#like Jimmy used to not like the other gays at the beginning of being out

[templeofshame]

.

[bengiyo]

Last Twilight Ep 5 Stray Thoughts

Last week, Mhok took Day’s teasing that he has no tenderness in him as a personal challenge, and spent the entire episode flirting with Day through all of Day’s other senses.  Meanwhile, we ran into Gee, who was a friend Day had through badminton. Day managed to reconnect with her and hang out with some of his team members (but not August). Meanwhile, Porjai broke up with that cheating fiancé of hers, but not before he and Mhok got into another fight. We also learned that Porjai is pregnant, and is going to be staying with Mhok for now. Everyone kept saying how hot Mhok is, and after flirting with Day constantly, Day decided to sneak next to Mhok at night and look at his face.

It’s early and Mhok is already starting.

Oh ho! We’re playing around with honorifics again.

This breakfast scene is great. Day got himself up, made his own jellied bread, and didn’t balk at posting a picture to Facebook about it. It’s a good sign that he’s moving back into interactions with others.

Wait, why are we back to reading the book? I thought we were heading to the badminton match?

Oh, whew, it was a flashback providing some emotional context before we meet more people.

Okay, Day teaching Mhok how to comment on badminton is fun. He’s not an amateur, and Mhok doesn’t know the rules.

Film looks good.

I am a fan of sports. I was moved by Gee’s win and cried a little bit.

I love Mhok beginning to integrate into the banter with Gee.

Our first interaction with August and Day flees.

I’m loving this backstory. I am such a fan of sports drama.

Aof and his double entendres. “If you want to pick it up again, handle it with care.” I will fight him.

Thank you, Pride flag in the locker room, for letting us know there are gay stakes between Day and August.

Ohm Thipakorn is whipping extreme ass here with these eyes. You are upgraded from “Baby Ohm,” sir.

I am crying again because of the bonds between men. Even Mhok approves of August moving to singles rather than compete with someone else.

So, how mutual are the feelings between Day and August, and how much does the other know, because August took his hand in such a meaningful way before asking him out to dinner.

I’m with Mhok; I like him pushing Day to hang out with August.

Oh yes. It’s time for a practice date. We’ve gotten a few of these this year, and it hits every time.

Porjai ain’t shit, and she’s not gonna let Mhok go without getting a dig in.

I love how Mhok responds to all of Day’s teasing by going hard on the flirting.

This whole cake scene was cute as hell.

Oho, we’re getting back to the Night and Day stuff. Day thinks Mhok has also been fooled by Night.

Oh no. Please don’t spill water on yourself immediately and panic, Day.

It’s always 4:20 somewhere, amirite? (I don’t smoke)

Now where the fuck is August?

I’m glad Mhok stuck around to salvage this outing.

They went back to see if August ever arrived? I’m mad at August.

I AM LEANING IN. Day hadn’t confessed his crush on August, and today felt his heart break at some sort of final piece of reality he had to face.

August picked the most dramatic time to show up, and then just walked away after sensing something between Mhok and Day.

There’s so much going on! Mhok was about to admit his own feelings, but stopped because of August.

This was an excellent episode. I’m so proud of Ohm for being able to do more than just be adorable. We’ve got a great form of romantic angst here where the board isn’t completely set, but we know the players. These two definitely practiced a lot for this role. Jimmy has found his smolder.

[silly1ky]

STAN & KYLE HEADCANONS !!! :3

no one suggested it , i just simply wanted too lolz

stan: 

Had a short mullet in 8th-9th grade but dyes it blond over the summer out of nowhere lol. dyes it back to black his senior year

Listens to RADIOHEAD!!??

Plays the electric guitar 

Still apart of crimson dawn along with kenny

Butters and jimmy stopped playing - due to other school shit - so they held tryouts for a backup guitar player and a new drumist, eventually recruiting two freshmen

RAGING bisexual

Been kinda in love with kyle his whole life

Got braces in the middle of 7th grade and got them taken off at the end of 8th

Kyle eventually got braces too at the BEGINNING of 8th so throughout the whole year, him and kyle definitely matched bracket colors <3

5’8’’ ( 2 inches shorter than kyle )

Always been just a tiny bit shorter than kyle and has ALWAYS despised it while kyle relished in it lmao

Had his first kiss to wendy in 6th grade …. it was NOT good and they broke up like a month later 

They never got back together again, much to kyle's pleasure :D

To clarify, they did not break up bc the kiss wasn’t good, they both just realized that they were tired of eachother and that it was stupid trying to hold onto something from literal elementary school

They still talk sometimes but quickly get bored of each other

His style consists of pajama pants, baggy band t shirts, baggy jeans, blue hoodies, and converse

He totally has stickers all over his guitar along with “ k + s “ drawn with in silver sharpie <3

Pins and keychains decorated his school backpack

Sometimes paints his nails but gets mad or anxious and ends up peeling them off by lunchtime

Has wrote 16 songs all dedicated to kyle

HATES social media and only has accounts so that he could look at kyles posts and videos

Still uses an mp3 player .... he SAYS it's bc it sounds better but that's a bunch of bs. he definitely just uses it for the “look”

PLAYS HOCKEY

Was on the team for about a year in 9th grade but QUICKLY got sick of the practices 

Listens to radiohead, slipknot, iron maiden, weezer, and deftones

Favorite movies/tv shows are bojack horseman, mid90s, and shameless

Tried to learn how to skateboard with kyle and actually kept up with it for about the whole 10th grade

REFUSES to get a tiktok account

he would probably watch youtube shorts or instagram reels...... 🤠

He would send Kyle tiktoks that were funny like 7 months ago which he JUST got to see on ig reels.

He definitely had a fnaf phase

has car sickness totally

TOTAL dog person

both:

their houses are right next to eachother !!!

they definitely sneak into eachother's rooms at night

they got together sometime in middle school, after kissing on stan's roof and they both discovered that they were major fags for eachother

they go to the same college too!!!!

stan always joins kyle's tiktok or insta lives ( even if it's the most boring thing in the world )

"no homo dude" "oh yeah totally no homo lol" is their catchphrase most definitely

kyle:

Stayed on the basketball team throughout 8th-12th grade

5’10’’ 2 inches taller than stan

He loves being taller than him

gay gay homosexual gay

Didn’t really have to “come out” everyone kinda already knew he wasn't straight lol 

Had a little rebellious phase in 10th grade and ended up stabbing a needle through his nose and belly button at like 4 in the morning, the same night that stan bleached his hair ironically (not ironically as they had snuck out together lmao )

By 7am he had a nose stud, a belly ring, and his lobes pierced

Did them all by himself minus his bellybutton, which stan helped him with

It was literally just the piercing scene from thirteen LMAOOOO

Wardrobe mainly consists of sweatpants, green and brown hoodies, straight jeans, nike's, and ugg neumels. oh and lots of grandpa sweaters.

Listens to the cure, tyler the creator, radiohead, the smiths, and the offspring (sometimes ldr too)

Stopped wearing his hat in 7th grade, it just didn’t fit right anymore ( plus it kinda stunk )

Reads romance novels and hyperfixates over them definitely but he will NEVER admit this

ALWAYS live on insta and tiktok

Secretly LOVES stan's dyed hair (he totally thinks its hot)

His first kiss was with stan. at 2 am. on his roof.

Total grammer nerd

bullies ppl when they make grammar mistakes

Lowkey kinda popular on tiktok

STRAIGHT A'S!!!!! 

and REFUSES to get anything below a 85

fucking nerd

OH and he definitely cusses WAY to much ( its kinda a problem )

Gets into so many fights at school (mainly caused by cartman) but has developed kinda a bad reputation for himself

has such road rage

lowkey best friends with bebe

thinks elvis is hot

LOVES adult cartoons

when sheila isn’t home, him, ike, and gerald watch family guy

TOTAL cat person

[dantegreaves00]

More than anything Dead Island 2 Bruno x FtM reader

Ok so before we begin Trigger Warnings this fic includes use of the f slur and t slur as well as alludes to 18+ actives reader discretion is advised.

Tag list @brunos-wife360 @amdaspoon

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bruno sat the bed in his room at the Sterling Hotel, waiting for his boyfriend to come back from talking to Denise. He was lucky that he was able to find Dante after they were separated when the evacuation flight crashed.

The door to the bedroom opened and in walked Dante, his normally bright green eyes were dull and his short raven hair was messed up. His skin, which was normally a pale porcelain was now pink and stained with the markings of dried tears.

"Mi amore, what happened?" Bruno asked as Dante buried his head in the crook of Bruno's neck.

"I was having a very pleasant conversation with Denise when Jimmy walked over and started yelling at me about how i wasn't pulling my weight around here and that just because I'm a trannie doesn't mean I can be a free loader" he replied.

As soon as those words left his lover's mouth, Bruno felt anger like never before. His mind was racing with ways in which he could beat Jimmy up without being caught. Noticing the change in his boyfriend's breathing, Dante maneuvered himself so that he was looking Bruno in the eye.

"Bruno, don't worry about it, don't do anything stupid ok, all I need you to do is hold me" Dante said as he ran his hand up and down Bruno's back.

After a while, Bruno's breathing returned to normal as he counted backwards from ten under his breath, which in turn caused the Koala known as Dante to giggle. This in turn caused Bruno to giggle and soon the duo where trying to keep their laughter down as to not wake anyone else staying in the safe zone up.

After catching their breath the two young men looked at each other with love and devotion before leaning into the other for a kiss. The kiss seemed to last forever as it grew heated and Dante soon found himself laying under his lover, who was fit snuggly in between his legs.

●●Time skip after sexy times●●

The pair lay naked under the thin covers. Their body's had a layer of sweat and sweet kisses were exchanged as exhaustion quickly took a hold of them. Soon enough Dante found himself fighting to stay awake as Bruno whispered sweet nothings in his ear.

As soon as Bruno felt Dante's breathing even out, he carefully removed himself from his partners death grip, found his clothes and quickly and quietly made his way out of the room and over to where he knew Jimmy Montana would be.

"Oi Montana!" Bruno yelled as he saw Jimmy standing on the balcony that over looked Venice Beach.

Jimmy looked over his shoulder when he heard his name being yelled by the Docs new toy.

"What do you want fag?" Jimmy asked as he stumped out his cigarette. His attitude was blasé and uninterested as Bruno made his way over to him.

"Well, friend, I just want to know why you think it's OK to say what you did to mi amore, eh, jefe? I don't remember seeing your name on the chors list that Tisha created, what do you even do here except lounge around in that stupid chair bitching and complaining?" Bruno asked as he pushed Jimmy backwards and further towards the edge of the balcony.

"Why, did she come to you crying or something?"

"No, but he did tell me what you said and now you have the balls to stand in front of me and purposely misgender him. What's your problem jefe?"

"She still has a pussy right, then she's still a girl, also how can you claim to be gay when your "boyfriend" still has tits?"

At that Bruno lost control, before he could comprehend what he was doing he had Jimmy pinned under him, nose bloody and trembling.

"You can insult me all you want but if I hear you talk about my boyfriend like that again, scratch that, if I hear his name leave your pathetic mouth I will show you just how loco I can get, do you understand friend?" Bruno asked Jimmy as got off of him.

Jimmy didn't say anything but slowly nodded his head, wincing in pain as more blood gushed from his nose.

With that Bruno turned around and made his way back into the hotel lobby where he bumped into Dr Reed, who gave him a small knowing smirk before entering his office.

Bruno finally made his way back to the bed where his boyfriend lay sleeping and carefully slid back into bed wrapping his tattooed arms around the man of his dreams.

Bruno made another promise to himself that night. No matter what he wouldn't let anyone else say anything negative about Dante and he'd make sure that he spent every moment the two shared showing him how much he loved and cared for him more than anything.

[goldendoodlerlockerlove]

Tell us more about Gene and Alexis! Gush to your heart's content!

Pom!! You're too sweet, really, letting me gush like this 🥺. Now that you asked me this, that reminded me that I have the next few panels of my comic done, and should be posting them either tonight or tomorrow! :D

I've already posted a bunch about it, but yes, I took on the feat of making a (sort of) long-form Bob's Burgers comic immediately after I finished my first shorter one. That was definitely inspired by @bluebirbbs and their lovely comic, which everyone should go read if they haven't already because it's fantastic.

I mentioned the comic because it's all about Gene and Alexis. Alexis is my OC who's around Gene's age. They moved to Seymour's Bay and started going to Wagstaff around the time the My Butt Has A Fever short happened and were incredibly nervous about meeting new people and having to adjust to living in a new, seaside town. They're kind of insecure and immediately thought people would find them awkward and not like them. Then, they saw Tina, Gene, and Louise performing that song, and all of their worries melted away. They somehow immediately realized that Gene was the one who wrote the song and was blown away. I headcanon that they couldn't stop gushing about it on the drive home with their parents and even beyond that.

Their parents are quite nice and have done a decent job raising Alexis, but they aren't exactly supportive of people in the LGBTQ+ community, which Alexis is definitely a part of. Alexis figured out around a year or so before the events of the comic that they're Nonbinary (and go by They/He pronouns), and also Androsexual. However, they generally just call themselves Gay because that's easier for people to understand. But, around their parents, they (sort of) pretend to be completely Cishet for fear of judgment or worse. Oh, and they were also born without a right foot (which they have a super realistic prosthetic for) and they have Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. They generally only use a crutch for it, and sometimes, not even that. There are a few occasions when they have to use a wheelchair, but they hate using it because they like being more independent. They later confide this all to Gene, who actually thinks it's super cool, which is something they've never had anyone say about their disabilities before. I suppose this sort of parallels my Linda is deaf AU by having a person with a disability's partner be super sweet and supportive.

Anyway, Alexis is so captivated and moved by Gene's performance that they very quickly fall in love with Gene. They freak out for a bit but don't say anything, because they don't know who to ask for advice. Then they decide that the best course of action is to get their feelings for Gene outward anonymously. This poor soul mistakenly thought that by sending sweet anonymous notes to Gene their feelings would somehow disappear. Of course, that doesn't happen.

But, fortunately for them, Gene eventually begins gaining feelings for Alexis too. This is because once they start hanging out and becoming friends, Gene discovers that they have a lot in common, such as loving the same movies, foods, and fashion. Thrifting and making clothes is actually one of Alexis' hobbies, and Gene adores it. He can't get enough of seeing Alexis' clothes that they made themselves. Then they begin talking about how stupid they think masculine gender roles are, and Gene begins confiding in Alexis on how sometimes he wonders if he's being a boy wrong because he usually doesn't enjoy traditionally masculine things.

The two continue bonding and eventually go on a small ice cream date, a la Tina and Jimmy Jr.'s date to Fro-Yo Mama in What A (April) Fool Believes. I didn't realize the parallel at first when I decided this would happen, but now I'm completely obsessed with it.

I'm not sure yet, but it might be on this little ice cream date that these two finally confess their feelings for each other and start dating officially. However, Alexis is kind of terrified of dating Gene, just because of how their parents would react. So, they keep it a secret from their parents. Gene doesn't have to worry, though, because Bob and Linda are nothing except enthusiastic about it.

Surprisingly, Bob is actually super invested in their relationship, and gets kind of emotional, knowing that his little boy is growing up and falling in love 🥲 And is like "Soooooo, who is Alexis? 👀😏" just like when Gene started dating Courtney, and he was like "Soooooo, who is Courtney? 👀😏"

Oh yes, and this entire comic is supposed to take place during Valentine's Day, too, and Tina has a little thing throughout where she's really hoping for a Valentine from Jimmy Jr. I kind of want to resolve that later by having him give her something other than a Valentine, like a goofy little dance, as per Zeke's suggestion, which I thought would be pretty cute and would feed @drawthethingdoppelganger's Tinimmy loving soul accordingly 😌

Louise's thing throughout the comic isn't too deep, but I kind of like it too. She's just angry that Mr. Frond gave the three of them detention for their song at the talent show and wants to lace his coffee to get out of it, pffffft. She isn't thinking that much about Valentine's Day and is convinced that Rudy is just going to ignore her again in favor of Chloe Barbash, so she's kind of given up on the holiday. But then he maybe gives her a sweet note or something 🥺 She pretends not to care, but she really, really does. That gesture means a lot to her.

I actually haven't thought about a Boblin subplot that could happen, because I'm not sure if they'll be too prominent in the comic? But I'm sure they'll be adorable as always for Valentine's Day. I already had them mention that Bob's taking Linda out for a fancy dinner, so I might have them talk about how much fun they had, like the cute lil' ancient married muppets they are.

But I'm getting sidetracked from Gene and Alexis. Anyway, they fall in love with each other and slowly become the most wholesome couple in the universe, second to Bob and Linda. They do all the cliché couple things like hold hands, give each other lil' cheek/forehead kisses, and share milkshakes. Gene definitely becomes one of those stereotypical straight guys who are always like: My wife 🥰 except he's always like: My partner 🥰 and takes every moment possible to gush about Alexis. And vice versa.

@dianadeadwing also made a glorious essay about why she thinks Gene and Peter Pescadero would work so well, and I think all the points she brought up apply to Gene and Alexis--two people who seem really different but have the same values at their core. Gene is loud and energetic just like Linda on the outside, but is really sweet and insecure on the inside, caring so much about the things he's passionate about, like music and his family. He actually gets offended when people try to fight battles for him because he really wants to be seen as more capable, as seen in Drumforgiven.

Alexis seems pretty quiet and unassuming on the outside, because of how awkward and shy they can be at first, especially when moving to a new town, but when one gets to know them, they get really passionate about the things they love too, like fashion and glass blowing (yes, they like glass blowing, which is such a random hobby, but it somehow seems really fitting). They and Gene really bond over their love of obscure movies, fashion, and not being traditionally masculine. And just like Gene, they're insecure on the inside and want to be seen as more capable, not wanting other people to fight battles for them. They also have a secret sarcastic streak a mile wide, and their silver tongue reminds Gene of Louise a ton. They don't exactly have a penchant for getting into trouble, but definitely for getting into mischief on occasion. They also definitely have a secret hopeless romantic side, like Tina, but really try to hide it because they're afraid of being judged for it. Gene doesn't judge them, though, of course.

But really, this moment is what truly started it all for Alexis falling for Gene:

Also, I'm resharing this adorable Commission I got of them from @carnivaldemon because it's actually my everything now:

I could probably go on for even longer, but I'll stop here~

Also, I swear this wasn't intentional, but I realized that Alexis' design looks just like my boyfriend Michael--

[risingsouls]

@gunsnboots​ asked: 🔥🔥🔥

Salty Sunday || Open!

[ 🔥  I’ll start with the one that’s been rustling my jimmies for the last few days (years, frankly, but FB seems to think I want to see shit about this garbage human, and the world still wants to tout her as a great person and ally): Miley Cyrus is a fake ally and a gross individual. Ever since she told every non-straight woman that they don’t have to be gay and there are good men out there like women being attracted to women is only a phase and therefore perpetuating the gross narratives and stigmas surround leasbianism, bisexuality, pansexuality, and any other non-straight sexuality (and that’s not beginning to touch on the hint of trans erasure in her comments, too), I will not change my mind. And I’m sure because she caught a shit ton of flack for it she walked those statements back, but I don’t fucking care (the tweet in this article definitely doesn’t undo the damage lmao; nice try dumbass). The damage was done, and she’s proven how her allyship was just for show and good PR. Like her music, she sways in the direction of what will get her most popularity and earn her the most money, and because of that, she slipped up and showed her true, ugly, nasty colors. I refuse to pretend that she’s a good ally to the LGBTQ community.

🔥 Even more personal and also on my mind over a much longer period of time. Maybe it isn’t as hot of a take as it used to be, but it is absolutely okay to cut off and cut out toxic family that makes you feel unsafe or mistreats you. Blood is not thicker than water, and family members that try to use their position as your family member as a way to gaslight you into not doing what’s best for you are even worst. And I know that can be much easier said than done depending on circumstances, but I will definitely not be a person that tells you, “But they’re family!” Nah. If they hurt you or behave in a way you don’t like and you don’t want to be around, you have every right to say fuck that.

🔥 On a lighter note and maybe not as unpopular as I think? I don’t really run around in these fandoms any more BUT. Devil May Cry (not the shitty reboot don’t get me fucking started) is better than Bayonetta. Does is have problems? Sure. But it’s FACTS (aka just my opinion xD).]

[anxious-ace]

General EI notes:

No one is ever truly stupid, oftentimes it's either an act or an honest mistake (although some dumb decisions have been made, looking at you P.I.E. and Angus). Sure people have bubbly personalities but it doesn't mean they're dumb, they are just happy and outgoing. This applies to the kids as well as they are oftentimes smarter and more aware than people give them credit for.

Take Spooker for instance: he was the first one to put together the fact that Kashuba and CJ are the same person just by looking at her old photos from high school to her working at the Magnus Institute and then back at her (as she was right in front of him).

Marvin saw everything that Angus had been through when he looked into his soul stone to try and fix it back when it broke that one time. This includes his early childhood (the part where his parents were thinking of having another kid because he did not turn out how they wanted), all the abuse he went through when he and Ellieanna were married, and the whole fading process. (the soul holds on to things the brain can't/refuses to)

Like the seers in Quest!, the Magic Circle is trying to keep their timeline in order. multiple timelines are running at the same time as the one in the series (like all the stuff Seán and Mark are doing is one timeline separate from this one) and each timeline has its own group trying to keep it together.

Jimmy is a chaos demon chosen by the housekeeper/chaos god. Jimmy spreads chaos through murder (duh) and the housekeeper spreads chaos through stealing gold (which is very valuable), causing the Ghost family's whole deal and trying to take over the world. Ana and Tim are still Jimmy's parents (making him and Ghost twins) but after everything that happened (Ghost drowning, Gregory dying, etc.) the housekeeper kinda just gave this child (who was already a demon, to begin with) more demon powers (ie possession) and free range.

Ghost has insomnia, autism, Cotard's delusion, MS, PTSD, anxiety disorders, depression, vitiligo, maybe some co-dependency towards Toast, is an ambi wheelchair user, has a sci-fi monocle (doesn't want to call it that though), numb tongue (from eating too much spicy and sour foods growing up). And yes there is an in-universe reason he wears the gloves (covers scars and vitiligo).

Both Ghost and Angus are partially blind from injuries. Angus in their left eye and Ghost in his right (hence the monocle). I've already explained Angus' injury but I still have to figure out Ghost's.

S3(4N) was made by Cyberlife for police work (duh) while Bing (septiceye) was built by Mack to help around the house I guess. Bing (iplier) and Google on the other hand were built by The Host and Dark to help with the votes when the group needs to make a big decision. That being said, if Mach met them all, he'd feel "out of place" because they were made with an expressed purpose in mind while he was only really made for a high school exhibition.

Ghost was 13 when he figured out he was gay. How? Middle school locker room + Toast just chilling on his bed while playing video games together (with Ghost just silently having his oh moment)

Toast was 15 when he figured out he was bi (or at least that he liked guys as well as girls), it wasn't until college (21) when he finally accepted this about himself (as the Toast family would've had some....opinions about this fact so he'd rather not think about it).

Alan Wake is either 1. Toast's pen name (along with Edgar Kingsley) or 2. Toast from another timeline/dimension

(both of which would be in-universe explanations for why they look damn near identical)

P.I.E's handiness goes as follows (weapons wise everyone is ambidextrous, this is what hand they use for everything else):

Toast- ambidextrous

Ghost- right handed

Spooker- left handed

Colon- right handed

CJ- right handed

Alex- left handed

Zoé- left handed

Suzannah- ambidextrous

Ok, I know I said that I wasn't doing the whole "Ghost is a system" thing but I think I can do this as it doesn't involve Jimmy as he is a murderer. Let me introduce you to Casper: Casper is Ghost's alter who formed when Ghost was 5 (which explains why Casper is only 5) after Gregory's death. Also, he is mute (only talks in the headspace/to Ghost) by choice because of how many people Ghost is constantly around

Toasts lycanthropy: full transformations are caused by the full moon (no fucking duh) while smaller transformations (limbs, eyes, and teeth) are caused by high amounts of emotions

I named some people as well:

Burke/Angus + Henrik's parents: Falko and Tahlia

O'Fallons/Marvin's family: Lonán, Saraid (parents), Isabelle, Rían, Sophie (siblings)

Houghs/Jackie's family: Oisín, Saoirse (parents), Lexi, Willow (sisters)

Flynns/Shawn, Jack, and Grant's family: Cuán, Annie (parents), Hollie, Marcel, Teagan, Casey, Aisling (siblings)

[kedreeva]

Stranger Things prompt:

Robin takes Nancy to a gay bar for the first time. Perhaps there’s a moment of the Always Sunny meme where those two guys make startled eyes at each other from across the restaurant between Nancy and Steve (who is there with Eddie).

(My askbox is open for ST prompts!)(Previous Prompts)

I need you to know I have been to one (1) bar in my life, once, in college, for a school assignment, and it wasn't even MY assignment.

-----

Out of her element did not begin to cover the way Nancy felt as Robin led her into to the darkened entrance. The music was loud enough to fuzz her ability to think, which Nancy supposed was part of the appeal. The low, off-color lighting made her nervous, reminded her a little of places she'd rather never think about again, but Robin's hand was warm around hers and she didn't seem bothered by it at all, so Nancy tried to relax and follow her lead.

They took their seats at the bar, Robin collapsing herself half over it to get the bartender's attention. He slid over and smiled at them both like he'd just listened to all their secrets, and Robin leaned closer to ask for their drinks. He listened, then shifted to say something back to her and even though they're only one seat away, he was so close to Robin that Nancy couldn't hear the question. Robin shook her head no, blushing, and glanced at Nancy with a smile.

"I've been here a couple of times," Robin said once they had their drinks. "Jimmy's cool."

Nancy leaned in closer so she wouldn't have to shout, her eyes scanning the crowd. It was packed, which she supposed was fair for a Saturday night. "Now what?"

Robin sipped at her drink and then used it to motion to the seething crowd on the small dance floor. "We uh- finish these and then flail around on the dance floor for a bit."

"You mean dance?"

"Oh, you can dance, maybe," Robin said with a laugh. "I will be doing my best to make flailing look stylish."

Nancy laughed, but the sound stuck in her throat when she caught sight of a familiar mop of hair out on the dance floor. She stared, waiting for the guy to turn around, knowing that she had to be wrong. There was no way Steve was all the way out here, in this bar, of all places. And yet, when he turned, smile bright, it was him. Glowing, happy, kind of being a dork because no one had actually taught him to dance.

He turned, eyes coming up to catch on hers, and he froze.

"Uh, Robin," Nancy said quickly, not moving as she tried to process. "Steve's here."

"Steve?" Robin said, but it didn't sound exactly confused. It almost sounded annoyed. She turned and scanned the crowd, easily catching sight of the single, frozen body in the small sea of moving ones. She hopped up on her tippy toes, and waved a hand broadly, almost frantically. "Steve!"

Steve's attention shifted, but when he saw Robin, his shoulders dropped and he relaxed, waving back. He said something Nancy couldn't hear, leaning toward a companion Nancy couldn't see, but it didn't matter; Robin apparently knew who it was already.

"I bet he's here with Eddie, come on!" She grabbed Nancy's arm and began to drag her forward as Steve began to move toward them. Sure enough, Eddie appeared at his heel, eyes wide as he clocked who they were going to see.

"You two finally figured it out?" Eddie asked, as soon as they were in hearing range without raising his voice.

Beside her, Robin's cheeks pinked. "Uh, no," she said, like a warning. "Nancy is keeping me company since someone said they already made plans to do stuff."

"I did have plans!" Steve protested.

"I'm stuff," Eddie said with an over-the-top grin, and Robin rolled her eyes.

"I'll bet," Nancy said back with a sweet smile.

"Why didn't you just tell me?" Robin asked.

"Well, because I didn't know," Steve said at Eddie, who showed no remorse at all, still grinning broadly. "I thought we were going back to my place after dinner, and I really didn't think you wanted to be invited to that."

"Ew, I don't!" Robin exclaimed, holding up her hands.

"See!" Steve said, gesturing. "This is why I didn't invite you!"

"Well you could have called when the plan changed!" Robin said.

Eddie glanced between the two of them, and then to Nancy. "You don't seem surprised by any of this."

Nancy looked away from Robin and Steve, glancing over Eddie briefly. "Why should I be?"

Eddie glanced to Steve in question, who shook his head once- he hadn't told Nancy anything. "Uh... I guess because..."

"Because you thought Steve likes girls?" Robin suggested unhelpfully.

"Steve does like girls," Steve chimed in.

"He just likes Eddies too," Robin said.

"Clearly," Nancy said. Then she shrugged a little, and Robin failed miserably to hide a smile, as if she knew exactly what was coming, and Nancy figured she probably did. She'd said about the same thing to Robin. "Honestly, after all the other surprises in my life, this one is kind of a relief. Something good, finally."

Steve glanced to Robin, but whatever passed between them silently, it put a smile back on his face. He nodded toward the dance floor. "You'll come flail when you finish those?"

"You bet," Robin said, raising her glass. "And tomorrow, we're all gonna have a sit down about keeping secrets."

Steve rolled his eyes, but he shot a smile to Nancy and then to Eddie, and held out his hand. Eddie brightened considerably and took it, though to Nancy's surprise, Eddie led the way back to the dance floor. She smiled fondly after them, glad they had found each other. Which reminded her-

She turned to Robin with a knowing grin. "So, we're supposed to be figuring out something?"

Robin groaned and hid her smile behind her drink.

[heloflor]

I have to say, one thing I absolutely love about the Sam and Max Telltale games is the side characters and more specifically how they all have at least some “oddness” to them, which not only makes Sam and Max feel like they do belong in this town instead of being the outsiders other people react to, but it also makes it possible for the duo to form genuine friendships with some of those people (which is also helped by the continuity this trilogy has).

All of them are eccentric in their own way, I mean :

- Bosco is a paranoid conspiracy theorist and is afraid of enbies

- Sybil keeps changing professions, and between that and how she evolves in S2, it feels like she’s sometimes in her own world/gets in her own head a lot

(And also, between her being really nice to the titular duo and her overall personality, she and Max could easily be besties. I mean c’mon ! He always goes to stand near her + gets involved in her love life + the S3 finale. He’d 100% be her gay bff and also possibly babysitter since he likes kids so much !)

- Flint Paper is a lot like Sam and Max on the police brutality aspect (and the three of them working together is great. There’s a single braincell between the three and not a single one of them uses it. Except Sam occasionally, if he’s not too busy fanboying over his neighbor with Max)

- Superball (my beloved) feels like one of the more grounded characters but at the same time he’s never seen taken aback by the weird shit happening around him and has no issue rolling with it. He’s also pretty mysterious at times and even straight up teleports in 304

(I’m not going to mention his love of doors as him being eccentric because, between that and how he expresses emotions differently, plus the musical number and his voice impressions showing he has an artistic side, I can’t help but view him as autistic. Heck you can also add him taking the “please don’t hang up the phone” thing way too literally in S1. So the love for doors feels like a special interest)

- Jimmy and the rest of the rats are some kind of mafia or street gang

- The C.O.P.S. are a bunch of old sentient machines trying their best (also Buster Blaster reminds me of Lord Hater from Wander with the way he screams all the time and I love it !)

- Harry Moleman is a creep who somehow keeps getting involved in the story through new jobs

- The Soda Poppers are pretty self-explanatory (gotta love how everytime they show up I’m like “oh, it’s these assholes again…”)

- Hugh Bliss is a literal sentient bacteria cult leader

- Girl Stinky is a literal cake and apparently a mermaid ? Like, her design has always been mermaid-oriented but apparently it’s because she truly is one

- Grandpa Stinky is that kind of grumpy old man who can and will throw hands with a 13 years-old

- Abe is the douchy head of a broken sentient statue who can’t do anything right aside from speeches (and he gets lectured by the local married couple after messing up his relationship in S2, which I find very funny)

- Featherly is a talking actor chicken who was literally found at the beginning of the universe that one time for some reason ??? It was very funny tho

(Also off-topic and I’m not sure if this was on purpose or not but isn’t Featherly technically trans ? I mean, he’s explicitly told to be a chicken in S2, not a rooster, and is even capable of laying eggs, but he uses he/him pronouns and refers to himself as a man)

- Santa Claus isn’t taking shit from anyone and hates kids

- Jurgen is a gay emo teen stereotype (who would absolutely have many social media accounts were those game made in the 2010s)

- Sal is a cockroach himbo who’s kinda just going along with the craziness around him

- Papierwaite literally tried and sort-of managed to summon some demi-god, demi-god who turns out to be pretty chill. And the duo is symbiotic. Oh yeah and Papierwaite has powers and may or may not be immortal (I think him living this long might be due to Norrington ?)

- Mama Bosco, despite acting more like the voice of reason, still remains the wacky kind of scientist, with her creating portals to other dimensions and being pretty nonchalant about the risks of it

- Skun-ka’pe is a hyper-intelligent alien who lets his ego and slight naiveté take the better of him

- Sammun-mak is a child with enormous powers and a god complex

- and the list goes on

I just really like how the world of Sam and Max is eccentric in itself. It’s not just the two main characters who are “weird” while the rest of the city reacts to their weirdness. Every character has their own thing going on and I love how it makes this world flow.

[absolutebl]

This Week in BL

July 2022 Wk 2 

Being a highly subjective assessment of one tiny corner of the interwebs. Organized by which ones (in each category) I’m enjoying the most.

Ongoing Series - Thai

Triage (grey) Ep 12 - Tol’s turn to fix the timeline - well he can’t do any worse, right? I found this episode a little frustrating, but I still think this is one of the better high concept Thai BL‘s I’ve seen in a long time. I’m reminded a little of Great mMen Academy for some reason (much as I question if GMA is a BL). I’m excited to see howTriage ends, but also glad next one is the final ep. Where Triage falls down, for me, like Manner of Death, is going to be in rewatchability. I think once the element of surprise is removed, there isn’t enough romance holding this show together to make me want to rewatch it. But I think the story is a lot better for having not been that romantic. It’s just I happen to be a romantic at heart. 

Love Mechanics (Sun WeTV) Ep 4-5 - ep 4: of course the cheating gf is hurt in a car accident with her rich boyfriend#2 and Vee rushes back to her and then makes eye contact with Mark who he is hurting even more. Because why not MORW PAIN? This whole series is basically a diatribe against cheating and the one honest gay reaps all the punishment. And yet I CAN’T STOP WATCHING. Stupid genius YinWar. Also I do love Poppy turning up, he’s got to be one of my favorite character actors in the BL universe, right up there with Gunsmile. Watching Vee lose everything was cathartic, his family, friends, and Marke are too good for him. He is a lovable asshole tho. I am both delighted and terrified that we have 6 more episodes of this nonsense.  Ep 5, why are these cheaters so cute? Because it is YinWar, that’s why.  Also I love it when Mark gets his own back against Vee, even if it’s just teasing and standing up for himself. Don’t ask, I didn’t get the bit with Vee’s dad either. Lots of good brother characters this summer in BL. Meanwhile  Yawhe is figuring everything out.

 Vice Versa (Sat on YouTube) Ep 1 - The meet cute was awkward and I don’t love that. Jimmy (Puen) is lovely, of course. The lead (Lay) is okay, I haven’t fully warmed to him. (Hooray for a butch character! Even if they had to use body swap to explain them. Notice mostly no polite particles?) I like the concept of this show. You know me, I’m big into paranormal and magical realism and skewed reality. I’m engaged with that if nothing else. And then Nanon waltzes in holding a goddamn guitar and I’m mad at the whole universe.

Unforgotten Night (Weds on GaGa) Ep 4 - I am beginning to think we should be calling this show Forgotten Kink rather than Unforgotten Night. Actually, this week was fine, we got a bit more of the side couple, whom I am now officially calling P’Daddy and Baby Boy. Also I may a UFO pun joke. Go me. TRASH WATCH IS HERE! 

Sky in Your Heart (Fri YouTube) Ep 7 - How is this show now boring, corny, AND cheesy? Also I’m starting to get bad secondhand embarrassment. And then... the white sponge bath, of course.

Even Sun (Wed iQIYI) Ep 3 - They are pretty, it pretty, that’s it. I’m so bored.

Check Out (Sat IQIYI) Ep 6 - World’s most boring date? Mostly I was just confused by the random English letters on Daonuea’s shirt and wondering if I could get one like it with Thai script (since it’s so pretty). In other news, should I start a vomit trigger warning for BL shows? Why do people throw up so much? We don’t have to SEE it, ya know? 

My Secret Love (Sat YouTube Sat) Ep 7 - Interesting that they call GL yuri in Thailand. That’s it. That’s all I got. 

War of Y has semi started or something? Whatever. 

Oh My Sunshine Night (?) - Ep 1 I managed the first ep without subs but it seems really really sad. I am nto sure I am in the right mind set for this one so I think I will wait until 1. I know if it ends happily, and 2. It’s easier to get internationally. 

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

Minato Shouji Coin Laundry (Japan Weds GaGa) Ep 3 - currently my favorite show by a land slide. I like everything about it, the questionable content and relationship, the age gap, the characters, Shin’s obsessive staler edgy intensity, the side boy with the terrible hair. The food. ALL OF IT. Minato’s feelings for his sensei are an interesting parallel to Shin‘s feelings for Minato - and explain both why Minato is sympathetic to Shin and dismissive of him at the same time. When Minato admits to his feelings for his high school teacher, Shin final understands Minato’s reluctance, or thinks he does. I feel Minato deeply, he’s sunshine honesty and core integrity does not allow him to outright lie to Shin that he isn’t attracted, which goes up against his ethical scruples around their age gap. There’s an interesting dialogue going on within this show around how seriously to take teenage love and first true desire (simultaneously the most intense of our lives and the most scary for the adults around us) and how it’s belittled by society as a result. I should note at this juncture that the age of consent in Japan is 13, the lowest of any developed country. However, most prefectures also have local "corruption of minors" or "obscenity statutes" (淫行条例) which raise that AoC to 16-18, unless they are in a "sincere romantic relationship" (usually determined by parental consent). Are we going to meet Shin’s parents and large family under this context? I’d really like it if we did. Japan may be reserved in its romances but it usually attacks social criticism and difficult content head on (unlike Korea), so I wouldn’t be surprised if we got this topic grappled with directly. See Japan’s approach to noona romances. 

Want to See You (Vietnam YT) Ep 6-7-8 - Far be it for me to say this with our prince of VBL but I don’t think that these leads have any chemistry. Sad, that’s usually not one of Vietnam’s issues. The brother character remains my favorite and a best boy and the only reason I’m still watching this show.

Senpai, Danjite Koidewa! (Japan Fri Viki) Ep 4 - We are halfway through this one, and I’m still not sure if I like it. It’s just too cringe. Also they keep reusing a lot of footage.

Gameboys 2 movie - didn’t drop for me in the USA on gaga.

Love in Spring AKA Spring of Crush (Korea grey) Ep 15-16 - A suitably tragic ending (including an Untamed call back) for all the bad characters and some of the good ones. I liked the psychopath second lead best - apparently my second lead syndrome extends to COMPLETELY INSANE. In the end, this drama was all over the place with uneven acting, narrative, and focus (sometimes it wanted to be a slapstick comedy, sometimes a depressing drama) which meant no one, actors or viewers, took anyone or anything seriously.... AND it’s a bromance. I was left wondering is SalHyung is now code for “they were roommates” in Kdrama historicals but otherwise largely apathetic and unimpressed. Korea, we now know you can do better. Watch Tinted With You or Nobleman Ryu’s Wedding instead: 3/10 not recommended, I don’t know what I’m watching, and neither does it. Full review here. 

Gossip

Japan to adapt yaoi Takara Kun To Amagi Kun as Takara-kun and Amagi-kun. Oriyama Nao and Sato Arata will star, and rumors of the leads from My Love Mix-up putting in a cameo. 8 epes. About a popular guy and an outcast boy who secretly like each other, and soon after start dating in secret. Premieres August 18 no word on distribution yet. 

Japan to produce The 8.2 Second Rule AKA 8.2 Byo no Hosoku about a boy finding his first love. 

Korea’s Kidari Studio to adapt Happy Merry Ending about two men who work with wedding events, grumpy/sunshine pairing. 

Blueming is getting a season 2. This is one of my favorites from this year (9/10). I am not thrilled about this decision. It’s the same director as TMS2, and I didn’t like that one all that much. Still, I’ll probubly watch it. I’m very intersted in where Korea goes when it’s given enough rope to hang itself with. 

Next Week Looks Like This:

I think Coffee Melody is to start tomorrow on Viki? (Pavel my love!) 

NOTE: There probubly will not be a weekly update next Sunday from yours truly. I have a busy week of remote work (with the meetings and the deadline) and then a (cough cough) college reunion thingy. So yeah. Don’t think I’m dead, okay? 

This week’s best moments?

Can’t lie, I’m a big fan of the boyfriend sniff test. 

I feel this in my bones... or shoudl I say stomach? 

Sing it with me now... jealousy! 

And a meeting of the Marks. (I used to think War & Mark looked A LOT like each other, but now I really don’t anymore). I hope Mark IRL really is really in Love Mechanics. I love him so much. He’d make a great boyfriend for heartbroken rich boy Nuea.

(last week)

[aoitrinity]

Why Do I Have to Feel Like a Fucking Conspiracy Theorist -- OR -- How I Find a Semblance of Peace on Sunday Night

I’m also going to start this out with a GIANT DISCLAIMER.

I am about to theorize about what may have happened to the SPN finale. I have absolutely no insider knowledge. I am merely speculating here based on the panels and a bunch of Twitter and Tumblr posts that I have been reading over the last few days. If you are not in a good place to read such things, TURN BACK PLEASE. Go take care of yourself and your mental health. You and your feelings are valid and deserve to be handled gently right now.

Additionally, if you are here to give me shit for being unhappy with the ending, please walk away as well. I am here to reach out and share my feelings with people who might be struggling to make sense of something that upset some of us in very deep-seated ways. I am not here to bother you or critique you or tell you that you’re lesser because you liked the ending. If you felt it was good, then go enjoy it.

Long-ass post beneath the cut, everyone.

Alrighty folks...I debated whether or not to do this because I have been spiraling down the hell that is the SPN finale since Thursday. The travesty of what happened to our show--to this beloved show that seemed to have been so perfectly and precisely written for at least four years that it had basically already paved its own tarmac on which to land its plane and we all thought we knew exactly what we were going to get. And then we didn’t. We had a nigh Cas-less and entirely Eileen-less ending. We had no goodbye between Cas and Jack. We had Dean dying young after finally finding his freedom, only to ascend to heaven with no one but Bobby. We had the weird, weird, weird incest-y death scene. We had the bridge crane shot thing because...sure. You do you, Robert Singer.

It was so terrible, so truly awful, and I couldn’t seem to square any of it with anything we had known going in. I tossed and turned and cried and didn’t eat or sleep all weekend. I spent hours just reloading tumblr and twitter, going to the Misha panel, reading and reading and listening and trying to figure out what the fucking hell is going on because I needed to know exactly where to direct my anger. And after a fuckton of talking with @winchester-reload, I think we have at least a very plausible theory about what happened here--I’m laying it out below as much for my own peace of mind as anything else, because otherwise all of these thoughts are going to continue to spin around in my head for weeks and I won’t be able to do jack shit.

Now to start off, unfortunately I do think Dean was slated to die from the beginning of this season. I don’t know WHY they thought that was the best way to go, and I wish they had listened to Jensen on this one. Part of me wonders if it was an order from on high based on the discussion between Becky and Chuck earlier this season--the writers knew it wasn’t a great choice, but they were trying to signal to us that we should feel free to write our own endings to the story because they’d be better (I can wax poetic on the signs of why many of the writers probably wanted Dean to live, but that’s another post). I’m not defending that choice by any means, just laying it out there that I think they didn’t necessarily all want to kill Dean like they did.

However, what I THINK I can explain now is what happened with Misha and why we got so jerked around with Cas’s story. Consider what we know (I can’t immediately source all of it, but I did my best):

At the end of episode 15x19, Lucifer has been returned to the Empty after being killed AGAIN. He talks with Cas. Maybe harasses him a bit about Dean, idk. But then...Jack shows up. New God Jack. And he picks up Cas and pulls him out of the Empty, leaving Lucifer behind, because seriously. Fuck that guy (also leaving behind his abusive father is character growth for Jack, so yay for that).

-Misha was contracted to film 15 episodes this season. He was only in 14.

-Misha told Michael Sheen he had to go back to film 1.5 episodes after the shutdown in March. (Starts at 6:13)

-Misha was in Vancouver during filming of the finale.

-Mark P said at Darklight Con that the last scene he filmed was with Alex and Misha (and Mark P was only in episode 19).

-Misha implied that he was present for various filming moments, including Dean’s death (start at 35:15), and said that it felt like a “mini-reunion.”

-Various sources have mentioned that Jimmy Novak was supposed to be in the finale.

-After episode 18, Stands tweeted a fan who was angered and hurt by Cas's death that they could talk about the “bury the gays” issue after the finale aired.

-In episode 19 we know there were takes of the parking lot scene where the only thing fans observing could hear was Dean yelling “CAS” at Chuck (fuck I can’t find this one right now, but it’s definitely out there)

-Also in episode 19, we had a very strange, awkward montage at the end of the episode.

-In episode 20, we know there were a FUCKTON of missing scenes

-We also had no opening montage, but three other separate montages.

-Carry on My Wayward Son was played TWICE, back-to-back at the end of the episode.

-Episode 20 was shorter than normal and had surprisingly little dialogue. The pacing was VERY strange.

-The cast and crew has been almost completely silent about the finale since it came out. When they have spoken, it has been with an awkward excuse of “Uh...COVID?”

-Samantha Ferris has specifically noted that, despite the Harvelle’s being back in play and a big heaven reunion having been planned pre-COVID, neither she nor Chad Lindberg received any such invitation to return.

-Cas and Dean POP Funko figures were pictured together in a replica of Harvelle’s in 15x04.

NOW with all of this in mind (and I’m probably missing some stuff too because there is so much--feel free to add on to that list), please bear with me because here is what I think we were SUPPOSED to get POST-COVID (after it was determined that the reunion couldn’t happen because of the virus):

In episode 20, we start with our NORMAL OPENING MONTAGE, like always. It traces everything that happened during the season. We are reminded of Cas. The confession. Rowena. Eileen. Jack. Billie, God, the Empty, all of it. 

Things then follow along in the episode where they did up until Dean dies and wakes up in heaven. After his conversation with Bobby, he drives off to find Cas (who, in the script, was listed as “Jimmy Novak” in order to protect against script leaks--who wouldn’t want to do their best to avoid spoilers about the finale with the wrapping of a fifteen-year show?). He does indeed find Cas. We get Dean’s end of the confession. Hell, maybe we even get a kiss. And then Dean sets up his new heaven home in the recreated Harvelle’s. Maybe Cas even fucking moves in. 

Years pass. We get Sam having his life on Earth (still can’t explain why they cut Eileen and couldn’t even have Sam signing vaguely to the blurry brunette in the background; if anyone wants to take that on, go for it). Eventually, Cas tells Dean that it’s almost Sam’s time. Dean takes Baby and goes to meet Sam at the bridge. The cover of Carry on My Wayward Son plays during this much shorter sequence. End of episode.

But that’s not what we got. Instead, much of what I just wrote about was excised from the episode. The remnants were stitched together after shooting had been wrapped. Filler was added in the form of montages and long, unnecessary extra shots to get the episode to something approaching a reasonable length. 

But why? Why would they spend all that time and money and quarantining on Misha, only to almost completely cut him out of the finale? I struggled with why the fuck the CW would want this mammoth show to go down as the greatest queerbait in TV history when they had the chance to do something truly beautiful and monumental with it? It couldn’t just be sheer homophobia, right? Well, I think that factored into it, my friends, but here is where my head is at right now.

It was about cold, hard cash.

Now I could be wrong, but this is what I’m thinking at the moment: Supernatural is going off of the air. Supernatural, the CW’s cash cow for fifteen years. Sure there is still money to be made on blu-rays and merchandise and cons...but they need people watching their shows. They need that sweet advertising revenue. And you know what show they have about to premiere? A show that could, potentially, bring with it a chunk of that SPN revenue?

Walker.

And if any of you know anything about the original Walker Texas Ranger, you know that the show was predominantly a show about a very heterosexual white man being very excessively heterosexual. And for SOME REASON over the years, many of the execs at the CW still seem to think that this show, Supernatural, is really attractive to a lot of middle-American white men...whom they desperately want to watch this new show with this guy from Supernatural that they already know.

Now here’s where COVID fucked us. I think Destiel was greenlit by TPTB, at least in SOME form, before COVID. But then the pandemic happened, and they panicked. They got the cut of the last two episodes and watched them in their original, probably queer form. And then, the execs at CW looked at the economy. They looked at their cash cow, about to make its journey to the great beyond. And they looked at this new little calf Walker that they were so desperately worried about. And they made a choice.

They decided that it would be too risky to take the step with Destiel. They were worried about frightening off their ever-so-valuable hetero male demographic with the possibility that a traditionally masculine man in his 40s could be in love with another man in an overt way. It was homophobia mixed with greed, spun up by fear for their revenues because of COVID.

So they called in Singer, possibly Dabb, although I wouldn’t be surprised if they went straight to Singer. They told them that Destiel had to go: executive orders. And the only way to make it go in a way that removed any trace of what had been there was to rewrite what happened to Cas and cut him out from the last two episodes entirely. It was too late to reshoot anything. They had to just cut and stitch and fill with bullshit montages. 

They removed the scene at the end of 19, probably because Cas and Lucifer discussed Dean. All that was left of Misha there was his voice on that fake phone call. They may have cut other things too, but I would bet my life that they cut a scene from the end of the episode and replaced it with that very strange montage. Then they moved onto 20. They cut out every scene with Cas. And left in only two platonic mentions of him, neither made by Dean. They tried to imply that Cas might show up in Dean’s heaven at some point, but that was as far as the editors could go in the time they had. They filled in with montages, awkwardly long shots, anything they could do to fill all of those missing scenes.

And they even had to take the opening montage, because literally everything in it pointed to Cas being there at the end of it all. They wouldn’t be able to leave out his scenes, they were too critical to the season. They couldn’t cut his confession without raising eyebrows. So they cut the whole thing and moved “Carry On My Wayward Son” to one of the newly-added driving montages at the end. Which is why we awkwardly had both songs play back-to-back--again, such a strange choice unless they were out of options and couldn’t exactly buy rights to a new track or compose anything else.

And so we were left with the shadow of the finale that we deserved, that Cas and Dean deserved. We were left without resolution or happiness or words. Bobo told us the most important thing about happiness is just “saying it” and our characters were silenced without anyone ever knowing the truth.

I think the writers might have known and been given the new party line that “Misha never filmed, he couldn’t, sorry, it was COVID, no one’s fault!” But I don’t think most of the cast even knew it had happened until they watched the finale on Thursday with us (though they might have been confused why the bit from 15x19 was sliced, they could reasonably have assumed it was a time thing and also BL episodes don’t make sense anyway). Why do I say that?

Well, first of all, Misha started sending out a bunch of excited texts to fans with some old BTS pictures about an hour before the show started airing on EST. He also wanted his children to see the episode, his YOUNG children. Why would he show them such a traumatic episode if their Dad wasn’t in it? What if it was because he wanted them to witness what was going to be a monumental moment in queer television history that their DAD got to be a part of? And then that was all dashed.

Which is why I think the cast and crew went almost completely radio silent the next day. I don’t think they knew. And based on how they have been acting on social media since then, I think many of them are absolutely furious, but they have been silenced because of NDAs, because they want to find work again in a cutthroat industry, because they don’t want to bring down the hellfire of Warner Brothers Entertainment upon themselves. So the most we have gotten is a little acknowledgement from the MERCHANDISING COMPANY trying to validate our pain (god bless Shirts, she is a LIFESAVER) and a response to my salty tweet about keeping good stuff in the closet from Adam Williams (the VFX coordinator) that seemed to acknowledge the validity of my complaint.

Then there was a scramble behind the scenes, I would bet my life. Talking points were fed to the boys who had panels today, to CE, to all the cast and crew:

Toe the party line. Misha never filmed. This was always about COVID. Do not mention Destiel. Do not mention Dean’s feelings for Cas. Do not promote the Castiel Project or anything that validates the idea that this was anything less than a superb ending.

And that is why we have heard so little from the cast on this front, and what we have heard has been muddled and contradictory. That is why the writers are saying nothing. That is why we have been left adrift.

Now before I close this out, I do want to say that I really, genuinely do not think this was on the writers at all. I feel like they tried to give us the best ending that they could, in a writers room that we know is notorious for splitting along party lines about the overall story (BL and Singer, who have always been about the brothers and their man-pain vs. Dabb and the rest who always seemed to want more for them and for Cas). I think they did everything in their power to at least end with Dean and Cas happy together. If they could give us nothing else, they wanted to give us that. And then the network took it from them. From us. From everyone.

For the sake of fucking money. 

And the WORST PART OF IT ALL, for me, is that in the wake of this disaster, the fans have been left to try and figure out what happened. We have had to wade through a mire of conflicting information in the midst of all of our collective anger and grief over this garbage ending of a show many of us have loved and even relied on for YEARS, all the while wondering if we’re just fucking crazy, if we have all fallen collectively into the hole of conspiracy theories. That hurts ESPECIALLY badly because we have taken so many hits over the years from other groups on social media saying we were crazy for seeing things that weren’t there (especially Destiel), for writing meta and analyzing tropes and believing the evidence of our eyes and ears. The network has made us relive that entire nightmare WHILE processing our grief for a show we wanted so badly to celebrate and which instead we now have to mourn.

So again guys, I cannot prove that this is exactly what happened at all; this is simply my idea of what may have happened. But right now, it’s the most sense I can make from this mess, and to be honest, the act of typing it out has helped me enormously in my processing of it all. I feel like I can see more clearly, like I know where to target my outrage and where to direct empathy. I feel like just fucking maybe, I might be able to do my job tomorrow without bursting into tears at random moments. 

I really hope that this post has helped some of you to, in some small way, process this too. We get through this the way that Misha told us at his panel this morning, the way the writers have told us to do all season long...we throw out the story God gave us and we make it better. We write our characters the happy endings they deserve. 

We save them.

One last thing--if you have not already, please consider channeling your rage into a donation to one of the five causes our fandom has put together to pay tribute to our beloved show and to mourn the ending it should have had:

-The Castiel Project

-Dean Winchester is Love

-Sam Winchester Project

-The National Association of the Deaf

-The Jack Kline Project

[vyeoh]

this is your chance: wax poetic about an Empires or DSMP character of your choice to a fan who is new to both. Explain why I should love them. I need guidance in this new and meme-populated land.

okok this is a lot of pressure haha. Spoilers for EmpiresSMP and DreamSMP below, obviously. I wrote a lot so prepare yourself, anon

I watch a lot of empires POVs but the ones I most anticipate every week are Scott and Sausage.

c!Scott (I'll call him Smajor for the sake of simplicity) starts off the series chilling, not really getting involved with the rest of the server, and staying aggressively neutral. After all, he's an elf. He has lived far longer than most of the other rulers already, and will most likely outlive them for many years. So, the best thing is to stick to his mountains and not get invested in the dealings of mortal affairs, maybe sometimes causing problems on purpose and dipping because what's life without a little spice right.

But then, this demon comes to the server, Xornoth. He's going around causing havoc and wants to send the world into an eternal winter, but he doesn't bother the kingdom of Rivendell much so Smajor stays tentatively cautious but ultimately unbothered. But then, the puzzle pieces start falling together. The first thing that the audience noticed was was Xornoth sounded like Smajor, but we mostly thought that this was just due to cc!Scott voicing both of them and there was nothing more to it. However, then, the people the demon starts possessing start chanting in elvish. The demon hates mortals, and the elves are conveniently one of the two confirmed not fully mortal races in Empires.

This culminates when Smajor stumbles across a cave that contains the backstory of the patron god of Rivendell, Aeor. Basically, there's two opposing forces, Aeor and Exor, and both have a champion. In a previous life, those champions were two brothers, where Aeor eventually prevailed and banished Exor. In this life though, the champions are - you guessed it - Smajor, and the demon Xornoth.

So now Smajor is like. Well fuck. It's my literal god-given destiny to be responsible for defeating this demon who is technically my brother, and if I fail the server gets plunged into an eternal winter. And I have no fucking clue what is happening because I've just been here on this mountain actively trying to stay out of the issues outside my kingdom. We watch him panic and teeter on the verge of spiraling for an entire episode, and when the followers of Xornoth go to the End to kill the dragon, releasing Xornoth's full powers, he fails to stop him. Smajor is a character who was used to being the smart one, the prepared one, the one who has the least deaths on the server. But he's also a character who runs away from his problems and ignores them. Before and during the dragon fight, we hear the desperation in his voice, as he's thrown into a situation he is wholly unprepared for, and it's bigger than him going to the Cod Empire to kill their king, or assisting in other people's plans to kill the codfather. He can't run from this. cc!Scott plays this scene so well as well, as I've said before, one of the best parts of Scott's acting is how he's never super dramatic, but he's so effective in the little things like inflection to make you feel, viscerally, the panic and dread.

So after the dragon fight, Smajor realizes, I can't do this on my own. I've tried and failed. So he gets allies. We watch him, someone who has so strongly been an isolationist, learn the benefits of allies and watch him learn to trust others and watch him learn how to get that trust in return.

My favorite thing about Smajor's characterization is that he's an incompetent protagonist, but not in the way of the "plucky young adventurer". He's capable skill-wise, and fairly jaded and very pessimistic. However, his issue is that up until recently, he did not care about the rest of the server at all, and by the time he learned to, it was way too late.

Also, in 3rd Life, cc!Scott and cc!Jimmy were canonically married and they reference it sometimes in Empires. Like, Scott goes over to the Cod Empire every so often both in and out of character to kill and/or flirt with Jimmy, the ruler of the Cod Empire, which may develop as a secondary plot into the future who knows. So ty Scott for giving the gays what they want o7

Now onto Sausage: his is a story of Icarus, his hubris and ambition being his downfall. He's one of the two followers of Xornoth, who promised him endless power in exchange for his servitude. He started the series being eccentric, but not outright unhinged, but slowly gets more and more extreme as the series progresses, as he gets brought more and more to Xornoth's side.

One of the best parts of Sausage's character, in my opinion, is how his gradual corruption affects the people around him. Initially, he got into a conflict with the Cod Empire and was allied with two other people in the Witherrose alliance. They were allies, but also close friends. The fandom liked to joke that the three had sibling energy, and I'm pretty sure the ccs played to that even more lol.

It was painful to watch the other two members, Gem and fWhip, watch Sausage get corrupted right in front of them, and see them desperately clinging on to this old idea of Sausage in their head because if they faced the truth, it would mean that their friend was gone. Eventually, they do finally cut him out of the alliance, leading him to fully commit to the side of the demon. Sausage felt very clearly betrayed by this, and declared the remaining two Witherrose alliance members to be enemies.

He gets more and more possessed, and we even see the other Empires, his enemies even, slowly realize that something is very wrong with the ruler of Mythland. He starts doing more and more evil things, like killing people more, making sacrifices to the demon, and eventually helping to kill the dragon to free Xornoth. So things are good for Sausage, for a bit. He won, and is more powerful than ever. Then he finds out: he's going to die. Xornoth's possession is slowly killing his soul, and eventually, his body going to be fully taken over and he himself is going to be trapped in the spirit realm. So how do you react to this? Over the next few episodes, we watch Sausage struggle between "the demon is literally killing me" and "the demon has given me so much, and I love it", all while Xornoth takes over more and more of him. We hear him exclaim that "don't worry!! I'm still about 15% there!" while trying to downplay every time Xornoth completely takes over his body. We watch him willingly oppose anyone who is trying to end the thing that is killing him.

My favorite thing about Sausage is that he is undoubtedly evil and proud of it, but he's also undoubtedly human. If you like to watch evil characters go absolutely feral, he's the guy for you. He makes the deal with Xornoth in the beginning, knowing and fully embracing the evilness of the demon, but at the same time he knows what he's doing is detrimental to both himself and everyone around him, but he's gotten in way too deep at this point, and to be fair the demon has held up its end fo the bargain, right?

Also, I would be damned if I don't talk about cc!Sausage's editing. Every one of his videos is like a movie. The way he does camera angles and uses music is so skillful- every lore scene feels like something out of a high fantasy action saga (think: LotR). Every big lore event I always wait in anticipation for Sausage's ep because his editing truly takes lore to another level.

I'm just generally very excited to see where this series goes. Empires is such a good mix of talented builders and good lore. Part of the reason why the series is so immersive for me, beyond any other lore smp, is that they have the settings to back it up. There is a certain charm to the DreamSMP's objectively terrible builds (with a few exceptions) but in Empires, the settings help sell the plot so much.

Another part of why I love EmpiresSMP is how much the ccs are involved with the fan community. I'm sure you've seen the memes about Scott being on tumblr, and Sausage regularly goes through the EmpiresSMP fanart tag on Twitter and likes art, even ones not related to Mythland. Most of the ccs, in fact, have brought up tumblr content on stream at some point or another. Like, several ccs have said that they read tumblr lore theories and hcs and stuff and sometimes take inspiration from them. Fun fact: Rivendell's church was inspired by my pinned drawing; confirmed by Scott Smajor himself. It's just such a good cycle of ccs and fans being excited about each other.

As for DreamSMP, I'm gonna be honest here, the only person I really am invested in in Technoblade. I started watching when he joined the server, and he's the only person whose lore I keep up to date with.

Techno's fun to watch because he's like the Deadpool of DreamSMP. Virtually unkillable, very skilled and scary, but consistently cracks jokes and breaks the 4th wall during plot. His POV is just fun. Like, he does wild plans and gives speeches and some of the stuff that happens to him should be called deus ex machine if it wasn't for the fact that Technoblade is the one who's doing it, and all the stuff is grounded in the fact that cc!Techno is just that good at the game.

However, the fact that he rarely takes anything seriously makes the few times Techno is 100% serious so much more impactful. His whole character has a basis in being perceived as inhuman and being treated as such, and therefore in return trying to hide his humanity. So, when he shows that humanity, whether that's fear, anger, or genuine love for his friends, it really makes you go "oh shit."

Techno's often said not to have character development, but I'd argue that while he remains steadfast in his moral code, he develops leaps and bounds as a person. Like, at the beginning, he's brought onto the server to help Wilbur and Tommy overthrow a government; them knowing he's 1) an anarchist and 2) very very powerful. His character was more of a plot device at that point and was treated as such in the canon. Wilbur and Tommy straight-up lie to him about their plans to establish another government after they overthrow the current one, while he was led on to believe that they were abolishing all governments in the area. But he isn't a plot device. He's a person, as much as he only shows the terrifying, blood god side of himself.

After the establishment of New Lmanburg (the new government its a long story), his friend Phil joins. And for the first time, we see him be fully human with someone and we see someone treat him like a human. Like, we saw glimpses before, with Wilbur and Tommy in Pogtopia, but Phil is the first person we noticeably see he trusts 100%. Then Doomsday happens, and Techno essentially retires to the tundra. During this time, we see Techno learn to be more human, first with Ranboo, then Niki when he establishes the Syndicate. In fact, the two of them, along with Phil, canonically throw him a birthday party, which is a far cry from his treatment in Pogtopia.

Techno's development is one of a god learning to be human, and I just think he <3

[onebizarrekai]

v3′s art is comically terrible for a professionally distributed game in a series: a compilation

in this not-essay I will list all of the mistakes and problems I have spotted in v3′s art. don’t worry, it’s entirely for fun and I’m doing this on a whim, so please feel free to not take this seriously but also it’s hilarious and embarrassing how ridiculous this is like what happened did they speedrun the whole production or what

see, there are some things you can take as meta like “they made it bad on purpose to allude to the downfall of tv shows that have been on air for much too long” but I have a very strong feeling this is not the case due to the nature of some of these errors

disclaimer, the more I study this art, the more I fear that the artists were underpaid and underslept, so if this is in fact the case, I am so sorry to all of them but also I’m going to make fun of the art anyway

anyway let’s get started!

if you study this image for longer than 5 seconds, you will see that kaede is the only one fully shaded and keebo is literally just his normal sprite pasted into the image. every other character is just an ordinary ref, hence most of them facing the exact same direction with neutral expressions on their faces. it looks like a bad edit, and is probably one of the worst pieces of art in the game. it kind of gets better from here on, but my roasting will not.

with that out of the way, here’s the problem that officially bothers me the most and clarifies my viewpoint of “this is not meta and an actual lack of company communication”

this freaking cg, which seems normal at a glance, but some wiseass was like “oh, kaede is a girl, so obviously she’s going to be shorter than the Male Protagonist™” ah, that’s funny. because if you look at the character bios, kaede is, in fact, one inch taller than shuichi and not like 6 inches shorter as she is shown here.

also shuichi’s shoulder is disproportionate and horrendous and he looks vaguely like a jojo character, but I wasn’t even thinking about that until right now.

thanks guys, 50% of the fandom who has never bothered to check these bios thinks that kaede is like 5′3 (did the developers really put so little thought into her to the point where drawing her correctly in the game didn’t even matter??)

also I would like to point out that, even though this isn’t related to the art itself, yes, a character kaede’s size being only 117 lbs is unfeasible, but this applies to literally every character in danganronpa ever and it’s not new news that it’s unrealistic

update: someone in the tags informed me that in versions of the game that use centimeters, like the japanese version, kaede is actually shorter than shuichi, which just adds another thing to the list of weird decisions the localization team made for no reason. that said, after confirming this, kaede is 167 cm in the original, while shuichi is 171 cm, which are approximately 5′6 and 5′7 respectively, but one inch is still nowhere near as drastic as it is depicted above. (in spite of this, I would rather depict kaede as slightly taller, so I’m probably going to keep doing that.)

the journey continues!

bro if you want kaede to have shoulder length hair then stick to it to begin with

you can pretend this is at an angle all you want but they definitely committed the shorter kaede sin a second time

wait a goddamn second.

DO YOU SEE THIS

no………… it wasn’t kaede who shrank. it was shuichi who got taller

speaking of which, can we talk about how shady the perspective is in this elevator pic? look at shuichi and kokichi in comparison to kaede. kokichi, who is canonically 7 inches (edit: or 5, if you’re loyal to the original) shorter than kaede, looks taller than kaede. he’s growing too. what steroids are these gays taking

running into the room, electric boogaloo: I don’t think tsumugi is supposed to be the same height as kokichi

gonta… gonta you’re lookin a bit like a jojo character there

I love how kaito’s head looks kind of like it was pasted onto his body. why is he the same size as shuichi? shouldn’t he be high school bully size or something? his torso is teensy

ah yes, white angie.

I love this cg but why is shuichi’s right hand so much bigger than his left hand

I also love how this cg looks like they literally took pictures of trees and pasted them into the background, especially on the left. the shadows are so weird, especially closer to the ceiling, it’s difficult for me to believe they didn’t do exactly that.

return of Enlarged shuichi

puberty update: kokichi is now taller than shuichi in spite of shuichi never missing leg day. what crimes will he commit

I have to mention it, guys. this has to be one of the worst danganronpa cgs. kokichi’s facial proportions look atrocious. look at the way his face sticks out like his jaw is in the wrong place. his scarf is a pasted texture. that’s it. this moment was so iconic but the cg just looks so… so… off. like something is terribly wrong, but you can’t put your finger on it.

you know what? let’s get into that ‘pasted texture’ thing.

let’s imagine you’re an artist working on a professional game. you’re assigned to draw cgs of kokichi ouma, who has a checkered scarf from hell. sure, it will be terrible to draw, but you only have to draw it once at a time! plus, perspective is pretty important, right? can you be bothered? nah, actually. let’s just copy paste a checkered pattern into the cg, because I’m sure nobody will notice. it’ll blend right in with the other cgs that someone actually put effort into drawing his scarf in, right?

no. the answer is no and I very much noticed. this genuinely looks terrible and I would understand taking a shortcut like that in fanart or even an indie game but this is a full price pc and console distributed game

(an addition: look at kokichi’s TINY HANDS in that last one)

meanwhile, they straight up forgot to color in kokichi’s scarf in this cg.

dude. I forgot about whatever the hell this cg was. anyway look at keebo please just look at him

lovin kaito’s baby arms

real talk, maybe you could argue that he’s missing muscle because he’s deathly sick, but most of his cgs don’t line up with this, and his arms just look disproportionate to his torso size (granted this is a consistent problem across all danganronpa games and a lot of characters have this weird problem, like hajime, but also kaito is bigger than hajime so I kind of have higher expectations of him) maybe it’s his stupid goatee and the way he reminds me of yasuhiro?? it creates this illusion that he’s older than he is and so I keep expecting him to look more like an adult

oh, also rantaro is missing some of his accessories in that video he made–you know the one–but I don’t wanna go back and screenshot it

also you may have noticed that I’m skipping all of the monokub cgs because I literally do not care about them and I’m not even bothering to check and see if they have artistic mistakes in them

JIMMY NEUTRON???

hey um uh kaito you seem to be missing your neck

hey guys do you like my pregame fanart

so, that done, the sprites are also pretty terrible at times. they’re not as interesting to go through, however, and downloading the full sprite sets for every character and studying every single one of them will drive me insane, so I’ll just sum some of the ones I noticed up. I made things for kaede and shuichi before deciding I wasn’t going to get into it, so here are these.

that said, other mistakes include kokichi missing his purple highlights in all of the sprites encompassing a specific pose, stray pixels all over the place on everyone, and everyone also has heavily inconsistent shading, but literally all I think about is how pregame shuichi is unshaded and two of kaede’s pregame sprites have glaring outfit change mistakes in them

anyway, thank you for taking the time to read my ridiculous ramble. in all seriousness, there’s this looming presence of some lack of communication in the development team, like with all the art and design inconsistencies, pieces and sprites that look rushed, stray pixels, and missing basic proportional stuff. these are the kinds of things that you supposedly have to pretty much have in the bag in order to get jobs in professional businesses, so it’s really weird to me that this game suffers from so many of these problems. it’s like they tried to make the art so much more crisp than the other games, but it fell on its face as they realized it was going to take longer to draw everything and they started to rush. it’s weird, because the coloring itself looks normal–it’s just sloppily drawn, and the proportions are a mess once put into the context of perspective. many of the cgs look like they were drawn by different people, and I’m still not over the fact that half of kokichi’s cgs have his scarf pasted in as a texture.

the moral of the story is that if you’re selling a game at full price that also happens to be in a series that has had 3 very good games in it already the stakes should probably be higher than this. v3 has been out for more than 3 years and it’s still $40 (did it cost more than that before? I sure hope not), and the overarching quality of the game is just not as high as the other games. I’m not saying that the other games don’t have any problems with their art at all, they’re just not as glaringly obvious and every artistic choice in those games feels intentional.

regardless, I had a blast roasting the art at 2am, so maybe you got a kick out of all this chaos.

[nicanario]

this post is a product of its time

tw: discussion of racism, homophobia, misogyny and a short mention of sexual abuse.

ok, this is basically gonna be a very long rambling post about my not fully developed thoughts on the justification many people give to bigotry when talking about the past: "it was a product of its time"

it would be fair to say, with me being a raging SJW socialist scumbag, that I don't think this is a very good argument and is most of the time actually an excuse to not think about the problems inherent to our society, historical or not, and, by extension, the problems with ourselves. but I do think that sometimes, just sometimes, this can be a valid point, or at least one that raises some interesting questions.

I'm going to cite examples from several pieces of media, but fear not, I'll try to make this as accesible as I can.

so, let's take Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS) as our first case study. this show has, correctly, been called progressive by everyone except for clueless people who don't know much about Star Trek's history, Star Trek's crew, Star Trek's cast, or, frankly, Star Trek. because if you ignore the clear, sometimes in-your-face political history and present of the franchise, I don't think you know much about it at all. I do think you can call yourself a fan if you like it, you may have watched every single episode for all I know. but lots of mental gymnastics are needed to ignore the political progressiveness Star Trek has had since its very beginning.

episodes like Let That Be Your Last Battlefield are obviously anti-racist, at least in their intention. but the episode in question really is "a product of its time," and at the very end fails to uphold its ideals. the episode ends with the two aliens (who are LITERALLY. BLACK ON ONE SIDE. AND WHITE ON THE OTHER. BUT IN THE OPPOSITE SIDES.) fighting each other on their devastated planet, and the crew is like, "oh yeah if they both would give up on their hatred that they both share both of them equally" when it has been firmly established that one is the oppressor and the other one is the oppressed.

and that's a lot of Star Trek, not just TOS. even Discovery, one of the most recent series, has done Bury Your Gays (and Trans) TWICE (though both times literally rectified it, which is cool). there are episodes of the franchise that are overtly racist, or misogynistic, etc. TOS is lauded, mostly justifiably, as very progressive, especially for the standards of the time. they put a woman of colour as one of the senior staff, for fuck's sake. of course, when you analyse that same character, as with most of their intentions at being progressive, you'll see that she was relegated and sometimes even outright mistreated when she had the potential to be much more. but, at that time, it was a lot.

I had a friend (emphasis on "had") who, after I told him about TOS's both progressiveness and constant misogyny, told me something like "imagine feminists trying to complain about a show from the 60s." so, with unearned spite, he was, in some way, trying to make the argument that it was a product of its time.

you could say Star Trek, all of Star Trek, is "a product of its time" in the sense that it's not always perfect. uh, yes, I would agree. but that doesn't mean people have to accept it. well, I mean, the show is kinda over, you have to accept it's that way. but you don't have to accept that it's not wrong just because it was a product of its time.

H. P. Lovecraft, as another example, was a greatly influential writer whose works still shape a lot of people's ideas to this day. I have only ever read like one of his stories, so don't expect me to have an opinion on his works. but I can have an opinion on what I know about him as a person (he did have a life outside his writing, after all). and, yeah, he was a huge asshole. if you want to know more in depth about the subject, please watch Hbomberguy's video on him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8u8wZ0WvxI

but basically, he was incredibly racist & homophobic. some people might even say, "he was a product of his time." well, there are two possible rebuttals to that. the surface level one, and the one that examines why that argument is wrong to the core.

The Surface Level Response to "it was a product of its time": um, no it wasn't. Lovecraft was more racist than a lot of people even in his time. he wasn't just a guy who carried the racist beliefs of his society like everyone else, he was a reactionary who actively thought and discussed how racist he was, and how right he was for being that way. but that's only applicable to Lovecraft. one can't argue the same for Star Trek: TOS, because TOS did try to be more progressive and more anti-racist than the rest of its society. that leads us to the next response.

The Response that Actually Deals with the Fact that No Matter How Progressive You're Trying to Be, Your Failings Can Still be Criticized: the thing is, trying to excuse Lovecraft's or Star Trek's bigotry because they were "products of their times" misses the fact that racism is still wrong, and some people knew that in those times as well. people from these times weren't all naive or stupid or whatever. they had the capacity for rational thinking. they could stop and think, "hey, maybe what we're doing is wrong." and the fact is, some people did. not perfectly, not to our standars, but they did. everyone could have stopped and think. but most of them didn't, and we can criticize them for it. racism, homophobia, sexism, etc. HURT PEOPLE. horribly. massively.

also, even if you agree with the "it's a product of its time" argument, some people aren't criticising people's or work's bigotry: they're explaining why they don't want to experience it.

The Talons of Weng-Chiang is a 1977 Doctor Who serial, and it's one of the show's more racist stories. almost all the villains are Chinese, every single Chinese person is a villain. there's yellowface, slurs, stereotypes, the Doctor speaking nonsense words instead of actual Chinese, and a general belittling of Chinese culture.

note that I'm neither Chinese nor of Chinese descent. I have been searching for hours for a few posts I've read a while ago (some by people who are of Asian descent) about this episode and I can't find them. sorry.

suffice it to say, even though I love Jago & Litefoot (the audio series and the characters), it's not an acceptable episode at all. but it's also important to remark that, because of it, some people aren't going to want to watch it. sometimes, people aren't saying "the episode shouldn't be this way," which causes others to answer that it was "a product of its time." sometimes, people are just saying, "this is an episode that attacks real people. I don't want to see it. I don't care if it was common in that era to be racist, i don't want to experience it."

however, there is an interesting point to the "it's a product of its time" argument. after all, everything is influenced by its society, for better or worse. and we can't change it anymore. TOS sometimes didn't quite understand the political themes it wanted to explore. Lovecraft was a horrible bigot. Talons was racist towards Chinese folks. and that's that. I don't think we should change the episodes/stories or anything. edit them in any way. that would be, in a sense, changing history. and we wouldn't learn anything from it, about how we can do better.

I think there are two solutions to this:

1. warnings before starting the text: this was done with The Talons of Weng-Chiang. on Britbox, where you can watch Classic Who, this serial has a content warning before the start. that's good.

2. the removal as a whole of the text from some places: I think before applying this one, there should be a lot of thought put into each case. I don't think removing a whole serial of Doctor Who or Lovecraft's stories from anything would be, well, fair. especially on tv episodes a lot more people worked on those, not just the writers and the directors. Lovecraft's writing influenced thousands. we shouldn't erase them or anything. but sometimes, for some cases, we should.

those in the US might seen a Confederate statue being taken down. that is, in a way, a form of removal of a piece of history.

but that is a good removal. statues glorify. one sees a statue and probably thinks "this was a person worthy of admiration." they should be taken down, maybe even with a permanent mark of why this was done (a plaque that reads "a statue of X was here, but he didn't deserve it because of Y" could be put in place of the statues, for example).

another example is the removal from DVDs of the short episode A Fix with Sontarans, a Sixth Doctor minisode that featured Jimmy Savile, a presenter who was later found out to be sexually abusing children.

the removal of that minisode is good, actually. it's not a full episode (it's not even Doctor Who). some might say that's "erasing history" but, like, you can still find it online or information about it if you want. this minisode deserves removal from DVDs and Blu-Rays and whatever more than content warnings. it's not an important part of the show and it prominently features a horrible person who did horrible things during that time.

so, after all that, I have explained why I don't like the "it's a product of its time" argument. it is an interesting point that deserves to be examined, but it's not very good.

I have had this in Drafts for so long I've probably forgot some of the points I was going to make, but eh, what can you do? hope you enjoyed reading this.

bye

[fortheloveofqueer]

Intersectionality in Queer Media

Hi all, my name is Cora and I’m fully new to Tumblr, but let’s skip the pleasantries and get right to it :)

As someone who has identified as queer as long as I have labelled my sexuality, I have always liked seeing queer people who are like me in popular media. While I do love reading queer theory and find that texts and essays that are a part of throrough queer analysis, media in the form of TV, movies, podcasts, etc. is much easier to consume. It is less dense and typically more likely to reach a broader audience than dense essay collections that typically would have to be searched for deliberately in order to be seen. While some media that depicts queer people does so in a tokenistic way in attempts to seem inclusive, there is also a lot of media that actually depicts accurate representation of queer people and doesn’t ignore a queer character’s intersectional identities. 

One show I love and I feel actually is inclusive and attempts to bring about discourse on why ignoring that intersectionality is harmful is Shameless. Shameless not only features a plethora of queer characters, it does so in a way that also acknowledges their race, gender, class, and disability or mental illnesses that all need to be seen in order to truly understand who the characters are. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love the show as just a consumer of the media as well (#Gallavich ftw) but I think it’s an amazing piece to look at for a show that is in its roots a comedy/drama. 

One thing that has always stood out to me in Shameless is the way it takes its main family of characters from the South Side of Chicago and consistently depicts the disparities between the Gallaghers as a poor family and other characters like Jimmy/Steve and his family who come from wealth. Particularly, in the queer interactions between these to families is between Ian and Jimmy/Steve’s dad, Ned. The two spark a sexual relationship through encounters in a gay club, but there is a huge difference looking into the way these to characters handle their own sexuality. Ian, coming from a poor family, is confident in his gayness; his family knows his sexuality, he’s completely open to them about other gay relationships he has had, and he doesn’t hide the fact that he works in a gay club. Ned, on the other hand, is married to a woman, has had multiple children with her, and only expresses his sexuality in secret. The disparities between the twos class backgrounds lead into why they are expressing themselves the way they do; Ian has always had to be close to his family, they went through a lot together from being separated into foster care/group homes or having to all find ways to make money in order to have food and a roof over their heads, the Gallagher family is a tight knit group. Oppositely, Ned is completely closeted. He and his family are well off and have the means to keep their personal lives separate, and have not had to form the same reliances on one another in times of despair like the Gallagher family. These differences highlight how people are able to hide their sexualities if they have the means to create a facade of a straight-lifestyle. We see Ian getting bullied through school for being gay, while nobody even knows Ned is gay because he has a wife and only expresses his sexuality when he feels like he can/ when he wants to. 

A topic for another day but I’d like to mention is the way Shameless also opens up for a discussion regarding race and class in its latter seasons with the way Liam, as a black person, is raised by a completely white family and only begins to learn about black culture when he begins going to a wealthy school and talking to the one other black person he has grown up around, V. The show is not afraid of having the “tough conversations'' and has had a platform to bring about useful discourse through its airtime and beyond.

[writemarcus]

HITTING NEW HEIGHTS

BY MARCUS SCOTT

ORIGINAL RENT STAR DAPHNE RUBIN-VEGA TAKES YOU INSIDE THE IN THE HEIGHTS FILM

Qué quiere decir sueñito?” The disembodied voice of a girlchild ponders. “It means ‘little dream,’” responds an unseen authoritative figure, his feathery tenor with a soft rasp and tender lilt implying there’s more to the story.

Teal waves crash against the white sand coastal lines of the Dominican Republic and a quartet of children plead with the voice to illuminate and tell a story. Usnavi de la Vega (played by Anthony Ramos), sporting his signature newsboy flat cap and full goatee, begins to narrate and weave a tall-tale from the comforts of his beachside food cart: “This is the story of a block that was disappearing. Once upon a time in a faraway land called Nueva York, en barrio called Washington Heights. Say it, so it doesn’t disappear,” he decrees.

And we’re off, this distant magic kingdom ensnared within the winding urban sprawl of farthest-uptown Manhattan, the music of the neighborhood chiming with infinite possibilities: a door-latch fastening on tempo, a ring of keys sprinkling a sweet embellishment, the splish-splash of a garden hose licking the city streets like a drumstick to a snare fill, a manhole cover rotating like vinyl on a get-down turntable, the hiss of paint cans spraying graffiti like venoms from cobras and roll-up steel doors rumbling, not unlike the ultra-fast subway cars zigzagging underground. So begins the opening moments of In the Heights, the Warner Bros. stage-to-screen adaptation of the Tony Award-winning musical by composer-lyricist Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton) and librettist Quiara Alegría Hudes (Water by the Spoonful) that is set to premiere in movie theatres and on HBO Max on June 11, 2021.

This stunning patchwork of visuals and reverberations combine to create a defiant and instantly memorable collage of inner-city living not seen since Walter Hill’s 1979 cult classic The Warriors or West Side Story, the iconic romantic musical tragedy directed on film by Robert Wise and original Broadway director Jerome Robbins. With Jon M. Chu at the helm, the musical feature has all the trademarks of the director’s opulent signature style: Striking spectacles full of stark colors, va-va-voom visuals, ooh-la-la hyperkinetic showstopping sequences and out-of-this-world destination locations.

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A Kind of Priestess

Joining the fray of proscenium stage vets in the film is Broadway star Daphne Rubin-Vega, who originated the role of Mimi in the Off-Broadway and Broadway original productions of Rent. She returns to major motion pictures after a decade since her last outing in Nancy Savoca’s Union Square, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2011. When we caught up with Rubin-Vega, she was hard at work, in-between rehearsals with her In the Heights co-star Jimmy Smits on Two Sisters and a Piano, the 1999 play by Miami-based playwright Nilo Cruz, a frequent collaborator. Rubin-Vega netted a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her role as the enraptured Conchita in Cruz’s Anna in the Tropics; that same year Cruz was awarded the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, making him the first Latino playwright to receive the honor. Despite significant global, social and economic disruption, especially within the arts community, Rubin-Vega has been working throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

“People around me have [contracted] COVID… My father-in-law just had it. I’m very fortunate,” Rubin-Vega said. “This collective experience, it’s funny because it’s a year now and things seem better. Last year it was, like, ‘Damn, how inconvenient!’ The one comfort was that, you know, it’s happening to every one of us. That clarity that this is a collective experience is much more humbling and tolerable to me.”

The last time Rubin-Vega graced Washington Heights on screen or stage, she acted in the interest of survival and hunger as a probationer released after a 13-year stint in prison and given a new lease on life as an unlicensed amateur masseuse in the basement of an empanada shop in Empanada Loca, The Spalding Gray-style Grand Guignol horror play by Aaron Mark at the LAByrinth Theater Company in 2015. In In the Heights she plays Daniela, an outrageously vivacious belting beautician with a flair for the dramatics, forced to battle a price-gouging real estate bubble in the wake of gentrification.

“She’s like the deputy or the priestess,” Rubin-Vega said. “Owning a salon means that you have a lot of information; you’re in a hub of community, of information, of sharing… it’s also where you go for physical grooming. It’s a place where women were empowered to create their own work and it is a place of closeness, spiritual advice, not-so-spiritual advice. Physical attention.”

She said, “Daniela also being an elder; I think she’s not so much a person that imposes order on other people. She’s there to bring out the best—she leads with love. She tells it like it is. I don’t think she sugar-coats things. What you see is what you get with Daniela. It’s refreshing; she has a candor and sure-footedness that I admire.”

With the film adaptation, Chu and Hudes promised to expand the universe of the Upper Manhattan-based musical, crafting new dimensions and nuances to two characters in particular: Daniela and hairdresser Carla, originally portrayed as business associates and gossip buddies in the stage musical. On the big screen they are reimagined as romantic life partners. Stephanie Beatriz, known to audiences for her hilarious turn as the mysterious and aloof Detective Rosa Diaz in the police procedural sitcom romp “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” co-stars as the fast-talking firecracker, Carla.

It’s been a year waiting, you know. It’s like the lid’s been on it and so we’re just so ready to explode.

Where Is Home?

“Well, Quiara and Jon really expanded on what Lin and Quiara originally created and now they’re partners—and not just work partners, right? But they’re life partners,” Beatriz said at a March press event celebrating the release of the film’s two promo trailers. “What was so gratifying to me as a person who is queer is to see this relationship in the film be part of the fabric of the community, and to be normal, and be happy and functioning, and part of the quilt they’ve all created.”

She continued, “So much of this film is about where home is and who home is to you. And for Carla, Daniela is home. Wherever Daniela is, that’s where Carla feels at home. I thought that they did such a beautiful job of guiding us to this, really, you know, it’s just a happy functioning relationship that happens to be gay and in the movie. And I love that they did that, because it is such a part of our world.”

Rubin-Vega said she had no interest in playing any trope of what one might think a lesbian Latina might look or act like, noting that the queer experience isn’t monolithic, while expressing that the role offered her a newfound freedom, especially with regard to being present in the role and in her everyday life.

“Spoiler alert! I felt like not wearing a bra was going to free me. Did I get it right? Am I saying that gay women don’t wear bras? No, it was just a way for me to be in my body and feel my breasts. To feel my femaleness and celebrate it in a more unapologetic way,” she said, laughing. “To be honest, I was really looking forward to playing a lesbian Latina. It’s something that I hadn’t really explored before. Latinos [can be] very homophobic as a culture, and I wanted to play someone who didn’t care about homophobia; I was gonna live my best life. That’s a bigger thing. It’s also like, maybe I’m bisexual. Who knows? Who cares? If you see that in the film, that’s cool too, you know?”

Stand-out performances abound, especially with regard to the supporting cast; newcomers Melissa Barrera (in a role originated by Tony Award winner Karen Olivo) and Gregory Diaz IV (replacing three-time Tony Award nominee Robin de Jesús) are noteworthy as the aspiring fashion designer Vanessa and budding activist Sonny. Olga Merediz, who earned a Tony Award nomination for originating her role as Abuela Claudia, returns to the silver screen in a captivating performance that will be a contender come award season. However, Rubin-Vega may just be the one to watch. Her performance is incandescent and full of moxie, designed to raise endorphin levels. She leads an ensemble in the rousing “Carnaval del Barrio,” a highlight in the film.

Musical Bootcamp

“We shot in June [2019]. In April, we started musical bootcamp. In May, we started to do the choreography. My big joke was that I would have to get a knee replacement in December; that was in direct relation to all that choreography. I mean, there were hundreds of A-1 dancers in the posse,” Rubin-Vega said. “The family consisted of hundreds of superlative dancers led by Chris[topher] Scott, with an amazing team of dancers like Ebony Williams, Emilio Dosal, Dana Wilson, Eddie Torres Jr. and Princess Serrano. We rehearsed a fair bit. Monday through Friday for maybe five weeks. The first day of rehearsal I met Melissa [Barrera] and Corey [Hawkins], I pretty much hadn’t known everyone yet. I hadn’t met Leslie [Grace] yet. Chris Scott, the choreographer, just went straight into ‘let’s see what you can do.’ It was the first [dance] routine of ‘In The Heights,’ the opening number. He was like, ‘OK, let’s go. Five, six, seven, eight!’”

Rubin-Vega said that she tried to bring her best game, though it had “been a minute” since she had to execute such intricate choreography, noting that they shot the opening number within a day while praising Chu’s work ethic and leadership.

“There was a balance between focus and fun and that’s rare. Everyone was there because they wanted to be there,” she said. “I think back to the day we shot ‘96,000.’ That day it wouldn’t stop raining; [it was] grey and then the sky would clear and we’d get into places and then it would be grey again and so we’d have to wait and just have to endure. But even the bad parts were kind of good, too. Even the hottest days. There were gunshots, there was a fire while we were shooting and we had to shut down, there was traffic and noise and yet every time I looked around me or went into video village and saw the faces in there, I mean…it felt like the only place to be. You want to feel like that in every place you are: The recognition. I could recognize people who look like me. For now on, you cannot say I’ve never seen a Panamanian on film before or a Columbian or a Mexican, you know?”

Another Notion of Beauty

Rubin-Vega’s professional relationship with the playwright Hudes extends to 2015, when she was tapped to [participate in the] workshop [production of]  Daphne’s Dive. Under the direction of Thomas Kail (Hamilton) and starring alongside Samira Wiley (“The Handmaid’s Tale,” “Orange Is the New Black”), the play premiered Off-Broadway at the Pershing Square Signature Center the following year. Rubin-Vega also starred in Miss You Like Hell, the cross-country road musical by Hudes and Erin McKeown, which premiered at La Jolla Playhouse in 2016 before it transferred to The Public Theater in 2018. With her participation in the production of In the Heights, she is among the few to have collaborated with all of the living Latinx playwrights to have won the Pulitzer Prize; Hudes won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Water by the Spoonful, while Miranda took home the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Hamilton. Speaking on her multiple collaborations over the years, Rubin-Vega also acknowledged having known Miranda years before they would join voices.

“Lin to me is like a little bro or legacy; he’s a direct descent to me from [Rent author] Jonathan Larson, which is a bigger sort of all-encompassing arch,” she said, though she stressed that she auditioned like everyone else, landing the role after two or three callbacks. “Quiara and I have a wonderful working and personal relationship, I think. Which isn’t to say I had dibs by any means because…it’s a business that wants the best for itself, I suppose. […] So, when I walked in, I was determined to really give it my best.”

Life During and After Rent

Rubin-Vega has built an impressive resume over the course of her career, singing along with the likes of rock stars like David Bowie and starring in a multitude of divergent roles on Broadway and off. From a harrowing Fantine in Les Misérables and a co-dependent Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire to a sinister Magenta in The Rocky Horror Show, her evolution into the atypical character actor and leading lady can be traced back 25 years to January 25, 1996, when Larson’s groundbreaking musical Rent, a retelling of Giacomo Puccini’s 19th-century opera La Bohème, premiered at the New York Theatre Workshop. On the morning of the first preview, Larson suffered an aortic dissection, likely from undiagnosed Marfan’s syndrome and died at the age of 35, just ten days shy of what would have been his 36th birthday.

On April 29, 1996, due to overwhelming popularity, Rent transferred to Nederlander Theatre on Broadway, tackling contemporary topics the Great White Way had rarely seen, such as poverty and class warfare during the AIDS epidemic in New York City’s gritty East Village at the turn of the millennium. Rubin-Vega would go on to be nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical for her role as sex kitten Mimi Márquez, an HIV-positive heroin addict and erotic dancer.

  The show became a cultural phenomenon, receiving several awards including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and four Tony Awards, including Best Musical. Rubin-Vega and members of the original Broadway cast were suddenly overnight sensations, recording “Seasons of Love” alongside music icon Stevie Wonder, receiving a photo shoot with Vanity Fair and landing the May 13, 1996 cover of Newsweek. Throughout its 12-year Broadway run, many of the show’s original cast members and subsequent replacements would go on to be stars, including Renée Elise Goldsberry, who followed in Rubin-Vega’s footsteps to play the popular character before originating the role of Angelica Schuyler in Hamilton, for which she won the 2016 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical.

When the screen adaptation of Rent hit cinemas in 2005 under the direction of Chris Columbus, Rubin-Vega’s conspicuous absence came as a blow to longtime fans. The confluence of pregnancy with the casting and filming process of Rent hindered her from participating at the time. The role was subsequently given to movie star Rosario Dawson.

“First of all, if you’re meant to be in a film, you’re meant to be in it,” Rubin-Vega said. “That’s just the way it goes. It took a quarter of a century but this [In the Heights] is a film that I wanted to make, that I felt the elements sat right. I always felt that Rent was a little bit darker than all that. Rent to me is Rated R. In The Heights is not. It’s also a testament. Unless it’s sucking your soul and killing you softly or hardly, just stick with it. This is a business and I keep forgetting it’s a business because actors just want to show art. So, it’s really wonderful when you get a chance to say what you mean and mean what you say with your work. It’s a really wonderful gift.”

Rarely-Explored Themes

Like Larson’s award-winning show and the film adapted from it, In The Heights is jam-packed with hard-hitting subject matter, addressing themes of urban blight, immigration, gentrification, cultural identity, assimilation and U.S. political history. When Rubin-Vega’s character Daniela and her partner were priced out of the rent for her salon, most of her clientele moved to the Grand Concourse Historic District in the Bronx. Her salon, a bastion of the community, is met with a polar response when she announces she’s joining the mass exodus with the other victims of gentrification who were pushed out by rising rents. The news is met with negative response from long-time patrons who refuse to take the short commute to the new location. Daniela counters, “Our people survived slave ships, we survived Taino [indigenous Caribbean people] genocide, we survived conquistadores and dictators…you’re telling me we can’t survive the D train to Grand Concourse?”

The question is humorous, but also insinuates a more nuanced understanding of the AfroLatinidad experience in the Western world. The film also looks at the American Dream with a naturalistic approach. Leslie Grace, who plays Nina Rosario, a first-generation college student returning from her freshman year at Stanford University and grappling with finances and the expectations of her community, noted that while her character “finds [herself] at some point at a fork in the road,” she may not have the luxury to be indecisive because of the pressures put on by family, community and country.  

“The struggle of the first-generation Americans in the Latino community is not talked about a lot because it’s almost like a privilege,” Grace asserted. “You feel like it’s a privilege to talk about it. But there is a lot of identity crisis that comes with it and I think we explore that.” Speaking on the character, she elaborated: “Home for her is where her heart is, but also where her purpose is. So, she finds her purpose in doing something outside of herself, greater than herself and going back to Stanford for the people she loves in her community. I really relate to where she’s at, trying to find herself. And I think a lot of other people will, too.”

Worth Singing About

For Miranda, a first-generation Puerto Rican New Yorker that grew up in Inwood at the northernmost tip of Manhattan before attending Wesleyan University where he would develop the musical, this speaks to a larger issue of what defines a home.

“What does ‘home’ even mean? Every character is sort of answering it in a different way,” he said. “For some people, home is somewhere else. For some people, home is like ‘the block’ they’re on. So, that’s worth singing about. It’s worth celebrating in a movie of this size.”

Given the current zeitgeist, it’s no wonder why Chu, Hudes and Miranda decided to pivot with adapting the stage musical for the big screen, leaning in to tackle the plights and predicaments of DREAMers [children of undocumented immigrants seeking citizenship] stateside. In one scene, glimpses of posters at a protest rally read “Immigrant Rights are Human Rights” and “Refugees Are People Too.” Growing up in a multicultural household as a Latina with a Black Latina mother, a white father and a Jewish American stepfather, Rubin-Vega said she was used to being in spaces that were truly multiracial. Nevertheless, there were times when she often felt alien, especially as a du jour rock musical ingenue who looked as she did in the mid-1990s through the 2000s.

“Undocumented people come in different shapes and colors,” she noted. “To be born in a land that doesn’t recognize you, it’s a thing that holds so much horror… so much disgrace happens on the planet because human beings aren’t recognized as such sometimes.”

The film “definitely sheds light on that, but it also talks about having your dream taken away and its human violation—it’s a physical, spiritual, social, cultural violation,” Rubin-Vega said. “There’s a difference between pursuing dreams and being aware of reality. They’re not mutually exclusive. What this film does, it presents a story that is fairly grounded in reality. It’s a musical, it’s over the top… but it reflects a bigger reality, which is like an emotional reality…that people that are challenged on the daily, have incredible resolve, incredible resoluteness and lifeforce.”

She said: “Growing up, looking like me, I got to ingest the same information as everyone else except when it came time to implement my contributions, they weren’t as welcomed or as seen. The dream is to be seen and to be recognized. Maybe I could be an astronaut or an ingenue on Broadway? You can’t achieve stuff that you haven’t imagined. When it talks about DREAMers, it talks about that and it talks about how to not be passive in a culture that would have you think you are passive but to be that change and to dare to be that change.”

Dreams Come True

Dreams are coming true. Alongside the nationwide release of the much-anticipated film, Random House announced it will publish In the Heights: Finding Home, which will give a behind-the-scenes look at the beginnings of Miranda’s 2008 breakout Broadway debut and journey to the soon-to-be-released film adaptation. The table book will chronicle the show’s 20-year voyage from page to stage—from Miranda’s first drawings at the age of 19 to lyric annotations by Miranda and essays written by Hudes to never-before-seen photos from productions around the world and the 2021 movie set. It will be released to the public on June 22, eleven days after the release of the film; an audiobook will be simultaneously released by Penguin Random House Audio.

Hinting at the year-long delay due to the pandemic, Rubin-Vega said, “It’s been a year waiting, you know. It’s like the lid’s been on it and so we’re just so ready to explode.”

Bigger Dreams

“Jon [Chu], I think, dreams bigger than any of us dare to dream in terms of the size and scope of this,” Miranda said. “We spent our summer [in 2018] on 175th Street. You know, he was committed to the authenticity of being in that neighborhood we [all] grew up in, that we love, but then also when it comes to production numbers, dreaming so big. I mean, this is a big movie musical!”

Miranda continued, “We’re so used to asking for less, just to ask to occupy space, you know? As Latinos, we’re, like, ‘Please just let us make our little movie.’ And Jon, every step of the way, said, like, ‘No, these guys have big dreams. We’re allowed to go that big!’ So, I’m just thrilled with what he did ’cause I think it’s bigger than any of us ever dreamed.”

Speaking at the online press conference, Miranda said, “I’m talking to you from Washington Heights right now! I love it here. The whole [movie] is a love letter to this neighborhood. I think it’s such an incredible neighborhood. It’s the first chapter in so many stories. It’s a Latinx neighborhood [today]. It was a Dominican neighborhood when I was growing up there in the ’80s. But before that it was an Irish neighborhood and Italian. It’s always the first chapter in so many American stories.”