#not for the writer not for the actors not for the audience

[emilylawsons]

HI I’M BACK AND I FINISHED SEASON 3 AND I HAVE THOUGHTS™️

Newsreader spoilers under the cut

Okay first: THE NEWSREADER IS ONE OF THE GREATEST TREASURES TO GRACE TELEVISION AND IT DELIVERED ON EVERYTHING

ANYWAY…

The open ending as far as Helen and Dale goes—my shipper heart is a little sad we didn’t get a more explicitly romantic ending for them BUT these two have so much healing to do, and it starts with being exactly where they are. Finding peace and happiness as individuals before they give themselves to any relationship. And I think, no matter what any fan was hoping for, they can take this ending and decide how it goes for them. (Also the loving way Helen spoke to him and looked at him while she was talking to him off air. 🥹) They’re both exactly where they need to be and in their element, and that’s what the audience has been rooting for since day one.

THE PARALLELS AND CONNECTIONS TO THE FIRST EPISODE IN THE LAST ONE. Dale singing Kyrie in the car. Helen taking Dale home and talking care of him and “coming up with a plan.” Fucking brilliant.

Helen’s journey this whole season—getting a diagnosis and coming to grips with it. Being resistant at first but coming around and COMMITTING to getting better even when it’s hard and she hates it—frickin’ facing the place where she was locked up and endured additional trauma. She truly came into her own, and I’m just continuously blown away by Anna Torv and how, in every single project she does, she puts so much care and thoughtfulness into how she portrays her characters and the difficult situations they face. And she’s just a fucking incredible actress. THE SCENE IN 3.03 AFTER SHE GOT HER DIAGNOSIS AND CALLED DALE BROKE ME. I don’t think anyone else could have portrayed Helen. I just don’t. And Helen’s arc was all the more satisfying because the writers/creators decided to trust their talent and make her just as much a part of the creative process.

And Dale…oh my boy Dale. Sam frickin’ Reid the actor you are. Dale’s character arc has to be one of the most intense and challenging I’ve ever seen on TV, and Sam probably had the hardest job. Dale’s breakdown? OH MY GOD. We always knew Dale needed to break. He would have to be driven to the brink to be human again. And, just like with Anna as Helen, there was no one more qualified to bring Dale Jennings to life. Holy shit. Incredible, meaty, deep storytelling happens when you have creatives with a vision and actors they’re on the same page with. Sam got it from day one, and he saw it through to the end.

But Helen and Dale, stars of the show they are, are not the only incredible arcs we got to see. THE SATISFACTION OF WATCHING LINDSAY CUNNINGHAM GET KICKED OUT ON HIS ASS AND DENNIS SITTING IN HIS SEAT. The stuff of legends. And not just Dennis getting his moment (which we absolutely saw coming after he clocked Lindsay last season), but JEAN FUCKING PASCOE yelling at him from across the newsroom. I clapped. I cheered. And you know, I even cheered a bit for Evelyn Walters in all of it. She’s out for herself and still doesn’t get it (and Geoff was far from a victim), but she stood when it counted. She took action on one good thing. And watching them all collectively work together to get Lindsay what he deserved? Delicious.

And then we’ve got my girl Noelene who also went through The Most™️ oh… She’s got so much to figure out about standing up for herself and what she wants, and Rob’s got so much growing to do to be a better husband and father. But she did stand up for herself. She stopped being afraid to tell people how she felt and what she needed. She called Rob out on his racist tendencies and opened up to him about her work/motherhood balance, and she called out Helen for using her like everyone else and overworking her, and they both listened. She has hope ahead of her, and it was beautiful to see.

A few other small notes:

The whole Dale/Kay dynamic was so strange, but it needed to happen. Her constant comparisons of him and Geoff helped fuel his necessary fall. And it served to show what a terrible place Dale was in.

Cheryl got married!!! Good for her 🩷

Fuck Bill, and congrats to Helen for being like “I’m not gonna be punished because I didn’t wanna fuck you”

Tim gets a well deserved love and happy ending!!!

I’m really happy they brought back Linus. What a treasure.

Overall, as sad as I am to see this show go, they delivered on all counts. Everything they said they would be, they were. Every arc, satisfying. Just so beautifully and masterfully done, and with love by everyone involved. 18 episodes of perfection. And if Michael Lucas and Emma Freeman ever produce another show together and hire Anna Torv and/or Sam Reid or any of the wonderful-across-the-board cast? I will get my VPN’s worth as an American and be there for it.

[savage-sinister]

Do you have any advice for writers who are paralyzed by fear of mischaracterization?

The last thing I posted to Ao3 was years ago and both pieces were fandom poetry.

But, I've been infested with S.T.A.R.S polycule brainworms and need to get the words out in a style more like a novel.

Well, for starters, I LOVE S.T.A.R.S. polycule, so I am already very invested in hopefully giving you good advice that gets you writing. 😁

My first piece of advice is of course- fuck what anyone else thinks. Don't let an imaginary audience's reaction change how you write the characters.

The truth is, everyone perceives any given character a little differently, and has an image of them in their head that doesn't quite match up to anyone elses'. Embrace that, and embrace your interpretation, because

it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks

and I promise you there are people out there right now writing the absolute worst characterizations that would make you so mad.

Stupider people with worse ideas than you have done it with confidence. So don't be afraid. You write your own interpretation with the same confidence!

And that's how you deal with the fear that other people are going to think you're mischaracterizing them.

My next piece of advice may or may not be helpful to you, depending on how your brain works, but this is how *I* deal with the struggle of making sure the characters are "in character" as I personally perceive them.

As you might guess, I have a very strong sense of 'inner voice', or echolalia or whatever you want to call it. I remember voices and manners of speech that I hear and they get persevered as if recorded to an AI speech creation tool in my head.

So what I do when I'm writing dialogue is this.

If I can "hear" the character say the line I'm writing for them in my head. If I can "make the voice actor say it", if it matches up in tonality and mannerism in my mind, I assume it's in character and I write it.

if it doesn't match up, I revise the specifics of the line until I can hear it.

Basically just try to imagine the character saying whatever it is that you've written for them.

Again, that might not help you at all depending on the way your brain is set up, but if it doesn't help then just remember my first advice.

The bottom line is, if YOU feel like it's in character, if the character is behaving in a way that you think is the way they would or should act, then you're good.

because at the end of the day it doesn't matter if they're in character for "canon", unless that's specifically what you're going for. At the end of the day it only matters if they "in character" for the story that you're putting them in.

I hope that helped at least a little bit, and please loop me in when you put some writing out! <3

[iguessitsjustme]

Love Sea Ep 1 Thoughts

Okay. I know I said my next liveblog would be She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat because it won my poll BUT I decided I’m gonna be liveblogging Love Sea as it airs each week. And I will be liveblogging She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat later today. Or at least starting the liveblog. But liveblogging Love is the only way I think I make it through this series. I got my snacks I my got a diet coke. Pray for me watching a MAME show. Keep in mind that I am not a fan of MAME generally (and I have now finished this episode and this show is no exception. Don't get mad at me if you click the read more and don't like what I say). Under the cut as per usual:

I do like water so the water effect and sheer amount of water at the very beginning makes me extremely happy. I want more water forever.

FISH!!!!

“Dive and go get it” is not an appropriate response to dropping a pen in the water. Accept your loss.

DON’T PUSH PEOPLE OFF OF BOATS. DO NOT PUSH PEOPLE OFF OF BOATS. I DO NOT CARE. DO NOT PUSH PEOPLE OFF OF BOATS. HE IS NOT WEARING A LIFE JACKET. HE IS NOT PREPARED TO BE IN THAT WATER AT ALL. DO NOT PUSH PEOPLE OFF OF BOATS.

A nice, tranquil place being called heaven on earth makes sense. Our protagonist showing up and immediately calling it hell on earth because ???? does not make sense. Maybe see more than two feet of it before declaring it to be hell?

Calling someone that speaks a different dialect an idiot when you are on their island…bold. Dumb. And bold.

Do not steal his phone. You’re just an asshole. You’re both assholes. But you pushed a man off of a boat so I hate you more. All the other guy has done is been uppity and snobbish. He hasn’t actively endangered anyone’s life for a laugh.

And now purposefully speaking a dialect he doesn’t understand. Yes, he was an ass about it, but you knew he didn’t understand and did it anyway. And now he has explicitly said he doesn’t understand and you’re rubbing it in his face. You can speak a dialect he knows and understands and you both know you can and yet…

Oh I got it. He behaves like a teenager. But like the kind of teenager that needs a good life resorting. He’s a bully but no one really calls him out for it because he disguises it behind class clown behavior. He needs a swift kick in the pants considering he’s an adult that’s behaving this way.

I dislike how these shows always portray women as incapable of talking about the hotness of these guys. It’s not just BL. Other dramas are just as guilty if not more so. But c’mon. Having women characters does not excuse your portrayal of the other women in the story as only caring about some random dude’s hotness. Mut is hot? Not my taste but I can see why people consider him hot. But I guarantee most women on vacation, while they talk about hot guys, are also doing other things and talking about other things. Like the books they are reading on the beach. And how hot they themselves are. And the next activity they’re doing. They aren’t laser focusing on Mut. Except that the show says they are. Because they have no identities outside of a weak plot device to convince the audience of how hot Mut is. If he was really that hot, this tactic would not be needed. It would be conveyed in the rest of the show.

See how differently it’s framed for the men? Women are the ones interest in Mut, but when it’s for the men, it’s that Mut is open to them. The attraction is his. This is definitely setting the tone for the relationship that’s being built. Cause our other lowkey asshole (I’ll learn his name eventually maybe) is a man. He is not interested in Mut. But he is apparently Mut’s type so Mut will be attracted to him. It’s a different way of taking away agency but here it is on a character level and not removing agency from an entire gender.

They better be delivering this to me I have a feeling I’m gonna need it.

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA get em

This montage of people interacting with Mut trying to tell us what a good person and community member he is feels like such lazy writing. Incredibly lazy writing. Like makes me angry because despite her faults, I know MAME is capable of better than…that.

DID HE JUST LEFT HIMSELF INTO THE ROOM BECAUSE HE HAS A KEY. ABSOLUTELY THE FUCK NOT.

Romance *gags* aside, this is incredibly poor customer service. He didn’t knock. He didn’t announce he was coming in. I’m hoping it’s not early in the morning and that our lowkey asshole is just sleeping in. He’s cleaning the room and going through not-his-things. HE TOOK PICTURES. Someone call the police. Or call the me. I’ll go kick his ass.

Also also also the fact that he had that key that he was supposed to give to lowkey asshole means that HE SHOULD NOT HAVE USED IT TO ENTER THE ROOM. HE SHOULD NOT HAVE HAD IT.

Okay I need a break. This scene has gone on entirely too long with just the two of them standing on talking. There needs to be some movement on the screen and the tiny amount of body movement is not cutting it. Lowkey asshole should be walking away during this conversation. That would be in character and provide the necessary movement. But as it is…this whole scene feels stale and stagnant. So I’m gonna go make some food. Maybe I’ll be less pissy about this whole scene when I come back.

Okay. I am back but I am not less pissy. Tell me, how did I manage to mess up pasta? Truly is a skill I must say. And I’m not that bad of a cook. I swear but…I digress. Let’s just get back into it *grumbles*

That was the weakest punch I’ve ever seen. And I have weak little noodle arms.

Even the GL part of this is toxic. Miss secretary ma’am. I have an idea. Send her all of the shit on your plate. Email her all of the shit you have to do. In the email tell her what hours you are actually available and if she cannot work with that, then that’s unfortunate but that is her only option.

You don’t call the owner’s secretary to fix a light bulb. You call maintenance. Girl if you don’t grow a spine and tell her no….

I had to mute this damn show because the music is trying to convince me this is romantic and I am not a fool. I have eyes. Also stop using flashbacks of things that happened earlier this episode. This is the first episode. We know what Mut is thinking about when staring at his hand. We were there for that scene five minutes ago.

If someone started reading what I was writing over my shoulder without being explicitly invited to, I would pour hot sauce in their eyes.

This hug makes me mad. I’ll leave it at that.

Okay. It’s time for something I can’t believe I’ve never done before! Rae’s hatred scale. Where I rank the characters on how much I hate them:

Vi - 2/10. Honestly give this girl a raise. She isn’t paid enough to deal with this. I do need her to get a backbone though. C’mon my girl you can do it. You can learn to stand up for yourself. I believe in you.

Rak - 5/10. Look I learned his name! I think. He’s lowkey an asshole but honestly he just wants to be left alone but was sent on this trip that he didn’t ask for and is now being harassed by this guy that he doesn’t like because his “friend” paid for it.

Mook - 10/10. Girl what’s wrong with you? I hope someone slaps you in your face. Learn how to treat people.

Mut - 1000000000/10. DO NOT PUSH PEOPLE OFF OF BOATS.

[flythesail]

I'm so tired of the way tv is working right now. And it's not working. Seasons are getting shorter, and shows are canceled before they even get a chance to prove themselves. Shows with new concepts often get the worst of it, and it just makes me so sad to think of all the fantastic stories we're losing because of a system that prioritizes profit over the art itself. I want to live with these characters over years. Get to know them and grow with them and not watch as their stories are crammed into six episodes or even worse, go entirely unfinished.

[yesssssss-anime]

I seriously hope that Hollywood media just fails for a while so companies will finally realise how important their actors and writers are. I hope they come to see that ai can’t be used for everything. Also I find it funny how these companies think that we’re not going to support the strikers just because we won’t get some new Hollywood media for a while. I think they forgot that Hollywood isn’t the only place in the world creating amazing tv shows and movies. We have k-dramas, Thai-drama, anime, Tollywood and Bollywood movies. This isn’t the end of entertainment for us. If we don’t want to watch foreign media we still have old shows and movies that are great. I mean I can finally start watching those old Hollywood movies I’ve been planning to watch. So sure threaten us with the lack of media…we still having everything we need. The only person who’s in trouble because of the strikes is the goddamn companies. So screw you and have fun not making any money.

[the-mountain-flower]

If I made an audio description of Aurora, would anyone be interested in joining? Like voice actors or audio producers (I'm fully willing to do the entire thing myself, but it'd be awesome if I didn't have to)

(By audio description: think the kind they use in movies/shows aimed toward blind ppl so they can enjoy it too. That combined with an audiobook. Like that, but for a comic)

[scarefox]

My siblings in hell that rating .... 🙈 but also while it definitely does not deserve that low rating it's the most fitting number 😏

[aprilblossomgirl]

Not Friends (2023) | Screenwriter & Director Ta Atta Hemwadee

There are two things I love the most. Friends and films.

[mariocki]

Honor Blackman guest stars as art expert Syd Lewis in Saber of London: Deep in the Heart of Chelsea (1.3, NBC, 1957)

[pinchan]

never smoked a in my life but i felt such a strong need for a hit watching that fucking reunion scene

[bi-panic-at-the-disco]

I like how whenever I watch AstralSpiff or Backseat play a new Poppy Chapter it’s pretty clear what game that they devs had been playing before hand lmao,, Chapter 4 being very clearly referencing to the Resident Evil 4 underground factory insect fights with how it was framed

[cryptic-queer-cryptid]

look. not to get sappy on main but like.

call it cringe call it silly call it whatever you want but do you know what it felt like to be a depressed teenager and hear the doctor say “do you know, in 900 years of time and space, i’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important before”?

cause let me tell you, hearing that… there are whole years of my life that i barely remember because of my depression. chunks of my time on earth that i’ll probably never get back. but i do remember watching that damn special because it meant something to me, even in that fog.

[assiraphales]

Something interesting Ive noticed, is that a lot if what craig/neil/ususlly og game voice actors, say things about the show and characters that they didnt actually put on screen.

Like saying ellie has a violent heart when she has cried everytime shes involved in violence and after stabbing David literally screamed and cries in terror when joel gently grabs her. Or that Joel who is not a cannibal and not a pedophile is like david when the actual episode goes out of its way to make sure you know that their actions and intentions make them complete opposites.

Like it honestly feels like they know that these are opinions that formed from making tlou2. But beacuse none of those are in the show they have to say it in the extra content and explain it. Like so much of what theyve talked about isnt rhe same characters on screen.

Like they want to push tlou 2 narrative but know general audiences will not be receptive to those ideas. So they stretch the truth in off show content to justify their opinions.

Its so dumb. The show they made does not match the narrative they wanted to push and I only wonder how much behind the scenes talks went on that may have scrapped them actually doing those things.

Like Bruce for the og game is a big reason Neil dropped a ton of dumb plots and I wonder how much of that happened with other persons including cast members played a similar role. But they know only dedicated typically game fans will watch their off show content so thats where they plug their rejected interpretations and can pretend its canon.

Pedros out there very diplomatically discussing the show, talking about how he wanted to show a softer side of joel that archtypes like him dont usually get so you see more of his love and humanity. And then you got those bozos on their whatever podcast going "yeah joel and the rapist are parallels basically (henry was joels parallel you bongos)"

no literally. literally!!!!!

[the-starry-seas]

i'm gonna be honest man with the way comments are right now i don't know if i'm gonna post again after this event fic is up

[milfbrainrot]

i love ekko so much ;-; vander too. it truly is amazing how when i get shows that actually have a good ratio of female characters AND they get treated like people, the barrier that keeps me from giving a fuck about fictional dudes just dissolves.

[noomyguts]

and the way people of color were written in this show 😬😬😬