#dancing around their true wants

[tender-emotional-music]

I think leaks can be harmless if we use them as grounds for speculation, but oh boy, I see way too many people pick and choose the leaks they like and then say it’s literal “confirmation” of something. You’re just setting yourself up for disappointment. Like yes, Finn was filming in the week they were using the playground set, but that doesn’t mean it’s definitely about byler. It can be fun to speculate, but there are also many other reasons they could have used that set (like the Creel storyline, which they’ve been filming lately, and which the Wheelers could possibly be involved with).

Or some text leaks saying certain characters have scenes together (like I saw one about Will, Mike, Robin and Vickie). I do agree it’s a possibility, due to their filming schedules and who has been filming whom, but it’s not confirmed just because someone on twitter said it. It hurts the history student in me when I see the same people who will critically assess and be skeptical toward anti-byler leaks openly accept pro-byler leaks regardless of how reliable the source may be.

And I’m sorry, but same thing goes for Finn’s playlist. He didn’t literally confirm Mike is gay. I personally do think the playlist is an inspiration playlist about Mike’s season 5 arc (surely he’d know people would think it’s ST related with that title), but that’s still just one interpretation, and we’re still analysing the songs through our own perspective and biases. I don’t have byler doubt, and I do think the playlist is about the show, but to say he confirmed Mike is gay isn’t accurate, sorry. There could be other readings and interpretations of the songs.

All I’m saying is that I see a lot of bias, and while leaks are great if we want to speculate, we’re only setting ourselves up for disappointment if we take ones we like as actual confirmation

[imogenkol]

Ok I’ve been patient but there’s literally one episode left and I’m begging for more insight on what exactly is going on with the antagonists besides Thrawn wanting to return to the galaxy

[cecilyacat]

I'm still so annoyed at my colleagues who told me over lunch on Friday that "no man goes to a dancing class unless he's trying to pick up women" and "men just don't enjoy dancing, only women do". Like wtf. "Have you ever seen two men dance together?" As a matter of fact I HAVE. HAPPENS ALL THE TIME IN MY DANCE CLASS. "Oh some men like it, sure, but those are exceptions" I am going to punch you. What kind of gender essentialst bullshit did I have to sit through being the only woman (and only dancer) at a table of 5? The same bullshit as when my brother told me that "no one is reading any more" just because he didn't know anyone who does... Sometimes I fucking hate working in tech

[hirak0s]

13. How important are romantic relationships to your OC? Do they prefer casual sex, short flings, or long term relationships? Do they want to get married or are they content with what they have? Or do they have no interest in romance whatsoever? (For Shinji)

"I'm down fer a bang any time'a day. Casual sex an' short flings're just my thing." Though he was trying with Rose. So far it had stuck. But he was also on a Friends with Benefits relationship with both Shuuhei and Kisuke. "I coul' do romance, but...?" Did anyone want to even woo him? "Ain' the marryin' type."

[trainingdummyrabbit]

Uhh angela 2 and 3

ive already answered this one but i NEED to emphasize so so badly the way she is written kills me so so badly. positive. shes messy and complicated and genuine and loud and Everything. she is Everything to me. im not allowing myself to get too specific bc if uve been here you Know how it gets w her. with me w her. but the fact that shes allowed to stumble through everything and learn and change and still have hope. still keep going. an angela is something that is so full of love. i would kill for her. in a fuckig heartbeat.

THAT SHE DIDNT GET A FUCKING HUG

[stephenrea]

I wanna talk about 'The Banshees of Inisherin' cause I really enjoyed it but I'd like provide ye a bit of context for the production of the story that might alter some of the analysis I've seen gettin passed around. A common misconception about MacDonagh is that he's an Irishman- he's not. He's English. His parents are Irish and he's spent many a Summer holiday in Ireland. But he was born and raised an Englishman. Irish stories of the 20th century have a tendency to carry a lot of political tension, far more tension than you'd see in 'The Banshees of Inisherin' because, like all irish stories for the past millennium, they work as fabels. They're all metaphors for recent irish history and the social mores of rural Ireland and understanding that is almost necessary for the enjoyment of the those kinds of works.

MacDonagh, being an Englishman, is less concerned with these politics; but irish influences remain strong in his works all the same. First and foremost, he's a playwright and this is evident in the structure of his screenplays. MacDonagh makes a lot of references to the film adaptation of John B. Keane's play 'The Field' both visually and by use of certain character archetypes in his film. Take 'The Irish Fool' (a trope that deserves its own post tbh) depicting a mentally disabled character whose function in the story is like that of Shakespeare's fool, only these ''''fools'''' are genuine depictions of how mentally disabled adults were (and still are!!!!!) treated/taken care of in rural irish society. Yet in spite of all the parallels between both stories, The Banshees of Inisherin makes one fundamental deviation from all other irish works which is that rather than having the interpersonal conflict between the protagonists be a metaphor for irish history- irish history is instead a metaphor for their conflict. This inversion of traditional Irish storytelling is present in other areas of the story as well, such as the banshee not being a screaming mourner- but a passive aggressive observer. It's MacDonagh's close connection with the Irish that allowed him to subvert tradition in a way that I personally believe to have been done masterfully. Hypothetically; you could tell this story in any location, but it's rural irish identy is what sells it. Between the isolation of island life, the consant threat of emmigration vs homeland violence, the blur between the natural and supernatural, and the total lack of privacy met with a mandatory level of trust; all these factors are what make 20th century Ireland the ideal setting for a a story of this calibre AND I LOVE IT.

[forcebookish]

feel like i'm being gaslighted by the ofs fandom like where are all these wild think pieces coming from we can't possibly be watching the same ONE EPISODE of the same drama

anyway,

[snow-and-saltea]

sometimes replacing an emotion with a perhaps-equally-worse-but-for-different-reasons emotion works (even if its not healthy. we're not getting to healthy right now we're getting to what Works). today i was so pissed off about how the day was going and i felt so guilty for the kitties that i haven't been able to feed yet that day that after i cooked i just got into the car and drove to get cat supplies. and i didn't feel anxious as i usually did when i drove, and that is because i felt Angry instead. and it helped move things a lot

i understand how people fall prey to using anger as a motivator now. my mind was empty except for getting cat supplies and getting out.

at least i got to go to the bank today, so i'm able to make donations that i haven't been able to recently. head in hands. so, you know. silver linings

[taegularities]

i'm hurt 🥲

[beeapocalypse]

hey what do you mean pocketcat had daans soul

[cannibalisticskittles]

one last bg3/amity thought for the night --

it is so goddamn funny thinking about how astarion admits he set out to seduce the player character specifically to win their trust and their protection, with amity in mind.

like... congrats, my man. you picked the one person in the party that would have died for you immediately. from the moment you met. even after putting a knife to her throat. you could've attained the same result by doing absolutely fuck all; you did not have to do All That.

but you did. and now you've caught feelings. ya fool.

[a-cat-in-toffee]

hello chat.

[1980ssunflower]

god im so deeply and truly in love

[unproduciblesmackdown]

with the recent like self-analytical framework of [putting hand on own shoulder] "are you looking for the external validation of value in this which would never be guaranteed, and you don't even think it should be contingent on this anyways" it's like, that also speaks more to like "yeah i did really enjoy live performance / theatre-adjacent and -overlapping stuff"

like i have my sense of how much i loved things and none of that involves any memories of having enjoyed it b/c of any feedback i got, from peers or instructors or anything. memories of curtain calls don't stand out much. like fun Specific Feedback was a kind older (relative to me) performer with the central role telling me that my literal leaping onstage (dance performance. grande jete entrance) despite a technical difficulty that would have to be improvised around was Inspirational/Motivating lol. i stopped having any particular stage fright (although is that when you're onstage? more like, anxiety beforehand about messing up. being onstage was the easier, enjoyable part) thanks to just having to yolo through those technical difficulties lol....anyways and then that same show actually, some relative to me younger audience member's dad was like "she's your (role's) biggest fan" and we nervously take a pic together lol. these things were fun & standout but Not Even It; not at all like "this is what makes it all worth it" like this is largely beside the point but a fun little bonus outlier event or two

like there was also no "i loved it b/c of Being In A Cast" nor b/c of any particular like, hanging out having fun Social Element. i loved rehearsing, though. loved being backstage (or in green rooms, or dressing rooms) but not because of any particular company or goings on. loved waiting & practicing / warming up & getting things together like your own costuming & being summoned to backstage & whatall. loved all the technical elements of getting a show together, when things were being assembled / worked out, though i didn't get to have much of any active hand b/c i'm like this twelve year old just learning the part, but it was fun to witness. none of my sense of what contributed to having a great time entailed any particular praise or anything; there was some implicitness in how all at once i graduated from [ensemble performance, back row for tall people] to [roles with solos] and the like, but there was just like, being busy, doing things well enough that it just wasn't Impeding anything lol, and in other arenas where i might've gotten more comments about being like, an outlier per whatever measure of success, it was definitely like, it's all just [successfully avoided negative attention] and ofc people think good grades are good but i'm not particularly moved by the awareness that that in turn is what's good or impressive about me, or something. or that i have to have anything like that for [successfully avoided negative attention]

and i wouldn't have like, done a monologue to an empty room and been like wow magical. i'd do my thing for rehearsal, and then for an audience, but you can't really see the audience and you're like ten doing local ten year old recreational stuff so it's like, the curtain calls you don't remember much (by you i mean me) and then you're done, and for me it was the fun of just like Everything Before. no like classic memories montage of great times socializing, it was me sitting in the green room equivalent, me warming up in the hallway, enjoying being in an auditorium for like 7 hrs of rehearsal, etc, we didn't do any like social events like high school performance afterparties or anything; i wasn't like Friends w/even the occasional person i also knew from school, and that didn't matter or diminish things in the least. performing A Show and for whatever Audience and that abstract is completely good enough. any of my parents' involvement, unavoidable b/c i couldn't even get places without being driven, was a major downside; i didn't like any like post performance [congrats] from them b/c that stuff was just its own unconstructive Performance that you, by which i mean me, were required to be sufficiently like Oh Wow about when it's like, the focused attention from you here means i want to leave; being left all amongst other adults during rehearsals was the good shit, while it also wasn't the case i needed like support or hype from any of those adults either.

there was Some tradition of like, older students in some program who'd take a trip to nyc / do some performance or other, and that seemed exciting but it stopped existing before it could be relevant to me lol. also for the first like, show that was like "audition for parts" vs "class recitals" they gave us like a relevant keepsake for it, and that was a nice surprise, since i had a great experience and all. and one of my main [not dance, with lines and everything] experiences being this fourth grade english class scenes from julius caesar, auditioned again, i'm like hell yeah that this has to be nongendered b/c it's all a bunch of guys, so i play a guy, and an antagonist yippee who doesn't die midway through and sounds easy-peasy to be like [be the dictator assassin] lol. it's funny how already i Cared about like, wish we had Effects instead of awkward silence for the drama of that assassination. wish i like, knew fuckall about acting. but the teacher just focused on telling us all to talk louder b/c nobody could be individually mic'd, and in the end you really couldn't hear fuckall of other performances so that was a win. and we got to do it twice b/c some people's parents got stuck in traffic. all i remember of my parents' presence was being like "omg yes i get to stop being here talking to you b/c we get to do that Again hell yeah"

like it's social but in a Parallel way. i'm contributing my part, i know my role, you know yours, i'm fondly remembering sitting in some school lobby having mini muffins with hours to go before our performance, amongst other people but not at all hyped abt interactions with them or at all disappointed abt the absence of any. i enjoyed it all being in front of people, others involved in the show, or the audience, but i wasn't there for any specific feedback, just being Part of that group constructed experience there. truly this case of like....loved all of that exactly as it happened, was on my own shit, did not need any external validation, didn't need a specific kind of Socializing that's supposed to look like having individual interactions with personal friends, had this passion for it that i also was having a perfectly good time exploring on my own, whilest also enjoying working with / learning from whatever instruction i got. like sure wishing i knew fuckall about acting but that it turns out no not everyone necessarily all loves stage acting as The Peak like that, and this comfort and interest with it that comes from like, you have all the practice of Having to perform and mask and act in life against your supposed incorrect abnormalities, but here's this constructive and creative and expansive edition of that art and science. good enough for doing it all through like fourteen

[fagrackham]

i dont like having to apologize for wanting to have a good time ???

[hirak0s]

🍑 [Shuuhei for Shinji]

Send 🍑 to grab my muse's ass

He felt that hand collide with the cheeks of his flat, scrawny ass.

"Yer gettin' fresh with me huh Shuuhei?"

"C'mere a sec..."