#the other half of the show couple

[taffywabbit]

I finally watched breaking bad (all within the past week or so while I worked, finished it and watched el camino last night) and I'm confident this isn't a new thought I'm expressing or anything but genuinely how DID an entire generation of dudes convince themselves Walter White was cool and admirable and intended to be sympathetic. I know ppl just lack media literacy sometimes but I'm still so confused

I don't think I've EVER watched a piece of media that so blatantly depicts a guy making the worst possible decisions at every turn and having his life ruined for it and not being redeemed or made sympathetic in any significant or lasting way. the kinds of justifications villains USUALLY give that make people consider them "morally grey" or "tragic" or whatever (everything I did was for my loved ones, I did what I had to to survive, once I was in this I couldn't get out, I just needed you to trust me so I could keep you safe, etc etc) is ALWAYS framed as complete self-serving bullshit when Walt says it, and one of the only shreds of personal growth he ever exhibits in the whole series is when he finally fucking admits that. every time he does something even remotely cool or drops a quotable one-liner, something terrible immediately happens that makes everything worse and makes him look like an unreasonable idiot asshole again. by the end of the series the ONLY characters they can still contrast as being morally "worse" than him are literally a bunch of bloodthirsty neonazis who kept a guy in a cage for several months. this show is practically SCREAMING at you the entire time not to admire Walt. why did every dude I knew in highschool have his face on tshirts and Facebook pfps.

I just don't get it. at least with The Dark Knight's Joker it was like, a feature-length movie and that's it. you spend a lot less time with the Joker and it has a lot less time to delve into his motivations, so there's way more room for flanderization and misinterpretation as people extrapolate the few cool/interesting/sad things they saw into a whole nuanced misunderstood guy in their heads and online. Walter White has 5 seasons' worth of 45min episodes to convince you beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is a miserable fucking loser who ruins everything he touches because of greed and selfishness. if you weren't watching it for that, what WERE you getting out of this. what DID you think this show was about. am I just missing some key piece of context from 2012 or whatever that would help me understand this

[arcanegifs]

god i fucking love this show. never has a piece of media made me block off my schedules just to sit down and make a ton of gifs all fucking day. never.

[aroaceleovaldez]

What is the PR disaster in question that made Rick announce TSATS? I wasn’t active in the online fandom at that point

Of course! This was awhile ago so it figures people don't remember it/aren't familiar:

Basically a couple years back (2020) the fandom had some posts circulate discussing the ways different characters in the Riordanverse were written poorly or offensively. There was a masterpost that went around tumblr but the two major points people were particularly focusing on were Piper and Samirah (particularly because Piper had featured prominently again in Trials of Apollo recently and the third MCGA book had further emphasized and discussed Samirah being Muslim, since it was supposed to take place during Ramadan). Basically each had multiple posts breaking down the ways they were depicted incorrectly or offensively. The entire fandom for a little bit was VERY intensely discussing this (and it's around this time the "RR crit" tag got very popularized on tumblr - it did exist before, but suddenly was being used VERY frequently - cause it was that wide-spread - though the discussion took over basically every side of Riordaverse social media on different platforms). People really wanted Rick to respond to these criticisms, so he did!

He made two blog posts, one about Piper and one about Samirah. He has since deleted both so the links are to archived versions. The short version: he essentially tried to justify his poor research and double-down that he hadn't written them offensively, actually, people were just being mean to him. The fandom, of course, reacted poorly to this.

[Further elaborated events under the cut since this got a bit lengthy]

(Fun fact, this all happened within a month or so of the time i posted an open letter on aphobic tropes in the Riordanverse that Rick replied to, and then he immediately followed with announcing that Reyna was intended to be ace-coded [which cause a LOT of fandom debate] before Rick dipped for a couple of weeks, and then came back to post the blog posts in response to Piper and Sam stuff. So I like to jokingly refer to this as "The time I imploded the fandom/drove Rick off of twitter." Twas I that set the house ablaze.)

Rick fully left social media after this and the LT Musical social media manager became Rick's social media manager for the time being.

So this all happened June/July of 2020. Tower of Nero would end up being published in October of 2020 and a few months after that Rick would state that he was done with the series and wouldn't be writing any more series installments involving Percy, and also that he wouldn't be writing a Nico quest following Tower of Nero as it "wasn't his place to" and encouraged the community to write their own versions of Nico's story.

The community continued to circulate the tumblr posts and discuss the topics of Rick's offensive character depictions, and this is also where we see the dramatic shift in how the fandom depicts Piper in fanwork (though in most cases it is admittedly not an improvement 😬) because of all this discussion. This is also around the time when the fandom brought Viria under scrutiny claiming that she was whitewashing Piper as part of the same discussions, through the justification that she was drawing Annabeth as having tan skin (which she does canonically), and if Annabeth has tanner skin then Piper then that's whitewashing Piper? Except they were using completely separate images of not fully rendered Piper art versus Annabeth in dramatic lighting, so it's all very awkward and poor logic, and did actually get kind of racist. A lot of people were calling it "Tannabeth Blackchase" (yeah, i know) or similar and a common sentiment you'd see repeated is "Don't draw Annabeth as having darker skin than Piper, because that's offensive/racist/whitewashing." (Note: it was not phrased "don't draw Piper as having lighter skin than Annabeth" - we also won't get into certain offensive depictions of Native Americans, but I digress). But yeah, the Annabeth stuff in all that did not age well at all.

Anyways, in October of 2021 however Rick would announce that he was co-writing The Sun And The Star - with a lot of heavy emphasis on how Mark Oshiro works as a sensitivity reader, and some false advertising from the official social media that Mark Oshiro was the first time a non-Riordan author would be collaborating on the series (disregarding the ghostwriters completely). One of the big criticisms in the breaking down of issues in Rick's writing was his lack of ever seeking a sensitivity reader, and fans claiming that a sensitivity reader could solve a lot of the problems. This was basically Rick's "look! I totally listened!!!!" (though it did little to actually improve things, based on the book) and in TSATS as well Piper gets a large cameo at the end where the text very directly addresses a lot of points made in criticism of Rick's writing of her.

We also then of course got the CoTG trilogy later, explicitly stated to be for advertising purposes for the show.

So basically, short version: Rick came under scrutiny for a lot of offensive writing within the span of two months, made some bad blog posts doubling down about it, left social media. TOA ends. Rick says he wasn't going to continue the series/write what would become TSATS. Community celebrates the end of of the franchise but also continues to discuss Rick's poor writing and the blog posts at length. Rick suddenly announces TSATS and Mark Oshiro's involvement. Everybody gets distracted from being mad. Show announcement stuff also happens and the discussions peter out.

[giddlygoat]

as much as i want to see fiddleford recover and enter his much-deserved era of good mental and physical health, i also want to see the effects of his head trauma follow him forever. it’s important to me that while he heal and find a level of normalcy and peace, he never return to his old self.

kind of a side bar, but it’s relevant so: i also think there’s something to be said about old man mcgucket’s confidence. boldness? idk how to describe it. i wouldn’t say his paranoid tendencies have vanished, but for the most part he’s. breezier. part of it is the brain damage, and maybe part of it is genuine self-evolution in the right direction. but i think the obsessive mind-wiping just… broke that part of his brain. it’s like he’s no longer affected by fear in the same way. and i hope we see strong traces of that damage until the day he dies.

it’s important to me that fiddleford heal and emerge into self-awareness once more. it’s important to me that ford still look at him as very much the same person, despite all of the damage. but he’s also changed severely and irreversibly. i think of old man mcgucket as a much rawer version of fiddleford in that he holds less reservations and has no filter. he’s healing but he’s also broken, and those scars will forever be visible. and that’s important to me because it also changes ford and fiddleford’s dynamic a lot.

ok one last sidebar, then i’m done. when i say it changes their dynamic i mean it in the way that because fiddleford now wears his heart on his sleeve and ford himself is a bit wiser about relationships, there is less self-sabotaging going on between them. romance or friendship wise. and if nothing else, they both feel they’re getting too old for biting their tongues, so i imagine the discussions of certain difficult topics comes a bit easier now.

like, given that they’ve both made many catastrophically terrible decisions over their lives, they have a better perspective on life in general and have had time to reorient their previously fucked priorities. ford lives with a lot of shame for how he treated stan, dealing with the devil, and bringing about the end times. fiddleford lives with a lot of shame for how he treated emma-may and tate, starting a cult that ruined lives [especially his own], and not to mention the multiple death robot incidents. even though they both had good intentions or else thought their actions were justified at the time [mostly], it all collapsed on their heads because these actions were ridiculously stupid.

i think all of this is part of why the rekindling of their friendship happened so easily. fiddleford is eager to forgive ford and embrace him because he’s learned first-hand what grief and paranoia can drive a person to do, and so he feels the best thing he can do is accept his old friend back into his life, no questions asked. maybe ford will forever think he doesn’t deserve it, but he learns to accept mcgucket’s kindness and tries to learn from it. they’re both healing even if it’ll never be Backupsmore again. it’s still them, despite it all.

[sinister-inchworm]

hey guys what's up

For those who don't know, you can swap game logos in your steam library with custom ones by right clicking the steam banner and clicking "Set Custom Logo". As far as I know Steam accepts both .png and .jpeg formats (there's ways to get gifs to work as well, but that gets a bit technical so it might be best to look at a guide for that)

along with that you can also adjust the position of the logo as well as set custom backgrounds!

[itspileofgoodthings]

one time my mom was talking about something, I don’t remember what, and she said “have you ever known the poverty of having nothing to say?” and when I say nothing has ever punctured my heart quite like that statement

[raycatz]

I'm not including a situation where someone might be injured because in that case I'm thinking the bed goes to them by default or they are nominated for it. anyone who wants to be chatty goes to join the living room floor gang.

What are your thoughts and headcanons? Do you have thoughts on how the boys tend to approach assigning beds in inns? Who do the chain choose to sleep near when camping and why? What are their dynamics like when settling down for the night and getting ready for the day?

In "Mirror Vs Open Closet Door: Fight!" by Gintrinsic (here) Four refers to the chain's decision on how to split up between inn rooms as the "Link-per-room ratio" which I find very funny. He, Sky, and Time also talk about their thought process behind why they do or don't want to sleep in a room with some of the others which I find fun and interesting.

So! If you have thoughts and want to share them! *gestures to the post!*

[angelsdean]

i'll be honest, i truly do not understand when people get all up in arms whenever anyone involved with spn describes cas's love for dean as beyond the human understanding of love, as if there haven't been posts made on here for years by fans literally describing cas's love for dean / destiel's love as akin to worship, a powerful force greater than god, cosmic, all encompassing, profound, etc etc. i thought the outrage was silly when jensen expressed the idea of cas's love being more than romantic back in denver con 2021 and i think it's silly now with these bedlund tweets. not to mention being more than and beyond something imo means it encompasses the romantic AND more. it's romantic, it's platonic, it's cosmic, it's worship, it's everything. and i think that's beautiful. and yes, it's exactly what their love is. a huge profound force that changed the narrative, that wasn't meant to be there, that kept breaking through anyway.

and i understand what people are saying about this language being used for a queer ship etc etc, but like, there's nothing inherently wrong or negating their love in saying that it's a greater love. if anything i think it's saying, hey, see these two? yea their love is bigger than what we can even comprehend. idk i'm just going to continue to take these statements in good faith. and also, until the reboot happens, they can't really say more about destiel beyond the bounds of the confession. jensen, bedlund, misha, etc can't speak to dean's feelings, for instance, or confirm anything one way or another, because if those feelings are a major plot point to be explored and acknowledged in the continuation then to speak about them now with any kind of definitive statement would be spoiling / jumping the gun, and it's not their place to make those statements yet, if we are indeed going to see more of dean and cas's story in the future (which i mean, at this point based on their statements about the reboot it's really a When not If situation).

[yxnswife]

johnshi but they hunt monsters

[vividxp]

I've tried a couple of times to get my thoughts organized regarding white viewers commentary on how AMC's IWTV handles race, but I'll just simply say there's definitely a cynicism that is common in a lot of those analysis that is...bemusing.

[radarsteddybear]

Ok, Hogan's Heroes fandom, I've got a question for you: if you were introducing someone to the show for the very first time, which episode would you start with? For bonus points, also tell me WHY you choose that episode.

[aroaceleovaldez]

i think the thing i'm most disappointed about with riordanverse fandom now versus like 2014 is not only has the fandom not gotten any less racist or queerphobic or ableist (in fact in some regards its gotten worse!) but now it's just boring too. like there's no fandom infrastructure anymore - the community these days is almost entirely source material-driven - and you deviate from canon even slightly people get weird about it. whatever happened to the post-HoO fanon boom. the fandom needs to get weirder again. and self-sufficient. and less offensive.

[courfee]

every now and then the clock in my room behaves really fucking weird and shows a different time. It's a purely mechanical analogue clock. One of the old ones that don't set the time automatically. The weird part isn't the wrong time, i could explain that away with a battery reaching the end of its life and the clock just running alower. The weird part is that it is always the wrong time by full hours and then just keeps running normally as if nothing happened.

[sammygender]

i do genuinely think s7 is decent but even if it wasn’t it’d be like crack to me considering it’s an entire season essentially centred around sam’s trauma. it’s the closest we ever get to the show properly genuinely acknowledging the things it puts him through. which is ironic considering it’s also before many many other things he goes through!

[epiphainie]

.

[makeoutstopcrime]

we really are living in a golden age for chenford right now