director. There’s little Scott isn’t open about: In a wide-ranging conversation, he volleys back his answers with the relentless self-examination — and the fleeting tearfulness — of a person who’s spent time in his feelings.

It can be hard not to conflate the characters he’s played with the sense that Scott is Hollywood’s new prince of heartache. In fact, he has a direct line to the queen of such matters. “Taylor’s new album is sensational! I texted her yesterday to say how amazing it is,” Scott says about “The Tortured Poets Department,” which came out three days before our conversation. Taylor Swift, he says, is a friend, and he beams with vicarious pride about her 31-track magnum opus: “I think she is just a force of nature, just an extraordinary human, and this album is really, really amazing.” His favorite song on it, for the record, is “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” a ballad that begins with quiet heartbreak and builds toward a dramatic excoriation.

But Scott is perhaps being modest. Some believe that he is as much to credit for the title of the album as the men Swift sings about. Consider the explosion online after a 2022 Variety Actors on Actors conversation between Mescal and Joe Alwyn (who was dating Swift at the time, and is thought to have inspired a few songs on the album) in which they discussed their membership in a group chat called “Tortured Man Club.” Scott, they said, had initiated the chat.

“Let me tell you what that is!” Scott says. Just before Alwyn was to appear in the TV adaptation of novelist Sally Rooney’s “Conversations With Friends,” Scott — Alwyn’s co-star in the 2022 film “Catherine Called Birdy” — set him up with Mescal, of “Normal People,” another series based on Rooney’s work. “So they were about to play these tortured characters, and I had played a tortured character in ‘Fleabag.’ It wasn’t about our own characteristics!” The chat quickly died on the vine, he says. “I think there were three texts, like, ‘Hey, guys.’ You know those groups that you set up, and they just collapse.”

Short-lived or not, the existence of the chat had taken on a second life ever since the announcement of “The Tortured Poets Department.” And the whole incident speaks to Scott’s easy way of connecting people.

“He’s a great guardian of actors, if you’re lucky enough that he admires you or has respect for you,” Mescal says. “He’s got an overseeing quality, in terms of understanding that good art and good actors are hard to come by.”

Mescal, 28, and Alwyn, 33, feel in a sense like peers of Scott’s. “Fleabag” Season 2, which brought Scott to a new echelon of fame, was just five years ago, and in conversation, he has a Peter Pan energy: raffish, barking laugh and eyes that seem to twinkle with each new disclosure. And yet Scott makes for a notably older Tom Ripley — a character written by Highsmith to be just past college age.

“It was just a beautiful film,” Scott says of Anthony Minghella’s 1999 adaptation. “The idea of approaching that again, one of my first questions was ‘OK, who wants to do a carbon copy?’” Scott gestures at what, in the dim light of the patio, appears to be his delicately lined face: “Jesus, look at my age!”

Scott’s take on the character reads as more experienced, and wearier. More tortured, over a longer timeline. Scott can relate. Our conversation is the final stop on a lengthy press tour, which came on the heels of promoting “All of Us Strangers” during Oscar season; he flies back home tomorrow. Before that was “Ripley”’s long road to the screen: After some 162 days of principal photography from summer 2021 to spring 2022, the series, which had been made by Showtime, bounced to Netflix amid a fire sale at the Paramount-owned cable network.

Following “Ripley,” “All of Us Strangers” and his solo show “Vanya” on London’s West End last fall, Scott is on a career high, and he’s become a red-carpet fixture as a fashionista. (His all-white tux-and-tee combo as a nominee at this year’s Golden Globes deflated the pomposity of the event, while looking dazzlingly fresh.) “It’s a way of having fun, being creative — going, OK, well, this is a bit of a laugh.” Scott stammers, but goes on: “My mother was a very stylish, creative person, and it’s something I’ve always been interested in. Why not just have a bit of fun while we’re here?”

Scott has brought up his mother a few times before I get the chance to offer my condolences. She died unexpectedly on March 7 — less than a month before “Ripley”’s premiere. “It came very suddenly to our family,” he says, “and it’s landed in the middle of all of this stuff. Her spirit is so alive in me in the immediate aftermath of her death.”

There are painfully mixed feelings at play: Scott is proud of the work he’s done (and duty-bound to promote it), while part of him is elsewhere. Talking about his mother is a way of keeping her close. She was an art teacher, “and her way of dealing with people was so kind, but she wasn’t very good at small talk,” Scott says. “She connected with people in a very particular way. What I was taught was the idea of being authentically yourself.”

Which extends to Scott’s self-presentation. In our meeting, he’s neon-bright, wearing a teal crewneck sweatshirt under a fuzzy cardigan the precise shade of cerulean that Miranda Priestly popularized. “People say that they look back at photographs and cringe,” he says. “Who cares? It’s about playfulness. It’s about going, How would I be if I wasn’t scared of criticism?”

“Ripley,” in its ambiguity, is a show unafraid to trigger debate. Among the choices Zaillian (best known for his Oscar-winning screenplay for “Schindler’s List”) made was a greater fealty to Highsmith’s text. Minghella’s film untangled her complications: Tom lusted after Dickie (played by Jude Law), and he had to destroy what he could not obtain. Here, though, Tom seems repulsed by Dickie, even as he admires his lifestyle and easy way of being. Tom doesn’t seem to fit into any identity at all, leaving some viewers to wonder whether he’s even gay in this version.

“Everything that I feel on that subject is in the show,” Zaillian says when asked to clarify Ripley’s sexual orientation. “I don’t like to do anything overtly; I think subtlety is best. It’s not that I’m trying to hide anything, but I think it’s all there.”

Scott is willing to go a bit further. “I didn’t want to diagnose him with anything in particular,” he says. “I don’t think he would be comfortable in a gay bar or a straight bar. I think his sexuality is elusive to him.” What he does to Dickie is an expression of frustrated heartsickness, perhaps. “I think he has a feeling of love for him. Sometimes it could be sexual. Sometimes it could be fraternal. And sometimes it could just be amicable.” What was a quarter century ago rendered as an outright homoerotic story here gets into levels of confusion that feel more challenging, more novelistic. “If she was alive today,” Scott says of Highsmith, “I’d love to ask her a bit more about that.”

Highsmith, whose own relationship with her lesbianism was complicated, likely wouldn’t recognize the world through which Scott strides. Indeed, he has previously expressed his dubiousness about language around sexuality — specifically, the term “openly gay,” which he derides. “It’s wonderful to be able to talk about sexuality in an open way,” Scott says. “But I do feel sometimes, other people — and by other people, I mean straight people — don’t have to explain or talk about their sexuality every time they go to work.”

Scott, thus far quick-witted and voluble, has begun to weigh his words carefully. “The idea that I’m being defiant by just being exactly who I am … Be open about it? Why wouldn’t you be open about it?” The distinction between disclosing one’s sexuality and not isn’t lost on Scott, and he doesn’t mind it — that’s what, to him, the word “out” is for. “But the word ‘openly,’ for me, just seems a little loaded.”

The actor’s newfound prominence as a gay leading man is both a turning point for our culture and a fact that might seem to lend him special access to certain characters. In his first conversation with Haigh about “All of Us Strangers,” “he understood so deeply what that character needed to be,” Haigh says. “You want someone to connect to the character on a personal level. And I don’t think Andrew is afraid of that. In fact, it excites him, and he wants to embrace how he can make it personal.”

And yet Scott resists the idea that the story is solely one for gay viewers: He remarks that just today, he received a note from a friend who watched with his wife, and was moved. “A lot of this stuff has really affected me in my own life growing up — God knows I didn’t have a lot of gay content,” Scott says. “We live in an identity-politics era. We’re separating each other more than we need to. This hysteria about your sexuality and how that is something that is only understandable to people who belong to the same tribe as you — it just doesn’t seem truthful.”

Part of Scott’s response might be a desire to sidestep misreadings of his intentions with “All of Us Strangers” and “Ripley.” In both projects, he plays a character who has experienced some version of same-sex attraction; in both, his character also seems miserable. “Sometimes I find it hard when you’re doing press,” he says, “because I feel so joyful and so emancipated. It seems like I always want to talk about the difficulties that I have with being gay, when actually, it’s the greatest joy of my life.”

His presence on the celebrity circuit, though, suggests that culture is still figuring out how to treat an out star at Scott’s level. At this year’s BAFTAs, a red-carpet reporter for the BBC asked Scott about Barry Keoghan’s genitalia as seen in the film “Saltburn,” implying that Scott and Keoghan (who is dating the pop star Sabrina Carpenter) had been intimate. Scott quickly walked away. “It was awkward,” he says. “It was a little bit weird. But I got an apology from the journalist. I think it was a series of unfortunate events. And I totally accepted his apology.”

Scott doesn’t dwell on the incident, saying, “I wouldn’t want him to suffer any more.” But the story resonates with a general sense that Scott’s work, or his public self, is held to a different standard. The understandable excitement around Scott booking massive jobs — and his experience of being the “first” or “only” in many professional settings — feels strange from the inside. “What is the best thing that we could do?” he asks me. “I don’t have the definite answer. Would it be unusual for us not to mention my sexuality at all?”

Well, yes — but we move on. The moment Scott’s experiencing is the culmination of an incremental build, after an initial leap of faith. He’d dropped out of Trinity College in Dublin (alma mater of Irish artists such as Oscar Wilde and, more recently, “Normal People”’s Rooney and Mescal) after six months to pursue theater. “Sometimes you shouldn’t have a safety net,” he says. “If you have a safety net, you’re going to be really, really safe.” Early screen roles included appearances in “Saving Private Ryan” and “Band of Brothers.” The parts gradually got bigger — his performance in the 2014 drama “Pride,” about the gay-rights crusade in Britain, is a fan favorite, and he was an appropriately sinister opponent for James Bond and MI6 in 2015’s “Spectre” before playing the lead in a 2017 London staging of “Hamlet.”

But it was “Fleabag” that lit his career aflame. Scott calls Phoebe Waller-Bridge “one of my main homies” and, to the extent that the Hot Priest phenomenon has followed him, says it’s all for the good. “It hasn’t prevented me from playing any other characters. And I just feel so proud of the process and the product.” Would he return to a hypothetical “Fleabag” Season 3, if Waller-Bridge asked him to? “Of course I would,” he says before unleashing one of those great Andrew Scott guffaws. “But she’s not going to!”

It’s hard to overstate the impact Hot Priest had, turning what had been in its first season a charming critics’ favorite into a world-devouring, Emmy-sweeping hit on the strength of Scott’s chemistry with Waller-Bridge. (Scott was not himself Emmy-nominated for “Fleabag,” but was the following year for an episode of “Black Mirror.”) Sad-eyed yet smiling, H.P. forges a deep understanding with Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag: They both know that they want to be together, and they both know that they cannot.

Which makes “Fleabag” an intriguing counterpoint to Ripley, a character who pushes his way past every limitation he cannot hack his way through. The monochrome look of the show turns Scott’s eyes into vampiric black pools of need; over eight episodes, we witness Ripley’s lower-class life and high-class ambitions, and his willingness to turn to violence to bridge the two. There’s an unholy gnarliness to Ripley that Scott sells well.

“Ripley” is a double risk, as Scott knew when he took on the role. The series updates — by more closely following Highsmith’s tricky, nasty novel — a film that’s widely beloved, and does so with a leading man whose reputation is for suffering sweetly. “I’m just concerned about how it would be perceived, how it would change things for me,” Scott says. He acknowledged that fear — then let it go.

“When I played James Moriarty, I was younger than people wanted the character to be. And they’d go, ‘I wanted the character to have a beard and wear a top hat, and this little fucker is now playing it like this, and I don’t want that!’ The biggest challenge for you is to put your dukes up and go, Sorry, but this is this.” Risk — in comparison to what Scott calls “cynical and unconfident” compromise — works.

His co-stars have noticed the chances he takes. “Technical brilliance is one thing. And then there’s this other part of Andrew that is incredibly raw in his performance,” Mescal says. “You could sit around and talk to actors about their lives all day — they love nothing more than talking about themselves. But Andrew lets an audience into the corners of themselves that we don’t talk about.”

Sam Yates, the director of Scott’s 2023 “Vanya” — which won an Olivier Award for best revival in April — describes the places Scott would go onstage as “trancelike.”

“How do you go through that without a level of someone else taking over?” Yates says, adding that Scott “is being led by a certain degree of technique, but by a huge degree by his aliveness to his own emotions. He would surprise himself constantly onstage.”

He seems to surprise himself in conversation, too, returning with frequency to a subject that’s evidently joyful to recall and painful to discuss. Previously this season, while being interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR’s “Fresh Air,” his voice got tight when she asked him, seemingly not knowing the answer, if his parents were both still alive. Now, though, his mother feels like the third person at our table under a gray L.A. sky.

“You keep your Irishness alive by telling the story,” he says. “Thinking about my mom recently and talking about her — it was really important to me, in the eulogy, to celebrate her.”

I remark that his mother — her artistic sensibility, her impatience with pleasantries — feels very present to me. He pauses, seems to shudder slightly. Like a sudden storm, tears are rolling down his cheeks, and he takes a moment to speak. When he finally does, his voice is steady.

“It’s a really funny thing, to be honest,” he says. “I can’t disappear the fact that this has happened in the midst of all this. The juxtaposition of these two extremes in my life where all these projects are coming out, and I’ve had to be much more public-facing than I usually am, at a time when I’m going through this extraordinary personal loss.”

He begins talking more rapidly, becoming more animated as he wills himself out of crying. “I’m not even sure if it’s the right thing to do, but you have to tell your own truth. My job is to understand what it’s like to be a human being, and I don’t like perpetuating the myth that we’re all perfect. That you have to be a movie star.”

Scott’s production company, he tells me, is called Both/And — he notes the slash in the middle. “I’ve always believed that things are always both something and something else. It could be the happiest day of your life, and you’re hungry. You’re at a funeral, and you have a laugh. There’s always something else.”

I can relate: I’m pleased to be connecting, but sorry that I upset him. And so I apologize.

“No, no, listen! I’m upset anyway!” he says, then lets loose another hearty laugh, loud and rich enough to crack the tension of the moment. In its gusto and its surprising timing, it does feel like a laugh at a funeral, but sometimes those are the kind one needs.

“Ripley” may represent the greatest challenge this versatile actor has experienced — he’s at the center of each of its eight episodes, and nothing happens without him.

“We would do what we could in our time off, but I know it was really taxing for him,” Fanning, Scott’s co-star, says. “We found a lot of common ground, because we’ve both done this for the majority of our lives. We approach work in a very similar way — there’s a time and place to be serious, and there’s a time you need to tell some stupid joke. And we did that too.”

The presence of co-stars was a balm, but Ripley, necessarily, is alone a great deal. “Spending a lot of time with a character who is solitary when I was feeling solitary myself was quite tough,” Scott says. “I love that about my job — that you can go into a particular world — but it was very different from what gives me joy. It’s the sheer stamina that was needed: It’s a lot of acting.”

The show’s two bravura set-pieces involve the disposal of bodies. “It was important to me that this character was not a professional killer,” Zaillian says. “And so we have to see him think each one through. And Andrew can bring us into his thoughts and feelings.”

Scott, compact of frame, lugged his fellow actors (rather than dummies) as much as was feasible: “I remember doing a long take, seven or eight minutes, me just trying to lift something up, and Steve just let the camera go as I struggled, and didn’t cut.”

He doesn’t linger on this aspect of the shoot. Easily able to access heartache and joy, he tends to stop short when specifics about the work come up. “It goes into a sort of PR-speak,” he says, “where you have to tell people how much suffering you’ve been through.” He draws an analogy of a host throwing a dinner party: “If you spend the whole night saying, ‘Well, I couldn’t find any organic chicken, and the vacuum wasn’t working’ — they’re like, ‘Just give me my fucking dinner!’”

“He’s aware that his work isn’t for him,” Mescal says. “You’re providing a service to an audience. Nobody really gives a fuck about your process, and if they do, they’re boring.”

Elsewhere in our conversation, Scott edges up to describing his method for finding Ripley: “I’m always really interested in the vulnerability of people. What’s the thing they’re unconfident about? What are they hiding? It was hard to access that.” What he found, in the end, was less “a biographical sort of solution,” he says, than an absence — of the ease it takes to get through life. “Not everybody is charming and capable and socially adept and sexy. You have to advocate for people who don’t have it easy. That’s what made me have some degree of affection for him.”

Affection, even on a dark project, is what it’s all about. “He’s a big advocate for play,” Mescal says. “He takes the work very seriously, but he wears it lightly. And that allowed our chemistry to be pretty playful and organic.”

On “All of Us Strangers,” the pair, already acquainted, bonded deeply. “It developed into a genuine love between them, and you can still see that now,” Haigh says. “I felt like I’d been a dating agent, and I brought these two people together.”

The film, shot quickly after “Ripley”’s protracted production, helped Scott emerge and reset after playing Tom. “Sometimes a change can be as good as a rest,” he says. “Although, I have to say, I do need a rest now.”

I have one last question before I let Scott go. He’d said he wondered how “Ripley,” with its grand ambition and with Scott at the center of the story, might change things for him. What kind of change would he want?

It turns out the real question is what kind of change doesn’t he want. “You want to keep your life,” he says. “I like my life. I don’t want people to become the enemy. Because I like people.”

He lets out a sigh. “I’m glad to be wrapping up the promotion aspect of it, because it’s been quite a big journey, and obviously, I need to go and be with the people I love.” He smiles, and his eyes turn down slightly. “So it’s just time for me to exit stage left for a little while.”

I turn my tape recorders off; Scott has given me enough. But he waits a second, his gaze once again as eager as during the formal part of our interview: What had I meant when I used the word “obversely”? (I’d said that the Hot Priest persona seemed like a gift, but — obversely! — potentially limiting as well.) He usually uses the word “conversely” to describe what he thought I meant.

We both look up definitions on our phones, and conclude that the two words mean the same thing: two feelings coursing at once, in seeming opposition to one another. Like the lovability and loathsomeness dueling within Ripley; like happiness and sorrow in a single charged moment. Both/and, or something like that. Words are funny things! And isn’t it amazing, Scott muses, that we can use language to communicate what we’re feeling. What an invention. What a gift. He grins. And if there’s another feeling behind it, both the smile and something else, the sun is suddenly shining too brightly for me to see.'

[doyouwanttoseeabug]

Hey I posted GuyHal for the first time in NINE YEARS pray for my soul. What if, when Guy was following Hal around during everyone's late-90's breakdown, they ran into each other in a gay bar?

My apologies to the good people of Lennox, South Dakota, which is a real town where I have never been.

----

The tire blows twenty minutes from Lennox. 

Big, flat South Dakota country in all directions - blank horizon, long strip of green meeting long strip of blue, the laziest child’s drawing. In a movie there’d be a hard-bitten man riding away from that line or towards it, bringing trouble or taking it, maybe stealing one last kiss from the pretty schoolteacher or penitent dancing girl. John Wayne would call someone pilgrim in that sweet slow drawl, and the credits would roll and Hal’s dad would ruffle his hair and Hal would go upstairs and practise that drawl under the green glow of the stars on his ceiling - I haven’t lost my temper in in forty years, but pilgrim, you’ve caused a lot of trouble this morning. But this isn’t a movie. No gunslinger. Just Hal, saying fuck with slowly but ever-increasing fury as the car stumps and stumbles to the edge of the road. 

He slams his head against the steering wheel. Slams the door. Opens the boot, looks at the blank space where the spare tire should be. Slam.

“Well,” he tells the sky, “fuck.”

He touches the ring in his pocket. Walks the last six miles into town.

[caspianenjoyer]

More blorbs

Just thinking of the four cuddled in bed and eating popcorn and I hc Vincent and ashe have long tounges (yunno when that thing that keeps ur tounge held back is missing yea that. Ashe being born without it and Vincent accidently got it cut and couldn't fix it) and jsut a peice of popcorn falls out and Vincent just yunno *blep* and eat it like a lizard and Dakota convinces himself somehow Vincent Is a lizard like ashe and mark. Ashe 100% does with other food jsut to watch Dakota freak out real. Dakota has multiple times asked Mark if his tongue can do the same thign as Vincent and ashe and all Mark did was give him the rock face

Ashe sitting on the couch and just feeling will slowly get in his lap and go under his hoodie and ashe soul died for a second bc will is ice cold and it felt like touching a cold hand on ur warm back and will just shifting and getting comfortable and zipping the hoodie down a bit so he can pop his head out and smiling watching ashe shudder from the chill but rub will through the hoodie and just ashe getting the blanket wrapped more around the two real

Also thinkng of how marks powers are on his lower hips that make that red power and thinking of tide hugging him and his hip touching marks and the red hue fizzling bc they got touched or tide accidently placing his hands on the hips on the power points and both of them getting power waved real

Will like feeling ashe practicalky vibrating in anxiety and just will softly brush some hair away and wispering "Hey ashe, calm down it's okay I won't let you faint" but ashe Is blush mad crazy and man's is just like "will if you don't stop rizzung me up I swear to God please just peirce my nose so I don't pass out from gay panic" and he's just hiding in wills shoulder feeling will giggle at him before lifting his head and using his cold fingers to numb the area before getting the alcohol napkins to clean to nose and getting the clamps and needle ready. And just ashe gripping softly to wills shirt on his sides and just closing his eyes feeling cold air by his neck and face and just the needle quickly going through and feeling will jolt at ashes grip on his sides and just ashe muttering a apology and will wispering its okay real. Oh my god imgaine Dakota barging in and thinking they were kissing and they're both just like "BRO??? GO AWAY???"

Just Vincent waking up all shaky and panicky and him just him stumbling to whoevers room the closest and just flopping on to bed realizing its wills bc the smell of coffee and just him curling up into a ball and a few minute's later a tired will crawling into bed not nothing Vincent bc he was under the covers and just will accidentally hitting Vincent and apologizing quickly and just dragging Vincent on top of him like he's a big dog and petting Vincent head as Vincent stress picks his lips and breathe in wills smell and just will humming songs and feeling Vincent calm down and will comforts him quietly as Vincent quitly and a Lil brokenly tries to copy or harmonize with wills humming real

Jay stretched up like on her tippy toes trying to fix smth and gill noticing her shirt ride up and him softly pulling it down and Jay looks over and and is just like "thanks" and gill just smiles and is like "no problem"

And just everytime he sees Jay his skin tingles so much and he gets ill giddy and he always finds reasond tk touch her like touching her back when she wakes up, or fixing her clothes, or holding her hand, arms brushed against eachother or even nose kisses

Thinking hard of gill and Jay getting drunk that night and falling asleep with Jay on her and thinking of before gill fell asleep he wrapped his arms and tail and legs over Jay, like caging her in to the want to protect her while they sleep in this alleyway from everyone and just gill listening to Jay hum or make a squeak in her sleep and her fingers clutching to gills shirt and just curling more into gill bc of the wind and just gill warming her up with his body heat and when he wakes up before Jay he sees her mouth a crack open, drool on his chest and her cheek and mouth, hair stuck to her face too and just her jacket almost off and just gill softly and carefully putting her jack back on and fixing her shirt buy pulling it back down and getting hair out of her face and he just noticing how young and soft she looks when she's not stressed all the time and his chest just P O U N D S in this need to protect her from everything and everyone and just him if needing to stare in the sun to keep her safe by God is he gonna do that. (Lowkey not bc he wants to not look at Jay bc everytime he does he has this primal urdge to protect) and Jay waking up warm and sits up feeling her pillow have a heartbeat and firm and she looks over and relize she slept on gill who's currently burning his retinas with the sun real

Omg thinking of gill sunbathing real and Jay rubbing aloe Vera on him so he doesn't basically turn into a sun baked fish dish reap

[td-rarepairs]

Idk but I'm living for Gwen/Cameron, Gwen/Owen, and Gwen/Dakota, like I genuinely don't know, I just like em and I need to spread my truth. Gwen and Cam & Gwen & Owen purely for Tired Goth × Absolutely loser boyfail, then Gwen/Dakota cause it reminds me of that trend of girls of the opposite aesthetic hating each other but then Tumblr would redraw it to be gay 🫶🏽

I think I just like Gwen, she's so fun to write in random ass pairings #GwenKotaSolos

.

[nysocboy]

Gemstones Episode 3.8: Is Peter a woman? Are Kelvin and Keefe lovers? Does Jesse dye his hair?

Episode 3.7 was the worst in the series due to its chronological disaster, plot incongruity, annoying misdirections, and assertion that the guys were just good buddies.  Maybe that was intentional,  to disorient the viewers so they would not be expecting Episode 3.8 : It is intricately plotted, and gives us a huge number of queer codes, including one that most fans consider definitive.

Reunited with the Loved Ones: After their rescue, the siblings are taken to Rogers Regional Medical Center to be examined.  Gideon must have finally phoned the family, because the partners and kids burst in, coincidentally in the order they need to be in to reach their loved ones without bumping into each other.  

We cut to the siblings being interviewed by the police.  BJ and Gideon stand in front of them.  Amber is not present. Keefe waits by the door, still not included in the family; but he does get a bit where he knocks over a trash can and yells "I hate what you had to endure."   They all hate Eli, who left them to suffer and possibly be killed. 

Next, having established that May-May wasn't in on the kidnapping plot, she and Eli bond.  

Which of you is a woman?: With the marital problem plotlines nearly over, we have time for a deep-dive into the Militia. 

Peter and Chuck are driving a U-Haul full of explosives, followed by a ragtag caravan of militia men. Marshall and Dakota (Sturgill Simpson, Quinn Dunn-Baker) complain that they don't know where he's going.  

Does Peter know?  Two compounds have been destroyed.  The kidnapping scheme has been foiled. Everyone has forgotten the first scheme, which required the truckload of explosives.

They stop at Dodge's Fried Chicken, a real fast-food place on Savannah Highway in Charleston (next to a KFC, har har).  Marshall continues to grumble. Peter asserts that complaining is "like a woman," and Marshall retorts that he drives "like a woman."  They continue to call each other women until Chuck gets tired of it and tells them to focus on the new plan.  Whatever it is.

Peter re-asserts his authority: if they rebel against him, they are rebelling against God, because he is the Keeper of the Word. Uh-oh, another Messiah.We see again parallels between the Militia and Kelvin's God Squad in Season 2: both societies devoted to the masculine, suspicious of women, informed by homoerotic or homosocial desire. run by a messianic figure. The militia is the dark side of Kelvin's God Squad  We can go even farther and juxtapose Kelvin's bodybuilder fetish with the militia's fetishization of the soldier.  

Seasons 1 and 2 featured gay-subtext friendships to counterbalance the development of the Kelvin-Keefe romance.  I was surprised to not find one in Season 3, but maybe it's here, in Peter and Marshall's bickering.

Sexy Time:  With almost no sleep, almost nothing to eat, and only a bucket to poop in for 36 hours or several days (depending on the chronology), I'd be interested in dinner and bed rather than sexy time, but after two militia scenes, we cut to the two couples having sex.

First, BJ and Judy take a bath together. BJ: "The whole time you were in captivity, I would light candles and just cry."  It sounds like they were held for longer than a day.  Also, his eye, puffed out from his fight with Stephen, is almost healed. Maybe a week? 

He continues: "The best way to reset is with a really good, deep f*king."  They play a game of helicopter-penis with an incest motif.  You can sort of see BJ's dick, actually a prosthetic, in the swirling water.

Next it's Kelvin and Keefe's turn.  Keefe has changed into a sleeveless leather top with gold studs from the Jim Morrison Mr. Mojo collection.  Kelvin has showered and restored his top wave.  After keeping his body under wraps all season, he displays his backside and butt, again becoming an object of homoerotic desire.  Keefe pretends to give him a massage, but slides right past his shoulders to concentrate on his butt. 

After being invited to fondle an ex-boyfriend's bare butt, most people would assume that he wanted to get back together, but Keefe has received so many mixed signals in the past that he has to be very careful.  His questions are skillfully designed to push Kelvin to a decision: are they going to be post-breakup pals, good buddies with benefits, or lovers?

First he eliminates the post-breakup pal option by asking if Kelvin and Taryn are dating.  Immediately after asking, he has Kelvin spread his legs, feels up his inner thighs, and starts"taking liberties," as Adam Devine reveals.  The actor needed to be semi-aroused so his penis would look bigger for a cut scene with frontal nudity.  In-universe, Keefe is answering his own question.

Kelvin: "Nah. She ain't my type." I've heard gay men say "You're not my type" to reject a flirtatious woman without coming out, but why would Kelvin feel the need to be closeted with his ex-boyfriend?  This must be a structural ploy to avoid having him say "gay."  

He continues: "I hated all the forced claps and laughter and fun times.  I like doing claps and laughters with you."  I've analyzed this scene in detail, and I still can't think of an in-universe reason for bringing up Taryn's work performance. That wasn't the question, and besides, Kelvin quit his youth minister job, so he's in no position to hire Keefe back.  

But Keefe assumes that he's talking about the assistant youth pastor job, and responds in kind: "I love getting the children zazzed up and excited to learn about Jesus with you." 

Now Kelvin clarifies that he was answering the "Are you and Taryn dating" question, not "Can I have my old job back?"    "I mean, Taryn was nice and all, but she's not you." She was nice, but you can't build a romance from niceness.  You need passion. 

Keefe understands:  "She tried to replace me, but it was a failed try." They're going to be romantic partners, combining eros and phileo, trying to "build something" for the future., reguardless of its impact on Kelvin's career.  Which shouldn't be a problem.  He's not working for the church anymore.  They can move to Atlanta and march in Pride Parades.

Cut to Gideon driving Eli somewhere while they discuss how the siblings still aren't talking to him.  

Eli explains that he would have paid if he thought they were really in danger; "I knew they weren't."  Dude, Peter killed a man, tortured another, and sent his guys out to assault his own sons.  The militia was planning to kill one of them "after church."  Their lives were definitely in danger.  Besides, the church paid $500,000 to avoid a scandal.  $1,000,000 to get its pastors back seems like a bargain.

Next they discuss what Gideon is going to do with his life.  He doesn't know.  Eli notes that when he was a young man, he never would have imagined becoming a preacher, hint hint. You want the succession to skip over your children and go straight to Gideon, Pontius, and Abraham?  Gemstone Brothers Ministries.

Back at the mansion, Chuck sneaks a phone call to his brother Karl, to complain that escaping put him and his dad in a bad spot with the militia. Oh, was not wanting to be murdered inconsiderate?  Terribly sorry, Bro.  He insists that he wouldn't really have killed his cousins. Everybody's got excuses.

I can be true to myself:  The siblings meet for lunch at Jason's Steak House, and discuss how the kidnapping ordeal has changed them.

 Judy: "Things are better than before the kidnapping." You and BJ having a second honeymoon?  

Kelvin: "Makes everything snap into focus, that's for sure." You and Keefe having a second honeymoon?  

Jesse: "I can be more honest, true to myself." He's stopped dying his sideburns, letting the natural gray appear.

Jesse asks them to return to their jobs at the church, and they agree. They don't mention Keefe returning as assistant youth minister, but it's implied: everyone has apparently forgotten about the Smut Busters scandal. Then they hold hands.  In this season, holding hands has been awkward and uncomfortable for the siblings, so this is an important milestone in their relationship.  

Not much left in the episode, but what's left includes most important scene in the series. 

Military fetish photos, Kelvin's butt, and BJ's dick on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends

[catgirl-catboy]

choose violence 3 6 7 8 9 10 16 22 and 25 for total drama (and i’ve just realized that’s a lot a lot so obvi if u don’t wanna answer all of them that’s all good)

No worries! I'm happy to scream about Total Drama! Worst case scenario, I get tired and simply finish the rest later.

3.) screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr

Shipping Raj x Wayne is somehow homophobic because Raj is in a canon gay relationship. Polyamory is a thing, and somehow I don't think homophobes would enjoy the idea of a fanon m/m ship somehow.

Honestly, any time people expect canon queer couples to be given special treatment in fandom it annoys the shit out of me. Someone will dislike the vibes of the ship. Its inevitable. Honestly, I'm surprised that someone wasn't me this time, since happy relationships like Rajbow aren't usually my jam.

6.) which ship fans are the most annoying?

Can I bash the shippers for my favorite TD ship (of Duncney) for a second?

Shut up about the love triangle. Shut up about Courtney's character derailment. Literally every ship was wronged by canon, we aren't fucking special. A vast majority of the ship tag shouldn't be bitching about canon.

7.) what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how how the fandom acts about them?

...honestly, thats a hard one. I feel like hate is a strong word, but I don't understand the hype for Noah. (and any Noah ship that isn't Nowen or Noah x Emma.)

Like, sure. He's sarcastic. So what. That makes him a 5/10 at best. He never does anything but be sarcastic and then be mindlessly in love.

I don't hate him though.

8.) common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

lean in. come closer, I don't want anyone else hearing this.

Dramarama is good. and funny. and I like it. Why is it despised?

9.) worst part of canon

The fart jokes are low hanging fruit, so I won't pick them.

I hate how everyone in gen 1 had to be coupled up. What relevance Izzy/Owen have on the season as a whole? Or Geoff/Bridgette? (I like them but point still stands.)

If you introduce a canon couple and get me invested in the romance, it has to actually go somewhere. Lyler was a plot device to get you to hate Heather. Duncney went through an entire arc. Gwent was amazing.

Why do no other ships bring that energy?

I love Samkota, but Sam was just a trophy husband for Dakota after her mutation. He's a passive participant in his own romance arc.

Gens 3 and 4 improve on this I think, but it still annoys me.

10.) worst part of fanon

this is incredibly petty and personal, but WHY IS CODY EVERYWHERE? He squicks me. So much. (honestly, the fact that he reminds me of a past experience when most creep characters don't proves that he feels like a real person. but no.) Why is half the fandom Cody. Can it not be?

16.) you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

I answered this before and I said Lesbian Emma. Now, I'm going to go with Gwortney. These two could barely sell and interesting friendship, and somehow you expect them to carry an entire romance plotline? Its the most bland of bland ships. If you want a Sapphic way to resolve the despised love triangle, Gweather is right there. They actually have chemistry.

It feels like they took all of Duncan's hard work of getting Courtney to relax and enjoy life, and made Gwen have the same effect on her when it doesn't make sense with the characterization. If anything, Courtney making Gwen be more serious makes sense.

(that being said, I'm glad you are having fun, and will reblog cute art.)

22.) your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

The episode recaps. I want Chris to recap my day. I love them.

25.) common fandom complaint that you're sick of hearing

Other than the love triangle?

Heather's plot armor.

Owen had just as much, if not more plot armor. He makes the group sleep in the woods? Fuck it, Katie and Sadie get lost.

Single-handedly blows the cooking challenge? Uh... (Total Drama writers thinking up Bullshit) Beth and the Statue pisses everyone off more, somehow!

He betrays the guys alliance? This has no concequences for him.

At least Heather's plot armor didn't cause her to win a season.

[ghost-bard]

I’m so normal about Dakota and keres btw like the most bormal

Dakota going back to the prime defenders base seeming happier than usual,and for the first time he looks tired ,like he’s been challenged. Keres on the other hand is sitting in their appartement trying to explain to their brother that yes they got in a fight but no they didn’t loose

Keres teaching him jiu jitzu moves ,gay as hell to teach someone how to escape gaurd,what do you want him to do,kiss you?

one day Dakota came into the gas station and Keres just ran,ran back behind the counter and hid there,luckily one of their co workers were there

Jackey and Keres would be like watching the news and they see le frog like rob a bank or something and while jackey and gazing lovingly at le frog Keres is just watching Dakota trying to see how he fights

“Don’t fall in love with the enemy!” Okay what if the enemy is a cute boy with red hair and a pet spider monkey?

The duality of dakota and keres is so funny to me because keres is like this cool fighter person who (generally) doesnt hold back, but then theyll gay panic in private because dakota compliments their fighting style or smth, whereas i feel like youd expect dakota to be the one panicking and he just. Isnt LMAO hes got a pep in his step no care in the world, the pretty person he fights w on occasion said they liked his muscles and it makes his whole week LMAO

Jacky and Keres watching the news like “omg look at le frog hes so bad at being a villain 🥰 his mustache is pointyer today can you see” “shush im trying to see how dc moves his body like that so i can incorporate it next time we fight” it is easy to tell who is who LMAO

Funn Jacky facts!

Jacky is in their mid-late 20s!

Jacky is actually his nickname, although he has several! Such as Jack, J, Jake, and Sunny! Their full name is Jackson but p much only his roomie and their book agent call them that! He has no distaste for the name since they chose it themself its just most people tend to use one of their nicknames lmao

[bookloveravenue]

Hot Off the Ice (book 1): City Boy by A.E. Wasp

Follow the money or follow your heart?

All Bryce Lowery knows how to do is play hockey. He’s been playing professionally since he was fifteen. Twenty years later, he’s rich, famous, tired, and alone. And possibly gay according to his ex-wife.

When a blown tire leads directly to mind-blowing sex with a motorcycle-riding white knight named Dakota, Bryce discovers he is most definitely gay. Now Bryce has a tough choice to make, follow the money to a new multimillion dollar contract, or follow his heart into the unknown?

All Dakota Ryan knows how to do is grow apples. Now at twenty-four, he faces losing both his home and his livelihood in one cruel twist of fate.

Then Bryce Lowery crashes into his life like the answer to all of Dakota’s prayers. He’s whispering promises to make all of Dakota’s wildest dreams come true. But Dakota knows better than to give his heart to someone who could leave, and if life has taught him anything, it’s that everyone leaves.

Dakota has a choice, sit back and wait for Bryce to decide his fate, or for the first time in his life, chose what he wants his future to be.

City Boy is a first time gay, fish out of water, May/December love story with a happy ending. It features snarky siblings, a dirty-talking farmer, lots of food, and big choices. (No poultry was harmed in the making of this book.)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35498519-city-boy

********

January 15, 2023

My Review: 3.5/5 Stars

Bryce has played professional hockey for a long time and after a knee injury, the thoughts of retiring sounds like a real possibility. Plus it may be time to figure out some stuff about himself. Specifically the fact that he has been told gay by more than one person, including his ex-wife. He doesn't understand what everyone is seeing about him that he isn't. Could he have missed this part of himself all this time? It's hard for him to understand that he is a grown adult and may not have figured this out sooner. So what to do? Well, when he heads to Colorado to set up a home that he inherited from a distant relative for his mother, he gets himself in a little car trouble and is rescued by Dakota. A man who recently lost someone he considers a grandfather despite not being related and just another person he considers family he has lost in life. Now, he is getting ready to lose his home when he learns that the will that was supposed to help him keep his home is missing. When Dakota and Bryce meet, sparks fly immediately. One thing leads to another and very hot and enlightening hook up later makes Bryce realize that everyone was right about him. But it becomes more than that. Bryce has never connected with someone the way he connects with Dakota. Love at first sight may actually exist, especially when they get to know one another. But fate isn't finished them yet when they realize that they are connected in ways neither have expected. Bryce and Dakota were so sweet! Bryce's world has changed and he is figuring himself out but what becomes more crazy to him is how he feels about Dakota. Dakota had been burned in the past and he isn't sure to trust his feelings when it comes to Bryce but it becomes pretty challenging to step away from something that could be worth it in the end. A very sweet story and interesting beginning to a series that I definitely want to keep reading!

[warlordfelwinter]

i was bored so naturally i ended up on picrew and decided to make my sidestep

[thelasthalloween]

❤️ What is your favorite line that you’ve written in a fic?

💥 What is one canon thing that you wish you could change?

👻 What is your wildest headcanon?

🚀 Do you like to outline your fic first or create as you go?

🎁 Have a piece of a WIP you want to share?

🏷 Is there a tag you like to search for when looking for fanfics to read?

For the ask game wasn't sure which one to ask, feel free to only answer the ones you wanna!!

OMG THANKS ANON I THOUGHT THAT POST GOT BURIED (I love doing these so much)

1) The entire section in Swimming with the Sharks where Cavendish takes an am I gay quiz

2) The fact Cav and Dakota barely got to hug in the finale

3) Honestly I think a lot of my headcanons are normal, or as normal as one can get considering the characters

4) My writing style is mostly just going in with a vague idea of what I want and ending up with whatever I put on the Google Doc. Probably not the best idea but that’s just what I do

5) This is subject to change but this is from a future chapter in Falling in Love for the First Time (Again)

“You’re not bad, you just don’t feel the same way,” The man was deeply hurt, but Cavendish couldn’t tell why. “Your number one priority was saving the world. Not that it’s a bad thing, I just don’t think you ever realized that to me, you and the world are one and the same.”

6) First Kiss and Trans Vinnie Dakota :3 I never get tired of the fics where they get together or stuff about trans Dakota

[honkschnoo]

So if you don’t follow me on Twitter maybe you should, I go on sleep deprived tweet sprees and I’m kinda funny sometimes (I’m not, I’m rlly not I have two hours of sleep in my meat suit rn and I’m so tired guys, I’m never funny but I try)

Anywho I’m writing the last scene later today after I go to cool kids club (therapy) and it might take a bit but it’s going well :]

Sheep says this chapter might be the ouchiest yet :]]]]

[denimbex1986]

'Tom Ripley (Andrew Scott), a poser, a small-time forger and scammer living humbly in New York is sent to Europe by shipping tycoon Herbert Greenleaf (Kenneth Lonergan) to persuade his son Dickie (Johnny Flynn) to leave his self-indulgent life in Italy and come home to America.

But when Tom arrives at Dickie’s villa in Atrani, the tables turn.

Mesmerised by Dickie and all he stands for, Tom is immediately ready for his next step.

An obsession to be Dickie and take on Dickie’s lifestyle takes him over.

Dickie’s girlfriend Marge Sherwood (Dakota Fanning) sees through Tom, distrusts him, and may even fear him, while Dickie at first enjoys Tom’s company but soon tires of him.

Out in a hired dinghy, Dickie tells Tom he’s fed up with him, for being ordinary and beneath him.

Tom can’t stand his rejection but at the same time, recognises that here in front of him is his greatest opportunity ever.

If he can kill Dickie, he can steal his identity. He’s on his way.

It’s an extremely clever story, devised in 1955 by Patricia Highsmith as the novel The Talented Mr Ripley.

In some previous screen adaptations, Tom gets caught, in others he gets away with impersonation and murders. Plural.

Poor interfering snobbish Freddie Miles (Eliot Sumner) becomes another of Tom’s victims.

In Zaillian’s mini-series, Tom’s murder of Dickie comes out of the blue, even to Tom.

Marginally out of control, he botches things, and manages to cover up just in time.

When he tries to dispose of Dickie’s body and then the dinghy, it’s almost as if he expects to be exposed.

Also streaming on Netflix is the 1999 film The Talented Mr Ripley, directed by Anthony Minghella, in which Jude Law is Dickie, opposite Matt Damon as Tom and Gwyneth Paltrow as Marge.

Unlike Andrew Scott’s Tom, who’s a bit of a bungler, Matt Damon’s Tom commits crimes that are all premeditated.

Jude Law’s Dickie is metrosexual, fitting for the nineties, comfortable in his skin, while Johnny Flynn’s Dickie is a privileged malcontent, like a contemporary trust fund kid, turning his back on his upbringing by escaping to Italy where he plays jazz badly and tries to be an artist.

Minghella’s film has azure skies and tanned bodies while Zaillian’s mini-series is in film noir style, with a suitably creepy atmosphere.

Robert Elswit’s exquisite black-and-white cinematography makes every scene worth watching. Shots of Atrani, Rome and Venice belong in an art gallery.

Andrew Scott portrays Ripley as enigmatic, fallible, disliking himself, compelled to take on the identity of another man, but unable to stop his own tendencies from coming with him.

It’s complex stuff, intriguing. Is he gay? Is he capable of forming any kind of relationship with a person, or is it all about things for him?

He’s drawn to a malevolent painting by Caravaggio, to opera, and to Dickie’s pen, watch, ring and his Picasso, but not to people.

Cynicism, pessimism and menace pervade the mini-series, as they did Highsmith’s classic novel. Ripley is in every way a work of art.

★★★★★'

[noodles-07]

Current mood: Tired, gay and sad

[elytrafemme]

the thing that changed was with William and Vyncent I made a crack fic that I ended up taking srsly o(-( but they end up kissing in it and Dakota was making fun of him bc he fell through the floor (<- William can then intangible bc he’s got ghost powers and he can’t always control it)

I prob won’t post it until I get a proper prime defenders fic out first! currently working on William And Dakota Late Night Convos where they just sort of reflect on/deal with the shit that happens in canon lol -> hoping it will be kinda long so it might take me a bit

ALSO i am so excited to read cough syrup I just need to clear my schedule bc idk how long it’ll take me to catch up o(-( BUT YEA hopefully I won’t be too tired 2night after work :]!!!

HELPFASHIDKFD NOT THIS 😭That just reminds me of years ago when my dad accidentally. fell through part of the ceiling. like just his leg fell through but he lost his slipper and was really upset about it (it got found bc it just like fell on the floor below but apparently that was his only concern not our fucking ceiling quality)

gay rights [goes intangible]

oh fairs fairs!!! love late night convo fics thatll be awesome :D

NO WORRIES TAKE UR TIME ! I feel like the next chapter is gonna be kind of shorter anyway? bc it's basically like 3 scenes long. and itll come out in a bit so pls take ur time w reading and everything :D

[heathneycanon]

incomplete list of the best things td artists do (plus some little shoutouts lmao)

when they draw heather with. arm muscles. i would like to personally thank u

when they draw trent looking extremely tired

the many interpretations of duncan’s hair

yes the above point is abt @unironicduncanstan

long haired tyler. everyone thank @tylerthirst for the propaganda

also @bubandkirbrbrbrb the way u draw tyler is just... *chefs kiss*

when they draw any of the characters in clothes that actually look good

when they draw any of the characters in ugly clothes, but in a way that is distinctly very gay

the way @totallyblurreddrama draws half mutant dakota.... actually no literally all of ur art. all of it. it’s so good

the trend of drawing noah in owen’s shirt. i love it

the really warm coloring most ppl use when they draw trody. it feels so nostalgic and sweet and i love it

on that note just the way @lesbiandawn draws cody’s hair... thank u so much i owe u my life. also on that note ur zawn redesign/rewrite slaps SO much

@alecodys‘s swap au art!! it’s such a good au and ur drawings are so cute

literally everything abt @paltrypal‘s art. u draw all of the characters SO well and i love ur art sm

when they draw courtney a lil chubby

all of the gwen and zoey redesigns

@alenoah‘s art style but ESPECIALLY the way u draw shawn. i love it.

@slsyams‘s dj art... also ur lightning and jo friendship art... it’s all so cute and i love it

when they draw alejandro in a wheelchair/with burn scars

actually, when they draw any of the characters with the lasting physical trauma they realistically would have

@realitytvpros and @shot-by-a-cowboy for doing literally. SO many requests for all of us. ur art styles are both so pleasing to look at, like lar ur style is like. td style but UPGRADED. and wolfgang not only does ur art slap but ur coloring is literally so nice and i love when u draw the characters’ rooms bc u always put the best details in the background. also im in awe of the amount of requests u have both done lmao

on that note @transtrent ur art is amazing. i literally love the little character interactions u come up with, ur series of td characters playing games is so sweet... just. i appreciate ur art sm

when they draw characters just being friends.... im soft

when they draw nowen. just... literally everything abt every nowen drawing. but especially the domestic ones where they’re just... together. it’s so cute

i would also like to draw special attention to @doglover502‘s nowen art. u have done so much for this fandom. also the way u draw tyler is fantastic

when they draw any tall character with cody on their shoulders lmfao

@antlercody‘s art!! but especially that one picture of cody with the boyfriend lyrics on it. it looks so good and also every time i see it the song gets stuck in my head

when they draw noah with his dog!!!!

when they draw trent playing guitar for any of the 37 ppl folks typically ship him with lmao

@totalzwen‘s roti art.... ESPECIALLY ur jock art. i keep saying this but u have done so much for us.

when they draw eva carrying izzy or izzy climbing on eva or any variation of that

the way @heterophobicnoah draw’s trent’s hair.... also their team e-scope art.... and their lesheather art.... actually hold up everything they’ve ever drawn.

@totalhoedrama‘s heathney art...... i owe u my entire life

when they draw the characters as lgbt+.... like i KNOW it’s canon that every character is gay and trans but like it’s nice to see that we’re all acknowledging it

slightly related but special shoutout to @bi-alejandro for bi duncan hair. that is. my favorite thing ever.

@j0ss-4rt‘s stuff. like hello ur art always looks like it’s glowing a lil?? it’s so cute????

when they draw lesharold. literally just... any drawing of leshawna and harold is automatically amazing.

OH MY GOD i forgot @total-shipper your art and comics are so cute!! i love your zombie comics, as well as the coloring on your digital art

ANOTHER ADDITION @nowarin i literally love the way u draw the td characters, but ESPECIALLY brick u draw him so pretty!!

feel free to add on (both things td artists do and artists themselves) i just think the td artists are all so talented and creative and i wanted to appreciate them. also i’m definitely forgetting some artists i absolutely love, i just made this off the top of my head so im sorry if i left u out!!