#not when the showrunners a dude

[alikandhoney]

Men are written better in mainstream media. They actually get their relationships expanded upon so even when there’s no intention behind it, male and male relationships are more compelling because it is more likely that a women is written for the benefit of a man or plot point in the show and not to be developed and explored for her own benefit.

is there like,,,, a psychological reason my favourite ships are men ????

merlin and arthur. nick and charlie. alex and henry. even geralt and jaskier.

like hello ???? i’m a lesbian ????

[the-kestrels-feather]

So... In Dark Water when Clara is threatening to burn all of his TARDIS keys, I KNOW it's a simulation, I KNOW it isn't real but like. Why is the Doctor even worried? He found out two regeneration cycles ago that the doors will open when he snaps his fingers he doesn't need a key. Hell, 11 used a snap to open the door. CLARA used a snap to open the door in two episodes why is she threatening him with "never being able to get in his TARDIS again"??????? Like I can at least give her a pass because she was grieving and not thinking properly, but come ON 12

[mischas]

they deliberately omitted this paragraph from JS from the VF excerpt

[mermaidsirennikita]

always wild to see people freak out over dark romance novels when you know they're also like... Spuffy shippers? or something along those lines?

I mean, I have no issue with that lmao, I've had ships that are on the same level, but I don't know, it's just like... are you romanticizing the thing you're shipping to the point that you don't recognize its own darkness, or are you fully aware of that and just knowingly hypocritical?

[bittersweetresilience]

Does Felix's actions in his debut episode (mainly him trying to kiss Marinette) ever made you feel awkward shipping them together?

nope this scene does not exist to me 👍

[mieczyhale]

@gay-jewish-bucky IT REALLY FUCKING IS. No matter what if it’s a canon gay couple it’s just not going to be good enough for the exact same people who complain about wanting more gay rep. Part of getting gay rep is accepting that we’re going to get rep for all kinds of gays, all kinds of relationships, all levels of relevance - not just the kind that some people want or deem acceptable.

We finally have what is, in my opinion, a pretty well balanced canon queer ship that isn’t just ~hints and eye contact~, that isn’t squeaky clean, that have meaningful conversations and show love and affection like it’s not a big deal. It’s treated on equal levels to any straight ship on the show and I think that’s a breath of fresh goddamn air tbh.

I know people are always going to complain, but this topic has gotta be one of the most annoying and most exhausting ones. People should be happy we get any kind of lgbtqa+ rep, and that that rep is getting not just more diverse over the years but better too. There’s never going to be Perfect Queer Representation and to bitch and hold out for it?? To nitpick the fuck out of every ship?? Why would you, y’know??

[deadlylittlemiho]

Really annoyed at all the homophobes review-bombing this show and making it harder for those of us with genuine criticisms -_-

[roxannepolice]

[rhys-ravenfeather]

I have no idea how to say this without sounding like a boomer so you know what? I'm just going to say it outright--I miss the cartoons I grew up with, and it makes me sad that animation is basically written off these days.

[wanderingandfound]

What do you call somebody who doesn't seem to be an out-and-out scammer, but is always jumping on the latest tech bandwagons and puts their name on things they haven't even read let alone written and doesn't make sure their coworkers/employees are adequately compensated even when their Kickstarter makes over seven times its initial goal but when they do make good things those things are very good? And it probably isn't solely the work of their coworkers/employees?

[giveamadeuschohisownmovie]

One reason why Agents of SHIELD is one of the more interesting Marvel/MCU projects out there is that you can pinpoint the moment where Marvel started to lose interest in the show and gave more creative freedom to the showrunners. Because at the start, it was just a glorified vehicle to advertise Phase 2. There was the direct tie-in to Iron Man 3 and the Thor: The Dark World episode.

But then, near the end of season 1 and throughout season 2, you can tell that Marvel Studios started to care less and less about the show and, thus, gave more leeway to the showrunners to do what they want. And this slowly led to the show becoming darker, edgier, and grittier. I think since the show was starting to become less of a season-long commercial for the movies, the showrunners didn’t have to be so family friendly anymore.

Let me put it like this. In season 1, you had an episode where Fitz and Simmons were working on pranks to do on the crew. Also, Skye being outed as a cosplayer and the gag scene where Fitz got stuck at a door.

In season 4, the season literally starts with a Daisy Johnson panty shot, followed by Ghost Rider murdering white supremacists. It’s not even subtle violence, a character gets covered in someone else’s blood, with the implication that Ghost Rider tore that dude’s neck or something.

If you weren’t there at the time, I can’t stress enough just how different the show felt when season 4 came along.

[sparrowlucero]

Even if a creator is a bad person it's still okay to like their work. People need to mind their own business.

Honestly it's not really that sort of situation. I'll actively defend Steven Moffat here.

There was a huge hate movement for him back in the early 2010s - which, in retrospect, formed largely because he was running 2 of the superwholock shows at once, one of which went through extremely long hiatuses* and the other of which was functionally an adaptation of an already well regarded show**, making him subject to a sort of double ire in the eyes of a lot of fandom people. Notably, his co-showrunner, Mark Gatiss, is rarely mentioned and much of his work is still attributed to Moffat (and yes, this includes that Hbomberguy video. Several of "Steven Moffat's bad writing choices" were not actually written by him, they were Gatiss.)

People caricatured the dude into a sort of malicious, arrogant figure who hated women and was deliberately mismanaging these shows to spite fans, to the point where people who never watched them believe this via cultural osmosis. It became very common to take quotes from him out of context to make them look bad***, to cite him as an example of a showrunner who hated his fans, someone who sabotaged his own work just to get at said fans, someone who was too arrogant to take criticism, despite all of this being basically a collective "headcanon" about the guy formed on tumblr. Some if it got especially terrible, like lying about sexual assault (I don't mean people accused him of sexual assault and I think they're making it up, I mean people would say things like "many of his actresses have accused him of sexual assault on set" when no such accusations exist in the first place. This gets passed around en masse and is, in my opinion, absolutely rancid.)

On top of that a ton of the criticism directed at the shows themselves is, personally, just terrible media criticism. So much of it came from assuming a very hostile intent from the writer and just refusing to engage with the text at all past that.

Like some really common threads you see with critique of this writer's work, especially in regards to Doctor Who since that's the one I'm most familiar with:

A general belief that his lead characters were meant to be ever perfect self inserts, and so therefore when they act shitty or arrogant or flawed in any way, that's both reflective of the author and something the show wants you to view as positive or aspirational.

An overarching thesis that his characters are "too important" in the narrative due to the writer's arrogance and self obsession (even though this is a very deliberate theme that's stated several times)

A lot of focus on the writer personally "attacking" the fans or making choices primarily out of spite.

A tendency to treat the show being different to what it's adapting as inherently bad and hostile towards the original.

Just generally very little consideration and engagement with the themes, intent, etc. of the shows

This one's a little more nebulous and doesn't apply to all critique but a lot of it, especially recently, is clearly by people who haven't seen the show in like 10 years and their opinion is largely formed secondhand through like, "discourse nostalgia". Which. you know. bad.

I think these are just weird and nonsensical ways to engage with a work of fiction. I also think it's really sad to see the show boiled down to this because that era of who is, in my opinion, very thematically rich and unique among similar shows, and I'm disappointed that it's often dismissed in such a paltry way.

This isn't to say people aren't allowed to critique Steven Moffat or anything, but the context in which he basically became The Devil™ to a large portion of fandom and is still remembered in a poor light is very tied to this perfect storm of fan culture and I just don't agree with a ton of it.

* I'm sure most people have seen the way long running shows and hiatuses will cause people to fall out with a show, with some former fans turning around and joining a sort of "anti fandom" for it while it's still airing. That happened with both these shows. ** Doctor Who will change it's entire writing staff, crew, and cast every few years, and with that comes a change in style, tone, theme - the old show basically ends and is replaced by a new show under the same title. As Steven Moffat's era was the first of these handovers for the majority of audiences, you can imagine this wasn't a well loved move for many fans. *** I know for a fact most people have not sought out the sources for a lot of these quotes to check that they read the same in context because 1) most of them were deleted years ago and are very difficult to find now and 2) many of them do actually make sense in the context of their respective interviews

[jkriordanverse]

Look. OKay. I get that the ending is bad. But yk waht pisses me off the most? How they treated th characters. like obviously ik the way the ended the show was unfair to us (the viewers) but also to the characters. Like they showrunners/makers just threw away the lore and trauma and character for every single person on the show to make whatever tu s4 was.

Why was Klaus not freaking out when he was locked in the coffin??? Hello Klaus trauma??? (*trauma has exited the chat moment fr*) Why was Allison forgiven so easily??? Why was Luthor's reaction to Sloan (aka the love of his life at the moment) was basically okay and? Why did Viktor emit so much control over his powers suddenly??? Like the last season was bascially him loosing and control and stuff but now?? And wtf was even Jennifer for? It's like they needed a reason to end the world? Why was she in the squid? Why did Five want to leave their family in the apocalyspe (so un-Five) like dude the least you could do was give US AN EXPLANATION.

[faededaway]

[𝕊𝕒𝕟𝕠 𝕄𝕒𝕟𝕛𝕚𝕣𝕠 𝕩 𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕕𝕖𝕣]

[warning: exhibitionism, pvp, fem reader, bike race mention, cumshot] [inspiration]

Manijo, Manjiro

After everything in his life, he wishes he could say he's calmed down a bit. But, he picked the life of midnight races and adrenaline, and you.

You, the other adrenaline rush in his life. The one who keeps him high at all times. You, who like him for what he's got. His dirty mouth and worse mannerism doesn't bother you one bit. If anything, it keeps pulling you to him.

He saw you at one of street races he'd gone to watch. He'd gone just to get a scope of the competition of an upcoming race. But you caught his eye with your jeans shorts and flag wrapped around your chest.

"She's the flag girl, dude. She'll take it off to wave it! You can see her tits when the race starts!" He was surprised to hear more whispers about you than any about the racers. But that meant no one here was worth watching than you were.

Maybe I'll give you something worth watching.

He'd strolled over to you with hands in his pockets, "is it true?"

You'd barely spared him a glance before he continued, "that everyone here sucks so bad, the showrunners stole your clothes?"

You'd glared at him but kept your eyes on the racers who were taking their positions.

"How much are they paying you? I could pay you double and give you some clothes," he leaned on pole you were standing next to, wearing his signature grin.

"Why don't you fuck off instead? Shut up and watch like the other bozos who've never touched a bike but talk like they're Steve McQueen or something."

He laughed off your remark and proposed, "wanna ride with me? Be the flag girl that wins the race?"

You finally looked at him to tell him off again, but the confidence in his eyes stopped you. Your eyes wandered over to the memorabilia on his jacket, you recognized him then. He's the guys everyone's been talking about. The one who wins every race.

"What's someone like you doing here?"

"What's someone like you doing here?" He parroted the question back to you.

You glared at him and looked away. The digital timer on the side was counting down to the start of the race. 30 seconds to start.

“Okay,” he laughed, “'m here to see how much I'll need to hold back to save these guys from embarrassing themselves in their next race.”

You sighed at that. It was embarrassing working here. It doesn't help that he was right on the money about the show runner situation too.

He laughed again, pissing you off further. 20 seconds to start.

“If you agree to ride with me, I'll enter the race. That's bound to make you some money, right?” 10 seconds to start.

That's not how this works but it would help your brother the show runner make some much needed cash. 5 seconds.

“You better win.” Go.

He'd won, of course. He's not sure if there was a prize involved in this race. To him, you were the prize. You'd laughed and cheered the whole way of the race. Your arms were wrapped tightly around his waist. Your flimsy top(that you did not wave as a flag) let him feel the warmth of your body over his leather. You'd even asked him to speed up at times. You loved speed just like he did. He loved hearing your giggles in his ear with the song of the wind. He knew this could not be a one time thing.

"Don't stop, I know a spot nearby," you whispered in his ear when he crossed the finished line. He followed as if it was a command.

The spot you spoke of was a rundown gas station with a back alley that seemed to be a popular place for a different kind of ride. "This was so we don't do the whole 'my place or yours' or the 'who pays?' thing."

"I wouldn't mind taking you on the streets, an alleyway seems fancy." His hands ran down your body as you giggled in reply.

He pulled off your clothes in one pull, "if this is what they saw before the race began, they'd be crashing into things." His lips sucked on your chest ravenously. Red and purple lined his touch on your skin.

His leather jacket hung on your shoulders, your back pressed to the wall of the alleyway that anyone could walk into. Even if no one walked over, they'd hear your mewls and whines for sure. Mikey didn't seem to care and neither did you.

His hands didn't leave your body even for a second. One hand played with you chest, while the other did the same to your pussy. His fingers would ghost over your stiff buds right after he'd pinched and pulled at them. His mouth followed the same 'soft one moment, hard the other' pace - pecking you one moment, sucking your skin the other.

Your legs wrapped around his waist. You felt his hardness on your stomach. You would have touched him if his touch relented, but his pace only let you cling onto him harder. A hand deep in his hair, the other clutching his shirt. He hadn't even put it in yet and you'd already scratched his back.

"Mikey, c'mon!"

He only stopped when you begged him for it. Laughter bubbled in his chest and you felt it in yours too. He's unlike any man you had previously. Any other man would've stuffed your face already but he touched you to please you.

"Put it in, baby." His hands moved to your waist, finally giving you a moment to do what you'd been wanting to do since getting on his bike.

You palmed him over his leather to get a feel for him before revealing the real package. Hot. Hard as fuck. Pulsating and hot.

He rolled his hips into your palm, rubbing himself into the warmth of your hands. "Ah, fuck!"

Mikey's whining wasn't any quieter than yours. You let in sooner than him. A moment's grace before you undo his buttons and look down at him.

Sticky wetness dripped from his pretty pink tip. You thumbed some of it and brought it to your lips. "Someone's keeping you well fed. Wouldn't mind throat-"

A deep thrust interrupted your dirty words. "Want your pussy today, baby."

Your hands returned to his neck, holding on for dear life. His thrusts choked the breathe out of your lungs. Each one as deep as the first one, but like his ride, he didn't do slow.

He'd avoided fingering you earlier, teasing your clit relentlessly. Your aching pussy throbbed with him in it. It loved the filling it was receiving. Slick dripped down your lips and made a mess on his blacks.

"Fuck, Mikey, Mikey, Mikey, slow down!" you weren't sure if you'd be able to keep up anymore before losing it.

"Are we nearing a curve, baby? Are we losing it? Hm? Are we gonna cum?" he slowed down like you asked but just a moment later, "let it lose, baby. Cum with me."

He groaned as he thrust in you for the last time, his dick throbbed in you before filling you with his warm sticky cum. Your body attuned to his play, came as asked.

A cacophony of your moans and whines filled the alleyway as the two of you came off of your high.

"Whew, someone call the janitor. Clean up in the cum-alley."

Your noise attracted some people, but with your back to the wall and Mikey before you, they couldn't see you.

"You look like you'd like to clean it up yourself." Mikey wrapped his jacket on your chest before taking out your shorts from his pocket.

"Nah, we're good. Hearing y'all was good enough for me. Just wanted to come over and see the goods f'myself, that's all."

Lucky for you, they'd walked away as you got dressed. But being caught with Mikey in your pussy felt -

"Felt you throb around me when they caught us, baby. Maybe next time, I really will take you on the streets." He'd tucked himself back in and was wiping your slick off his crotch with your flag top. His eyes bore into yours, a sly grin on his lips.

You'd laughed as you walked out of the alley and to his bike. "I felt you, too."

And that is how Mikey became your ride for life.

[fatcatlittlebox]

An anon asked earlier about my thoughts on Celedriel and my answer turned into another long ass meta. Shocker. So I decided to post it as a general response to the ship and Galadriel's marriage in TROP. I haven't said much about it because my takes are controversial and I think only 3 people in Borneo would agree with me. But the brain rot is what it is.

As for the Celedriel/haladriel in-fighting. I don’t get it. There’s room for everyone. It shouldn’t threaten anyone. I’m not against the ship either. I just have to see TROP’s take on it. I will say this, and it's an unpopular opinion: what I hate is the idea of boxing Galadriel in a ship because she is canonically married. I see that argument all the time on X. Like that’s it. That’s the tweet. “She’s married.” “Married” isn’t a personality trait. To me, it doesn’t say anything of the individuals involved. It doesn’t even denote love. It gives me nothing, sorry. I want to see their relationship before I ship it. Like I said, I am very open. And I do know what marriage means to elves but that’s clearly not what many of these online folk are asserting. We live in a post-modern, non-Middle Earth world. I'm not a big fan of chivalric love stories but that's my taste.

I love TROP Galadriel because she exists outside of her marriage. She became a warrior and commander. She’s dirty and bloody. She’s a brash, surly, tempestuous, unapologetic woman with priorities that are decidedly un-wifey and not traditionally feminine. Her husband disappeared in the war and she moved on with her life.

What I find interesting is that while Galadriel accepted her husband as gone... Sauron? She refused to. She pursued her rival for centuries with little more than a hunch and a handful of ashes. She pointed to her heart and said he wasn’t gone. Where was that certainty, that intuition about her missing husband?

And when Halbrand confronted her in Numenor, asking whom she had lost, for whom was she fighting? Her answer was not her husband. So why is Galadriel not as bound to Celeborn as she is to Sauron? In elven tradition, the fear of elves are intertwined through courtship, marriage and then sex. If their fear are tied, as they should according to Tolkien, she should know if Celeborn had passed and wouldn’t she be looking for him? But in TROP, does she know? And if she has no flarking idea if his fea had passed to the afterlife, i.e Halls of Mandos. Why?

Here’s my next unpopular take. The showrunners have already stated that Celebrian hasn't been born in this timeline. What if it’s because Galadriel and Celeborn have not consummated their marriage yet? And that’s why Gal’s fea hasn’t pinged on her husband. (Compare that with the text in the Unfinished Tales) So if she hasn’t had sex with Celeborn, their marriage contract is incomplete. The only 2 people who would know that are Gal and Celeborn. The other thing too is, elves do wear marriage rings. But here Galadriel is never seen wearing one for Celeborn? Why? Now let’s get to the meat. Why is her mind so attuned to Sauron? Why was that door open? Their bond had always been unique and singular. And now we know from the director that Galadriel loved Halbrand. I posit that there’s a possibility that they already had sex. I also suggest that Elrond believes they had too. His speech to her in Cirdan's workshop was very sensual in imagery: “Sauron looked inside you, plucked the very song of your soul, note by note. Making himself out to be exactly what you needed - the lost king who could ride you to victory.” Dude, he was trolling her. I believe that’s part of the reason why he’s so feral about Galadriel dabbling in anything to do with Sauron. Because she fell in love, (maybe?) had sex with him (possible?) and she is wearing a ring he believes to be under Sauron’s power. At this point, she is more the bride of Sauron than she was to her actual husband. Yeah.

I’m not saying she didn’t and doesn’t love Celeborn. I’m not saying she doesn’t value her marriage. It’s just clearly, it isn’t high on her list of priorities and if it doesn’t crack it, then obviously she doesn’t define herself by it and…*drumroll* she wouldn’t confine herself to it either.

So where would Celeborn fit in the grand scheme? How they would portray their marriage? In many ways, she’s the same elf Celeborn married: good, graceful, beautiful, charismatic, strong-willed, and clever. She could be all those things again. Sometimes that’s what marriage is. Being that person whom your partner married. But to find someone whom you could be yourself? Truly? That is a soulmate. So far, in the show, we’ve seen Galadriel with someone with whom she can be all parts of herself at once. Someone who sees her light and tells her to embrace her darkness. Who invites her to blaze at her brightest because he can withstand the flame. There is danger in that, of course. The flame could be a conflagration, destroying everything it touches in its wake. A temptation and adrenaline rush that only another one who bears a ring of power would understand.

If I were a TROP writer and I had to bring Celeborn back and make him a compelling counterpoint to Sauron, I would give him a whole arc and backstory of his own. I would show him on his own odyssey home to Galadriel. I’d show him in dire straits and similar obstacles where he triumphs because of his decency and devotion to the love he left behind. (Cold Mountain comes to mind). It’s a classic tale and it works every. damn. time.

[ex-libris-craux]

So Re: Dracula ended and has left a horror-themed-audiofiction-shaped hole in your life? Please allow me to recommend Shadows At The Door as your next listen! Some reasons you may be interested:

David Ault (Judge Moneybags, aka Lord Arthur Godalming) is, for the first couple of seasons, almost literally the entire cast. There are jokes about it. So many jokes. I think there are even T-shirts.

Karim Kronfli- you know, that Dracula dude? Is also a recurring VA, including for SatD's PHENOMENAL dramatisation of The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Rahul Motherfucking Kohli - also a VA for SatD! Believe me when I say I screamed like a little girl and replayed the episode four times in a day.

Ever listened to The Magnus Archives? Did you like their sound design? Nico does the score for SatD as well and it's BREATHTAKING.

Jamie Flanagan wrote the script for an episode in the current season. Yes, THAT Jamie Flanagan. The Haunting of Bly Manor, Midnight Mass, The Fall of the House Of Usher, Jamie Flanagan. You're welcome.

Two podcasts in one! Each episode features not just the horror fiction, but a post-episode discussion that is every bit as entertaining as the stories themselves. Mark Nixon (the showrunner) and David (Ault, yes), occasionally joined by VAs or writers, chat together thoughtfully, irreverently, frequently filthily, always entertainingly, sometimes even about the episode itself, lol (digressions are frequent, and frequently hilarious).

Drunk. Ghost. Stories. Trust me. TRUST ME.

The sound design is exquisite. Mark has a fantastically talented ear for effective and atmospheric foley and a flawless editor's touch.

An engaging blend of classic stories and new authors.

QUEER REP IN QUEER MEDIA MADE BY QUEER PEOPLE!!!!

Genuinely, Shadows at the Door is one of my favourite podcasts, full stop, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's just *so damn good*. Please consider giving it a listen!