maxphilippa

[overseer-picard]

This breaks my heart to hear. I can't overstate what a powerhouse this beautiful lady was. She wasn't afraid to go toe to toe with executives, spoke her mind, and wrote so many amazing episodes such as "The Drumhead", "The Wounded", "Time's Arrow", and many more.

She gave us so much and understood the nuances of what made Star Trek, Star Trek. She was a keystone of the franchise and her influence is seen in so many aspects of the 90's era shows. She will be missed, but her legacy still brings us so much joy and I hope she knew that.

[hotdaemondtargaryen]

PHIA SABAN INTERVIEWED BY ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY.

SO MUCH HAPPENED IN THE FINALE, AND HELAENA WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF SO MUCH OF IT. WHAT WAS YOUR REACTION WHEN YOU FOUND OUT HOW MUCH INFLUENCE HELAENA WAS GOING TO HAVE IN THIS EPISODE?

"When I read the episode, I was so excited to be involved in that trippy dream sequence."

"I was hoping that I was going to arise from a lake of goo or something, or fly."

"But I was also really happy to stand there and talk."

"That was really exciting because we did that all in a green screen stage, just me and Matt, so it was really cool."

"I watched the last episode last night, and it was really cool to see all of that come to life."

"I was very pleased to be involved in that."

"My other thought was if she feels this kind of clarity in that scene that she has with Aemond, and that isn't historically how she's felt about her power and everything."

I needed to work backwards from there and try and work out what journey she has been on, for that moment to be so clear, when usually she's a bit more like, "Oh, there's a beast somewhere."

WHAT CONVERSATIONS DID YOU HAVE WITH SHOWRUNNER RYAN CONDAL ABOUT HELAENA'S EXPANDED ROLE AND HOW SHE'S GOTTEN TO THIS POINT IN THE FINALE? BECAUSE SO MUCH OF HER JOURNEY HAS BEEN INTERNAL.

"Actually, Ryan and [writer] Sara [Hess] and the writers, they very much left it to me as to how Helaena feels, how she connects to that side of it, and how it manifests for her, but it's an interesting one."

"The line between what I know and what she knows, I try and keep quite close together, so it's not always so helpful for me to have this really overarching idea of how exactly she plays in and what magic it is."

"Because I think every time when that happens to her, it feels like the first time."

"So I know as much as she does, in a way, but they were very keen for me to interpret it however I want."

"Then I think they're just going to weave it into the story in their magical way."

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR PROCESS IN WORKING BACKWARDS FROM THAT CONFRONTATION WITH AEMOND. HOW DID YOU GET INTO HELAENA'S MINDSET?

"How I describe it is she has this amazingly strong intuition, and things come to her as gut feelings in flashes, but they're not always clear."

"She can't always turn them into advice."

"It's more of like a feeling that takes her over."

"That's where some of those really abstract things that she mutters earlier on comes from, but she also thinks of herself and knows of herself that she's quite a strange girl."

"There's a way in which her family lets her go and be her strangeness in her room and do all of her Helaena things."

But also she partially thinks, "Maybe if I didn't have these weird feelings or this strange intuition or this really intense experience that I have, then I could be a bit closer to people around me, or I could communicate better or it would be less strange."

"Part of her represses that stuff."

"Then I think with the trauma that happened to her in episode 1, essentially the worst possible thing happened, and there's a certain amount of dissociation and almost like a letting go of that, like trying her best to be the same as everyone else."

She has disassociated from the family reality, and maybe she has stepped in a little bit more to the other place, and she has more access because she's gone, "I can't abandon myself as well, so what is this?"

"She's given it the attention and the intensity it needed."

SINCE HELAENA BEING A DRAGON DREAMER ISN'T IN THE BOOK, WHAT DO YOU THINK OF HOW YOU'RE GETTING TO CHART NEW TERRITORY FOR THE CHARACTER?

"It's really fun."

"I know that people feel so passionately and lovingly towards the original story, but I think that me, as a fan of things, I love a certain level of loyalty."

"Then I love the idea that I can be surprised or something could be subverted."

"It more flatters the audience's intelligence when you get to surprise them and subvert things, so I like the idea that people didn't see that coming for Helaena."

"Obviously, I can't watch the show as an impartial person."

I WOULD BE VERY IMPRESSED IF YOU COULD.

"[Laughs] I'd be like a psychopath, yeah."

WHAT'S IT LIKE BEING THE BRAN OF THIS SHOW?

"The thing is that I really have absolutely no idea what's happening next season."

"I think that moment in episode 8 is an example of how clear and how powerful she can be, but I don't think that's the beginning of now she can just communicate like that."

"I wouldn't be surprised if she walks away from Aemond, [mimes shaking her head and shoulders and blows out a breath], and she goes inside and goes to her room and that doesn't happen again for a long time."

"So who knows, but it would be really cool if I got to spend more time in that vision dream world."

"I would love that."

"There's that moment when Daemon's going over to the tree, and then there's a guy with a deer head or something."

"I think Helaena should hang out with him."

THEY SHOULD GO OFF TOGETHER HAVE THEIR OWN SIDE ADVENTURES. NEW SPINOFF IDEA.

"Yeah, exactly."

"That's what I want for the next season."

DOES THIS REVELATION THAT HELAENA IS ACTUALLY A DRAGON DREAMER MAKE YOU RETHINK YOUR CHARACTER AT ALL?

"Yeah, I think it's fun because it's essentially development, which is what you always hope for when you play someone."

"I just really hope that there's momentum from this, that we see her change more and more and keep on being surprising."

WHAT WAS IT LIKE FILMING THAT SCENE WITH MATT WHERE HELAENA KNOCKS DAEMON DOWN A PEG AND REALLY HUMBLES HIM IN THE FINALE?

"It was fun."

We were there on the green screen going like, 'What the hell is this going to look like?'

"But it's great to do work with the people from the other team because at this point the relationships are so bad that you're really only going to get Helaena and Daemon together in a vision."

"They're probably not going to be having lunch together anytime soon."

"[Laughs] I'd love to go and hang out with Harry Collett and Bethany Antonia and Phoebe Campbell next time."

"I'd like to go and hang out with Alys Rivers [Gayle Rankin], all the people that live in different castles."

"Maybe I could meet them in dreams."

"That would be really good."

"It'd be like ... did you ever play Club Penguin?"

[LAUGHS] I HAVE!

"It could be Club Penguin."

It's like, "Meet me here at 3 p.m. by the igloo."

That'd be so fun if Helaena could just be like, "Let's go and hang out in dreams. Go and touch the tree, and I'll be there."

NO ONE HAS EVER LISTENED TO HELAENA UNTIL DAEMON REALLY TAKES HER WORDS TO HEART AND CHANGES HIS ENTIRE COURSE. DOES HELAENA FULLY APPRECIATE OR EVEN KNOW THE PART SHE'S PLAYING IN THIS WAR NOW?

"No, I don't think so."

It's all so intense for her and so immediate that I don't think she even is always like, "I have this overarching understanding of the story."

"I think it comes to her in moments."

"Maybe it muddies the water more, but I feel like that whole dream stuff is up for interpretation as well from the audience."

"How much is she a projection of his guilt, or how much did he just need to hear that from someone?"

"It's this magical realm, so anything could be possible."

"Maybe that's something that she could say in a moment, and then she's gone from there again, and it's just like she was just being channeled through."

"Who knows? Maybe we'll find out more."

I think to her it's just, 'This is my really intense experience of being alive,' and that's enough self-analysis for anyone in that moment.

It's like, "What am I going through?"

"And then there's this clarity."

"She's got a lot to process this season."

"Bless her."

WHAT WAS IT LIKE FILMING THE SCENE WHERE HELAENA STANDS UP TO AEMOND AND REVEALS SHE KNOWS THE TRUTH ABOUT WHAT HE DID? THAT'S ONE OF THOSE RARE MOMENTS OF CLARITY FOR HER.

It's really fun to work with Ewan — yet again, I'm answering the question in an annoying way because I'm like, "I just like working with those people!"

"[Laughs] That was really cool."

"God, this is really the first time... it's the most eye-contact she's ever made in both seasons."

And she's really going like, "Don't fuck with me."

Basically, "Because I have this knowledge that's on a higher realm and I cannot and will not go and kill people for male ego and toxicity."

That's the other funny thing with this family: Yes, he's the Prince Regent or whatever, and her husband/brother is the King.

But actually to each other it's like, "You're my brother and you can push me and you can push me, but I know you."

"That is more about a sibling dynamic."

"Actually, I think that Aemond ironically is one of the people that Helaena feels she can communicate with a little bit better."

"They have this sort of affinity."

"It's just fun to play with those dynamics because she doesn't have a lot of long chats with anyone, so it's fun for me."

YEAH, THE LONGEST CHAT SHE'S HAD UNTIL NOW HAS BEEN WITH HER BUGS.

"Exactly, and they don't really answer back."

"This is very new and very overwhelming."

HELAENA DOESN'T WANT TO RIDE HER DRAGON INTO BATTLE, BUT DO YOU? HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT MISSING OUT ON THE BIG DRAGON BATTLES SO FAR?

"Yeah! It's House of the Dragon, and I've got a dragon, and I haven't got on it."

"I'm rusty."

"I really wanted to get on the dragon."

"I went and watched a few people on the buck this season, and I was so jealous."

"I'd really love to get on the dragon, or at least have a scene with Dreamfyre."

"Dreamfyre, like Vhagar, she's super ancient and big and cool."

"I'd like to see Helaena and Dreamfyre having a sort of spiritual connection, but I'm not complaining."

"I'm just happy to be here."

[rainbowpopeworld]

(So you don’t have to deal with all the annoying ads on The Mirror’s website, here’s the whole article interview)

EXCLUSIVE: David Tennant reveals his wife Georgia's role) in his 'huge' Rivals series decision

By Nicola Methven

“David Tennant says he jumped at the chance to star in Jilly Cooper’s 1980s bonkbuster Rivals - because his wife said it would be “sensational”.

The former Doctor Who star said she was thrilled when the first script arrived. “I told Georgia and she was convinced that this was something I had to be involved with,” he explains. “She said, ‘This series is going to be huge. This is going to be exactly what the country needs, exactly what the world needs.’

"She knew the books from her teenage years, as I understand, and knew that this was going to make sensational television.”

He duly accepted the role of Lord Tony Baddingham, one of the show’s main villains and was delighted when Georgia eventually got to watch the episodes, and loved them.

"Her reaction was so positive and so joyous," he says. "I know when she's being genuine."

Tony is a grammar school boy with a chip on his shoulder about not being a proper toff. His character runs a regional TV station facing franchise renewal and has a dependable upper-crust wife, played by Sherwood's Claire Rushbrook, but is also having a very steamy affair with the new TV executive he's lured over from New York (Nafessa Williams).

The actor, 53, argues that poor old Tony is just horribly misunderstood. "From the inside, no character believes they're a villain, do they? I think Tony's motivations are very clear. He's very easy to understand in many ways. Tony sees himself as hard done by and someone who's just struggling to survive and to win."

While he can remember the 80s quite clearly, Tenant says that filming Rivals felt very much like being on a period drama. "It's almost like being on the set of a Dickens novel," he muses.

"The 80s seems quite recent history to me, but once you start recreating that world, you realise it's actually very different. That's wonderful fun to film - to be on a time capsule of a set is glorious."

As the Doctor he got to time-travel all over the place in the TARDIS but Tenant says he loved spending time in the 80s, not least because of the music. When you're a teenager at the time, a lot of it, however good it is, is uncool, and therefore you're not really allowed to like it," he says. "Whereas now, as a jaded 53-year-old, I can just go, 'Oh, do you know what I loved? A-ha'."

And what else did he love? "I didn't have to ride a horse, which was a mercy, because I'm a little bit allergic."

Tenant admits that filming the incredibly saucy bedroom scenes was a bit awkward but he felt there was safety in numbers thanks to the huge number of them. Barely any of the cast don't end up getting involved in one way or another.

"| mean, sex scenes are never comfortable, you know? But again, because everyone was in the same boat, there was a lot of discussion about, 'When are you doing that scene?' and 'Have vou done that yet?'

He believes it's fine for Rivals to be labelled a “bonkbuster" - it's full of sex at the end of the day - but only if it's said with due respect for what Dame Jilly achieved with the Rutshire Chronicles. "There are a generation of readers who were so influenced by her, and for whom these novels meant so much, it means that that writing is obviously better than some would have you believe," he says. "The way she writes character is timeless, and people having sex is pretty timeless. So these books have been tenacious for a reason." The actor says an early scene where the pathologically competitive Tony leaps from his helicopter onto the croquet lawn is his favourite career moment so far.

"That hole-in-one, I would like you to know, was probably the greatest day of my professional life," he laughs. Instructed by the director to "whack it" from 30 feet away he was told the cameras would keep running until he managed it. "I thought the crew are gonna hate me by take 402," he remembers. "And I nailed it on take four. I've never felt more pleased with myself than that moment. I felt like a sporting God."”

[multifandumbmeg]

Alright SCREW IT here's my Kiara defense post:

Is it annoying to watch get paired off with everyone in the main cast? Sure. Let me explain why that's not a character flaw or terrible, unplanned writing so yall can put some respect on her name.

1. They're ALL in love with her, and literally throwing themselves at her all the time. This is so important and well-documented that John B literally tells us IN HIS INTRODUCTION TO THE GROUP in episode one. It is literally so relevant to their entire group dynamic that he brings it up in the first episode summary of who they all are. Guys actually do this I have seen this happen. One of my high school best friends was constantly manic pixie dream girled (despite being profoundly depressed) and several entire friend groups of boys fell in love with her. She dated one guy, who was a piece of shit and dumped her saying it was because of his parents but told his friends it was because she had too much baggage. The fallout was so bad, one guy from one of the friend groups tattled to her and a different guy, who was best friends with the douche, literally got into a fight with him and THE DOUCHE HAD TO CHANGE FRIEND GROUPS BECAUSE HIS BOYS KICKED HIM OUT. I'm serious about these teenage boys all having the same taste and thinking it's a competition.

2. John B kissed HER. She immediately shut him down. Immediately. Everything before that can easily be explained as Kiara being concerned about him after losing his father. Teenage boys are dumb anyhow, but it's particularly easy to see why John B and JJ, who have both been routinely neglected and grew up without mothers (read, any positive female attention/influence) would interpret this as Kiara having feelings for them. They fall in love with anyone who sincerely gives them the time of day, basically. And that's a little too relatable moving on.

3. "Mixed signals" by kissing boys on the cheek. While I would not recommend this, I think there was a very clear pattern to her behavior and I have a theory I'm 99% sure is canon, based on copious textual evidence.

Kiara was in love with JJ all along. I'll come back to this. She only kissed the boys she friendzoned on the cheek. With John B, I genuinely think she never had any sort of romantic feelings for him and just saw him as a best bro. But she was worried about him, and maybe realized he listened to her more when she did it. Nonetheless, the minute he gets with Sarah it's almost like she feels relieved and never does anything remotely mixed signals to him again. Now Pope? That is a rich text. What the hell is going on with her and Pope?

4. When Pope first confesses, Kiara is once again caught off-guard. She once again rightfully turns him down IMMEDIATELY and gives extremely accurate and self-aware reasons. Her rejection of him is surprisingly mature, that the life he plans on and wants is ultimately and assuredly not compatible with what she wants for herself. So why did she kinda date him? Honestly, I think it was an attempt to move on from what she believed were doomed feelings for JJ. After all the things that happen in season 1, after Pope going off the deep end a little bit by smoking weed, getting drunk, and engaging in acts of violence, as well as ditching his scholarship interview, Kiara suddenly experiences a spark of attraction towards Pope.

Because he's acting like JJ. Reckless. Using substances to cope. Chaotic. Spontaneous. She knows these things are bad for Pope, and she's at times put off by how un-Pope-like they are as his friend, but she has a type. So following a moment of attraction and the sudden supposed loss of John B (and Sarah), she decides to give it a go. Maybe Pope's different after everything that happened. And he is, but not quite the way she was expecting. To link this back to the cheek-kissing thing, honestly, I think Kiara lowkey has the ick 😂. She consistently shoves any of the boys who try to touch her at all away except for JJ, the entire series mind you, except for these little cheek kisses like that's all she can manage to do. She kisses Pope like twice and ends up sleeping with him, at which point she realizes she just can't do it. She's not consistently attracted to her, and she can't get past her feelings for JJ, so she calls it off. Again, that's a fair healthy, and kind thing to do. When you realize it's not going to work, especially if you have feelings for someone else, it is distinctly NOT dragging people around to cut it off. If Kie has a real problem, honestly? I think it's that ultimately she wants a man she can fix. And Pope's fine. So that's him out.

My proof that the writers absolutely intended Kiara to have feelings for JJ from day one:

"Did you tell JJ?" specifically. Just JJ. She doesn't want HIM to think she's taken.

Shoving away John B and Pope every time they try to hug her or put an arm around her etc. Letting JJ hug her, take her hand, sling his arm around her etc. She also goes out of her way to touch him by taking his arm, holding him when he's crying, hugging him several times and then almost kissing him. So in a way, I'd very much like you to consider, Kiara was not in fact sending everyone mixed signals, her problem was that she was so consistent. Consistently attracted to and in love with someone she thought had no real interest in her. JJ flirts with her jokingly, and from episode 1 and the convo in the bell tower between John B and Sarah, we know that he's a horny little dude. And that's not surprising either, because people who've been abused tend to go one way or the other- either very physical touch-seeking in an attempt to balance about the bad, or very touch-avoidant. JJ is clearly, demonstably in column A. Not just with Kiara, but he also initiates hugs with John B and Pope, touches their faces, and even kisses Pope on the cheek once. He's clearly a very touchy person with everyone, so I can see how Kiara would be unsure about his feelings when he very much does not communicate his wants or needs with words.

Finally, the proof that Kiara had feelings for JJ, and that Jiara was the direction the show was headed, was in their conversation in thr storage container. When JJ tells her what he wants from life and plans to do with the money, it's a direct parallel to her initial reject of Pope. He wants to travel the world and be spontaneous and non-sedentary and have no use for money. Everything she said to Pope and is always trying to explain to her parents. That was 0% accidental, that was the writers making it clear: these two are a match, they're compatible on a much deeper level.

4. So if they always planned on JJ and Kiara, why didn't those two just get together to start? The answer, my friends, is jealousyy. This is a common tactic in writing to get a couple together: force the reluctant one to acknowledge their feelings by putting the other in a relationship with someone else. Im short: every moment between Kiara and John B or Pope was to show us JJ did not like that and therefore that his feelings for Kiara were serious, unlike how she interpreted them and him being a flirty himbo with other girls. It also helped Kiara realize she wasn't getting over him any time soon, and that she couldn't avoid her feelings either. So it forced them both to give up and acknowledge to themselves that they had feelings for the other.

5. "Teenage girls don't act like her" JOKES. This is the dumbest argument I've seen, I'm sorry. I'm happy you have met such well-adjusted teenage girls but buddy... I have known some teenage girls and people who used to identify as girls at that age who would make you roll over in your grave. Some people don't know what they want, some people desperately crave attention, some people just can't seem to avoid drama or make good choices and sometimes that's even a resulted of untreated disabilities or mental illness. Sometimes it's all of the above. My point is absolutely there are teenage girls who act like Kiara and faaar worse.

6. Lastly, why not John B or Pope? Why was Kiara totally valid for not liking them romantically? Well feelings are feelings so she's valid anyways but can we talk about them both touching her/making moves at inappropriate times without consent?? It's understandable she likes JJ and feels the safest around him when he's the only who doesn't act like he wants or expects anything from her. He never kisses her without consent, let alone while running from the cops randomly. He never tries to put his arm around her or make a move in the middle of them having an emotionally intimate conversation where she is clearly seeking emotional comfort. I'm not saying John B or Pope are bad people, but with Kiara both showed a lot of immaturity and failed to read the room numerous times. They acted whenever they personally felt attraction, regardless of where she was at at the time. There's such a thing as reading body signals, and the only times JJ comes close to making an actual move on Kiara is when she comes to him, gets close to his face and leans in. In the end, he only kisses her after she looks him dead in the eyes and tells him I LOVE YOU. That's on respect. Also, John B and Pope both get their shit together and learn this with their next girlfriends! So good on them!

But Kiara confessed to JJ at a random time too! I hear you shouting. NAY. Incorrect!! JJ is actively avoiding her and having a mature conversation about how they feel about each other, and also the fact that he stole from her family, and that is on HIM. That is a result of his issues and his fear and poor coping mechanisms. Kiara forced him to address it at an inopportune time because she already attempt to address it privately TWICE and he wouldn't let her. So all she did there was clear the air and make her own feelings known, which he needed to hear. That is the last conversation they have before he attempts to apologize and confess back. That is what convinces him that Kiara's feelings for him are both genuine and serious, and that no amount of pushing her away will succeed. She loves him unconditionally, which he did not know was possible until then.

So in short!! Kiara actually behaves like a real human being. She's not crazy, extremely selfish, nor an example of writers just testing out the waters and seeing what the fans want or who has the most chemistry. She is very consistent. The only thing I can really begrudge about her behavior towards her friends (her parents are a different story) is that she's insensitive to both John B and Pope after rejecting them, which I believe is because she doesn't realize they had actual feelings for her so much as thinking she's hot.

[lightgriffinsect]

a little thing i noticed about amanda's character and wanna talk about

Spoilers for Amanda the Adventurer under the cut:

One thing I've noticed - and is probably very easy to notice - about Amanda as a character, as least from what we see as Riley watching the tapes, is that she's very confrontational. She's very quick to take matters into her own hands.

One way we see her do this is by wresting control of the playable parts of the show, like where you have to type in an answer and decide to troll her because come on, we all wanted to do that to Dora the Explorer when we were kids. And like where you intentionally pick the wrong option 3 times and she either gets rid of the wrong options entirely (see how she gets rid of the fridge and sink in In The Kitchen, forcing you to pick the pantry) or replaces them with something you can't pick (she replaces the fruits in Everything Rots with organs and only brings the fruits back after you resort to clicking on the rotten sandwich.)

Another way is how in the second viewing of In The Neighborhood* when all the buildings are replaced with meat shops, forcing you, Amanda, and Wooly to enter one. She demands you to help her pick out a special treat, which being obviously impossible, causes her to get more and more angry. She snarls "Let me out of here" and somehow manages to break all of you out of that shop, where we then find that all the other shops have been restored and then burnt to the ground.

-> This shows that she obviously has some control over the affairs of the in-show universe. She can control what you choose and even what you type in the blanks. And she's very quick to use it if she believes you're messing with her.

-> It also shows that she may not understand the extent of her own powers. She believes it was you, Riley, the viewer, who corrupted the shops in In The Neighborhood. But as far as we know, the MC has no control over anything that's happening.

It's thus possible that Amanda could have somehow accidentally triggered that change in the episode and not realized it. And given how prone she is to frustration and helplessness, she may believe that it was you/Riley who caused it and subsequently take her rage out on you.

Or it could be Wooly. No one seems to really know his exact role in this game, myself included. It's possible that he may have abilities of his own that give him limited control over the show as well, if to a lesser extent than Amanda does. However, this does beg the question of why he would corrupt the game like that. I think Wooly as a character is very interesting, and honestly he probably deserves his own post theorizing about him, so I'll go no deeper into this for now.

Anyway, I really just made this post to highlight how in a fight or flight situation, Amanda is most likely to pick 'fight'. And I wanted to talk about how that might tie in with Rebecca as Amanda.

It's hinted at that Rebecca was, probably because of Hameln's influence, accidentally OR intentionally trapped inside the show, and specifically inside Amanda. She may even be a spirit trapped and forced to pilot a husk of a character herself, as it doesn't seem to me at least that Amanda the character has a will of her own. As far as I can tell, the scenes of her anger all seem to be Rebecca.

This makes me wonder. Was Amanda herself only ever meant to be a happy-go-lucky Dora-esque character? Did the confrontational attitude only stem from Rebecca once she was trapped inside the show?

I think that's possible. We know from Coffee Break, where Sadie interviews Sam Colton, that Rebecca was a source of joy and kindness in her life. Despite her troubled past from before Sam adopted her, she was known to be loving and optimistic, and I think Sam would have wanted Amanda to emulate those same qualities, back when Rebecca was playing her in the live-action version. Before Hameln purchased the show and turned it into an animated series.

So I believe that Rebecca only adopted the harsh, sarcastic, cruel demeanor that slips through in the show after she was trapped with no way out. By extension, Amanda, who is almost certainly her vessel, is the one we see acting on these qualities. Rebecca is devastated at the loss of her father, and possibly bitter towards Hameln if she ever realized what they may have been trying to get her to do. (Summon demons, as seen in the tape of Rebecca recording lines with Sam and the Director.) While I do doubt this, since she's like 10 with very little potential knowledge of demonology, it's possible that after being trapped in the show for so long, she has become cynical and quick to anger, rushing the plot along when you troll Amanda one too many times.

This also might explain why Amanda doesn't fully understand her own capabilities. She takes matters into her own hands and forces you to pick the right option for relatively petty things that she understands how to control. Aside from that, she doesn't seem able to stop the corruption of the stores in the second viewing of In The Neighborhood*. She comes to the conclusion that it must be Riley, you, doing this and gets angry with you for not playing the game right.

So if Amanda really is Rebecca, that would make a lot of sense as to why things get changed or corrupted to the surprise of us, Wooly, and her. Sometimes she exercises her control with full understanding of what she's doing, and other times she doesn't even realize it's happening because of her. And she becomes angry and, intentionally or not, confronts us and takes away our power to influence the show through our answers.

Orrrrr maybe I'm just being really nitpicky about this lmao.

In conclusion, MatPat has pretty much finished the game and he's already working on a theory, so I'm excited to see what he has to say about all this!

Thanks for reading my long post! I really like this game and I had fun coming up with a theory for it!

--------

*I actually don't remember if this was the exact name of the tape ^^ please bear with me here

[peachviz]

Weekly TV wrap up:

Palm Royale - Apple TV +, 1 Season & 10 episodes, averages about 40-50 mins per episode

Takeaway: charming, super camp, amazing cinematography, i want everybody’s wardrobe, Allison Janney can do no wrong, whodunnit, would watch a season 2, give it a try

Ready, Set, Love - Netflix, 1 season 6 episodes, avg about 1+ hr per episode

Takeaway - also camp, underdog in the way that i was pleasantly surprised, beautiful cinematography, intentional production design down to the costumes, funny, kinda corny but cute, dystopian (?), hunger games and squid games but nobody dies, give it a watch

Conan O’Brien Must Go - Max, 1 season 4 episodes, avg about 44 minutes per episode

Takeaway- super quick watch, hilarious, super chaotic, they could never make me hate you Conan, a great thing to have on in the background, give it a watch (BONUS WATCH: watch his hot ones interview)

CURRENTLY WATCHING

Star Trek: Voyager - Paramount+, 7 seasons, currently on season 3

Thoughts: should have watched this before ds9 bc my brain is ds9 poisoned, really hasn’t gotten my interest until the end of season 2 and maybe some of 3, having a real hard time connecting to anyone, Tuvok slays and that’s about it, Janeway is cool but see previous voyager post to get my temperature on her as a whole,

Slay episode so far of Season 3: Future’s End (Tuvok🤤)

Not slay episode: The Q and the Grey

Dead Boy Detectives - 1 season 8 episodes, avg 50+ minutes per episode, currently on episode 4

Thoughts: Loved sandman, having a tougher time with this one idk why, don’t hate it, don’t know if i love it yet, hopefully will change my mind

Delicious in Dungeon (At risk of me dropping) - Netflix, 1 season 24 episodes, average 20 minutes per episode, currently on episode 3

Thoughts: did it for Laios 🤭, i watched my hero all the way up until season 5 and then got content burnout bc they don’t know when to end it and i have a feeling this is about to be the same way, also do not care about the food show me the man. Someone convince me to stay and that it gets better

Hilda Hurricane (furacão) - 1 season 35 episodes, avg 55-45 minutes per episode, currently on ep 24

Thoughts: slowburn, slooooowwwwburrrnnnn, if it ain’t Hilda and Malthus i start skipping, been watching this for 3 months kinda over it, was easily influenced and i regret it

[talkingpointsusa]

Trump Ally Laura Loomer spins baseless conspiracy theories about Tim Walz having ties to ISIS

Laura Loomer is a person who sucks. She's essentially a self-described "proud Islamophobe" and white nationalist whose whole schtick is calling everybody she doesn't like ISIS. She believes that the Democrats can control the weather and has a bizarre obsession with Kamala Harris’ race.

Despite the fact that this person is clearly extremely fringe and has a belief system not that far out of step with the Neo-Nazi movement, she also has a scary amount of influence on the right having scored interviews with prominent GOP politicians and celebrities like Kari Lake, J,D. Vance, and Nancy Mace. As a result I think it is worth talking about who Loomer is, what she’s all about, and how pretty much everything she says is bullshit. Unfortunately for my sanity, that process involves me watching Laura Loomer. Oh well, lets see what deranged thing she's lying about this time.

TW: Loomer's whole "thing" is basically being an Islamophobe and that carries on in this episode. If you're not comfortable with that, I don't blame you, I'm not either which is why I'm debunking and countering this bullshit while also showing how close it truly is to the modern Republican Party.

21:25, Laura Loomer: "Good evening and welcome to episode 65 of Loomer Unleashed, I'm your host Laura Loomer. If you had any doubts that a Kamala Harris presidency would be anything but a total disaster for the United States of America than the past few days ought to set you free. Yesterday, stock markets all around the world posted one of their worst days ever as investors fear that America is headed for a recession."

On Monday the stock market plummeted after the release of a weaker than expected jobs report coupled with the Federal Reserves decision last week not to lower interest rates, a decision that has been panned by multiple economists who are now suggesting that the Fed make an emergency rate-cut. The current chair of the Federal Reserve is a man by the name of Jerome Powell who was appointed by the Trump Administration. So, while Trump and his sycophants want you to believe that the chaos on Monday was a Kamala crash it was more of a Donald drop.

This crash had nothing to do with Kamala Harris but that didn't stop key figures on the right like Donald Trump, Charlie Kirk, and now Laura Loomer from blaming the crash on the vice-president. In Loomer's case this is particularly embarrassing since she posted this episode on August 6th...the day that the stock market rebounded and investors started to regain some of their losses. Oops, bad timing there.

22:12, Laura Loomer: "Lets make one thing perfectly clear, even though Joe Biden is currently 'the president' (her quotes not mine) we all know that he has not really been in control of the government and the decision making if that couldn't be more obvious to all of you."

No proof, just vibes. Isn't it interesting how far-right media never offers up any concrete evidence outside of "Well, I saw this thing through my distorted worldview and here's the vibe I got!"

But she did put forward that absolutely ridiculous statement with a purpose. Here's where she's going with that line of thinking - this is really dumb and gets contradicted by her multiple times over the course of this episode.

22:30, Laura Loomer: "That means that for the past few years Kamala Harris has already been, in a large part, running our nation. That means that all of the problems over the past four years can be hung around her neck."

I love how they basically have to make fan-fiction up because they don't really have anything on Harris and Walz and got blindsided by Harris deciding to run in the first place. It's been absolutely hilarious to watch.

"Wait guys! Ignore everything that I've been saying for the past four years, Kamala Harris was actually the president this whole time which means all that stuff we made up about Biden actually applies to her! Yeah...that's it."

23:38, Laura Loomer: "Even though the market had been doing quite well prior and has now recovered slightly, just a little, well Monday's disaster is a sign of volatility. And what exactly does this volatility indicate? It indicates uncertainty, massive uncertainty, a lack of confidence, and underlying problems."

Interesting way to try and reconcile that. "Oh yeah, the stock market was doing really well before Monday and has recovered now but uh....the Democrats are still responsible for this." It's almost like there's something that caused such a sudden reaction on the market that Laura isn't telling her audience.

In case you're wondering, she never brings up the Fed or the jobs report in this episode because why would she? It goes against her bizarre narrative that Kamala Harris, who isn't even the president yet, was somehow responsible for a global stock market downturn.

25:12, Laura Loomer: "If this is how Harris's economy has been while she's VP imagine how much worse its going to be when she has full control of the reigns as president, god forbid."

Wait, isn't Harris already the president? You know, back during that long since passed wistful period of three minutes ago when Biden had dementia and Kamala was secretly running the country.

There's a certain level of turning your brain off required to uncritically consume shows like Charlie Kirk and Laura Loomer. If you pay attention to them you'll start to notice that these guys contradict themselves constantly. They have a spread of talking points and they just say shit for two hours without actually thinking about what they're saying beyond "This thing can piss off my audience at this exact moment". If you don't notice these direct contradiction when watching this kind of media, you aren't paying attention.

25:50, Laura Loomer: "The same is true of the immigration crisis which has been at all time lows when President Trump left office partly as a result of COVID."

During the pandemic, undocumented immigrants crossing the border dropped significantly because, well there was a pandemic. However, in the last four months of the Trump presidency encounters at the Southern Border were 14.7% higher than the first month he was in office. This pandemic number was also not an all time low, that would be in April 2017 shortly after Trump took office and before another large spike.

The notion that the Biden-Administration has some sort of "shadowy open border policy" is a total myth that's deeply rooted in white nationalism, as we'll see later on in this post when Loomer starts peddling white nationalism. As a matter of fact, the Biden Administration has increased spending on the border from Donald Trump's $20.9 billion to $23.5 billion. Unfortunately, this also means that many of the human rights abuses at the border that were carried out in the Trump years also carried on during the Biden years which is policy that I obviously don't support.

When people like Laura Loomer talk about "the open boarder" they are essentially admitting that they don't want anybody coming in whether illegally or legally. That is because these people want a white nation, something which Loomer has literally admitted out loud in the past. It's a very thinly disguised dog whistle that you see on every spectrum of the right-wing media ecosystem, from more fringe outlets like Laura Loomer and Infowars all the way to more "mainstream" ones like Daily Wire and FOX News.

26:19, Laura Loomer: "Once here, the Biden/Harris Administration has resorting to simply letting these invaders go free or worse, they have been shipping them to small towns across the country."

Fear-mongering against "the other" is a hallmark of fascist propaganda and it's no exception here. This is all just great replacement theory shit that has nothing backing it up. Notice how nobody ever shows a picture or video of these Biden Harris vehicles shipping migrants to small towns.

This isn't just about migrants at the Southern Border, it's about legal immigration too. The Laura Loomers of the world don't want any immigration unless the people immigrating are white and even then only white heterosexual Christians. Don't believe me? Here's Loomer going on a bigoted tirade against Somali immigrants in Minnesota.

26:30, Laura Loomer: "In fact, Minnesota the state where Kamala's VP pick Tim Walz is governor is a perfect example of how this invader resettlement has gone terribly wrong. A lot of people refer to Minnesota as Little Mogadishu, a little spin-off off of Somalia because of the massive population of Somali Muslims who refuse to assimilate in Minnesota."

What she's essentially saying is that Islamic communities that consist of Somali-American's who are here legally, some even second generation immigrants as the Somali immigration into Minnesota began during the beginning of the Somali Civil War in the 1990's that led to thousands of refugees leaving Somalia and immigrating to the United States, are still invaders. This is because in Loomer's eyes anybody who isn't white is inherently an "invader". It's naked racism in its purest form.

You would think that this kind of rhetoric is fringe on the right but one of the reasons that I'm covering Loomer here is that it really isn't. Touch this up a little, put a bit of a mask on it, and it could easily be the opening monologue on something like The Matt Walsh Show or The Charlie Kirk Show.

And you know what? Mainstream Republicans have embraced Loomer despite this clear white-nationalist rhetoric. Before he was vice-president, J.D. Vance appeared on Loomers show to raise campaign funds. Loomer was a white nationalist and extremist back then too, nothings changed. Donald Trump himself has also embraced Loomer, referring to her as "great Laura Loomer" in a speech and Loomer has rode with Trump aboard his private jet in the past. Donald Trump Jr has also floated Loomer for a spot in the Trump administration if Trump gets elected for a second term. So, when I show you this next quote about Somali Muslims let it be known that this is what the Trump Administration explicitly endorses through their continued association and praise of Loomer.

26:55, Laura Loomer: "There, these people leech off the system, they breed like rabbits, they disrupt the natural communities and they commit violent crimes without contributing anything of value to our society."

I hope J.D. Vance and Donald Trump are proud of what they're endorsing when they associate with this woman. Don't get it twisted, this talk of breeding wouldn't be out of place in a Neo-Nazi pamphlet and it's being peddled by a key ally of the current person that the GOP is running for president. This is not fringe anymore, it's what the GOP explicitly endorses and that should be scary as fuck to you!

If you are a more moderate Trump supporter, you know someone who maybe catches FOX News from time to time and is concerned about the economy and whatnot, first of all welcome to the blog! I actively welcome you to read my back catalogue and see how the stuff you've been consuming is total bunk consisting of half-baked lies. But second of all, your candidate endorses this! Take a look at this stuff, compare it to what Nazi's say on a regular basis, look at your candidate embracing this person, and ask yourself; is this the kind of thing that I support?

27:47, Laura Loomer: "Governor Walz has been in office since 2019. While BLM ran rampant in his state burning entire sections of Minneapolis to the ground following the overdose death of career criminal thug George Floyd, Walz didn't just sit idly by, he actively encouraged it."

As we saw when mainstream right-wing commentators like Matt Walsh and Tucker Carlson, more proof that these guys are all peddling the same rhetoric by the way, pushed this exact same lie about George Floyd, it's complete bullshit.

The autopsy report released by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner, while it did show that Floyd hand fentanyl in his system, ruled that Floyd died from “cardiopulmonary arrest from law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression."

We literally saw Floyd get murdered on camera and there are mountains of testimonies from the Chauvin trial showing that it was absolutely Chauvin's fault that Floyd was killed. Not that it matters when you're a racist who's overly concerned with breeding that's also actively using racist dog-whistles like calling a black man a "thug".

29:04, Laura Loomer: "This guy is clearly a loony left-wing radical dressed up as an old white grandpa. He wants you to think that he's your typical old-white grandpa and he's very dangerous. He's basically a less senile and more radical Joe Biden."

While it is definitely important to point out how extreme Loomer is, it's also important to point out that she's also a complete dumbass.

Ah yes, famous left-wing radical *checks notes* Joe Biden. We've lived through four years of the Democrats and none of the stuff that Loomer said would happen happened. She's just somebody who's good at drumming up fear and rage in racists without providing actual evidence.

29:47, Laura Loomer: "He certainly isn't going to be driving anybody to go vote. Really, lets just think about this for a second. What young voter or minority is looking at Tim Walz, an old white man, and is saying 'yes, that's our guy. I'm in. He's going to represent me.'"

The polls say that voters like Tim Walz more the J.D. Vance but I guess if you want to live in fantasyland go right ahead.

30:16, Laura Loomer: "And so, as the election approaches President Trump needs to be asking himself 'How would a Kamala Harris presidency be any different from the past four years?' She's been running the White House already."

Kamala Harris: She's more extreme than Biden and will turn America into a communist hellhole....also she's been running the White House already and if she wins it'll just be more of the same. None of this makes any sense, even internally.

Laura does an ad that's basically her playing clips of Alex Jones praising her and some clips of her dumb attention starved PR stunt bullshit like running around in a stereotypical "Mexican" outfit to protest immigration. You know, for someone who is pretending to be a journalist that has this breaking proof that the Democrats have ties to ISIS, Laura is really just stretching to waste time here. She comes back, talks more about the stock market, and contradicts herself again.

33:52, Laura Loomer: "We can look at some of these posts, him calling this crash yesterday the Kamala crash and that's what exactly everybody needs to be referring to it as because this is exactly what we're going to see if Kamala Harris gets into the White House for another four years and she is just as much involved with our policies in this country as he is."

Is Kamala the president right now or isn't she? Make up your mind Laura!

The thing with Laura Loomer's show is that half of it is just the "Riffing About Trump's Truth Social Posts and Twitter Show". She continues down this route of riffing on Trump's Truth Social posts and I decided to open up the stopwatch app on my phone and time it.

Laura's Truth Social commentary clocks in at around a minute and fifty five seconds give or take the few seconds it took me to open up her Rumble page after I hit go on the stopwatch. It's just two whole minutes of reading tweets and "The Kamala crash, Trump called it the Kamala crash!" with absolutely no substance to it.

So, she goes on to talk about the guy from Pakistan who got arrested for plotting to assassinate key government officials and honestly covering this wasn't a smart move on her part at all. I'll explain why in a minute but lets hear her out.

40:46, Laura Loomer: "And just today actually, we saw how grave the national security issue is when the DOJ announced that a Pakistani national has been arrested and charged for plotting to assassinate president Trump."

This story is about a Pakistani man named Asif Merchant with alleged ties to Iran who was arrested last month for plotting to carry out the assassinations of key government figures including potentially Donald Trump. Court documents actually did not specify who this guy was planning to assassinate however a threat on Trump's life from Iran due to the killing of Qassem Soleimani in 2020 led to many people speculating that the person that this guy had in mind was Trump.

First of all, we just don't know a lot about this story. While it is likely that Merchant might have had Trump on his list and many sources have backed that claim up, those same sources are saying that this guy had targets from both sides of the political aisle in mind. There's a lot of unknown here and its all very messy meaning that it's Loomers responsibility as somebody calling herself a journalist to be really careful about what she says while covering this. In that respect she absolutely failed.

Second of all, the fact that Merchant was arrested and charged blows everything that Loomer was saying earlier out of the water. I thought that the Biden Administration was just letting criminals run rampant and not charging anybody. Guess that's no longer something that's happening. I also thought that the Democrats wanted to kill Trump. Dumbasses like Laura Loomer have been speculating that the Democrats intentionally let the Trump shooting in Butler PA happen for weeks. But I guess the evil Biden DOJ that I've been hearing about for months now just arrested and convicted this guy that may have been planning to assassinate Trump, thus foiling their evil plot, for....reasons I guess.

Laura Loomer absolutely should not have covered this story. I get that it's low-hanging fruit in MAGA-world right now but its very existence messes up this narrative that MAGA media has been pushing for what feels like centuries now about Biden just letting people run rampant and the Democrats allowing the Trump assassination attempt to happen.

So, Loomer finds out that Merchant contacted a confidential informant for the FBI and of course gets the story completely wrong. What actually happened was that Merchant landed in the states and contacted a person who he felt would help him carry out his plans. After Merchant contacted this guy, his contact immediately called law enforcement and became a confidential informant for the FBI that helped the authorities eventually bring Merchant in.

The way that Loomer seems to interpret this part of the story is "Oh, the FBI contacted Merchant and was giving him his marching orders" which doesn't even make any sense with the facts that Loomer presented! If the FBI wanted this guy to kill Trump and was giving him his marching orders, why would they then arrest and charge this guy for doing what they wanted him to do in the first place? It makes absolutely zero sense whatsoever.

42:15, Laura Loomer: "Ok, so the FBI was in touch with Iranian hitmen to kill President Trump. Don't tell me for one second to that this attack that we saw in Butler Pennsylvania, probably, what are they going to say? 'Oh, this was just a mentally disturbed kid'. When's it gonna come out that he was also talking to confidential informants in the FBI."

This is just complete nonsense that is completely devoid from reality. This is somebody who calls themself an "investigative journalist" messing up basic details about this big news story to push a political agenda. It's embarrassing behavior and anybody calling themself a "journalist" who acts like this should be absolutely ashamed of themselves.

42:38, Laura Loomer: "So, you see how dangerous our intelligence agencies are because they intentionally lead people to these positions. They allow this guy to travel to New York where he was planning on killing president Trump and we just saw that somebody got very close. We know that this Thomas Matthew Crooks individual, they're not saying that there's ties between this guy and Thomas Matthew Crooks but Thomas Matthew Crooks had overseas encrypted bank accounts."

They also arrested him after getting the appropriate evidence needed to convict. This conspiracy theory makes zero sense in the real world.

Thomas Matthew Crooks didn't have overseas bank accounts. That claim was spread by an Instagram post made after the assassination attempt and nobody provided evidence to back this claim up. The FBI has came out and stated that Crooks didn't have overseas bank accounts and until somebody provides actual evidence proving them wrong I'm inclined to believe them.

As any regular listener of Knowledge Fight (hello, fellow wonks) will tell you, guys like Laura Loomer and Alex Jones mainly get their "news" from shitheads on Twitter and Instagram without actually looking into it and this is an excellent example of that.

I figured this out in five seconds and I'm just some university student with a blog. I don't run a massive produced show and hobnob with key government figures, I'm just a guy with a laptop sitting at a desk in my home debunking bullshit. Yeah, I'm majoring in journalism but you don't just magically gain the ability to verify stuff the day you step into a journalism lecture, Google is a thing that exists and it's a really easy tool for journalists to use! The minute that people like Laura Loomer start calling themselves "journalists" becomes the minute that they become responsible to vet the stuff they're saying and whether or not it's accurate. Loomer has failed her audience and on a broader level her basic duties as a journalist.

So, Laura decides that Tim Walz has ties to ISIS because at this point we're openly playing make em' ups. What's her proof of this absolutely damning claim?

45:16, Laura Loomer: "So, Tim Walz of course is the governor of Minnesota and that's who Kamala Harris decided to pick today as her vice-presidential pick. He is openly tied to Ilhan Omar, Keith Ellison, a lot of these very dangerous radical Muslim politicians."

Surprise surprise, it's just more disgusting bigotry. Naturally, Loomer sees two Islamic progressive politicians and thinks "They must be tied to ISIS" without having any evidence tying them to ISIS. There used to be a word for that, I remember that it started with an R and ended with ACISM. Not that this critique matters much when it comes to Laura who doesn't try to deny her racism but it's still absolutely worth pointing out just so that it's on the record.

45:32, Laura Loomer: "But probably the most radical situation of all is the fact that Tim Walz advocated for an ISIS affiliated Islamic centre called the Dar-Al Farooq Islamic Centre which I have personally visited by the way in Minnesota."

There is absolutely no proof that the Dar-Al Farooq Centre is tied to ISIS and what Loomer is doing here is disgusting for a bunch of reasons.

The thing that got the ball rolling about this mosque being "ISIS affiliated" is an incident in 2016 where three youths who attended this mosque tried to flee the country and join ISIS. While this was obviously an extremely bad thing and it's a good thing that these kids got caught, there's no proof that mosque leadership knew about this nor is there proof that anybody else at the mosque knew about what these kids were planning. However, that didn't stop far-right media from starting a targeted smear campaign against this mosque. Congregants reported far-right social media figures showing up to the mosque and filming their children.

This eventually reached its apex when in 2017 three white males traveled eight hours from their home state in Illinois in order to plant a pipe bomb inside the Dar-Al Farooq Centre, thankfully nobody was hurt in the attack. According to the bomber his motive was to scare Muslim's into leaving the US and that he heard that Dar-Al Farooq was "training ISIS members". Now, look at the fact that Laura Loomer is pushing the exact same kind of rhetoric that nearly got innocent people killed....yeah. I cannot stress this enough, fuck! this! shit!

There's absolutely zero reason for Loomer to not know that far-right disinformation like her show played a huge part in children being harassed and actual terrorism and yet here she is spreading this crap about this mosque anyway despite everything that it's caused. It's easy to laugh at how dumb these people are and how they have no idea what they're talking about but I cannot stress this enough, this shit has the potential to get people killed.

On that happy note, Laura starts interviewing a man named John Guandolo and I really don't care. For those who don't know, John Guandolo is a former FBI Agent who runs the SPLC registered extremist group "Understanding The Threat". Guandolo left the FBI in 2008 while he was being investigated by the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility over having an affair with a confidential source and soliciting $75,000 dollars for an "anti-terrorism group" that he was working on creating at the time. Real cool and trustworthy guy. John's "coolness" only continued after he left the FBI and formed Understanding the Threat which basically runs bizarre "counterterrorism training" sessions for law enforcement officials and civilians alike that are basically just seminars devoted to islamophobic conspiracy theories. Guandolo also has a long track record of assaulting people and then promptly getting has ass sued. In 2023, Understanding the Threat shut down in part because John kept doing dumb shit that got his ass sued (although the exact details of why they shut down are kind of murky at best).

Essentially, he's one of these ex-military/FBI "counterterrorism" grifters that were a dime a dozen after 9/11, he's cut from the same cloth as guys like Jack Idema. I don't have enough time to go into all the specific nuances of how much of a loser John Guandolo is but suffice it to say this guy really fucking sucks. We're not going to look at too much of his interview because it's just boring and dumb islamophobic conspiracy theories but there is some stuff in there that we should talk about.

50:03, Laura Loomer: "I was just explaining prior to you coming on that we spent a lot of time together in Minnesota doing counter-terrorism and also investigating on the ground with other counter-Jihad experts. People like Ilhan Omar, Keith Ellison and their radical networks which includes Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and also ISIS."

"And by on the ground doing counterterrorism I mean us running around doing dumb stuff on the internet."

Neither of these guys have presented evidence to back up what they're saying outside of "we don't like Muslims". I couldn't find what kind of "counter-terrorism" these guys were up to in 2018 but given Loomers past track record I'm sure it was just running around being a public nuisance and acting like an absolute drain on society in front of mosques.

50:43, Laura Loomer: "Obviously it's all factual and you can confirm it."

This show is just Islamophobic LARPing at this point.

51:32, John Guandolo: "Number one, Dar-Al Farooq is an -- and it's not a secret. That's a jihadi mosque. The leadership of the mosque, those are jihadi's running it. And you mentioned something a moment ago that I think is important to put a real fine point on for your audience, Shayk Idris at Dar Al-Farooq is the chairman of the Islamic University of Minnesota, the first of its kind in America, and its built to teach sharia to a wide variety of folks but its really to train people that are looking to be scholars and the way it fits into the broader Jihadi movement in the United States is the Brotherhood is very interested in raising up Jihadi's here that are American's so they needed to build the Islamic university here and they chose Minnesota."

The Islamic University of Minnesota is basically the Muslim equivalent of a bible college. They aren't "training Jihadi's" and if they were the FBI would be all over them in eleven seconds. This is just conspiracy theory nonsense from two people who have built their careers around pushing islamophobia and like I said before, this shits dangerous and could very easily lead to violence in the real world.

53:14, John Guandolo: "That entire culture there is in bed with and I mean protecting and defending the Jihadi's in the Twin Cities and it's why when my team came through prior to the 2016 election and I wrote that article, it was entitled 'In This War: The Twin Cities and Minnesota' and I still believe today more than I did then it will take literal military intervention to liberate Minneapolis/St Paul."

Not much to say other than this guys calling for the military to come in and kill civilians because they're immigrants. I hate these two so much. By the way, as stated previously in my last post on the Walz nomination, crime has been down in Minneapolis recently.

The entire interview is like this so we don't have to spend a lot of time on it. Just two bigots lying to each other and potentially inciting violence. We have one last quote, here's Loomer saying that the Democrats want to form an "Islamic Caliphate". Never heard that one before except for when Obama was elected, or during Hillary's campaign, or....

01:39:36, Laura Loomer: "We are literally in the middle of an Islamo-fascist communist takeover of the Western world and the United States of America. Make no mistake, you see these videos right now in the United Kingdom where people are setting fire to cars, they're raping women, they're stabbing people, they're attacking white people in the streets. We're gonna have Muslim gains like that here in the United States of America. We already do, in cities like Dearborn, Michigan and Minneapolis, Minnesota and New York City. We've seen these pro-Hamas riots where we have these people waving Hamas and Hezbollah flags. So I'll tell you right now, if Kamala Harris gets elected as president of the United States, we are, we are going to have an Islamic caliphate in this country."

She said about the UK during a period where the UK is dealing with extremist anti-immigrant rioters setting fire to buildings but that's honestly a topic for its own post. This is just a bizarre slew of Islamophobic talking points that make zero sense, a fitting way to end a post full of Islamophobic talking points that make zero sense.

Conclusion:

That was a particularly gross thing to watch. The thing that freaks me out about Laura Loomer is the fact that this woman has influence. In a reasonable society folks like Laura Loomer and John Guandolo would be guys yelling on street corners with little to no influence but instead here they are spreading hate to a massive audience full of people that unquestionably believe it. The only thing you can really do is call it what it is: hateful bullshit.

Quite frankly, there's very little separating stuff like this and some of the more "mainstream" organizations on the right like The Daily Wire. Just ask Matt Walsh who's very concerned about the white birth-rate or Michael Knowles who believes in the Great Replacement Theory. The difference between them and Laura Loomer is that Loomer doesn't really try to hide her naked bigotry whereas FOX and the Daily Wire try to couch it in double speak and dog-whistles.

On the bright side, it says a lot about Tim Walz' record that they have so little to go with that they have to just up and make shit up about him. While there's very little you can do to win over extremists, Walz' record can do a lot to win over moderates and watching people like Laura Loomer flail around trying to find new ways to smear him gives me some hope for the election.

Original Video:

“EP65: SUMMER of JIHAD: Kamala’s vp Pick EXPOSED for ISIS Ties!” Rumble, 6 Aug. 2024

Sources Cited:

Dorn, Sara. ““Kamala Crash”: Trump Tries to Pin Stock Market Downturn on Harris.” Forbes, 6 Aug. 2024.

Picciotto, Rebecca. “Trump Quiet on Markets after Stock Rebound Robs Him of “Kamala Crash” Attack Line.” CNBC, CNBC, 6 Aug. 2024.

Farley, Robert. “Trump’s Misleading Chart on Illegal Immigration.” FactCheck.org, 4 Apr. 2024

Miller, Todd. “Biden’s Supposed ��Open-Border Policy” Does Not Exist.” Www.thenation.com, 22 Nov. 2023

Smith, Allan, et al. “Trump’s Embrace of Far-Right Activist Laura Loomer Worries His Allies.” Nbcnews.com, NBC News, 14 Jan. 2024.

Hananoki, Eric. “Laura Loomer Helped JD Vance Raise Funds While He Appeared on Her Show.” Media Matters for America, 29 July 2024.

TUCKER, ERIC. “Pakistani Man with Ties to Iran Charged in Plot to Carry out Political Assassinations.” AP News, AP News, 6 Aug. 2024.

Thrush, Glenn. “Justice Dept. Charges Pakistani Man in Alleged Plot to Kill U.S. Leaders.” The New York Times, 6 Aug. 2024.

“Understanding the Threat.” Southern Poverty Law Center

Montemayor, Stephen, and Stephen Montemayor. “3 Illinois Men Charged in Bloomington Mosque Bombing.” Startribune.com, 14 Mar. 2018.

Riham Feshir. “Twin Cities Mosque on Edge after Opponents Start Pointing the Cameras at Children.” MPR News, MPR News, 4 Oct. 2019.

[alrightbuckaroo]

hi ada! it's nice ask week! i hope you don't mind me coming into your inbox!

what are your 3 favorite scenes in lone star?

what's your favorite hobby outside of fandom?

what's your favorite song/album right now?

Hello Rachel; I don't mind at all! I hope life is being kind to you and that hateful messages cease entering your inbox for the rest of time <3

what are your 3 favorite scenes in lone star?

Oh gosh, only three??

Maybe it's cheesy but I love the proposal scene. There's so many layers to it: the fact it was episode 3x18 and TK woke Carlos up at 3:18 in the morning, just after Carlos told TK he can wake him up at 3 a.m. if he needs anything??? I love the red string of fate, I love synchronicity I love soulmates. I also love the fact TK holds Carlos' hands the way he did when he told him they make a pretty good team. I say it all the time, but they really do hold one another like that's the reason God gave them two hands <3 Also the way TK rocks back and forth with excitement? The same way he flipped the ring he was going to propose to Alex with but because of anxiety? If I'm going to love anything it's a reference let me tell you that much!

I have gone out of my way to show people the Lou story line because to this day it might actually be my favorite. It's so miniscule, in a way, in the grand scheme of things but nothing beats TK walking in, posed like this: 🧍‍♂️and asking Carlos if they were robbed. As if the COP would just be sitting in a mess of a living room if they had 😭

Saving Grace is tied with Push as my favorite episode and I'll occasionally think of Grace telling Judd, "You're so tall." and Judd replying with, "You're so beautiful." and feel the need to scream because I LOVE them so much. I have a spin-off I want to write based off a Tarlos AU that's in the work and I can't wait to write them falling in love because I love falling in love with their love.

what's your favorite hobby outside of fandom?

Media consumption seems like the weirdest thing to call a hobby, but truly, that's what it is!

I love watching films that I don't know I'm about to love (Humboldt County, my beloved) , discovering new television shows that rewire my brain (looking at you AMC's Interview with the Vampire), listening to music that feels like sunshine (Cannock Chase by Labi Siffre, you will always be famous) or reading a book that makes me want to bite a brick (A Density of Souls by Christopher Rice ruined my life (affectionately)

If I'm not doing any of that, and this is going to sound so corny, but I write! I've been working on a novella for a little while as I'm trying to prepare something for grad school (that isn't gay firefighter fanfiction lol) and I was working on a book of poetry before realizing that I'm a much stronger narrative fiction writer than I am a poet (Ada Limón if I could just have a sprinkling of your voice please ma'am)

what's your favorite song/album right now?

Album wise it has to be Cowboy Carter. I've been saying it since forever, but Beyoncé truly is on a very different level than any other pop artist we have right now (and I like a lot of them! I loved eternal sunshine and I can not WAIT until Dua drops her third album in May)

If anyone is the music industry right now it is her because she is constantly reinventing herself as well and influencing the industry as whole. Did you know that she's the reason music comes out on Fridays now? Her impact !!

Anyways, one of my favorite genres of music is Classic Country; so think 1950s, 1960s Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, Skeeter Davis, Lee Hazlewood, Glen Campbell; that whole bunch.

So, I was so excited to see what Beyoncé was going to cook up because that is a woman who makes sure each and every thing she makes is perfection and my god, it got as close as any of her work has gotten so far.

It also features an interpolation of Good Vibratations by The Beach Boys, who's one of my favorite artists so it feels like this album was made specifically with me in mind. Here's hoping Act III is rock because I need to hear her with Jack White again.

[inkforhumanhands]

fandom asks: 1 2 8 11 12 17 23 24 25

list 3 positive things about your current fandom(s)

a) I love that the Daredevil fandom has been kept healthy with several events over the years: shout out to @daredevilexchange for all the work they've done! b) My mattfoggy buddies are all so sweet and supportive; I know I can always count on someone to leave a comment on my fics even if they're occasionally a bit niche! c) I'm currently loving the surge in podficcing! We've not only got longtime veterans doing podfics for other people's work, but several of us have dipped our toes into the waters and have begun to podfic our own work. Not only a neat part of fandom but a step toward some more enjoyable reading for our friends who primarily use screen readers.

2. a headcanon you weren't sure about at first but have come to like!

I think at first I wasn't super big on the whole "Mike is in love with Foggy and obnoxious about it" thing, but as anyone familiar with my fics knows I've since come to embrace it.

8. you hope more people will come to appreciate ___ (a ship, a trope, an episode, etc)

Honestly I'd just like people to write more fics and draw more art directly inspired by comics storylines, especially some of the older stuff! That's what I'm hoping to get people to do with my upcoming DD comics bingo event. :D

11. if you're a writer or artist, what fic or piece of art are you proud of making?

At the moment I'm really proud of Hearsay, which is a comics volume 1 wip. I just think it's very tightly written.

12. compliment someone else in your fandom

@mutuallyprime is as lovely and supportive as it gets! You can count on her to boost you up if you need it 🥺 and she's written some truly great fics! The DD 2003!Matt/Milla fic is never leaving my brain.

17. the thing in canon that everyone loves and that you also love

Already answered this one with Matt and Foggy's friendship, but I suppose I also love their frequent divorces. 😌 Great source of drama, I think we can all agree about that.

23. the fandom you're curious about because of a mutual

lol sorry this is a boring answer but at the moment... none! I have in the past however been influenced to watch things, including Hannibal (loved it), Interview with the Vampire (loved it), and BBC Merlin (hated it lmao).

24. how has fandom positively impacted your life?

I've made so many friends!! It's lovely to wake up in the morning and be able to go and say hi and chat about this thing we're all obsessed with. Far less lonely. :D

25. a piece of advice for taking care of yourself in fandom spaces

literally don't listen to anybody telling you you're doing fandom wrong because you do/don't do x, y, or z. it's your life and anybody espousing these opinions has a very narrow and limited view of other people's interiority. get the hell out of there if you see a post like this. you deserve better.

[lexiloos-currentobsession]

BCS season 5 roundup!

Magic Man

-Saul Goodman is ~official~

-Ziiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeegler

-I ADORE the magic man montage

-The scene where Kim refuses Jimmy’s plan for convincing her client to take a plea deal and then does it herself anyway reminded me of when Jimmy told her to beat Howard to Mesa Verde and she initially declined but ended up sprinting through HHM

50% Off

-Nacho’s face when he sees his father in the restaurant 💔

-I don’t know why I’m so obsessed with context but I geeked out over Lalo giving Domingo the nick name Ocho Loco since we know him as Krazy 8 but no one has called him that in BSC yet

-This early still-Jimmy-at-heart phase of Saul Goodman is so fun to watch. Confidently strolling through the court house in ridiculous outfits dropping so many great phrases:

-Into every life a little rain must fall

-Life’s a rich pageant who are we to judge

The Guy for This

-HANK and GOMEY!!! What a perfect reveal

-I’d honestly forgotten that in Breaking Bad Hank said Krazy 8 was an informant but now it seems so obvious that we’d see how that came to be

-I’ll say it again, I love watching Kim Wexler yell

-A Suzuki Esteem, it’s an import

-Acker accuses Kim of saying anything to get what she wants and it seems to really affect her. I don’t think it gets to her because she believes it to be true of herself, but because she KNOWS that’s true of JIMMY

Namaste

-Me during the opening scene:

-Jimmy does the ole bang on the interview room door to make it seem like you’re walking away from the negotiating table trick that Hank JUST did to him to the criminals he’s meeting with

-My friends still call me Jimmy, you can too

Dedicado A Max

-Jimmy squeezing into the construction meeting 💀

-An all-time great Mcwexler scene: Kim role playing as Kevin

-The Acker scam is probably my favorite so far

-He’s claiming our prime contractor is an escaped felon lolol

-There’s a moment when Kim is confirming to Jimmy she wants to go after Kevin personally where she says “ok” and Jimmy replies “ok” while extending a beer her direction. She smirks. THIS is true Mcwexler happiness.

-Jimmy and Kim really make schemin and drinkin beers look so damn enjoyable

-Kim makes a hilarious face when Jimmy is on the phone with Mike and says “this is not like that other thing”

Wexler v Goodman

-I just feel like if just we get out there and we hustle we can do it!

-Jimmy is having FUN giving acting instructions. The whole shooting the commercial montage makes Jimmy so lovable

-The shot of Nacho and his car in that warehouse with missing windows is so sick

-Jonathan Banks plays Mike playing a sweet innocent old man so well

-No Cliff my hookers were taller than these

-Ofc Kim proposed to Jimmy

JMM

-Jimmy asks who the hell is Jorge de Guzman right when the opening credit for Tony Dalton pops up on screen

-They absolutely nailed the whole consummating the marriage scene because Jimmy is honest with Kim which showed way more intimacy than the actual act

-LIGHTNING BOLTS SHOOT FROM MY FINGERTIPS!!! I love that this specific language was included in the rant because now we know what Jimmy is thinking when he does the lil finger waggle to make something happen

Bagman

-One of the coolest things about this show is how it influences the way you view Breaking Bad on a rewatch, and this episode is a prime example. Seeing what Mike and Jimmy go through in Bagman completely recontextualizes their relationship for me. The closest feeling I can relate it to is when after you’ve known two people for a while you find out that they also know each other.

-Did Mike and Jimmy think they would be able to steal the car of the guy they baited and sniped???

Bad Choice Road

-Jimmy in the tub scene 👀

-Kim is the queen of impulsive decisiveness

-Ok Lalo IS Spider-Man. First the roof thing at Travel Wire and now him jumping off a ravine onto the esteem

-Jimmy pestering Kim with that ”pro bono means no money” argument is rich considering she held him down when his license was suspended

-When Lalo presses Jimmy for more about what happened in the desert Jimmy throws in the detail about drinking his pee, which was the same thing he did when Kim tried to get him to open up about what happened

Something Unforgiveable

-Kim snorting in laughter at Howard’s accusations of Jimmy made that scene

-There are a myriad of reasons why Kim turns on Howard and one I don’t see mentioned enough is TIMING!! Consider this, Jimmy tries to break up with Kim on the same day Howard approached her about Jimmy being unhinged. She brings this up to Jimmy that night almost as a way to distract from the heavy shit they’ve been experiencing. They spend the evening lightheartedly brainstorming schemes against Howard, then it becomes serious for Kim when she thinks going through with a plan will keep Jimmy in the relationship

-Jimmy leaves the mint chip off his room service sundae. I don’t exactly know why but it feels significant

-I’m trying to imagine how Jimmy felt when Kim did the finger guns at him. I imagine whatever he felt in that moment is what he was trying to convey to Kim when he did them to her in Saul Gone

[hotdaemondtargaryen]

EWAN MITCHELL INTERVIEWED BY POLYGON MAGAZINE.

YOU'VE SPOKEN BEFORE ABOUT THE INFLUENCES YOU TOOK IN WHEN CRAFTING YOUR APPROACH TO AEMOND — YOU HAVE PROMETHEUS; YOU HAVE HEAT; HALLOWEEN; LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. I'M CURIOUS WHAT YOU WERE SEEKING AS YOU WERE RESEARCHING TO PLAY AEMOND IN SEASON 2.

"Characters who possess a tremendous amount of power, and see it as a means to do things no one else can do."

Similar with Lawrence of Arabia — something in Lawrence of Arabia that I like, he says 'The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts.'

"You know, the idea that he kind of tempers himself — very similar to Aemond — to pain."

"He puts duty over love."

"And [similarly,] the idea that Aemond can be loved, but he also knows that he can achieve more if he’s willing to be feared, and do the necessary kind of evil."

"[I sought] characters who were kind of marginalized, and they maybe start off their story on their back foot, and over time become the hero of their story."

"There are setbacks, but they bounce back even stronger."

"Those kinds of characters."

DID YOU FEEL LIKE YOU WERE LIFTING THE ENERGY OF THESE PERFORMANCES, THE PHILOSOPHY, OR JUST THEIR PHYSICALITY?

"Anything — I mean, I try to watch a film a day."

"Although recently, with press, I’ve sometimes had to do two a day, because I miss a day."

"But anything, anything: Inspiration can come at any time."

"I’m always watching for it."

"I was watching Split the other day, M. Night Shyamalan’s Split, and it kind of raises the idea that the broken are the more evolved."

"And that’s certainly true with Aemond; from the moment he had his eye taken from him, he’s used it as motivation to develop himself and manufacture himself into this lethal weapon."

"I was speaking to a reporter earlier, and he had a Rutger Hauer T-shirt from Blade Runner."

"That’s also something that I might use as inspiration going into season 3."

"Just kind of leave my arms open, take anything."

DO YOU FIND YOU HAVE DIFFERENT INFLUENCES FOR DIFFERENT MOMENTS IN AEMOND'S LIFE, OR EVEN JUST DIFFERENT RELATIONSHIPS, LIKE ALICENT VERSUS HELAENA?

"Yeah, ultimately, after the raising of the dragonseeds in 'The Red Sowing,' it’s definitely made Aemond a lot more desperate going into episode 8, and he’s losing that composure that he’s known for [in] the previous episodes."

"And so there was always something really fascinating in exploring that kind of fractured Aemond, seeing that scared boy rise to the surface again, that he’s tried to keep a lid on for so many years."

"It’s the sort of relationship that makes total sense even when you don’t see them together."

"Of course she’s the person who sees him and puts him in his place."

"And he just has nothing to say to that."

"Her words just cut him in half."

"He always has this idea of where and how things will pan out."

"She just challenges that, and it breaks him a little bit."

IN A SHOW THAT'S SO MUCH ABOUT INTERROGATING PEOPLE'S QUEST FOR A POWER, THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO IT, AND HOW IT CAN BE BOTH WIELDED AND CORRUPTING AS A FORCE, HOW DO YOU SEE AEMOND FITTING INTO THAT? WHAT'S HIS MINDSET?

"I think he raises that question of whether Aemond is inherently evil, or whether power does corrupt, whether it was nurture versus nature."

"Was it the upbringing that [he] received from Otto Hightower and his mother, or was it just being in the Red Keep and being a product of his environment there?"

"I think Aemond — he’s always had that quest for power."

"He’s always wanted to be known as that war hero."

"And here at the council table, for the first half of the series, he’s very much serving in the war from one end."

"And then when he gets into power and becomes prince regent, he goes to the other end."

All of these people, he now has a completely new perspective on, and it’s like, 'OK, so how can each of you serve me? And if you can’t serve me, you’re gone.'

"It’s that kind of very black-and-white pursuit that Aemond has in his quest for power, which I think is quite scary."

"It’s formidable."

It doesn’t really take anybody else’s perspective into account. 'It’s what I want.'

"So what’s his relationship with power? It’s not a pretty one."

DO YOU SEE HIS QUEST FOR POWER AS COMING FROM THAT SCARED LITTLE BOY WHO JUST WANTS SOME PROTECTION AND INSULATION, AND TO BE ABOVE REPROACH? OR DO YOU SEE IT AS HIM THINKING I HONESTLY BELIEVE I CAN DO THIS BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE HERE?

"I mean around the council table, all these other characters, they’re losing their composure, they’re raising their voices, they’re arguing."

"Aemond’s just sitting back."

"He’s calculated, he’s cool."

"He strikes when the moment arises."

"He needs to be seen as someone who can wield that power effectively."

"He needs to be seen as someone who can lead."

"He can become that war hero."

"Whether or not he wants to sit the Iron Throne — I don’t know; I don’t want to answer that! But he definitely wants a similar kind of reputation as Daemon Targaryen."

"He wants to be like Daemon Targaryen, but he also wants to better him."

"He wants to be known as that rogue prince, who you know all of the realm respects."

"Or maybe he doesn’t really care what anyone thinks — that’s kind of what I love about the character."

"He could be many things."

TELL ME ABOUT HOW YOU APPROACHED THE ARC FOR HIM OVER THE SEASON — TO RETURN TO INFLUENCES FOR A SEC, I WAS THINKING A LOT ABOUT STREETCAR NAMED DESIRED, AND HAVING A CHARACTER WHO DOESN'T KNOW THEY'RE THAT CLOSE TO A BREAKDOWN, BASICALLY, AND DOESN'T KNOW THEY'RE ONE BAD DAY AWAY FROM THAT. THEY'RE JUST HOLDING THEMSELVES TOGETHER EVEN WHEN PEOPLE AROUNG YOU CAN SEE THIS IS BAD NEWS.

"Aemond… if he has a breaking point, I don’t think he’s found it yet."

"It’s interesting."

"Maybe he found it there, when Helaena challenged everything he thought his life would amount to, and how things would pan out."

"I think Aemond always thought of himself as the captain of his own fate and his own destiny."

"And so when Helaena shares that knowledge — on one hand, it could make an enemy out of him."

"But on the other hand, it could also make Helaena a tremendously valuable ally."

"If you’re able to harness that kind of foresight and that power that Helaena possesses, you could see a blow coming before it lands."

I think that would certainly be something interesting to explore: 'Where is Aemond’s breaking point?'

"I mean we’ve seen everything he’s done so far."

"He kind of had to abandon humanity in season 2, with what he did to his brother."

Helaena raises that: 'Was it worth the price, and what did he lose in that moment?'

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT WHERE HE ENDS UP THIS SEASON? IN MANY WAYS, IT FEELS LIKE AND OTHERWISE TRIUMPHANT SEASON PUTS HIM IN EXACTLY THE RIGHT PLACE TO HAVE HER POP THAT BALLON FOR HIM.

"Yeah, that’s a good way of looking at it."

"I think he’s got to sit with that information now, and sit with that realization."

"But as we know for Aemond, he can’t sit still for long."

"He’s going to be on the back of that dragon."

"Up to no good, you know."

"And yeah, I can’t wait to see where it goes in season 3."

"I think he’s got to change again."

"I think similar to when he had his eye taken out as a kid, it served as this motivation to become something else entirely."

"And then with this new realization at the end of season 2, he’s gonna have to evolve again, or otherwise risk being broken again."

[zeciex]

Reading “ A Vow of Blood” knowing that Aemond hates Larys for the treatment he gave to Daenera post usurpation, I CANNOT WAIT for your version when Aemond outright says “Not you, you TOAD 🐸 “ to Larys after making him think he was going to be his hand.

Like Larys the you actually think he was actually going to let you be his hand after everything you did!?!?!

Also Alicent dismissal in the council, like after everything she put Dae through with Mertha, like putting her through physical and emotional abuse DURING THEIR PREGNANCY he was gonna actually listen to your advise and letting her stay in the council. You reap what you sow Alicent!!!!

This is Dae’s sweet karma and we know she is gonna enjoy these dismissals like receiving presents on Christmas day.

I was literally watching the episode and thinking 'this is perfect--I can totally show Daenera's influence here.'

It's such a strange thing to be watching the show and make mental notes of what is to be changed and how Daenera fits into the narrative. Like, there's just so many openings for her to be a part of the story and I just love it.

Also because since season 1 we've just made a lot of assumptions and guesses to his character, and then with this new season and with the interviews Ewan has made, he's kind of confirmed a lot of what I expected/read into Aemond as a character. Like, the way Ewan talks about Aemond and his thoughts/motivations fit so well with how I've perceived him and how I'm trying to write him.

And we'll definitely see Daenera's influence when we reach that point in the story.

[berlinbabylon]

review of s4 (skip if you don’t want to read criticism)

SPOILER WARNING

so, i finished season 4 a couple of days ago and... i liked some parts of it and one episode was good (episode 8) but for the most part i really absolutely hated this season and i never thought i would say that. in my opinion, it actually got worse towards the end! i must be living in a different reality from everyone else.

i’m sorry. i really am. but i have to get this off my chest:

- charlotte double-wielding guns and shooting up those white hand idiots like she’s in a john woo movie? awesome! except... it was dumb af. this could have been so good, i’m a huge genre fan of this type of action, but not at the expense of a character’s intelligence. there was zero reason for her to barge in there when she did. at least make it seem like they’re just about to kill the good pathologist, have them string him up or whatever and she sees and has absolutely no alternative but to intervene. or have them conclude their meeting and start making for the door. please, i’m begging, just anything to make her desperate actions make sense.

- malu taking a shot for kiddie fiddler wendt? thanks, i fucking hate it. for that matter, i hate what they did to wendt’s character.

- for that matter, awesome lgbt+ rep or uhmm not. reinhold and fred don’t even get a kiss or any significant scene together (the couples date at the very end is cute but too little too late) although fred actually has a fairly important role to play this season. we never even really get to see them talk about his decision to work for that nazi paper. like, what. okay, fred quits at the end, good for him, but does this qualify as a character arc now?

- speaking of lgbt+ rep, them blowing up the esther/edgar/walter polycule only to have walter go “well whattaya gonna do. i loved him ¯\_(ツ)_/¯” right as he croaks was the most ridiculous thing i’ve seen in a long while and didn’t land at all. i actually cackled. i can’t believe they turned the complex dynamic they had introduced in s3 into this clichéd jealousy mess that had no nuance whatsoever. i’m stunned people preferred their storyline this season. it didn’t track at all. neither did edgar showing up again (as i had predicted) and gereon believing him about wanting to broker peace in the underworld. el oh el.

- also edgar being like “oh btw we need to kill doktor schmidt, he’s an evil mastermind” was an absolutely ridiculous and lame way to try and advance that storyline. it also just got dumped in there and you don’t get any sense that it’s influencing gereon or his character actions at all. not that he has much of an arc or anything this season anyway but back when the show was still good (and by good i mean exceptional), his drug addiction and guilt complex was a major driving force behind much of what he did, how he behaved at work etc. here, in s4, you have to be grateful that they belatedly remember to send him to confession because he’s a catholic but that scene also just unceremoniously gets dumped in there. not to compare but since we have already seen an absolutely outstanding confession scene this tv season (in interview with the vampire, fabulously acted by jacob anderson), i couldn’t help but notice how the confession with gereon was neither written well, nor particularly acted well, nor integrated in its episode well, nor, in fact, scored well.

- max raabe’s ein tag wie gold is a bop but other than that, this season was not scored well and i say that as someone who owns the first two soundtrack releases on vinyl. there were many times when i noticed that something was off, where the music actively worked against the scene it was supposed to be enhancing. the song at the shabbat dinner was nice but as a jewish friend who i watched it with pointed out, them playing piano on shabbat is very sus, even if they’re a reform household. there was a woman with a wig which indicates (ultra) orthodox. not going to nitpick that scene any further though because the shabbat dinner and abe goldstein’s character in general were a highlight (although i loathed the storyline he was stuck in).

- tell me you don’t want to write actors out of the show without telling me. nyssen and helga have long overstayed their welcome. nyssen they could justify by having him pop up from time to time in connection to the rocket science “plot”. but he’s lars eidinger (who’s great), so. helga has just become whatever they needed her to be. anne marie’s actress had some extremely dodgy acting going on this season, sorry to say. i don’t even want to talk about the idiocy of how they wrote this storyline which could have been extremely good and important. i’ll just say that i laughed my ass off when anne marie clocked abe with her flute but generally it was not a good choice to play these kidnappings for laughs (and i guess these rich people just have no security whatsoever, even after the first kidnapping). there’s a time and a place and this storyline wasn’t it. but rich people, funny, or something. well, they are ridiculous.

- the whole story with the butler. talk about wasting screentime. his götz von berlichingen monologue was also really bad although i was delighted when i heard the verses. it just didn’t land. that goes for many scenes this season imo. i don’t know if it was the directing or what but even stuff that looks interesting on paper just does not come across well. it just comes across as ridiculous and manieriert. but not in the good way. (there is a way to do this well and the show used to walk that line very well. not anymore, it seems.)

- (side note: the frivolity of the movie industry provided the perfect pastiche for that sort of thing in s3. which is why i really vibe with it, as someone who’s a huge fan of 1930s movies. didn’t even mind that they relocated the apex of expressionism into the late 1920s when that’s very ahistorical. but anyway that’s a different topic.)

- actually as a last point on the nyssen storyline, abe goldstein shooting a hole in the ship instead of shooting anne marie in the head made me groan. it was so obviously written that way just to give her a chance to pop up later again. it made absolutely no sense, even if you try to handwave it as an attempt at poetic justice. neither did helga leaving her down there make any sense. she had no way of knowing that abe would kill her or make it seem like he killed her. at that point, helga still looked like she could think straight, she didn’t tumble around deliriously, she made a clear choice. and they just did it for the twist, not because it made sense for the character in that moment.

- the show was always very drunk on coincidences, twists of fate etc in that 19th century charles dickens / victor hugo way and i could dig that for the most part because they had this rich tapestry of social commentary going on. while i can still appreciate the breadth of society that they’re trying to show, it now comes across as shallow, there’s no immersion, i was extremely distanced from everything going on and couldn’t have cared less, which is a damn shame considering that this is where we should start feeling even more involved.

- as for one storyline that i couldn’t have cared less about: everything to do with toni. in fact, i think it would have been far more poignant if we hadn’t seen her for a season and hadn’t known what had become of her after running away and then when we least expect it, charlotte comes across her living on the streets, maybe while chasing a suspect or something. now that’s a coincidence i could buy. and such a scene would play like a gut punch. but they rob themselves of any dramatic impact by wanting to overexplain and overshow and being all pedagogical which is a huge problem in the writing of german tv shows and s4 of babylon berlin has started showing all the hallmarks of mediocre german tv and it makes me feel sick, considering how stylish and epic the previous seasons were.

- toni’s actress is not good. i’m sorry. i just have to say it. but also, they stuck her in a nothing storyline. moritz’ actor fares better but if they wanted to pair off the spares and get rid of them, they needed to do that in a way that would’ve left more screentime for the interesting and/or relevant stuff. like, uhm, everything to do with malu/litten/charlotte etc. it’s a damn crime that they didn’t do anything with lotte being fired from the police and then hired by litten. nothing. she gets to mope around at the bar a little bit and poor jacky gets to be her hapless sounding board (he deserves better, so many characters and actors in this cast deserve better). and then she gets to be gereon’s emotional support system. once again, charlotte is deprived of any and all agency and no, the double-wielding scene does not make up for it. the scenes in that haus sonneborn institution were well-shot, the horror film genre influence was clear, but unfortunately i don’t much care for horror films and i also, at that point, did not much care for toni or her friend or the pathologist (f*ck him for getting rudi killed in a very lame rip-off of stephan’s much superior exit) and we all knew lotte wasn’t going to die. that’s what i mean by immersiveness: where in previous seasons i’d have been on the edge of my seat with tension and dread, this didn’t elicit much emotion from me at all. except for the groan when lotte did her thing at the end there. the only good thing to come out of that was her conversation with gereon about her guilt which was the only time in the entire season where i believed a scene between them, emotionally, and was invested.

- i guess that, on the bright side, she got to be happy. i support that. even though i don’t believe it should have to come at the expense of the show being good. and she still had to go through that awful ordeal of the dance marathon. (one of the few memorable scenes of the season, at the very least.)

- random but i very much liked the actor playing oskar. and he was very much underutilized. really, don’t get me started on the entire debacle that was malu’s storyline. i think i’d rather have watched an entire season set on that zeppelin than what we ended up with.

- litten not even being in the finale should actually be considered a crime against humanity considering he’s literally the best character on the show at this point. for that matter, the trial against katelbach and the undermining of the legal system and the press should have been a much bigger arc and point. katelbach still being a comic relief character only used to bumble about not knowing whether he did propose to behnke or not is absolutely ridiculous. these are the characters we’ve come to know and care about and they were paid absolute dirt in s4. behnke’s best scene was the train heist and even that was not edited or scored well but hey, at least it was amusing and they did something with some sort of flair there.

- going back to lotte for a moment. i’m happy for the charlotte/gereon shippers that they got so much fucking out of them this season (to be crude, then again so is the show) but i can’t be the only one who thought they were awkward as all hell together. i never shipped them but i did always like their dynamic and i thought their kiss in s3 was magical. what they did with them here did absolutely nothing for me, i cringed when she visited him at the station and their idea of sexy talk in between kisses was discussing case-related work. none of it had the levity, flirtation or charm you’d see in a lubitsch film (one of the alleged inspos for this season) although liv lisa fries sold the hell out of her infatuated smiles and looks. volker bruch trying to smile was physically painful to me, however. sure, it could be charming that he’s an awkward turtle duck but considering everything we know about the bts issues, it really didn’t endear me any further. i dread having to watch them be awkward together in future seasons and i absolutely dread lotte’s only purpose being tied up in that. for that matter, how did she earn her badge back at the end? surely not with her double-wielding gun action? but it’s not like the show really cared to pursue this as a storyline or her as a character this season, so why should i care.

- the way they threw rukeli in there at the very end of the season was almost offensively bad. i was extremely excited for him to show up ever since they had insinuated that he’s her half-brother in s3. the actor here was fine (i wouldn’t count on him being accurately or sensitively cast bc german productions usually don’t do this, haven’t checked it, however) but you’re really going to do a whole season where boxing is at the very least on the periphery and you’re only going to throw him in at the end to make some sort of point? we didn’t even get to stay with him and lotte during their first meeting? we’re just supposed to believe they have some sort of relationship now after that camera shot panned out, showing them through the window of the café? i’m sorry but what?

- worst of all: them having him use chalk as white paint to mock the nazis in the audience to make a point. you can’t make a character we’ve barely even met the dramatic and emotional high point of the season. and i’m sorry but rukeli was a real person and in real life he was forced to present himself with bleached hair and white paint in an “aryanized” form, this was part of the abuse he suffered!!! it makes me absolutely mad to think about how they tried to turn this into some kind of empowerment thing here. nevermind that at this point in time, audiences were still overwhelmingly on his side and actually protested against fights being rigged against him. i just absolutely hate everything this scene chooses to be. i also hate how gereon walks up to that one guy who can command~ the crowd and we get a flashback to something that happened in the same episode, like, just 30 minutes earlier, to remind us that this is the guy he refused to shoot so they can defuse the situation in the dumbest most construed way possible. i feel like i’m losing my mind when i see people say that this is good writing. good writing would have involved audiences not needing a flashback to something that happened in the same episode, just because almost nothing in this season is giving anything resembling the appropriate weight and focus.

- speaking of which, the case of the season was so uninteresting and lame i even forgot to talk about it. and i still don’t have anything to say. except one thing: why did weintraub not immediately suspect that something was up with max (the henchman) when that car bomb went up killing the other henchman? because weintraub arrived in the car, went inside, came back outside and suddenly a bomb has been attached to his car in the meantime and max was standing there all the time? like, what?? this season is littered with this dumb shit and maybe it was prevalent in the other seasons as well and i just chose to overlook it because there was so much for me to love but i genuinely can’t believe five adults wrote this season and struggled so much with thinking any of it through. it feels like they just had little chess figures with pictures of the characters attached to them and tried moving them across a board.

- oh and one more thing about the flashback issue. böhm and his family being in that apartment at the very end was an absolutely ridiculous scene. his money issues were well-telegraphed, a little too well-telegraphed if you ask me, and his involvement in the shoot-up was already extremely obvious by the time his wife demands to know where he’s got his money from. that bit where he collapses against the wall and we get all these flashbacks to things an audience that’s half-way intelligent and half-way paying attention has already gotten long ago was just embarrassing for the show. the issue wasn’t just with the flashback, however, it was also with the way it was shot and edited. so many scenes this season really don’t land as intended. i feel bad for the actors because they’re doing their best and they’re also not at fault for this weird issue in german shows where they do really bad ADR (re-dubbing scenes when there were sound issues in the footage from set, it makes dialogue sound very unnatural and strange and the show always had this issue in certain scenes but in this season it’s amplified to the max, i almost couldn’t watch the edgar/gereon reunion because of the bad sound engineering). but woof that böhm family scene could have been a highlight but the way he creepily said something to the effect of them never being separated (probably telegraphing an eventual fate that we call “erweiterter suizid” in german where usually a man kills his family and then himself) and then the show just straight up cutting to the nyssen last will scene without giving any of it the time to sink in was absolutely comical. i’m sorry. but there are scenes this season that feel amateur and i don’t think you can blame it on covid when the editing is at issue.

- having said all of that, i was excited for gereon’s arc this season and imo they never did anything of note with him undercover in the SA. why not have him befriend stennes for real, become conflicted about what he’s trying to do (and, well, in fact him and the police president do want stennes to succeed so it wouldn’t even have been that outlandish). him talking to the police president about the mission at home while his very much indoctrinated nephew is in listening distance was so so dumb omg.

- the stennes putsch which i also was very much looking forward to was such a flop that fizzled out without any real spark. his confrontation with wendt was lame af. the actor is awesome, his interactions with wendt in s3 were intriguing and this what it all leads up to? gdi. i can’t believe they wasted so much time on that homophobic blackmail material plot when it was never even picked up again after it got stennes out of prison. he never should have gone to prison before the putsch, he already had his conflict with wendt from last season, they could have saved so much time on this and dedicated it to something actually interesting. and if you actually want to get into the messiness of homophobia and homosexuality in the SA, röhm and all, you better be prepared to bring on figures like magnus hirschfeld (it’s honestly ridiculous he hasn’t even been referenced on the show yet because he was super famous in berlin and germany in general and also a favorite target of the nazis). reference the harden-eulenburg affair. do something with this. not just have wendt buggering a kid in a park. i like that gräf was quietly pissed at gereon about the whole thing but this should never have been a storyline in the way it was implemented.

- it really ruined wendt on top of things. not that it made him worse as a person because he was already bad before (though lbr it did make him worse ofc) but it made him a whole lot more uninteresting as a villain (he only seemed to find his groove back in the last two episodes). the interesting part of his dynamic with malu in s3 was the intellectual clash of ideologies. while i did not and do not ship them, i was very intrigued to see where they would take that in s4. well, i have my answer. they skipped any and all interesting and relevant development and turned it into an extremely clichéd and lame honey trap plot because we all know communists loved honey traps. groan. (yes, i watched the americans.) also, rilke is my favourite poet and has been for many many years and wendt needs to keep his words out of his damn mouth. i can’t believe they revealed that wendt used to sexually abuse underaged boys and still wanted us to think that his relationship with malu is in any way romantic, cute or intriguing?

- i was so rooting for doktor völcker to get him and then malu just had to take a bullet for him. bruh. just when i thought i couldn’t hate this season more. i know i already mentioned it but still. at least she didn’t die from it, small blessings, but her getting shot straight through the chest and then being back to spy shenanigans on the zeppelin not much later was just the height of ridiculousness. i always hated the train confrontation between gereon and bruno and it seems that the show is very very determined to evermore move towards that pulpy comic book-y version of the show that i can barely tolerate in order to get to the good stuff. but when there’s barely any good stuff to get to, it gets tough.

- do i even want to talk about edgar? him taking the kids away from esther was lame. anything to do with esther was lame. i can’t even muster more to say and edgar/gereon was one of my absolute favourite dynamics in s1/2 so i should’ve been overjoyed to see it make a return here. but, in the eternal words of the matrix: not like this.

- finally, doktor schmidt, eh? well. where to begin. first of all, jens harzer is one of the best living german actors, he’s phenomenal, and the fact that he still gets so little development is a fucking joke, frankly speaking. i might have liked his scene with alfred lying on the floor best. at least it was funny. his sessions with gereon were hamfisted in their analogies. his last scene with gereon also didn’t land, it was just groan-worthy. gereon repeating back his words just made it all the more obvious how much of their luster they have lost at this point. i can’t believe someone spoke schmidt’s platitudes in a serious way like some sort of cool mic drop when the “quelle der angst” stuff only works in that hypnotic evil drugged out therapy session way jens harzer says it. the cgi was also bad but that’s neither here nor there (there was a surprising number of badly lit and framed scenes in this season, idk if they changed cinematographers but even the staple shot of following a centered gereon with his hat around became extremely overused). the thing is that i’ve long been convinced that doktor schmidt isn’t actually anno / gereon’s brother, so i should be happy that he seems to be finally be revealed as a svengali type which i also find very fitting for the movies and culture the show references as well as the history it tries to reflect (in fact, this season was as thematically rich as ever, with many metaphors and analogies for the rise of evil etc etc but what good is that if it’s all pedagogical and the actual character writing is either non-existent or utter bullshit?). they’ve dragged this out for too long now. they also, and this might be the worst offense, have completely lost the connection gereon is supposed to have to this plot. nevermind helga or moritz. have doktor schmidt be a svengali figure, fine, love that, i vibe with it, but that doesn’t mean this plot should have no advancement. it really feels like they treaded water for as long as they could because they only had a very vague idea of where they wanted to go with this and still needed to figure out the details. well, hire some fucking writers (and by that i don’t mean hire your wife, like one of the director/writers did for s4).

- i’ve really come to loathe this very german tradition of producers, directors and others thinking they can write scripts themselves and that there are barely any decent writers around who are just that, writers. we have some that are barely okay but the structural issues of underpayment etc ensure that the talent that exists can’t turn this into a job. instead you really just have nepotism and all those people who think they can write but where the wheels eventually come off. now i’ve loved babylon berlin for a very long time, i’ve been there since the beginning, i’ve actually been there since the first press announcement (the show spent a lot of time in production hell before s1/2 saw the light of day, the budget kept ballooning etc). and i will say that i think the first three seasons featured some of the best that german tv has to offer. (s3 slightly less so but it was still entertaining and i think they did a really good job introducing a number of great characters like malu and litten in it, plus sabin tambrea is always fun!) but i must now question whether i was not more so taken in by the direction, the music, the style, and some very expertly shot and executed scenes that the show either cannot or does not want to afford anymore. the type of scenes that are needed to let the wild and often nonsensical plotting breathe and give the characters a chance to shine, to give all of it depth and resonance. i’m really so profoundly sad by the direction this show’s quality has taken and i have no idea whether it’s because one of the directors did more this season than the others, whether it was because of the new writers (i hope not). whatever happened, they had enough prep time and this just ain’t it.

- last point: i know how annoying it is when a show that you love gets hated on by others, so this is the last thing i’ll say about that. but i really needed to get this off my chest because i’ve been loving the show for a very long time, i’ve been investing a lot of time (not so much in recent years but before that) into spreading the word, at least here on tumblr and irl where i got several people into the show who all disliked s4 as well btw, i loved making gifs (which is also why i’d say i have a very good eye for the cinematography and style of the show and all the finer details but gif-making isn’t a real credential ofc lol). and i’m usually quite chill about stuff, i’m neither a super stan even when i love something (which is also why i didn’t watch it first thing it came out) nor am i a hater when i don’t like something but a case like this, where i genuinely loved something and it turns sour, that hurts, man. i’ll probably watch the next season - if there’s a next season! - because i still hold out hope that it might be better, i think it’s an important history to tell and the show had everything set up in order to tell it. there are two gif sets i want to make of this season (which is also always a good gauge for me to tell how i feel about something, and even those sets aren’t sets i absolutely want to do but i’ll do them nonetheless at some point; probably). after that i don’t think i will use this blog much anymore but i’ll keep it online for as long as tumblr is online because i always find it annoying when other people delete their stuff.

so long und auf wiedersehen!

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

https://www.tumblr.com/itshouldhavebeencanon/661890115241656320/siambre-fkef-crienselt-after-years-of?source=share

why do the zutarians continue to insist so persistently that Ehaz wanted to create aBook Four and make zutara a canon, but he was simply not allowed to do so? where did these rumors come from, which of them is true? and is it true that this is an official poster from a Korean studio?

"Why do Zutarians insist on (insert random thing that would somehow "prove" they were screwed over by Bryke) being true" because they are desperate for canon validation, and cannot enjoy their ship just for the sake of enjoying it. They made this stupid ship war their entire personality, so recognizing that it is totally fanon, but a fanon that they like, is not a matter of "ship and let ship" to them, it becomes "accepting defeat and being seeing as the losing side."

As for why they latched onto Ehasz in particular it's simple:

1 - He was the head-writer, meaning he was probably the person with the most influence on Avatar (except for the showrunners and the netwoork execs of course).

2 - He DID want a book four, and had some ideas that he wanted to see explored.

He's an "authority" figure that had been planning extra content and that created plenty of the content we already watched and liked. Having that guy on their side would be HUGE for Zutara.

Too bad he's a Maiko fan, and in fact repeatedly says he's glad Mai got her happy ending with Zuko, and was very moved by the letter of a fan that related to her and was rooting for Maiko. But that's okay, Zutarians "corrected" that by literally writing a fake interview in which he confirmed Zutara was the real planned endgame but evil Bryke made them change it at the last minute - the fact that Ehasz has already said "This interview is total bullshit" many times does not at all stop them from spreading that rumor around and using it as sword and shield.

It's a cope. Plain and simple. They think that if they convince everyone Zutara was supposed to be canon, they can get some of the new material or the Netflix reboot or literally anything to break up Kataang and Maiko and add their ship in it's place.

As for that Korean poster, I have no idea if it's real or not, but even if it wasn't that would just mean that the artist either liked the ship and wanted to push it a bit or it was just a result of the ancient art of "Bait a desperate motherfucker to buy what we're selling." Not exactly the big "win" Zutarians want to pretend it was.

Hell, I ship Zuko with his own sister, something Nickelodeon would obviously NEVER allow to be canon, and if you give me five minutes I could point to everytime the voice actors (ESPECIALLY Grey Delisle), writers and Bryke have mentioned the ship throughout the years, mention all the memes people who don't even like the ship made about how strange the bedroom scene in "The Awakening" was, quote a lot of lines from the novelizations that show there's more than just hate and envy between the fire siblings, and then bring to your attention that Ehasz has repeatedly said he wanted Azula to redeem herself, that Zuko was the person she loved the most (except for Ozai), and that in his mind book four would have Auzla hit her lowest point and find Zuko there to help her get back on her feet.

Yes, all of these things happened. Does that mean Zucest is the "real" canon ship for Zuko instead of Maiko?

No. Because no matter what ideas were thrown around, be it as a joke or seriously, the path canon would follow was VERY CLEAR for a long time. The show was pushing Kataang from the very first episode and Maiko from the very first episode we met her - even the occasional "distractions" like Jet and Jin and were obviously not going to be their endgame.

Does that mean I don't get to enjoy my ship anymore, and can't be happy when it gets mentioned?

Nope. It just means I need to keep in mind that shipping is supposed to be FUN, not a goddamn fandom war, and that something being fanon doesn't make it bad, inferior, or something that is "forbidden" to like - and in fact, I have every right to prefer it to what we got in canon. I just don't get to LIE about what we actually got in canon.

If only Zutarians had chosen THAT mentality instead of "We are totally the real deal and if you point out that this is bullshit we will send you death threats", I wouldn't have made this blog, and would still be just indifferent to the ship instead of hating it.

[hotarutranslations]

stuffin

Evening

I went and saw Kudou Haruka-chan's live🪽

She really did her best! Thanks for your hard work--!

The fans watching over her were kind, When asked who was meeting Duu for the first time, We were happy when there were people raising their hands,

There were also wonderful things to see☺️🫶🏻

With the band in the background, bathed in the lights, the sight of her singing alone,

Maybe its because I've seen here a ton as an actress,

It looked like a scene from a work! It was cool!

(asking if it was fun)

(My hair is too long and I ended up tying it in a bun, don't worry about its awkward look, ok)

With various meanings, the MC was interesting🧐🧐

This Duu, isn't good at MC's lol

Maa and I thought about what to say for the second show🧐🧐 lol

But including everything, this is a stage the current Duu has made, and she sent straight out to us

She did her best, right---🌏🪽

Her drama is starting in April, lets watch it everyone, definitely👱🏼‍♀️🤟🏾💖

95

Today I,

Updated Tokyo Sports note Series✍🏻 I'll tell you more about the 13 in Morning Musume '24

Special Interview✍🏻 "I want to develop my influence" "Doing my best without change isn't enough" Ishida Ayumi's Steady Ambitions 【Tokyo Sports Editor/More Than 5000 Characters!】

These 2 have updated!!!

In the series I wrote about everyone and, I talked about my own changes in the interview

Please definitely read it🪽

🩵🎫e+ 🩵🎫TicketPia

Also the finale has been decided

May 27th (Mon) Nippon Budoukan .🌏👏🏻

The Ticket FC Advance Reception is undergoing! I'm looking forward to being able to meet!

📺Hello Pro Dance Gakuen Season 11

April 18th 11:30PM~ A Learning From TSUKUSHI-san Adventure🕺

In season 10 we challenged breakin', its reairing continuously! On the 15th, 17th, 19th, 20th, 21st, 22nd, #1~#6 all at once! Check out HP for info!

Sendai Broadcast "Ara Ara Kashiko" Every week (Sat) 10:25AM~ Ishida Ayumi Goes~!

I appear once a month as part of the AraKashi Family

The previous shows, and makings, are on OX VIDEO STORE!

Also on YouTube

Sendai Broadcast Ara Ara Kashiko

📺"HinaFest 2024" Before Special ~NamaTake Member Great Gathering 2 Hour SP~

CS TV Asa Channel March 24th (Sun) 12:00PM~

Thank you for following.. Instagram💙🩵

💿Releasing February 7th

Morning Musume '23 25th ANNIVERSARY CONCERT TOUR ~glad quarter-century~ at Nippon Budokan

Thank you for waiting for the Blu-ray&DVD! Its finally releasing--!

Its already nostalgic but, It has an amazing medley, really Please enjoy it many times

📚Releasing on February 7th "Hello! Project BEST SHOT!! Vol.26"

Ishida AyumixOda SakuraxNonaka Miki📸 Fukumura MizukixIshida AyumixOda Sakura📸

✍🏻Tokyo Sports note Series I'll tell you more about the 13 in Morning Musume '24

Announcement of Series Graduation in March

🪩Spring Tour Has Been Decided Morning Musume '24 Concert Tour Spring MOTTO MORNING MUSUME

We'll be going around the country from March 16th!

🪩HinaFest March 30th and 31st at Makuhari Messe

🪩JAPAN JAM Morning Musume '24 will be performing on May 3rd!

⚾️《LIVE DAYS！～Exciting Big Exhibition Match～》 June 2nd(Sun), after the Hokkaido Ham Fighters vs. Yokohama DeNa Baystars match, Morning Musume '24 will be having a special mini live!

.👗👠 Aoyama Clothing x Morning Musume '24

📻Morning Musume '24 Morning Jogakuin ~Houkago Meeting~

Airs Every Saturday, On Radio Nihon at 12:00AM~

Past Broadcast Episodes Are Available →Program Details

Yamazaki Mei's Panda-san Daisuki!! ~Expressing Love Towards My Favorite Panda-san♡ ver.~ in Adventure World

Yamazaki Mei's Panda-san Daisuki!! Mei-chan's Holiday. Adventure World with Oda-san and Ishida-san

see you ayumin <3

[mybrainproblems]

the thing is i'm hyperaware of the fact that i'm Weird About Andrew Dabb but it comes from a place of me realizing back in fall 2021 that i wanted to identify why exactly i didn't like him and deciding to do a close watch of his spn eps. and when i realized i was enjoying parts of it, i decided to see what i could turn up any of his non-spn work. (this is something i've always tended to do with creatives: tracking down older stuff for a more holistic view of their work.)

i was so stuck on how much i hated some parts of his writing (s7 dabb-loflin is horrendous) and couldn't get past that... then i found out independently that he was showrunning the upcoming netflix resi show (a franchise i both love and have complicated feelings about) which filled me with dread that the guy who co-wrote 07x22 would helm a show with a predominantly black cast -- especially with the ultimate villain, albert wesker, played by a black man (RIP lance reddick, you are dearly missed). i wanted to be optimistic but i was ready to be infuriated and was so nervous that i'd hate something i'd been looking forward to as some camp horror tv.

but then. oh. OH. it was everything i ever wanted from resi and never thought i could have. i could not conceive of a resi like this. a resi where women and poc are treated with empathy and as nuanced characters with interiority. where they are the central characters. the video games have their own issues but the movies are truly egregious when it comes to black characters. so to have a predominantly black cast (and a black female protag, no less!) and have them treated respectfully was amazing. this was a show that had heart and a somewhat diverse writer's room and bts crew (not saying it was perfect) and you could see that difference in how characters were treated and how the plot and direction was handled. (i think having female directors and producers in particular helped a lot.)

for those who have not seen the anderson/jovovich movies: there is always a token black character and they will always die by the halfway mark bc they make stupid decisions. it's non-stop tits and ass shots of jovovich (which feels super weird when the director is her husband). alice (jovovich) is an Action Girl who is frequently subjected to sexualized violence but unfortunately, i love the camp horror of it. it's complicated. the video games have their own issues with the portrayal of women and ada wong being DLC feels really shitty when she's so pivotal. women are largely either helpless or Strong Sexy Action Women.

like i really cannot express just how much 8 episodes of tv so wholly changed my opinion of a writer/showrunner bc it showed such growth. a showrunner is only one piece of the puzzle of a tv show but they are the ones guiding it and the ones who have substantial influence in the hiring and development/direction of the story.

it's like. i don't forgive dabb for 07x22 and the shit he wrote with loflin (or solo, tho he improved a lot without loflin), but to see how resi turned out and to read/watch interviews with him and the bts crew is like. oh, okay. i think this person gets it now. i don't think i can forgive and forget bc s7 makes my blood boil, but i can accept that growth has happened here and that's what we should want from people.

also i'm gonna say that when i look at how i am Weird About Dabb and take a step back, i can see that i'm about as weird about him as some folks are about other writers and actors from spn (and willing to acknowledge his faults). i just chose a weird writer to be Weird about.

sorry but i just have a lot of feelings about resi.