#the pandemic was a weird period where i had the time to do that and the management required to keep up with it outside then is intense

[pastafossa]

How do you get past writer's block? I have a fic that I'm working on that is updating on a schedule, and I made the mistake of giving myself a month off in between parts and now I can't really get back into writing it. I don't want to leave it abandoned because I have a few people who I know are really invested and I don't want to leave them hanging, but I'm having a hard time getting as excited to write it as I did before.

Ok so I'm in a weird place for this, hilariously. Because The Answer That Usually Works For Me (TM) and that carried me through a regular weekly update schedule for almost two and a half years is, in fact, not at present working for me apparently my brain can write through a pandemic but not through recovery from the shit that went down in December/Jan so we found my writing kryptonite. However, I'm going to assume you're closer to 2021 Pasta than 2024 Pasta. SO LET'S GO WITH THE METHOD I NORMALLY USE SINCE IT WAS SUCCESSFUL FOR YEARS. Cause that's the thing: sure, I've written almost a million words, and pumped out chapters for years (ignoring the past few months) but I promise, I hit the same walls as everyone else even when nailing weekly uploads. But over those years, I came up with a fairly solid list of steps that I'd go through one by one.

Fun one first: when I'm in a block, I almost always try re-engaging with canon first. I'd rewatch my favorite episodes, binge a whole season, or even the whole series depending on how much of a boost I needed. For me at least that was often like Pavlov's bell, my favorite story triggering a flood of affection. I'd remember why I loved this fandom and the characters so much, and it could often kickstart my brain and excitement back into gear. If you really want to dangle a carrot and your fic touches on canon, focus on watching parts you're excited to get to in your story. A big one for me in TRT for example was the post-Nobu, Nelson v. Murdock episode, since I'd had that planned for TRT almost since the start, and I was very excited to reach the hurt/comfort I had planned. Even if your fic isn't following canon though, see if it'll give you a creative rush again!

So let's say step 1 doesn't work, either because the canon just isn't hitting the spot or because your fic is dealing with something else. In this case, my next step was usually to jump ahead to write a scene I was really eager to get to. It was often a short blurb, but it was always something I REALLY wanted to explore, and because I'm also a reader who likes exactly the tropes and plots I'm writing, I want to read what fucking happens. Except, fuck, I'm not there yet, am I? And I can't see how that scene finishes until I write my way up to it and finish it. This is my own carrot. Multiple scenes in TRT were written months or even years in advance, simply as a way to bribe myself. This is also an option!

But maybe this doesn't work. Sometimes it didn't. This is when it got a bit more serious. For anyone who was reading at the time, you'd have noticed that I'd sometimes drop side fics, either Matt POVs or one-shots. This was me, in essence, working on the shower principle (basically, ideas/solutions will come if you stop thinking about it and do something else, like take a shower). I figured if I went and wrote something else - either with less stress, or something fun and dopamine-inducing - the part of my brain focused on my Big Fic would wander around the writer's block beneath my notice. And it almost always worked, all while I still kept my brain trained that, hey, even if we're not writing This Thing, we're still writing.

But let's say this doesn't work either. You're well, and truly, stuck. Been there now and then. And, you're going to hate this one. I hate it but it works 9 times of 10. And it is: Write anyway. Half of it was spite. I was not going to give up my schedule, I liked my schedule. The other half was that I knew myself. I knew if I could just get past the chapter/plot/dialogue I was struggling with, I'd be able to roll along again. And so I made a rule: whatever I wrote didn't have to be pretty. It just had to exist. If that meant I wrote, "Jane chased the cat in circles and caught it. She was happy." then that's what I wrote. Because everything, EVERYTHING, can be fixed in editing. But you can't fix what doesn't exist. And so there were those nights when I would scowl and groan and snarl and bash my head against that writer's block until 5 in the morning, but in the end Jane chased that fucking cat adn caught it, it was written. Hilariously, sometimes those chapters have wound up amazing (likely because I spent so much time hammering at them) and reader favorites. There are absolutely, I believe, moments where you can, and should, see if you can push through.

But that brings me to *waves* now. A lesson I've only recently recently and with encouragement. Namely... sometimes brain no go and that's ok. My steps work for me 99.9% of the time, but I've done the above during the past few months, and it just... hasn't dragged me out entirely out of it yet. Sometimes, our brains demand that break, especially when things just aren't going great. There's a reason TRT had a break of roughly 2 years between chapter 4 and chapter 5 (feel free to check the chapter index with dates on AO3!). I had some life things happening and I just was not in a place to write, even if I was still busily plotting and planning and thinking about TRT behind the scenes. And that was ok. We're not machines. I came back like a bulldozer in Jan 2021, yes, and bulldozed through weekly updates, but that break was needed. And now I'm obviously taking a short one again while I recover from everything. It's ok if you're not in a place for it. So the last step is one I've been told a lot by dear friends recently as they helped me through this: be kind to yourself, and try not to stress if none of the above works. The story will always be there, and if TRT is any indication through all its highs and lows, your readers will be there when you start up again.

[rimouskis]

one of my best friends is about to have a baby today........... so weird to be on the periphery of something so life changing. I want to go "life is going to change forever" as if it hasn't already

[pitviperofdoom]

High School Time Travelers, Part 2

It's finally here! Follow up to this story.

***

“So. Spill. What the fuck is going on with you and Angelique?”

Raph fidgeted uncomfortably, and something within Erin roared out in protest at that. They were in her room, surrounded by her clutter and band posters and the stuff he kept at her house to keep his mom from throwing it away. He wasn’t supposed to be uncomfortable here.

Eventually, he took a deep breath. “I time-traveled last night.”

“I’m serious—”

“So am I,” he said wearily. “I woke up in a house I haven’t set foot in for years, across the hall from someone I promised myself I’d never talk to again. It happened, and if you’re stuck on that part then this conversation can’t continue.”

Erin got up and paced her room, kicking aside her backpack, nearly knocking over the guitar stand in the corner. “What the fuck.”

“That’s what I said.”

“What the fuck, Raph.”

“I didn’t mean to!”

The absurdity hit her instantly—he didn’t mean to time travel, as if they were talking about him forgetting his homework or getting in Monica Dillon’s way during passing period. She wanted to laugh.

But then she remembered some of the weird things Angelique had said—about friendships imploding, about college, about shit not mattering in high school, all with the easy certainty of experience.

“Prove it,” she said. “Can you do that thing where you predict what I’m about to say?”

“I’m not stuck in a time loop, dumbass, yesterday I was thirty-three!” Raph snapped. “I had to go through math class trying to pretend I still remembered my teacher’s name!”

“Okay, okay, Jesus.” Erin held up her hands placatingly. “There’s gotta be something.”

Raph sighed, rubbing his forehead. “I dunno. Anything meaningful and unchangeable I can remember won’t happen for a while, so if you’re willing to wait for the Trump presidency or the global pandemic, there’s that.”

“The what.”

“Wait, who’s president right now? It’s still Bush, right?”

Erin pulled a face.

“Next one’s Barack Obama, he’s gonna do two terms,” Raph informed her. “First black president.”

“Oh, huh. Cool,” Erin said faintly.

“Let’s see, what else, um… Balloon Boy? Has Balloon Boy happened yet?”

“No, what the fuck is Balloon Boy?”

Raph brightened. “Yeah, so at some point this family is gonna release like, a homemade weather balloon? Or something? And there’s gonna be this huge panic because they think their son is stuck inside it, but then it turns out he was fine and hiding in the basement the whole time and it was a hoax.”

“Okay, I’ll keep an eye out for that I guess?” Erin sat down again. “You’re seriously not fucking with me right now?”

“I mean, if you want, we could forget this conversation ever happened,” Raph offered. “Continue with our normal lives, while I keep under-reacting to devastating world events.”

“Christ, I don’t know.” Erin pressed her palms into her eyes. After a moment, she lifted her head again. “Wait a minute, we’re getting off track. What does this have to do with Angelique?”

Raph’s silence could not have been louder.

“Raph,” Erin said, a little desperately.

“First you have to promise you won’t be mad,” said Raph.

“Did you sleep with her in the—” Erin paused to do some arithmetic in her head. “—eighteen years between then and now?!”

“She’s my wife,” Raph blurted out.

Moments later, Erin’s mother knocked politely on the bedroom door. “Everything okay in there?” she asked. “That’s an awful lot of screaming for a Tuesday night.”

Erin continued howling into her pillow. “She’s fine, Mrs. Yokota!” Raph called. “We’re looking at—uh—creepypastas!”

“Creepy what?”

“Uh—crap, are they still called that?—like, ghost stories and stuff!”

Placated, she left them to it. Eventually Erin recovered enough to lie back and stare listlessly at the ceiling.

“Dude.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“What the fuck is your life?” Erin demanded. “How did that even happen?”

“We ran into each other at—so my friend Hazel got roped into being in their college roommate’s bridal party and dragged me along for moral support, and Angelique was in the same friend group but with like six degrees of separation from us,” Raph explained. “It took half the reception for her to recognize me because at that point I’d been on T for a few years, but the second she realized we went to the same high school she turned fishbelly-white, pulled me aside, and apologized for how much of a bitch she was back then. It was really awkward.”

Back then, he called it, even though for Erin it was still right now. “And you married her?”

“Like eight years later, yeah.” Raph ran his hand through his hair, not quite hiding the small smile that stole over his face. “She really turned over a new leaf.”

Erin was silent for a while, mulling over this new information, combining it with what she already had from that afternoon.

“Is your name still Raphael?” she asked. “She sounded really surprised about it. And I know you said you were just taking the name on a trial run, but you really seemed to like it. Not that there’s—you know,” she added. “I know that—just because I picked it, I knew you might not… you know. It’s fine, I was just wondering. If I should call you something else.”

“I did—I do like it,” Raph assured her. “But, uh, some stuff happened. My dad found me.”

Erin’s eyebrows shot upward. “Wait, really? What’d he have to say for himself?”

“That Mom ghosted him when she got pregnant because her side guy had more money.”

“Dude, fuck your mom.”

“Don’t fuck my mom, she’ll ghost you for money, weren’t you listening?”

Erin burst out snickering. “Fuck, sorry, this isn’t funny.”

“It will be in eighteen years,” Raph said with a wry smile. “Hindsight. Anyway, he found me in—he’s gonna find me in two years unless I reach out first. He’s a good guy. My stepmom’s pretty cool, too. And I have sisters? So that’s awesome. And yeah, he had this friend who passed away when he was younger, and he always wanted to name his son after him, but then Mom disappeared and he only ended up having daughters, so when he found me, it kind of worked out.” He hesitated. “I’m Damian. Damian Raphael Harker.”

“That’s such a cool name,” Erin sighed.

Raph—Damian—tilted his head back to grin at her. “Yours is cool, too.”

“Shut up,” she said fondly.

“No, seriously,” he said emphatically. “Your name is unspeakably cool.”

There was something odd in his tone, sticking up and catching like a loose nail. It bothered her, the same way something Angelique said earlier had bothered her.

“Hey, Ra—Damian?” Erin said cautiously. “Earlier, when Angelique sat down with us, she didn’t recognize me.”

“She does, don’t worry.”

“No, she didn’t,” Erin pressed. “It took her a second to realize who I was, and she stopped herself from saying why.”

Suddenly Damian looked deeply uncomfortable. “I, uh.”

She took a deep breath. “Was I dead in your time?”

“Wh-no! No no no no, of course not!” Damian looked horrified. “We played Pathfinder like last week, you’re not dead.”

“What’s Path—no, never mind. Something’s clearly up. If we just played whatever-that-is last week, and Angelique is your wife, then why didn’t she know who I was?”

“Uh…” Damian’s hands had worked their way deep into his sleeves. “You look different, that’s all. You kind of reinvented yourself in college.”

“Oh,” Erin said, momentarily relieved. Then— “Wait.”

“What?’

“Damian. You’d—” She hesitated. “If I was a guy, you’d tell me, right?’

“Oh my God,” Damian mumbled into his be-sweatered hands.

“Damian.”

“You’re... not...”

“You’d tell me, right?”

“See, I don’t know if I would!” Damian answered, in a strained high-pitched tone. “That’s—look. If you were a guy, that’s something you’d have to work out for yourself!”

“Damian, I swear to God.”

“I can’t crack your egg for you, that’s like violating the Prime Directive!”

Erin seized a pillow and started to buffet him with it. “You are such a nerd!”

“It’s your personal journey, you can’t use me to cheat!” Damian cackled, fending her off with a plush horse.

***

“Yeah I’ll get the banana split.” Angie bounced on the balls of her feet, eyes raking over the array of toppings. “Can you put caramel and chocolate sauce on it? And Heath bar pieces, chopped strawberries, and M&Ms.”

“Yeah, sure thing.”

It took all of her self-control not to press her nose against the glass as she watched them make it. Some small part of her balked at the sight of three huge scoops of ice cream and all the toppings, but she quieted it. She had a second shot at being a teenager, and that meant never taking her garbage disposal stomach and body made of rubber bands for granted ever again.

She hummed absently to herself, only to pause halfway through the tune. How did it go again? She tried repeating the first half, only to get stuck at the same spot. Oh, this was going to bug the crap out of her. It wasn’t like she could look it up, not when the song wouldn’t come out for almost ten years—

Her phone vibrated in her purse, and she checked it absentmindedly, zeroing in for a moment on the DAD displayed on the screen. After a moment, she put it back without answering. If it was that important, he could text.

Sure enough, her phone gave a short buzz. New text message—he hadn’t even bothered to leave a voicemail.

DADI need you to talk to your brother.

Angie checked her banana split’s progress with a glance, and replied.

lol why

DADHe’s not listening to me. We both know the courts favor the mother so if we’re going to beat her I need both of you on your A game.

Angie ground her teeth until her jaw creaked.

what do you need me to do

DADJust coach him on how to talk about her. You’re a smart lady, I know you can do it. He’s always getting scuffed up at practice, just have him say the bruises came from her. Throw in a drinking problem if you have to, just keep your stories straight.

why father dearest i’m surprised at youyou want me to lie under oath?

DADJust talk to him, will you? Keep your stories straight, don’t get too outlandish, and we’ll get out of this with everything we want. You’ll never have to hear the word no again, I promise.

ok daddy ill do my best!

DADGood girl. You’re the smartest girl I know. Smarter than your mom, smarter than her bitch lawyer. Love you!

“Order up!”

Angie brought her banana split to the table with the clearest view of the door. It took her a moment to decide how to begin, then nearly a full minute balancing equal parts ice cream, banana, and toppings in a single spoonful. She managed it in the end.

Mood lifted, she unlocked her phone again and made a call. “Heeeey, Anika.”

“Need I remind you that phone calls are billable,” her mother’s lawyer said dryly.

“Yeah, I’ll be quick, I have some incriminating text messages I think you’ll be interested in?”

The sound of rustling papers paused. “Go on…?”

“Dad just told me to lie to the judge,” Angie explained, twirling a thin ribbon of caramel around her spoon. “And to coach Eric to lie to the judge. I took screenshots.”

Anika cursed softly under her breath. “Thank you for telling me. Send them to your mom, okay? Thank you.”

“Yeah, no problem.”

The bell above the ice cream parlor door jingled, and Angie perked up as both Damian (Raph?) and Erin walked in. She waved them over, grinning when both pairs of eyes widened at her treat.

“That thing’s half the size of your head,” Erin pointed out.

“Sure is, you guys came just in time.” Angie nudged it across the table, along with the two extra spoons. “If we split it, I’ll have enough room for a milkshake chaser.”

“You’re a monster,” Damian said delightedly. “Oh shit, are those Heath bars?” He dug in without waiting for an answer.

“They’re peanut butter cups,” she said solemnly, once he’d taken a bite and could probably tell they weren’t. “I added them just to hurt you.” Damian rolled his eyes and dug his spoon back in.

Erin stared at her, probably still baffled by the gentle banter, but at least she looked more curious than infuriated, like instead of being suspicious she simply didn’t know what to make of Angie.

“So, you guys talked?” Angie asked carefully. “Are we… all good?”

“I think so,” Damian replied, shooting a cautious glance at Erin.

“You’re on thin ice,” Erin informed her as she helped herself to the chocolate scoop.

“Fair.” Angie didn’t remember Erin putting up quite as much of a fight, but then, it had been years when they’d reconnected before. This time around, it was still fresh.

“The ice cream helps,” Erin added, slightly muffled by the spoon in her mouth.

“Noted.” Angie paused, weighed her options, and shrugged. No harm no foul, probably. “Hey, you’re a musician, right?”

Erin swallowed. “Yeah, why?”

“And not just a performer, but you write music too, right?”

“Yeeaaah?” Erin squinted suspiciously. Beside her, Damian shot Angie a warning glare.

“If I give you half a tune, could you resolve it?”

Erin was staring at her like she’d grown a second head. “Probably.”

“Great!” Angie hummed the earworm from earlier. “How would the next part go?”

Erin repeated it to herself, nodding along. After a moment, she said, “Probably like—”

And sure enough, there it was. The rest of the chorus’s tune came rushing back to Angie’s memory, and she breathed a sigh of relief. 

“Thanks! That was driving me nuts.” Angie returned to her banana split, ignoring Damian’s growing scowl.

Later, when Erin was in the bathroom and  Angelique was standing in line to order her promised milkshake, Damian dug his elbow into her side. “You’re not as slick as you think you are,” he muttered.

“What?” Angie said innocently. “I didn’t give anything away.”

“You just taught her half the chorus of a song she’s eight years away from writing!”

“I’ve planted a seed,” Angie insisted. “I’ve created a stable time loop.”

“That is not what you did and you know it.” Damian pursed his lips, clearly trying to stay annoyed with her. “I barely avoided spoiling her transition, and that’s after she asked me to my face.”

Angie grinned. “So you haven’t told her she’s a genderfluid punk rocker yet?”

“No. Because she’s not a genderfluid punk rocker yet.”

“And now, when she becomes one,” Angie said with a smile, “she’s going to look back on this day and laugh.”

[didnt-hear-cold-as-you-live]

hm. I don't know how to say this but like. I reblogged a post earlier today about least favorite album, and after reading that more than half the tags said Midnights and TTPD, I've just been thinking. I'm glad for Taylor that she doesn't have to do promo or interviews, and she doesn't have to do full-fledged eras anymore, and I get and appreciate that she's the biggest she's ever been, right now, in this moment, when she's not employing that stuff. but it's interesting to me also that her size currently is largely in part to re-records, celebrating past eras, and to the Eras Tour.... neither of which would be capable of existing if not for the effort she had previously put in to eras, appearances, interviews, etc, and having branding for each album that actually gets seen through; creating worlds and universes out of each album (as opposed to TTPD and a lesser extent Midnights, which, to me and I think a lot of others, are just 2 collections of music. and the worlds that they "create", which seemed promising in the beginning, didn't really... carry through for an extended period of time). Like a part of being an albums artist is not just recording albums, but it's also... making those albums entire universes? Carrying the aesthetic of the album wherever you're seen / etc, doing appearances and exciting things for fans and releasing content that fits in the world of the album. It honestly made sense for that to be minimal with folklore and evermore because, as pandemic albums, that kind of... fit?

But content-wise, TTPD literally may as well be a pandemic album. I loved the world the Fortnight video created. But that's.... it. I miss hearing her talk about her work, I miss her on socials embodying that work in various ways, I miss fan-oriented cool things. and like again I get that that's not necessary for her now, but it's weird that that's literally how she got where she is, and why she's beloved in this moment. But I wonder.... will that continue if she never has a proper era again? Like I don't think anyone's going to look back and be nostalgic about TTPD or Midnights even (they will think back on this time because of Eras, but it's not about the album whatsoever) in the way look back on 1989 / rep / speak now / Lover etc. And it sucks because tbh sonically TTPD is my favorite record of hers, but I'm such an album person and this album being like, one (pretty non-cohesive except it's in black and white) photoshoot and one video and legit nothing else, it's really... hard to love it the way I've loved her other albums. Even single covers just being random tour photos or already-used shots from the album booklet! It feels like gearing up for something and then slamming the breaks the second it gets going.

[minaaaawaaaa]

Reblog/comment with your favorite things in South Park *fanon media. Here's some of mine, pairing-related separated since some people don't really care for that, which is totally fine

Craig being partly Peruvian (derived from Pandemic I & II); either not Thomas's or Laura's biological son and half-siblings with Tricia. Also him just being tall asf; I think his dad is supposed to be taller than the average adult male character. Also Craig balding early in adulthood LOL

Plot twist villain Cartman in larger-scale-plot fics

Also, Cartman still earning God's wrath when he really, really deserves it

Kyle being the absolute fussiest little shit you've ever seen, at any age, for good reason usually. This is pretty canon, but still it's important to maintain

I think it's never directly put out there in canon besides Tweek's name being so terrible, but the Tweaks have definitely had Tweek and half the town on meth for years

Tweek being super artsy and those practices helping him relax; visual arts, music, sewing/crotchet, etc.

Clyde Donovan, the most sensitive crybaby football player of All Time

Quarterback Stan, regardless of high school/college/NFL level

It's so sad but longtime-alcoholic-since-10 Stan :( I still love him

Not sure when/where it became popular as it isn't too evident in canon, but the weird Craig and Kenny often being pothead frenemies thing? Idk when or why it started but it's pretty fun

Burnout yet extremely dependable Kenny working a ton in high school and often shooting for custody of his little sister Karen once of legal age. Also him being a scientific/mathematical genius but never applying it to prioritize Karen's comfort and safety instead. Also him being super clean given his family situation

Stan being the 5-in-1 body wash friend and Kyle being a major skin care girlie

When ppl draw them in the show's style and when they make them actually look like they're 9

Adaptation of the wackier canon events into a more realistic context like maintaining Butters's eye injury through other means, Kenny being gone for extended periods of time, Stan secretly taking in animals, still playing superheroes. I recently read an anger management counseling fic where Cartman bit off a guy's finger in an argument which I assumed was a Scott Tenorman Must Die reference

Pairing-related

Tweek being closer to the Tuckers than his own parents; his own house being tidier but the Tuckers' being much more of a home

Craig's been gay since 2007, Season 11 episode 8, "Le Petit Tourette." No straight reason for asking to do "the coolest kid in the world's" laundry. Has a type for twitchy dudes--Thomas from that same episode and then his relationship with Tweek

Cartman's demented-ass crush on Kyle; Kyman shipper or not, that kid's got bigass issues. I do not ship Kyman but Eric's got a fucked up little obsession with Kyle. Bro saved his family from deadly L.A. smug because he couldn't live happily without having Kyle there to constantly argue with

Stan being the one to be super down bad for Kyle yet also be the one with more issues in the relationship. I love Stan but dude has way too much of Randy in him, he's gotta be a pain in the ass

Only Kenny calling Butters "Leo," with most characters not recognizing his actual name being Leopold; being sort of popular as a secretive background relationship and Kenny being very protective

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Noticed that none of the widely known Dino’s aren’t in the competetion…..which is honestly good cause the trex would have absolutely swept

So actually this is our 6th dinosaur march madness! (5th, technically, anyway). We've been doing this for ages, ever since I got inspired by a similar thing on twitter (mammals, not dinosaurs)!

Year one was way back in 2016 - we used to use google polls to run the competition! We had people narrow down their fave dinosaurs by general group (ie ones closely related to each other) and then duked it out. Believe it or not, T. rex didn't make it into the first year! That'll remain wild for me, but Yutyrannus was the tyrannosaur. Ultimately, the Common Raven won, which makes a significant amount of sense for tumblr

Year two (2017) we only allowed in contestants that hadn't made the bracket the year before - this was a weird year, because Maiasaura won, and I s2g, I don't think it should have, I think people just voted for it because it's my (Meig, the main ADAD guy) favorite dinosaur. What can ya do...

Year three (2018) we only allowed in things that hadn't been in EITHER bracket EITHER year - this allowed for a lot of weirdos to show up, and the ultimate winner was Halszkaraptor, the first known goose-raptor-thing (like Natovenator this year)!

Year four (2019) - DMM Allstars! It was a bunch of competitors that had made it into the bracket the other three years, but didn't win outright. Amargasaurus won that year! It's a close cousin of Bajadasaurus in this year's bracket

Year five (2020 - note all the prep happens BEFORE March...) we switched it up and did Triassic March Madness - not technically dinosaurs, just a bunch of really weird critters from one of the weirdest times in Earth's history - Postosuchus won though, even though its not that weird, because the art made it look like a puppy. What can ya do.

Then we took a break because I was starting grad school again, moving across the country, bunch of the rest of the team also doing literally the same two things to whatever extent it applied to them, and also that whole pandemic thing

And now we have DMM: Rising Stars, where we take the opportunity to highlight dinosaurs that had come out since the last competition new ones would have showed up in (2018) - hence its a bunch of dinosaurs y'all haven't heard of! What a great opportunity to share new science and make DMM even more interesting!

Plus it gave me and @albertonykus more opportunities to brag about the birds (Anachronornis and Asteriornis respectively) we've named during that same time period XD

We want to do Permian Madness eventually like we did Triassic, because the Permian is also super weird. Another year we might do Fossil Birds, because often the birds that got voted in those first four years were living species and a lot of fossil birds haven't had their time in the spotlight in my very biased fossil-bird-researcher opinion. We have a lot of ideas, and frankly the excitement that is not having to use a third party (google) with the addition of tumblr polls means prehistory-march-madness will continue for a while!

[spurgie-cousin]

I’m about to go through the process of changing my last name too and the thought of having to get new documents for everything would have me also saying “I don’t think so” if someone ever told me I had to go back to my maiden name.

My mom had my father’s last name for 2 years after they divorced because she had extra licenses and degrees and stuff under that name, and when she started dating again she decided not to go back to her maiden name because she figured she would marry again and have to change all of the documents anyway. Like…going through the process once, going through it again to go back to maiden name, going through it a third time if you remarry? Nah at that point I’m making up a new last name and the new husband is going to have to take that one and we BOTH do the paperwork.

Good luck with your name changing process, I did a lot of mine during the pandemic lol so I truly, genuinely hope it's easier these days. I wouldn't wish calling social security in 2021 on my worst enemy.

Yea it's a pain in the ass, and honestly if you're an emo cry baby like me there are unexpected hard things that pop up. Like replacing the SS card I'd had since birth made me weirdly emotional lol (I kept it). My maiden name is actually incorporated into my full name but I often can't include the entire name when I sign stuff bc my name is looong now, so signing something for the first time w/ a shorter, different version of my name made me feel some type of way too. Just little things like that that I didn't expect.

And none of that is because I regretted my decision or anything, it was just me adjusting to a significant change. and now my "new" name is a part of my identity in a significant way, beyond just that I share it with someone, so it would be a similar, difficult adjustment period to ever change it again in the future. I feel like that's just where Olivia's at and I don't understand why that's so weird to people.

Like your mom, my mom had my dad's name for years after their divorce, and she told me it was because "that's the only name I've ever had as you and your brother's mom, that's a huge part of who I am". That feels similar to what olivia said in the sense that Plath is the only name she's had since being out of her parents house and on a path to independence, ya know?

[thelooniemoonie]

Look at how far we've come (Happy 25th birthday to me!)

I'm gonna put some of my thoughts under the cut here, so if you wanna hear me reflect or get personal for a second feel free to scroll past. (CW: mentions of suicide, and other dark topics)

I'm writing this the day or so before queuing this so by the time you read it it will be my birthday but I'm writing this on like. Wednesday

And...well? I guess I'm turning 25? I know it's technically a big milestone because it's like 25% through your life or whatever, but it feels....kinda weird? Like, "oh, I guess I'm turning 25."

I don't quite know how to explain how I'm feeling. It's not necessarily bad? I know we live in a world that puts a lot of unnecessary pressure on age and getting older, but i don't really care about that kinda stuff like getting grey hairs or wrinkles. But this is a new feeling.

It's more like....the feeling of realization once you reflect a bit. A lot of stuff has happened over the past few years, but once you actually turn and look back all of the events you lived through, you kinda realize how much you've grown. Going step by step, day by day, and only realizing once you turn around that you've climbed an entire mountain.

Back when I was 12 years old, I attempted to kill myself.

At the time, the future felt like a dark fog with nothing ahead in sight. I was living in dangerous abusive conditions with my father, severely depressed, and actively spiralling with my own identity, let alone my place in the world. The future was nonexistent.

Now...when I reflect back on that period of my life, it feels like worlds away now.

(Also don't worry if you're reading this and feel concern for me, I haven't felt any suicidal feelings in practically a decade now. I'm sure as hard things may seem sometimes, I genuinely am miles away from that headspace and do not intend to hurt myself in any way.)

It's kinda weird knowing back when I was younger (which isn't that long ago, to be fair) that I already felt like my life was over. Like I just wasn't gonna get into university, I was gonna drop out, I'm gonna have to navigate the entire trajectory of my life in that deep fog.....

.....and now realizing where I am? It's weird. Like I didn't plan for any of this. I should be dead. I'm just winging this entire thing.

But.... it's also realizing that I'm gonna be fine.

To be perfectly honest, this year has been kinda rough for me. While I don't talk about my personal life too much on here I was pretty miserable the first 4 months due to getting screwed over during the start of my Masters, plus not seeing my irl friends for a while hasn't been ideal either. (I also feel kinda shitty complaining about these things in general, as I'm well aware these kinds of opportunities are things not everyone is able to get, and I know there's friends and others that have it worse off than me, so I just kinda keep that shit to myself)

But I've also come a long way haven't I? I've managed to graduate in the middle of a pandemic, managed to land a job helping the covid pandemic in my province, got my drivers licence, made memories with the ones I love and meeting new people, slowly becoming more independent and now doing climate change research for my Masters degree? It's...something.

It's kinda the feeling of your world being very small, like a tiny space where the fog obscures anything outside your view, and slowly it fading away and your world getting bigger. Like sure I can't 100% see the future, but it's important to reflect on knowing what that world was like before.

I wish I had something poetic here or a message or life lesson to articulate my thoughts. But that doesn't really work here. (I'm also being careful to focus on positive aspects of my life here, as it wouldn't really be great to focus on the more negative aspects, like that time I almost died again (this time not on purpose, I promise) in a car crash in 2020 or a really bad breakup I had with a group of friends. But I suppose that's just life, isn't it? You really get a wide variety of experiences, good or bad)

I can't really say my life is 100% improved at this point either, things still aren't perfect as I'm still living with my mom, a closeted queer, and I'm sure there's a lot that I still need to learn and considering, the uh, well (vaguely gestures at all the current events going on right now) stuff....going on........there's still a lot of work to be done.

Dandelions in the spring. A shining moon on a dark night. The first seedling after a forest fire. Fading scars. Light from a birthday candle held in your hands, carrying wishes in the wind long after they burn out.

Hope, I guess.

Anyway if you read this far here's my official adult™ tips from my experience:

If you wear jewellery that tarnishes quickly line a bowl with tinfoil shiny side up, place jewellery in the bowl with equal parts baking soda and salt, and pour boiling water over everything and leave for 5 minutes

Invest in a cushion that supports your tailbone. You have no idea how many office chairs have shit ergonomic design.

[worms-in-my-brain]

Oh boy do I actually have a story for this account that I nearly completely forgot until I thought more about the subject of anti-maskers.

So this was maybe two years ago, during a really bad COVID spike in my city. But it was towards the ‘end’ of the pandemic (well. It hasn’t ended but it was towards when people started calling it the ‘end’) so people were starting to be… worse… about wearing masks. Anyway, I was at the grocery store. It was reaaaally crowded, and despite most people there wearing masks, there were still a good portion not wearing them, so I was a little impatient to leave.

So I’m in the super long line. Luckily the people around me are wearing masks. Except… the person in front of my has their nose out of their mask.

So I’m thinking. Do I say something. Because come on, we’ve been doing this for years, it’s not hard. But also I don’t want to like Get Into a Confrontation. But I look at this person, they have dyed hair and cool earrings and generally look queer. I kinda sigh with relief and think, oh, this person is probably not, like, super conservative, luckily I can probably say something.

So I say, “excuse me?” and they turn around to look at me. “Sorry, would you mind pulling your mask over your nose?”

Now I’m not gonna lie I don’t remember word for word what happened next because I ended up dissociating hardcore. But I do remember that they got, like, mad. Like they started yelling at me and shit. Something along the lines of, “oh yeah? You want me to pull it up? What, are you scared? Are you scared?” Surprised, I made the mistake of. Responding. I said something like, “well, yeah, it’s not that big a deal?” And that SET THEM OFF!! They pulled their mask on and started trying to get super close to me.

Now keep in MIND that I am disabled and while I don’t know for sure if I’m immunocompromised or anything, I do have weird nebulous lung issues, and have had periods where I’ve been sick for like. A year. So I did NOT want to get COVID (for good reason, when I got it a few months ago it left me with long COVID…).

So I have this person trying to get all up in my space and I’m guiltily moving really close to the people in front of me. I try to keep a lot of space between us. But even though I literally do not open my mouth from then on, they keep. Harassing me. Yelling at me, and if I so much as GLANCE in their general direction they start trying to get in my personal space. Like it got so bad that a woman with her son next to me pulled him closer to her because of the ire of this person.

I am autistic and I started to get very overwhelmed. Mostly typical dissociation stuff, but I must have been visibly, like, upset or something because a worker at the grocery store CAME UP AND MOVED ME TO THE FRONT OF THE LINE.

This did NOT make the person happy. And the one time I tried to subtly glance back to see what they were doing as I was checking out, I found them staring daggers at me. Ofc they immediately noticed me even though I tried as hard as possible to be subtle, and they started yelling at me from ACROSS THE STORE.

Anyway so I got out of there ASAP.

Moral of the story is that people are weird and anti-maskers like that are truly the scum of the earth and make life way more difficult and dangerous for every single disabled person out there.

Like I literally was in disbelief the whole time, thinking, I wouldn’t even believe this if I read it online. I can’t believe things like this actually happen. So yeah anyone who doesn’t believe this. I totally understand lmao. But also be careful out there… pls learn from my mistakes 🙇

[valyrfia]

so rough summary of lestappen without dates because im not that knowledge

so born same year. 13 days apart, both libras

started karting, met there, famous interviews , the famous inchident,

max went to single seaters (? like f3 if im not mistaken, again dont really knowledged about the actual motor sport periods that they went through)

charles remained in karting longer (1?2? years)

max got into f3 then straight to f1 in 2016 so they kinda didnt have tangents till charles came to f1 in 2018

at first, like in charles' rookie year, they were like not really friends? but they were talking in interviews about their karting days and whatnot so they were acknowledging eachother but never more than 2 sentences in an interview or a quick chat in the paddock

now, 2019, whole another story

in 2019 charles got to ferrari so he was in a more competitive car (illegal but still competitive)

so they had some fights on the track

most notably, austria 2019, imo the moment lestappen actually started (well the inchident can also be considered a start but i think austria 2019 is more, hm, important? a spark formed there between them so)

so austria. austria would have been the race where charles would have gotten his first win in f1. the place he could prove he deserved the seat at ferrari. but it was already doomed when max made his appearance. i cant recall correctly what happened, and honestly i dont care who pushed off track who and who was in the right, all that matters is that charles was pissed and furious while looking so tempted to murder max on the podium.

charlie boy didnt even spared a glance at max when he was celebrating with champagne, on top of the world, he literally left stomping away.

the thing is, its funny how 2 grown man, who knew each other for such a long time, acted so childish, charles being so annoyed and max being so stubborn and not admitting that he could have done wrong

naturally, they unfollowed eachother on instagram. you know, like adults

but the real and actual hilarious part is that after the race, they both went back home (monaco), in the same plane, so you can guess that there was, aham, tension

but anyway, later that season, charles got his wins and max was getting whatever he could (2019, not a really good year for redbull but what can you do)

2 salty grown man who could hold grudges only like childhood acquaintances

this weird tension and rivalry got to a point where, when in the pandemic, when every driver was doing streams on twitch while sim racing (including these two), they got to play together at some point. the drivers were planning virtual races with eachother, and playing games with eachother. everyone got along and it was all fun. our 2 main characters werent exactly on speaking terms so in most cases they would ask lando to send eachother messages and memes (not frequently but we do know at some point they did ask lando to send stuff to the other)

in 2020 i actually dont remember anything well big happening between them

2021 of course was kinda busy for max because of the championship battle with lewis but if i remember correctly at some point charles praised max and called him talented and a part of his childhood and his rival. honestly i was busy that season, being more focused on the battle so i didnt follow charles and his interviews

now

now 2022 comes

the year of our lord, 2022

ferarri? a compromising car

redbull? reliability issues (at the start of the season)

mercedes? fucking terrible, was clearly not a contender

of course the fate made them two the main rivals of this season

so the battle started strong between lestappen, because what do you expect from 2 people who entire narration of their lives is that they are childhood rivals

charles won the first couple of races, at some point expanding his lead with 50 or something points ahead of max

it honestly looked like an truly iconic title fight, but fuck ferrari and their management of everything and so im not gonna talk about how much they screwed up and got me cursing them out every race. im not. ...

ok so notable lestappen 2022 moments

austria 2022. man everyone called the podium celebrating soft porn and i cant agree more. just. how

every podium they shared and every cooldown room and every Thursday media day they shared. they just delivered something. everytime they got together

oh and maxplain. it started simple really. max had some issues with the car and charles asked what happened after the race and thats how maxplaining was born.

they started to share their opinions on every aspect of the race (well mostly max, charles was content to just listening. which, slay, let your man nerd out)

they started to speak highly of each other so frequently, so much, every race, if they got the chance to talk about the other they would do it

they would joke about their childhood and about how they actually deeply disliked eachother , about how they grew up and started to replace that dislike with respect and understanding and sympathy.

i just cant put into words how interesting their relationship is, how interesting they develop still to this day

max talked about how they would be racing for another 10 15 year together

its so, poetic? took out straight out of a book

they are so iconic frfr.

ugh 2023 has been so lame without the weekly lestappen propaganda

so i cant wait for them to get to race again as they did in 2022

anywayyy hope this wasnt boring and long and lame, my apologies if it was, i just took my thoughts out from my brain and threw them here. i hope they have just a little coherence.

these two truly have more moments that i could have mentioned but i cant really remember. they have too many tbh

anyway yes. lestappen 🔛🔝

this is the most incredible answer to my plea anon, thank you so much.

i'm just getting into f1 so i knew some but i didn't know a lot but my jaw DROPPED. what do you mean they're only born 13 days apart, they grew up together not quite liking each other but also destined to forever be on the same path

i went and watched the austria 2019 and 2022 podiums and i cannot make this shit up literally typing it out just feels like fanfic, it feels poetic. the CONTRAST with their worst and best moment being at the same race? jesus

i was a believer before, but now i'm pious. you've fully converted me. with the sheer amount of history between them there was never going to be room for indifference. the idea of the other person being their only true equal god i eat that shit UP i fear these two are going to haunt my brain for a while

[auricbound]

im not rbing the post solely because i kind of interact with the younger side of the fma fandom as part of my job for a moderator of a big discord but i do wanna be able to talk about this like. somewhat as part of the whole thing i went through. little bit introspective but i think it's an important perspective to have as someone on the younger end who interacts with Both Sides.

also just kinda dumpy. nonsense ahead. i'm very mentally ill. it goes off track but im sure you can see my points in there. somewhere. i guess.

back then i was kinda like. still freshly 18 ? and i joined the rpc because i got my brainrot (which actually is a special interest i just didnt know i was autistic at the time but that's besides the point). and i was very, very desensitized to certain parts of the internet. except i was still ... vulnerable. very much so.

ignoring the fact the pandemic happened right during my highschool graduation in 2020 (meaning i was still a minor at the time), i kinda was. still rockin with my youthful energy ! and ignorance. and naivete.

i guess a good way to say it is: i was 18, but that's still ... not an adult. not really. it's a young adult. people older than me should've seen me as kind of that weird younger sibling, but instead i was made out to be a full-on same-age peer - and that ... caused issues. a lot. mainly in the bond i had with someone and how unhealthy it became because we "clicked" even though this person is 14 years older than me.

"you're mature for your age." please don't EVER say that to someone, period - but especially so in my case, because i was a young adult and i was just barely figuring out where i was in the world alongside years of built-up autistic burnout and stress finally imploding. i was only 18. i still didn't feel anywhere near "grown up" and quite frankly i still don't - that's just kinda the curse of having major life milestones during major world events.

but we wrote stuff. dark stuff. stuff i have never and will never share on the blog, nor will i ever speak about except to specific people - at least, until i'm READY to ever go public about it for one reason or another. point is - i was 18. i held my fault in broaching the topic in the first place - however gently it was - but it was even more on the fault of the other person, 14 years older than me, for never shutting it down and in fact encouraging and adding to it all. this would have been fine if things didn't explode the way they did, but - well, they exploded.

really bad. to the point that i was actively gaslit and i genuinely believed myself to be a problem because surely, it was all my fault. they had made it OUT to be my fault. i was told i was obsessed with control and that i needed help - all by someone that much older than me, all by someone who insisted that it was a black and white of child or adult, no inbetween. i couldn't ask for things only a child would get because i was an adult and i had to act like it. and that's just - not a healthy way to be. at all. ever.

just ... please, if you're going to have the age of 18 be your limit, please be mindful of the vulnerabilities of people RIGHT at that limit. i want the older folks to be mindful that we're still all figuring stuff out and we can and will fuck up sometimes - just like EVERYONE ELSE does, only maybe a little bit more unstably.

don't expect us to be perfect. in that same breath, please SHUT US DOWN if we push too far on something - we need clear boundaries, and boundaries like that were never SET with me because of the other party engaging actively. it's a complicated, fucked up mess ; i don't want anyone else to be hurt the way i did, nor do i want anyone to hurt people the way they hurt me.

i wasn't given that luxury. i was taken advantage of, and i don't ever, EVER want anyone else to go through that. this is why i'm still hesitant of people that much older than me - but i haven't even really begun to cover it all, and i don't really want to do that yet. it's hard to put these thoughts together to begin with without feeling indescribable rage at how long i had suppressed those memories that proved i wasn't at fault, not in the way i was said to be.

use that emotional maturity you have for the better. see us like little siblings, the same way peers can exist in different age groups but still communicate with eachother. just ...

be calm. and understanding. have your boundaries and ENFORCE THEM, and be kind while doing so unless given good reason otherwise. if you make 18 your limit, please treat anyone within that age range with the same respect you'd give just a newbie college student. don't ... expect full people out of us. not yet.

the pandemic fucked up everything. the economy sucks. the world is dying, and we're the ones left with it - so please just ... be kind. especially since people younger than i am are getting progressively less safety-literate. even for my generation specifically i'm on the higher end of safe, but i still was hurt by someone older than me - just not in the way most people would think of if i ever used the word for what actually happened. and that's a problem.

please, please set your boundaries. be EXPLICIT about them. do not be vague because odds are, none of them have the life experience to read between the lines like that yet. we don't have life experience period - even 20 is still so young.

i was 18 then. i turned 19 right at the end of it all. and i dealt with that for 3 whole years, all of it blaming myself in secret - until recently, that is. that talk was eye-opening and life-altering. i want to be a pillar now because of it - someone that those younger than me can turn to for help, but someone that those older than me can talk to to be able to bridge some kind of gap between them and the young adults.

i was 18 then. i don't believe anyone here will be as irresponsible as them - but i have to say this, regardless, because i may be their only victim with this experience. i was 18 then, and i've changed since - but i'm still young, still learning.

let us learn, so that you can learn from us too. we gotta work together to foster a safe community for everyone involved.

[truceisawordmadeofvelvet]

Gonna dump this stream of consciousness here…. If you read this, you are a gem. I love all of you beautiful souls on here and want to start sharing more personal content…

I had the best weekend visiting a beloved friend in NYC who I hadn’t seen in 2 years. She is one of the coolest and most beautiful people I have ever met, and I miss her a lot of the time. We roomed together in college. As a pretty extreme introvert, it was such a gift to live with someone whose presence was actually as welcome and comfortable to me as my own usually is.

She stayed by my side during a season where I lost so many friendships I had cherished during a dark period of my life around the pandemic, where I had strayed so far from my deepest values. Out of every poor decision I’ve ever made, one that I made that year is something I’d do anything to take back. I will always be grateful for her loyalty and (undeserved) grace.

She is one of the most forgiving, open-hearted people I know. Fun, bright, driven, generous, caring, creative, confident, up-to-the-minute, adventurous, independent, gorgeous, and cool… It’s a weird thing to say about my best friend for whom I’ve only ever felt profound respect and platonic love for, but I would love to have a partner or wife like her one day.

I finally came out to her this weekend, and she was so supportive. We went to a lesbian bar (my first time at one), had an amazing time (didn’t expect people to hit on me because I’m so femme I look straight & felt ecstatic when some breathtaking women did!), and stayed out all night. I live in the burbs, and I sometimes wonder how my life would be in a city.

I ended up drinking alcohol for the first time in 3 years, 2 months, and 20 days. I don’t regret either long-term sobriety or choosing to end it. I’d never go back to daily drinking, and while I definitely had a problem, I refrained for long enough to limit it to social occasions now (which are almost never for me, lol). Drinking is fun for a night, but being sober is so life-giving.

I see the AA mentality (once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic) as offensively limited, deterministic, and dualistic. There is a lot more nuance with human behavior, so I believe finding balance is possible in most cases.

I know this is getting long, but I think part of the reason M is in my life is to open my heart. I have so much fear-based guardedness & my life is so damn comfortable (living at home… as thankful as I will always be for my parents’ generosity, I miss out on a lot). She reminds me that there’s a whole world beyond my small bubble and that some risks are worth it.

She was raised in another country, and she’ll get married soon- there for sure and hopefully here, too. Traveling is not my thing (Saturn in the 3rd house makes travel tough for me… I know that’s more about short-distance, but long-distance is unappealing to me, too). Yet, we shook on it that I’d do it for her. There’s no one else I would consider leaving US soil for, lol.

Anyway, I’ll be 30 in October and need to think hard about where I want to be in 5 years. I am terrified of becoming more independent (my phobia of driving on highways and such & apprehensions about living alone in some city), but I know I’ll finally have the financial capacity to do so after grad school. I’m considering moving to a city then…

[turtlethon]

Reflections & The Road Ahead

ABOVE: The Turtles make a promotional appearance in the UK, circa 1990. These puffy versions of the green teens showed up on TV and in the press often during Turtlemania, and resemble the characters as they were depicted on licensed Hero Turtles items during that era.

I’m old enough at this point to feel comfortable in saying that life is full of periods of awkward re-adjustment, where the world moves around you and it can take a while to find your bearings. You go to school for years and it feels like it’ll never end, then one day you’re just... done. A day job that perhaps you feel like you’ll be doing until you reach old age and keel over abruptly ends for whatever reason, and suddenly your routine is gone, leaving you wondering what to do with yourself. 

Years ago, on a whim, I made the decision to re-watch the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon from the beginning and live-tweet about it over on the birdsite. Things were stop-start in the beginning, but at some point during the pandemic the project began gathering momentum. The threads got longer, my need to point out every weird little thing that happens in any given Turtles episode outgrowing the format of a Twitter thread. And so, almost exactly two years ago, Turtlethon made the jump to Tumblr, and in short order the format for each entry began to take shape: a beat-for-beat walk through a single episode of TMNT, complete with screengrabs and the occasional video clip, and an analysis of why that particular adventure does (or doesn’t) land, typically 2,000 words in length, longer still if it’s really good – or exceptionally bad. 

In time, we settled into a routine: two new entries would appear every week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Sticking with that turned out to be an undertaking that I vastly underestimated the scope of early on, and there were times where the obligation to write about, screencap, edit and post about Turtles became exhausting, but I didn’t want this to be a project I abandoned halfway through. It was of the utmost importance to me to persevere, to get to the end no matter what. 

Now that day has been and gone. We watched Splinter hurriedly declare the Turtles to be his equals, the credits rolled, and honestly it was all underwhelming. Upon further reflection, there’s no doubt there was more story to be told – there's no way Mung angrily telling Dregg he’d gone mad was the intended payoff to him getting pushed around all season – and presumably that’s something we would’ve seen followed up on had the show returned in 1997. But that’s not the world we live in, and so instead, we have to assess Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as it is: the 192 (or 193) adventures that were broadcast, which we can now observe as one overarching body of work. And I guess now all that’s left to ask is... what even was TMNT ‘87? Beyond the obvious and most cynical analysis – that it was initially an effort to promote a line of action figures, before becoming the heart of the Turtles business empire in its own right – what, if anything, was the series about? What was it trying to communicate to those of us who grew up watching it? 

Peel away that initial "toy cartoon" layer of interpretation, and the next observation is perhaps only slightly less world-weary: it’s about communicating the idea that the Turtles are cool, to create adventures that will be compelling to kids, ensure they keep coming back and hopefully convince them to explore the other facets of the franchise too. Early on, the show was successful in these respects commercially, but from a creative standpoint it took a while to find its feet. Through the first three years the Turtles were first and foremost a unit, rarely getting to venture beyond their respective descriptions in the theme song. Leonardo leads, Donatello does machines, Raphael is... not exactly rude but certainly quippy, and Michaelangelo is indeed a party dude, whose pizza fixation sometimes appears to reach “this guy genuinely has a problem” territory. (It’s remarkable how integral pizza is to the first seven seasons of the show, only for it to be abandoned completely in the Red Sky era: I’m sure there must have been a strict “NO PIZZA” edict handed down from S8 onward that explains why the series ended on an ill-fitting popcorn gag instead.) One of the common themes explored in the Turtlethon entries for the golden era episodes is that Shredder, Krang, Rocksteady & Bebop make the show work comedically in the early goings, in part because they’re allowed to be flawed and vulnerable: meanwhile the Turtles are constrained by that need to be super cool dudes, the world’s most fearsome fighting team. 

With the success of the show assured around season four, we finally begin to see a willingness to explore who the Turtles are beyond those base traits conveyed in the theme song. I’d argue that in this incarnation of the series, Leonardo is the member of the group whose personality adheres closest to what the team were when originally conceived for the Mirage comic: he’s a ninja first and foremost, even memorably declaring his intent to finish off Shredder in the first season. Season three’s “Take Me to Your Leader” explores how the burden of leadership weighs upon him but it’s the following year where he’s fully rounded out, the pros and cons of his overbearing strictness explored in “Leonardo Lightens Up”, while his competitive nature turns compulsive in “Leonardo Versus Tempestra”. More than anything, his role is to serve as an anchor, ensuring TMNT stays somewhere in the neighbourhood of being an action-adventure cartoon and doesn’t float off into complete tomfoolery. 

Raphael is the inverse of Leonardo, encompassing everything that makes the Fred Wolf TMNT what it is – for better or worse. He’s the goofball, the one typically given the task of breaking the fourth wall, and if anything is actively pushing against what Leo is here to achieve. With his incessant zingers, Raph is the embodiment of everything that purists who resent the show for not being a faithful recreation of the Mirage comic dislike about it, a situation exacerbated by the fact that the 1987 cartoon version of the character is such an outlier, eschewing the angry, brooding depiction of him seen almost everywhere else. This idea that there’s something inauthentic about Fred Wolf Raph is so pervasive that modern media and merchandise based around the MWS show often skews towards making him “the angry one” instead of the wise guy. It’s an unfortunate bit of revisionist history that loses sight of the fact that 1987 Raph is wildly popular, perhaps now more than ever. The fans who like him really like his witty retorts, outings such as his memorable romance with Mona Lisa, and the entertaining performances from Rob Paulsen that brought him to life. His value is in keeping things light, and in doing so he differentiates TMNT from the earnest action cartoons that preceded it. 

Okay, but if Raph is the fun one, where does that leave Michaelangelo? I’d argue that his depiction as the team’s “party dude” is merely window-dressing, a means to convey what makes him marketable but which doesn’t really get at what makes him tick, in part because as alluded to above, in the early days of the show none of this stuff had been thought out. Anyone watching seasons one, two and much of season three would be forgiven for seeing him as one-dimensional, the cowabunga guy. Pizza, pizza, pizza. Dude, dude, dude. These aspects of him can be... grating, to be certain, when watching the series as an adult. Eventually we start to occasionally see beyond this. There’s a sense that Mikey is the youngest member of the team, even if there’s nothing in the show itself directly confirming this: by extension he’s the most innocent, sensitive, and personable member of the group, the one who’d be most likely to befriend you and invite you into the Lair if you were to encounter him, rather than viewing you as a threat. Michaelangelo is both the most “human” Turtle and the one who displays the greatest longing to live as a human, something seen in episodes such as season three’s “The Gang’s All Here” and the following year’s “Poor Little Rich Turtle”. When it comes down to it, Mikey’s character is easy-going but more importantly, he’s kind. There’s an irony in him being the one whose weapons had to be excised from the show entirely, though if anything I think that only gave him a little renegade appeal over and above even the other Turtles. 

Donatello has always been my favourite Turtle, and not just for aesthetic reasons as “the purple one”: coming in from Ghostbusters as many of us did back in the day, I think it’s natural that if you were on Team Egon, you were likely to be Team Donnie, too. He's the most creative Turtle and arguably the most introspective, two qualities that also make me gravitate towards him. Putting my biases aside, he’s by far the most necessary member of the team for the series to work: his intelligence and ingenuity seem to almost always play into the climax of any episode as the Turtles scramble to stop whatever enormous threat is facing the city, and without him it’s inarguable that Leo, Mikey and Raph would have been majorly screwed countless times over the course of the show’s run. Around the mid-point of the series his accomplishments seem to go to his head, and his abilities make him vastly overpowered relative to the other Turtles. Despite this, Donnie remains the big purple cog that keeps TMNT ticking. 

The show upholds its four main characters above everything, even in situations where this becomes detrimental, and this goes hand in hand with a focus on immediacy: what anyone else is doing isn’t a concern unless it will impact the Turtles somehow, and nothing that’s happened to anyone in the past matters unless if affects the team in the present moment.  There’s an unspoken anxiety at work in TMNT that runs throughout the series, apparent even at its height: a fear that if the Turtles aren’t front and centre, chasing the macguffin of the day, then young viewers will grow bored and switch off. 

These considerations are apparent in the series from the outset, affecting even the origin of the Turtles themselves, who in this continuity go from pet turtles to their established forms in the space of seconds: they’re not allowed to grow into their teenage selves over the course of years for the same reason that only the most barebones information is conveyed to us about the Hamato Yoshi / Oroku Saki feud that led to their creation. This show isn’t about getting caught up in the details, it’s about the Turtles existing in the present moment. 

Yoshi and Saki’s ongoing rivalry is one of the most fascinating aspects of the entire series, and yet one barely explored because the show only cares about the elements of it directly relevant to the Turtles. At some unspecified point in the past Saki framed Yoshi and took control of the Foot Clan because... he was just naturally power-hungry and evil, I guess (later we learned that his mother was also villainous, so there might be something to that). There’s a huge chunk of the timeline which takes place after this of which we know little, covering Yoshi presumably stowing away on a boat and beginning a new life as a penniless refugee living in the sewers of New York. By all rights the story should end here, with Saki having vanquished his enemy and now ruling over his own turf as the head of a criminal organisation in Japan, but his inability to let go keeps things rolling: at some point he follows Yoshi to America, sets up an elaborate network to spy on him, and in a botched attempt to kill his enemy inadvertently mutates the four heroes who will ultimately be his undoing: Leonardo, Michaelangelo, Donatello and Raphael. 

Oh, and along the way Saki happened to run into a disembodied alien warlord brain from Dimension X who had himself been on Earth for an unspecified amount of time, the two bad guys forming an alliance to achieve world domination. None of these events unfold on-screen as the Turtles weren’t involved: instead, Shredder and Krang arrive fully formed, how they met and the circumstances that led to them working together are deemed unimportant. Similarly, Splinter is a wise old man whose exact age is unclear, capable of applying mystical ninja abilities that vary depending on what the plot of the day requires. 

Given how scant the details of Splinter and Shredder’s feud were, it should perhaps come as no surprise that in the end, it was never resolved in any satisfactory fashion. By the end of the series Shredder and Krang were banished to another dimension by the Turtles for the umpteenth time, but the power struggle between Splinter and Shreds over the leadership of the Foot Clan that kicked all of this off doesn’t receive any closure; to make matters worse the final three appearances of Shredder and Krang tease the idea of them becoming... well maybe not good guys, but at the very least neutral figures having been overshadowed in the evil stakes by Dregg. I think by season ten, the viewers would have been ready for that: to have Shredder and Krang perform a heroic act to stop Dregg that definitively concludes their run on the show as villains, then let them ride off into the sunset. If we’re to assume there were plans for a twelfth season, there’s no reason that Karai or another villain new to the series couldn’t take their place. 

I’m going to skip over writing about Bebop and Rocksteady here as this post is long enough as it is, and I covered their contribution to the series in the entry for “Turtle Trek”. The only thing I would add is that if anyone was truly deserving of that elusive redemption arc and/or a happy ending, it was them: this is one of the areas where the Archie TMNT comic got it right, the idea of them living peacefully on the animal-friendly Eden Worlds providing an opportunity to for the duo to move on. 

April is perhaps the most important character in the show other than the Turtles: there are plenty of episodes in the first seven years of TMNT that don’t feature Splinter, Shredder or Krang but none prior to “The Legend of Koji” that don’t incorporate her into the adventure in some capacity. She's interesting to view through a feminist lens: for a character who first appeared on TV in 1987 in a cartoon primarily marketed towards boys, not only is she integral to the proceedings but from the outset she’s her own person, a (somewhat) established career woman who just happens to cross paths with the Turtles and strike up a friendship with them. Because of that need to keep the focus on the green teens we never get to see her grow much beyond this – she likes the Turtles, she likes getting to cover anything that will make for a Great Story™, but that’s as far as it goes. There are a few rare occasions where the show will toy with having a male guest character serve as a potential love interest for her, but it’s not central to what she’s about. First and foremost, April cares about journalism and about sticking up for her friends, the Turtles, and for a cartoon from 35 years ago it’s kind of refreshing that’s she’s allowed to maintain that focus. 

Irma’s introduction to the series feels as if it was intended to play up April’s qualities by bringing in someone who in many ways is her opposite: there’s little indicator that Irma cares about her job or is any good at it in the early goings, and while April only makes occasional references to finding a partner throughout the series, Irma is obsessed. Her desire to find a man to sweep her off her feet in some paperback romance novel scenario is a constant theme throughout the first four years of the show, and I get the sense that part of the intended gag is that all of this would come easily to April if she wanted it, but for Irma – frequently inferred by the show to be frumpy or plain – such things remain perpetually out of reach. 

When it comes to Turtles discourse there sometimes seems to be borderline hostility towards Irma, perhaps in part because she’s driven by a desire for those old traditions, but I think largely based on people focusing on her appearances in those first three seasons (the only ones people tend to pay attention to, especially outside of the fandom) and viewing her on a surface level: April, so the thinking goes, is glamorous and exciting, Irma is merely her gawky sidekick. I’ve consistently gone to bat for her throughout Turtlethon’s run precisely because The Struggle is Real: Irma exists, living and growing as a flawed human being alongside the successful, infallible April and her friends, the ever-valiant Turtles. She messes up, she fails, she frequently ends up being on the receiving end of pure bad luck but through it all she keeps going, persevering in the background while the focus remains on April and the Turtles. As the show continues, we start to see her maturation, both in terms of taking on different roles within Channel 6 and the downplaying of her man-hungry antics. By the end of season seven there’s a sense that Irma has grown into a fully capable person and shed her insecurities, culminating in her brief reinvention as an action heroine and her defeat of Krang(!) in “Shredder Triumphant!” 

There’s an argument to be made that season seven should have been the end point of the series, or at least that years eight through ten ought to be viewed as merely a possible continuation, a look into how things could have continued rather than something set in stone. The truth is that aside from maybe Shredder, the core cast is served poorly by the Red Sky era: the Turtles come across as miserable throughout, April seems adrift after moving on from Channel 6, ultimately losing prominence following Carter’s introduction to the show, Bebop and Rocksteady are robbed of any semblance of personality and Irma only makes two appearances in season eight before being unceremoniously dropped entirely. I’ll freely admit that by the end of season nine, watching each episode for Turtlethon was becoming a deflating experience: by that point the spark was gone from the show, and seeing what it had become just felt sad. Happily, things improved a bit in S10, but I can’t shake the feeling that Shredder, Krang and The Boys riding off in the pick-up truck at the conclusion of season seven would have been the right time for the Turtles to bow out.

TMNT ‘87 was looked down upon from the outset by readers of the Mirage comic who saw it as sacrilege, a mockery of everything the source material was about, and once newer animated iterations came along that adhered more closely to Eastman & Laird’s vision the perception of the MWS version took an even greater hit. Ironically there are a bunch of disgruntled guys around my age – Xennials and the youngest Gen Xers – who will now swear blind that the ‘87 Turtles are the one true faith, and that any deviation from the way the team were depicted then is a disgrace. Click on any TMNT post on Instagram, especially the ones pertaining to Mutant Mayhem, and you’ll find these dudes in the comments pissing and moaning about how much better things were in their day, when the Turtles were real tough guys and manly men, which is an oddly rose-tinted perspective of a show where a significant portion of fights were won with a cream pie or pizza to the face. That’s the thing: at its heart, Turtles is a fun adventure show, one that over its run draws heavily upon martial arts tropes, sci-fi macguffin chases, aliens, monsters, dimension hopping and occasionally time travel: these concepts are all part of the DNA of the superhero comic book, and in that respect, the show is absolutely in the spirit of the Mirage comics which were themselves conceived as both a parody and a loving tribute to that artform. 

That’s it. That’s what the point of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles show is: it’s a fun adventure cartoon that might not aesthetically resemble the Mirage comics, but it has an innate understanding of how to adapt the underlying concepts of those stories into a series that connects with its target audience. 

One of my intended aims for Turtlethon, in pulling apart and analysing every episode of TMNT, has been to dispel two commonly held stances about the show that I see online all the time: 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) was never good. 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) was only good for the first five episodes, everything after that was terrible. 

People who take the first stance are harder to reach. Some of them are from that group of Mirage readers who were around back in the day and still hold a grudge, but the majority of those who hold this opinion have a wider disdain for eighties cartoons in general. They dismiss the contributions of everyone who worked on these series entirely because they were all “thinly veiled toy commercials”: to them TMNT and every other show from that era are nothing but sound and fury, signifying nothing. I hope in my analysis I’ve shown how far this is from the truth: even the clunkiest episodes of Turtles occasionally have moments where the animators go above and beyond to create impressive sequences, and when the show was at the height of its popularity during seasons three and four these teams created a lot of television on a modest budget within a short timeframe. On the writing side, over the course of the series Turtles incorporates themes into its stories of environmentalism (including climate change and conservation), how sensationalist media and wealthy individuals in positions of power can cultivate hate movements against marginalised groups, and gentrification, to name just a couple of topics off the top of my head; an entire side season was also dedicated to having the Turtles travel around Europe to be exposed to its arts, history and culture. These efforts are a drop in the ocean compared to what the Archie Comics version of TMNT was doing during this period but are respectable, nonetheless. 

The second position – that the show goes off the rails after “Shredder & Splintered” - is something you’ll hear from viewers who have perhaps purchased the first few seasons or the entire series on DVD and have started watching it, but they’re not engaged with the source material. If you’re only half-watching the show, if it’s background noise while you perform other tasks, then the visual drop-off from “Return of the Shredder” onward combined with the drudgery of the Eye of Sarnath arc might make you wonder if there’s any point in venturing further. Undoubtedly there are stretches of the series that tested even my patience: the ungainly syndicated adventures in season four, the bizarre, sometimes directionless Vacation in Europe arc, and pretty much all of season nine. There’s still great stuff in there, however: the second half of season two is far stronger than the first, season three is full of classics such as “Turtles on Trial”, “The Ninja Sword of Nowhere” and the concluding Big Trilogy, and seasons four through six have phemomenal adventures and character spotlight episode scattered throughout. Season seven – the proper season seven, not the vacation episodes – might be the strongest stretch of adventures in the entire series as TMNT regains its focus and attempts to mature in step with its original audience. There’s so much good stuff in Turtles if you stick with it, and I can’t see how anyone could watch the series in its entirety and come away thinking only season one has value unless your criteria for what makes a good cartoon comes down purely to looking cool and some vague aura of edginess. 

ABOVE: A June 1990 TV Guide cover in which Ariel from The Little Mermaid mingles with Bart Simpson, Donnie, Leo and Raph. Yes, Bart is missing his ear, but also WHY DO THE TURTLES HAVE THREE TOES WHAT THE HELL

I hope that if you’ve never actually sat down and watched the 1987 version of TMNT from beginning to end that maybe the breakdowns of each adventure I’ve cobbled together for this blog will inspire you to do so, and that if you’ve seen the show before they’ll allow you to rewatch it with additional insight. More than anything, the goal of Turtlethon has been to point out why Turtles works, while also acknowledging the times when it doesn’t. It’s lost to history now, but there was a vanishingly brief window of time – pretty much just the entire calendar year of 1990 – where the ascendancy of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in pop culture occurred in parallel to the rise of The Simpsons. The two series were linked by their indie comics origins and their anti-establishment appeal, however Simpsons was able to reinvent itself after the hype around Bart died down as one of the greatest TV series of all time by continuing to up its game and making Homer the central figure of the show. TMNT was never in a position to make that leap, hampered as it was by budgetary restraints, parental backlash and being more overtly targeted towards children, but as a body of work it still has value, and its longevity speaks to how strongly it resonated with viewers around the world. It is, in a word, tubuloso. 

---

When Turtlethon was in its early stages, I gave some consideration to what series I might like to deep-dive afterwards. I reference Transformers all the time on this blog and it’s without a doubt my First Fandom, so there’s a natural inclination for me to want to go back and examine the 98 episodes of that show. Between that and TMNT, Ghostbusters was my second major fixation, and there’s a lot of The Real Ghostbusters to explore too. 

The natural extension of our journey is to move on to Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation, but I honestly doubt it would be fun for me to write or for you to read. I dunno, maybe you want to see me rip it to shreds, but I'm unsure how much financial compensation I’d need to make up for the psychic damage that would inevitably be incurred. (The tip jar is there, if you’re so inclined; let’s just say that Yale could use an international airport.) Moving on to the 2003 version of TMNT would be much more fun, but also a tremendous undertaking that - for now - I don't want to approach. After years of writing about the Turtles, I’m exhausted. I’m also acutely aware that while Turtlethon has been beneficial for me in many ways as a writer – it's allowed me to refine my skills, to learn how to create and maintain a regular schedule, and made me a more effective editor, even if you’d never know it from the length of my posts – the time I’ve devoted to writing about the Turtles would have been better spent working on my own comic series, Corinne Morgan, Corbie, which has been on hiatus throughout the life of this blog. 

[SIDE NOTE: If you want to see me put my money where my mouth is, and if I’ve learned anything through analysing Turtles, read Corbie when the new edition of issue #1 comes out in a few weeks. Its influences are more rooted in the Archie version of TMNT than the MWS series, but if you like cute, light-hearted and socially conscious superhero adventures then I think you’ll soon become a dedicated flocker.] 

I’ve undoubtedly been teetering on the edge of burnout lately, and my workload has been further encumbered by the technical changes implemented by Tumblr that negatively affected the last two seasons’ worth of Turtlethon entries. Behind the scenes, I’ve gradually been making moves to port the blog in its entirety to a stand-alone website where all 193 entries can be enjoyed in the original format. The thinking is that this will allow me to also write about anything else that takes my interest, post my art and generally keep you up to date on the status of all my assorted ongoing projects. With that in mind, I’d like to introduce you to Portertronic, which is now live. The Turtlethon entries for the first two seasons of TMNT have been posted there already, with the rest of the series to follow in the weeks and months ahead. 

This isn’t the end, for Turtlethon or for this account: you’ll still see new TMNT posts from me here, as I have a laundry list of one-off bits and pieces related to the series I still want to explore. The plan is that new content moving forward will be made available first to Patreon and Ko-Fi supporters, then appear on Portertronic, and eventually get posted here too. To kick things off, there’s a pair of upcoming Turtles-related CDs I’ll be looking at as part of a crossover event to introduce Excess Volume, a sub-blog that will cover pop music of the 1980s and early 1990s. I’m not going away, just getting off the treadmill I’ve been on for the last couple of years, and trying to refocus on writing shorter bursts of material while I return to working primarily on Corbie. 

Turtlethon has always had a modest following – there are only so many people in the world who are interested in reading long-form analysis of a decades-old cartoon – but going into it I had zero expectations that anyone would connect with it at all. I’ve never lost sight of the fact that in real life, if a classroom’s worth of people were willing to listen to me talk at length about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles twice a week that would be incredibly edifying, and over time the readership grew to roughly double that. It probably should have been a YouTube channel from the beginning, but the thought of continually being struck down by DMCAs from Lionsgate ensured that was a non-starter, and perhaps that would have defeated the purpose. I like to draw, and I like to write – obviously! That you’ve indulged me in doing the latter and gushing about the Turtles for the last few years means a lot, and I hope you’ll join me – either through Corbie, over on Portertronic or here on Turtlethon – for the adventures still to come. 

[simmonsized]

Sorry if this is weird but are you ever stricken with the passing of time? I was talking to some friends and they were confused why I was so emotional seeing teens buying stuff for back to school since its that time of year. They just looked so painfully and obviously TEENAGERS!! Like, I was like that a few years ago, but it feels like a million years but it also feels like it was just yesterday. I felt so old back then, but was I also obviously so young? Will I also look back at myself now and feel the same in the future? idk man. Sorry for this word salad

I mean nah, it's fine. If you only graduated a few years ago, you are probably young enough that you are going to feel that way for awhile! And there's nothing wrong with that! Eventually it becomes a kind of nostalgia, and you stop feeling so close to it, or close in a different way, anyhow. That has been my experience, anyway.

Teenagers often feel like they are older than they actually are, just because there is so much going on in your life, literally all the time, and it is, in a way, the oldest you've ever been at that time. We had a really lovely kid on the boat who was 19 and would say "I feel like I'm thirty sometimes" and we would all laugh because that is literally not true, and she'd get a little huffy because we all feel our feelings, but I think it's pretty common! And a normal way to feel :)

Also I can say from personal experience that your twenties are absolutely a "oh holy fuck what the fuck" period, and that you are doing a good job, and acknowledging those feelings is good, and important! Also within the past few years we have entered a global pandemic, experienced shutdowns and literal worldwide, large scale death, so it feels like it's been even more complicated to be a young person than ever before

But I think I am not as stricken by the passage of time in the sense of "oh my god teenagers look so young" because young people always look young the older you get, but more in the way that I feel like the pandemic really skewed my sense of how much time has passed between now and the start of said pandemic, it is just. wild, truly. I have been friends with the same group of people for almost five years! we are all still homestucks! What the fuck!

I am more content now at over thirty years old than I was at twenty-six, and while I can't really tell you where the time has gone, I don't feel old about it. To put it into a kind of perspective: maybe for you, high school was only a few years ago, but for me, high school was over ten years ago. I have spent longer than a decade being an adult human, versus when you are in your early or mid twenties, and you have only spent 3-7 years being not-a-teenager

Being a human is just really weird, anon, but I think it's okay to have emotions about seeing teenagers be teenagers and thinking, "god was I really so young?" because you were! And you still are! Life is amazing! :)

[invisibleicewands]

Lizzy Caplan’s Perfect Year

With her role in “Fleishman Is in Trouble,” Lizzy Caplan found a character more similar to herself than anything she’s done — and with it, the perfect experience for her first months as a new mom.

Up until now, Lizzy Caplan had avoided back-to-back projects. Not intentionally, but rather, that’s just the way things unfolded. So, of course, this year — the year she had her first child — would be the one where she bounded from a six-month shoot in New York, to immediately shoot another show in Los Angeles, to then embark on a full-on press tour.

“It’s  been a crazy year, that i’m honestly mostly very grateful for,” Caplan says. “But in this moment I’m feeling a little crazy.” On Zoom from her home in L.A., Caplan is preparing to wrap work on the television adaptation of “Fatal Attraction” before boarding a flight to New York to do press for “Fleishman Is in Trouble,” her new series. Adapted from New York Times writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s bestseller of the same name, the story follows Toby, a doctor in his 40s with two kids living in New York who is finding his footing through his divorce from Rachel when she suddenly goes missing. The story is narrated by Libby, Toby’s old friend who has moved to the suburbs with her family and, through supporting Toby on his saga, goes through her own life-questioning crisis. Jesse Eisenberg and Claire Danes are Toby and Rachel; Caplan, for her part, knew she was meant to play Libby

“I love this book. If you like the book I think it’s safe to say you’re going to like the show.

“It’s the truest adaptation of a book I’ve ever seen,” Caplan says.

She’d heard through her agents that the series adaptation was floating around, and once she learned a producer she’d worked with on “Masters of None” was involved, she approached her for the role of Libby.

“I find the idea of narrating a whole show very appealing, especially if it’s done in a way that works and I think that it actually works really beautifully [here],” Caplan says. “I like the idea of being part of something where you’re presented with a character who you have some ideas about and then hopefully by the end those ideas have been upended or deepened or altered in numerous ways. I didn’t really identify with the Rachel character ever — it was always Libby. We have a similar upbringing, there was enough to tap into.”

She also was interested in Libby’s status as a woman who left the city for the suburbs to raise children and is now feeling adrift.

“I was pregnant when I started speaking to them about it so it was sort of staring down the barrel of this next chapter of life and domesticity and it felt like the right time to do it,” she says. “On one hand, it made sense to me in a very instantaneous way, because it’s about this girl who has these friends and they met in Israel and theres this Jewish upbringing. It was like the East Coast version of my upbringing. I had these friends, I was definitely raised Jewish, I went to Israel, I did all these things. There was this instant familiarity with who this character is, combined with, honestly, feeling disconnected with the ennui of the suburbs and the kids and the long marriage and feeling really trapped and giving up a career to move to the suburbs and raise these children — that doesn’t mirror my life at all,” Caplan continues. “So it was this weird combination of something that felt more familiar than anything else I’ve ever read, and then this other side of it that I can identify with as a potential nightmare.”

Due to timing of her pregnancy and the pandemic, Caplan says she’d been holed up at home for plenty of time and hadn’t worked for a bit.

“For a lot of actresses, certainly for a lot of my actress friends, there’s this weird period when you’re about to have a baby and you don’t really know what your life as an actress will look like,” she says. “I didn’t know what to hope for, I wasn’t trying to fully identify what I was going for and was trying to keep it open and loose, but to be honest, this was the version of first year of motherhood that was beyond my wildest dreams. It was perfect, it was ideal.”

Coming back to L.A. and immediately getting out of the suburban-New-Yorker-mom character and into “Fatal Attraction” mode was just the culture shock she was looking for.

“For me personally, I’m happiest when I can be bouncing around and doing the most disparate types of roles, just changing it up. And there couldn’t be more of a whiplash change up from Libby to Alex in ‘Fatal Attraction,’” Caplan says. “Libby’s physicality, she’s somebody who’s sort of given up. She’s past the point of caring about her appearance and she’s fully enmeshed in this domesticated suburban life, and that felt very right for my headspace at the beginning of that. And it’s been really great to know that I have to turn that off and be the complete opposite right in the moment that I probably needed to feel more like my previous self.”

[nochi-quinn]

candela obscura chapter 1 episode 2: hey entire table what the fuck

still enjoying matt in shirtsleeves

still weird that his wrists are naked

are his sideburns going grey? like under the bulk of his hair

this is a scene that jumped into matt's head fully formed and he has to give all the details

source: been there

auggie!

that's my son!

vexnvax syndrome strikes again

going 'yum' just as charlotte's art pops up: correct

if there's one thing anjali's going to do it's play a hot lady in period clothing

"I've been smoking since I was eight" "then you can find your own smokes"

"sir, ma'am - " "doctor"

mala: the three genders

is "otherwhere" like ffxiv and "anyroad" or is it like. a place.

if there's one thing laura's gonna do it's try to get a magical item out of the GM

thank you, howard

witcher potion

auggie, whose friend turned into an ice ghost not even a month ago: fuck you, werewolves aren't real

arlo: maybe SOME PEOPLE - not me - are just SHY - I'm not tho - and have TROUBLE with PEOPLE - except me, I'm fine

bidet

"let matthew know" snickersnort

"what's my name?"

your name is also matthew

I don't know why "make a sneak" makes me smile but it does

howard just faceplants in the background

the story's too long to tell here but one time a woman brained herself on a hamster cage in petsmart and that's all I could think of with the guard blocking auggie

this voice is very endearing

not weird but WEIRD weird

all this for a loaf of bread?

matt making up names off the top of his head

aha! drugs

oh no

Quite Betrothed

fate dating au

"have you ever seen boiled bacon?" revolting!

"I have moments where new information makes me somewhat uncomfortable" autism mood

"I'm gonna touch it" to "this was a mistake" pipeline

if any of them were gonna succeed this seems like where you would want to succeed

yeah, DEAD SCIENTISTS, HOWARD

howard is now craving bacon

I WAS JOKING

I also enjoy this voice very much

aha. veterans.

he is An Doctor

bottom table is ND as f u c k

channeling patrick loller from tiktok: "if you thank me for my service you have to give me $5"

pocket bacon!

yeah see, $5

"we're not doing Get Help"

and that's just what the couple did to the room!

oh shit it's the fuzz

"our first victorian shit!" robbie what

joke three people in the world will get: you can only poop in the designated areas

the whole table: howard no robbie: HOWARD YES

nose punch go CRUNCH

"HOWARD WENT ROGUE"

howard said acab

what is anjali feeding her dice

robbie do you want to tempt the wrath of the whatever

the secretary's a werewolf

with a very cute accent

"he was a horn player" "I bet he was"

"s e x u a l i n t e r c o u r s e"

howard

"I wanna take his badge" fearne lives

he ran into a doorknob"

"WHY DID YOU TALK"

"stairs is faster" confused me until I remembered some people can actually walk down stairs instead of having to take them one at a time, one foot then the other, while clinging to the rail for dear life

laura

the way my brain autofilled "stayed open during the pandemic"

"is he a tall lanky boy" tailed by slenderman

grumbles in public transportation

everybody gets to punch a cop!

cable car fun fact: I was reading dashiell hammet for the first time and had to google what a broadway car was bc he said it like 90 times in the first three pages

and I'm STILL not sure I got it right

"how do you know I'm OUP" "the everything about you"

"my name is gertrude! I mean ethel!"

"spend all the drives! you won't need them later!"

"steal the man of the cloth's cloth!"

[witcher voice] for your discretion

"if only you knew how I was making my money"

ty for not popping your shoulders out on stream anjali

(I originally said "popping them out" and decided specificity was necessary)

this music is a+

"first name trio" is a good name for a band

disco elysium crossover

"she's having an idea….and it hurts" mood

"SHE DID IT" my crackpot theory is vindicated

that is certainly a way to put it

eddie? eyes emoji?

ashley very quietly reaching for her pencil

bacon plague!

banana spiders

"make sure you bring your hand with you"

c o n s u m e

"I've been working on this really great YA novel" MATTHEW I have already snorted lemonade through my nose once tonight, you can't say shit like that

ARLO

AUGGIE

I love them

why was my only thought AT THE OPERA TONIGHT

"do I recognize her as a TA?" "she's an ex-student" you get how that's worse, right

you have buried the lede slightly arlo

anjali: "I shouldn't curse" matt: who told you that shit

"that's poor people talk"

classism!

arlo

"THAT MAN TOUCHED MY BREAST"

"JEEEEEEEMY GOD"

we never should have given matt buttons

matt you live in LA you're giving them all trauma

kickin buddies

[pounding table] werewolf weREWOLF

that's. not a werewolf.

that's a bloodborne monster

just the panicked yelling dlkfjls

I too yell wordlessly when forced to make decisions

"until it was trying to merge with your body" hate THAT wording

hey matt what the fuck

HEY MATT WHAT THE FUCK

"if I'm still aliVE YOU NERDS HELP ME" bakugocore

"its own viscosity" despise it

hey. hey howard. whatcha doin.

[justin mcelroy voice] DON'T DRILL A HOLE IN YOUR HEAD

DON'T YOU PUN RIGHT NOW

hey robbie what the F U C K

"a gun! :D"

hey. hey arlo. hey arlo whatcha doin

some fullmetal alchemist shit is what

I hate everything about this

laura has just decided all her characters are coloring books now

"this arm doesn't have function anymore" oh mood

"takE IT, ROBBIE"

"you just do. what other choice is there?" hey I don't need this right now

hey howard what the fuck

HOWARD'S HAUNTED

see this is why you don't drill a hole in your head, you get ghosts