#i gotta be that person or who else will

[aspergerasparagus]

Fudge you, Toxic yaoi be upon thee. Frankie and the Contestant but Frankie is just in it for the money and the kicks. Rabbitroyal??? I don't know the ship name im sorry

Also here if needed.

It had been just over a week since the Contestant had won their season. The show was still rolling in the money with late viewers still pouring in to witness the achievement over and over again. The show hadn’t seen revenue and viewership like this in years and with the announcement of a 58th season the excitement was sure to be even greater! Of course they’d have to get a few new replacements, resulting in a small delay in the airing of said season, but “Frankie” was sure they crowds would be patient. Eagerly awaiting the return of their first ever winner, his Lucky Contestant.

Frankie, as he had had to start referring to himself as, glanced over at the human seated next to him. Of course they were still dressed up in the Frankie costume provided, he wasn’t about to let them out of it lest the police be able to identify them via a hacked camera or accidental broadcast. They were the ticket to the show's renewal and continued profit, something his higher ups had made all too clear. Not that they’d had to force him at all to behave himself around them, to the contrary he was making sure his new cash cow was being well taken care of. Although saying that it seemed his Contestant was less than thrilled with the arrangement.

“You know I can’t just live off cereal right? Humans need other stuff too, especially considering how much crap is in this stuff…” The Contestant, who Frankie had so generously nicknamed “Lucky” (couldn’t have them using their real name, even with the voice filter), was once again grumbling as they shoveled another mouthful of the fruit flakes into their mouth, grimacing slightly. 

“And I have told you previously “Lucky”, Frankie’s Fruit Flakes are nutritious and contain a number of essential minerals, vitamins and a source of iron! And that it is considerably difficult to acquire a steady stream of other food products with… certain parties after us.” He heard Lucky grumble again as he finished off his bowl, the scowl he wore, while hidden behind his mask, was still all too evident. “But I do have some people who are currently working on the issue. You should have some “proper food”, as you so call it, by the end of the week. Hopefully that will keep our little winner happy until the next season is ready~” Tutting, Lucky pulled the mask back over their face and sank into their chair, but did mutter out a small thanks. 

Frankie just gave them one of his trademark grins (not that he could do anything else) and returned to work. He had set up a TV for Lucky in his office so he could keep them entertained, and close by. Of course he had the cameras set up throughout the facility if they ever decided to go and muck about in one of the parkour parks, but he was aware of the blind spots so keeping the Contestant as close to him seemed like the best option. Plus it had been a long time since he had had company that wasn’t just interested in sales figures and pleasing the investors. Lucky was… refreshing, special, different and Frankie found himself becoming more and more possessive of the human as the days progressed.

He was there when the human rose, when they ate, when they practiced in the parks, when they went to sleep… not that Lucky needed to be aware of that last part. It had been some long since he had someone he could just talk to. The other Frankie was just a beast with barely any thoughts and Henry was too terrified of him to speak with him other than work related topics. It would have been enough to bore anyone to tears or worse, at least Frankie had had his show to keep him busy. But now he had something else to occupy himself with.

The rabbit must have been staring as Lucky glanced over their shoulder to meet his gaze. The furrowed brow just visible behind the mask. 

“You’re staring at me again…” Their voice held steady but Frankie could pick up on the small twinge of concern hidden under it.

“Am I? Sorry about that, Lucky! I’m just lost in thought about the next season is all. We’ve got to make it even bigger and better than last if we’re to keep up this momentum!” He saw the human’s shoulder sag slightly as they relaxed.

“That’s what you always say, but… No, never mind.” They trailed off, obviously deciding that whatever they intended to confront Frankie with was probably best left unsaid. Interesting.

Unfurling himself from behind his desk, Frankie slinked his way over to Lucky, who maintained his ground, glowering up at the rabbit as he came to a stop in front of them. 

“”But.” It seemed you had something else you wanted to add there Lucky. Care to share it with me? After all, we are business partners now, if you have something on your mind, you know you can share it with me, after all I need my prize contestant happy and content.” While he was laying it on thick, the voice change hadn’t gone unnoticed by Lucky who tensed, ready to run if the need arose. This only caused the rabbit to let out a soft chuckle. “Don’t look at me like that, you know I’d never hurt my money maker. Not until next season anyway~”  

“Bastard.” Lucky barely had time to spit the words out before a gloved hand slammed into their chest, knocking the wind out of them and shoving them off the chair. Pinned, they swore again and tried to desperately wrench the hand off them, but quickly fell still as Frankie crouched down over them. The rabbit couldn’t stop the chuckle that slipped out. 

“My Lucky Contestant, perhaps you are right. Maybe there is more to all this, but could you blame me. Right now, you are the most important thing to this show and in turn me. You are my everything right now.” Frankie practically purred out the last part as Lucky shuddered under them, a fear response or something else. Frankie couldn’t care, this was truly a thrilling feeling and one he was getting more and more greedy for.

Leaning down further, so that he was mere inches from their mask, Frankie could feel the Contestants’ panicked breaths against his face as they struggled to keep their composure. 

“My “Lucky”. You really are… different. Like I said before, I like that, I like you. Maybe I’ll let you win the next season just so I can keep you around for longer. Wouldn’t that be fun, and even more profitable~” Unable to take much more, Lucky kicked his legs up, dislodging the rabbit just enough so they could roll out of the way and free of his grip. Locking eyes once more, Frankie could see the look of fear and disgust in their eyes before they bolted from the room. Of course he could chase them, easily catch them and drag them back kicking and screaming. But they’d both had their fun for today so best to let his little contestant recover. Dusting himself off Frankie, glanced towards the screens, watching as Lucky raced through the halls, turning to check behind him now and then until he bolted into the temporary room Frankie had set up from them, slamming the door closed behind them.

“Until tomorrow Lucky. Sleep well my golden goose and I hope we can play again~”

[travelling-hydaelyn]

Lahabrea possessed Thancred before this questline even started which means these are back to back Laha interactions. Here is how he greets the WoL in the Waking Sands immediately after his Disney villain introduction.

Meanwhile in Minfilia's solar:

presumably he took a brief break from running Alphinaud's errands to go dramatically laugh at the WoL

[mobius-m-mobius]

TenSimm + they're really doing this now huh

[luck-of-the-drawings]

OH ARTHUR BENNETT.. such a gorgeous and intriguing character. terribly burdened by a GRUESOME set of crimes, his light suffocated by a HEAVY century of GUILT. so tragic, so dark and broody, and yet PAINFULLY awkward in any social setting ever

[cluescorner]

I cannot imagine being a Damian stan right now. You've got both Zdarsky's bullshit (where he clearly doesn't give a shit about your boy) and The Boy Wonder (where Juni Ba clearly gives so many shits about your boy) coming out on the same day. The whiplash must be insane. I hope y'all get some nice warm soup for your efforts jfc

[turtleblogatlast]

Thinking about the Don Suave scene and what it means in terms of LGBTQ+ representation because my brain does nothing if not torment me with random topics to ramble about on the regular.

Anyway, I just wanted to ramble about why I like the scene but to get it out of the way - the scene can very easily be interpreted in so many different ways, and all of them are valid. I personally see it as Leo having at least some attraction to a man. And the following is an explanation of my own interpretation and thoughts on it and what it means especially for Leo’s portrayal in the grand scheme of things.

Long-winded interpretation under the cut!

Now, to start with, it’s important to me that in the scene Leo looks at Don Suave in the very beginning and then for the entirety of the rest of the time the man is on screen, Leo’s eyes are closed. Yet, in the end, he is still visibly enamored with Don Suave, happily cuddling up to him as he’s being carried away.

You can very easily interpret this as Leo being spellbound and that’s honestly super valid and I believe he likely was at least somewhat in the beginning, but considering how fast he looked away and how he never looked again, I personally think it makes more sense to read it as Leo just finding the man attractive, at least somewhat. (For the record, I personally headcanon Rise Leo as bisexual with a heavy preference for men, but I want to be blunt when I say that any interpretation is valid. Literally any. Ace, pan, gay, bi, none of the above or a mixture of something new literally all of it is more than okay and fair. Hell you could even interpret this entire scene as more romantic attraction than physical and it would still work. Anything goes!! Don’t bother people, guys, really.)

The main reason I take this scene to be at the very least LGBTQ+ adjacent isn’t just because of how it’s portrayed, but because of who Leonardo is. Not in terms of Rise of the TMNT, but in terms of the entire Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles™️ franchise.

Leo’s a character who, while changing with each iteration, has still at his core been around for decades upon decades as “the blue one”. One fourth of the team. He’s the one most are going to look at as the Leader, and oftentimes he is the one closest to having the title of Main Character. Not to say the others aren’t just as important, but Leo’s presence in the A plots of basically all TMNT media is often something very main character-esque.

And that’s very, very important to note. Here we have a Main Character of a prolific and decades long-running franchise distributed by a children’s television network. You can play around with his and his brothers’ characters all you like, but there is always going to be challenges to dodge around, especially since this was still in 2018-2019.

For example, you can play around with their designs so long as they’re color coded turtles, but their sexualities? Now that’s tricky.

“But what about Hypno and Warren?” Not main characters and also they’re Rise originals. They have a lot more room to play around with than a character like Leo does. But even talking about main characters in the franchise, you could arguably have an easier time playing around with Donnie or Mikey’s sexualities than Leo or even Raph, as (unfortunately) the former two tend to get more B plots, so they’d likely have had a little more leeway (still not a lot though.)

So, where does this leave us?

It leaves us in a place where outright stating and/or showing undeniable proof of Leo’s attraction to men is very, very difficult. So, workarounds!

Workarounds like the entire Don Suave situation.

To be honest, as left up to interpretation and lowkey and deniable as it is, this whole scene means a lot to me because of who Leo is as a character. It’s just nice when we get so see even the bare bones of representation with characters that have been such a large part of pop culture for decades, y’know? Even if more would be so much nicer, this is better than I thought we’d ever get for these boys.

And, again, literally nothing I’ve said is the only way to interpret it, I’m more than happy when people interpret media on their own honestly, it’s just something I’ve been thinking of lately and I was wondering if others felt the same way.

Whatever you think when you interpret this scene or Rise Leo as a whole, I just thought this would be interesting to think about, even if it was ramble-y, haha.

[moeblob]

idk if it's a fun fact or not but! Right's favorite color is green. He never wears green but it's his favorite color. then I've been working on silly emotes for my OCs and they're "disappointeddad" and "tryme".

(Also there is an AU where these two are knights along with Paul and Evelyn while Brent/Caspian/Atticus are princes. Chris is basically Caspian's personal guard while Right just runs around trying to do everything to stay busy even when not on duty which stresses Chris out. But since he's kinda busy with the crown prince it defaults to Paul having to babysit Right.)

[pyrrhicprose]

Hey guys so I was rewatching OPLA and uh.

They really carried that well theme through huh?

[longliveustherecklessandthebrave]

I wanted to post my comment that I made on the Minecraft trailer video to tumblr so people can see my thoughts and rambles

I just love Minecraft and the idea of it so much and to see it portrayed as something cheap and hollow legitimately saddens me. And I will personally fist fight Warner bros in a parking lot

[jrueships]

r u the grew up poor never being able to buy the little things in life u always wanted as a kid so now u buy whatever little thing u want as an adult and struggle with saving for the big mandatory thing,

or the grew up poor never being able to buy the little things in life u always wanted as a kid so now u just never buy anything small bcs u had to learn to live without it and constantly try to save for the next big thing in 500 yrs

[zabala0z]

Listened to 3 today instead of 2 like I planned! Worth it. Anyways, welcome back, yada, yada, I’m here again YIPEE

MAG 52: exceptional risk

Oh shit Robert Montauk is back. the guy who visited him was Maxwell Rayner and I did write down from previous episodes he was like a defrocked Pentecostal minister (hell he do???) and had that cult grow around him. Also the last name Rayner was mentioned in The Piper, Joseph Rayner tags or something. The whole, bulbs flickering and crappy water, at least my assumption, seems to be like in response. I’m assuming the thing that murdered Maxwell which then scared the shit out of his daughter in A Fathers Love and possibly killed her mom. I think Robert did something to try and get rid of that creature which is Maxwell came and did his ominous speech or whatever

MAG 53: crusader

Gertrude!!! No notes on this episode but I know eyes are like a super common theme in the magnus archives, I’ve seen some vague fanart so I’ll keep an eye for that. Sorry.

MAG 54: Still Life

Daniel Rawlings was one of the people who disappeared in Anglerfish near Old Fishmarket Close. The thing that was in his basement was also described very similarly to the thing in the alleyway. Swaying motion, a monotone voice, repeating the same sentence again, and again. Not only that Daniel disappeared the same year as Sarah Baldwin, who we were already, unfortunately, introduced to. I know he has like a completely different appearance but I dunno. It’s creepy. ALSO, there were those 2 men with cockney accents and when Jon got delivered those packages in season 1, Martin described them with cockney accents. So I’m assuming they are the same.

MAG 55: Pest Control

Jane Prentiss mention. Thought we’d be done with her when she’s now ash but I guess not 💀 (<- Jane) anyways, apparently John Amherst got an appearance. Doing some calculating, I think him in MAG 55 was before Taken Ill. I think. One thing I noticed looking back at Taken Ill was that Nicole didn’t want to touch the bell because there was this oily residue on it, the same oily residue on the door to his house when Jordan knocked on it. Also the landlord from Jane’s statement is here. Did not expect him to sacrifice himself. Clearly he knows a lot and maybe knew what that “wasps” nest was all about. He had that scar too. So far I can’t find anything connecting with that scar but everything (everyone) is going up in flames in this podcast I swear.

MAG 56: Children of the Night

I was actually going to end this post at Pest Control but I saw TREVOR was giving this statement so I had to listen. Anyways. Uh. Rest in peace that human he killed 🫡. The lady that had spiders come out was interesting. Lot of spiders in this podcast.

Also Jon seems really stressed like he needs a nice nap and maybe some like book to calm him down. I jumped and he wasn’t even yelling at me 😭 personally I would not let that slide. also Martin mentioned his mom having problems so he dropped out and I think his moms problems were based in the supernatural in some way. No basis for that.

One other thing, I saw that the title of this episode is like…slightly similar to the thing Gertrude referenced in Crusaders. “Those who sing the night “children of the night”. I guess only night is mentioned and it could be a coincidence but I’m keeping that in mind just in case.

Anyways that’s all my thoughts!! I see the next episode is something about space. It is currently 10:12 PM and it’s pitch black so I’m definitely not listening to that tonight.

[mamawasatesttube]

i have to speak my truth. i think timkon clone baby aus fucking suck

[nataref]

No one is responsible for this election besides white people and implying otherwise is reductive, racist and frankly going to do nothing except for weaken community and coalition building we have desperately needed for decades if not centuries. Cause the reality is white supremacy created Trump. White people voted en masse for him. It wasn't latines, or Black men, or Arabs, or the Free Palestine movement. It will always rest squarely on the shoulders of whiteness as a individual identity and as a superstructure.

Stop fighting each other. Start fighting FOR each other. It will never ever be the fault of racialized people and anti-racists. Ever.

[snailvibes]

Thinking about how Max‘s habit of shying away from help or talking about things is because throughout that whole week she had to only rely on herself essentially. How she had the whole world on her shoulders and felt she had to carry it, not because no one else could, but because no one else would.

[lovecolibri]

Oh I am *cackling* at the producers trying to claim the show was driven by Loki and Sylvie's relationship when she refused to lift a finger to help multiple times (while platonic bestie Mobius was living out romcom moments by the dozen with Loki), and honestly they could have not had her in the season at all and barely anything would change. Like, I don't like that ship but it's still SO deeply disrespectful to give them NOTHING on screen all season while giving all the cute classically shippy moments to Lokius, and then come out after and claim it was some grand, sweeping romance and also there was nothing intentional about giving all the shippy stuff to Lokius. 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄

Also, as I said in some tags, the "we can't get into Loki's head" like is just....peek absurdity. My brother in Christ, YOU'RE the writers! This character has been in the MCU for like, 14 years, played by Hiddleston who is *obsessed* with Loki. Getting into Loki's head should have been a cake walk! And even if it wasn't, IT'S LITERALLY YOUR JOB TO GET IN THE CHARACTER'S HEAD. Maybe this is why shows are so shitty? Instead of letting the characters drive the plot by getting into their heads and making choices from that perspective, showrunners instead twist the characters into a storyline.

ANYWAY.

[thefirstknife]

Some important stuff in regards to the harassment of developers came from Bungie today. They won a lawsuit against a guy who repeatedly harassed a community manager and his family (not fully confirmed in the official document, but people are fairly certain this is about A_dmg and his family). This is a twitter thread from the lawyer who went into some details about the situation. The court document is also available to read (featuring some of the horrific harassment tactics that were motivated by racism and also used racism as part of the harassment so be advised if you want to read).

This isn't just a win for the individual community manager and Bungie, but also has potential to set a bigger precedent in the future. It's basically the first time this has been done to this extent and some ruling in this case made it clear that companies can pursue this sort of legal action in the future if their employees are harassed and threatened. This is HUGE because the protection of employees in the gaming industry has been abysmal otherwise. This case will allow for the company to file a lawsuit on behalf of their employees in cases of harassment.

Before I add some of the more heinous stuff about this situation below, I want to say that the majority of reactions to this are positive. People are happy that this happened as it did and a lot of people are excited about potential big influence this will have in the future to combatting harassment of this type in the gaming industry.

Extra details and thoughts below (racism tw):

This started because the community manager highlighted a black content creator, Uhmayyze, who is himself a victim of harassment more often than not (usually of racist nature). He is most often harassed because he is unapologetically positive for which people have continuously sent him awful shit and comments. Because he enjoys the game and isn't jumping on the hate train. Just recently he commended Bungie for a ban wave and had hundreds of people hound him on twitter for his comment, including Gladd who started it by specifically replying to Uhmayyze and putting him on blast (warning for a lot of gross comments, including photoshopped screenshots of fake discord texts to make Uhmayyze look bigoted, nsfw images, r slur, suicide baiting and so on). This is important because the incident of real life harassment was fuelled over a community manager highlighting a content creator that is himself being harassed and despised online for the crime of... being positive. And you know, for being black. This situation isn't an isolated incident. The community, including other content creators, are absolutely horrible towards this one person that they feel, I guess, does not follow the content creator NPC questline of hating Bungie and Destiny.

So of course, at some point, someone from that crowd will feel confident and justified taking things further. How dare Bungie promote this person they hate. How dare they focus on a positive creator. They're clearly biased and don't want to listen to criticism, only to "toxic positivity" streamer. How dare a community manager highlight this creator. It's a personal slight to them, and "proof" that Bungie is bad and evil and "ignoring criticism." There's someone out there (and probably not the only one) that hates this creator and the game so much they were willing to harass and threaten a community manager and his family in real life.

The community manager was first harassed by phone with text messages and voice mails featuring racist bile, including apparently a voice mail telling him to "convince Bungie to create options in its game in which only persons of color would be killed." This is the worst part for me and super concerning in general, as well as showing the dedication of this person to racism, motivated by his hatred of a black creator (which also, by proxy, technically makes the streamer being harassed as well). Absolutely ghoulish behaviour.

This escalated to also harassing the CM's wife and resulted in doxing them; the harasser somehow found their address. Most of the reports on this will say that the asshole "sent them pizza" which doesn't truly capture how horrific the incident was. First, it's a random guy who has your address which is concerning enough given that he harasses you by phone already. Apparently the pizza was made to be "inedible" and the delivery was instructed to bang loudly on the door upon arrival to maximise discomfort. The order was also deliberately made to be paid on delivery to create as much pain for the victims as possible. The harasser also kept track of the delivery and then called the family again when it was done to tell them to "enjoy the pizza." The family immediately contacted Bungie who contacted the police and provided the family with protection. There's no telling how this would've escalated had they not been in the position to call Bungie and had Bungie not reacted to them asking for help. It's absolutely crucial here that Bungie is the type of a company willing to immediately assist in this situation.

Immediately following that, Bungie organised a long and expensive manhunt to identify the harasser and bring them court. That's where most of the expenses went; finding the culprit and protecting the employee and his family. This is the money Bungie earned back by this court decision because they could prove that the expenses were caused by a person harassing and threatening their employee.

This is a big win overall for the whole industry. It's Bungie setting a precedent on how a company should protect its employees. No matter what people think about Bungie or big corporations or whatever, this is how you can use a lot of money and power to make sure that your workers have rights to decency and safety. That's huge for the rights of workers and worker protections. I hope it becomes a standard and that any future harassment is prevented altogether or at least punished accordingly.

Naturally, the commentary on the news from a big part of the community is super positive. Unfortunately, there's also a part of the community that has a lot of really awful shit to say about this. The comments on twitter are littered with people who are using THIS specific moment to yell about Bungie being a greedy corporation, how the money they won should be used to "fix the servers" and "make more pvp maps" or how Bungie will greedily put this money "into Eververse" or "into Marathon." There's comments about how time was uselessly spent protecting an employee who should expect harassment anyway, instead of working on "fixing the game."

This is what I mean when I talk about how impossible it is in the current situation to have a meaningful discussion about any sort of criticism or feedback. There's thousands of comments from people who think that this specific instance shows how Bungie is greedy. This is what I mean when I say that none of these people actually understand what they're talking about. You can't make proper criticism when you can't separate game development with a company's legal effort to stop an escalating harassment campaign of an employee. The majority of gamers are simply not fit to offer any criticism or feedback. The idea that we all have something useful to say and that employees at Bungie are obliged to give us their time of the day is simply incorrect.

I genuinely 100% stand by the claim that the recent barrage of content creators promoting the idea that Bungie is "the greediest company in the world that's scamming players and increasing costs out of greed" as well as the idea that Bungie is "abandoning Destiny for Marathon, isn't working on the game anymore and is deliberately ruining it" is the reason for these comments existing. If a big streamer said that Bungie is getting too much money but also not doing anything "good" with it, then any money that Bungie receives (including compensation for expenses they took to protect an employee from active harm) is a result of greed. The nuance of any situation is lost; when you only learn the mantra of "company has money therefore company bad" you WILL end up causing harm for people and you will most definitely not be an advocate of workers rights. That's where we're at right now.

The dehumanisation of people who work at Bungie (and the harassment itself) is a consequence of this crap and other similar crap that's been thrown into the ether for the past year, disguised as "we're just offering feedback." People heard that Bungie is a "microtransaction hell" and that Bungie is only investing in Eververse and Marathon and they feel like this story reflects that; they feel like an employee being harassed is not deserving of proper condemnation and that this isn't important enough and that Bungie is a greedy corpo anyway so who cares about that. They do not understand how companies work, how games are made, the state of the industry as a whole (or the world as a whole), the treatment of employees or workers' rights, and you cannot meaningfully critique a company's business practices without understanding that. And they don't because they think that legal expenses used to protect victims, finding a culprit and bringing their ass to court is money that is being used for game development and that Bungie receiving this money should result in... new pvp maps or "fixed servers."

And there's even seemingly good commentary where people recognise how this is good, but they initiate the comment with "As much as I hate Bungie and Destiny and I think they're awful and greedy and destroying gaming as a whole..." : that's not the time and place. You don't have to excuse your support of a big win for potential new employee protection policies just because those policies are done by a company. Of course it is. Companies are the only ones capable of pursuing this sort of legal action. It's one good way a big company can put their power and money into a good place to actually help people and bring forth positive change. And like, you don't have to tell us how much you despise Bungie before you're "allowed" to admit that this is good news. Sometimes companies do good stuff. It's literally not that complicated.

I hope that this situation will help other employees demand the same protection, that other companies will follow suit and that this will also make potential other harassers rethink whether or not they will engage in this or similar type of behaviour. In the meantime, know that the community is largely positive about this, but that there are still absolutely detestable human beings who should feel ashamed of their reaction to this. They shouldn't feel welcome here. And there's still people doing this to the devs and I hope Bungie takes their asses to court too.