#lou personal post

[tillthelandslide]

Me? Watching daisy Jones and the six for the fourth time? Nope. Definitely not.

[clarionglass]

so i have been bitten by the sam reich!master bug courtesy of some phenomenal art by @northernfireart and uh. as is too often the case i had to write something otherwise if i didn't get it out of my brain i would go absolutely insane

(there may be more vignettes coming if i have ideas..... there are definitely other episodes i'd like to give the Treatment to, plus with the new dw series coming out on the weekend i may have ideas for how to incorporate the dw gang! however, i promise neither more writing or no more writing. that said, this was a lot of fun so there'll probably be more at some stage :D )

this has full spoilers for the game changer ep "escape the greenroom", but hey that's been out for a while now so,,,, if you haven't seen it i'd highly recommend it as an episode!

so, without further ado:

--

Samuel Dalton was a complete fiction, of course, but that didn't mean that when Sam Reich snuck back upstairs to get tied up in the “out of order” bathroom, the Sam that remained on the monitor, laughing at the contestants, was a pre-recording. And if Brennan, Siobhan and Lou had snorted at the idea of a time-travelling evil magician great-grandfather (for good reason), going in with the actual truth of the matter would have sounded like jumping the shark.

It sounded bizarre, but the time travel bit was the only part about his new partner in crime that was confirmably real. Admittedly, the jury was still out on “evil”—he gave off a weird vibe at times, but so far, no lines had been crossed, and it had all been funny as hell—so for now, Sam was willing to roll with it. But perhaps most surprisingly, there wasn’t even the possibility of blood relation between Samuel Dalton Reich and the guy who had shown up out of the blue one day with his exact face and a plan to really fuck around with things on Game Changer.

Yeah, the whole alien thing had really ruled out that particular prospect.

There had been various bits and pieces of confirmation that this guy wasn’t human through the time Sam had known him, but the final nail in the coffin for that one was when his doppelganger had looked him dead in the eye and tried on one of the heart rate monitors—sorry, “range extenders”—for As a Cucumber. The damn thing had literally sparked up, then died completely. Trying to process input from two separate heartbeats at once would do that, apparently. 

His doppelganger was a Time Lord, or so he had nonchalantly said one afternoon in casual conversation, though Sam still wasn’t sure if that one was a joke or not. It was hard to tell, sometimes, because he said the wildest things with the straightest face, and so far, most of them had turned out to be one hundred percent certifiably true. The time travel, the space travel, even the changing faces thing—it sounded objectively insane, but the proof was undeniable. 

There were some notable exceptions, though. Saying he’d been trapped for aeons inside Neil Patrick Harris’s gold tooth went just that bit too far to be believable, though Sam did appreciate his double’s slightly warped sense of humour.

It was that offbeat line of thinking that lent itself well to game design, as it turned out. He had a knack for coming up with ideas for Game Changer episodes, albeit with the occasional suggestion that went way beyond the bounds of good taste, and, as in the case of Escape the Greenroom, had devised some blinding twists on concepts Sam had already half-formed. The letter puzzle unlocking the secret door? It was perfect.

Understandably, Sam’s doppelganger had wanted to observe the fruits of their labours in real time, rather than watching the recording later. It happened, sometimes, particularly when it was one of his ideas that had made it through to the episode list—they’d swap places for a session, with nobody being any the wiser. Watching those edits back always felt a bit weird—it was uncanny how flawless the mimicry was—but hey, the guy was right. It was always fun.

Escape the Greenroom, specifically, with its “Samuel Dalton” conceit, provided them with a unique opportunity. Instead of swapping out the camera feed for a recording when the cast piled into the tiny secret room behind the wall, as per the original plan to get Sam in position to be discovered in the bathroom, they could just swap out the people. Sam would go upstairs, and his double would take his place at the podium, ducking out of sight when everyone came back to the main stage to “defuse the bomb”.

Sam was keen—hell, if their situations had been reversed, he’d want to be there to watch, too—but caution raised a flag. “You don’t think it’s too risky?” he’d asked when the subject was first raised. “Both of us being in the same place?”

His doppelganger had shrugged one shoulder with supreme unconcern. “The crew won't notice.”

At the time, Sam had shot him a sceptical look, but right now, Sam-Reich-in-a-purple-tie and Sam-Reich-in-an-orange-tie were standing backstage post-record, clearly visible and and calmly chatting, and not a single member of the crew had given them so much as a second glance. 

…Hardly even a first glance, come to think about it. If anyone looked over their way, their eyes seemed to… not exactly go through them, but slide over the two of them like water. He was tempted to wave to Nico or Ash or someone, just out of pure curiosity, but something in the back of his mind told him that wouldn’t be the world’s greatest idea. He had a funny feeling he wouldn’t like to see what would happen next.

(He’d given the prop bomb back to the crew once the cameras stopped rolling, and though it looked the same as the one he remembered from before he’d headed upstairs, it felt different in his hands. Heavier, more… serious, somehow. He was sure nothing would have happened—but at the same time, he was suddenly very glad that the cast had cut the correct wire with no less than a minute fifteen to go.)

(The jury was still out on evil, after all.)

“Worth coming in for?” he asked instead.

“Absolutely,” his double replied with relish. “Locking those three in a small room for an hour? Brilliant, fantastic. Inspired. It was absolute chaos.”

“Have you seen up there?” Sam asked, a smile starting to spread across his face. “They messed up the set real bad.”

His doppelganger smirked at him. “You know it took literally two seconds from you telling them to escape the greenroom for Lou to smash that guitar?”

Sam shook his head. “Oh my god. Yeah, they were stressed.” 

“Mmm. Some real panic in that room,” his doppelganger agreed, and Sam chose to ignore the faint note of satisfaction in his voice.

He shifted his weight, settling back to lean against the table behind the set, in the exact instant his double decided to do the same thing. It really was freaky how similar they were, down to the smallest mannerism—like looking in a mirror, only weirder, because the face that looked back at him was truly his own face, not mirror-reversed. Even now, it still caught Sam off guard from time to time, but at least it had faded into a more comfortable kind of strange. He had an exact lookalike who was an actual time-travelling alien. Cool. Doesn’t everyone?

The pair shared a companionable silence for a few moments, before a thought Sam had been turning over for a while rose to the top of his mind. He shifted again, this time on his own, and he felt his double’s regard swing up to fix on him like a magnet. 

“Okay, real talk,” he started, and his doppelganger frowned back in an approximation of confused innocence. “What’s all this for?”

“Who says it has to be for anything? Aren't we just having fun?”

Sam hummed, considering. “Yeah. No, I'd believe that, if I didn't sometimes walk into production meetings and find out I'd apparently been very specific about the people I wanted for certain episodes.”

“Point for Sam,” his doppelganger acknowledged with a grin. “You got me. Wasn’t hard to make a few phone calls on our joint behalf.”

“Yeah, but why?” Sam pressed. “I mean, Siobhan, Brennan and Lou are always great comedy value when you put them together, and it was awesome to have them for this, but I get the feeling you’re thinking of something other than making good content.”

“Who, me?”

With that, his double gave him a look of such overdone pantomime innocence that Sam suddenly and thoroughly understood why, not half an hour earlier, Brennan had very seriously threatened to push him down the stairs. 

He rolled his eyes, which earned him a smirk for his troubles.

Dropping the act, his doppelganger continued. “I’m expecting an… old friend, I guess, to show up at some point, and—well, I’d like to put on a really special show for them. I thought it would be a good opportunity to try a few things out, you know?”

Ominous pause aside, that was actually kind of sweet. Sweeter than he’d been expecting, that’s for sure—he was half anticipating the revelation that he and his cast were subjects in some weird experiment. Hey, that still couldn’t fully be ruled out, but still.

“Okay,” he acquiesced. “Well… just let me know, next time? Before you start ordering in my cast like takeout?”

“Who says they’re your cast?” his double shot back with a twinkle in his eye, and Sam snorted.

“Fine. Our cast, then. But seriously, let me know?”

His doppelganger nodded, which, if not quite fully convincing, was good enough. 

“Oh, and do you know when your friend might be arriving?” Sam asked. “Because if you wanted to plan something, we can—”

“I don’t know,” his doppelganger interrupted. “So yeah, we’ll have to move fast when they do get here. But I’ve got it under control.”

He broke off, then shot Sam a mischievous grin. “In the meantime, though, I’ve had this fun thought about time loops…”

[miksterrr]

so like, i know we, as a fandom, don't like Sensei Wu that much-

BUT how many times do yall think the ninja called him dad?

[egberts]

louis 9 weeks old vs 12 weeks old with the ball tower

[evankinkley]

listen, if you post buddie content in the lou ferrigno jr tag, automatic block. what are you trying to achieve?

[kommandonuovidiavoli]

When the whole family has your back…

I swear this is funny in my head with my context, ignore that I haven’t introduced adult au design for half these people, pretend you know who is who…

[okruee]

How do we know half of the Gaza posts are real when it comes to these GFM? Some of the stories seem "off" with the age, and stories.. the written paragraphs are too clean.. Even copy, pasting and googling some of them link to a ton of other stories, pages, sites.. and some are dated from 2022, and prior.

Most of the donations i reblog are people who have messaged me on here which I'm more than willing to share since I know it'll reach a lot of people:

I try to vet before I reblog - I check this masterlist of vetted fundraisers managed by trusted people on tumblr, I check if they've interacted with the posts if not on the masterlist yet.

photos - I'll reverse image-search to make sure they're not stolen, people might create fundraises on multiple platforms - i don't see an issue with that.

their stories - i assume they're using google translate or someone else has translated it into English for them.

timing - Gaza has been facing violence from the IOF for decades so I wouldn't immediately discount something from years ago

Obviously donate to gofundme's at your own discretion, you always have the option to donate to registered charities too

[milf-harrington]

inspired by @flashyysins

Two days after Hawkins was almost split open, Robin saw a woman pacing in the hospital waiting room.

There were plenty of other people as well, sitting or standing or walking the length of the room in a similar pattern, but there was something about the woman that Robin noticed. It wasn't just that she was beautiful, which she was- it's that there was something familiar about her.

She was in blue jeans and an old-school Hawkins High Letterman jacket, light brown hair twisted up in a claw clip. Robin had never met her before, she'd remember that at the very least, but still.

Something about the angle of her nose or the gentle waves of her hair felt like something Robin had seen before, something she'd be able to find in a crowded room or across a street.

But Robin had somewhere to be, so she shook off the odd feeling, and followed the familiar path to Steve's room.

---

"Hey Stevie."

Steve's smile was tired, but he was looking more lively than when he'd passed out in the waiting room the other day, so she'd take it.

"Robbie, you left me hanging yesterday."

She snorted and dropped into one of the chairs by his bed, swinging her legs over the arm rest and cradling the bag she'd brought with her in her lap. "You're the one who fell asleep during visiting hours."

He rolled his eyes, and she happily noted the colour returning to his skin. "You should be exempt from visiting hours, you're like...essential to my recovery or something."

She laughed to hide the way those words curled soft and warm around her heart, eyes stinging until she blinked it away. The dumbass had almost over-worked himself to the point of no recovery. "'Exempt?' Someone's been reading a dictionary- did one of your children leave theirs behind?"

"Oh fuck you-"

They were interrupted by a knock on the door, and Robin was startled to see the woman from the waiting room hovering behind a nurse.

"You have a new visitor Mr Harrington."

Even knee-deep in confused intrigue, Robin couldn't help but dramatically mouth Mr Harrington over her own shoulder, pleased at the face he pulled in retaliation.

And then the door shut, and Steve looked up to find the woman-from-the-waiting room standing at the end of the bed.

Robin saw his brain grind to a halt at the sight of her.

It was silent (well, as much as it could be in a hospital room, what with all the beeping and whirring) as they took each other in, and Robin slowly brought her knees in closer to her chest like it would shield her from the vague awkwardness chewing at her.

And then-

"Fucking hell, Eve." The woman breathed out, white knuckling the bar at the end of his bed.

At the same time, Steve's face scrunched up as he demanded: "What are you doing here?"

"What do you mean 'what am I doing here'? You're in hospital!"

"I thought you were in New York!"

"Yeah and then I got a call from Hawkins General that my little brother was dying in a hospital bed! Thank you for keeping me as your emergency contact, by the way."

"Well-" Steve spluttered and then crossed his arms over his chest, wincing at the pressure on his injuries. "Obviously."

Several things clicked into place like undone locks. Steve had almost been too comfortable about "feminine" topics for as long as she'd been an active member of his life- and even slightly before.

(He'd once run out of Scoops to buy her pads when she'd started her period in the middle of a shift. At the time she'd figured he was just trying really hard to beat the still a douche-bag allegations.)

Then there were the sweaters that he wouldn't confess to the origin of, the jokes he'd make about Robin "not being the only woman in his life" that she'd thought were about Nancy Wheeler, the vehement denial that the rom-com collection in the theatre room were his.

And, while Robin hated to enforce gender stereotypes, he'd always had the kind of mean girl cattiness that was usually only forged in teenaged girls and merely rubbed off on others.

Of course Steve Harrington had a sister.

Now Robin understood why she'd seemed so familiar in the waiting room.

"What happened to you?"

Simultaneously, Robin and Steve shifted uncomfortably, meeting each others eyes and coming up blank on both ends.

Steve's sister swallowed, jaw clenched and lip quivering as she look back and forth between them. She seemed suddenly fragile, like Steve after a nightmare, or right before he'd collapsed in the waiting room after carrying Eddie inside.

Steve cracked first. "Lou-"

"Don't fucking lie to me, Stephen. This is the third time you've ended up in hospital since your senior year."

Steve blinked, startled. "How did you-"

"I'm your sister." She seethed, and Robin could see flickers of Steve with an axe in his hand in the arch of her shoulders. "You might have told the hospital not to call but I still have friends in this town. If that Hargrove asshole wasn't already dead-"

"Lou-"

"Don't-"

"It was a serial killer." Robin blurted, drawing Steve's sisters' attention to her. "I don't now if you heard about it, but someone was going around killing teenagers. It started with Chrissy Cunningham- she was a cheerleader? kind of cute in a preppy sort of way, but, um- she was killed in our friends living room and then he sort of got blamed for it because, I mean, it was pretty sketchy but he didn't do it! I promise, Eddie didn't- anyway, there was this whole witch hunt, and two more people died which just sort of made it worse for Eddie and a group of us were trying to, like, clear his name, you know? Because we knew he didn't do it and we didn't want him to get killed next, but then one of our other friends - this girl, Max, she's a riot - she was being targeted by the real killer so we came up with this...really stupid plan to catch the killer but everything went sort of tits up and Eddie and Steve both got, well-" She waved her hands at the bandage around Steve's throat and the bruising around his wrists from the vines. "And Max, she broke her elbow and her knee when she fell, and I think Dustin twisted his ankle? So now Max and Eddie and Steve are all in hospital and Dustin has these crutches that he doesn't want to use but, I mean, Steve always makes him because it's Steve, and we don't really know if Eddie's okay yet but no one's come to tell us he's not so we're still hopeful-"

"Robin."

Robin shut her mouth, and took a deep breath through her nose. Steve's sister was staring at her in the startled sort of awe that Robin was used to seeing when she got going. She had the lungs of a trumpet player, it wasn't hard for her to talk until she forgot where she'd started.

"You fought a serial killer?" Steve's sister - Lou? - asked, and Robin hysterically felt like she should offer up her seat.

Steve, bless him, only nodded. Lou stared, lips pressed into a thin line and nostrils flared slightly.

And then, quite abruptly, she was straightening her back and stepping around the bed to hold out a hand to Robin. "Louisa Harrington."

Robin blinked, and shook her hand. "Robin Buckley."

Louisa nodded, like that made sense, and smiled the same cupids-bow smile as her brother. "The best friend- it's good to meet the other half of my brothers brain. Clearly the better half, considering you aren't the one in the hospital bed."

Steve made an offended noise, and Robin grinned.

[mountedeverest]

You know what? I like Oliver. Am I disappointed in the comments he made about Buck turning back to his 1.0 days since it plays into a major toxic bisexual stereotype I’ve personally been victim of after he said he’d handle this story with care? Yes. But he’s human and under scrutiny the likes of which us regular people will never be and can never possibly understand. We can’t be perfect and say the right stuff 100% of the time. Oliver’s not a saint. He’s a person with a job. We’ve all fumbled situations or misspoke at times or had views which we had to change or adjust after learning, that’s part of the human experience. So yeah, I liked BuckTommy. Yeah, deep down I still like Buddie. Yeah, I know Lou had some questionable posts on his Instagram from some years ago. And yes, I like Oliver, Lou, and Ryan even though none of them have been perfect. There’s nothing today that would suggest an immense clash with my current values, and if there were, it seems it was all in the past and there’s been growth, evolution. I hope we can all appreciate the humanness of actors and the plasticity inherent to us all through time and learning.

That’s all I had to say.

[thesaintofnevergettingitright]

Sometimes you just gotta shamelessly project on your parasocial best friends, ya know? 

[fortjester]

got told over brunch by my partner that a friend has decided to read tlt and it is "mostly [lou's] fault" and i am soooooo vindicated. like yes i take my duties as an advocate for tlt incredibly seriously. another tally on the board for the amount of people i've managed to convert

[tillthelandslide]

Writing fan fiction during my lecture is iconic behavior idgaf

[marsbotz]

no matter what happens, no matter how much it hurts, you don't stop dancing, and you don't stop smiling, and you give those people what they want.

[blusthings]

I might regret even posting this, but I have to tell this to someone or share it or else I might loose my mind.

I think I'm more depressed, anxious and self loathing than I have ever been my entire life. I can't draw, can't write notes or poems, can't have fun playing video games. I can't do anything like I used to. Can't even pray. I sleep a lot, or sleep very little, and yet somehow I'm always exhausted. I cry most nights, with or without reason. I eat a lot, or very little. I often can't look myself in the mirror and spot one thing I like. And when I do, it's always temporary. I always criticise everything I do, everything I say and I can't keep up with this anymore.

I'm finding a therapist though. I don't wanna take meds, I'm not sure I even want a diagnosis, I don't even know if I can afford it atm. But therapy is a good start, I need to pick myself up. I will be okay somehow, I really don't know but I want to be okay. I'm sick of living like this.

I hate being perceived, but I want help.

[disastergoose]

it’s murphin time

[evankinkley]

People hating on Lou like he's not a person who actually interacts with Oliver, Ryan, Kenny, Tim etc in real life. Your behaviour isn't just in his inbox, it's in the 9-1-1 halls and you think your favourites are impressed?