#now the question remains

[catharusustulatus]

I can totally imagine season 5 being a speed run of seasons 1 and 2 Stancy-wise, where Jonathan and Steve bond and Jon is like “I need to work on myself and focus on family and I know you still love her” or whatever and then Nancy and Jon talk and lovingly break up with no fuss and then Steve and Nancy talk and Steve is like “look I am sorry about what I said in the upside down, I thought I was about to die and I know you’re with Jonathan and I don’t want to rush you and maybe we can just be friends” and she’s like “shut up and kiss me” and they have steamy pre-final battle sex, effectively bookending their arc in a symmetrical way. You just know it’s happening!

[reneg4de-gone]

Well, the episode hit all 4 points I was hoping it'd hit & it did it beautifully! & Ashley Johnson! My God. Words can't express my love for that woman. I'm still a bit irritated with how short the episode was & how much has been missed through the entirety of the show, but the finale was almost perfect. It'd have been completely perfect if they had the infected in the subway that Joel & Ellie needed to get through, though.

With that said, I felt the first half of the season was weak & didn't start getting better until episode 5. With the poor pacing, feeling like there wasn't enough time to develop Joel & Ellie's relationship, the lack of infected, & some other missed opportunities, I'd have to rate the show a 6/10. It could've been sooo much better than it was, but they did nail it with all of the major plot points that they put into the show. Phenomenal acting by both Pedro Pascal & Bella Ramsey. The set designs were amazing & the creature prosthetics (when they actually showed up) were spot on.

[calista-222]

It's hilarious to me to imagine Sonic could not keep a regular phone for longer than a week without breaking it

[egophiliac]

I've had a beast of a cold for the last few days, but I wanted to get this out before the new year! while I've sort of made my peace with my first take on Lilia's UM poster, I really wanted to do a version with the new context that chapter 6 gave us. because. c'mon.

(don't worry, Lilia can carry ALL HIS KIDS AT ONCE)

[silverfox66]

Terrible train accident in the Netherlands, with one dead and several injured. The train collided with a construction crane and derailed.

[mekha-draws]

"you were a handful dear, not even a day after hatch and you were wriggling like a worm! the downy feathers of your coat were surprisingly difficult to get a grab on and you made every effort to take that as an advantage, little one"

"You made them both so happy, all of us... we're sorry. We let him do this to you"

"the last egg on that nest, small, wingless, and weak. With how little you moved, They didn't expect you to survive the night but your siblings surprised me"

"They stood by your side, pushing and playing around with you, no malice in their little bodies, just curiosity, invitation even..."

[kimdokjas]

We are alive. And we will continue living. So long as you remain by my side.

[girlbossblackbeard]

in a completely non-joking, genuinely narrative and writing analysis way, i do seriously believe we may get to "see" stede and ed have sex this season. there have been 2 explicit and one kinda implied mentions/discussions of sex so far: the first is obviously when ed tells ghost Hornigold how two of the pros of choosing to live are "intercourse" (nerd) and orgasms. on the one hand, yes, that's an easy joke to make that will be sure to get a laugh out of it. on the other hand, the writers could have literally written anything else in the entire world. they have so many options for other jokes that would've landed just as well or better than what they went with, and yet they chose to have Ed mention those two things. how interesting. the second example is, of course, anne and mary ribbing Ed and Stede about them clearly not having sex or any sexual experiences with each other yet. again, there are sooooooo many ways the writers could drive home how deranged those two buckwild lesbians are and yet they went with the call out on the status of Ed and Stede doing it. very interesting indeed. The last, more amorphous example is Ed breaking his kiss with Stede and asking if they can take things slow. granted, that could be related to a bunch of different things that aren't sex related, however we know Stede has already basically confessed how in love with Ed he is to his face and they were already best friends basically as soon as they met each other, which starts to narrow down the options for what Ed is referring to pretty quickly. he also only broke the kiss after Stede grabbed Ed to intensify the kiss which further supports this theory. sooooo tl;dr - i think we're gonna see those two middle aged dads do it bc the writers have been seeing the seeds for the past 3 eps

[sysig]

Puts the “plates” in “Fellplates” (Patreon)

[anzuhan]

[prince-peachie]

@emry-stars-art asked for Royal AU sketches so I truly had no choice but to oblige

[booasaur]

Willow (2022) - 1x02

[erinravenseeker]

Just had a middle-of-the-night “ohhhh” moment as I just figured out that Kim Dokja needs the Fourth Wall not because of the scenarios but because it was essentially his survival mechanism for life.

Now I have only read the novel once so I could totally be forgetting stuff & way off-base but this is what I remember. Inane rambling under the cut, major spoilers included.

We know he’s generally antisocial, placing himself outside of society like a reader, and he internally smoothed over Sangah’s rough points even before the scenarios, making her into a ‘character’ (a caricature of herself) that fit into an archetype.

Dissociating from reality & viewing himself as a reader is his coping mechanism & “WoS coming to life” provides a convenient excuse to keep ignoring that fact.

This kind of ties in with an idea I’ve been forming about the Fourth Wall, which is that KDJ is fundamentally incapable of believing that “The Characters” (read: everyone) can experience growth as a result of his actions. He exists outside of the story, he is in the audience beyond the fourth wall, so he cannot affect the characters.

Hence the paradoxical nature of the Fourth Wall. For as long as he is a Reader, the Fourth Wall is maintained. And as long as the Fourth Wall is maintained, he will continue to be a Reader.

(Warning this is where it gets incoherent and messy.)

Kim Dokja fundamentally NEEDS the Fourth Wall to be maintained. Not just because of the OD stuff, but because it’s the way he’s learnt to cope with existing. It’s also why dying is so easy for him—we know he cannot deal with the guilt of making people he cares about suffer, but if he’s just a Reader, that means he can’t really have any meaningful impact on their lives, so it’s fine for him to just… disappear.

Kim Dokja is not actively suicidal, he’s just invested himself so far into the worldview of himself being a Reader that to him, his temporary deaths no longer register as dying. More like… stepping out of the theatre for a bit.

It gets complicated when we hit OD. Because then we realise the KDJ we’ve been accompanying is essentially a self-insert OC. So we can ascribe the way he thinks to OD, including all the coping mechanisms and self-distancing. But where OD manages to escape the narrative along with SP, at the same time the KimCom Crew escape the narrative, KDJ actually kind of… doubles down?

Like, OD does what any Reader does and learns from the book. When KDJ says “I, someone of no redeeming quality, could be loved by the others.” It’s not just him learning this lesson. It’s actually kind of the opposite. OD is Reading this lesson so he learns that he’s allowed to accept the mercy of SP & the 999 crew. So they escape the narrative.

KimCom also manages to escape the narrative but KDJ… can’t. He comes to the conclusion that he was actually backstage all along. But that means he’s still not ON stage. A Character can’t feel for the Script Writer or Director or Stage Manager. So he doubles down on his separation from them, stepping into that role. And then then KimCom comes banging on his door backstage because they’re not just characters, they’re the Actors now, and KDJ disappears because he can’t deal with that, because he fundamentally cannot exist on the same plane as them.

I think that’s why I’m hopeful at a post-epilogue ending. KDJ The Reader exists at essentially a higher tier than the people around him, and so he believes he cannot be loved in a way that has a lasting impact on them. But he DID spend years being affected by WoS, by Yoo Joonghyuk. If he becomes the Character, and them the Readers… maybe, just maybe, he can actually accept that love.

[supermaks]

Kit do you not rep Charles anymore 😭

Of course I do he’s prime I just need a break from his team and that fucking dog

[arolesbianism]

I caved and made them real. Obverse me losing more and more motivation to draw as I made each of these back to back lol

[cads-the-cat]

It's been like 5 mins and I'm far from recovering from the graphic novel announcement. MY JAW DROPPED, I'M LOSING MY MIND, WHAT THE FUCK?? I think that's the end of my comprehensive thoughts

DO YOU EVEN UNDRSTAND WHAT THAT MEANS? WE MIGHT GET CONFIRMED LORE!!! LIKE ACTUAL CONFIRMED LORE BEYOND THE TINY BITS VESSEL GAVE US IN 2018 OR WHENEVER

IMAGINE WE MIGHT GET SPEECH BUBBLES! CHARACTERS TALKING! VESSEL TALKING AND SAYING THINGS