#i have sooo many stories about it

[amaltheas-garden]

people still shocked that in the year of our lord 2024 some of us don't want to see Dany get her 'happy ending' by becoming the white savior who was promised

[honeymarune]

i can't sleep and i feel like i'm losing it- has milo SERIOUSLY never had an audio where he shifts for sweetheart??? other than like- the offscreen mention in the first healing audio ???

WHERE IS HIS VIDEO WHERE HE SHIFTS FOR SWEETHEART!! WHAT ABOUT A REVERSE COMFORT VIDEO WHERE SWEETHEART MAKES HIM FEEL GOOD ABOUT HIS WOLF FORM!! ERIK!!!!!!!

[intramoon]

Nes + Erin: partners in crime & platonic soulmates & always dressed coded (+ Erin all grown-up. ;-;)

[misguidefate]

pandora hearts my beloved best friend. the most profoundly special media to me of all time. accepting your story as is, the pain from people and events that hurt you shaping you into who you are just as much as the love you’ve been shown from those who care about you has, and refusing to look away from yourself no matter what. accepting your past but not allowing it to chain you, making sure to live in the present, persisting into the future despite futility because you have hope!! realizing it’s okay for you to exist and self-actualizing through the bonds you’ve formed 😖 they too hold within them the proof that i am me!!! an enveloping darkness also contains the light of hope!!!

[im-smart-i-swear]

dolly

[vaguely-concerned]

just going about my day idly contemplating how some of the ways hawke can interact with a romanced anders are not at all unlike how they interact with leandra (and a bit of carver too, especially with a purple hawke), and then thought about my hawke in the timeline where he romances anders and was hit straight in the face with 'was he ever actually in love, or was he just desperately trying to renegotiate with his mother's ghost in any way he could' and now i need to lie down. this is the power of dragon age 2

[hella1975]

ive just rediscovered an old wip of mine and im having so much fun right now. like i havent opened the document since early 2020 and genuinely forgot it existed yet there's 90k words and so much lore and elements of basic concepts that made it to my present writing in far cooler and more complex ways and the writing isn't great but there's potential to it and idk. it's been a while since i wrote something privately and while i hugely prefer the way i do it now where i actually have a community with it and dont hole myself away and act like it's a huge shame thing, there's still something hugely reasuring about knowing this is something ive always done and that actually i was always drawn to it and had potential and that's something to remember for when my writing block gets bad or i convince myself Everything Ive Ever Done Is Awful

[bayofwolves]

i was on the most random nostalgia kick and rewatched the prince of egypt yesterday and let me just say... that movie is truly one of the greatest animated films of all time.

[swallowtail-ageha]

Also since im on a teacher bitching mode today lets rank the top three things my elementary teacher had done

3) saying to the biracial abused kid at home that the reason why his hair was curly was because he was so mean his hair went from straight to curly out of straight assholishness

2) going on an unhinged rant in front of sixteen eight year olds about italian colonialism and how we were the victims in this because "we civilized abyssinia (yeah. She used that word) and those [n word] only gave us sand back"

1) trying to get me diagnosed with infantile schyzophrenia with the excuse of bad calligraphy to get me ostracized by my peers and my family by the village (she had extreme beef with me since i was six. for some godforsaken reason)

[luneinary]

I have something silly and perhaps a little lame to say about v3

So after a good 7 months of ruminating and actually Sitting Down to give chapter 6 my full undivided attention and analysis (without operating on a flu-induced fever and not half-asleep from NyQuil) I have come to the conclusion that I love v3's ending , or at the very least its message

I was initially in the crowd that was like "wow I have never stopped caring about a narrative faster" and tuned out the remainder of the trail before the mantra of "it's all fiction" numbed me first and I indeed fell hard for the cameos that Tsumugi kept showing the audience . Normally I liked meta - commentary and media that challenged the status quo so I wasn't sure why v3's conclusion sat so wrong with me , so naturally I just kept chapter 6 at an arms length while I sat on what it was trying to tell me , as the player .

Nowadays , I absolutely still wish that it was better in its execution , but it did what it was set out to and is extremely effective when you lend it some patience.

  the mechanics of the trail are deliberate , subversive , and a really great method of storytelling . It's Shuichi's UI gradually shutting down just before entering K1B0's perspective -- a little nod to Kaede passing the torch to him in her trial; it's the back route (the "lie" mechanic essentially) being "despair" to counter hope , once again calling out the surface-level dualism between the two concepts; it's seeing the inner monologues of both Maki and Himiko while convincing them to abstain; it's the trial impeding on the player's ability to even interact with the game at times (i.e. Monokuma throwing a Hangman's Gambit or a Psych Taxi in your face in a way to coax you into playing, though you aren't meant to participate)  , and that's just a few of my favorites .

Your first instinct is to be upset that everything you learned up to this point was fabricated and being laughed at for caring-- I was upset , too . But the game isn't mad at you for liking its story . If anything I feel like it would not spend nearly as much time trying to get you to care about its narrative and characters if that really were the case . It swept the rug from under our feet to force us to look inward and ask: have we truly understood what we were consuming ? Do we emphasize with the grief and loss that these characters are experiencing , despite knowing that all we can really do is watch ?

Questions that which lead me to the author;

Tsumugi is fascinating as a mastermind because she's so deeply entrenched in simply creating something consumable , that she forgets to care about her own story . If something as big as Danganronpa (in-universe anyway) went on for as long as it did , there had to be, once , a time when the franchise had the most integrity , only to be gradually diluted with each season until it became whatever for the sake of whatever-- it doesn't matter , it's just a show, everyone will tune in anyway, because the world needs it . It's silly and dramatized in the trial , but an example of consumerism all the same .

All of this, likened with the thematic constants, of truth and lies , belief and doubt -- our perception of them -- just kept changing and changing , to the point that even we couldn't make those distinctions, and it was like what are we even doing anymore ?? What even is this story ?

It only makes sense that the characters would outgrow a script that wasn't reliable to begin with, the death of their supposed author allowing them to finally reach an audience that had dismissed their experiences as "lies," in favor of keeping a collapsing franchise alive . The extent of what seemed real to her classmates , maybe even the audience , doesn't seem as such to her -- even if she participated in the killing game -- because of the lack of integrity she had in writing her own plot .

Whether you're an artist or an author or just someone who creates , it's important to remember that: Life imitates art and vice versa , and what we create doesn't exist in a vacuum . How common is it nowadays for people to share how much a game they grew up with has impacted them , or the friends they've made over a book that they've read , or see the time and energy and love people put into fanmade material for the world to see for free ? We are all human beings with so many feelings and thoughts to share, and our ever-evolving ability to express them through storytelling is a wonderful gift -- especially now, when people are connecting more to works of fiction and diverse media more than ever .

So even if it's just fiction , what these characters say , do , think , it matters -- just as much to them as it does us . Shuichi could have always been meek and unsure , but he has gone through something horrible  , seen people at their best and at their worst , met people he loved dearly , and now he isn't . And we were so proud of what he became . Nevermind if what he experienced was predetermined , because it felt real to us , and it mattered ! All of it !! It all matters !!

An author may die . But the memory of opening their book for the first time is timeless . The story isn't over because it lives on through us . Our care . And for that reason, our stories are eternal . Be honest and be real with what you create . People can tell .

[penisbutterjellytime]

some misc ideas i guess for Blind Folk living / Architecture

[mer-se]

I could cry

[raiiny-bay]

they've come a long way

[kinnbig]

oh my god, tell us more (about the arm tankhun fake dating fic in your head), please! :D

OKAY so the concept is. about 6 months post-canon, the main and minor families are invited to the destination wedding of one of their allies from a hugely powerful mafia family - it's a few nights staying on a private tropical island, and as a respect/trust/hospitality thing, it would be considered really inappropriate for guests to bring more than one or two bodyguards per group.

so Tankhun is like “well then obviously I can’t go?” because while he is now much better at leaving the house, he’s not quite ‘get on a plane and fly to a random island for several days of intense socialisation with incredibly dangerous near-strangers without a single Trusted Bodyguard’ levels of better.

he’s talking to Chay about it and Chay's like “yeah, it's kind of fucked up that everyone gets a +1 but not a bodyguard. how would anyone even know if your +1 was your bodyguard?!” and Tankhun's like “.....Chay you're a genius. Arm, I need you to be my wedding date.”

commence the fake dating shenanigans! they ‘reveal’ their secret, long-term relationship to the entire family, and then they’ve got to pretend to be a couple in front of everyone while Arm actually works as Tankhun’s bodyguard. as the only other person who knows their relationship isn’t real, Chay is helping to mastermind the entire operation. what Chay also knows is that Khun does actually have very real and Not Fake feelings for Arm - and you can be sure he’s going to be a menace about it.

luckily, Khun is being just as much of a menace in return - the wedding is the first time Kim and Chay have been in the same room since… well, everything, and Tankhun has watched them both silently pine for each other for long enough. background KimChay reconciliation era my beloved!

and so the usual fake dating antics ensue! lots of pining… plenty of acting out intimacy while wishing it was genuine… Chay putting them in so many Situations… lines slowly blurring between what is part of the act and what is real… and. obviously. there was only one bed.

🥰 thank u so much for indulging me, i love talking about blorbos from my shows and my silly story ideas for them! i came up with this with @aikinn and @thewholedamnboulangerie during some kind of group astral plane projection, which makes it especially delicious as they always have the best and most objectively correct Tankhun takes 💪

my brain is currently on 24/7 armtankhun lockdown soooo if u have thoughts about Them… pls… i would like to eat them…

[carolinanadeau]

In Praise of Sally Ann Howes

As I've made it one of the purposes of my blog to share photos and songs and general positivity about the wonderful English actress Sally Ann Howes, I thought I'd make a post to talk in much more detail about all the great things about her and why I adore her so much!

This classy English beauty possessed a highly expressive face and eyes, an astonishingly powerful soprano, a great sense of humor, and the world's most charming laugh. One thing I cannot stop saying about Sally Ann is that she did not and does not get nearly enough credit and recognition for her immense talent and prolific career, and it's precisely for that reason that I'm here to do my part in giving it to her!

This overlong rambling post is a combination of biographical information and my personal fawning over her performances... whatever I felt I most wanted to put out there in the world and what I'd like people less familiar with her to know.

Click on Keep Reading and I'll take you on a journey!

As she preferred to work on the stage and didn't really pursue a film career, the catalog of Sally Ann's work that can still be viewed today is unfortunately small - though you can find almost all of her early films on the internet if you look hard! In her early film days, mostly made before she was able to pursue her true passion of musical theatre, her extraordinary singing talents weren't utilized by the producers at all.

However, we were fortunately blessed with exactly one musical film role from her, and it's an iconic one: the aptly-named role of Truly Scrumptious in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), the golden-haired, golden-hearted candy heiress who falls in love with and eventually marries Dick van Dyke's character Caractacus Potts after joining him and his children on a madcap adventure. She's a sweet, intelligent ingenue with hidden depths and one of my favorite sorts of character arcs - the uptight, lonely woman who becomes more and more warm and open as she discovers newfound freedom and joy in life and falls in love.

There is something about Sally Ann that just glows in every scene of Chitty, and it's not only that bright blonde hair! The way she widens her eyes sometimes, the way she raises her eyebrows, her gentle and soft presence in the happiest scenes, and the particular airy lilt she has to her speaking voice are all so distinctive and appealing, and I can't take my eyes off her. And her smile! When I say she glows it's barely even a metaphor, the woman just emits light. 

(Funnily enough, I started to realize that many of the laudatory quotes I've found about her also refer to her in this way, like this quote from a 1965 TV Guide article, from playwright Sidney Kingsley: "She's luminous as an actress. I mean that literally. In Brigadoon she really lit up the stage.")

For me, I'm weak for any actress who can do the defrosted-ice-queen trope so incredibly well. Truly starts out as closed-off and prim, and nearly reverts to that state when she and Caractacus have a Big Misunderstanding near the end, but in the scenes where she's happy and carefree, the warmth just radiates off of her.

She also has the most adorable chemistry with Dick van Dyke in an annoyances-to-friends-to-lovers relationship that absolutely shaped my young brain. Whenever Sally Ann and Dick glance at each other, whether with irritation and frustration early in the film or with warmth and affection later on, their chemistry is obvious and natural, and there's so much expressed in each one of those glances. One has no difficulty believing that these characters are going to be very happily married.

(Here's a cute on-set interview where she talks about, among other things, how easily she and van Dyke clicked.)

While I acknowledge that the character of Caractacus Potts was absolutely originally planned to be an actual Englishman, Dick van Dyke played him with an American accent, and to me they will always be an adorable English-American couple. It's a whole part of the charm of this pairing to me!

Sally Ann also had a great relationship with child actors Adrian Hall and Heather Ripley who played Jeremy and Jemima Potts, and did her best to help make them more comfortable and happy during the many very long days on set. Having been a child film star herself, she knew a great deal about how difficult and alienating it could be. The genuine affection the three of them shared is obvious in their scenes together, especially in the extremely adorable "Truly Scrumptious" number, and it really makes the developing mother-child relationship between the characters so believable.

The beach scene, where so much of the relationship between Truly and Caractacus and the Potts children is developed, is incredibly cute and heartwarming, and a lot of that rides on Sally Ann's performance and how her previously prim-and-proper character shows herself to be warm and loving, once she (literally) lets her hair down. We've already seen how happy the Potts family is together; now we see how Truly fits in perfectly and makes them all even happier.

Look at her! Literally glowing!

(One thing I should mention: I think both the plot and the love story of CCBB are greatly improved if one just treats the "dream sequence" as real events, which was possibly the original intention anyway, so just note that is always the perspective I'm coming from here. It's the only way to make some things make sense and for the characters and their relationships to fully develop.)

"Lovely, Lonely Man" is Truly's big solo moment, and was probably the least comprehensible part of the movie to me as a kid (lol), but is now indisputably one of the very best parts to me as an adult. It's an exquisitely beautiful love song, especially the bridge, and I somehow love it more and more every time I rewatch it. Sally Ann's dreamy, graceful movements and the way the whole scene is shot make her look like a princess, and the slow build of the song is masterfully done. She has this distinctive crisp way of articulating her words while singing, especially the closing consonants like N and M, that I just love to listen to. The string section and the building countermelodies are so beautiful it makes me want to weep. Everyone involved in creating this scene and song deserved an award, I'm being so serious. While it's not the highest of soprano songs and doesn't fully show off Sally Ann's astonishing range, she shows an incredible amount of vocal control here through the many diminuendos and crescendos, and she's mesmerizing to watch and listen to. One of her "glowiest" scenes, for sure!

While I've seen people call this song irrelevant to the plot, I strongly disagree - the romance is part of the plot, of course, and while I didn't fully understand the meaning as a kid, this song establishes how much Truly's outlook on life and hopes for the future have already changed since meeting Caractacus, and how much happier she is with the poor Potts family than she's ever been in her life of luxury. Plus, now we know for certain that she's head over heels for Caractacus, but he doesn't know... increasing the dramatic irony of the pining and yearning to follow!

In the reprise of "Hushabye Mountain", which was sung in a much earlier scene by Dick van Dyke alone, Caractacus loses the will to continue the song because he's overwhelmed with emotion thinking of his children being held captive. Truly comes in to aid him with the final verse - another pivotal moment in the developing romance - and Sally Ann's singing here is nothing short of breathtaking.

And of course, I can't neglect to mention the "Doll on a Music Box" number, where Sally Ann, who was not a trained dancer and in fact considered herself to be "appalling" at it, performs an incredibly precise, incredibly impressive clockwork song-and-dance number while on a spinning turntable! She practiced it so well that she managed to successfully complete the shot in a single take, prompting the stage full of extras to burst into applause.

This is another important character moment for Truly, though it's disguised in a diegetic performance: though it's another thing that went over my head as a child who only got to see the movie once, the lyrics about being trapped up on a music box and longing to be freed by love pretty clearly symbolize how trapped the real Truly's high-society life makes her feel, and how she yearns to break free from class restrictions and live happily-ever-after with Caractacus, as it's only with him and his family that she really feels free.

Then there's that incredibly warm romantic look that Truly and Caractacus share at the end of the song when she silently acknowledges the love confession he's just made while singing in counterpoint with her, though they're still in a dangerous situation and can't give themselves away by appearing too human and breaking their disguises... sadly this vital moment is cut off on all the Youtube videos of the scene I can find, because none of the people who clipped it understand that that's the whole point of it all, apparently. But here's a gif!

The character of Truly doesn't exist at all in the original (quite different) book by James Bond author Ian Fleming - surprising, I know, given her name! - and, honestly, the fact that Truly and the romantic subplot of this movie exist are why it had such a strong impact on me as a child, and very much why I fell in love with it again as an adult. Even though the score is wonderful anyway and the story is charming and magical, I can confidently say that I would not have become as completely enchanted or had such a strong desire to revisit it again and again if there'd been no Truly and no love story. The fact that Sally Ann's performance makes Truly so loveable is, obviously, a pretty crucial factor there.

Sally Ann's delivery of "Well, Mr. Potts... now you'll have to marry me!" after Caractacus kisses Truly... that slide from prim mock-outrage to the playful, warm, you-can-hear-the-smile-in her-voice conclusion is flawless. Not even exaggerating when I say that this was the moment that made me into a hopeless romantic as a 9-year-old child. Sure, this wasn't the first movie I'd seen where two people fall in love and live happily ever after, but I distinctly remember that this was the first romance story that had me in a giggling, kicking-my-feet, "I ship it so hard" state of mind. And after revisiting it as an adult for the first time last year, I have confirmed that yes, child me already had great taste in fictional romances!

Oh, I could say so much about the difference in her body language between the two scenes where Caractacus carries Truly out of her car that's become stuck in a pond. The first time, Truly is affronted and extremely embarrassed by the situation, holding herself so stiffly and awkwardly to avoid an accidental embrace that she causes him to nearly lose his balance and drop her. The second time, when they're in love and they know it, she snuggles right up into his arms without hesitation and it's the cutest thing ever. Sally Ann was 5'6" but looks so tiny in that scene!

(And that kiss! Maybe I'm getting off-topic here in terms of strictly focusing on Sally Ann's contributions, because Dick van Dyke deserves tons of credit for making this kiss so good... but wow, the kiss. Several times I have called it "the Most Kiss they could have gotten away with in a children's movie." Again, giggling, kicking my feet etc.)

While Truly's costumes and hairstyling are rarely historically accurate (the film is set around 1910), the stylized nature of her fashion is iconic and memorable in itself. Sally Ann also completely pulls off playing a fresh-faced ingenue who is 12+ years younger than her actual age - and I do wonder if the aging-down of Sally Ann is at least part of the reason why Truly wears her hair loose throughout most of the movie! Either way, it works perfectly and I was shocked when I first learned how much older she was than her character. (If you watch her in The Admirable Crichton, where she is also in Edwardian costume and was closer to Truly's actual age, she really doesn't look all that much different. If anything, I think she looks even more glowingly beautiful in Chitty!)

Also, as for Truly wearing her hair down... it may just have been an intentionally anachronistic stylistic choice, but in-story, I think it actually contributes to her character by showing a willingness to flout convention and pursue whatever will make her happy instead of what's expected of her, which happens to be a key theme of her character arc.

Another thing that led me to adore Sally Ann as a person as I learned more about her over the last year: in the 1960s, she appeared as a panelist in quite a few episodes of the game show To Tell the Truth (as well as a few episodes of Password), and these can be found on Youtube. I really adore how her personality shines through - she's unfailingly bubbly, witty, self-deprecating, and a bit quirky. Just listening to her speak is a delight and she has one of the best laughs I've ever heard. Here is one of my favorite little moments that I clipped. 

By all accounts, she was a delightful person to know and work with, witty and clever, very professional, and very serious about her craft. She also always maintained a great affection for and pride in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and her role as Truly, which is always a wonderful thing to know about an actor in a beloved role.

Another bonus: here is a super charming interview with her after a backstage disaster at What Makes Sammy Run? on Broadway.

She was also, along with Twiggy and Diahann Carroll (as Julia Baker), one of the first three celebrities to have her likeness made into a Barbie doll.

Two of her earlier films I recommend are the comedies Fools Rush In (1949) and The Admirable Crichton (1957), if you can find them (hint-hint, you can.) You may also be able to find the 1966 TV movie of her reprising her Tony-nominated role of Fiona in Brigadoon with Robert Goulet, and although I feel like the oddly close-up way the film was shot kinda does a disservice to the actors at times, it's still amazing to be able to see and hear her in a role she performed on Broadway.

Richard Rodgers once called Sally Ann "the greatest singer who ever sang on the American musical stage." Now, I don't quote this to claim this superlative as some kind of objective fact. If you know anything about me, I am very, very strongly opposed to pitting women against each other and all the Golden Age sopranos are absolute queens who deserve crowns, no matter how much mainstream success or present-day name-recognition they have/had. I just think it's phenomenal that she received such high praise from a man who worked with many of the best musical theatre singers who ever lived... and to think, many people today have never even heard her voice. Without her performance as Truly Scrumptious, it's possible almost nobody would in the future! I am so glad that Sally Ann's lasting legacy was ensured by such a beloved film role.

Sadly for us, many of the theatrical roles which she originated (and thus, for which cast albums featuring her exist) were in shows that either flopped quickly or at least did not enter the theatrical canon, so she never achieved the level of mainstream recognition she clearly deserves. But Sally Ann also played such legendary and challenging roles as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, Fiona MacLaren in Brigadoon (for which she received a Tony nomination), Maria Rainer von Trapp in The Sound of Music, Anna Leonowens in The King and I, and, much later, Desiree Armfeldt in A Little Night Music. She received great acclaim for all of these performances and, judging by what we know of her process on My Fair Lady, was excellent at making roles distinctly her own and never merely imitating another performer.

Even in her iconic original role of Truly Scrumptious, you don't get to hear the true full power of Sally Ann's extraordinary soprano. For that, I highly recommend listening to "Another Time, Another Place" from Kwamina (1961), and "Something to Live For" from What Makes Sammy Run? (1964). I'm always sad that we don't have any recordings of her in her "fiery" star turn as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, but you can at least hear her do a Cockney accent, be silly, and sing "With a Little Bit of Luck" with Bing Crosby here!

If it weren't for the enduring success of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, few people might have even heard of Sally Ann Howes today, and that would be a terrible loss. I cannot overstate that I am so grateful that we all know who she is because she played this role and we get to see her give this radiant performance of a character that's all her own. Maybe this sounds strange, but I think the fact that this was Sally Ann's only musical film role (and the ONLY role most people will ever see her in) makes it even more precious, and makes everything she brings to the character that much more distinctive and unique and special.

Both for all of the talent and charm she brings to the role itself, and everything else that I and many other fans have been able to learn of so much of her otherwise-obscure work because of it, the world is incredibly lucky to have the lovely Sally Ann Howes immortalized as our Truly Scrumptious, and I wouldn't have it any other way 💖

[fromtheseventhhell]

Need more female characters to brutally kill their abusers and then laugh about it cause otherwise we get people using them as self-inserts, romanticizing their abuse, and shipping them with their abusers