#everybody loves lucy

[the-eclectic-wonderer]

Just caught up with Dracula Daily and it just tears me apart how desperately everyone loves Lucy, and how desperately everyone wants to save her, and how fully she loves everyone in thanks. From Mina running through half the town to rescue her from her sleep-walking, to Arthur giving all the blood he can and then some for her sake, to Dr Seward and Van Helsing giving blood themselves and keeping watch through the night, to her maids begging to keep watch over her, to her mother’s solicitude for her health, to the tenderness of her words in her diary. It’s all a labour of love and desperation, and it is devastating that the Count manages to snatch her away despite it all.

[livelovecaliforniadreams]

[girl4music]

The Xenites may collectively hate ‘Married With Fishsticks’ and indeed the entirety of Season 5.

But at least we got this from it:

Because that’s what the story of it was about.

It was never about Gabrielle and Joxer.

Why was that Gabrielle’s fantasy?

It wasn’t. It was her nightmare. But you can still learn something from your nightmares. Something positive.

It was all about Gabrielle’s struggles with being maternal after that whole trauma with evil Hope.

It was so she could learn to be a better parent to Eve.

[wosobronze]

GUYS

[lewkwoodnco]

LOCKWOOD & CO. Ep 6 - You Never Asked

[snakpple]

ikkkkkkk michael doesn't fuck with adam

[2hoothoots]

Revisiting P2 since the docu epilogue dropped and your AMV (<3) popped up as a sign for me to ask something that hopefully you haven't already spoken about years ago: What did you think of the in-game psych explanation for Maligula, that she's the primitive savage part of the mind? P2 is a weird mix of sketchy Freud/Jung concepts that Tim likes meshed with modern psych, and Maligula's deal seems like something they probably wrote a lot of different versions of but never quite solved elegantly

yeah, i think you totally hit the nail on the head - it's always felt like one of the parts of the story that they couldn't quite give enough polish to before they had to finalize it and move on with development. like - i went to go get my artbook to see if it had any insight into the writing process, and did you know that Nona and Maligula being the same person was apparently added way later in development? that's wild! i didn't know that until literally right now! i may or may not have skipped straight to my favourite characters when my artbook arrived and then put it on my shelf without reading the whole thing

ANYWAY, retrospectively i think it being a twist that was added later actually makes a lot of sense in the context of everything you mentioned. the Maligula problem, to me, is the fact that they're trying to juggle a bunch of different things that she has to be in the story. there's Maligula, the ruthless big bad, and Nona, the beloved grandma, and if you suddenly have to also make them both the same person... well, it ends up being kind of a thorny writing problem to make that work, haha.

here's some art i made so this isn't just a wall of text, rest of the answer under the cut

i think one thing they could have done when they needed to rehabilitate a mass-murderer into a lovable old lady was pull back on either end of the spectrum. make your villain softer and more sympathetic, or give grandma a mean streak like she's one bad day away from a tragedy at the crochet club. and to give the story credit, i'm really glad they didn't. Nona is relentlessly sweet and endearing - and that's great! she needs to be in order to make the audience care about her, otherwise the emotional beats are never going to land. likewise, Maligula is a great villain, she's vicious and ruthless and at the culmination of her arc we see she simply does not give a shit about murdering hundreds of people. i love that for her, honestly, you go girl

but then, like - how do you connect the dots? how do you frame grandma having a violently murderous streak in a way that doesn't make the ending of "but she's over it now" feel kinda weird and hollow? and how do you do that while also being sympathetic to the game's themes around mental health? Maligula's informed by the traumatic things that happened to Lucrecia during the war, but she can't just be a manifestation of trauma, because the moral of the story being that trauma makes you a mass-murderer (until you beat up your trauma and shove it in a giant pit) would feel... really tonally dissonant!

so i think you're totally right that the sprinkling of pop-psych concepts we get ends up feeling a little bit like an awkward band-aid. Maligula's story is about how the horrors of war can shape you into a terrible person, who does terrible things - ...but there's also, like, special circumstances, so it doesn't feel weird that she goes back to being Raz's sweet grandma afterwards. special psychic circumstances! she's not just any war criminal, she's the fight or flight response gone out of control!

which - i dunno, i think that line in particular always stood out to me, because that's not really what the fight or flight (or freeze or fawn) response is, right? it's a temporary boost of adrenaline to the system to rev you up for getting out of a dangerous situation. an overactive fight or flight response is called chronic stress and anxiety. i know the games are pop-psych and not actual science, but it always stood out to me as a little awkward.

if it were me in the writer's seat - with the benefit of all the time in the world to workshop it, and no looming deadlines, and the hindsight of having a full completed game in front of me to think about - i might have tried to frame it around connection. i think you could swing the lens to instead focus on how violence, stress, trauma etc., make it harder to understand and empathise with the people around you. the tragedy of Lucrecia's story is that she came home to try and help her countrymen, the people she cared so dearly about. but the more time passed, the less she cared, the less she was able to see them as people. after Marona's death, the Maligula that remains is one who's unable to even care about killing her own sister. the alternative is too raw, too painful - instead, she sheds her last vestiges of remorse, and throws herself into the easy relief of violence. (we see this again, when Nona "awakens" as Maligula - when confronted with the baggage of her past, she chooses to wash it all away with force, unable and unwilling to care about the people she used to call friends.)

and i think shifting the focus like that ties it in thematically, too. a big theme (of both games, but especially the sequel) is how important connection is, how being able to understand and reach out to and rely on other people is a lifeline during hard times. PN2 touches on how there aren't really "good people" and "bad people" - everyone has the capacity to do wonderful or terrible things, and i think Raz's line to Maligula about how "everybody's got something like you" works. Lucrecia was never a monster, no matter how everyone tried to pretend she was. she was just a person, the same as everyone else - and just like everyone else, she could be pushed to extremes under the right circumstances. it just feels kind of odd when the implicit context is "everybody's got a mass-murderer hidden in the primal recesses of their brain", hahaha.

but like, again, that's the privilege of hindsight, right? i've definitely also been on the other side of the creative process, stuck with something i suddenly need to make work in a story and having to come up with a solution that feels like a band-aid. sometimes you just gotta call it good enough, and move on. and i think the game is overall much stronger for having Nona and Maligula be the same person - it plays into the wider themes, it sets up some great emotional beats, and i think it's overall well-executed, even if there are one or two hiccups in the writing.

anyway, great ask! thank you for the invitation to ramble, this is something that stuck out to me on my first playthrough of the game and it was fun to sit down and get my thoughts in order

[paranormaljones]

There's something that I think we don't talk about enough and it's that book!Lucy canonically cannot stop looking at Lockwood and describing how he looks literally every other paragraph.

[stillwithmeisonlyyou]

when you get this, list 5 songs you like to listen to, publish. then, send this ask to 10 of your favorite followers :3

Omg just 5? Ok here we go

Maybe someday- the cure

True Blue- boygenius

Black Sheep- Metric

Turn out the lights- Julien Baker

Nonbeliever- Lucy Dacus

I think 3 of these songs being about boys is really telling about me and honestly my honorable mention would be me and my dog soo

[leslieseveride]

opened tiktok to a fan edit of eric and roselyn and had to laugh at the top comment that read, "i'm just so glad for once that the fans don't ignore the wife and try to push two fictional characters to date in real life" because idk what fandom this person is talking about because there is always that one ☝️ egghead out there commenting on chenford edits like, "i ship them in real life too! 😍" and everytime i see one of these comments it makes me want to throw my laptop against the wall because after 6 years you'd think people would learn that eric and melissa kissing on screen is literally just a part of their jobs as actors.

they're only acting as if they are in love, they will never actually be in love. thanks for coming to my tedtalk.

[which-hospital]

making a ‘crossover’ (time travel?) edit of my favourite love triangles of my own interpretation/imagination

couple thoughts:

1.) funny that both fit the format ‘character I relate to (teddy and duffy) and best friend (sah and susie) and girlfriend (paige and mary)’ but only IN MY HEAD - I see duffy/mary as at very least a situationship but I guess that is not at all canonically true

2.) I keep forgetting that teddy and sah being into each other isn’t canon because of the way they act in barriers

3.) mary I love your lesbian swag

4.) susie I’d do a murder for you

[catastrophicgay]

dream state and nonbeliever are lucy dacus’s most devastating songs but yall aren’t ready for that conversation

[livelovecaliforniadreams]

5x2 | 5x12

[girl4music]

*When I see people watching Xena for the first time*

ME: “Did you fall in love with Gabrielle yet?”

She’s an adorable little nuisance in Season 1.

Xena’s just like “Gods what’s this girl done now?”

She’s stolen our hearts Xena. That’s what’s she’s done.

You can relate right? You know you can’t stop smiling.

[neeterloveschenford]

Definitely in my top 5 favorite episodes for this season. Very action packed and I am very intrigued by the new villain. And how bout our battle couple y’all!! Watching them fight together was so freaking HOT! Also, too many parallels to Jackson the last two episodes. I’m gonna need my boo Aaron to be a-ok please and thank you.

[tortured-poets11]

W e l c o m e <3

You can call me Dove:) I go by she/her pronouns, and I’m super open to meet new friends���🏻

I’m a huge fan of old media (shows, movies, books, everything) so that’s basically what I’ll be posting (though there might be a few other things as well haha)

Main Interests: Michael J. Fox, Back To The Future Trilogy, Family Ties, The Facts Of Life, Gilmore Girls, Everybody Loves Raymond, I Love Lucy, The Andy Griffith Show, Steel Magnolias(movie), Billy Joel, Carpenters, Madison Cunningham, Stevie Nicks/Fleetwood Mac, Switchfoot.

currently watching: Family Ties (season two) - The Facts Of Life (season five) - Gilmore Girls (season one)

Hobbies: reading, music(both preforming and listening lmao) collecting vinyls (I wanna start collecting cassettes and CDs too) writing, art(not as much as I used to but I wanna get back into it!!)

i also am an immersive daydreamer and sometimes post about my daydreams/paras !!

aaaandddd idk what else to put here lmaooo

have a nice day <3