#i guess let me know if there's interest

[inkedberries]

expanding on the thought of kudou getting the call sign 'hero' and afo getting irked by it for some reason

[lulady030]

That one Haunted House meme : SEES edition

[yo-yo-yoshiko]

Real conversation I had recently. Its HIS DAY!!!

[carpe-mamilia]

Ghosts’ Larry Rickard Explains Why They Chose the Captain’s First Name

Photo: Monumental,Guido Mandozzi

It couldn’t be a joke. That was one rule laid down by the Ghosts creators when it came to choosing a first name for Willbond’s character. Until series five, the WWII ghost had been known only as The Captain – a mystery seized upon by fans of the show.

“It was the question we got asked more than anything. His name,” actor and writer Larry Rickard tells Den of Geek. “Once we got to series three, you could see that we were deliberately cutting away and deliberately avoiding it. We were fuelling the fire because we knew at some point we’d tell them.”

In “Carpe Diem”, the episode written by Rickard and Ben Willbond that finally reveals The Captain’s death story, they did tell us. After years of guessing, clue-spotting and debate, Ghosts revealed that The Captain’s first name is James. At the same time, we also learned that James’ colleague Lieutenant Havers’ first name was Anthony.

The ordinariness of those two names, says Rickard, is the point.

“The only thing we were really clear about is that we didn’t want one of those names that only exists in tellyland. It shouldn’t be ‘Cormoran’ or ‘Endeavour’. They should just be some men’s names and they’re important to them. The point was that they were everyday.”

Choosing first names for The Captain and Havers was a long process not unlike naming a baby, Rickard agrees. “It almost comes down to looking at the faces of the characters and saying, what’s right?”

“We talked for ages. For a long time I kept thinking ‘Duncan and James’, and then I was like ah no! That would have turned it into a gag and been awful!” Inescapably in the minds of a certain generation, Duncan James is a member of noughties boyband Blue. “Maybe with Anthony I was thinking of Anthony Costa!” Rickard says in mock horror, referencing another member of the band.

Lieutenant Havers wasn’t just The Captain’s second in command while stationed at Button House; he was also the man James loved. Because homosexuality was criminalised in England during James’ lifetime, he was forced to hide his feelings for Anthony from society, and to some extent even from himself.

In “Carpe Diem”, the ghosts (mistakenly) prepare for the last day of their afterlives, prompting The Captain to finally tell his story. Though not explicit about his sexual identity, the others understand and accept what he tells them – and led by Lady Button, all agree that he’s a brave man.

Getting the balance right of what The Captain does and doesn’t say was key to the episode. “It wasn’t just a personal choice of his to go ‘I’m going to remain in the closet’,” explains Rickard. “There wasn’t an option there to explore the things that either of them felt. That couldn’t be done back then – there are so many stories which have come out since the War about the dangers of doing that.

“We wanted to tell his personal story but also try to ensure that there was a level at which you understood why they couldn’t be open, that even in this moment where he’s finally telling the other ghosts his story, he never comes out and says it overtly because that would be too much for him as a character from that time.

“He says enough for them to know, and enough for him to feel unburdened but it’s in the fact that they’re using their first names which militarily they would never have done, and in the literal passing of the baton”.

The baton is a bonus reveal when fans learned that The Captain’s military stick wasn’t a memento of his career, but of Havers. As James suffers a fatal heart attack during a VE day celebration at Button House, Anthony rushes to his side and the stick passes from one to the other as they share a moment of tragic understanding.

“From really early on, we had the idea that anything you’re holding [when you die] stays with you. So it wasn’t just your clothes you were wearing, we had the stuff with Thomas’ letter reappearing in his pocket and so on. And the assumption being that it was something The Captain couldn’t put down, it felt so nice to be able to say it was something he didn’t want to put down.”

Rickard lists “Carpe Diem”, co-written with Ben Willbond, among his series five highlights. He’s pleased with the end result, praises Willbond’s performance, and loved being on set to see Button House dressed for the 1940s. He’s particularly pleased that a checklist of moments they wanted to land with the audience all managed to be included. “Normally something’s fallen by the wayside just because of the way TV’s made, it’s always imperfect or it’s slightly rushed, but it feels like it’s all there.”

Rickard and Willbond also knew by this point in the show’s lifetime, that they could trust Ghosts fans to pick up on small details. “Nothing is missed,” he says. “Early on, you’re always thinking, is that going to get across? But once we got to series five, there are little tiny things within corners of shots and you know that’s going to be spotted. Particularly in that very short exchange between Havers and the Captain. We worried less about the minutiae of it because you go, that’s going to be rewound and rewatched, nothing will be missed.”

The team were also grateful they’d resisted the temptation to tell The Captain’s story sooner. “We’d talked about it every series since series two, whether or not now was the time, but because he’s such a hard and starchy character in a lot of ways you needed the time to understand his softer side I think before you had that final honest beat from him.”

“What a ridiculously normal name to have so much weight put on it for five years,” laughs Rickard fondly. “Good old James.”

From Den of Geek

[tropicalcontinental]

Human fear is the window to the soul or whatever ://

[vethbrenatto]

Sorry it’s strange that I’m crying, think it’s ‘cause you’re the one...

[whaliiwatching]

finally my obsession with zoot suits becomes useful

[ggarbagee]

another skimble !!

[crimeronan]

my most irritating severance theory is that "gemma" was never real and that she's a carbon copy of dichen lachman's character in dollhouse, who was a tabula rasa woman living in a hole that could be programmed with different personalities to fuck rich clients. i'm like 99% sure this is what "exports" are -- it's lumen shipping pre-downloaded sexbots with custom human personalities out to people. and/or using those sexbots for the company's own manipulative agenda.

in keeping with this, the entire relationship and """death""" and subsequent soulshattering grief were all painstakingly manufactured by lumen to get mark scout to sever himself, because for some fucking reason, he's the only one who can complete project cold harbor, whatever the Fuck that is. (i have not been in any theory tags and do not have any ideas about what it is or why mark s is special. or even IF he's special.)

then once mark finds out that gemma isn't real, his feelings for and about her will vanish in an uncomplicated puff of smoke. he will become miraculously free to continue his deeply fucked-up """love triangle""" with the helltwins without needing to answer any complicated questions about, like, the self, and his emotions, and his commitments, and polyamory.

(the helltwins don't count as complicated relationship dynamics because they are the same person, aside from not being the same person, and they hate each other, and also most importantly, mark absolutely Does Not Want to fuck one of them. hurrah!)

this theory irritates the fuck out of me bc i really do think i'm right about gemma. and this "twist," as a way to avoid any interesting themes, would be the laziest, most boring thing they could Possibly do.

i am on my fucking Knees praying to god that they KNOW this is the laziest, most boring thing they could possibly do. Please, God, If You Love Me. Please. Please Don't .

...

HOWEVER.

i WILL accept the lumon-engineered-a-sexbot-relationship-to-coerce-mark-into-severance plot, IF and ONLY if:

gemma is a person.

not like, gemma is a human being whose outie parents aren't actors. i mean, gemma is an artificial sexbot with a nonconsensually programmed personality, AND gemma is a fully sentient living breathing person. who wants her life back. who wants her AUTONOMY back. who is just now learning that she Literally Never Had Autonomy In The First Place.

we, as the audience, get to see her reckon with her identity. we're used to innies being the most oppressed class in the show, but gemma is something else entirely. even less than an innie. she is, legally and corporately, Nothing. she is an object built to serve lumon (and, upsettingly, mark!) without any sense of interiority or free will.

but here she is. having interiority and free will.

if the writers take the themes of personhood and "what is identity?" and "how do we define each other?" to their logical conclusion, by making gemma a non-person who Absolutely Fucking Is A Person....

and so we get to See Her be absolutely fucking MESSY and WRECKED and COMPLICATED, instead of always being the laughing dead wife or the gentle vapid servant....

if gemma Gets An Arc. if gemma makes Choices. if gemma has Motivations and Desires and Fuckups. if gemma gets to be centered in the narrative thematically, the same way the other innies are, if gemma gets to drive the story Herself instead of being the carrot on a stick for mark...

well. then the writers will have my heart. 5eva.

🙏🙏🙏

[oneluckydragon]

"What do you remember of being human, Echo?" The question is out of the blue and unexpected. But Sora offers a patient smile and tilts her head in curiosity, just enough that one of her ears flops over. It's endearing, if anything.

But Echo wishes she hadn't asked.

"Not much. Distinct memories are cloudy." A tired tone says softly, a pained recollection in her eyes and an acrid haze in her soul that endures, endures, and endures, "But I remember the discomfort more than anything. My body always did feel wrong back then. Misshapen. Condensed. Like it was too small for everything buried underneath, and that ache went so deeply some days that it would make my skin crawl. I hated that part the most."

At that, Sora's expression falls. She looks inexplicably sad, as if she'd hoped for a different response, a gentler one despite knowing the harsh truth about the dark future and the struggles Echo must have suffered. "But you had Grovyle, right? I'm sure he took care of you."

"He did, Sora, of course he did." A sigh, a flick of an ear and claws clenched tightly into the churned earth pressed under her paws. "I doubt I deserved his attention, though. I was too busy being angry at the world to give any care back."

In my lore, Echo does not look fully human during their time in the dark future. Since they were Darkrai before becoming human, and as a result of Palkia's reckless shattering of the Dimensional Portal which distorted both time and space, Echo's transformation was broken and accidental. They ended up looking pretty messed up and definitely (not) human. A lot of their characteristics as Darkrai carried over but rather morphed into something else.

And Grovyle, growing up in a world where humans have been extinct for longer than any living pokémon has been alive, has no concept of what a "true" human looks like. The only thing he knows is descriptions of humans from glyphs and texts in old ruins. Thus, he mistakes Echo for an actual human. And Echo, not knowing what a human looks like themselves due to amnesia, accepts this identification with nothing better to use.

[defiledtomb]

WE'RE GONNA BE OKAY!!!!

[oversizedsunhats]

Lowkey wanna start sharing stuff about the game im making rn but im not sure if making normal posts about it would be smart or if making an entire new account dedicated to it would be better 😭

I just want to gather an audience for it before i release it on Steam but I DONT KNOW HOWWW

[eddis-not-eeddis]

Expecting a man to ask conversation-carrying questions is futile. It will never happen. So instead I've been acting like a podcast host interviewing a guest, and dang. Those conversations get kinda deep.

[papaiyatree]

today i repeat that you can enjoy a bad villainous or a morally vague antihero character without "defending them" and just liking them because they're interesting

[sieglinde-freud]

oh im obsessed with this actually… who ever wrote this one i am kissing u on the forehead and hugging you real tight… inigo is such a loverboy im kkkhhhhhhijnsdnfng

[sampegger]

do you guys think the writers would have taken it more seriously if it had been alastair around relentlessly tormenting dean in late seasons as opposed to lucifer with sam