#or at least well executed

[pileontheyears]

“So Ryan and Laura...” (Lovers Card Analysis)

I know people talk about Ryan and Laura not having any romantic chemistry and it’s bizarre to say that there was any romance between them. And while I agree about they're not really being chemistry, I do think the writers were trying to make them love interests (and did a terrible job). So I decided to do an analysis of their relationship (this is what I'm using my English degree for) and I thought I’d share my thoughts because boy I’ve got some stuff to say.

And of course feel free to take this all with a grain of salt, these are just my interpretations and I'm also by no means an expert in tarot (I'm really not all that familiar and any familiarity comes from a google search). Just wanted to make those quick notes so that if you don't agree I totally get it! I do try to address the most common points for why people don't see Ryan and Laura in a romantic light and while I agree I try to show what I think the writers might have been Attempting to do.

The more obvious points are of course from the script itself. How there’s “sexy sparks” between the two, how Laura begrudgingly says trauma can bring people together (as if to say it didn’t bring her and Max together), how Laura brings up Ryan’s relationship to Kaitlyn and his reply of “maybe neither” to whether he likes Kaitlyn or Dylan perhaps insinuating his choice is going to be Laura.

And it's... bad writing. For instance, Laura pins Ryan as a “brooding loner” when she’s known him for an hour and in that time he’s been talkative/around people/acting as leader. How would she know he's a brooding loner? Not to mention her saying Kaitlyn seems to look up to him when it’s the opposite of what she’s seen? (Ryan potentially asking Kaitlyn what he should do, her scolding him for pointing the gun at Laura). But all of that is not the point of this post. I’m bringing these moments up to say this relationship is a lot of tell with little show, (and what we're told we've already been shown the opposite).

If you didn’t pick up there was “chemistry” then Dylan and Kaitlyn will tell you that. If you think Ryan is interested in Dylan because you chose to grow that relationship, Ryan is going to say no. (Of course you could interpret the "after tonight I don't know" line that Ryan is understandably not sure of anything given the circumstances, I myself interpret it that way however the "maybe neither" definitely is this additional "Ryan chooses neither Kaitlyn nor Dylan" and perhaps there is an unasked question of will he then choose Laura?) That being said, I don't think if any of the “these guys are into each other” lines were in the script people would have even thought they were flirting/interested in each other (it would still be a ship some people like based on how they work together to survive akin to Sam and Mike but again at least that script didn't constantly point out romantic/sexual tension in between horror scenarios).

So when people say there’s no chemistry and the relationship is more “we have to work together but I’m gonna bitch at you the whole time" I agree, but the game kind of throws Laura at Ryan (her literally falling on top of him) after revealing the Lovers card depicting Laura biting Ryan’s arm. We know it, we hate it, but this is where my analysis comes in.

Aside from the obvious fact that Ryan and Laura are labeled as the lovers, the card itself has a few layers to it that I’ll go through.

The first being choices, specifically choices in relationships/partners. Now when I first read that I thought “Great, that doesn’t mean Ryan is her choice perhaps he just is one choice.” But the context makes it so he’s kind of her only choice if Ryan is going to survive. The context being Ryan can let Laura bite him in order to save him from blood loss, or he can refuse which leads her to reuniting with Max. There is no way for her to reunite with Max without Ryan dying. What that insinuates with the context of choice of suitor is... yikes. Basically Laura “choosing” Max comes from Ryan dying, and the implication that in order for Ryan to survive that he and Laura are somehow bonded romantically from that point on. Hate both of those, actually.

Now we move onto the next meaning of this card, temptation. This is where we go full analysis mode. The original Lovers card depicts Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. After all what better example of temptation than Adam and Eve biting into the forbidden fruit. And what does Laura do? She bites Ryan. He is her forbidden fruit. And where does this scene take place? The Hackett greenhouse.

A garden.

It’s not exactly subtle. There’s also the parallel of Ryan being stabbed in the ribs, Eve being made from the rib of Adam. 

So alright, they’re drawing parallels between Adam and Eve and Ryan and Laura (bringing about the downfall of humanity/the Hacketts). But does this mean that Laura is “giving into temptation” by saving Ryan’s life? I mean that sounds stupid. And maybe her "temptation" is more-so the werewolf curse and giving into that but then why point out "sexy sparks?" Why have Laura ask if Ryan is flirting with her? Why label them lovers? It may just be that stupid because I also found this in Chris’s office when playing as Dylan. This book is right by Ryan, right where Dylan asks if he has a girlfriend or boyfriend. 

Maybe it's a reference to the love triangle between Ryan, Dylan, and Kaitlyn. But the title? ...The King of My Gardens?

Not looking like a coincidence anymore. They were planting this seed early on. And the fact that the only foreshadowing of Ryan and Laura is this book cover that no one is going to see (unless they scower through each corner of the game like I do) that’s not even writing.

I love nothing more than when writers put in extra effort with little things like this that a casual viewer won’t see but it just goes to show that even if you do that it can’t make up for bad writing and a lack of chemistry. I’m sure some people like the pairing but to me it’s introduced way too late after the player has invested time in other relationships.

Perhaps Dylan and Kaitlyn aren't reliable when they talk about Laura and Ryan, and if that was the Only instance the game tries to put Ryan and Laura together I would agree but twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern and man is there a pattern here.

As for Laura yes she is going through all of this for Max but it depends on the players choices how that relationship is going. After all, she could have left him at the very beginning of the game. While Laura's choice to save Max is always the same in order for the story to stay on track, her motive could be from love or perhaps a sense of loyalty/duty (Ryan's and Laura's loyalty being what brings these two together, be it romantically or out of admiration but I can see that's probably why the writers were trying to put them together because they respect how far they're willing to go for the people in their lives).

So if the player's choices hurt Laura and Max's relationship and she starts bonding with Ryan, the camera lingering on her smiling after Ryan says "maybe neither" could be read as her being interested. After all she asks (curiously? hopefully?) how close he is with Kaitlyn, insinuating she's trying to figure out if he's available. Maybe that's not the case or maybe it's due to her werewolf infection but the game doesn't show her fighting back against it so it seems to be presented as genuine. Regardless of the viewer's interpretation the relationship as a whole could have been presented better (let their be an option if the player really doesn't want Ryan with either Dylan or Kaitlyn to turn them both down early on and if Laura's relationship with Max has also plummeted then sure add another relationship path, but let the player choose which relationships will become romantic).

And I know these games aren’t dating sims, the point of these horror survival games is, well, survival. But literally every other Supermassive Game puts just as much emphasis on character relationships (and a lot of emphasis on romantic relationships) as they do survival (Chris and Ashley, Alex and Julia, etc.) And for a game to be all about how your choices matter and then have them not really matter when it comes to the relationships they bring attention to? When they do in every other game? 

It feels like Supermassive just told me “It’s Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve.”

[haxxydraws]

𝖕𝖗𝖔𝖙𝖊𝖈𝖙 𝖙𝖗𝖆𝖓𝖘 𝖞𝖔𝖚𝖙𝖍

[zorosdimples]

mdni. cw: hybrids. takes place a little before this drabble.

it’s not his fault you smell so good—that’s what your tiger hybrid tells himself, anyway.

yuuji does what he can while you’re at work: he cleans the apartment, exercises, and bathes (though he struggles to reach the base of his tail). he even makes food for you—what little he can, anyway, given the sad state of your kitchen. the rest of the day is his own, and is usually spent daydreaming about you.

that’s why he’s frantically rutting against the pillow on your bed. he knows it’s wrong, knows you would flip out if you caught him humping your pillow as if his life depended on it. but his cock aches for you; every time you cross his mind, every time he thinks about your soft skin and warm smile and shimmering eyes, he leaks a mess in his shorts.

usually, yuuji buries a nose in your sheets to soak in your scent while he jerks himself off. but your pillowcase is smooth and cool to the touch, the insert deliciously plush. it makes him think of you, how he wants to mount you—to put his full weight on your back and feel the friction of your dewy flesh against his. to fill you up yet leave you craving more.

but he can’t have you. so he fucks your pillow the way he yearns to fuck you. he can smell you everywhere; your scent embraces him, makes him feel like you’re there as he shuts his honey deep eyes and pants raggedly. and when he climaxes, he does it with the sweetest cry, one that would surely have you stroking his rosy ears.

yuuji whines as he floats back to reality, rolling onto his back. he’s still hard and thobbing, though he doesn’t want to deal with it, and your pillow is covered in his creamy spend. he makes a mental note to wash your bedding before you come home (he’ll frame it as a surprise). but for now, he curls up and drifts off to thoughts of you.

[stars-obsession-pit]

Hello! Can do a chapter fic off this fic prompt Danny phantom x dc: https://www.tumblr.com/corkinavoid/767516270934556672/dpxdc-legal-power?source=share

This isn’t a one-to-one recreation of that dialogue but it’s based on that as a framework/premise

Batman dropped down into the room behind a pair of figures—a teenage boy and a slumped adult—letting his landing create an audible thump to alert them of his presence.

If the teen noticed, he didn’t react. Even as Bruce approached, he continued to stare impassively at the wheezing figure on the ground, an old wooden bat with flaking green paint on its side loosely held in his right hand. Bruce had already suspected who the figure would be since he arrived, but seeing the Joker so broken was still bizarre. No laughing, no schemes. He didn’t even seem to be attempting to escape his binds, just… lying there, almost as if pinned in place.

Bruce paused a step behind the teen. “I don’t know what the Joker did to you, but this isn’t the right way to go about this.”

The teen scoffed, and Bruce felt a painful lurch in his chest as he was reminded oh so strongly of his son Jason. “And what, let him go kill more people?”

“I know he deserves to face justice, but not like this. Everyone deserves a right to fair trial. No one person should be judge, jury, and executioner.”

The teen turned to look at him with glowing green eyes, and Batman felt himself freeze. He had faced gods before, yet even using that as a comparison felt like an understatement. The boy’s eyes belonged to someone far older than his teenage form implied, and they radiated power. Inevitability.

When the teen—no, the entity—spoke again, his words carried an unearthly echo. “Perhaps, but I’m not acting for just myself.” He paused, glanced down at the Joker, then asked almost conversationally, “Do you know how many people he’s killed?”

Another pause, but before Bruce could even try to answer, the entity continued, “Eight hundred and fifty-six. He’s ended the lives of eight hundred and fifty-six human souls. I can tell you about every single one, if you want. About who they were, what their dreams were before he killed them. About the pain they felt at his hands.”

He punctuated the word ‘pain’ by raising up the wooden bat in his hands and ramming its end down onto the Joker’s arm. He let out a wheeze, muffled by the gag in his mouth.

“I have a duty to my people. I am the King of the In-Between and of all the souls that pass through it—even ones whose stays were as brief as his. I am the rightful arbiter of his fate. And with that power, I sentence him to death.”

He raised the bat again, adjusting his grip so he’d hit with the side rather than the end this time, then paused and let out a chuckle. “Of course, just because it’s based on some justice doesn’t mean I can’t have a bit of fun with it too.” He swung the bat down, slamming it into the Joker’s side, then hooked it under the clown’s torso and flicked him up through the air to slam into the wall. “We all really hate this guy.”

With the entity’s attention fully turned away from him as he sauntered towards the Joker’s slumped figure, Bruce could finally unfreeze himself.

Even if the Ghost King did have the right to pass judgement on Joker, Bruce still couldn’t let torture go on like this. He wouldn’t win a direct fight, but he could hopefully at least grab the Joker and bring him over to the police. Carefully, he reached for some of the smoke bombs and batarangs on his belt and readied his grapple. He’d have to do this very, very fast.

But before he could move, another figure entered the scene. Red Hood, emerging from the shadows on the far side of the room, an unexpected bit of a pep to his step.

“Nice to see someone else who gets that that bastard needs to die. But if I may make a suggestion, how ‘bout you use a crowbar instead of that old bat? It’d be a bit more… fitting.”

[beaft]

i follow a facebook page called "terrible art found in charity shops" and so many of the paintings that get posted on there are just... abstract art. not terrible, just unusual or stylised in a clearly intentional way. and the people who post them always add the most obnoxious captions like "well, i don't know who this 'picasso' is, but it's time he learned that women's eyes don't live in the sides of their heads! 😜" idk like i just think the world would be a better place if we got over this idea that art must be hyperrealistic and aesthetically pleasing in order to be good lol

[notmoreflippingelves]

Actually going insane over the implications of Jason asking Dick to be the Robin to his Batman in Battle for the Cowl.

Like I initially took it at the purely surface-level of Jason wanting a partner in the general sense. Which made sense, it's a huge responsibility and a lonely one so an assistant/sidekick/partner seems a no-brainer if you can get one.

But then I really thought about it, because Jason is not asking Dick to be his partner in the general sense; he's not even asking Dick to be his Nightwing. He's asking Dick to be his Robin.

And they both know exactly what Jason means: "Be the light to my darkness. Be the smile to my scowl. Be the hope to my fear. "

He's saying "Be 'Robin'; be the embodiment of Love and Justice and Goodness. Be the exceptional person that you have always been. Be the slightly-less exceptional person that I was when I wore your colors. Be the person that I was in the process of becoming and might have been (or might still be), if only Joker hadn't clipped my wings."

He's saying "I am prepared to become vengeance, become the Night. And I will go further than Bruce ever dared to, because it is what is needed. I will be the necessary evil. But you don't have to be. If Batman is Gotham's curse, Robin has always been its blessing. I will be the brutal punishment to our world, and I am asking you to be its incandescent gift."

He's saying, "Be for me, what we were for Him. Be my anchor, my comfort, my hope. Remind me what it's all for, why it's all worth it. And remind yourself as well."

He's saying "Be 'Robin' again--for both of our sakes."

[ladyloveandjustice]

I was stubbornly not wanting to cry at dandadan I was like "single mom doing sex work supporting her child backstory! obviously some guys are gonna come attack her and her kid will die or be taken I've seen this I refuse to cry for this basic ass woman suffers story wanting to tug my heartstrings I REFUSE"

but then it was so well directed and Momo's reaction and the hug and "to a kinder world" and I cried anyway. you win this one dandadan.

[adimouze]

cant wait to tune into the next season of f1 with the returning plotline of red bull racing STILL trying to find a ricciardo replacement!!!! Oh GOODIE!!!!

[demigodofhoolemere]

Trying to find nice stuff for Wish but everywhere you go people are being painfully wrong in their interpretations of the movie

[freakurodani]

tell me again how famous those battles were?

redraw of something i did in 2016

[doriandotexe]

Ariadne - My Curse of Strahd PC.

Class: Ranger (Gloom Stalker) Race: Eladrin (Winter) Age: 77 Gender: Female (She/Her or They/Them) Height: 5'6" Alignment: Fey Whimsy (Chaotic Evil)

Recently made her some multi-sided tokens for normal, injured and her 'normal barovian woman' disguise and i love them.

More info about Ari below if you are interested.

Ariadne is a Feywild Eladrin and a member of the Unseelie Court with bold ambitions of perhaps becoming an Archfey herself someday. Tasked with what could be considered an impossible feat - she makes her way to Barovia with the express intent to kill Strahd by any means necessary. Although she usually prefers to work alone, it becomes apparent very quickly that she may need to become a team player until her task is complete. So, with her new found "friends" - Emery, Iris, Illmaryn and Illsteryn, Ismark and Ireena - her adventure begins in the land of Barovia.

[lipstickchainsaw]

Maddie Nolan's place in this story irks me.

In Act 1, we see her speak glowingly about Vi and Caitlyn to Vi, showing her admiration for Caitlyn through how enamored she is with the stories she told about Vi, but at the same time, she calls Vi 'one of the good ones', showing that she's still very much internalised an 'us vs. them' narrative here that dehumanises the citizens of Zaun and fails to understand what's driving them to start with.

Fittingly, she's the first to support Ambessa's push to install Caitlyn as dictator to put that entire mess in order and put a stop to the attacks Piltover suffered.

So far so good, average cop behaviour.

It gets her in Caitlyn's bed as her rebound, which, also fair enough, Maddie's cute, but now she's arguing against Noxian involvement, and in favour of stepping back and scaling back the oppression?

What changed your mind? The length of the oppression? Or maybe the fact that it seems to have worked? Like yeah, they didn't catch Jinx, but also, the attacks seem to have stopped. Crime is down, as it were.

But she also seems to have developed a theory of mind of the people they're oppressing in the meantime, pointing out that, whatever happened at the checkpoint, isn't the Jinx they're hunting, and instead they've focused so much on using 'hunting Jinx' as a justification for political repression that they've turned Jinx into a symbol for the Undercity to rally around, which is pretty canny on her part.

In this episode she is acting as Caitlyn's conscience, much as she gets interrupted and overruled by Ambessa, and I'm not sure where that came from.

[shalpilot]

well one of us is going to have to change

[zero3six]

Remember to take care!

[wolfgang1097]

In case anybody isn't aware, there's a brief backstory about a certain Spy vs. Spy short

Good evening, folks. The Spy vs. Spy short that had to do with ventriloquism from MADtv is basically another fan favorite besides Defection. Not to mention that it's also the only short where anybody has spoken a single word at all.

I will admit, I do find the raspy voices, and the incomprehensible babble, the spies were given (especially White Spy) pretty interesting and, just like the suppressed snickering they had throughout most of the shorts, it suits them very well to some degree.

I've heard rumors that the spies were probably voiced by Bryan Callen right up until he left the show right after season two. Is this true? I dunno, but it may be possible.

Anyhow, in case anybody isn't aware, this whole incident was actually provoked when Black taunted White by shouting profanities at the latter whilst he was minding his own business, as seen at the very beginning of the original paperback strip.

See?

Geesh, as much I like Black Spy and all, he can be such a huge wise-ass (I kinda did want to slug Black in the gut for straight up taunting White like that, I will admit). Well, it all came back to bite him on the ass when White retaliated by inventing a mini speaker and a mini microphone so that..well I'd see the events unfold in the video if I were you (and/or check out the original paperback strip, too; if y'all happen to have that paperback book with this strip), and the rest is history.

Hope y'all enjoyed finding out about this. Peace.

I do not claim ownership of any content. Spy vs. Spy belongs to the defunct MAD magazine and Antonio Prohias.