#tbs Wadsworth

[monster-gut]

Yayy some more Bright Sessions art

(Did I base Greens' design off of Jon from garfield? Yes, yes I did)

[ispyspookymansion]

this is what i do for fun, basically. bright sessions character chart!! more notes under the cut:

SO each character column is the collective opinion of other characters on that character, character rows are what they think of every other character. i tried to keep it to canon, textual dynamics only. if the squares alternate, the feeling is mixed. some of the other color groups are relationship developments chronologically, or they dont feel strongly enough to have a full four color set. had to simplify some complex stuff for the sake of color coding but it was funnnnn! hoping i didnt miss anything huge and embarrassing but well the character dynamics ARE messy so its possible something slipped by me!

[fandomscraziness22]

3x17

6x16

the bright sessions parallels and callbacks 3/?

[chickwiththepurpleguitar]

Haven't been here in a while, but Iiii am really proud of this one. Please share and let me know what you think!

[podcastbrainrotdad]

The current , unfiltered list of suggestions from both Discord and tumblr that i collected so far (stoll going through submissions) . I am so sorry.

Tma: Michael distortion, Elias (Jmagnus) Bouchard , Mike Crew, Oliver Banks , Jonathan Sims, Martin Blackwood, Jane Prentiss, Sasha James, Gerry Keay, Annable Cane.

Archive 81: staticman, Rat, Dan, Dromen, Nicholas waters.

Malevolent: Kayne , Arthur, John Doe.

WTNV: Cecil , Kevin, Carlos.

TPP: Peter Nureyev , Cecil Kanagawa, Lord Arum??, Mick Mercury

Wolf 359: Doug, Warren Kepler, Cutter, Hilbert

DBD: Obituary writer

Rqg: Oscar wilde

C&HT: up and Adam, Elijah Volkov

Wooden overcoats: Rudyard Funn, Eric Chapman

The Amelia Project: The Interviewer, Koslowski

Dndads: Scam Likely, Glenn Close, Lark Oak-Garcia (s2), Stud Stampler, Nicholas Foster(s2), Henry Oak, Ron stampler, Darryl Wilson, Meryl streep.

Taz: John Hunger, Taako Taaco, Garfield, Indrid Cold, Kravitz,Amber Grits, The wonderland twins, Barry Bluejeans, duck Newton, minerva.

Red valley: Bryony Halbech.

Nadpod: moonshine cybin

Hfthw: Digory Graves

Tbs: DAMIEN????? , Owen Green, Mark Bryant , Ellie Wadsworth

Kfam: Deputy Troy, Finn the Truck guy, Archie Simmons, Robotim??????, Sammy, Ben.

Critical role: Mollymauk, Vax, laudna.

Thrilling adventure hour: Sparks navada.

Just roll with it: Nikulaus Hendrix.

Magic Tavern: Usidore.

Our Fair City: Doctor Herbert West .

SAYER: Sayer, Ocean, Future, Speaker .

Mistholme Museum: The Man with the Voice like Honey and Chocolate and Coffee All at Once.

Storybreak ig???: Gin

Mechs????: Johnny D'ville, Toy Soldier.

The two princes: Rupert, Amir

The vanishing act: Rudyard T. Codswallop

The hotel: The hotel herself, the owner, lobby boy.

Jasper Moon from Badlands Cola

Campaign: Skyjacks: Nodoze, Travis Matagot

Spirit Box Radio: Oliver Boulin

Night Shift: Miles Beaumont

Old Gods of Appalachia: The Railroad Man

Marscorp: David Night

A Voice From Darkness: Dr. Malcolm Ryder

Guys, in honour of Cecil doing so well on the sexyman polls, I think we should start a podcast centric sexyman poll. We have enough of them it could work.

Drop your male(?) specimen in the rbs.

[theemptybloggercometh]

Abandoned

I noticed that Wadsworth used this word quite a lot in the latest episode. This is interesting for two reasons

1) it isn’t what Damien said happened. It’s a very one sided view that puts the blame onto Damien parents whereas if he hadn’t willed them away would they have still abandoned him? Does Wadsworth know more about Damien's upbringing than she lets on?

2) Abandoning Damien is exactly what Wadsworth is doing. How is he going to cope without his ability? He’s had to fend for himself since he’s 13 and I would bet not that most, if not all, of his life skills revolve around being able to manipulate people. He hasn’t those formative teenage years where a parental figure could teach him other methods of achieving his goals. Will he revert back to crime? But with no way to deflect the blame onto someone else how long until he’s caught? And would the AM protect him from the police?               

[dreaming-of-podcasts]

Guys what if kepler (w359) met damien (tbs)?? They're both such manipulative, trash excuses for human beings, I would love to see how they interacted with each other. Who would win the manipulation game

[void-star]

This is consistently one of the wildest aspects of TBS. Wadsworth said some jaw dropping shit about atypicals, invoking the Birth Dearth argument about them and everything (implicitly positioning them as a marginalized minority group), when explaining that she doesn't really care about the horror factory juicing atypicals for serums for the DoD.

But, like, Damien is supposed to be the worst one in the room at all times because he checks notes is kind of a snarky pathetic loser with a cluster b disorder.

Like, lmao.

And I wasn't too interested in Owen's "redemption" arc because I kind of think it's no longer about whether he has strong moral character traits when we're talking about an organization that can extrajudicialy imprison people from a group with no real civil rights lmao

There definitely seems to be a lack of perspective in the narrative

I do find it interesting that Agent Green gets a whole redemption but Damien doesn't*. Like Damien, as much as he is a fucking asshole who does horrible shit to people, a lot of what he does clearly stems from a genuine inability to understand other people. Meanwhile, Owen is over here low-key doing Nazi shit. Like I know The Bright Sessions doesn't lean as hard on the "people with powers are a minority group" thing as say, the X-Men, but it is a present theme, and Owen actively assists and participates in the kidnapping and unethical experimentation upon said minority group. And his motives for that are... career advancement? Impressing Joan? Like I know he likes to focus on the good the AM does for people like Rose, but he focuses on that by ignoring the fact that they're torturing people in a basement until it threatens his job security.

I know Owen does stop what he's doing and comes to Joan and Sam asking them to help him be better, but Damien asks multiple characters what he should be doing to actually connect with people and they all just kinds roll their eyes and go "Well, if you don't know, I can't explain it to you." Explaining it to him should be part of his therapy- which admittedly it's unclear the extent to which none of his therapy actually being helpful is his own fault by forcing Joan to spend the sessions talking about abilities instead of actual therapy, but it still could've been part of her little "you always wonder about the patients you can't help" speech. Is the fact that Owen gets the help he asks for and Damien doesn't just because Owen helps oust the bigger threat of Wadsworth- which doesn't even work? If Wadsworth hadn't made herself immune to abilities and Damien had made her fuck off, would he have been welcomed afterwards?

Don't get me wrong, I don't think Damien necessarily needs a redemption, and I definitely don't think he should be spending more time around the main characters, Mark especially. But Owen's redemtion has always rung a bit false for me and like the reason he died is that killing him was the only way to make him ultimately sympathetic, and I think this is part of why.

If you asked me to rank the villians of Tbe Bright Sessions, Damien would be at the bottom of the list because unlike Wadsworth, Owen, and to an extent Blackwell, he doesn't weild any institutional power over a group of people, and unlike Helen, the only person he's ever killed was in self defense. And while what he did to Neon to enact that self defense was despicable, forcing atypicals to use their abilities in ways they hate is what the AM did to every major character who went there other than Rose. And we know Owen actively participated in that because Mark and Helen know him. And it doesn't feel earned by the narrative to redeem to some extent both Owen and the institution that gives him that power over people, especially when held up in comparison to another villian.

*I do need to reread Some Faraway Place, but to my memory, the "well maybe one day, if he keeps working really hard, he'll be worthy of forming a genuine human connection" story that Damien gets there is still a far cry from Owen becoming a protagonist in The AM Archives

[cobalt-knave]

Sometimes I'll see artwork. And I can tell it's fanart for a podcast. But I will not know what podcast it is for.

Like, there's a guy with a man bun. Could be Sammy Stevens.

There's a woman who could either be Annabelle Cane or Annabelle Wadsworth (wow didn't even realize it was the same name)

There's someone who could maybe be Ben Arnold but also conceivably Mark Bryant (yes there was one I thought was Ben that ended up being Mark).

And ANY OF THEM could be Cecil Gershwin Palmer.

[flusteredbard]

Look everybody! It’s my favorite morally questionable office worker! I just listened to episode 50 and agent greens reprise made me go FERAL. This man is a national treasure.

[oretlumiere]

Every time Wadsworth and Damien have a wild amount of tension despite having exactly no interest in each other. Audio from episodes 317 - Telephone 2, 402 - Subject #E-307, and 406 - Damien.

[fandomscraziness22]

4x11

7x19

the bright sessions parallels and callbacks 17/?

[dramatic-audio]

[ID: drawings of various Bright Sessions characters, wearing solid-color shirts with text on them. 

Mark, a light-skinned Asian man with short black hair, is smiling at the viewer with a hand in his pocket. His shirt is a blush color and says, “I’m just here to darken the mood.” 

Damien, a gaunt, light-skinned man with short black hair and several facial piercings, is hunched over and glaring at the viewer with his hands in his hoodie pocket. His hoodie is black and says, “if you can’t handle me at my worst, you don’t deserve me at my worst.” 

Sam is a light-skinned woman with chin-length red hair, with one green eye and one brown eye. She’s resting her hands on her hips and giving a nervous smile, looking off into the distance. Her shirt is green and says, “Whoa. I have anxiety.” 

Dr. Joan Bright is a light-skinned Asian woman with shoulder-length straight black hair. She’s looking off to the side with her arms resting neutrally at her sides. Her shirt is grey and says, “Hey kids! Did you know adults make mistakes too?” 

Chloe is a dark-skinned, chubby woman with a short, curly undercut that’s dyed a gradient red and yellow. She’s looking at the viewer with a bright smile. Her shirt is yellow and says, “Hang in there!” She turns around to show the back of the shirt, which says in text, “pic of cat.” 

Caleb is a tall, broad boy with a medium complexion and a dark buzz cut. He’s looking at the viewer with a little smile with his arms resting at his sides. His shirt is yellow and says, “I’m gay & I eat my feelings.” 

Rose is a short, light-skinned chubby woman with chin-length strawberry blonde hair. She’s smiling at the viewer with a dazed look on her face. She’s wearing a pink shirt under a brown jacket. The shirt says, “Caffeine sensitive and damn proud.” 

Adam is a dark-skinned boy with black, curly, unkempt hair with a blue streak in it. His hands are in his pants pockets and he has an unimpressed expression. His shirt is black and says, “What the fuck.” The back of the shirt says, “Just in general.” 

Owen Green is a light-skinned man with short orange hair. He’s frowning and looking nervously at Wadsworth, who stands beside him. His shirt is white and says, “Susceptible.” 

Ellie Wadsworth is a dark-skinned woman with very short, curly black hair. She’s giving a confident smile to the viewer and resting a hand on her hip. Her shirt is a berry-pink color and it says, “Insusceptible.” 

End ID] 

yeah so i spent my entire evening making bright sessions characters wearing oddly accurate zargle shirts cause i saw the one for mark first and then decided Y’know What Let’s Just Make Everyone (except frank bc while i love him dearly i had a hard time finding a good shirt for him sorry frank)

i’d link to the shirts but in the time i took to draw these half the posts just.. stopped existing? for some reason? i had a list of links and everything rip

[nebulous-tundra]

In talking about good and bad survivors/mentally ill people I find a huge problem with all the TBS work is how every major villain is connected to personality disorders. Each time there is a villain they are said to be psychotic or narcissistic (TCT is probably the worse with this). Plus while Wadsworth starts out as neurotypical and 'straight-laced' TAMA has her backstory reveal she went 'bad' as a response to a traumatic event. So she is another example of a bad survivor.

I mean there's nothing inherently bad to depicting a villain w mental illness, it's about the writer(s) go about it that usually end up being the issue. The problem w TBS(and presumably TCT, although I will reiterate that I've never listened to it and likely never will) is that: while most characters are depicted as being neurodivergent on some scale, all the good guys "try" to be better whereas the bad "don't try" to be better. Whatever the fuck that means. Nevermind mental illness is already greatly stigmatized, now people have to get therapy for it or they're not "trying" I guess. Nevermind if they can't afford it, don't have time between jobs and/or kids, can't find a good therapist that they have chemistry with(still don't understand why so many of Joan's clients stay around, she's not really a people person lol).

Of course, the issues that real people could face from internalizing this depiction don't affect our villains. Damien(at least during the course of TBS) has time and money in spades(and literally has gone to see many therapists) but his brainwashing makes any meaningful progress practically impossible, and essentially treats it like a hangout session. Wadsworth seems to have a much tighter schedule but definitely makes it known she thinks therapy is beneath her. What..... wonderful examples.....

I will say though I'm surprised they went the PTSD route with Wadsworth though! I think she was just fine being neurotypical(plenty of neurotypicals can display lack of empathy/compartmentalization which, considering her nephew, looks exactly like what Wadsworth is doing) but if she was doomed to have a diagnosis I think Narcissist Personality Syndrome would've been a better fit, plus it would've added a nice underbelly to her character knowing all that stone cold hard bravado is in fact sheltering a very insecure core. Of course I say that but I can't trust them to do this depiction justice without butchering it OTL

[hellishfig]

relistening to the bright sessions and once again experiencing great anger towards wadsworth

god, villains who are convinced they’re a) in the right and b) smarter than everyone else rly make me want to punch something

[measuringspoon2]

popular podcast villain trope is just like a geriatric probably white man. imagine them all in a board meeting. imagine ellie wadsworth sitting in that room next to cutter elias and ramses. either their hearts would give out from the strain of fighting over the head of the table while she watched or she would eat them alive. either way she comes out on top i love her