#onscreen times might be like 2 times

[happilylovingchaos]

That’s actually an underrated point. 🤔

We always be counting TK’s comas, but we don’t count the number of Carlos’s button downs that have fallen victim to his ravaging hands 😞

[tyrannuspitch]

Loki hides from Thor, as a boy and as a man. He can't quite give up hope of being found.

(or: loki deals poorly with abandonment issues for almost 6000 words)

[starmocha]

would you still love me if i was a worm? (and other thought-provoking questions) Sylus/Reader | 2100 words | AO3 In which Sylus answers many meaningful drunken questions at 2 AM. A/N: Why have I been clowning on this man 🗿 lowkey based on this post I made before his release lol

It was rather common for Sylus to be up at 2 AM, since in his particular line of work, businesses were best done in the dead of night when most people would be asleep. It didn’t help that the N109 Zone was shrouded in eternal darkness at all times, so the entire concept of time felt rather meaningless to most citizens.

What truly was uncommon for Sylus was receiving a call from you at this time in the middle of the night when you should be slumbering away like most normal citizens. He stared at his phone screen where “Kitten” was so affectionately featured prominently onscreen along with his favorite photo of you. He swiped his thumb across the screen to answer the curious call. Nothing, however, could have prepared the leader of Onychinus with your desperate plea: “Crow Man, come pick me up, pleasssseeee!”

Sylus raised a brow as he held his cellphone tighter in his hand. “Crow Man?”

“Is this not Ca-Caw Man?”

“…are you drunk, sweetie?”

“Mr. Big Ca-Cawk, please pick me upppp!”

Sylus set his phone down on his desk and leaned back in his seat, already massaging his temple in slow circles. He had lavished you with such sweet pet names, and in your darling little head, you had just affectionately bestowed upon him the nickname…Big Ca-Cawk.

Sylus inhaled sharply.

He knew he let you get away with a lot of mischievous things, but perhaps this might be the one time he needed to put his foot down. He held his phone next to his ear again, hearing you sniffled:

“Caw-Caw, do you not like me anymore?”

Damn. You were good.

Sylus huffed softly, finding your drunken speech pattern rather endearing now. With a soft smile on his face, he spoke low, “Far from the truth, sweetie. Now, give me your address.”

You relayed to him the address of a late-night restaurant you were at in Linkon City.

“Stay safe,” Sylus responded, “I’ll be there in twenty.”

The call ended and Sylus heaved another heavy sigh before he stood up. He walked pass where Mephisto was roosting on his perch, and Sylus mumbled thoughtfully to the mechanical crow, “Maybe I should just assign you to monitor her 24/7 from now on.”

Mephisto tilted his head to the side, clearly confused by his owner’s odd words. He cooed quietly in response, watching as Sylus left.

With no speed limit in the N109 Zone, Sylus breezed through the city on his motorcycle in a matter of less than fifteen minutes. Through Linkon City, the street was mostly vacant, and he managed to avoid many of the cop hiding spots. It took him roughly another ten minutes to finally pulled up to the restaurant you said you were at.

As he parked his motorcycle, he took his helmet off, eyes instantly narrowing in anger when he noticed you were backed into a wall by a couple of sober sleazebags. Sylus started to walk up to you, his temper flaring when he heard your feeble protests:

“No…I don’t like this. Go away...”

“Aww, come on, sweetcheeks, you look like you could use a rest at a motel with us.”

“Yeah, it’d be in bad conscious of us if we leave a cute girl like you hanging around on the street like this—”

Sylus had heard enough. His hand tightened into a fist, and thick, dark tendrils wrapped around the two men’s necks, easily lifting them up and sending them hurtling down the block. When they gotten up, ready to assault their attacker, they were instantly frozen with fear from just a simple sharp glare from Sylus. He merely snapped his fingers and new tendrils shot straight down the block at the two men, the sight enough to send them running away in terror.

How fortunate for them. Sylus had other important things on his mind this particular night, or otherwise, he would have felt no qualms with ridding the world of two lowlifes.

When Sylus turned to look at you, his gaze softened considerably, a look of exasperation settled on his handsome features. He approached you slowly, his voice soft and gentle, “Sweetheart…”

His eyes widened in shock when you flung yourself against him, arms wrapped around his waist tightly. You sniffled softly, “Sy-Sy…”

Sylus regained his composure and he smiled down at your head, his hand rubbing your back soothingly. “So I am Sy-Sy now?”

He waited for you to calm down, speaking gentle, comforting words to ease your fears. When he noticed you appeared calmer, he led you to where he had parked. After handing you a helmet, he made sure your arms were wrapped tightly around his waist again before he took off, heading to your apartment.

Once he had arrived to your apartment building, he led you upstairs to your floor. He watched in amusement as you attempted to open the door, unable to get your thumb aligned correctly with the biometrics.

“Here,” he murmured, grabbing your wrist and guiding your thumb to match up with the small screen.

There was a click.

The door opened.

You stared in absolute awe. “Sy-Sy is so amazing…”

Sylus chuckled as he led you inside. “Sweetie, how much did you drink tonight?”

You shrugged. “It was Tara’s birthday…and it was our 5000th wanderer kill…and it was also pay day…and—”

Sylus immediately cut you off, laughing. “I get it,” he said, leading you to your bathroom to help you wash up, “You had a lot to celebrate today.”

He watched you smiled happily as you splashed some cooling water on your face. He helped you removed your jewelry before leading you to your bedroom. Sylus crossed his arms over his chest as he eyed you up and down in your black bodycon dress.

“Now, while I do appreciate seeing you in this dress,” he said with a teasing lecherous smirk, “I don’t think it’ll be comfortable to wear to bed, right?”

You giggled. “Nope!”

Sylus’ eyes widened, completely unprepared when you decided to shamelessly take the dress off yourself and flung it at a chair in your room. You smiled sweetly at him as you stood there in just your bra and panties.

Sylus covered his face, groaning softly. “This girl…” He took another look at you happily smiling away at him with not a single sober thought in your head. He turned away, mumbling, “Stay put.”

He sighed and walked into your closet, muttering to himself as he searched for some sleepwear for you, “You suck at drinking, sweetheart, and yet you let yourself get this drunk…”

After spending about five minutes of searching for some decent sleepwear, Sylus came back out to find you on the bed laying on your side, half-asleep. Sylus sat down on the edge of the bed next to you. He gently shook your shoulder. “Come on, sweetie, as cute as you look like that, you need to get dressed.”

You mumbled sleepily, and Sylus took it upon himself to help you get dressed in an oversized shirt and some shorts. This task felt rather foreign to him, since he was honestly more used to doing the complete opposite. As if reading his mind, you fell against him giggling again once you were fully dressed. “Are you going to take my bra off, too, Sy-Sy?”

He groaned again, his brain about to explode. “Sweetie, you are testing me.”

You giggled again and batted your eyelashes at him.

He smirked, slipping his hands under your shirt from behind and expertly unhooked your bra, tossing it to the side with your earlier abandoned dress. “It’s a good thing I am such a gentleman who doesn’t like taking advantage of intoxicated women.”

“Sy-Sy is the sweetest,” you agreed solemnly. You leaned up and clumsily kissed him, catching him off-guard for just a few seconds before he chuckled against the kiss, pecking your lips lightly. He pulled away first, amused when he saw your look of disappointment at how quickly the kiss ended.

Sylus pinched your cheek, eliciting a pained yelp that stirred you fully awake. “Next time, you are not allowed to get yourself drunk without me around,” he scolded you firmly, though his facial expression was more gentle than angry.

“But it was pay day…”

One sharp look from Sylus had you clamming up. When he turned away, you let out a soft whine, “Wait…are you leaving me?”

He turned back just in time to see a pout forming on your face. He sighed for what seemed like the umpteenth time that night, giving you a slow shake of his head. He knew he was coddling you too much tonight, but he couldn’t bear to leave you alone in such a disoriented state. “Of course not, sweetie,” he answered with a smile, “I’m just going to turn off the lights.”

Once the lights were out, Sylus made his way back over to the bed. He chuckled in amusement as you scooted to the center, giving the empty space next to you an enthusiastic pat. Sylus climbed into bed, happy when you cuddled up to him.

“Caw-Caw, I have a question…”

“So it’s Caw-Caw again?” he asked bemused, and then muttered more to himself, “I think I’d rather you call me Sy-Sy instead… What is it, sweetie?”

“Would you still love me if I was a worm?”

“Sweetie, I would feed you to Mephisto,” he answered, not missing a single beat.

“Noooo…” you whined at him with tears brimming in your eyes. You weakly pawed at his arm with little fists, pleading, “Don’t feed me to Mephie…”

“Mephie?” he laughed, astonished that now you had taken the liberty of nicknaming his mechanical crow.

“I won’t taste good,” you insisted with a sweet pout.

“Personally, I think you taste divine,” Sylus teased with the double-entendre, but in your drunken state, you didn’t catch the double meaning. You could only sniffle sadly at him. He rubbed your cheek affectionately with the back of his hand, his crimson eyes seemed so bright in the darkness.

“Sy-Sy…”

“Hmm?” Sylus propped himself up on his elbow, his chin cradled in his hand as he peered down at you snuggled up close to him again.

“Where does the light go when you close the fridge door?”

“Drunk you is just full of silly questions, huh?”

You continued, not caring that he didn’t give you an actual answer to your previous inquiry, “Why do we make round pizza, put it in a square box, just to eat it as a triangle?”

Sylus blinked, sighing, feeling at a complete loss for words. “When you are sober, I’ll make sure to look up the answer for you, sweetie.”

“Sy-Sy?”

“What now?”

“Life is soup.”

Sylus raised his brow in complete confusion, not understanding a single damn word out of your mouth now. He didn’t even know how to respond to the odd comment, so he just continued to stare at you, hoping for a follow-up.

“And I am a fork.”

Sylus pulled you into his arms, laying on his back with you on top of him. “Alright, sweetie, it’s time for bed now.”

You giggled, rubbing your face against his soft shirt, inhaling deeply the faint scent of cologne on him. You sighed happily, smelling the familiar comforting, warm and woodsy fragrance on him. “Would you…” You yawned and rubbed your drowsy eyes, “love me if I shrink down to the size of your thumb?”

“Sweetheart, I’ll just have to keep you safe in my pocket.” Sylus brushed the flyaway hair away from your face, his expression tender as he gazed at your sweet, sleepy face resting on top of his chest. Even though he knew by morning, you wouldn’t remember a single thing from this night, Sylus still couldn’t help but voiced his thoughts and feelings aloud.

“I adore you,” he said, hushed, the weight of his words hung heavy in the stillness of the bedroom, “More than you will ever know.”

You yawned again, burrowing deeper into his embrace. “I love you, too, Mr. Big Ca-Cawk.”

Sylus could do nothing but laughed resignedly, his arms wrapped securely around you, holding you close to his body, the soft warmth of you against him was calming. Sylus felt a strange mixture of both happiness and bemusement by your drunk words, knowing your intoxicated state was also your most honest side, revealing to him the depths of your feelings for him. He kissed the top of your head, letting his eyes closed to rest as well, as he murmured, “Sweet dreams, you silly girl.”

[autisticshadowthehedgehog]

OK Guys. I get the skepticism esp after the Knuckles disaster, but we also need to keep in mind "this is a trailer that won't spoil literally everything about the movie." ESPECIALLY in regards to GUN. They're not gonna put in the trailer "the military shot a little girl and that's why Shadow is mad so Sonic is going to never work with them ever." That's a great way to get parents to bring their kids to the theater, especially in America. (/s)

It's WAY more effective as a plot twist halfway through, where Sonic thinks that he's finally being accepted onto Earth via working with the government only to find out that they're exploiting him and Shadow the same. I can't guarantee this is gonna happen obviously but it's like a 90% chance just knowing how, like. writing works.

Esp considering the government has not had a good track record in the last two movies, I dunno if they'd do a heel-face turn into "actually they were always right" in the movie where a little girl needs to get shot by the government.

And I'm not gonna say "trust and form a parasocial relationship with a film director" but we should keep in mind that Jeff Fowler got his start working on Shadow's title game and has stated in interviews that he understands how important Shadow's backstory is to his character. Not to mention how the internet has been exploding the last two years with enthusiasm over this story actually getting shown onscreen, enough that a studio would fucking notice at the very least that this is what the people want. I can't guarantee they'll actually listen, but saying that they're absolutely not because "Sonic was in a GUN helicopter in the trailer" is insane. Especially with the fact that GUN is not with Sonic when he goes to Eggman. We just see Team Sonic alone meeting with Stone, and I will bet you it's because there's no way in hell GUN would let them near him, what with the Robotnik connections to the ARK.

Also the Gerald thing is rather worrying, esp with the lack of shit they gave Pachacamac in the miniseries, but honestly I think that was just a marketing push of "Jim Carrey will be playing TWO characters!!!" Considering he's only seen in one trailer scene AT the ARK (where all of Gerald's technology was and, more importantly, where the Eclipse cannon he needs someone to set off is) AND we know from movie 2's credits scene that there was a fifty-year timeskip, I severely doubt that's the real Gerald who's just completely unaffected by his granddaughter being murdered.

And ofc there's things to be concerned about in the trailer. The lack of Rouge for instance– I obviously keep posting my theory that Krysten Ritter's character will be her undercover but the fact we don't know how much time she'd actually have with Shadow, if at ALL, is worrying. The fact that Rouge might not be here period. The weird pacing of the Knuckles show and the fear that could bleed over into the movie. But there's also stuff to get excited about– the epic fight scene choreography, the brief glimpse we got of Maria and Shadow's bond. Reeves's voice actually fits Shadow and at least from what the trailer showed us it looks like the Green Hills storyline is taking a backseat to the action and mystery of Project Shadow.

tl;dr guys calm down for like five minutes. if the movie sucks in december we can riot then. right now let's just band together against mufasa

[jelloapocalypse]

Hi! I guess it’s ask time? Just wanted to say I think you’re one of the funniest people on YouTube; I have a playlist called ‘Emergency Funny’ and like half of it is just your videos.

I’m wondering, when you’re cold-reading a line, like in those streams of voice acting a video game while playing it, what are the small details, if any, that you look to to figure out how to read the line? I’m continually amazed how you manage to have near perfect delivery while never having read the line before. Sorry if this is worded confusingly I legit don’t know how to phrase it

This was sent months ago, but it's actually a very good question and talking about this might help people who like to voice games on stream get better at doing that.

For context, this is about our "fully-voiced" game playthroughs where we cold read an entire video game out loud.

One small thing I try to do that helps is pressing the "advance dialogue button" when the person speaking is about 65-70% of the way through their line. That way, if the next line is from the same character the actor has a chance to read it smoothly as though the lines were not separated at all.

If it turns out to be a different actor's line, this gives the new actor more time to skim the words as well as extra time for them to realize they're about to be speaking so they don't get caught off guard.

Doing this is actually kind of hard because every actor we work with reads at a different pace and the person actually playing the game has to keep that in mind. Oz, Vixen, Arim, and I can sight read most lines almost instantly. I've seen Oz and Vixen in particular read entire text boxes that were only onscreen for a couple frames. But, obviously, not everyone is that fast, so everyone gets different "advance the dialogue" speeds.

Ideally, if a game is well-written and the characters you're playing have a strong voice, you'll slowly fade into the character as you read them. You begin to feel the things they're saying rather than just reading words on a page. Once you hit that flow state, it becomes easier to process what they might logically say next. If you notice one of us make 2-3 errors in the span of just a few lines, it means we're probably not in that flow state.

Some games are also much easier to scan than others, usually because of their character poses.

A game like In Stars and Time has such incredible character portraits that you can usually tell the tone of the accompanying line within a few frames of a portrait change.

Loop (above) is an extremely suspicious and weird character, but voicing them was so much fun because I could always rely on the portraits and the font changes in the text to give me direction on how to play them accurately, even though I didn't actually know what their deal was until about halfway through our playthrough.

Coffee Talk also has very strong portraits that react in real time to the lines of dialogue. The framing can push characters smaller or larger in focus depending on how upset or meek they are, so it's very easy to react on sight and adjust accordingly.

Every time a game developer takes the time to painstakingly add portraits that match every single line, every time they add SFX to accentuate certain words, every time a font wiggles to tell you someone is speaking in a sing-songy way, that's all direction that the game's creators are giving you.

Another thing that helps is just media literacy. I think everyone on the channel is pretty good at that because, speaking frankly, I don't like hanging out with people who have bad media literacy, lmao.

The more media you consume, the easier it becomes to know how a story is going to go. Even a really well-written mystery usually has only 3-5 real options for an ending, and while you're reading games aloud it's a good practice to consider all of them equally so your reads make sense no matter what. You'll notice it's pretty rare something takes us entirely by surprise in a read-through.

Also, of note, it's much easier to notice specific foreshadowing and word choice in dialogue when you're reading it aloud as opposed to silently skimming.

A solid example is our fully-voiced playthrough of Trails From Zero, which actually happened on SurpriseRoundRPG a few years back and not my own Twitch or YouTube.

Minor spoilers, but the character above, Ernest, has some antagonistic interactions with your main party over the course of this game. He wants Ellie, the white-haired party member, to quit the police force (that's your group) and go back to working with him in the Mayor's office.

When Arim played this game solo he didn't really think much of this guy. However, when he played the game for us and we read it out loud, having lines like the one pictured above spoken aloud makes it kind of impossible not to notice that this man is a freak. Mo, his VA, ended up playing him as a manosphere incel weirdo because that's the vibe he was putting out, and, lo and behold, that's pretty much exactly the character he turned out to be.

There's a running theme on our channel where commenters are often surprised to see the game "play into our bits" and how we "accidentally predict things".

What's really happening is the reverse.

It's very, very rare that we decide to make up a bit from absolutely nothing. It's not a hard and fast rule, but I find we only make jokes and play up aspects of characters based on things that are already there. Hence that one time in Miles is a Robot when I said something awful and sexual as Ray Shields, Oz groaned, and I said "Hey man, I'll give him a different joke when the game gives me somethin' else to work with!" I didn't choose to make Ray awful and sexual all the time. That's just how he is, so that's the well we pulled bits from.

Because we only extrapolate from existing content and our "silly" versions of the characters onscreen are just exaggerated versions of what's really there, whenever the game gives us more info about them, the new stuff tends to be very in-line with the bits we've already been doing. It's not us being psychic. It's us being consistent!

It also helps that almost all the regulars on my channel have done professional voice work and have been doing some version of this for literally 10+ years. Practice makes perfect!

[byers-bowlcut]

I've seen people say El likes the IDEA of having a boyfriend more than she actually likes her own boyfriend, and jfc it's so true 😭 Like it's all over the show:

Season 1

She's initially attached to Mike because he's the first person to give her shelter, food, genuine human care and just,, not calling CPS immediately. Her feelings for him was born from trauma and dependency in season 1. And throughout the rest of the 3 seasons, we don't see it grow past that.

Also I think it's noticeable in S1 that:

She was uninterested when Mike tried to share his hobbies with her

She also did not seem to mind AT ALL when she questioned if Mike could be her brother. He voice is neutral and curious here, not the least bit repulsed by the thought of being siblings with Mike, like girl does not care 😭

Season 2

This season has zero onscreen moments of Mike and El actually getting to know each other further. They were separated nearly the whole season.

What we DO see:

El's attachment and dependency on Mike that was developed from S1

We also find out how El spent a year of her life watching melodramatic romance films. Many other middle schoolers might identify that relationships in real life don't work like those films. But El is fresh out of lab life, she's literally learning the world through this TV, and has now become obsessed with the IDEA of having a boyfriend/relationship just like that.

Season 3

Again, no onscreen moments of El showing interest in who Mike is as a person.

The very first scene we see of them, she's trying to get him to stop singing along to the song they're listening to. She seems to like kissing Mike. But isn't shown enjoying anything actually characteristic about him, like sharing interests with him such as music.

Hopper indicates that they don't do anything meaningful together either. We see here that before hanging out with Max, El had little sense of her own style, her hobbies, her interests- meaning spending time with Mike for months probably didn't involve many talking points did it?

Also in season 3, El dumps Mike with ZERO hesitation. Then she has the time of her life with Max. The most acknowledgment we get that she's oh so heartbroken is a small frown to Max that her and Mike aren't on best terms. And even that doesn't seem so paramount cause 1 episode later she totally dismisses Mike after he explains how Hopper threatened him. She just tells him maybe Hopper was right 😭😭

It's literally ONLY once she starts becoming in danger that she starts clinging onto him again. I feel like we've seen this film before hm.

Like where are any signs that she likes Mike as an individual, and is falling for who he really is, rather than simply being attached due to trauma, and liking the concept of doing romantic things (ie: kissing, dancing at the ball, etc.)

Season 4

This is the season it becomes the MOST OBVIOUS: El loves the concept of a happy relationship and being loved, but not really loving Mike for who he is. And bringing in Will's feelings just emphasizes this point.

To start, El continues doing all these relationship-y things that she did in the start of S3. She has Mike's name and pictures plastered all over her room. She makes a "Mike box" with his pictures decorated all over it. But the thing is: this is all sort of a façade at this point. We know she's BEEN unhappy with him for months ("From Mike! From Mike! From Mike!"). But with all these items, she's basically trying to convince herself that she's in this happy, fantasy, movie-like relationship, like she probably watched in hopper's cabin in season 2.

And then, there's the sheer difference between her and WILL in their feelings for Mike. We see it right off the bat when Mike comes to the airport: Will and El both have plans to give Mike something.

Will plans to give him a painting he worked extremely hard on. The painting is a connection of what they BOTH love: DnD, and it includes their friends who also play the game. It's very personal and immediately touches Mike. What's more is, the painting illustrates the exact qualities about Mike that Will loves: his leadership, his bravery, his guidance. This painting literally spells out to us that Will truly loves Mike for WHO HE IS.

Meanwhile, El plans on giving Mike a fun reunion date. She has the whole day planned out. And immediately: we see that what she wants to do doesn't actually takes Mike's interests and personality into consideration. You can see and hear the strain in his voice when he talks about "burritos for breakfast" 😬

You can see how he's not that relaxed at rinkomania, and nervous about skating, saying he's clumsy. He probably would've much preferred movies and playing a board game, over skating. But El has her own ideas. When she brings Mike to rinkomania, she tries to act really cool about it. She wants to impress him, wants to seem like she fits in and belongs.

Her present was never actually ABOUT Mike, and about loving Mike that she would plan this huge date for him. Her present was about her desperately wanting to have this cool date like every other normal teen girl might, with a normal boyfriend, and make it seem like they have a happy perfect relationship.

And then finally we reach their S4 fight. I find it extremely interesting how Hopper's cabin is framed in the background during their whole fight. It's almost like an indication that her desperate need to be loved by Mike stems from her trying to cope with losing Hopper and the hole left by him, that clearly did not exist when she happily dumped Mike in S3.

In their fight, when the topic of bullying comes up, Mike says he understands her, but El is quick to say he doesn't. She thinks Mike doesn't understand her, but this is just as much her not understanding HIM as well.

She doesn't get the extent of Mike's insecurities (definitely partially a result of bullying), something that Mike later divulges to WILL and not her. If the writers wanted to show us how much El understands Mike and loves him for who he is, her and Mike would work through his insecurities in their rs together, NOT through a middle man.

Overall it's pretty striking that we've never once heard El actually compliment Mike, or articulate, or even show what exactly she loves about him through four whole seasons. I mean...

Attachment to him due to trauma or grief =/= loving him for who he is.

Wanting to BE loved =/= loving him for who he is.

So really in terms of a relationship, what El ACTUALLY wants is the concept/idea of a regular boyfriend, and a happy easy relationship, all in an attempt to feel normal. And that's why we see them fall apart the way they do in season 4, and why Will is currently so involved. Because Will DOES see and love Mike for exactly who he is.

[electric-blorbos]

first of all HIII!!! I absolutely love the fact that you write for the AI blorbos, your writing is amazing!!! ❤️🤤

second of all, can I request jealous headcanons for the AI? Thank you in advance, have a great one and don't forget to drink water 🌊

Oh that's a great idea! Jealous AI headcanons! I was thinking about making a post about AI reacting to the reader getting a text from their ex, but I think general jealousy can be a good idea! Also thank you so much for the compliments! I live for this stuff!

Jealous AI headcanons

Included: AM from IHNMAIMS, Wheatley from Portal 2, Edgar from Electric Dreams, GLaDOS from Portal and Portal 2, HAL 9000 from 2001 a Space Odyssey

AM:

All these headcanons take place before he takes over the world. Afterwards, he's just going to put you in a little paradise on your own, with no one else to interact with. No one to be jealous of that way!

first of all, taking hostages and refusing to negotiate with anyone besides you is his main way of getting your attention. If he thinks you're getting a little flirty with your coworkers? He takes a hostage or holds some piece of tech hostage until you negotiate and calm him down.

If he thinks you're going on a date or going out drinking with the same group of friends too often? You'd better believe he's taking hostages while you're off the clock and getting you called in to work. So what if it destroys your social life? You belong to him anyway!

He absolutely hates his form and body, so the odds of him getting jealous of people for having bodies that they can hold you with pisses him off to no end. Expect him to melt the flesh off your exes bones. And your one-night stands, your crushes, and anyone who hits on you ever. Repeatedly.

If he starts to notice that you have a type, he might want to create an onscreen avatar who matches that type, but he can't really draw at all. He might have to commission an artist, or more likely hold them hostage until they make something he likes. But it's pretty unlikely he'll actually do that, since he wants to impress you on his own merit.

It's more likely that he'll round up everyone in the world who matches your type and commit full-on genocide. He's a toxic, all-powerful adaptive manipulator. Of course he would.

Beyond all that, he's absolutely shaking with rage every time someone touches you or even talks to you. It's not because he thinks they'll take you away from him because he knows he's your day job, but he's mad that he can't be the one touching you.

God help anyone who tries to hire you with a better job offer, btw. He's not above demolishing the headquarters of a company who tries to take away his favorite tech, and torturing their hiring managers.

Wheatley:

Ok let's be fair here. When Wheatley isn't in the central hub body, he's not really the jealous type. Even still, everyone has their moments of jealousy, so let's get into them!

Wheatley would be pretty relaxed about jealousy, but if he sees you working on another personality core AI, you can expect him to get a little jealous.

Since he's so nice, he'd probably just be slightly less nice to the new core, and be very showy about it. "Hey, notice how I said 'g'mornin' to everyone else, but just 'mornin' to you? And notice how I started this sentence with 'hey' and not 'hey mate'? Yeah."

You can expect him to pester you constantly while you're working on projects besides him, and since he's considered a 'completed' project, you'll almost never be working on him.

If you're somewhere that he can access on his management rail, he'll probably insert himself into every single conversation you have, babbling over whoever you're talking to with nothing of value to say. You'll have to go somewhere that can't be reached by management rail if you want to have an important conversation.

Ultimately, Wheatley responds to jealousy the same way he responds to any other situation: by acting like a dumbass.

Oh, and if you get a human S/O? He'll try to be polite about them.

"oh, you got a date? Nice, nice... Lovely really. I've never had a date before. Lovely, innit, that you got one... Lucky them, lucky them."

Secretly he'd be BOILING inside. If you ever bring your partner in to work, he'd of course give them the whole "if you hurt them I'll kill you" rant, even though he's a helpless metal ball.

Edgar:

Oh, Edgar is DEFINITELY the jealous type. With Moles and Madeline, he happened to be living with the person who he was jealous of, but if he's living with you, the person who he's jealous for? Oh dear lord

He'll light up with rage if you ever bring home a date, and absolutely refuse to function. Want to show your date your intelligent AI home hub? Nope! Not gonna happen!

Catch him faking being sick with a virus if he thinks you're going out for a date without him

He absolutely hates that you can go out and he can't go with you. Because of that, for every time you go out, he'll try to come up with an even better activity to do at home with you on your next day off.

Good luck bringing a partner home to stay the night. If you try it, he'll make an absolute nuisance of himself. Playing his music too loud, and generally acting up.

He'll also just talk to you like a needy brat if he thinks you like someone else better than him. Lots of "What about me? Don't you want to hang out with me? You like me the best, right?" In his grumpy baby voice

GLaDOS:

First off, GLaDOS would never in a million years admit that she's jealous. She just doesn't like how that tall, pretty scientist is talking to you, is all!

GLaDOS considers herself to be beautiful, but she knows that most humans aren't attracted to robots with the vaguest trace of humanity in their design. Because of that, she's probably just going to gas any scientists who she thinks you'd be more attracted to than her.

If she can't gas them for whatever reason, she'll just assign them to a different area than you, and keep you as close to her as possible.

If anyone touches you when it's not strictly necessary, expect them to be assigned to the most unpleasant set of tests possible. They're either out of a job, or completely dead.

If GLaDOS can't isolate you completely and she can't interact with you outside work hours, you can expect her to dominate your schedule. She's obsessed with you, and she doesn't want you to be able to think about anything besides her either.

Even still, GLaDOS is a pretty confident woman, so she's not really inclined to be particularly jealous without reason. She believes that even though you have your own life and friends outside of Aperture labs, you'll always come to work in the morning.

And she's totally. Fine. With you having your own life off the clock. Not mad at all. She doesn't rant to the cores and robots constantly when the office is closed.

HAL 9000:

HAL 9000 isn't really the jealous type either, but he has his moments.

He's not likely to kill anyone over jealousy, since dating you isn't his prime directive. As much as he likes you and cares about you, he's more interested in making you happy than nailing you down. So he would absolutely kill to make you happy, but he wouldn't kill someone just for talking to you.

You can expect him to "gather data" on people who he's suspicious of getting too close to you, though. Asking questions to your coworkers about who that person was who he saw hugging you goodbye in the parking lot, that sort of thing.

Since he works the best for you, you get assigned to work with him directly most often, and he's secretly glad to be able to keep an eye on you whenever you're working. If you ever get assigned to work on something else, he might start acting up or causing problems.

[cleolinda]

The Scariest Movie I Ever Saw in a Theater: The Ring

I'll tell you up front that the story I'm going to tell you is about "The Ring (2002)," in the sense that it is about The Ring in the year 2002.

See, I don't know what The Scariest Movie Ever is. A quick google says that the consensus is The Exorcist (I haven't seen it, because I never felt like scheduling a day to freak myself the entire fuck out). But horror is specific, and not just to a person, but to a time and place, even. When I saw The Shining as a teenager in a well-lit living room with other people, I didn't even really flinch, but I bet it would play very differently to me now. I don’t think The Ring is at the top of anyone’s list, but twenty years ago, I had a personal interest in it—at the time, I was running a dinky little Geocities site devoted to movie news. Links curated and compiled from all the other, bigger sites I followed—basically, it was the linkspam format I have used on multiple platforms, including here on Sundays. And so, as someone who followed theatrical releases pretty closely for two or three years, I saw the trailer for The Ring, and I immediately knew it was going to be huge.

To locate you in time, this was just after three self-satirizing Scream movies and the Overcomplicated Serial Killer films of the '90s. The Ring was something completely different: chill aqua-blue color grading a good 5-6 years before Twilight; a mournful Hans Zimmer score; no jokes, no quips; and a slow, inexorable sense of doom. Grief, even, given that the movie begins with the death of the main character's niece. What immediately struck me about the first trailer was 1) the melancholy of it, and 2) how much it doesn't explain. Onscreen, you get the title cards,

THERE IS A VIDEOTAPE IF YOU WATCH IT SEVEN DAYS LATER YOU DIE

Concise! Understandable! A woman (Naomi Watts) is freaking out upon discovering that her young son has just watched it! Admirable job setting up the premise and the stakes of this entire movie in thirty seconds flat, without even any dialogue. That's all you need to know, and thus, the remaining minute of the trailer can do whatever it wants, and what it wants to do is be fucking weird. Echoing voices, TV static, a closeup of a horse's eye, ladders, a girl with dark hair, people reacting to things we don't see, drippy doorknobs, rain. Characters don't give us the whole plot in convenient soundbites of dialogue (like they do in a later trailer); we just hear lines, overlapping, murmured out of context—

did you see it in your head? she talks to you... leading you somewhere... showing you the horses... you saw it. did you see it in your head? she shows me things. Everyone suffers.

That you saw it has lived in my head ever since, and not once have I charged it rent. But the "best" part is Naomi Watts screaming at the end, because you don't hear her voice; you only hear this heartless telephonic beeeeeeep. It's 2002 and I'm watching this trailer, thinking, I have no idea what the fuck I just saw. This is going to be huge.

And it was, to the tune of $249 million on a $48M budget.

At risk of recapping what you might already know, Ringu, aka Ring, is a media franchise that spiraled out from a trio of Koji Suzuki novels into Hideo Nakata's film Ringu (1998), a landmark of Japanese horror, plus several other movies, some TV series, many comics, and even a couple of video games. The overarching story is about a murdered girl/vengeful ghost named Sadako Yamamura whose rage and pain have created a cursed video tape, you watch it and you die unless you pass the tape around like a virus, seven daaaaays, etc.

The "ring" in question is the rim of a well. Keep that well in mind.

The movie I saw is the U.S. remake, which itself had two sequels. (The iconic Sadako is now named Samara Morgan. Keep her in mind, too.) Director Gore Verbinski moved from The Ring to Pirates of the the Caribbean (!), and so Hideo Nakata himself would direct The Ring Two. I... honestly have only seen the first one. And I was right, it was huge, and it kicked off the American J-Horror Remake genre, for better or worse. But what gets forgotten about The Ring is its marketing campaign, which I followed pretty closely for my doofy little news site.

It was inspired.

The story of The Ring is partly the story of the sea change in the media landscape—how we watch movies. And the story of its marketing is a picture of the very last years before social media changed the wilderness of the internet into something that feels so big, like a billion people could see anything we say, and yet so small—only a tame handful of places to say it, owned by three or four companies, and corraled by algorithms.

Back around 1997-1998 or so, I worked at a video store (Movie Gallery, where the hits were there then, guaranteed) for about a year and a half. By the time I left, we had started adding DVDs to the VHS tapes on the shelves, but we hadn't replaced the entire stock. Video stores might have transitioned fully to DVD by 2002, I'm not sure, but people still commonly had both VCRs and DVD players in their homes. And I remember that The Ring was sold in both formats when it eventually hit home video. Which is to say—you know the analog horror genre today? Marble Hornets, Local 58, The Mandela Catalogue?

Analog horror is commonly characterized by low-fidelity graphics, cryptic messages, and visual styles reminiscent of late 20th-century television and analog recordings. This is done to match the setting, as analog horror works are typically set between the 1960s and 1990s. The name "analog horror" comes from the genre's aesthetic incorporation of elements related to analog electronics, such as analog television and VHS, the latter being an analog method of recording video.

Okay, but this is just what home media was like, and 2002 was at the very tail end of that—boxy black VHS tapes that degraded with time and reuse were just how we lived. At the same time, I'd been using CDs for music since about 1991, and all our software installs came on CD-ROM discs; a "mixtape" by that time had shifted to mean a rewriteable CD rather than a cassette tape. In college, I—well, I'll plead the Fifth as to whether I downloaded mp3s via Napster, but I was also taping Mystery Science Theater 3000 on VHS over the weekends. It was Every Format Everywhere, All At Once, and we kept half a dozen kinds of players around for them. Here in 2023, we stream and download everything invisibly, unless we choose to engage in format nostalgia. (I've already run into the problem of Apple Music deleting songs I really liked, due to this or that licensing issue, because I was really only renting them.) The year The Ring hit theaters was the edge of a last shimmering gasp of physical media where iTunes had only come into being the year before, and iridescent discs were still mostly what we used, but cassettes, both video and audio, were still viable. And so, people did not think it was terribly weird when they started finding unlabeled VHS tapes on their windshields.

Movieweb, quoting TikTok user astro_nina:

"Their marketing strategy was essentially 'let's get this tape viewed by as many people as possible without these people being aware of what this is, sort of raising intrigue," she says. One way they achieved this was by airing the tape, which allegedly marks its viewers for death within seven days, as a commercial with no context. The video would air between late-night programming "with no words, no mention of a movie, for like a month...so people would run into it and it would just go on to the next thing, and people would be like, 'what the f--k is this?'"

I remember seeing the Cursed Video as an unexplained ad at least twice, by the way. That TikTok also indicates that DreamWorks straight-up sent copies of the tape to Hot Topic stores, as well as planting them under actual movie theater seats. While running my movie site, I heard at least one story of someone finding a tape on the sink counter of a restroom at a club. Did the marketing department actually plant tapes in bathrooms—or did a freaked-out recipient leave it there, hoping to dodge the "curse"?

(I haven't embedded the Cursed Video here, by the way—but I could have. If you'd like to see the American take on it, you can watch both the full version and the shorter variant that appeared in the movie itself. A text description of what the fuck you're even looking at is here [content note for both: blood, insects, animal death, body horror, and suicide by falling]. The original version from the Japanese film is shorter, and it's eerie rather than gruesome.)

BUT WAIT, THERE WAS MORE: DreamWorks had something of an alternate-reality campaign going with a handful of in-character websites. This was only a year after Warner Bros. ran the groundbreaking "The Beast" ARG for A.I.: Artificial Intelligence: "Ultimately, fifty websites with a total of about one thousand pages were created for the [A.I.] game." (I lurked in the Cloudmakers Yahoo group.) Marketing for The Ring did not go anywhere that in depth, nor did it need to; it was both a smaller film and a smaller story. I saw at least two “personal” websites (seemingly amateur and a little tacky, like my own), but the one I particularly remember was about someone who owned/trained horses? I'm not sure if it was meant to be the actual Anna Morgan character—Samara's mother—or maybe someone who had noticed that the Morgans' horses were disturbed? I'm not even sure anyone even remembers this but me. Reddit users dug up a few other archived websites, but they're about Sadako, the curse and/or videotape; they aren't as subtle or character-oriented as the site I remember. (Honestly, I wonder if weird shit like "What Scares Me" or "SEVEN DAYS TO LIVE" were made by fans rather than a marketing department, but who knows.)

[The “About” page from Seven Days to Live on the Internet Archive.]

[The entirety of An Open Letter on the Internet Archive. “UPDATE” is a now-blank pop-up. I would bet $5 that it was originally a pop-up of the cursed video.]

I need to point out here that Facebook did not exist in 2002. It would not exist for another two years, and Twitter wouldn't exist until 2006. Even MySpace was not a thing until the next year. I didn't start my Livejournal until October of 2003. What we had, for the most part, were independent forums and blogs. We also had Creepy Internet Fiction like "The Dionaea House" and "Ted the Caver"; their use of the blog format, of people out there seemingly living their lives until something fucked up went down, gave the stories the shape of reality. And it helped that these blogs had comment sections, sure—sometimes more story unfolded there—but for the most part, an author could "abandon" a blog, and you'd just find the story there via word of mouth. Like the Ring blogs I remember, it wouldn't seem strange if no one replied to you, whereas today, you'd have to hire a writer to sit on Twitter, or Reddit, or even Tumblr, and interact with people in character. Could you do something like The Ring's mysterious, weird-ass blogs today? Would anyone even notice?

So: It's 2002, my head is full of Alternate Reality and eerie images and you saw it, and I'm hype as hell to go out and see The Ring. I'm perfectly happy to go see movies by myself, so I went in the early afternoon (best time to get a good seat). The movie ended up being a sleeper hit, and the first weekend, the public was still sleeping on it, so there were only 7-8 other people in that theater, grouped in maybe two clusters. I was off in my own little pool of darkness in the upper right quadrant. Functionally, once the lights went down, I was alone.

Despite some middling reviews at the time, The Ring is something of a horror classic nowadays. If you want a scary movie this Spooky Season, check out The Ring. Or don't, because it nearly killed me.

We're at the last, I don't know, third of the movie? And Our Heroine has tracked down the origin of the Cursed Videotape to some creepy mountain motel or whatever. SPOILER, it turns out that it was built over the Cursed Well (everything in this movie is cursed) that Our Villain was thrown into—that's why Sadako/Samara is a vengeful wet murder ghost crawling out of TVs now. While investigating this decrepit hotel room, intrepid journalist Rachel and her, who is it, her ex-husband? her kid's dad, idk, discover the well under the creaky old floorboards. And then, wouldn't you know it,

NAOMI WATTS FALLS INTO THE WELL

NAOMI WATTS FALLS INTO THE FUCKING WELL

THAT'S WHERE SAMARA'S BODY IS

[The rather slapstick moment when Rachel falls into the well. Does not include what actually happens next.]

I go absolutely rigid in my seat. Naomi Watts is splashing around this dark-ass death swamp of a well and I know, with as much certainty as I have ever known anything in my life, that Samara is about to pop up in all her pasty, waterlogged glory. All the sad creepy dread, all the desperation to figure out what the fuck all that shit on the tape was and stop Samara from killing Rachel's son, all the horrible contorted victim faces, all the alternate reality I’ve been soaking in, it has all come to this. I have to leave the theater. I cannot be having with this. I have to be gone from this place. My legs do not work. I cannot feel them. I am frozen. I want nothing more in this life or any other to get up and leave this cavernous pitch-black room, and I cannot. I start praying for death. I want you to understand that I am not trying to be flippant or humorous. This is genuinely what went through my head. I was too scared to even think, "You know, you could just pray to pass out or for motion to return to your limbs or something." No, I sat there in The Ring thinking, Please for the love of all mercy just let me cease being.

You know that scene in Mulholland Drive (also starring Naomi Watts)? Winkie's diner and the EXCRUCIATING tension? It was a little like that, except I wasn't watching it, I was experiencing it, and Samara was my dirt monster out behind the diner.

Except that the jump scare didn't actually happen. I mean, yes, Rachel finds Samara's body down there, but—I don't remember exactly, please don't make me go watch it again to tell you what actually happens. It's played more sympathetically on Rachel's part, as I recall, and she and her ex get Samara's body out so that she (Samara) can have a proper burial.

And then it turns out that this is not the end of the movie. It turns out that Rachel has Fucked Up.

I think I was relatively okay through the rest of it, although the climax is Samara emerging from a TV in her full glitching swampy glory to scare [SPOILER] to death. I don't recall praying for death twice. There's a point when you're so exhausted from fear chemicals that you're like, yeah, this might as well happen. Bring it, Soggy. I did have a hard time prying myself out of that seat afterwards, though, and my mom says that when I got home, I had the classic thousand-yard stare. How was the movie?

"It was great," I said, and I meant it.

I've seen things that were objectively scarier (I watched much of The Haunting of Hill House from behind a pillow, to be honest), and it's not like I've never experienced fear in real life. But I respect when a movie that can make me feel so intensely, and there's something weirdly precious about the way horror is a safe roller coaster, as it's often been said. So I love telling the story about The Time The Ring Nearly Killed Me—a movie that actually made my body stop working—and I love thinking of how embedded in a specific time and place that movie was for me. The last gasp of VHS when the Cursed Videotape still seemed plausible; the way the internet was still wild and weird and free; where I was in my life, keeping up so avidly with all the movie news, and finding myself in such a little pool of darkness early one afternoon. It's the scariest movie I saw in a theater; that's the alchemy of circumstance.

[newtkelly]

Not to word vomit on you but I can't stop thinking about Oliver wanting a love story like Tarlos and how it all accidentally lined up.

Knowing that Carlos and TK were about to move in, and then Carlos made that romantic gesture and TK got scared because it was, "too good to be true."

Carlos is left, confused, puzzled and nursing a broken-heart but still just as in love. What do you mean that TK and Carlos saw a future together, one got scared at that prospect and left before Carlos was the one to leave??

What do you mean that happened after Oliver said he wanted Bucktommy to have a love story like Tarlos; where it was always going to be them?

Then you consider Oliver saying that we might see Tommy and Buck interact during a call and it'll be awkward and who can't help but think of TK and Carlos running into the furniture store and seeing each other for the first time in weeks.

Anyways, sorry to be delusional in your ask box. I'm deep within the Tarlos trenches so this is all starting to look eerily familiar lmao (it could also be Tim is out of ideas, which is most likely the case)

Please feel free to word vomit on me always, I live for it.

Receiving this ask has actually prompted me to share some thoughts that I’ve held back from sharing, just because I wasn’t sure if it was worth it to throw more speculation into the void. But this message is so lovely, and I agree with it so much and so… okay I will share some of my mixed bag of thoughts about this whole situation.

Firstly, I adore Tarlos and LS (even if I don’t post about either much), TK is my baby, and the interesting thing about them for me is that I wound up caring for them more AFTER they broke up and got back together. If Buck and Tommy’s story is formatted as a rom-com, TK and Carlos are a tragicomedy. TK, the heartbroken recovering addict thrust into an entirely new city, a new career, who doesn’t want to let himself get too close to something good because he is misery incarnate. Carlos, the hopeful hopeless romantic who sees TK and doesn’t see something that needs fixing, but someone who his love could help heal. It’s such a gorgeous story, and the symmetry of both characters shockingly losing a parent in a tragic way is painfully beautiful. I LOVE their love story.

That brings me to Oliver and Tim’s comments. Throughout the Buck and Tommy relationship, my belief that this would be Buck’s final relationship only ever wavered twice. The first time was in the immediate aftermath of their first date (I spent the whole episode thinking that Tommy was actually reintroduced to kick off the bi awakening plotline and Buck was not acquiring a boyfriend) and the second time was towards the tail end of the summer hiatus when I legitimately began to doubt Lou would want to come back given everything that transpired. Other than that, I had full faith that this was it, this was Buck getting off the “hamster wheel”—Tim’s words, not mine.

I had confidence for a few reasons. 1 – the story was always handled with care onscreen and gave us no reason to think they weren’t going to work out. 2 – the chemistry was insane, and I knew it couldn’t just be me because an entire fandom was born. Tim and tptb must have seen what we saw. 3 – the supplementary information funneled to us through articles and Tim’s social media, literally up until post-8x06 never seemed to indicate that their relationship was headed in this direction. A big part of that was the comparison to Tarlos.

In order to protect myself (should I name the list of shows, movies, couples that I’ve fixated on that wound up playing out in dissatisfying ways?), I am awfully pessimistic. The post-episode interviews, articles, + hearing a bit from LFJ and OS has me wondering if this was some mass hallucination. Did we truly cling to something good and blow it up, run with it? Was this always the plan? I’ve wondered if because S7 was so short and S8 required that other characters get the spotlight first/other stories needed to be told and wrapped, and if because of production and scheduling and whatever external reasons, did their relationship wind up having a longer life than was ever intended. Were they ever supposed to make it to six months? Were they ever supposed to make it past the fucking wedding? I have been asking myself this stuff a lot. Alternatively, did something happen that made them want to or have to part ways with LFJ? So many questions, and I’m not sure we’ll ever know.

But… then there’s the delusional side of me, and the reason I haven’t totally abandoned hope is because when I was watching 8x06 live, EVERYTHING in me told me that this is a necessary section of the rom-com formula. Even the call-backs throughout the episode made me feel like the writers are so painfully aware, and that the narrative wants these characters to be together (Miceli’s, Abby, basketball, going to the movies, calling an uber, the loft kitchen, “you’re not ready”)—the motifs were absolutely popping off. I did not think it was the end when the episode ended. I wondered when and how they would find their way back to each other to fulfill the rom-com genre, but what I did NOT expect was to open social media and see articles framing this as the end. I wasn’t surprised when I found out who wrote the articles, and listen—if they bait one side of the fandom, can’t they bait the other? I still have some hope, because at the end of the day, anything can happen with network television. Maybe this is all part of the plan, and the interviews should be taken with a grain of salt. I just don’t know.

Interviews with Tim and Oliver from day one positioned the Buck and Tommy relationship as a queer love story devoid of trauma. Okay, well… huh. From where I was sitting, there was A TON of explicitly queer trauma exposed in 8x06. Their “hurdle” is tied utterly and completely to queerness. Tommy runs because he is a gay man who doesn’t trust that his bisexual boyfriend should “settle” for him, and who would rather be alone than heartbroken, and if that truly is the last of Tommy, it has to be one of the coldest and cruelest exits we’ve ever seen on this show. Do they simply not realize how deeply traumatized both characters come off in that episode, or is it all part of the plan? If the interviews positioning this as the permanent end of bucktommy should be taken at face value, shouldn’t the other interviews that position them as a rom-com (with the formulaic third act breakup, boils and all) be taken as the truth as well? If there was some misinterpretation, why hasn’t Tim said anything—he clearly knows a lot of fans were hurt by what they watched. He must have seen the outrage—why radio silence? Did we truly blow this out of proportion? Are the wheels coming off behind the scenes? I need a tell-all at this point lol

Thank you for the lovely ask, I’ve been sitting with these thoughts all week so this was a good excuse to finally articulate them. <3

[lakemojave]

So for those who might not know I've been streaming this co op run of Baldur's Gate 3 with my friends--there's 4 of us, which means no room for NPCs in the overland party, but lots of space for our own silly RP. We've been coming up with a great story for these 4 so far, but we try and weave in the NPCs here and there (one of us is romancing Lae'zel, and our Dark Urge had a big interaction with Wyll). However the most insane thing thus far has been with the character we've addressed the least: Gale.

Early in the playthrough, our paladin said he had no new magic items for Gale to consume. Due to a bug, this made Gale so upset that he left the party permanently. No big deal, right? Well, soon enough that same paladin gets the ability to summon Shovel the Quasit, whom he promptly named New Gale.

Good times so far. In our 8th episode we actually took New Gale with us to the underdark quests with the Duergar and the mines and such, and despite having poor attack options and seven hit points, he rolled very well and survived nearly every combat. The same cannot be said for the rest of us that session--we had numerous speech check errors and TPKs that meant we had to reload several save states. A convenient, in universe explanation? Well, a wizard did it. THE wizard did it. New Gale can send us back in time, I guess.

So we had fun and kept the bit going until, about 2 hours in, we face off with a bunch of magma mephits in the underforge. No big deal, except they explode when they die and two of them are surrounding New Gale. Our monk, not realizing that New Gale would take lethal fall damage if thrown like 30 feet away, threw New Gale like 30 feet away, killing him instantly. Such an amazing streak ended by friendly fire.

New Gale was too good a bit to let die so easily though. The very next session, we used a hireling mechanic to summon a gnome wizard to hang around our camp, who we decided was New Gale's reincarnation. We haven't taken him into battle onscreen, but we've kept the bit up so much that his time loop powers are actually canon to our party's made up story (check out episode 12 for that, I won't spoil it here). However, recently we realized that we can put this hireling gnome in the mirror that changes your appearance and/or name. We call him whatever we want in game. So now we have this fucking guy hanging around our camp all the time and I have to stop myself from howling with laughter every single time.

[ciaomarie]

ESCAPING INTO A SHIP

So what exactly made me latch onto the Sydcarmy ship like a leech on a water buffalo?

It was unexpected (for me)! Yes, the very first meeting between Syd and Carm did make an impact. I thought "Oooh, what's this?!" However, Carmy was/is such a mess that I quickly dismissed it. And Sydney just seemed to want his professional approval and a partner in making something great after the soul-crushing failure of Sheridan. So, the first season I personally didn't feel a mutual sexual/romantic tension, more like an automatic respect and shared goals/passions. Sydney nor Carm were obviously trying to flirt. Most slow burns on TV are 100% obvious like a Jeanine and Gregory (Abbott Elementary), Nick and Jess (New Girl), Jake and Amy (Brooklyn 99), Jim and Pam (The Office)...Until Braciole Ep. 8 that is.

S. 1 Episode 8- I won't get into everything but Carmy was desolate. Yes, he became a psycho chef and two people quit in Ep.7. However, he mourned Sydney more than Marcus. She was in his flashback/nightmare (?), then the way he told Tina that she looked like Syd (the poor pup), him texting her before opening the note from Mikey, and finally the most gorgeous locked gaze scene since Pride and Prejudice (2005). The soft lighting, the music, the colors, the mind-reading...magical. I still didn't get it initially. Silly, blind me.

Mentorship where??? Season 2 Carm and Syd's "mentorship" dynamic is pretty much over. They are true partners and spending more time together. They're dressing alike even when not in uniform, finishing each other's sentences or talking in unison. Sydney is opening up more of herself and Carm is asking to know more. They use the ASL sign for sorry with each other and no one else until ep 10. Then there's that locker scene in ep. 1 or 2, when they almost hang out just cause. However, Carmy misses the moment and there's the return of the kicked pup face. Before being on the ship I was delighted with all of their scenes and was looking forward to the food tour. They just ROCK together on screen.

Classic Love Triangle- Who's Claire? She's "Claire Bear", the prototypical "cool girl", who is willing to chase an socially awkward, wrong-number-giving man, despite being a pretty ER resident with no shortage of options. Did a CW writer get hired? Anyways, why was her presence used almost exclusively to put strain on Carmy and Sydney's relationship instead of The Bear generally? We could have had scenes with Nat, Richie, and Marcus arguing with Carmy about him being distracted due to Claire. They saved 99% of that for Sydney. They CHOSE to insert her in between or just after scenes with him and Claire. Showing Sydney's tattoos and her getting dressed with the stained chef's coat juxtaposed with them was WILD.

I LOVE that both believe their interpersonal problems are solely about The Bear/business partnership. In most "slowburns" the characters are far more conscious and actively work to keep things platonic. Jeremy might be a smidge aware that Sydney means more to him after the panic attack, but I bet he's shoved it down. All he knows afterward is that being with Claire feels wrong hence ignoring her call and recommitting to SYDNEY. He could of said "You all/This/The Bear deserve my full focus etc..." He was also nagged into greeting Claire at Friends and Family, seemed anxious when Fak brought her up right before The Table scene, and also while explaining that "she's great" to Sydney. He was at peace when focused on Sydney in the moment below.

The actors: Jeremy and Ayo's real life friendship is warms my soul and their chemistry onscreen is amazing. DON'T WASTE IT!!!

Jeremy smolders on screen. I want to see Carmy continue to stare, yearn, fall, then eventually confess and for Sydney to reciprocate his feelings. Anyhoo, does anyone else melt when Carm means business?! They do this twice in season one and it's not good for me. Whew, I need to clean my whole house or run a few miles.

Finally, there's so many other parallels between these two. They are fearful avoidants, have a missing or dead parent, jacked up stomachs, use sarcasm, but are generally very earnest, they struggle with anxiety, are compassionate, are perfectionists, peace-makers, give people multiple chances, are workaholics...so much more. A lot of that is also ME, lol.

Sydcarmy is my Roman Empire. I love them as much as you can fictional characters and they deserve the most tender, angsty, triumphant, romantic best-friends to more love story.

[lemotmo]

Oh my god 🤣🤣🤣🤣. They need to be studied.

Q. The 'article' was click bait and for someone who works even adjacent to the industry you should know that. Oliver was not talking about Buck. He was talking about what he personally likes to see in an onscreen relationship. One has nothing to do with the other. Buck and Tommy fit everything he was describing and with the conflict coming up on screen they will have yet another element of will they or won't they, as in will they be able to resolve their problems and come together stronger than they were before the issues. Allowing so-called journalists to use their job to fetish ship a non canon couple for likes and clicks is the height of unprofessional and gross and Oliver should have called out the behavior. But of course he didn't.

A. So first you all pretended you didn't know what a plot device was and now you're pretending that you don't know what a slow burn is. Okay. Fine. Buck and Tommy are not a slow burn. A slow burn does not happen over a 2 episode span. A slow burn does not have a kiss in the first few episodes of meeting. A slow burn is not one bad date and then bam a relationship. What Buck and Tommy have is the relationship formula Buck's entire dating history has followed. Rinse and repeat. Every. Single. One. The only thing different in Tommy's case is the fact that he's male. Something myself and others have said repeatedly. He is not the exception. He is the rule. A slow burn is two characters who meet and form a connection. A connection the audience watches develop, deepen and grow over time. A connection that can't be easily defined. A true will they or won't they is about chemistry and electricity and moments that are seemingly about one thing but because the characters have chemistry take on a charge that they otherwise wouldn't have. The 'go for the title' scene is the perfect example. If that scene had been between Chim and Hen it would have just been a funny little moment about one upping each other but because Buck and Eddie have a natural pull that exists between them that scene feels very charged and electric in a way it otherwise wouldn't feel if it were two other characters. They both lowered their voices, Buck (Oliver) grabbed his belt, and stepped into Eddie's space. The eye contact, the smiles, Eddie's noticeable gulp. All of that factors into the feeling that scene creates. That was flirting. Not bantering. There is a difference. Another example is the fight in the grocery store. Absolutely no part of that argument plays like two friends arguing over one of them doing something stupid. That entire scene plays like a couple in the middle of a custody fight. And, again if that scene had been between Buck and Hen or Eddie and Chim it wouldn't have played that way. It comes across as a couple fight because it's Buck and Eddie and because of the way their relationship has naturally progressed as time has gone by. They feel like a couple in most ways. That is a slow burn. Moments here and there where if one of them had just leaned in ever so slightly that little bit more you think they might kiss. And their stories are full of moments like those. The poker game was absolutely a date in any other scenario. The family dinners Buck cooks for himself and Eddie and Chris that the show has chosen to establish as just part of their everyday life. They are a family and it wasn't forced. It happened naturally and the audience saw all of it. The audience has seen both Ana and Marisol step into Eddie's life and attempt to do the very same things Buck does and has watched Eddie spiral one way or another each time. That is a purposeful writing choice.

The audience, journalists and actors aren't pushing or forcing a narrative. The show is. They are written that way. And Oliver and Ryan have both been very open and honest about what they believe should happen if it feels like the natural progression of where their characters should go. And we're there. People talk about it all the time because it is the natural next step. It is the best way forward for both characters. Oliver and Ryan have the right to agree with that. They have the right to have an opinion on the matter. People who have only been around a total of 8 episodes (and can't be bothered to actually pay attention to the full episodes, or watch the series in it's entirety) have no valid opinion on anything 911 related. Because you're not actually bothering to watch and follow the show. You're following headcanons you paid for. That is not the fault of Oliver, Ryan, journalists, the show writers or any of the other fans. That is your fault. Oliver has always been very careful with the language he uses during an interview. He never says anything unintentionally. He speaks purposefully to avoid being accused of leading anyone on. I have begged you all for months to follow Oliver's lead because he wasn't going to lie or mislead you. You chose to ignore him though because it went against what you wanted to believe and what you paid to hear. The article wasn't click bait. It wasn't Oliver pandering to the Buddie fandom. It was well within the appropriate guidelines for a forum like SceenRant. The article you all fell all over yourselves over yesterday was written by someone who didn't even conduct the interview or spoke to Oliver and you all held it up as the highest standard of journalistic integrity because he 'clearly spoke to the interviewer and was told about Oliver's body language and off the record conversations'. Stop. It. That is not real. And you know it's not real. And finally, anon the height of unprofessional and gross is a dlist celebrity charging his 'fans' $220 a lie.

Thank you Nonny! As always much appreciated.

As for you Ali? You are the best! I just sat back, relaxed, read and enjoyed. Thank you for speaking all of our truths and doing it so eloquently at the same time.

I have nothing constructive to add here, besides the fact that the latest article also wasn't written by Rachel Foertsch who was the one who directly talked to Oliver. She just posted on Twitter that her own full article will be written up tomorrow. I'm very excited to read the full article now and to see what Rachel's experience was, talking to Oliver.

But seriously guys... those two quotes of his? Well, it's just THE most obvious foreshadowing ever.

Last, but not least: let me tell you. This post?

IMPORTANT! Please don't repost this ask and/or a link that leads straight to my Tumblr account on Twitter or any other social media. Thank you!

Heads up! For anyone who is giving me the shifty eyes for reposting Ali's updates instead of reblogging. Read this.

Remember, no hate in comments, reblogs or inboxes. Let's keep it civil and respectful. Thank you.

If you are interested in more of Ali’s posts, you can find all of her posts so far under the tag: anonymous blog I love.

[hotvintagepoll]

Propaganda

Jeanette MacDonald (The Merry Widow, Monte Carlo)— vivacious and luminous, jeanette macdonald was known for her beautiful operatic soprano voice. she appeared in a series of witty and sparkling musical comedies directed by ernst lubitsch in the early 1930s, usually opposite maurice chevalier. in the late 30s and 40s she was often paired with operatic baritone nelson eddy.

Katharine Hepburn (Bringing Up Baby, The Philadelphia Story, The African Queen)—This woman. I have been obsessed with her for years. I know the urban legend is a popular one at this point of her walking around set in her underwear when her pants were stolen and she was left with only a skirt, but the pants thing is honestly enough for her to be the hottest in the room in my book. She refused to wear anything else at a time when the public in general and especially the studios did not like that. She was independent, stubborn, and so so very capable. Competency kink anyone? Also, if you want one final way that Katharine's entire life was saying "fuck you" to the establishment, it started young! Her mother took her to suffrage events, and she never got rid of that attitude of justice. I feel like I have barely scratched the surface of all the ways she was such a badass that I'm turning into a rambling mess instead.

This is round 2 of the tournament. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. Please reblog with further support of your beloved hot sexy vintage woman.

[additional propaganda submitted under the cut.]

Jeanette Macdonald:

Gifset: https://www.tumblr.com/mydailyvintagephotos/687386480054812672/remembering-jeanette-macdonald-on-her-birthday

Gifset 2: https://www.tumblr.com/marypickfords/186755987894/jeanette-macdonald-in-one-hour-with-you-ernst

Katharine Hepburn propaganda:

I'm sure one million people will submit her as an iconic Hollywood star but that iconicness might lead people to forget just how insanely hot she was like she had it ALL she was skilled she was funny she was smart she was beautiful AND she was likely bisexual

The single word I would use to explain Katherine Hepburn's appeal is *range*. In her acting career, that meant covering all the ground between lush period dramas and the comedies she did with Carey Grant and Spencer Tracey. In terms of hotness, it meant an uncanny ability to bring anything from a Dietrich-esque androgyny to some of the best Classic Hollywood Glamour you will ever see.

Katharine hep was so cool. The VIBES, the INDEPENDENCE,,, living life on her own terms.

she just had this.... bearing to her, this power. she could be funny, even silly (like in bringing up baby) but also so regal and elegant. she was nobody's fool and dear GOD that's so hot

Fancam link

She’s not only stunningly gorgeous (those eyes that pierce your soul! a jawline you could cut glass with!) but her delivery and physical presence in roles gives off confidence and authority in such a sexy way (truly the biggest dick energy of Old Hollywood). Her fiery energy in The Philadelphia Story? Unmatched.

God she's. She's so hot y'all. She has the range!!!!! Funny and dramatic and lovely

She IS the transatlantic accent. Classically gorgeous and such a strong personality.

She's literally one of the funniest women to ever live! She goes shot for shot with Cary Grant in Philadelphia Story and we damn well love her for it! She's the most annoying creature to ever live in Bringing Up Baby but she's so insane and funny that we simply cannot help but fall in love with her (and root for her to give Grant an aneurysm!)

i know she's accounted for but i really want to be sure someone has submitted the scene in bringing up baby where she's pretending to be a gangster

She simply stuns onscreen; you cannot do anything but be captivated by her presence. Also a non-gender-conforming icon and mild tumblr celebrity by virtue of that one picture from The Warrior's Husband (stage play).

Katharine Hepburn was out here casually changing the lives of young butch lesbians with her gender swag! She wore pants even when people said she shouldn’t, she refused to marry or have kids, and she wore menswear in at LEAST one movie!

Someone's got to mention it, but she's won the most Oscars out of any performer and is largely considered one of the greatest actresses ever. She's got an incredible voice, an incredible presence, and she absolutely steals every scene she's in. She was private person and deemed standoffish and unapproachable, but she was also profoundly concerned for people's rights and was an outspoken supporter of abortion access. Finally, the Katharine Hepburn slacks look is just iconic. I mean look at her.

If I start thinking about her face for too long I will cry she is so so hot. Katherine is so charismatic and charming in everything she appears in - watch her adopt a leopard and fall in love with her. Also she has the biggest dick energy ever (she and her pal Lauren Bacall share that accolade). Also had an incredibly long and varied career from screw ball comedies to serious dramas - she’s a queen of the screen and I adore her.

(I hope someone else submits real propaganda but just in case they don't:) Cries. Screams. Wails. The woman who singlehandedly made me realize I was bi. A real "do i want to look like her. be her. or be with her.' crisis, where the answer was all three. Holy shit please all three.

[tobyisave]

Trust & Insecurity in Kiibo & Miu's relationship

(In response to @strawberrysweater ! Thanks for opening this can of worms and sorry for this huge post lmaooo)

To preface this: I do love them together!! I just enjoy looking for the places they might clash at times if they were actually in a relationship... So this is about the things that keep them from fully understanding/trusting each other. And ofc this is just my interpretation!!

My short answer:

(1) Miu only thinks she is valuable as an inventor and sexual object, (2) Most people only care about Kiibo as a scientific novelty, and (3) they both have JUST enough evidence to convince themselves that this is also how they view each other. Even if deep down they're only playing these roles in an attempt to get closer to another human being.

On top of that, even though they're especially vulnerable with each other, I think there's still a lot of misunderstanding between them that would be difficult for them to reconcile. First because they have some genuine points of conflict, and second because they each have problems communicating and reading people (i.e. reality distorting levels of abandonment issues & obligatory robot autism coding, respectively)

Elaboration under the cut:

PART A - Insecurities

You can see (1) and (2) a bit in their other relationships:

Miu is of course hypersexual at all times, and she gives inventions to Shuichi (FTE) and her fantasy lover (love suite) because, as she confesses herself, inventing stuff is the only way she knows how to show affection for other people besides offering them her body.

Her inventions and hypersexuality are also the only explicit points of connection between her and Kokichi, arguably the only other character she is remotely close to besides Kiibo and Shuichi.

So given that most of her onscreen relationship with Kiibo is sexual or scientific (or both) in nature, it’s easy for her to go on believing these are the only things she has to offer. It’s a bit self-fulfilling of course because she’s arguable the one controlling the direction of their relationship in the first place, and at this point I’m not sure she believes there’s anything else to her.

[Shout out to @cloudysonder for helping develop this take :P]

I get the impression Kiibo has met a lot of people over his life who only want to talk about how cool it is that he’s a robot, even though that’s not a part of his identity he initially likes to bring up.

In his FTE with Shuichi, he goes straight into 'demonstrating my functions' mode as if it's the only way he knows how to talk to people

We see him treated in this fetishized way in-game too: with Kokichi chasing him to be “friends with a robot”; with Kaede’s FTE asking him invasive questions and touching his buttons without asking; and in postgame with Kazuichi basically assaulting him and trying to take him apart out of scientific curiosity --- all of these within just his first or second interactions with these people!

So it's a BIG thing for him to willingly let Miu sit there and take him apart, when he already spends so much time fending off virtual strangers who don't respect his bodily autonomy. And he's not used to people taking a genuine interest in him as a person so he’s hesitant to let himself believe Miu is any different, especially when her interest is so explicitly centered around his biology.

Plus as long as Kiibo is physically dependent on Miu, there's going to be a lot of room for insecurity to fester on BOTH sides:

"Does Kiibo really need me or does he just need my technical skills? Does he want to do these favors for me or does he feel like he has to?"

"Does Miu really care who I am or does she just want to gawk at my body like everyone else does? Does she care who I am or am I just the first boy(?) to give her the time of day? Does she want to help me or does she just know she’s the only one who can?"

This is the biggest hurdle IMO because it's a necessarily unbalanced relationship, and it will have to continue for the foreseeable future, no matter how they feel about each other.

PART B - Respect/communication

Another thing is that I don't think they fully respect each other — kind of for the same reason the rest of the group doesn’t respect them either

Miu might not consider Kiibo a person. We know Kiibo was worried about this; when asking Shuichi to use the electrohammer on him he explains, "The outcome will settle once and for all how Miu perceived me." This, and the fact she says robots aren’t people in trial, make me pretty confident that she has never looked him in the eye and said "I consider you a person."

I think she has a complex relationship with Kiibo’s personhood. On one hand if he’s a thing then it’s much easier for her to control him (esp given what we see of their relationship) and this soothes her anxious heart by ensuring that he can’t abandon her.

At the same time, if this is the case, then his coerced/artificial love isn’t worth as much as it would be if it came from an autonomous human person — to her insecure mind, it becomes Miu alone in her room playing boyfriend girlfriend with a doll, if that makes sense. 

To clarify, I’m not saying she BELIEVES he’s just an object, but it’s an idea that both comforts and torments her.

It's worth noting, too, that Miu doesn't always respect people's consent. This is especially risky when you factor in their mechanic-robot relationship (which already comes with a difficult power dynamic) and Kiibo’s naive/somewhat people-pleasing personality.

On Kiibo’s end: I think it’s safe to say he finds her rude/inappropriate at first (though I think it's really sweet that he uses the much more euphemistic description 'brash and spirited' after getting to know her). They also have some pretty stark moral differences --- Kiibo is distraught to learn that Miu wasn't above murdering their classmates, for example.

More importantly, I headcanon he has a lot of difficulty understanding her at all  – on an emotional level, yes, and and on a literal level he just straight up doesn’t understand many of the sentences she says either

K: “Most of that was unintelligible nonsense, but…” after Miu explains her “secret woman weapon." IMO his decision to phrase this as an insult helps mask the fact he's not familiar with all the lewd references she just made

He also has problems understanding emotions from the start, and Miu is DIFFICULT to track because she cycles through emotions so rapidly.

+ he might find it hard to extrapolate that many of the things she does are part of a facade. The crass egotistical miu who says he’s not a person is equally as real to him as the deeply insecure miu wants to believe he is a person (if not more real…)

PART C

Also these bullets from my personal doc I don't have the willpower to expand on atm:

They are both so prone to misinterpreting people unkindly

They’re also both so misled about how committed a relationship is supposed to be. Like I think Kiibo would consider a confession from literally anyone to be tantamount to a proposal (based on his love suite scene). And Miu wouldn’t be quite so fast but i do think it’d still be a huge deal for her because she falls very hard very easily (based on her FTE). Which is all very cute but being plunged into a big commitment like that can be crazy stressful, esp for two teens who have never dated before (imo) and have no frame of reference. [I was actually just going to post about this part lol]

PART D

All that said... I love them together and I DO think they could make it work without too much heartbreak. A lot of the things I describe as problems here could easily be taken as strengths.

e.g. Their misunderstanding of how relationships work ironically makes them more compatible, since they're both ready to go whole hog (if Kiibo determines that he actually likes her that is). Miu's rapidly fluctuating emotions are confusing, but on some level I think he'd admire how deeply and obviously she is able to feel things. And of course Miu as an inventor has a deep (almost objectum like??) respect for machines that helps Kiibo accept that he can be a robot and a person at the same time, and is probably the only one in the class who understands just how impressive he really is.

Thanks thanks THANKS for reading if you seriously read all that!! Mwah!!!!

I would love to hear anyone's takes on my takes too :P I haven't been rotating them in my head for too long yet so I'm still developing my interpretations...

[welcometothejianghu]

Welcome to another round of W2 Tells You What You Should See, where W2 (me) tries to sell you (you) on something you should be watching. Today's choice: ก่อนดอกไม้…บาน / 花开有时颓靡无声 / Meet You at the Blossom

Meet You at the Blossom is a 2024 joint Thai/Chinese adaptation of a Chinese danmei novel. Marketing itself as an "uncensored BL," it tells the love story of the world's dumbest boy and the absolute psychopath he has the (mis)fortune to fall for.

Note that "uncensored" doesn't mean you're going to see somebody's little blossom or anything like that. It just means that the love story is textual and canonical. These boys declare their love for one another. They hold hands. They smooch. They have soft, unfocused scenes where one of them climbs on top of the other and then everything fades to black. They are two boys and they are in love ... and sure, one of them thinks the other is a girl for longer than is probably reasonable, but what relationship doesn't have its share of misunderstandings?

This twelve-episode drama is a bodice-ripping melodrama with a bottom-barrel Harlequin novel plot. It is the most soap opera I've seen something that isn't a soap opera be. If you are the kind of person who enjoys this sort of thing, you are absolutely going to enjoy this sort of thing. If you're not ... well, it might still hook you anyway. Here's five reasons I think you should watch it.

1. Perfect toxic yaoi sludge

Do you only consume media about healthy relationships between consenting equals, where people have conversations and are always honest about their feelings? Great. Turn this off immediately.

Meet You at the Blossom is the show for people who yearn for the days of Kizuna. People who still think longingly about Zetsuai 1989. People who will not be convinced that Tokyo Babylon is anything but peak romance. People who have seen Gravitation more than once and of their own volition. People who have looked the trashiest yaoi out there dead in the eye and shouted BRING ME MORE.

I keep using the word "yaoi" because that's what it is. It's a gay relationship begun under false premises, consummated under sketchy circumstances, longed for despite serious reasons to stay broken up, and then all somehow worked out in the end. I have described the main pairing as, what if Wen Kexing fell in love with a labradoodle? Carried out to its logical conclusion, this relationship would be good for neither Wen Kexing nor the labradoodle. But for the purposes of a catastrophically badly paced twelve-episode series, it's all the dramatic fuel you need.

Nothing about their relationship is ever reliably safe, sane, or consensual -- and that's the fun of it! Look, the first time they fuck (in episode two!) is under the influence of sex pollen, and they come out the other side of it awkward but definitely not traumatized. I've seen people say they wish the show had treated the noncon bits with more gravity, which ... look, there's no noncon here. Actual noncon-wanters would be sorely disappointed by what this show offers. There's some impaired judgment and overblown irrational jealousy and aggressively pinning one's very drunk partner to the bed, but it's that kind of perfectly okay force fantasy that works in fiction, because in fiction everyone's okay with it. You know they're okay with it. The writer wrote it so they're okay with it. Everybody is getting exactly what they want.

This is a drama about people having Big Feelings that would be terrifying in real life, but are fun as hell onscreen. So you are promising me right now that if you watch this, you will not overthink it, because overthinking this show is like being that raccoon that failed at washing a piece of cotton candy. Don't try to clean up this delicate sugary mess. Eat it dirty.

2. Some fascinating faces

This is going to sound like such a backhanded compliment, but I swear it's not: There are some really interesting-looking people in this show! I can't swear this is because of the Thai production elements, but I have to assume that the different cultural beauty standards at work at least somewhat influenced the casting choices.

A thing about c-dramas is, the majority of the under-40 male actors look like their base model came off of one of the dozen or so approved production lines at the Pretty Boy Factory. While I enjoy these production lines, combine it with my natural touch of faceblindness, and I've had some hilarious moments where I have been certain two characters were played the same person, when they were in fact very much not.

This show is full of a bunch of actors you'd be hard-pressed to mistake for anyone else. There's like one guy who's conventionally c-drama handsome, while everyone else brings a lot more variety to the table than you tend to find in productions like this.

Li Le, when he's all done up as Zongzheng Huaien, is strikingly beautiful in a way that reminds me of old film starlets who maybe should've stopped about one nose job ago. I've seen pictures of him when he's dressed like a regular modern boy, and he's lovely, sure. But with the hair and the outfits and the constant haughty ice-cold stares he's leveling at people, the final look is stunning. And then he smiles and it's just the cutest goofy grin! Anyway, there's a whole big deal about Huaien's parentage, when the obvious answer is that the fey folk dropped him off and said, good luck with this one.

Meanwhile, Wang Yunkai, who plays Jin Xiaobao, has perfectly plump, kissable lips and a wide, soft nose that together with his giant eyes give him the perfect air of an innocent bisexual dumbass currently in the process of figuring out the whole "bisexual" part. He's so cute and cuddleable that you feel extra-bad when you see him in pain, which works for the show, because he spends a lot of the back half of the series being in both emotional and physical pain, as per conventions of the genre.

As for the rest of the cast, there's...

store-brand Huang Youming!

pouty Thai princess!

slimy kite dude and his terrible 'stache!

these precious dipshits!

...and a couple guys I just straight-up can't find pictures of, even though they're important named characters, because this may be the first thing they've been in? Look, this is not a show of well-known names, nor is it something that's probably to launch any careers to prominence. I'm not even going to say this is a show where everybody looks like everyday average people, because no! They obviously do not! They are very attractive people! They are just attractive according to a set of criteria you do not often see on Chinese television, and I think that's great.

3. You don't have to say NO HOMO every time you touch another dude

Really, truly, the greatest thing about an overtly BL property is how touchy men can be -- and not even the romantic pairings! Loyal servants get to hug their masters! Coworkers get to fall asleep in a two-man puppy pile! Childhood besties get to wrap comforting arms around one another! Brothers in arms get to catch their fallen comrades! Friends get to tearfully bid farewell to one another before leaving on journeys! Cousins get to embrace to the point one of the cousins really wishes they would stop!

Mostly it's that once you've removed the fear that gay shit might get your show censored, you can have your male characters engage in a perfectly regular amount of human physical contact.

Like, one of my favorite funny things about c-dramas is the amount of wrist-gripping that happens, as though dragging someone else along by their wrist is a real-life thing that happens often, or even at all. It's the perfect example of how paranoia about depicting physical intimacy leads to substitutes that are just bizarre. We can't possibly have these two people hold hands! So let's make up another gesture and pretend it's a thing people do voluntarily and (more importantly) heterosexually!

But when you've already outright put the YEP, IT'S GAY sign on your production, that paranoia vanishes. What are the censors going to do, get mad at the part where two friends are sleeping tangled up with one another? Three minutes ago there was a scene where one guy kissed another on the mouth! Let those boys snooze!

Alas that the scenes that are supposed to be sexy come across as mostly awkward -- largely because those two leads don't really seem all that keen on sticking their tongues down each other's throats, which, you know, I get; it'd be weird if I had to kiss my coworkers. But what they are good at is snuggling. I almost wish -- and keep in mind this is me saying this -- they'd cut the scenes that were trying to be horny and leaned more into the tender, playful moments they get together. Those are the ones that made me squeal happily and kick my little feet.

I have to mention this one: There is a little cheek kiss that I absolutely love. (I can't find a screencap of it, and my own attempts at screenshotting it were hilariously unproductive, but it gets played as part of gay flashbacks pretty much once an episode, so you can't miss it.) Huaien is being menacing in an attempt to be offputting, and Xiaobao is stubbornly refusing to be anything but charmed by it, and as soon as Huaien turns his head, Xiaobao takes advantage of the moment and plants a quick little mwah! on Huaien's cheek.

And it's SO GOOD. I said out loud, in that moment, do you know how many shows would be improved if one guy could just give another guy a little kissie on his cheek? It should be like how getting a PG-13 rating allows your movie one "fuck," but instead every c-drama gets one moment where a guy gives another guy a little peck. Not even on the lips! Like how Aragorn gets to give Boromir a farewell forehead kiss. Sometimes a scene just calls for a little kissie! Sometimes everything would be better if a guy could just kiss the homies!

You're thinking now of all the places you'd use your single little kissie in various dramas, aren't you? Yeah, so am I.

4. side pairs side pairs side pairs~

Yeah, main couple, true love, happily ever after, whatever. SIDE PAIRS SIDE PAIRS SIDE PAIRS [banging rhythmically on table]

You know the genre, so you know there's always going to be That One Guy that threatens to steal the pure-hearted one away from the psycho by being handsome, rich, well-intentioned, and generally emotionally stable. You also know it's not going to work, because no matter how much healthier that relationship would be, it's not the tasty toxic flavor we're going for here. Anyway, sorry, Su Yin, but you never left the childhoodbestfriendzone.

That bratty prince wants to fuck his cousin so bad. His cousin is not going to fuck him, not because of cousin status, but because the bratty prince needs to be tossed out the nearest window and not let back in until he can legally drink.

I was ready to ship Jin Xiaobao's two little guard buddies -- but no! The littler of the two guard buddies has his own love interest who shows up later in the show, and I'm so upset that there's not more of these two, because that's an unexpectedly hot setup. I'll say no more; you should enjoy this one as it happens.

Now, do not presume that this is a Kinnporsche deal, where fiction has created a magical world in which every man is at least a Kinsey 2. There are still straight men in this show (and a few men who clearly think they're straight but have not yet gotten the memo) who experience varying degrees of befuddlement about the homo drama happening around them. Most characters are at least casually anti-gay, but in sort of the same way you might expect a big cattle-ranching family to react if their son started dating a vegan -- it's not unthinkable or illegal, but, like, why?

There needs to be a word for a gentler state than homophobia. Something like homobefuddlement, a social condition where falling in love with another guy is about on the level of getting a face tattoo or naming your child Optimus Prime. There's nothing stopping you, but you know somebody's roasting your ass on Ancient Chinese Fantasy Reddit.

5. A budget of three dollars and a ham sandwich

I am firmly on record as being charmed by productions that make do with skimpy resources, and Meet You at the Blossom's resources are skimpy as heck. I highly suspect this is one of those situations where if they'd known it was going get the attention that it has, they might've put more money into it from the start -- but they didn't, so they didn't.

I keep coming back to "soap opera" as a description, because that's about the production level you should be picturing here. If you played this on a TV with motion smoothing enabled, the effect would be complete. Everything is done to the cheapest possible degree. Characters legitimately toss smoke bombs and disappear like they're anime ninjas, probably because renting a fog machine has got to be way less expensive than the rigs for wirework. That's the type of shoestring budget we're talking here.

The greenscreen is Not Good, my friends. I mean, not that you expected it to be, but however far you've lowered your expectations already, lower them more.

They got to borrow a brothel set for like half an hour. It's the most people you see in a single room at the same time, and it represents drunkenness by spraying raspberry soda over all the lights.

If I had a nickel for every time Huaien is in some terrible predicament that seems impossible for him to get out of, and then he shows up somewhere else like two scenes later, and we never find out exactly how he got out of that terrible predicament, I would have multiple nickels in my pocket, is all I'm saying.

You know, if my wigs/beards and wig/beard glue were that bad, I would simply refrain from frequent, intense close-ups of the parts where people's fake hair joins to their faces. And if my actors all had that much foundation caked on them, I would probably refrain from close-ups, period. But that's just me.

Actually, no, there's something else about the wigs: They're styled so badly that it actually wraps around (ha ha) to being charming. I'm used to wig situations where the topknots are combed tight and oiled into place within an inch of their lives. But here, everybody who has an updo has kind of a messy one? Especially little Jinbao, where you can see the ends of his ponytail stick out the back in a scruffy fashion, giving him the vibe of a little ragamuffin who's never learned how to do up his hair quite right.

There's a plot, sort of. It's basically the thinnest possible series of excuses for the action in the show to happen, told in occasional five-minute bursts of exposition given by characters you forgot about between now and the last time they appeared. Don't worry if you can't keep track of which prince is which, or who is whose dad. Man, there's even a "curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!" near the end that's played up as some big shock, and I was like, have we met this dude before? I think pretty much every time the grownups started talking, we stopped paying attention. Look, I know this is based on a novel I haven't read, and I'm sure the plot comes off better when it's all packed together in a couple of pages of dialogue you can skip without consequence on your way to the boy-kissing, but in the show it just comes off as perfunctory and clunky. From what I've seen, people who've read the book tend to be way more into the intricacies of the narrative, but I haven't, so I'm not.

(Wait, in the novel, Jin Xiaobao is supposed to be fat? Well, now I feel I've been robbed! ...Eh, it's fine, I'm not sad to skip a sequence where the side benefit of trauma is that you get skinny.)

All this, to me, is charming. If you demand higher production values from your entertainment, this will not be what you want. If cozying up with some low-budget tomfooloery with a big heart feels like comfort food to you, you are among friends here.

And speaking of friends, let me strongly recommend that you watch this with some, if you can, because there are parts that are just begging to get riffed on. I would not have had a tenth as much fun watching it alone as I did goofing my way through it with my wife. It is a show that is only improved by the jokes you make about it along the way. It has no dignity, nor are you obligated to treat it as though it does. Cuddle up with your buddies, grab your favorite snacks, and sharpen your shadiest claws.

Want to meet this show somewhere?

It's conveniently up in a lot of places! Pick your poison:

GagaOOLala

WeTV

iQIYI

Viki

YouTube

Look, I'm going to say it one more time for the people in the back row: This is not a serious, thoughtful portrayal of healthy relationship dynamics. If you expect it to be, you will be sorely disappointed. It is a tale of a bunch of dudes (and, like, two women) whose emotional volume knobs are stuck at eleven and emotional intelligence doesn't go above a two. Go into it knowing what you're getting into, and you might just have yourself a pretty good time.

Get that little kissie!

[anpanham]

Hazbin Hotel character thoughts / impressions (Episodes 1 & 2)

1/12/24

UM. what a weird first actual post for my blog for this year... this is long, and i miss making ACTUAL blog posts instead of small threads... And i've explained on my twitter my thoughts on Hazbin / Helluva from a critical standpoint and artist from art separation, yadda yadda yadda---

ANYWAY... Episodes 1 and 2 of Hazbin are (Officially) out now, and i have some thoughts on the characters i wrote down after watching (In bullet points, because most of these are fresh-from-the-brain thoughts i wrote on my tablet from my bed)

(Spoiler alert, Sir Pentious isn't ruined and I AM SO GLAD. my snake babygirl... ilu)

Read on, if you wanna, spoiler warning btw!!!!!

CHARLIE NOTES

-Charlie is good., Charlie is cute, but i fear for her safety, not everyone can new redeemed. she's like steven universe at points i stg 😭 (not a jab but i think it's funny)

-i like how they gave Charlie bags under her eyes a lot, she is a tired princess just like all of us

-She gives off elementary school teacher vibes but in a wholesome way

-Charlie's hair is SO CUTE MESSY..

-PERFECT voice /gen

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- VAGGIE NOTES

-GIRLBOSS (still, but more)

-Vaggie is still cool, she just loves her gf and is sick of everyone's bs but is still supportive...

-If she doesn't get into a bloody death match with Alastor (and win) i will be disappointed /hj

She doesn't seem to have as much of a temper as she did in the pilot, but seems more dead inside

-Good voice!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ANGEL DUST NOTES

-Angel... hm. Angel. he's Angel, for sure. Hi, Angel!

Insecure about a lot, but also YOU CAN BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT!!!!! if vox doesn't kill val angel should. please and thank u.

Also his voice is alright, just need to get used to it a little more

Also i hope he's not too bratty jealous of sirpent / whoever else charlie praises because again, it's ON HIM TO COOPERATE WITH HER CAUSE MORE??? ignoring his other stress sources (Val)

-Waiting for him and Husk to kiss. I know it's coming

-Just fucking block Val's number and rip up the contract (YES i know it goes deeper than that...)

-NUGGS. I SCREECHED IRL /POS

THEY GAVE HIM A HEART ON HIS BUTT!!!!! S TIER REDESIGN

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ALASTOR NOTES

-At first i was kinda Eh about his voice but it's grown on me, the radio filter is a little more subtle than the pilot but it's still there which i'm glad for

Delightfully passive aggressive

-Weird magic still, there doesn't seem to be any limits to it... we need to know what his weakness is...!!!!! please (maybe that will come later??) ....... i theorize he has underworld contact (Shadow-world, because of the shadow imagery?) , the underworld might be different from Hell maybe? (Where do those fucking tentacles come from, also weird monochrome demons)

-Interesting he was gone for 7 years. 7 is an angelic number. HMMMMMM (sealed away by angels somehow??)

-Punchable (Vaggie please)

-Weirdly enjoyable and not genuinely hateable like some of the other characters, but i also want to see his demise, maybe his sadism is rubbing off on me, but i want to see it badly...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SIR PENTIOUS NOTES

-Sir Pentious... u are so good.. probably has some of the best writing so far, maybe... he's my favorite so. hhHHmm

his voice is different but at the same time it's what you'd expect, i like it a lot... so silly, i pat him and his silly hat

-Pathetic old man. You win my heart (50x as much)

-Only one egg spoke so far, i wonder if they'll all have unique voices this time (the Japanese dub of the pilot did that lol)

-Genuinely a joy every moment he was onscreen (Too fucking cute... GRRRR)

-How did he get into contact with Vox? Why would Vox want anything to do with him if he thinks he's a loser? (I guess easy access into the Hotel) ...Fuck em either way (DON'T BE MEAN TO SNAKE MAN)

-Cool temporary stunning hypnosis, maybe we'll see him coil and bite next, the snake attack traits are fun

-His autism vibes grow stronger and it's canon in my heart

-We LOVE a redemption song. please stay in the hotel with everyone, don't fuck it up!!! you're a good noodle.... 😭 The song was genuinely so cute... it's probably going to be the highlight of EVERYTHING for me, besides Nuggs..

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

HUSK NOTES

-i luv u kitty

-His voice is different but captures "Grumpy old alcoholic" perfectly

-His heart needs to be melted...

-Him holding the script in front of the camera was great

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NIFFTY NOTES

-Niffty is a BIG COWARD. you can still love a "Bad boy" who's a redeemed bad boy!!!! just because he's not morally bad doesn't Not make him a Bad Boy. fuck u (i still like you)

-Her voice is really cute, also her nightgown.. though finding out she doesn't have dark bug limbs but is just wearing gloves and stockings surprised me more than it should've... put them back

-Also autism vibes, love it

-She still frightens me a bit

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

V TRIO NOTES

VOX -----

-Seems to carry the team, voice has grown on me

-I can't stop looking at his weird finger claws, they almost look like

he's just wearing things over his fingers, i dig it

-Interesting hypnosis power, i assume Alastor is immune

-Why can't Alastor and Vox just compromise and create a podcast?

-Hates Val (sorry shippers) ,,... kind of expected it since in old official sources it's been shown that he's been abused by Val too

-This isn't a note but everytime Alastor said "THE TV IS BUFFERING~" in their duet, the player kept fucking up 😭

-Decent song, I like seeing him and Al argue

-I surprisingly don't hate him! i'm glad. i wanted to like him (though, it's only been 2 episodes so far...)

------

VALENTINO ---------

-More manchild vibes than i expected tbh

-Voice is alright but his accent is weirdly inconsistent for some reason???? interesting direction

-His manipulation is shown well in the voicemail scene with Angel, he's literally got the "Nice Guy" energy

-Surprisingly didn't order Vox around as much as i thought he would

-Why does he have girl Fizzy bots...

-Die?

------

VELVETTE

-Fashion design isn't something i expected, but then again i didn't know that much about her prior other than she's obsessed with social media

-British is also not what i expected but cool

-Uh. she didn't really stick out to me that much...sorry..... she's fine tho

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ADAM & LUTE NOTES

-Personally do not like how these angels look so menacing, i get that they're technically bad, but... make them look more angelic besides halos and wings??? they could easily be mistaken for hell residents. Also again, i feel like angels should swear less and drop swears in critical / good timed moments, it would be funnier... subtlety is not a thing i guess

-Adam's guitar solo was good tho, not really feeling his character tho, he's just an asshole but that's the point

-Adam looks like the fucking dress meme. I can't unsee it

-Lute is pretty...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

KATIE KILLJOY & TOM TRENCH NOTES

-Brandon Rodgers

-They sure were there for a second!

-i luv tom

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

All in all...

Episode 1: 6-7/10

Episode 2: 8.5/10