#examples off the top of my head:

[legitimatesatanspawn]

Me as a kid watching a superhero cartoon: "Why are all these ladies working for this one lady? She's a super villain. Is it an Evil Lady Gang?"

Me, watching it again as an adult and taking note of the skimpy costumes and casual touches: "... There's absolutely no straight reason for this."

[hballegro]

they're leaving room for jesus via the width of a single communion wafer

[biblionerd07]

I gotta gush about something from the Residence, the White House murder mystery on Netflix starring Uzo Aduba. (Spoilers ahead but as far as I know they’re spoilers for character backstory but not for the plot of the show, though I’m only on episode 4 so idk if this comes into play later.)

Okay so there is a thing that writers sometimes do when trying to convey backstory to the audience where they have the characters just explain their backstory to someone. But often they are doing this to someone who would already know, like a family member/partner/longtime friend. You know I love my man Taron, but Netflix’s Carry-On did this with his character and his girlfriend multiple times. Like who’s been dating their partner for 2 years and says things like, “You moved here to be with me. That was 2 years ago.” It’s awkward and unnatural because people don’t talk like that to each other. They both already know that! But it’s hard because you want to tell your audience the story.

So, on to the point of this post. The 4th episode of the Residence opens with Cordelia on a birding trip with her nephew, who I think is somewhere in the 10-12-year-old range. He’s discouraged and wants to give up because they can’t find the bird they’re looking for, and Cordelia tells him about not giving up while looking for a lost sock.

She tells her nephew that his mom (her sister) had a favorite pair of socks as a child. She’d wear these socks every other day, even if they were dirty. Her nephew asks what was so special about the socks and Cordelia says, “They were a gift from her brother.” Her nephew’s face gets serious. Cordelia goes on to talk about how distraught her sister was when one of the socks was lost. She wanted to skip school to find it. She cried. Cordelia promised to find it and skipped school to look for it. She says, “I even looked in places I wasn’t supposed to look” and we see a closed door that a child-Cordelia opens to reveal a boy’s bedroom in an obviously untouched state. At one point in the story she mentions a neighbor bringing food by for the family even after her dad didn’t want the neighbor to do that anymore.

Neither Cordelia nor her nephew ever say the brother died. Because they don’t need to. In real life, you don’t need to remind your 10-year-old nephew about your brother who died. He knows, and he’s not a younger kid who would blurt it out just because he knows it. Instead of going for the unnatural “let me talk at you so we get character backstory through dialogue”, the show gave us the hints we needed and trusted us to put the pieces together ourselves.

We still get the backstory they wanted to tell us, but it doesn’t stand out as a weird conversation between family members. It’s so much more natural and I’ve been thinking about it all day because it was so refreshing. I feel like so. many. shows these days spoon-feed the audience every single detail and it leaves the dialogue feeling awkward. It was so nice to have a show say “here, you’ve been alive long enough that you can understand what we’re saying.” And we can! It was not particularly subtle, despite never actually saying the words. It was just really good!

[tea-cat-arts]

Shen Yuan getting transported into pidw isn't "the system punishing him for being a lazy internet hater," but instead representative of "step 1 of the creative process: getting so mad at something you decide to go write your own fucking book" in this essay I will

[fluentisonus]

one thing les misérables does so well but can be so agonizing to read is the extent to which certain things are just (deliberately) never resolved or left with their potential unable to be realized -- e.g. jean valjean never sees or hears from his sister or her children again (we're told this straight out) and has to spend the rest of his life half wondering. likewise his sister (presumably) never knew what happened to him. marius takes a diligence the morning after getting the letter instead of the night of & so misses any chance of seeing his father alive & anything they might have said or clarified to each other is just gone. nobody in the book ever understands javert's ultimate character growth or motivations for suicide (none of them even know his backstory!) & in fact they actively misunderstand it. the two little boys who get lost never find their way to where their mother told them to go and never find gavroche again after he dies and maybe never see their mother again. gavroche never makes the connection between the man he saw lecture montparnasse and the man he gave his letter to at the rue de l'homme armé and the man at the barricade. javert never realises that jean valjean was the man at the gorbeau house or how he got away into the convent. jean valjean never finds petit gervais again & can never make up for what he did. fantine dies with javert's revelation that madeleine is jean valjean but without properly knowing what that means or who he is. jean valjean's gravestone is written in pencil that eventually washes away, fantine's grave is never marked, there are bits of the story even the reader never gets to know

[raihanstrapinch]

Regardless of whether they're dating or not, Hirano loves Kagiura 💚💛

Pass it on 🥰

[alleycatchitchat]

did anyone else notice how physically protective shadow was in this episode

[sonknuxadow]

always thinking about how many scenes there are where sonic or knuckles is attacked or gets hurt or something and the other immediately rushes in to protect them or make sure they're okay like Ohhhh .... you care about himmmmm ... <3

[ghostinthegallery]

Reading IDW Transformers comics (which is a trip don't do it but also definitely do it pain is weakness leaving the body amirite?) and it's giving me even more feelings about Ratchet. Like...everyone has been at war for millions of years. War for even a few weeks fucks up your head so do that for millions of years yeah that's fine. So everyone has to cope. And thus almost everyone is insane. Charming insane! Except Ratchet doesn't get to be charmingly insane. We know what happens when the medic goes "charmingly" insane. You get Pharma and nobody wants Pharma as their doctor (poor little meow meow? Fine. Healthcare professional? No.) No, Ratchet doesn't get violence or faith or obsessive loyalty or any of the other copes, he forces himself to be as present and "realistic" as possible. And this isn't just the comics, he's always the grumpy adult in the room because he has to be because if he isn't on his game, people die. His friends die. Even if he is on his game, people die, and he forces himself to experience every single second of that. No dissociation, no quirks, no nothing. For MILLIONS IF YEARS.

Yeah. Yeah I'm super normal about this. When does rationality and "sanity" loop back around to become the most insane reaction possible? When are you fundamentally unwell because you've had to be the "most well" person in the room for so, so long?

How do you retire from that?

[tiredcowboyy]

I can only conclude that the reason arthur was so blind to merlins magic was because he couldnt actually have a coherent thought around him because he was so besotted and distracted by him

[yeetus-feetus]

dark/edgy/grumpy/misunderstood/brooding character with parental issues/trust issues x adorable bisexual with who follows them around like a lost puppy despite their arguments both pining hardcore over each other, is the perfect ship.

It works for everything! Every genre! It's fucking perfect and so tasty. So Good I'd inject it into my veins if I could!

Even better if they're both a little insane but one of them is better at hiding it.

[foundfamilywhump]

the brief and instinctive touch when a whumpee wakes up following being unresponsive or revives after resuscitation - the moment when the person there who cares about them is just so relieved that they’re alive, that they’re responding, that they just can’t help clasp them in a tight hug, or cup their cheek, or kiss their head. that nonverbal you’re still here, i got you, thank fuck you’re alive.

[parme-san]

"squidward doesn't like hearing spongebob cry" is something that i don't think is ever explicitly said in the show but i feel like it's one of those things where once it's pointed out to you you can't miss it. i feel like it's probably called back to repeatedly because of pizza delivery, not only because the climax of the episode is so iconic but because as the first episode centered around squidward and spongebob interacting it serves as a kind of blueprint for their relationship.

[whattraintracks]

I'm thinking about siblings and sons and legacies again. Raph's "ugh, I sound like Leo" and Mikey's "my father taught me better than that" and Splinter's oft-repeated "he who lives without honor, ends without honor." I'm thinking about how Raph sounds like Leo and Donny and Mikey who sound like Master Splinter who sounds like Hamato Yoshi, and this legacy of what it means to have honor/be honorable/act honorably. Not as a teaching of ninjutsu but of the Hamato Clan. I'm thinking about how this family's legacy is one of teaching its sons about honor.

[bardace]

Anime/manga fans when an anime/manga does the bare fucking minimum (not oversexualizing the female characters, not making bipoc characters racist caricatures, drawing people with different body types normally, and just generally being normal about characters that aren’t cishet able-bodied men)

[loop-lover-central]

What do you think Loop's favorite animals are, and/or which one(s) do they connect with the most/you associate them with the most. And also why?

Can just be vibes-based and have no real reason, I just think connecting characters to animals is fun :3

Super basic answer but Loop is just feline af to me. Like just a huge amalgam of felidae of all types.

Some different kitty traits that are strictly observable from canon Loop alone(spoilers ahead):

-Adept at climbing trees

-Separation anxiety(Which is why Loop and Siffrin are basically destined to become a bonded pair)

-Slender, muscular, build

-Quick reflexes(Snatching the coin from mid air with their limited depth perception(as someone with depth perception and vision problems if I tried to snatch a quarter from the air I'd fumble so bad))

-Good at sneaking and hiding

-Large, forward facing, eyes

-Spotted pattern

-Mostly solitary and secretive lifestyle

-Occupies a forested area

-Parallel play (Loop and Siffrin can just sit in silence together at some point)

-Sleeps a lot

-Aggression based in fear and territorialism(over the party)

-Hides while in distress (avoids the party and even tries to avoid Siffrin in act 6)

-Meowing (Nya-ing?)

-Aggressive play and/or Feline Asocial aggression(Kinda mean and annoying to Sif for their own amusement or because they simply don't like him as a replacement)

-Observational learner and problem solver

-Watches over Siffrin to ensure safety A LOT (They can't actually protect Siffrin in the typical sense but they can learn from his mistakes and give them advice. See above↑)

-Also have you ever just looked at them and then looked at a cat?

That's the same guy (gender neutral)

-Get pet then bites type behavior ("PLEASE TOUCH ME PLEASE HOLD ME PL- Actually ew no stay away from me ew gross" ass mf)

-Frizzles out in aggressive moments to appear more threatening, like a cat fluffs out to seem bigger.

look at these angry Loops.

But Loop couldn't care for a pet to save their life despite adoring all kinds.