#its the worst thing we can do

[laurenkmyers]

The new year in England is rapidly approaching and it always seems to make everyone so reflective.

So I figured, as this year has been one of the best, but also without a doubt, the *worst* years of my life, I'll make a reflective post of my own. This is more for me than for any of you, but if you find comfort or resonate with anything that I do say, hi- you're not alone.

Sometimes it's easy to forget that not everything is as you see on social media. People's lives are so vastly different to what we see through the lense of instagram or twitter, and sometimes even through his loveable hell site. It may look like someone is the happiest they have ever been, when in reality someone could be suffering and putting on a happy face to avoid the awkward questions.

My life this year started off strong- I had a dream job in film. I was financially stable. I had savings for the first time in my life. I was able to splash out and buy things I wanted without worrying what to eat that month.

One of the highlights was seeing my name on the big screen for Barbie. It was my first ever credit since joining the film industry. It had people I haven't spoken to in years reaching out to tell me how proud they were of me. It was a bit of a whirlwind to be honest. I felt untouchable, I felt seen for the first time. I felt great.

Until I didn't. Until it all came crashing down. The film industry went on strike. No, sorry, the writers and actors went on strike and the crews were forced out of work because of it. Now, don't get me wrong, I am 100% with the writers and the actors and I support the strikes wholeheartedly, but the knock on effect to the crews was one one the darkest times of my life. I suddenly found myself out of work, unable to find a new job, and that wasn't to say I didn't try. I cold-emailed every company, every production I knew who were still working, and even the ones I didn't. But alas, it was all in vain. There was no work.

My mental health was deteriorating rapidly and I didn't know what to do to bring myself back out of the dark. So I looked at my dwindling bank account and made a last minute decision. I'd never had this amount of time off from work before, and the only thing that gave me a shred of happiness was my silly little bl shows.

So I did what I thought would make me happy. I booked a last minute flight, and 3 weeks later I was in Thailand having the best 12 days of my fucking life. I met my long time, long distance bestie in person for the first time. I went to some of the most beautiful temples I had ever seen. I met the love of my life, Bible Wichapas, not once, but twice as I supported him at a local event. I made new friends who I still keep in contact with. I saw so many bl boys in the flesh it still boggles the mind. I travelled to the north of Thailand on an overnight sleeper train. I took a speedboat to literal Heaven on Earth and swam in the most crystal clear ocean. I got 4 tattoos all commemorating my time in Thailand and my love of Jeff Satur, Prapaisky, and Vegas Theerapanyakul (by definition Bible), by a local artist who charged me next to nothing (and then I got one more tattoo for my SKZ bias Bang Chan). I cried meeting an elephant. I visited some of the most iconic Kinnporsche the series sets. I rode on the back of a scooter for a forty minute journey that cost me £1.50. I ate the spiciest dish of my little white girl life. I got to see Man Suang on the big screen. I met Mileapo at the airport and Mile smiled and waved directly at me. I got stuck on a boat during the heaviest rainfall of my life. And overall it was the best experience I have ever had. I fell in love with the city, the culture, and everything in between.

But the moment I landed back home in England, the things I had desperately tried to bury by living my best life for 12 days hit me like a sack of shit. I had no income, no money, and a mountain of bills to pay. All those savings I had were gone in just 6 months. I started to panic. I had (several) breakdowns. I couldn't pay my friend back the money I still owed her. I could barely pay my rent. I couldn't tell my parents because I didn't want to tell them I'd failed. But I was stuck. I applied for any and every job under the sun, but even they didn't want me. I felt fucking useless... and once again my mental health was dragging me down to hell. I couldn't see a way out. When I did eventually get up the courage to tell my parents, one of them told me I was a fool to spend what little money I had left travelling to Thailand, as if I didn't already know it was a dumb idea. But what they didn't know was that the trip had ultimately saved my life.

After that reality check, I did what I have never in my life needed to do. I asked for financial help. And both my parents came through. I know how lucky I am that they did. Not everyone can turn to parents to help them out. I'm forever grateful. They gave me £500 each. So I now had rent money for two more months. I also went on benefits (which I'd refused to even consider for so long because to me if felt like defeat- it's not). But then I took the first job that would take me. I now have an income. It's minimum wage, but it pays the bills. I finally feel like I'm slowly making my way back to the surface. I've still got a long fucking road ahead of me, I'm still overwhelmed as fuck, working tow jobs and studying to teach English as a foriegn language, but things are slowly taking shape again.

I'm hoping the new year will help me get back on my feet. I've accepted a few days on a very well known soap which I'm excited and nervous about, but hopefully with it, the momentum in the industry I love that I lost last year will start to come back to me.

Overall, this year has been fucking crazy in the best and worst ways and I'll be glad to see the back of it. I'm not one for making resolutions as I tend to live life day by day, but my hope for this year is to get back to somewhere near where I was before.

And most importantly, I want to go back to Thailand in the not-too-distant future. Whether that's to visit or live, who knows?

2024- Let's fucking goooooo!

[bacchuschucklefuck]

dreaming abt sophomore year class swap bard!riz

[yeonjune]

Yeonjun about the strain he felt while preparing for his debut solo project ✙ "GGUM" MAKING FILM

[xxplastic-cubexx]

was talking to my brother the other day after i rewatched dark phoenix and he was like 'why is everyone so mean to charles in this movie?? were they always this mean to him ?? is it cause he's bald now- he lost his pretty privilege??' and i fear i havent recovered

[boarcide]

I truly think that one of the biggest tragedies in BEAST in regards to the Akutagawa siblings is that, at the core of it, Ryuunosuke viewed himself as a beast, and showed his love in a way a beast would, while Gin was the only person who ever saw him as human and judged him accordingly. She did not see a beast acting like a beast, the way everybody else did, she saw a human acting like a beast and it’s part of what drove her away.

The ADA saw their rookie detective at his worst, and watched—and continues to watch—him grow from a beast to a human over time. Consumed by hatred and only knowing how to be cruel, and slowly learning how to become human.

Gin saw her brother at his best—the best he could be in their situation—and then watched him grow from a boy to a beast within moments. The scraps of humanity that he had, all disappearing into rage so primal it no longer made him seem human.

[kan-be]

everyday is a fruk day here but today is especially so 🥳

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

some Friendly Maintenance scribbles i forgot to post!

[natsmagi]

honestly the more i hear about engstars and its TLs the more i absolutely dread the inevitable release of poltergeist and what may ensue from it, bc if if the translators themselves are already invalidating arashis identity then i Really Truly do not want to see how theyll translate natsume and tsumugis microaggressions/transphobia towards her. esp since ive noticed a rise in people being comfortably transphobic towards her, and i REALLY do not wish to see natsume and tsumugi being stupid fucking morons be used as evidence to discredit her

and i think this is all the more reason why its VERY IMPORTANT for engstars to DIRECTLY ACKNOWLEDGE arashi and her gender. bc sometimes characters are STUPID and RUDE and APATHETIC. enstars is a story with NUANCED and FLAWED CHARACTERS, and when a character is being a fucking asshole youre meant to PROVE THEM WRONG. but they dont even acknowledge arashi as a girl themselves. so, if you do use engstars, please keep pressuring them bc omfg this is so bad and i can only see it getting worse

[dayurno]

this is somewhat of a vent post & something i said i would not do again but has been plaguing me enough that i think getting it out might feel better. so. has anydoggy else been. Baffled and upset by nora sakavic’s refusal to speak on how terribly aftg has treated its characters of color? with the author of the series coming back with a new book and starting up on her online activity again, and questions of what she’d change about aftg bubbling up, it’s particularly glaring to me that we are all playing this very long game of pretend where we ignore how badly the non-white cast has been treated & her lack of thoughts on it

and i understand not wanting to bring up nicky and thea because people pick on her for it. i’m not trying to discredit nora sakavic’s terrible history of getting harrassed online by aftg fans. but i think it is very cynical, and it is very juvenile, and most of all very cruel, that she gets to ignore the very real ways the books have set up these characters to be hated. i think it’s obvious why the characters who get the most hate are the only canonical characters of color, and i think we do not get to treat this like a deliberate decision on the fandom’s part when the books have put these same characters in degrading and embarrassing and terrible positions in the first place. aftg is not a story about nice characters with clean pasts, but there is a very specific nastiness to the only characters of color being a brown man who sexually harasses and later assaults the main character, a black woman whose only scene is her lashing out at her love interest after being ignored for the first two books, and the japanese villain who gets maybe two lines of complexity before he goes back to being a terrible person. the white cast, in comparison, while not at all free from flaws, are never shown to commit mindless evil; all of their actions are ultimately justified. the book goes out of its way to give them concession after concession. we know exactly who to side with, because aftg tells us who these people are. does nicky’s assault ever get addressed in the books? does riko’s reasoning to be the way that he is ever gets more than briefly aluded to? is thea reserved even a shred of humanity or grace in her one scene?

anyway. it’s been years of talking about this and the fandom has been constantly hostile to criticism in this regard, and more recently any criticism at all, and it’s Grating to be on the other side of this discussion. it’s exhausting to know that in ten years we do not get even an acknowledgment besides the author saying she will not answer questions about nicky and thea anymore. it’s upsetting and it’s ugly and i wish no one had to talk about this again, but we do because what i thought was common sense has been washed away by a sudden influx of no-nuance adoration for the trilogy. basically i hope we all explode

[occidentaltourist]

bbc: Some sweet #Silvacre content for your FYP ❤️

[lanternlightss]

okay .. take two !!!

+ bonus doodles

[reel-fear]

Genuinely so curious who Mike thinks is gonna be buying The Cage or the new DCTL GN bc with the way he tweets as far as he's concerned, it's not gonna be:

The queer people he has actively admitted he will never show any representation of in the games.

2. The POC he has actively fought against representing in his franchise. [Who he also mocked for thinking they would be represented in his franchise]

3. The Bendy fandom which has always been concerned with topics of diversity esp in the sense of queer people since its creation. Who he has responded to really poorly esp in regards to the GN.

4. The fans who critique him. [He blocked me for doing so lol]

5. His fans in general who he tweets about like this currently. [He's being vague about why people were mad at him or sent him 'nasty messages' because if you actually looked into why you'd see he was in the wrong. Either way, a very hateful way to speak abt ur own fanbase.]

Reminder while Mike is trash talking his fans he has always treated them rather poorly. The fans who won the fanart contest for Chapter 5 never got their posters actually in game due to it being rushed. Not only was chapter 5 a big slap to the face story wise, but it was literally so rushed he couldn't be bothered to add in the art his fans gave him for his game FOR FREE. [Meatly blames this on a crazy timeline, reminder him and Mike are the literal ceos of this company. The proposal of future updates here is also pretty cruel considering Mike nowadays happily admits he corrupted Chapter 5's source code and therefore literally can't update it At All currently. Because he is a moron]

At least they got to be in Boris and the dark survival, and by that I mean that was the Only game they got to be in so far, isn't that just treating your fans like you love them? Shoving their hard work into a spin off game almost nobody has played or addresses much. [Hell, who knows if with the Lone Wolf rebrand they'll even stay there. In which case they'll be in None of the games, only in the credits of BATIM]

6. The Bendy fans who just generally disagree with him on stuff. Like the new ink demon design where there is literally a public poll showing people generally prefer the old one.

7. The Bendy fans who can see he is actively lying to them. To their fucking faces.

He says this has always been the case, but screenshots and links to tweets regarding the books being canon prove it was not. Does he really think bendy fans are stupid or something? [Unless he's admitting here he lied to Kress when he told her the books were canon which sounds worse!]

8. Anyone who doesn't like the idea of giving money to a guy who laid off tons of employees then afterwards thought it was a great idea to express his anti-union views! Also brag about how good of an employer he was, according to his employees, he was not!

So in summary; Mike is an awful person who has not learned anything from the awful things he did. I will not be purchasing The Cage because, combined with this and his absolute refusal to take any kind of critique or see any differing interpretation of his franchise, I have no reason to think my problems with the franchise will ever be addressed or fixed. I probably will pirate The Cage along with any future Bendy Products [Including the movie] and will do my best to avoid giving it any kind of monetary support. Unless this changes any time soon, I can't see myself making anymore positive Bendy posts soon.

Mike has just managed to make it so hard to speak positively or optimistically of this franchise when he's so willing to broadcast how little he cares about it or its fans. I'm at the point where I refuse to pull any of my punches with my problems with it. What's the point of trying to play nice with my critique when either way the people creating it don't care?

So with this post, I want to invite anyone who feels similarly about the franchise to tell me, make a post or send an ask talking about how all of this makes you feel. It may not change how things are, but genuinely seeing other people share my feelings of anger makes me feel better. It feels nice to see when other people share our same concerns and worries. I'd also love to know if anyone else thinks they'll be avoiding purchasing Bendy products over this.

I'm not forcing anyone to participate in it nor trying to say anyone who doesn't supports mike but genuinely maybe if we can collectively decide to boycott things like the movie, graphic novel and The Cage... It might at least make the bendy devs acknowledge how much they have destroyed their own fandom's faith and trust in them.

The way Mike tweets about his actions like he had no control over why people were mad at him at least proves to me he takes NONE of it back nor regrets it. If you didn't know about his actions and only went off his tweets, you would be led to believe Mike has been needlessly picked apart by fans over things he couldn't control [or in his own words, had his words twisted and taken out of context]. That is not how you speak about your actions if you have actually learned better from them.

anyway, that has been my bendy dev callout post. This is an open invitation to anyone feeling similarly upset about the way the franchise is going to talk about it. It's genuinely nice to see how people feel about this and the more we talk about the more it's likely the bendy devs are forced to address our concerns. I don't think they will but hey, that's why I'm not gonna support them with my money anymore nor am I gonna be nice to them in any content I make critiquing Bendy. I mean I'm also basically making this post just in case anyone asks me Why I feel this way towards to bendy devs/as a way to respond to anyone who thinks I am too harsh in my critique in the future.

As always, it seems the best part of Bendy isn't actually anything about canon but about what the fan's are creating with the ideas Bendy failed to do anything interesting with.

Also the books, the books slap.

[dykedvonte]

wanted to say I appreciate your nuanced takes on MW and especially Curly. i don't get the claim that the fandom is full of Curly apologists when majority (esp yt and tiktok) say he's worse than Jimmy. Yes there's commentary about bro culture defending people, he def messed up in trying to placate Jimmy (tbh "we'll fix this" sounded more like trying to keep someone prone to outbursts like Jim calm and not hurt Anya/himself) but I don't think he did nothing to help Anya, since she continued to confide in him and he had less than a week to resolve it before the crash (I also don't get everyone saying he knew for ages when it seems like Anya told him that same week). I get Jimmy's a pos but saying stuff like Curly should've known he'd crash the ship or that Jim had a criminal record he ignored, reducing them to obviously horrible villain and willfully ignorant sidekick feels like a disservice to the game. If your best friend turned out to be horrible, what would you do in a confined space in the span of a few days to respond? I'd say some of the horror comes from trying to do good but ultimately failing, Curly's state after the crash is meant to be tragic horror not revenge/punishment

Thank you and this is what I want to get across.

A lot of information we have to supplement when it comes to how long things have been happening on this current ship. I think people try to add on to the horror and negligence by making things more obvious so it can feel like it was easier to avoid when, true to life, its not. Jimmy clearly didn't deserve or appreciate what Curly did for him in getting him the job, but do you think if Jimmy was that big of a menace on Earth he would've given him a position where he could have that level of power over people's lives? There's something in the fact he specifically chose to pick a position so close to himself where he could watch Jimmy.

I hate the bro code argument because that is a whole can of worms people really don't get. That sort of mentality is born from the general respect and preference of male matter over female ones. Curly is clearly not that guy, he is absent minded about the issue and inadvertently dismissive but he clearly believes Anya, he just can't understand what she's going through. It's an onslaught of information that no one really reacts right to. Additonally, the entire discussion of her assualt plays to heavy into the idea that there is fault outside of the perpertratior when it comes to SA. It's too close if she only did this or if Curly had protected her better but the fact of the matter is Jimmy did what he did. He did it before any of the conversations with Anya about it and it's why her behavior seemed to change so drastically in those last two days.

He has other conflicting thought and while his role as a Captain should've taken over, people act like it's not a very human thing to have such a toxic presence cloud your judgement. It is never easy to separate friend from coworker once that connection is formed, you want to help them, especially if they were friend first and for a long while like in this case. It's not right, but people act like it would be easy when the game clearly points out that no choice is easy to make, especially when you have to make it for more than one person. You have the weigh the consequences, look at all the options and make a plan. People can headcanon and decide how long things where happening, but if we look at what we were presented through the characters eyes, the only person given time to do that was Jimmy.

He waited two months after the crash to appoint himself Captain. Every time a problem was brought up he immediately took action and refused to sit on it and find a better solution. I think it's important to look at the warped way Jimmy takes initiative where Curly didn't as it works as a good contrast of why you don't just run in to "fix" things. The quickest and easiest option may not be the safest or most beneficial. I think some thoughts on the game suffer from the black and white thinking the game doesn't operate on along with us being voyeurs. We see what exactly led to what but the characters don't. They don't have the hindsight and foresight we do and even ours is scrambled by the non-linear story telling.

Like it's hard to talk abuou those grey zones without sounding like an apologist because you're explaining why taking responsibility isn't easy. It's not and it's weird to act like it would be in a scenerio that led up to the events of the game knowing what we know. We see all these characters in such isolated moments with various things before, in between, after and even during we aren't privy too. The idea that Jimmy is worse than Curly heavily banks on the words Jimmy was saying to Jimmy before he crashed the ship. That whatever happened on the ship was his responsibility to bare, which is true due to his position. But, are they not still not responsible for taking the actions Curly then must bare?

Like i feel like people think that these are situation that become easier with age or when you are in a postion of authority and they aren't. You don't lose your biases or gain some sudden knowledge that makes it easier. It just becomes more tiring as you keep dealing with it. I would be first in line to say Curly fucked up and should've done more but the idea he knew how bad it could get or he really saw the worst in the people around him and ignored it pretty much ignores a huge aspect of his character and the game.

[evocatiio]

if chibnall was the one writing this season you lot would be talking VERY differently

[ducktracy]

reminder that if you're not watching Crayon Shin-chan then you are living a hollow and empty life. this is not edited. this ripped straight from the movie (Movie 8: Jungle That Invites the Storm, highly recommend for fellow Masaaki Yuasa lovers)

if you need further convincing: these monkeys run an animation sweatshop

[tommygotwrittenoff]

confession time!!! can't wait for bt bones