#sometimes more than that based on asks

[discocandles]

I haven't talked about my babysitter's a vampire in a bit, but it's october, so i have no excuse(or every excuse. whatever). this show impacted me a lot.

In mbav, i feel like vampirism is treated a bit differently than in other supernatural media. and maybe that's because its for a younger audience that a lot of other vampire media, aiming for pre-teens rather than actual teenagers and young adults. From what i remember of buffy, vampires aren't people anymore. The person dies when they get turned and are left as like demons, i think? its been a while since i last saw btvs. When turned into a vampire in mbav, you still retain your personality for the most part. there's just also vampire quirks next to it. and don't ask about the vampire diaries, i've never wached it.

like we only see people get turned in the mbav movie, and while we never see what Sarah was like as a human, we get a few ideas from erica, and it's not like she's unrecognizable after being turned(into a fledgling, but beside the point), just acting kinda weird and distant. Rory also doesnt act super different when turned, but almost made this whole post about him, and i have a theory about why he barely changed that i'll get into later. Erica's change was pretty dramatic but given the fact that the main thing the movie told us about her personality before being turned was her obsession with the dusk franchise it was pretty easy for her to have a dramatic change, and she still has elements of the girl she was before that come through from time to time, especially in season 2.

I think people don't change a lot when turned in mbav because they has a bigger sense of freedom to do whatever they want to due to all the power they now have at their disposal. We see this more in the show, because of the need to defeat Jesse takes precedent in the movie. In a lot of Erica's s1 plotlines, she's doing things because she's "hot now", or didn't have the courage to do, or just because she wants to. And with Rory, part of the reason he didn't change all that much is because prior to being turned, he already did whatever he wanted, and his wants are more aligned with publicly being a nerd rather getting more power. Like in the movie, he talked about his interests with Ethan and Benny, but as a vampire he's broadcasting those interests in the hallways in addition to that.

Sarah is a bit of a different case, especially as a fledgling, because she feels held back by her vampirism rather than her humanity. The thing Sarah wants is one of the few things her vampiric powers can't do: go away. she sees them as a shackle instead of as freeing. and she acts like a normal human should act like to cope, trying out for sports and getting a job or two. Scarfing down human food to stave off her bloodthirst. But in season 2, when she's fully a vampire, we see her sense of doing whatever she wants pop up a few times. it happens a lot in episode 1, when she dunks VP Hicks in the trash can, and especially when she's resistant to the Vampire Counsil. We also see her join activities that she's actually interested in, similar to Rory being even more outward about his interests after being turned. she joins the talent show and the school play, and she starts dating again. ironically, i think that's pretty similar to things she would've done as a human. hell, we even see her being best friends with Erica again, which hadn't happened since before Jesse turned her.

and speaking of getting turned, vampirism started as an allegory for like, losing your virginity before getting married. and it's not really present as a metaphor in the show(again, made for pre-teens), but there are a few moments that it's hinted at. Like Rory calling his vampire bite a "wicked hickey" or Erica leaving a bedroom with Gord looking really disheveled. It's the closest to a legitimate allegory with Sarah and Jesse, because the way he phrased him turning her into a fledgling is very very similar to that of sexual assault. it's very clear that Sarah did not consent to being turned, even if Jesse was her boyfriend at the time. its less an allegory for loss of virginity and more one for the importance of giving consent, and even then, it's not that exact of a metaphor.

away from that, also interesting is how different Erica is from Rory and Sarah. there were hints of her desire to rebel in the beginning("if i had a hot boyfriend, i'd totally ditch class too. what? i would!"), but they feel understated after everything she does after being turned. while in the movie, it's because she was one of Jesse's followers, but her morals also skew towards the gray area in the show, sometimes having Rory as a henchman to have do her bidding/hep her. it could be attributed to her vampirism, except the fact that Sarah and Rory don't often share that muted sense of morality is odd, especially since she was introduced as a straight As good girl that's really into canon's twilight. And in season 2, we see she still has some of her nerdy aspects in there that she's hiding, like when she geeks out to Ethan that the star of dusk is in town, or her chemistry knowledge, or her following instructions for vampire rituals on halloween. also, the way she acted around David in the werewolf episode seemed to call back to her nerdier side. idk it just fascinates me the ways that erica acts, because she will wholeheartedly do things that are at least kinda questionable morally, but hesitates when it feels nerdy or sees the guys are also doing it.

anyway, those were some of my thoughts mbav that i've kinda just had in the back of my mind.

[commsroom]

i don't think early-series hera gets enough credit for how funny she is. "scans do indicate a percentage drop in the tank's capacity that is commensurate with the amount officer eiffel could stuff into a crewmember duffel bag"? she saw him do it. she probably talked to him while he did it. it's the tonal dissonance between highly technical phrasing and a very blunt observation. like when eiffel asks her for her top five 'stick it to the man' songs and she asks him things like 'top five lanthanides?' until he says "you're just yanking my chain, aren't you?" and she responds by quoting anarchy in the uk at him. sure, sometimes there are things she genuinely doesn't get and/or would express differently, but the way she frames it is playing with the false expectations people have of her. she knows exactly what she's doing.

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

Wait, what do the neighbours do to more or less get money? Like what do they do for quests wise?

Howdy's tavern has a board where people can post jobs/quest requests - a lot like in Fairy Tail! a lot of times requests are sent in the mail to any tavern/area that will post them, so you gotta be quick about responding before anyone else does. if the posting was sent in, they have to reply via some form of message to confirm it and essentially say "dont let anyone else take the job, i'm/we're on my/our way"

the quests/jobs have a wide range. sometimes its like "collect this item for me", sometimes its "bodyguard me & my belongings while i travel", and it can be "kill the monster terrorizing my town." it can be anything! it's a mixed bag!

and its a little risky, too. the job postings arent always... In Depth. one time the Neighborhood rushed somewhere because the posting just said HUGE EMERGENCY, LIVES IN DANGER but in reality it was an elderly farmer who had them build a new coop for her chickens before the winter frost. then another time it was all "id like help with a small issue at our town's border" and then the Neighborhood got there and it was a fuckoff huge dragon that they were Not prepared to handle.

the Neighborhood doesnt just take job postings though! their travels often take a while because they'll get into shenanigans/trouble, or in completing one job something else will be asked of them, etc. they also don't always do it for money. if someone's in trouble while they're traveling, theyre gonna help without asking for compensation.

[dykedvonte]

I feel like THOSE parts of the mouthwashing fandom would absolutely explode finding out that stuff like blood Meridian has a goofy fandom too

I think it’s less that the fandom is goofy and more people think people goofin around or with the sensitive subject matter don’t get the themes or plot or just avoid thinking about it.

I know a lot of people do but like it’s a fandom. People are gonna do weird or crazy shit and I just think we should use the block button more than openly inciting harassment towards something you don’t like vs trying to bring awareness to genuine problems. There is overlap but sometimes what people are saying or how they are going about it is a little crazy.

Then again I’m not used to how people talk about things on sites like twitter or in very popular spaces so maybe this is like normal there.

[tothebestofmyabilities]

What's your all-time favorite Bob's Burgers episode? Like this is YOUR episode? (You can list multiple if you want!)

Oooh my all time all time favorite is Carpe Museum! Its the first episode featuring regular sized rudy who's one of my favorite characters now and i love how that friendship with louise started and its such a sweet bob and louise episode as well.

Its also the first time the show explores the dynamic between gene and zeke which of course gave birth to my life long love affair with genezeke, their personalities mesh so well and the silly nicknames/pet names on zekes part??? I live for that.

Its my sisters favorite episode too and bc the belchers are eerily similar to my own family its always been something my family watches and enjoys and loves together so it makes me happy that me and my sister have the same favorite episode and that fact only makes me love the episode even more.

Plus cute boblin and isn't that the first henry haber episode too? Lots of good stuff.

Close seconds include in no particular order of importance:

Gene it on (cheerleader gene lives rent free in my heart i like to think he still does it just off screen)

The runway club (breakfast club episode? The little bits of school staff lore? Especially mr branca? The cotton candy festival which i desperately want an episode about? Iconic)

Poops! I didn't do it again (when i say the belchers are eerily similar to my family this is one episode id point too and i will not elaborate)

Work hard or die trying girl (im a theater kid at heart)

[seventh-district]

not even gonna tag this properly bc i don't wanna get Involved but i do have some Thoughts i need to get out into the void so here we go

(aaa quick edit: CW for mention/discussion of Boothill leaks)

[cdroloisms]

You’ve heard of awesamdream Stockholm syndrome relationship now get ready for dreamity killing stalking

the main thing abt c!dreamity for me is that it's frankly p straightforward compared to awesamdream ... but you know sometimes i do think abt how the mechanics of the prison torture both means we have no idea what actually happened in specifics in that box, and that minecraft allows for really practically anything with the existence of instantaneous healing items, and how c!quackity was literally dripping with blood down that prime path, and. you know. sometimes i want to get a little silly with it (read: remind myself that the only Real thing limiting the prison torture is ur own imagination)

[yellowocaballero]

hi!! is your recent Naruto fic something that people would be able to "get" if they only have passing knowledge of the series?? I love your work and am reaaaaaally interested in the premise but alas...... I was a Bleach girlie and not a Naruto girlie........

I think it's definitely not my most accessible work, but it's a huge deviation from the source material and doesn't scaffold. It is extremely tangentially related to canon. I also haven't consumed Naruto in 10 years, so I had to brush up on a lot of the characters just through their wiki pages. A handful of random characters show up, but none of their backstories are particularly important or unstated.

I think that if you skim Obito's Narutopedia entry you should be mostly fine. I think you'll miss a few things but you'll be able to 'get it' just fine. Maybe, like, 6/10 "inscrutable if you haven't read the source material" score.

[philcoulsonismyhero]

I've accidentally gotten Way too invested in some characters I've been playing with for a 'one of my beloved early 2000s crime dramas but this time people are actually queer' type story, so here, have some middle-aged gays

George is a detective, Tim is a forensic pathologist, they're an established couple because I don't really write romance but I do enjoy a bit of domesticity, and any resemblance you may notice to other characters that I've drawn a lot is probably entirely deliberate, this is an exercise in self-indulgence

[jq37]

I believe ppl have been discussing the name thing b/c a) some ppl use it to call her gendered insults (fair enough) and b) Freshman Year revealed Halflings are the colonized indigenous ppl of Solace and then that NEVER GOT ADDRESSED AGAIN (wild), so the question is "is it bad for us to shit on what may be an Ethnic Halfling name," b/c Penny+the Cubbys have very different names but are they products of assimilation, and do Halflings typically name themselves after items like how the Luckstones are named after a lucky rock, etc. That's also why it's hard to tell if she's supposed to be "white girl hates Affirmative Action" or "model minority punching down."

Hmm, OK. Thanks for the info.

Making fun of someone's name in general isn't very nice but neither is grabbing them by the balls and putting a pistol to their heads. Of course, the first thing is a thing that happens way more often irl so it makes sense that people would be more rubbed wrong by it than this crazy pirate activity that is (hopefully) not happening in anyone's day to day life. But because the racial politics of Spyre isn't really something that's emphasized in play, I can't imagine the players are thinking any deeper than dunking on this very intense Keebler Elf sounding name that Brennan invented irl and then gave to a character designed to oppose them. They don't have the cultural context their characters would have. I don't think they'd be dunking on a whimsical sounding name if the setting was Unsleeping City and it was like, a traditional name from a real life culture.

The only times I can think of racial stuff explicitly coming up in the show is the halfling thing you mentioned and the fact that "evil races" are marginalized enough that there's literally a squad of undercover angels staffed by evil races for when they need an easily believable baddy.

Anyway, I guess my point is this very much feels like a situation where there is def a discussion that can be had on the topic but there's not a ton of material in the text to answer the question and, even if there was, it probably wouldn't be a one to one perfect representation of any real world thing anyway (in the same way that Helioism is obviously very based on Christianity and there are problems in the Helioic church that are analogous to irl problems with Christianity but it literally can't be the exact same thing because this is a world where their god explicitly exists with no faith needed to prove it and there is 1000% a hell you can go to for not following the rules and also your god is influenced by the opinions of the followers and there are other gods too and a WHOLE lot of other things that separate Heliosim from Christianity).

[bucephaly]

I keep seeing posts of people saying that a term transphobes stole and are using incorrectly to be transphobes is a Horrible Transphobic Term and Anyone who uses it is transphobic and it's Not Real and Entirely Not True when it's literally an actual anthropological term that has studies about it and is actually very useful for Everyone to think about, cis and trans, and be critical of. I hate seeing people respond to dumb hate by entirely writing off everything even remotely connected to the twisted shit bigots use when the shit the bigots are stealing and twisting is still like... a thing?

[emblazons]

hey marie <3 I've been experiencing byler doubt as of late for some strange reason?? And you're one of my favorite analysts so what would you say is like ... the moment or thing that made you actually consider Byler would be endgame?

oooh, I'm sorry to hear that! Honestly there are still some days when the weight of discourse in this fandom gives me little flairs of discomfort about the state of their relationship in S5, even though revisiting the show itself almost immediately assuages most of my fears because fuller context for me has always been most comforting? But...hmm.

I think more than anything—and these two points are really what my "favorite byler things" hinge on, more than the moments themselves—I first remember that the entire show can be subjected to the same scrutiny and level of detail as Byler (even independent of it), which helps me remember that seeing and even looking for evidence of the relationship between them isn't just me indulging my desire to ship them—it's digging into something that The Duffers and the 2000-strong ST production team put there.

Things like them reusing the track Girls on Film to parallel an idea between two scenes with Nancy, paralleling moments of depression between El and Max to show us their bond even from a distance and using set design to show a character trait about Jonathan show that the little details I pick up on for byler are intentional the same way the rest of the show is...and I'm not being unduly invested looking for them, the way a lot of byler critics claim when they say byler's are "delusional" and "reading too much into it."

Second, I remember that I am the audience for the show according to the Duffer Brothers—that they've made clear that it's people like me they're catering to, who love movies, filmmaking and indulge their nerdiest interests even when it means being "less adult" than one perhaps should be in the eyes of the people around them—on top of the fact that they have repeatedly said their story is mapped out and intentional, which means what I see on the screen and put together from "studying" it was designed that way, and isn't just a series of random choices or Finn "deciding" to make flirty eyes at Noah (lmfao).

Once I keep those to things at the fore of my mind, it's easier to accept that what I saw on screen even before I deep dived the whole show were 1) designed for me to catch and 2) intentional...which leaves me with the ability to trust that all of these things—

Mike and Will showing repeated and unprompted signs of attraction to each other mutually, while showing signs of deep emotional connection outside of just the simple bounds of friendship

Mike re-prioritizing his relationship with Will, to the point of saying he was over-invested in El, while also asking Will to be closer to him (which he kept up, all the way to the very last shot of the season)

Will's romantic feelings now being blended inherently with the painting, even though the painting could have easily been written as a platonic gesture if the duffers wanted it to be

Mlvn’s communication (verbal and nonverbal) breaking down in S4 without a single bit of promoting from the audience before it dropped, to the point where Will’s feelings are the romantic ones underpinning Mike’s perception of El & El is no longer behaving romantically forward him, even given the “I love you” that was meant to resolve the tension in their relationship

The fact that I can connect these events to several other moments across all seasons, because the concepts and relational dynamics aren’t new to S4—only the context is

—are good enough reason to believe that the story is headed toward romantic!Byler, while actively moving away from romantic!mlvn.

I think, at the end of the day, the reason why I believe in Byler is because I’m familiar with The Duffers as storytellers, have been invested in their show since S1, and Byler makes sense for the show thematically—it fits into the narrative, doesn’t require any wild jumps to recognize (neither does the end of mlvn, to be honest) and—probably most importantly—the details like color coding, where people are standing in the final shot, and even the insanity of that one way sign into the closet Mike has are just details designed to bring life to the story…not what I’m basing my understanding of the story on itself.

Basically: I believe in byler because that’s where the story is pointing, and I feel I have a solid grasp on the story and characters in several sections of the show, not just the byler one. Revisiting the show over the course of the year has only strengthened my sense of that—and even when I do doubt, it’s the show itself that reminds me why I believed it in the first place, rather than anything that goes on throughout the fandom side of things.

I don't know if that helps you, but it's what keeps my confidence steady throughout the ups and downs of fandom! And also...literally nothing confused me worse than vol ii when it dropped...and now I feel like it presented some of the most important moments for building toward romantic!byler, so. I feel pretty confident in my interpretation of the events of the show now lmao.

thanks for the ask!

and also...outside of all this: the moment that made me catch onto byler as an option fully as an "invested GA" was Will and Mike at the airport, because...that shit was crazy to watch for the first time honestly. My jaw was on the floor like "oh shit, they're really doing this?" and it just. never came back up the rest of the season LOL

[crossbackpoke-check]

about to be sooo nosy so. my apologies. but. morgan frost? girlfriend? do share (or don’t! again this is so nosy i’m sorry)

for legal purposes i can neither confirm nor deny anything about morgan and his girlfriend but afaik i think he’s single right now? at one point (within the past four years 😭) he did for sure have a girlfriend and that is the extent of my wag knowledge

[aeide-thea]

a while back i made a post (that of course i now won't be able to find) that was like, two really popular (complementary!) fallacies are (1) thinking an experience is universal, when in fact it's specific to one's particular body/psyche/milieu; and (2) thinking an experience is specific to a particular body/psyche/milieu, when in fact it transcends such divisions—

anyway i get that the phrase 'purposelessly cloistral' is fun to sneer but i'm afraid that, like rhetoric about 'touching grass,' i actually think it's both unkind and intellectually unrigorous as analysis. yes, exposure to a broad variety of people is good for you, and can help you realize that positions you've taken for granted aren't shared by everyone; but people tend to cluster into insular echo chambers anywhere they congregate, whether that be in chatrooms or churches or cities, and i'm frankly very tired of this recurrent urge to, like, resurrect middle school ideas of coolness and use them as cudgels. clubbing—of either variety!—doesn't make you a better person.

[thatsgonnaleaveamark]

almost all of these polls are difficult choices! i have to sit and think about the possible scenarios for a few minutes before voting

thats great! the polls can just be a fun little game to press a button with absolutely no stakes, but they can also make you think more about the different tropes/options, and maybe even inspire new ideas :) i enjoy voting in them too, and it really gets difficult to pick sometimes because there are so many good ones lol, but I also Love reading everyones tags and comments about why they prefer one or the other, its very cool to see!

[asktotallyhuman]

Oh my goodness! I wonder what questions we have to ask to see what happened?

//Well if there's something you wanna know about, you gotta ask about it! Whether or not the character answers, or answers in the RIGHT way...well, maybe there's a way to get one character to "loosen their lips", and maybe there's another character who's already willing to answer. Or, perhaps, the other can tell you how to get the first to talk. Who knows?