#the stories i tell don't have to be groundbreaking. in fact they don't have to be good. i just have to like it

[snandtnurtle]

i'm gradually trying to unlearn some of the obligation i used to feel to be sophisticated and reflective of "good taste" all the time. truth is i'm a simple trashy bitch and that's amazing. i love it when media has hot men who suffer. i love it when music is ridiculous and has lots of horns. i'm not the pinnacle of taste i'm just a human who gets endorphins from silly, dare i say cringe, things and that's awesome actually

[casscainmainly]

Duke Thomas and the Robin Mantle

There's been some minor discussion about whether Duke counts as an 'official' Robin or not. While that discussion is interesting, I actually don't think it's the crux of the Duke and Robin issue. To me, the question is whether or not he should be Robin. And, to me, the answer is definitively yes.

This is purely my opinion, and I haven't read every single Duke comic so it's possible I've misread/missed things. Any Duke fans, absolutely feel free to add or disprove anything here!

The Changing Robin

The first thing to understand is that Robin, as a mantle, has shifted with each person it's been passed to. Tim's Robin doesn't mean the same thing as Jason's Robin, which doesn't mean the same thing as Damian's. A mark of a true Robin is the ability to shift the meaning of Robin by wearing the colours.

Duke absolutely fulfils this criteria. In fact, him and his We Are Robin crew are the biggest shift in the meaning of Robin since its creation.

Cover from We Are Robin #1. The phrase "We're not sidekicks. We're an army!" signals the shift from Robin as individual to Robin as collective; from Robin as tied to the singular Batman to Robin as a wider movement, a socio-political force. The last question, "are you ready?", is vitally important as well. Duke as Robin is meant to be different. He's meant to be non-normative, a groundbreaking turn in what Robin looks and feels like.

At the end of the first issue, a disguised Alfred (who started We Are Robin) thinks the following:

Alfred infuses the phrase "of color" with two meanings: the Robin colours, and People of Colour. By explicitly linking Robin to POC, the comic is suggesting that not only can kids of colour be Robin, but that they should be Robin. Robins of Colour are the "future of this city," and Duke is the vanguard of this future. It's no coincidence that the Robin before (Damian) and the one after (Maps) are both POC. Duke, however, is the Robin that gives the mantle an explicit direction towards diversity: him and WAR use Robin as a social movement, and in doing so transform the colours of Robin into a symbol for the diversity in Gotham and the world.

Robin as Collective

Duke doesn't change Robin alone. The point of We Are Robin is that Robin is a collective, and it's important that Duke doesn't start WAR (as much as people like to say he did). By joining late, the comic demonstrates that Duke is part of a bigger movement.

The Robin community represents POC solidarity, the necessity and ability of the oppressed to band together. Lee Bermejo ends We Are Robin's final issue with "stress on the word "we"" - Duke's arc, in one sense, is learning to rely and work with others (he initially mistrusts basically everyone). The WAR community is essential to both Duke's character development and his tenure as Robin.

So to have this page, affirming his loyalty and love for them, to be followed immediately by them being written out is... something.

Duke appears next in Batman: Rebirth, where Bruce gives him the yellow suit and tells him he's not looking for a Robin. As soon as he stops being Robin, the community around him quite literally falls apart. Izzy sticks around for a bit but fades into obscurity, Riko and Dax turn evil, Dre ends up in Arkham - all of these fates are antithetical to these characters and genuinely tragic.

Batman: The Secret Files: The Signal is possibly the worst Duke story in existence, but it's important to understanding why Robin!Duke mattered. Riko calls Signal 'Bat-Signal', highlighting his sudden reduction to a Batman acolyte. His friends turning on him shows how, by losing Robin, he also lost the community formed by WAR. In every way, his transition into the Signal was saturated by loss.

Robin Doesn't Need A Batman

Bruce giving Duke the Signal suit is borderline insulting. He already had an identity predicated on the fact that he didn't need Batman.

From Batman (2011) #45, Batman: Rebirth, and Night of the Monster Men. "Robin doesn't need a Batman" is an inversion of Tim's 'Batman needs a Robin' - in many ways, Duke is the opposite of Tim, who's rich, White, and whose Robin is the most focused on helping Batman. If Tim is the ideal Robin-as-partner, Duke is the ideal Robin-as-individual. His idea of Robin is not, and has never been, associated with Batman.

People who say Duke isn't an official Robin since he was never Batman's partner miss the point. He is Robin because he was never Batman's partner. That's what Robin means to him - a mantle free from Bruce and all authority.

"Batman is on the gargoyle. Robin... Robin is on the street." Robin is the person on the ground, who lives and belongs to the people. When Duke becomes Signal, this ground aspect - as well as his separation from Batman - is gone.

In this cover from Batman & The Signal, they gave him a Bat symbol and put him on a gargoyle. They erased every single part of his Robin philosophy.

The Original Robin

Post-We Are Robin, Bruce becomes the Batfam member Duke interacts with the most. Besides the insult of Bruce withholding Robin, this fact also strips away one of my favourite aspects about early Duke - he was tied to the Batfamily through the Robins (especially Damian and Dick), not by Batman.

It's Dick, the original Robin, who chooses him.

Dick recognises that him and Duke have a lot in common. He tells Duke in Robin War that he's "got it," and that he's a natural leader - Dick knows Duke has what it takes to be Robin, and explicitly endorses him.

Not only that, but when Dick sends Duke to jail (along with the other Robins, official and unofficial), he tells Duke that he "take[s] care of [his] family". He basically inducts Duke into the family then and there!

Dick's endorsement of Duke makes it more interesting that Bruce doesn't make him Robin. Despite Duke's disillusionment at the end of Robin War (dispelled soon after in WAR), the events in RW confirm that Duke can and should be Robin. Bruce not making Duke Robin is defying both Duke's potential and Dick's right to choose Robins.

Robin as Family

On the rooftop in Robin War, Dick tells Duke that Robin is about family. This is the fundamental connection between them both: Robin acts as the link to the families they've lost and gained.

For Dick, Robin keeps John and Mary Grayson alive, while also symbolising his connection to Bruce. For Duke, Robin is the intersection of three families: the heroic legacy of his parents, the tight-knit community of We Are Robin, and the newfound friendship of the Batfamily.

In Batman (2011) #45, Duke tries to give his friend Daryl a Robin badge. He says, "you and me, we came up together. We're fam[ily]." Even before Dick, Duke associated Robin with family, and Daryl implies in the next issue that Duke became Robin because of his parents' inclination to help. Signal, of course, also comes from his mom; but unlike Robin, Signal isn't a legacy mantle. As Robin, he constantly inducted people like Daryl, Riko, Damian, etc. into his family. As Signal, his circle shrinks immeasurably, until it's really only the Batfamily and the Outsiders if we're being generous. (Daryl also turns evil - a really unfortunate pattern for Duke side characters).

Lark and Conclusion

I'm going to end with this panel from Batman & The Signal #1, which is emblematic of the way DC has treated Duke and Robin as a whole. Bruce tells Duke that Lark is "too soft" a name. DC was probably debating between Lark and Signal, but it's telling what they went with. How is Lark too soft, exactly? How is it any softer than Robin?

By overtly dismissing the bird-like name, Bruce - and DC editorial, or whoever decided this - is definitively moving Duke away from Robin. And it's a shame. In Duke's transition from Robin to Signal, he has next to no agency. Bruce tells him he's not Robin, Bruce gives him the suit, Bruce tells him not to be Lark, Bruce gives him another suit. It's a stark contrast from his induction into Robin - though Alfred arranged it, he gave Duke a choice. Duke chooses Robin.

Duke being disallowed the Robin mantle is, to me, on par with DC stripping Cass of the Bat symbol during the New 52. The racism behind both these decisions cannot be overstated - both Cass and Duke redefined their mantles, and their mantles defined them. At least Cass' mistake has been corrected, and lots of writers and fans acknowledge how horrible that period was. For Duke, he was never given a real chance. And it's unlikely he ever will be.

This is not a knock against the Signal identity or any writers. However, it genuinely saddens me to think that all of this story potential - Duke's redefinition of Robin, his relationship to Dick, his connection to We Are Robin, and above all his ability to choose who he wants to be - has been neglected and cast aside. Even if they never acknowledge his role as Robin, I hope future stories centre him once again, because it's what he deserves.

[lizzieisright]

Trust exercises

Abby, your friend, helps you with some of your therapy homework (just fluff, no smut)

-/-/-/-/-/-

It doesn't happen often, but sometimes before your scheduled meetings (since two adults need to schedule hangouts) you go to therapy, which means you come to Abby's place after therapy.

Sometimes you're happy, sometimes you're sad, sometimes you don't come at all, and Abby understands.

When she first met you, she thought you were the most kind, sunny human being - you were so nice to her, and Abby couldn't help but try to spend more time with you. You gladly let her and soon you two were practically inseparable - Abby trusted you, shared her worries and fears, even the stupid ones, and you supported her through it all. You were soft and kind to her, and you told her the stories of your past which made her cry. This is why Abby didn't notice that you didn't share anything from your present, not anything deeper than a complaint about work.

Abby knew you were in therapy - who wasn't in this economy? - and she thought you were so nice because you were healing. But during one of your shared evenings in Abby's apartment you both got drunk, very drunk, and you spilled something.

"Do you know why I'm in therapy?"

"Because your childhood sucked and your parents can eat shit for that?"

"Well, yeah." You laugh. "I have like, major trust issues."

"You?" Abby stared at you, even though she saw two of you by now. "Really?"

"Yeah." You nodded and even if Abby was super drunk, she noticed how your voice was strained.

"Fuck." Abby sighed, not really having a better response in this state of mind. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"So I can regret it later? No."

It stuck with Abby later, and she couldn't let it slide, so she talked to you about it. You were very reluctant about sharing what are your triggers, but the fact that you told her some things was already groundbreaking. (I won't ever ask for any help and I hate when people baby me, you told her, and it meant that when she bought you coffee you got literally offended - which led to another "you need to tell me if I hurt you because it's unfair" conversation, which led back to "If I could trust you, I would")

So Abby started getting more gentle with you - it rarely worked, but you always reassured her she wasn't the problem, which broke her heart even more.

But slowly, even through you shot her some weird looks when she took care of you in any way, you started to accept it. You started talking to her little by little, and Abby was happy - even if it was "holy fuck I cried me eyes out last night, kill me please" message. You shared some of your feelings, and Abby couldn't help the protectiveness she felt about you. You were so nice and kind to everyone and you were so lonely and broken inside it made Abby angry at anyone who made you feel like this. So she tried to give you everything she was able to.

One day you came from therapy, eyes red and puffy, your face empty and you just asked if Abby could cuddle you. Abby felt like she won life this day - won a glimpse of your trust.

So today you came after therapy as well, grumpy as fuck, which looked cute on you - Abby couldn't help her adoring gaze when she looked at you, even if you gave her a weird look now and then. It wasn't agressive, but Abby knew you struggled to accept she loved you for who you are, even though that was something you desperately needed.

"I have fucking homework." You told her and Abby laughed: you hated when your therapist gave you homework, since it was embarassing and you wanted to throw up.

"What is it?" Abby asked as she heated some food for you: which was also a struggle for you, accepting her care, but you were trying your best. These small things were just a trial before bigger things, and you promised to at least handle this for now.

"Fuckin' trust exercises." You sighed and rolled your eyes, but Abby saw through you: you wanted to do it, wanted to see there was someone you could trust. "You know this shit when you fall back and someone catches you? Disgusting."

Abby laughed and placed the plate in front of you, nodding when you said thank you.

"It's scary."

"It fuckin' is. And I don't want to do it." You grumped and Abby waited. "I mean I do, but I'll hate every second of it. Anyway, the point of this is, will you do it with me?"

Abby saw how it physically disgusted you to say it, and she knew it was your reaction to being vulnerable, so she just smiled: you hated being vulnerable, but she couldn't express how much it meant to her that you chose her to be vulnerable with.

"Of course."

"You don't have to, obviously-" Here you go again, Abby thought.

"I want to. I don't go to gym for nothing, I won't let you fall." Abby flexed her biceps and you got flustered.

You both knew you liked each other, and you flirted all the time, but Abby didn't rush you: you couldn't handle her heating the food for you, you were not ready to be in a relationship by any means. So Abby was waiting for you, calm and sure one day she will get to kiss you and you will accept her love.

"Thank you."

"And don't you fucking dare to do something nice for me in return, I'll kill you."

"...Fine."

You look so uncomfortable with the whole idea, but Abby knows you'll push through anyway - you are a masochist like that. So you stand in the middle of her living room, Abby is relaxed and just waits for you to go through your conflicting emotions.

"I'll catch you, I promise."

"I know that. It's not what worries me." You tell her as you fidget with your fingers. "It's so fucking scary."

"Well, you're not here alone. I'll hold you after."

You struggle again with accepting this, but you don't reject her - every time when this happens Abby feels proud and happy: you are trying to trust her.

"Okay, can we like. Start with smaller distance? I don't think I'll be able to do the whole metre."

"Of course."

You stand awkwardly with your back to Abby, barely twenty centimeters away from her - if Abby leans down, she will be able to put her head on your shoulder. So this is not even the fall exercise, you're going to lean on her.

"Holy fuck." You curse. "Okay."

You're so tense and anxious even like this, and Abby stretches her arms by your sides, letting you see she is supporting you. So you slowly lean back until you feel your back touch Abby's front. She is solid and warm, and she hugs you, holds you, and it's almost too much, and you want to cry. Abby is safe and Abby loves you and really, it's too much.

"I've got you." Abby tells somewhere in your hair and you break. You sob quietly and move away: it's unbearable. "Too much?"

You nod, not ready to talk and embarrass yourself.

"Do you want me to be quiet?"

You shake your hand yes and no, and Abby understands.

"Okay. Want to try again?"

You nod again and go a little further: if Abby doesn't catch you, you will fall, but not painfully. Again, her arms are stretched out and you take a deep breath before letting yourself fall back - the air gets stuck in your lungs from a millisecondary fear, but then you feel solid warm Abby who chuckles into your ear, but keeps quiet, even though she wants to tell you how proud of you she is - and you feel saved. It's strange, but the relief you feel is visceral and you want to cling to Abby's arms around you.

"Okay." You sigh, the anxiety leaves your body as adrenalin gets replaced with dopamin. "Okay, I get it."

"m?"

"Like. I'm so scared when I fall, but because you catch me, I instantly feel safe. What kind of pavlovian shit is this?"

"Are you suggesting we train you into trusting me by doing this every day?"

"It might work. I wanna do it again."

And then you get giddy and giggle when Abby catches you for the seventh time, the dopamin doing its job. Abby is happy to help, especially since she gets to hold you and be there for you and lets you see you are safe with her. It's a long way down the road, but eventually you'll get there, and you will trust her.

Abby can't wait.

[horizon-verizon]

The showrunners just continue to steal from TV Daenerys’s characterization and final storyline to improve their Rhaenyra (a self righteous Targaryen woman with delusions of grandeur ? Groundbreaking), but she remains completely boring and forgettable. Dust in the wind.

And even though TV Daenerys is radically and entirely different from her book counterpart (as much as I love Emilia Clarke), TV Daenerys’ daddy didn’t tell her she’s special, unlike Rhaenyra, Daenerys realized she’s special when she brought back dragons from extinction and walked out of fire utterly unharmed, please can people stop compare her to any of the mid characters from HOTD ??

Speak it again, anon, bc what?! It's quite obvious that they are trying to inject as much a literal magic layer of significance in Rhaenyra's story as magic was in Dany's Or they are trying to make Rhaenyra more "important" in the Targ lineage & "interesting" to those who loved Dany (which is most of the fandom, lets' bfr) to promote the show. And yet at every turn they have also excused D&D's atrocious illogical writing of Daenerys' core traits and convictions behind the ol' "GRRM has not finished his series".

We know that there are only 2 books left of this series and Dany is still very NOT like her show counterpart's more...demanding isn't the right word but for now, we'll go with it. Based on this fact alone, people are so much more willing to believe that Dany will turn a 180 somewhere in these last 2 bks and destroy KL or do something akin to Mad!Aerys "bc Targs are crazy and she seeks to be a white savior while profiting from slaves". That this extreme turn for her will not happen for someone like Jon Snow who literally came back from the dead after nearly all under his command killed him. That they don't feel it rather be Cersei, not Dany, who'd blow up KL despite all the comparisons and actions she has similar to Aerys in the text, word for word verbatim. No it has to be Dany, bec she is a "foreign invader" come to ruin the good town of Westeros with her slave-owning ways.

Ryan Condal recently said as much about the D&D defense on BigThink:

Besides, there were a lot other instances where it's clear the real reason why they demolished her was to move on from the project and they just didn't like Dany. Go on over to ozymalek/PhoenixAshes' Youtube and search through to see how they broke it all down.

And yes, Dany actually showed/has very good reason to believe her singularity and even this pseudo-religious quality from her revitalizing dragons, effectively patching up a lot of the magical balance of the world by doing so.

What's also pretty cool is that bk!her still doesn't think of herself as a "god" the way Euron Greyjoy is kinda heading towards/is already at.

So it's so fucking weird how they are trying to re-capitalize on Dany's effect and show!character (and before that, her nonviolenet ADwD arc about the pits) for their false version of Rhaenyra bc apparently we can tolerate and even like ambitious, vengeful, cruel, or just selfish men like Euron, Robert B, Robb (not evil, but went to war for his own ends and his armies also raped indiscriminately), TYWIN [Rains of Castamere, everything else], etc. BUT a woman who has even just the mere self-concern to want to claim back a throne that was DEFINITIVELY usurped?! Nah, apparently, that's too much. She's unsympatheziable.

For a woman, she HAS to be "unselfish", trying to prove a point to men--dead or alive--of her strength 24/7, but unable to settle with an idea of her own "strength" or worthiness, and thus eventually be lead into semi-unintentionally building some strange "cult" around dragons from Westerosi religiosity to feel in control & for people to sympathize with her. She HAS to--as one Twitter user said--have a problem with her gender identity so as to attribute "womanly" stuff as "weak" to want the same things as what a man are granted.

If the audience is stupid, does that mean you should be as well and perpetuate MORE sexist stereotypes/frameworks? No; HotD is for the money and comes form a place of ignorant "women guide violent men" narrative, no matter much it claims it is "feminist" or how lore-knowledgeable Condal says he is.

We all know this is a media company and Condal is more businessman than creator and that you need sorta both a business/production sense as well as a creative spirit for TV/film. Problem is that Condal is inevitably and attempting to build an ethos and ethical narrative while also treating the org stories and GoT as material to re-market through his own "vision" of what he'd personally like to see as a ASoIaF story.

Just bc this is a huge media company doesn't mean whatever they say is "God" for the actual story they were tasked to adapt! You can enjoy that and still recognize nothing about it or most of it informs the orig story or "proves" anything of it WITHOUT bringing up good reasoning and comparisons as to how-why!

Much of the characterization/writing/plot decisions he makes are not about feminism or making the characters palatable for others but to--like with a lot of censorship--just make it so that as many people as possible are watching and are comfortable with the most popular but incorrect ideas of what ASoIaF & feminism or sexism is about, etc.. those of which have already been in fandom and larger life/online circulation for YEARS.

Therefore, there is much superficiality as well as what could have been fleshed out and nuanced ideas or directions the current writing HotD has AS WELL AS Condal's/Hess' own biases written into the very fabric of this show that mark it as just ASoIaF "fanfiction" instead of a strict "adaptation". I know people get annoyed with the fanfic allegations, but if you have an "adaptation" that no longer has most-to-any of the core ideas, themes, characterizations, EVENTS, etc. as its original, you call that a fanfic, not an adaptation. Just bc it came from a prestige major studio/company and had a lot of money thrown at it, doesn't make it actually an adaptation.

If the author themselves--even though they should know better bc look what happened with Dany, Euron, Cersei-Jaime, etc.--say something is egregiously wrong with how they written a certain thing in the show, it is not actually using the orig lore and therefore it is more fanfic than adaptation:

Dany--unlike any other Targ, which includes Rhaenyra--has a relationship with 3 separate dragons even though she will only ride one. Vermithor should NOT have been as "docile" with Rhaenyra as they were in the show (saw another clip online, still haven't watched the episode). There is still a reason why Jace tried to get her out TWICE, why Viserys was upset at Aemond for going down to the Dragonpit alone, why Rhaena nearly died trying to bond with some, , why Nettles approach and SUCCESS with Sheepstealer is so amazing, why Baelon bumping a dragon on the nose gave him the moniker "Baelon the Brave", etc. Dragons are damned dangerous to anyone who aren't their rider! And Rhaenyra's "specialness" was evident in the plethora and rise of dragon eggs....you want to show her as such? Have dialogue about the trajectory of dragon eggs laid compared to now vs 40/30/20/10 yrs ago!

Yes, most of the Targ women are connected and esp through magic and fertility & expressed "Targaryen woman's strength" and agency in unique but still related ways. But as rhaenin-time once said:

HotD thinks it's somehow an improvement to insist that actually, no, they're all just (by circumstance) variations of a "generic targ girl" template.

You could have even have Rhaenyra stumble on something a GoT character later finds but not have her go into that deep about it bc she's focused on the war/usurpation if you really want to stick with the whole oversimplified "distracted by selfish stuff" going on. Point is, Rhaenyra's significance was meager compared to Dany's SPECIFICALLY when we talk about active and participatory spiritutality/magic. Passively and more subtly, Rhaenyra dying spelled the end of dragons...so be subtle about it and stop with the whole "religious cult" nonsense that really is just a continuation of the whole Dany-is-a-facist nonsense we got in the final season of GoT. "Targ madness" and all that.

Of course they won't bc this is Condal's "vision", but hey, got things off my chest.

[2btheanswertothequestion]

She finds out about it a few weeks after her classes start. It happens by chance, and almost seems too good to be true.

But it's not.

The University of Illinois does actually have its own newspaper for gays and lesbians. It exists, made explicitly for them, by them.

And Robin needs it.

It requires some snooping, though it's basically nothing after everything she did at Starcourt. Soon enough, she is $8.50 ($7.50 for a yearly subscription and $0.5 each for the two previous issues) poorer in dollars and infinitely richer in happiness.

People Like Us: News, opinions, and features for the C-U gay and lesbian community it says on the front page. Issues 2 and 3 are both 8 pages long while the first issue is slightly shorter. They have everything. News about marches in Chicago and local gay-friendly businesses. Opinion pieces on places to meet up and homophobia. Roommate ads, reviews, and personal stories. News about AIDS. And, in the very back, a blurb proclaiming LESBIAN CONTRIBUTORS WANTED.

Maybe that'll be her one day. She's no Nancy, but she can write. For now, though, she's content with reading. It's almost overwhelming to hold the papers, knowing that it's made by people like her. That someone like her might be reading the same words at the same time. Less lonely, in a way.

No one else on campus knows about her. Ellen, her dorm mate, seems fine so far, but Robin won't take her chances just yet. She struck gold with Steve, Eddie, and the kids, but someday her luck will run out. So she hides the issues in a hard folder under her mattress whenever she isn't reading.

Then she gets the October issue in her hand and nearly dies of excitement. On the front page, the news section is announcing that "two highly acclaimed gay/lesbian films are set to appear on campus this month". The groundbreaking Desert Hearts and Parting Glances will be screened four times each, one week apart from each other, at the end of the month.

At her first opportunity, she calls and tells Steve about it.

"You have to come and see them with me!" she says. "I can't go alone!"

So he does, and he barely complains about the 3-hour drive.

On Sunday, October 19, he shows up at 7 in front of her building. They catch up while having a bite to eat before the film. It's mostly her talking, blabbing about classes and professors and new people and Illinois and the college experience while he chews his half of the pizza, staring at her with big eyes that scream I missed you, I missed you, I missed you!

She takes every chance she gets to knock their feet together under the table and clutches his arm on their way to the film. Just in case her own eyes don't scream it back loud enough.

By the time Desert Hearts starts, she's giddy. She knows only what the newspaper told her: that it's about a soon-to-be-divorced college professor meeting a lesbian country girl in Reno in the 50s, and that it includes a 'climactic lovemaking scene'. Both facts have her squirming with excitement, her seat squeaking beneath her.

The lights go out and the movie starts. It's slow-paced and atmospheric, using the Nevada scenery to its advantage. Parts of it are actually really slow, but she doesn't mind, especially not as it builds and builds toward Vivian ultimately accepting her attraction to Cay.

Steve is with her from beginning to end, scoffing at the antagonistic stepmother, squeezing her hand when the lovers are separated, and squeezing some more when they're reunited. When they reach the intimate scene, he gasps loudly. Then both of them succumb to a giggle fit and must stifle themselves lest they be thrown out. The newspaper was right – it is pretty hot stuff.

There's no dramatic declaration of love at the end, no the ending is as slow and quiet as the rest of it. Still, it hits hard. A sledgehammer to the chest, shattering her ribs and smearing her heart all over. Because these women look each other in the eyes and say 'I love you'. They say 'I want you'. They say 'she just reached in and put a string of lights around my heart', and they say it like it's normal. Which, Robin knows it is. But her world is small and their world is the silver screen and they say it like it's normal.

Steve turns to her when the credits roll and the lights come back on, saying it was good. But when she looks at him, his face falls. Arms wrapping around her, he pulls her into his lap and guides her face into the crook of his neck. Fingers cramping where they clutch his shirt, she buries herself deep and cries, cries, cries. She thinks she hears someone ask if she's okay, but Steve shoos them off, so it doesn't matter.

He walks her home in comfortable silence. As they stop outside her building he tucks her hair behind her ear and offers to stay with her. But she tells him no – he has work in the morning, so she'll have to make do without him.

The responsible thing to do after waving him off is go to bed, wake up early for class. Instead, she steers her step to the nearest payphone and punches in a California number. Minutes later she's got Vickie on the line, wondering if she's okay and if she's been crying. Robin reassures her, then recounts the evening. Soon Vickie's bell of a laughter envelops her; they discuss who's the Cay to whose Vivian until Robin runs out of coins.

Next week, Steve is back and they do it all over again, except this time they eat burgers. They even snatch the same seats they had the previous screening.

Parting Glances follows a gay couple for 24 hours of their daily life. Because they're established, their intimate scene happens much earlier. Steve's muttering about how unfair it is that it's less explicit than the lesbian scene has pride burn in her chest, even as she shushes him.

All in all, it's a really good film. It doesn't hit her as hard since it's about gay men and no lesbians, but it still hits. Again, because it's presented as something normal. They're people in love, and they have jobs and problems and dreams and friends. The hardest hit of them all is Nick, who has AIDS but not in a pitiful way. He's a rockstar with a sense of humor, still cool and charismatic. Sexy, even, thanks to the oozing confidence and the intensity of his gaze.

Steve is quietly contemplative on the way out. She slips her hand into his and lets him think. It's first when they're halfway home that she breaks the silence. Spinning so she's walking backward in front of him, him holding her waist to steer her away from lampposts and curbs, she asks:

"Did you like it?"

"I did. But it left me a little sad." He shrugs. "I just hope Nick survives and gets back together with Michael."

She chews the inside of her cheek. "I don't know if… I mean, AIDS is-"

"I know, Robbie, I'm keeping myself up to date. Or I try. It's just… It's very…" Steve sighs, shaking his head. "You know."

And she does know. The fear of being targeted and the frustration of being helpless. The fury of knowing diseases are supposed to be cured, until the ones affected are people who aren't supposed to exist in the first place.

Steve says, "I think he'll be okay. Nick."

"Yeah," she says, a little choked up.

"And he and Michael will be happy."

"Yes."

"And Cay will stay on the train, or Vivian will return to Nevada, and they'll be together. For real."

"They will. And even if they don't," she reaches up to cup his cheeks, caressing his stubbled jawline, "they'll have someone else. Someone just as good. Or better."

His gaze on her is heavy and bright, boring through, seeing inside. He nods.

"Or better," he says.

With that, he grabs and swings her around (in a pretty impressive move, not that she'll admit it to him) until she's latched onto his back. Then he carries her home.

It's maybe 50 degrees out, so not freezing but enough to leave you shivering if your jacket is old and getting threadbare, like Robin's. She's not cold, though, because Steve always runs hot. His back is firm and his grip on her thighs is secure; she burrows into him, absorbing his warmth and familiar scent. Lulled, not to sleep per se, but to rest by his even strides, she dreams of all the beautiful things she wants to have, and even more vividly of the things she wants to keep.

------------------------------

People Like Us was a real newspaper. You can find the issues that helped inspire this fic here.

(Oh, and you should really watch both those films if you haven't already.)

[cherrygorilla]

Ok, so you may or may not have inspired me with your Outsiders post to interrupt my usually sparse story post schedule and indulge in my own obsession with a certain musical. And as chaotic and random as it sounds, I promise it is good haha. But even if you disagree, please just let me vent and get all this out of my brain so that I can go back to writing the next part of TMM 😂

Alright, I've loved Starlight Express ever since I saw it when I was around... 7 or 8, maybe? It used to be my favourite show for years, and (fun fact) it was actually how I found out about fanfiction haha. I never wrote anything properly for the show, just like one or two pages in a random notebook when I was, idk 11 ? But it was around that time that TBM then came out, which I was obviously more drawn to writing-wise - I suppose because it gave me more freedom with stories and characters, since this show is just...you know...about trains lol.

And from the few times I've mentioned it before, I know it probably sounds insane, but if you just suspend your disbelief and accept it for what it is (a bunch of trains singing and falling in love), it is a lot of fun hahaha. I like to think of it like a mix between Cats and Cinderella, but the basic gist of the story, so you can have at least somewhat of an idea of what's going on lol, is that Control (a little kid - I don't think they have a name, they're literally just known as Control) sneaks out of bed one night to hold this big race between all his toy trains to find out who is the best - so the story essentially takes place within his imagination, as all the trains come to life to tell the story. It's like Cats in the regard that most of the first act is everyone kind of introducing themselves in turn. There's Greaseball, the champion diesel train, Rusty, the little steam engine who wants to race with the big trains, and Electra, the electric engine of the future - and a bunch of other trains and coaches, but I won't bore you with all that (just yet 😉). So, to cut a long story short, it's basically a big competition between those three main trains to see who's fastest, with Rusty being the obvious underdog, and hence the centre of the Cinderella story element.

The plot itself is nothing groundbreaking, and neither are the songs tbh, but it's just such a fun show that I can't help but love it anyway. I mean come on, the whole thing's done on roller skates - that's pretty damn cool! And although I've loved it for years, it had taken quite a backseat for a while, but the recent revival that has recently opened in London has really reignited my obsession with it all over again 😆 Because how do you make my favourite pairing in the whole show even more iconic? ...you turn them into lesbians 😎 Plus the costumes were all reimagined by Gabriella Slade, who did the costumes for Six, and they look SO cool!

Now, a big part of why I loved your Outsiders post so much was all the story ideas/similarities for characters you included, but I can't really do that here because (once again)... they're all trains, and none of them are really that deep or serious anyway. BUT, what I did think might be fun, would be going through who I think each of our characters would be good at playing if they were (for some bizarre reason) to ever put on the show - because I do have some strong opinions about that haha. And, as a little bonus, I have written some little random one-off story snippets that are Starlight Express adjacent that I'll throw in at the end lol - more as a reward for you wading through all my nonsense than anything tbh. But they were fun to write too haha.

So yeah, welcome to the insane workings of my brain - and pull up a chair; this could take a while 😅

Ok, I think the best place to start would be with going through the characters in the show and, like I said, matching them up with potential characters of ours I think would be good at playing them. I'll sort of elaborate on 'why' for each one too to help keep things entertaining from an outside perspective lol - and hopefully to help back up my arguments for each lmao. Because, let's face it, none of our characters have particularly...train-like characteristics. 😂

First up we've got Rusty, who's essentially the show's main character. Most of the conflict in the show centres around him; the 'better' trains all totally disregard him, a lot of the coaches tease him, and although he loves Pearl, she's more interested in the newer, more exciting trains than boring, quiet little Rusty. BUT, as with all Cinderella stories, he comes out on top in the end; he wins the race (I would say spoiler alert, but it's also like...duh 🙄😂) and gets his dream girl. He's a really likeable underdog character throughout the story though, and he does put up a good fight to come out victorious, which I appreciate - he doesn't just lay down and let everyone walk (well, roll 😉) all over him.

Now, who do I think would be good to play Rusty? Well, as I mention later on in the one-shots, and have potentially mentioned elsewhere too, I weirdly feel like Riven would really like the show. Maybe he has some childhood nostalgia linked to it like I do - maybe his dad took him to see it when he was younger since it involves skating? I don't know all the details, but something within me tells me Riven would like this show lmao. And so, in the spin-off scenario where our characters put on this show (which is the one I'll always lead with in these things), I think he'd want to take a leading role in the directing side of it - and probably spear-headed the campaign for putting it on in the first place tbh haha. BUT, I feel like a lot of people at Camp (because yes, I think they'd do this at Camp; I don't know when else they would all want to put on a show like this lmao) would think the whole thing was an insane idea, and wouldn't want anything to do with it (because it kind of is an insane idea). SO, I think that Riven would not only end up directing most of the show, I also think he'd have to step into Rusty's skates - which wouldn't be as daunting as he initially expected since he knows the show so well already. Plus, besides the backstory element, I just think he'd be a really cute Rusty; his auburn hair is perfect for it, he's a quietly determined guy, and he's an experienced skater, so he'd have no trouble taking on such a demanding role in terms of the skating.

So yeah, Riven would be my first pick. BUT, this new revival of the show that's being performed in London is playing Rusty and Pearl (his love interest, who we'll get to in a minute) in a much more innocent, shy way - and it's freaking adorable. And I think if we were leaning into more of that version of the show, Royce would make a brilliant Rusty if Vivien could be his Pearl. I don't know how likely he'd be to take on another leading role after being thrown into Hairspray like he was in your last Camp Wanamaker story, especially one that required him to be on roller skates the entire time, but I think he'd really nail it with that more innocent, down-trodden interpretation of the character.

But if everyone was willingly getting involved in the show, and they wanted to lean more into the old-school portrayal of Rusty and Pearl, that feels a little older, and more heavily romantically driven, then I feel like Miles and Carrie make SO much sense for those parts. The whole 'chasing after a girl you think is out of your league' thing has both Miles and Rusty written all over, and I think Miles would, again, play that fluctuating determination and defeat really well. Plus, I know this doesn't really mean anything, but his struggles for money do parallel Rusty being this rundown, tattered, but persistent little steam train pretty well... 😂

Ok, now we'll move onto Pearl. Pearl is the newest coach in the little kid's collection, and is therefore the most sought-after racing partner (since all the trains need to race with a coach - idk why, it's just part of the story I suppose lol). Sometimes she's a 'first class' coach, sometimes she's an 'observation car', it doesn't really matter - all that matters is that all the trains want to race with her, and although she has a soft spot for Rusty, who has loved her all along, she gets seduced by the flashiness of his competitors, and it takes her almost getting wrecked in the final race for her to see sense. She can be a little naive sometimes, or will sometimes just blatantly play the field (depending on how you play her), but her heart is always in the right place, which is what still makes her so likeable.

Again, for Pearl I've got multiple options for who could play her, but I'll start with Juliet. The new all-white version of Pearl's costume that they use in the current Bochum production just screams Juliet to me: that sleek sophistication and quiet confidence, but also a touch of flirty, girly charm is so her! And I think she'd make a great leading lady - which is why she's my pick for that spin-off scenario version of the show. Pearl has some great songs, which would be perfect for Juliet to show off more of her voice, with her wanting to be a singer eventually, and with you hinting at Riven and Juliet maybe having a little bit of a fling or something in your last STDP post, having them play the two leads here seems like a perfect fit for them! Rusty thinking Pearl's way out of his league, but Pearl falling for his kindness and good heart anyway - that just screams Riven and Juliet to me! Pearl also has a strong sisterhood-type friendship with the other coaches, which I think really works for Juliet too. And Pearl does try to stand up for what she thinks is right when the bigger trains start taking the competition a little too far - so I think Juliet could bring a great deal of her own strength to her portrayal of the character as well.

Now, my second choice for Pearl, links with the second choice for Rusty above, which is, obviously Vivien. I feel like the new London revival Pearl was MADE for Vivien to play; the whole space-y vibes of the show, the fact that they made her purple, and the fact that they made her this happy little ball of excitement, with a touch more innocence than previous Pearls - she's perfect for Vivien. And the awkwardly adorable, friends-to-lovers arc Rusty and Pearl have in this new revival was practically written for Royce and Vivien lmao - I just think they'd be able to play them brilliantly. And again, like with Juliet, I think Vivien's fiestiness would allow her to bring a lot of strength and determination to Pearl's character that isn't always there - she can sometimes be played quite airy and 'damsel-in-distress-like', but I think Vivien would really ground her.

And my last choice for the role is Carrie - she's not my favourite pick for the role, and I think she'd be better at other parts (as we'll see in a minute lol), but as I said earlier, if Miles is playing Rusty, I think Carrie would make an amazing Pearl opposite him. Their dynamic just fits them so well - Miles pining for her but not feeling like he's good enough, Carrie being blinded to her true feelings by other options (in this situation I feel like Eric would make a great Greaseball lol) but coming around in the end - it's just perfect! And, I truly believe that the song Pearl sings in the original London production, Only He, can only be bodied in the way it deserves to be bodied by my girl Carrie haha. I'm not a big fan of Next Time You Fall In Love, but I do quite like I Do (the replacement options for Only He), and I think Juliet and Vivien would do great renditions of them, but there's just something about the thought of Carrie singing that song that just makes so much sense. I've got an idea for her to sing it in a legitimate story too (that's how obsessed with that song I am lmao), probably linked to the heartache referenced in the little drabble I'll post below, but I feel like she needs to sing it for an actual audience too haha. It's just such a beautiful, powerful, swelling theatre ballad - she'd kill it!!

Alright, now we're getting to the good stuff. This is Greaseball: arguably the main antagonist of the show because, although most of the characters rag on Rusty, a lot of them do so to show their support for Greaseball. They're the reigning, undefeated champion when it comes to the races, so they have quite the ego on them. They're brash, and cocky, and a little brute-ish, but they're also incredibly competitive, which often gets in the way of their better judgement, resulting in a total disregard for everyone else (including their undeservingly loyal girl, Dinah). They're a total showboat and narcissist, but they do have a dopey, lovable side that Dinah helps to bring out towards the end of the show, which does help redeem them haha.

Now, there are two ways that Greaseball can be played: the traditional way, or the new way. For the traditional way (the sort of wannabe-Elvis, old school rockstar portrayal), Butchy feels like an obvious pick. And although I don't think he's anything like Greaseball's character, you know if he had to play him he'd take to the greaser caricature like a duck to water lmao. Plus, if Mick was playing Dinah (which, you'll see in a bit, I think works perfectly for her), they'd make an adorable duo in the show, and I think they'd have a lot of fun hamming up the roles to make them even more ridiculously cartoonish. And if Mick was his Dinah, I think Butchy would do the whole 'crawling back to her with his tail between his legs' schtick soooo well - he'd just melt into a puddle for her the second he apologised for being such a brute haha. The only thing that's holding me back with Butchy is that I don't know how good he'd be at being so mean to his friends - especially if someone like Miles or Royce was playing Rusty haha; he's just too nice! Plus, I don't know how well he could roller skate lmaoo.

OR, the other way Greaseball can be played is like how they've done it in the new London revival of the show: by making her into a fiesty little lesbian. And this is the role I feel like Carrie could really excel at. I just think she'd have sooo much fun with all the showboating and playing up the bravado. It's so different to anything else she's played before that I think she'd have a great time getting to try it out too - and I think she'd really enjoy getting to lean into playing a villain as well. I'm just obsessed with everything about the London revival Greaseball - her costume is so cool, her attitude is so iconic, the way she's adapted the character I just, uh- it's brilliant! And as cool as it could be to try out a male Dinah by getting Miles into some frilly gingham (lol), I think having either Juliet or Mick be her Dinah would work really well. I'll get into why I think Juliet would be a perfect Dinah later, but her dynamic with Carrie if they were to take on these roles would just be perfect; Juliet's mild scolding of Carrie's bruteish behaviour, but her unwavering loyalty regardless, Carrie's brushing off of her affection for the sake of winning, but then realising she didn't know how good she had it with Juliet by the end - aaaah, I love them. But for the spin-off scenario, where Juliet would be playing Pearl, my pick for Dinah would have been Mick - again, I'll elaborate more on why that works so well for her in a bit, but there's something about Mick and Carrie being paired up romantically like this that just entertains me so much, and low-key kind of intrigues me too haha. In my head, the way it would have played out was that they'd approached Butchy with the offer for the role first, hoping that if they also offered Mick to be his love interest, he'd be more likely to accept it. But after he dismissed it so blatantly, and they couldn't get anyone else to convincingly fit the role, Carrie was called upon to take his place - and to get back at Butchy for not even considering the part, Mick decides to take the Dinah role anyway, but doesn't tell him. Because imagine his face when he realises that this role they'd said couldn't be played by anyone but him was not only being played by Carrie, of all people, but that his wife was playing her love interest (and was practically throwing herself at Carrie the whole show)! They'd have so much fun torturing him with it, I just know it haha. And omg Carrie would have a whale of a time with Pumping Iron lmao. Plus, her skating skills can finally come in handy for something lol; she'd be throwing in all the tricks.

Alright, so here's where I started grouping people together because I realised I was rambling far too much about the rest lol. As cool of a character as Electra is concept-wise, I don't think I can talk about them in that much depth haha - they're just not one of my favourites! I don't feel like they have that big of an impact on the story tbh; it feels mostly Rusty/Greaseball centred to me, but it's nice to give Greaseball a bit of real competition in the races I guess haha. Their futuristic, diva-ish vibe is really interesting though, and the fact they have their own entourage is pretty iconic too. But with that all being said, I just don't think there's any of our characters that really fit their archetype, even just in terms of who'd be best at playing them - especially males, since that's what Electra has typically been played as (even though they're nonbinary in the new London revival). I thought it might have been fun to get Donny to play them in the spin-off scenario, because I like to think he's a good enough actor to pull off any role haha - and like with Carrie and Greaseball, I think he'd have a lot of fun with doing something totally different to any of his other roles. I don't quite know how it would come about that he'd ever get involved in an amateur production like this, but in my head I thought it would be cute if, besides Carrie's constant begging and pestering about how they don't have enough people to fill out the cast, he's swayed by the fact that his son's in his 'train' phase at the moment - and so he agrees purely for shits and giggles and getting to make his son excited hahaha. Plus, I think he and Carrie would have a lot of fun getting to play rivals for once instead of lovers lol. And I just know they'd really lean into the comedic side of One Rock 'N' Roll Too Many. But besides Donny, I really have no other good picks. I thought if it was maybe the situation where Butchy was playing Greaseball they could do a female Electra and cast Carrie - because she'd do a fabulous job at selling the glitzy, diva vibes and overall over-the-top dramaticness of the character, and a female Electra would be incredible - but like with Pearl, it's just not my favourite pick for her. More out of necessity than anything haha - although it would be perfect to have Butchy and Carrie playing enemies like that lol.

And then the second one on this list is Poppa/Momma McCoy, who's an old steam engine that takes part in one of the races to help encourage Rusty and prove that steam trains aren't outdated after all. The role has been played by both male and female actors, but it tends to lean more female lately. And whilst I'm sure Grandpa George would happily help the kids out with their show, I have much stronger feelings on different female characters taking on the role.

Firstly, how iconic could it be if Nonna Dawn surprised everyone who wasn't helping out with the show by rolling out to sing Momma's (Poppa's) Blues?? Because that's my main pick for the spin-off scenario and I feel like Viv's face would just be a picture lmaoo. She helped out quite a bit with the stuff in the playhouse in Camp Wanamaker too, so she obviously likes theatre, and she just has that kind of fun, mischievous charm about her, so I feel like when Riven and Carrie would approach her with the idea, she'd love it - especially with that added element of surprise for the audience. And the whole mentor/advice-giver role Momma takes on in the show would work perfectly for Dawn; she's like the embodiment of the voice of reason haha.

My second pick, if you wanted to play Momma a little younger, like the London revival has done (with her playing both Control's mum, and Momma), would be Charlie, because she took a big role in helping out at the playhouse in Camp Wanamaker, and obviously cares a lot about theatre. And she has a really close relationship to Carrie and Riven, so I feel like they'd be able to talk her around to taking part eventually. My only thing holding me back is that part of my feels as though she'd want nothing to do with the production because she'd be too scared someone was gonna get hurt since the whole thing's done on rollerskates - her pseudo-motherly instincts couldn't cope with the stress lmaooo. And if it's in the spin-off scenario, where in my head Vivien's organising a rival production (probably of The Outsiders since you're enjoying it so much atm haha), I feel like Vivien would have already snagged her to help with directing on her project.

And my last potential pick for Momma, in an AU version, and one where Royce or Miles was Rusty, would, of course, be Mrs Murphy. I don't know how she would have done with performing, but Momma obviously takes on a motherly role to Rusty, and the freight/fuel trucks too - so Mrs Murphy taking on that role opposite one of her actual sons, and helping to give them the confidence they need to succeed, just makes so much sense to me! Pretty unlikely scenario, but a fun one to consider nonetheless haha.

Ooh ok, more of my faves again haha. Dinah used to be my all-time favourite growing up, so I have lots of opinions about her. But basically, she's another of the 4 coaches (along with Pearl), and her main role in the show is that she's Greaseball's racing partner (and therefore, essentially also their romantic partner). They have a kind of strained relationship most of the show, because Dinah's totally head-over-wheels (😉) for Greaseball, but Greaseball's also being fawned over by pretty much every other coach, and is reluctant to give in to Dinah's affection for fear of showing any weakness to their opponents - so they can be pretty mean sometimes. BUT, they do have a really cute moment when Greaseball loses in the end and goes back to Dinah to apologise, realising that they still love each other without all the glory of being champions.

She's a pretty confident character though, and is good at standing up for herself when she doesn't think something's right - but she's still able to show her softer, more vulnerable side, which makes her a really well-rounded character imo. There are a few good options for who I'd want to play her though, and although I mention later that Carrie would be a good Dinah, I only think she'd really get cast in the role if she it was an externally produced show, since she only ever lands secondary parts haha. I think she'd be a great Dinah, don't get me wrong, but I just think that if all our characters were in the show, there are better choices for her.

My first one, as mentioned earlier, would be Mick. The brunette hairstyle she's been given lately, as opposed to the blonde, works for Mick so well, and with red being her favourite colour, taking the red from the new London costume but applying it to the more traditional gingham style - aaaah, she'd look adorable. Plus, like I said above, having her play this role opposite Butchy just makes so much sense - but, having her play it opposite Carrie (like she would in my spin-off scenario) would be brilliant. I just think they'd have so much fun with it, especially knowing how weird it would make Butchy feel watching them together, and oddly, I feel like it would help their friendship grow even stronger😂 It's just such an iconic pairing, and I really think they'd do it justice. I think she'd make a really strong-willed Dinah, and as unsteady as I think she'd be on roller skates at first, I think that'd make everyone all the more impressed when they saw her racing and dancing around with everyone else haha - Riven and Carrie would work their magic with teaching her.

And with Dinah being typically played as a sort of 'Southern Belle' type, the obvious pick for Dinah, and one that also makes a ton of sense to me, would, of course, be Juliet. And if she wasn't playing Pearl, this is definitely who I'd have her play. I think she'd be able to lean into the more sensitive, emotional side of Dinah, whilst also keeping a bit of the strength that Mick would bring to her - and you just know that if Carrie was her Greaseball they'd be in their element playing lesbain lovers 👀😂 They'd peak here, I feel. This and Maureen and Joanne in Rent - they'd be untouchable.

I didn't even know whether to include CB in this or not since he's been taken out and put back into the show so many times, but I reference him in one of the one-shots so I thought it was best to. Basically, he's a caboose coach that, in the second act, reveals that he's got a little evil streak behind his oh-so innocent appearance, and that he's actually notorious for wrecking the trains he races behind. So, (although I don't think it's ever actually explained why lol) he teams up with Greaseball and Electra to trick Rusty into racing with him, only to try wrecking him in the big final race. Naturally, it doesn't work, but hey, he acts as a zany little extra antagonist, which I'm never going to complain about haha. 

Like I mention later on, I think Riven would feel kind of drawn to this role - especially because of the softer side we see with him when he comforts Dinah after Greaseball ditches her (for being too moral for their dirty racing tactics lol). Plus, there's that 'red' motif again that would work with his auburn hair - and I think he'd be able to play that coolly sly, kind of crazily sadistic twist well because of how chill he is normally. That switch would be so jarring! But, perhaps an even more jarring option, I think Bentley could also do this part really well. He'd be the perfect, innocent mask to begin with because he's so little and smiley - but then I think he'd have a lot of fun getting to flip that on its head and be the complete antithesis of his usual ball of sunshine personality to be a little crazy criminal instead. Obviously he's nothing like that normally, but acting-wise, if he felt confident enough with it, I think he could really do it justice! And it'd make an even cooler contrast if one of his brothers was playing Rusty; that betrayal would be even harsher!

Alright, now onto the coaches. Let's try to speed through these because I already know I've wasted far too much of your time lmao. If you're still reading at this point, I'm actually pretty impressed 😂 The coaches have changed a bunch over the years, mostly for things going out of fashion (*cough cough* Ashley the smoking car lol) - but the current ones in the London revival are Belle the sleeping car and Tassita the quiet coach. Since these are smaller, more generic parts, I don't really have as much to say about them. But, for Belle I thought that Jade might be a good pick, because I know she can sing since she's in Riven's band, and idk, maybe she naps a lot? 😂 Either way, even though she's said before that she can't act to save her life, I don't think she'd have to act a great deal in this role - but she can sing and skate, and that's enough to give her the confidence to agree to help out in my book haha. And for Tassita, who's the first coach to ever be played by a male performer, which is pretty cool, I thought August might be a fun pick - you know, because he's such a quiet guy himself lol. Besides that though, I've always thought he'd be a good performer (he was originally going to have a part on Find Your Voice after all), and although, like Jade, I don't think he'd have a great deal of confidence at first - especially in a role that still appears quite feminine when he's not totally secure about his sexuality - but I think they'd be able to tweak both the part and the costume until it was something he'd feel comfortable doing. And once he started working on it, I think it'd be really good at bringing him out of his shell! Plus, I like to think he's got a really good voice hidden behind all that shyness - so this is an excuse to finally bring it out into the open hehe. 

Other coaches that could be worked in from other productions are Buffy the buffet car, Duvet the sleeper car (an alternate to Belle), Carrie the luggage car (what a coincidence lol), or, the original Belle the sleeping car, from the original London production way back in the 80s. Belle didn't really do a great deal plot-wise besides help motivate Rusty, and Dinah and the rest of the coaches in the second act when they're ditched by the trains they race with (please, Starlight Express producers, bring back the Rolling Stock reprise; it's iconic lmao) - but if for some reason they wanted to use her in the show, I think Charlie would be a great pick for her. She'd give her all the old-school glamour and girl-power she deserves haha. And I think she'd look iconic in that red costume. 

Finally, my last category: the freight/fuel trucks. Well, actually just the fuel trucks. I thought about including the freight trucks too, but tbh, I don't really have any strong opinions on any of them, and this post is already far too long, so I just left them out lol. But, like the coaches, the fuel trucks are just more racing partner options for the trains. Some have bigger parts than others, but their main purpose is providing fuel (shocking, I know ha). They're new to the London revival though, and tbh I like them more than the freight trucks; they feel more central to the plot - even if it did make the song Freight significantly worse lmao.

And speaking of central to the plot, Hydra, the hydrogen fuel truck is the new reason why Rusty wins the final race (because before it didn't really make that much sense tbh lmao); he's now powered by hydrogen steam, which gives him the advantage over his opponents. And throughout the show, despite the other fuel trucks ragging on Hydra for being too new and dangerous in comparison to their more reliable fuel sources, he ignores them and stands by his belief in his fuel. The only pick in my mind for Hydra because of this though is Ethan - and although I have no idea if he'd ever have any remote interest in acting, especially in a musical theatre production, you know he's so loyal to his friends he'd do anything to help them out if they asked. And, I think he'd just think the idea was so weird he'd be down to participate just for the hell of it lol. But Hydra's way of not caring what anyone else thinks of him, and sticking to his own beliefs, is so Ethan to me - plus, they just have that same, chilled, laid back vibe. And, naturally, they both have that kind of green motif 😉🍃 So yeah, for me, Ethan has to be Hydra - and no matter who's playing Rusty, I feel like he'd vibe enough with all of them for him to jump at the chance to help them out like Hydra helps Rusty in the show. And it'd finally give him an excuse to use those roller skating skills I know he's hiding somewhere despite his usually terrible clumsiness ha. 

For Porter (the red coal truck) I think Zack could maybe play him? Not completely sold on that idea because I don't think he'd really vibe with musicals, but if August roped him into helping out I think he'd begrudgingly agree - and Porter basically does nothing anyway, so he couldn't really complain lol. And for Lumber (the blue timber truck) I picked Erica - not only because her blue hair would look sick with an all-blue costume like that, but also because the thought of Jade and Erica flirting as their characters during the little bickering section between the coaches and the fuel trucks in the song Freight had me weak at the knees. So if they were both in it, their characters would 100% be in love, no questions asked - I need flirty trucks and coaches hahaha. 

So then the final role I'm passionate about is Slick, the oil truck, which is the new London revival's answer to CB, since she not only takes on his main song, but also the whole concept of wanting to race with Rusty to wreck him and help out the competition. This revival also gives her a monetary aim though, which is good for giving her more of a motive, I suppose. I don't really know how trains are supposed to use money, but it's at least a reason, which is more than we had before lmao. I think Abby would be such a good pick for Slick though - I'd want to make her a little more girly, giving her some different hair (like my little reference picture, or maybe something like some fun bubble braids or something - like oil bubbles 👀) and a more feminine costume - but I think having a pretty important role like that would help bring out her confidence with performing a lot, without totally throwing her out of her comfort one with a big main role. I think she'd like the added challenge and fun that the villainous twist Slick has would bring though; it'd give her something a bit different to play with. And with Slick's colour palette mirroring Greaseball's, and her being an oil truck, makes me thing that Abby would really want to lean into making Slick a little Greaseball fangirl, who is constantly looking up to her and wanting to impress her (and hence giving her even more motivation to wreck Rusty and help Greaseball win the race) - which I think would also nicely mirror how much Abby would look up to Carrie (an established actress already) if they were to ever meet. I just think it works really well for her, and I love how the show's leaning more into mixing the genders of the coaches and the freight trucks - even if the costumes are still leaning more feminine and masculine respectively, I think our characters would have more fun tailoring them to each performer's preferences. Because come on, Abby being a pretty girly, but still menacing, little secondary villain would be so cool - she needs to let her rebellious side shine!

Excuse the TMM spacer lol, I'm too lazy to go make a new one lmao. Anyway, if you made it through all that, you really are a true friend haha - because that was soooo much insane rambling. But, I do feel better for dumping it out of my mind and onto a page. Maybe now I can finally stop obsessing over it and get back to writing the stories I should be working on. But hopefully this was a little fun post to switch things up a bit! And hopefully you at least liked it half as much as I enjoyed your Outsiders post haha. If, for some bizarre reason, you actually are interested in the show, then just let me know because I have a slime tutorial (*wink wink*) of the new revival I'd happily send you the link to, because I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. But even if not, like I said, this was just a bit of silly fun to give all these ideas a home. It's not a complex show, and it doesn't have particularly elevated songs or characters, but the orchestrations are clever, the costumes and theatrics are amazing, and it's all done on roller skates - so it'll always have a special, fun spot in my heart hehe. I've linked a video of the megamix at the end of the new London revival for you to get a bit of a vibe of what the show's like without having to watch the whole thing too if you want hehe - at least this way you can see some of the skating and costumes in action! And, as promised, as a reward for sitting through the insanity of this post, here are two little drabbles with our characters as a reward.

The first centres around the song There's Me, and a pairing I think works particularly well for it, that I'm dying to see/write more of - it's also plucked out of that Camp Wanamaker spin-off I wanted to do that I'm not sure will ever materialise. But consider this a sneak peek into what would have gone down lol. And the second is a litle bit of what the chaos the concept of Riven and Vivien putting on rivalling productions would have brought about haha. For context, I think although Riven would have bagged Carrie for his show straight away, Vivien would have furiously retaliated by claiming everyone else in their cabin for hers - hence the competitiveness that ensues. Enjoy! Hopefully they're not too weird to not still be enjoyable anyway 😅😂

The dusty deck creaked as a scuffed, black Converse nudged into her periphery. But her eyes never left the lake - as grey as the thick blanket of clouds overhead, and as bleak as her outlook. 

"The laundry house, really?" the voice demanded, pausing to give the girl a chance to explain herself. 

She did not. 

Sighing, the guest realised this was going to be harder than he expected. After all, he wasn't used to her being this…subdued. "You know, I just think it's a testament to our friendship that I was the only one who knew to look for you here," he offered with a playful smile…that went completely unnoticed. Frowning as the girl continued to ignore his very existence, he let out another sigh, this one as he lowered himself down and took up the space beside her, nudging the sole of her now off-white sneaker with his knee to draw her out of her thoughts. "Come on, Carrie. I'm trying here," he said. But when he leant forwards to try to get a clearer look at her face, and found her cheeks marred with glistening tracks in her foundation, and her puffy eyes speckled with remnants of her mascara, his frustration waned. "You can't hide from them forever," he gently added.

"I want to," Carrie murmured.

"You don't mean that," he tried.

"I do; at least that way I wouldn't be able to fuck things up any more than I already have," she limply insisted.

"You didn't-"

"Don't give me that, Riven; I know I did," Carrie said, cutting him off with an exasperated huff. "I shouldn't have done it, I shouldn't have yelled at them like that. But I was just in such a bad mood after that class, and I was so fed up with everything, so then to come back to all that I just…"

"...Let all those years of bottled up frustration out?" Riven offered.

"Something like that," Carrie mumbled, dropping her gaze to her lap, knowing that if she actually made eye contact with the boy her resolve would start to crumble in an instant. 

"Hmm," he began, murmuring his understanding as he took his turn to look out across the lake. "I heard it wasn't pretty."

Although Riven was no longer looking at her, he saw her dark blonde curls trembling out of the corner of his eye as she shook her head.

"I'm so embarrassed," she admitted, voice barely above a whisper. A fresh tear plopped onto her thigh as she kept her watery gaze steady, praying she'd be able to get a handle on her waterworks for once. "They hate me for sure now."

"They never hated you, Carrie," Riven promised, turning back to her again as though it would persuade her to believe him. 

But Carrie proved to be as stubborn as ever, completely bypassing the comment with a mournful smile she still couldn't bring herself to lift from the floor. "All that time I spent trying to win them over…down the drain, all because I had a shit day and lost my cool."

"I don't know, I'd still say you're pretty cool," Riven tried with a playful lopsided grin, bumping her shoulder until she turned to see it for herself.

When she did finally turn to face him though, it was with that flat, annoyed frown that always just egged him on more. "This isn't a joke," she grumbled, but Riven's little chuckle said otherwise. 

"I'm not saying it is," he countered. "I'm just letting you know it's gonna take a hell of a lot more than one dumb argument for me to stop thinking you're cool. Come on, you're Caroline Cole: entertainer extraordinaire-"

"Why are you doing this?" Carrie stopped his playful bolstering in its tracks with a weary sigh.

"Because I want to," Riven said, standing firm in his optimism. "Come on, I hate seeing you like this," he pressed on fitfully, uneasy with her uncharacteristic despondency. She was usually the life and soul of the party in that playhouse, now she had all the energy of a wet paper towel. Hoping to distract her with a little healthy competition, he added, "We should be out there crushing Erica's cabin at volleyball right now."

"Well forgive me, but I'm not really in the mood," Carrie flatly retorted.

"What are you in the mood for?" he challenged, with a primarily jovial tone, but a hint of creeping frustration. "Moping about like a kicked puppy?"

"Yes, actually," she snipped. "Hate to be the bearer of bad news but I can't be the 'smiling showgirl' 24/7…" Her frown twitched into the faintest of wistful smiles as her voice trailed off, carrying her focus back into the turmoil unfolding within her own head. "I'm allowed to have emotions, I'm just not allowed to show them," she went on to explain with a quiet, self-loathing huff. "'Cause that's when things always turn to shit."

All Riven's teasing intent slipped away, seeping into the damp wood beneath them, as it began to dawn on him that there may have been more to her dramatic disappearance than what he'd initially thought. "...This is about more than just you yelling at the boys, isn't it?" he slowly asked, treading carefully, as though to not set off a bomb.

And yet, Carrie dropped one on him anyway.  

"I think Miles and I are gonna break up, Riv."

The words hung in the muggy air between them, not daring to be believed.

Stunned, hazel eyes settled on Carrie's profile, unable to tear themselves away until she explained herself. So, she began to talk. Slowly but surely, she unravelled the tangle of thoughts in her head, laying them out before her friend, praying that his sensible, perceptive mind could help her make sense of them. "It's just…not felt right this summer. It's like he's…pulling away, or something," she started, still avoiding eye contact at all costs. At least that way she could keep a handle on her tears, even if her mouth did start to run away from her instead. "And the arguing with Royce never helps, but it's just been getting worse instead of better and I can tell he's getting frustrated with it, but I'm trying and nothing's working and I don't understand why and that's making me frustrated, which makes the bickering worse, I just-" She stopped to snatch a breath, only to blow out all her remaining self-confidence with it. "I feel like I've got no fight left anymore. I can't see it getting better. And when I know Miles would always side with his brothers, and everyone else would side with him if things went south… I don't know, it just kind of stings, I guess; one wrong move and I lose them all. No matter what I do, I'd still be left out on my own."

"Don't lump me in with that."

Startled, Carrie lost her focus and turned to the boy; she'd been so lost in her own thoughts she'd forgotten she wasn't alone anymore. But even when she searched his expression, his comment still made no sense. "What do you mean?"

"Well don't say I'd never speak to you again if things with you and Miles didn't work out," he explained as though it was the simplest thing in the world. "Which they totally will by the way, but that's beside the point," he tacked on as that playful chuckle of his started creeping back into his voice. "Of course I'd still speak to you; you can't get rid of me that easily."

"Really?" Carrie asked, wary despite the hopeful glint in her ocean eyes. 

"Yes, really, idiot," he snorted. "I'm not just friends with you 'cause you're dating Miles, you're my drama buddy," he went on to explain with a grin holding nothing but fond sincerity. "You're the only one that keeps me sane in that playhouse, and even then you're so ridiculous I can only take you seriously like 60% of the time. Plus, I did see you naked that one time-"

"I was not- it was just my top."

The frustrated tone shining through in the way she had cut him off, and the way she had hurriedly returned to avoiding his gaze, struck Riven down. "Oh my god, you didn't even laugh at the bikini story. This really is bad," he said - again, half-joking, half-genuinely-concerned. Reaching behind him, his fingers closed around glossy wood as a teasing smile started to tug at his lips. "I didn't want it to have to come to this…"

Hearing fingers start plucking at guitar strings, Carrie's bewildered frown deepened as she turned back to him. "What are you doing?"

"I can't help it, you've left me no choice," he chuckled, cheesily grinning back at her and continuing to lazily pluck out a melody. "I'm not leaving until I've cheered you up - even if that means resorting to music."

"Come on, Riv," Carrie wearily groaned, not nearly as amused by the offer as he'd hoped she would be. "Stop, I'm not in the mood. Can't you just leave me alone?"

The plucking stopped and Riven sat the guitar fully back in his lap, his own brows now starting to furrow. "They really got you this time, huh?"

Carrie sighed as she dropped her gaze to her lap again. "I don't like to show it normally 'cause I know they don't always mean it, they just want to get a rise out of me," she slowly confessed. "But it was…different last night. It's felt different since we arrived."

"I really thought you guys were getting somewhere," Riven softly mused, just as perplexed by the sudden nosedive in amiability as the others in the cabin.

"So did I," Carrie agreed, smiling painfully down at a knot in the wood. A million things she wanted to say swirled in her head, but none of her thoughts were quite able to be fit into words - nothing that could make a coherent sentence anyway. She didn't know whether to get mad, and let the rest of her pent up anger spill across the deck until she'd rid herself of it completely. She didn't know whether to just push it to the back of her mind again, put on a brave face and swan back into camp as though nothing was wrong at all. She didn't know whether to stay hidden, avoiding everyone at the cabin and all her problems at the same time. At least that way she wouldn't have to face them again, or have to try to explain herself and her inexcusable temperament to Miles. God, he was probably so mad at her right now. 

More and more thoughts flew through her mind, hitting the walls of her skull like rabid animals until her head pounded and her resolve broke down. Helpless tears started to slip from her eyes as the hopelessness of her position washed over her all over again. She felt a hand on her back that brought her back to her senses in an instant though - having forgotten, yet again, that she wasn't alone out here. She sniffed and hurriedly patted away the tears, trying to salvage what little of her makeup still remained. "Guess I'm not such a heartless bitch after all," she offered, managing a melancholy chuckle at her predicament that, although was an improvement, still did nothing to show Riven that she was feeling more like her usual self. 

In fact, he just felt more concerned than ever. Carrie was strong-willed and stubborn, bold and exuberant - not the shying, insecure, tearful shell of a girl before him. He'd already suspected that her confidence had been knocked this summer thanks to the rather personal disruption at the playhouse, but this was worse than he thought. And he couldn't stand by in good conscience and watch her fire be extinguished. 

Setting his guitar back into position, he began plucking at the strings again. Carrie shot him another questioning look, with a slightly annoyed huff, but he stuck to his guns and kept playing, offering her nothing but a cheesy, comforting grin in response. "Complain all you want," he chuckled. "But I'm not gonna stop playing." 

Although Carrie just rolled her eyes, she did manage a small, resigned laugh as she gave up on the pushback. And soon, to her surprise, lyrics began to accompany his playing - as gentle and reassuring as his own intent.

All alone, you think you're on your own You think there's no one in the world who cares for you That isn't true, there's me May not be, the one you want to see But if you need someone who's kind then look behind And then you'll find, there's me

I'll be near, standing by Never fear, you can cry But in a while, you will smile And I'll be there to see

By yourself you have to cry yourself Nobody else can cry the tears you have to cry But I will try, there's me Until then, when you're okay again You'll look around, find I'm no longer there I'll still be near somewhere You're not alone, there's me There's always me

I'll still be near somewhere You're not alone; there's me There's always me...

The soft, yet cheeky smiles Riven kept shooting the girl as he sang, paired with the meaning behind the words, and the added special meaning to them both, meant that by the time his strumming faded to silence, Carrie was finally grinning back at him. 

"You really came all the way out here to serenade me with a musical theatre song from the 80s?" she asked with a teasing chuckle, wiping away the last traces of any tears with the heel of her hand. 

"It worked, didn't it?" he teasingly fired back with a satisfied smirk. 

"Touché," she giggled, before hitting with a further pointed eyebrow raise. "But Starlight? Really?"

"Again: it worked, didn't it?" he retorted with a snort of laughter she was all too happy to reciprocate.

"You are way too attached to that show," she chuckled, teasingly bumping his arm.

"It's about roller skating trains - how can I not be attached to it?"

"I don't know, ask literally anyone else at camp," Carrie snorted back, referring to the many attempts the pair had made to try to get even just one of their friends to give the show a chance.

Knowing exactly what the blonde was talking about, Riven just shot her a grin. "They'll come around eventually, trust me."

Giving an equally confident, yet slightly more playful grin back, Carrie conceded with another giggle before continuing. "And when they do, I think you've proven you'd make an excellent CB."

Riven pressed a hand to his chest. "I think that might be the nicest thing you've ever said to me," he said with a comically dramatic earnestness that just had Carrie rolling her eyes again.

"Shut up, I compliment you all the time," she retorted, and her smile only broadened when Riven showed no signs of pushing back. "I'm serious though; if you ever manage to convince Nonna you don't need to be sectioned for suggesting we stage the show, I think you'd be great."

Biting back a laugh, Riven instead decided to lead with sincerity. "Only if you'd be my Dinah," he bargained with a fond, yet knowing grin she, again, gladly shared. But it wasn't long before he started rambling again. "But I'd sacrifice that if it meant you could be Pearl…"

With an affectionate shake of her head, Carrie playfully sighed, "I never play the lead - I can't break my streak now, you know that."

Taking his turn to roll his eyes, he retorted with. "Pearl is not the lead; the whole show's about Rusty."

"Ok well maybe you can play Rusty then, Mr Know-It-All," Carrie teasingly fired back as the pair fell back into their typical, theatre-based ramblings - idly chattering away without a care in the world as the wind pulled the clouds across the sky.

It wasn't until Carrie saw the sunlight skittering across the lake, and heard the distant chatter of counsellors start up again, that she realised her head had finally stopped pounding, and her chest no longer felt as though someone had carved a giant hole into it. Astonished, but grateful nonetheless, Carrie turned back to Riven with a smile. "Thanks for coming to find me, Riv."

Grinning contentedly back, he replied, "Well, I don't like thinking of you being sad. You're like my fun, crazy, big sister - I can't have you moping around like a sadsack."

"You really think of me like a sister?"

"Of course. We don't always understand each other, and I tease the shit out of you at every opportunity I get, but that doesn't mean I don't care about you. You always make me laugh, you're insanely talented, you give the best advice, but you're honest when you need to be - you're everything I'd want in a big sister. Plus, like I said, you're my drama buddy. The shit we put up with from those campers has bonded us for life, whether you like it or not."

Unable to hold back her laughter any longer, it spilled out from her grateful smile as she reached out and wrapped him in a big hug, nestling her face into the well-worn cotton of his hoodie. 

"And you give great hugs," he playfully added, mumbling through her mane of frizzy, golden curls.

"Thanks, Riv," she murmured between giggles, letting herself melt into the comforting reassurance of his embrace.

"Any time, Care Bear."

Sitting back, scouring his half-finished painting with an acutely analytical gaze, Bentley didn't even hear the door to the art barn open, let alone the footsteps that followed. He squinted his eyes, tilted his head from side to side, screwed up his mouth in concentration… And then his vision went dark.

Blinking, eyelashes brushed against an old t-shirt masquerading as a blindfold. But before he could try to question the ambush, a quiet voice broke through his haze of confusion.

"Alright, listen to what I say, or this is not gonna be pretty."

A chuckle couldn't help but slip from Bentley's lips, immediately relaxing as he recognised the voice. "Is that your attempt at sounding threatening?"

"I was actually trying to be reassuring," August countered with a bashful chuckle of his own.

"Oh, well then consider me reassured," Bentley laughed, still idly toying with his paintbrush. "As reassured as anyone can be when they're randomly blindfolded on a Wednesday afternoon. What are you doing anyway?"

"I need to take you somewhere, so put the brush down and get up - but don't go too fast; I've gotta make sure you don't bump into anything," August ordered, tying the old t-shirt in place before clumsily helping the blonde stand, taking him by the shoulders and leading him towards the door.

"Where the hell are we going?" Bentley asked, after they had navigated the stairs in a (somewhat) successful manner - consisting of only one giggling fit, and one almost-total-collapse - as he felt them move from the wooden deck to the uneven grass. 

"I'm not allowed to tell you, but it's nothing bad, trust me."

"Who's forcing you to kidnap me and parade me across camp like a prisoner?"

"You'll find out in a minute," August chuckled, steering him around a tree stump. "But just know that it's nothing bad."

"Well I'd hope not - I'd hate to think you'd willingly be involved in leading me to my demise," Bentley snorted, before continuing with his idle rambling. "Who's roped you into taking me captive anyway?"

"I don't know if I can say; they didn't give me much briefing, and I don't think they expected you to be this…chatty."

Bentley laughed. "Well then they should have sent a more intimidating kidnapper."

"They didn't want to scare you, they just needed you away from Vivien," August admitted, immediately falling silent for a few steps. "...I don't know if I was supposed to say that."

"Ohhh, ok then, so I'm being taken hostage by the competition?" Bentley chuckled through a smirk as he began to piece the puzzle together.

"...Maybe," August confirmed as he rounded the blonde and started to lead him up a new set of steps from the front to make sure he didn't lose his footing. "But if they ask then you figured it out on your own - you didn't hear it from me."

"Well it's not like I had many options; it was either that or some weird camp event I didn't pay attention to the announcement for," Bentley laughed to himself as he blindly stuck his foot out, almost completely missing the step until August repositioned him. "What do they need me for? Information about how our rehearsals are going? And how are you in cahoots with them anyway? Are you abandoning our show for theirs?"

"What? No, just… Hang on, gimme a second," August fumbled through his excuses, fighting to nudge the door open with his foot before carefully pulling his friend inside. "Alright, we're here. Just sit down and listen to what they've got to say, they'll explain everything," he continued, keeping his voice down as he offered the boy further reassurances he was sure he wasn't supposed to. 

Once Bentley was situated on what felt like a metal fold-out chair, August gave his shoulder one last reassuring squeeze before untying the old t-shirt and lifting it away from his eyes. Oddly though, even with the blindfold removed, Bentley could hardly see a thing; whatever cabin they were in had black-out cloths draped across the windows, leaving the room in complete darkness. Well, at least that explained why it had taken August so long to navigate him across the room. 

"Uhh… Hello?" Bentley tried, calling out into what felt like a completely empty room if the thick silence he was met with was anything to go by.

But before he could question his situation any further, a light sprang to life beside him, so bright he had to jerk his head back to save himself from temporary blindness.

Wincing, he tried to take in his now significantly more illuminated surroundings, only to find that he was sitting at a scuffed, fold-out table, occupying the very lamp that seemed to give off more light than the sun itself. Other than that, the rest of the room was swimming in darkness, creating a rather effective interrogation set-up, which he suspected the masterminds behind his kidnapping had hoped for. 

And speaking of these masterminds, just as the afterimages were finally starting to fade from his vision, a figure rolled out of the darkness and up to the table. Yes, quite literally rolled. 

They set their hands on the tabletop in front of him and presented the boy with a smug smile. "Hello, Bentley."

"What are you doing?" Bentley asked, snorting out a laugh at the surreal nature of the entire situation. 

"We have a…preposition for you," Riven slowly explained, his smug smile only broadening. 

"We?" Bentley questioned. "There are more weirdos than you tied up in this thing?"

Suddenly the lamp head was wrenched back, sending the beam of light directly at his face, once again making him jerk his head back. "And just who do you think you're calling a weirdo?"

Eyes watering from the visual assault, Bentley squinted through the brightness until he found a tanned hand clamped around the lamphead. Following it up, he found an all-too-familiar, shadowed face, framed by a mane of unruly golden curls. "Not you?" Bentley offered with a lopsided smile.

Thankfully, the gesture was enough to appease Carrie, who tilted the lamphead back into position - but not before she shot the boy a satisfied smirk in response. 

"You got any other questions? Or can we get down to business?" Riven asked. 

"Uh, yeah: what's with the kidnapping?" Bentley fired back, sporting an amused smirk of his own. "You so worried you'll lose the bet you're turning to torturing the competition?"

"What? No! We just needed you away from the boss," Riven laughed, his comically threatening act disappearing in seconds as he referenced his pint-sized figure skating partner. "Like I said, we've got a preposition for you."

"Couldn't you have just asked me in the dining hall? Or in my room or something?" Bentley went on to ask, still having to squint from the light.

"Well yeah, but where's the fun in that?" came Riven's snorted reply, to which Carrie just grinned and nodded in agreement.

Bentley shook his head at the pair, evidently equally matched in their passion for dramatising the most menial things. "This is so dumb," he breathed, fighting back a smile at the ridiculousness of their whole set-up. "What do you want then? What's this preposition thing?"

Carrie and Riven exchanged a glance, giving each other a confirmatory nod before turning back to the blonde. "…We need your help."

"With what?"

"With the show," Riven clarified.

"The show? Your show?" Bentley spluttered, eyes darting between the pair, looking for any evidence of jesting, yet finding nothing. "I don't understand," he slowly continued. "Why do you want my help? I've got no idea what I'm doing with all this theatre stuff. I'm out of my depth with Viv's show as it is. Plus, I already agreed to be in her's - I can't help out the competition."

"Why not? I am."

Bentley's ears pricked up as a new voice entered the conversation, and to his amazement, when he turned to follow it, he saw a grinning brunette emerging from the darkness on Carrie's right. 

"Mick?! You jumped ship?" Bentley asked, gawping at the grinning girl as though she'd just grown a second nose. "Does Viv know?"

"No, I didn't jump ship," Mick chuckled as she perched on the edge of the fold-out table. "I'm helping out with both."

"What? Why?"

"'Cause I wanted to," she snorted simply. "It's not like there's rules against it. This whole thing's just for fun anyway."

"Yeah, it's not actually a competition - we just both wanted to put on different shows," Riven added.

"Well could you let Viv know that? She's treating this like we're at war - we've all been sworn to secrecy," Bentley said, chuckling at his friend's competitive spirit.

"Oh we know, we already tried to get Mick to squeal but she wouldn't budge," Carrie said, sharing a knowingly playful glance with the brunette.

"And luckily, they had a cool job for me besides just being their spy," Mick cheekily added. "Or else all the effort it took to brainwash me would have been for nothing."

"Which is…?" Bentley tried.

"I'm building the stage," Mick revealed with a proud grin. 

Bentley's eyes went wide. "You guys need to build your own stage?"

Riven and Carrie shared another knowing smirk. "If we want the show to be as awesome as it deserves to be then yeah, it needs a custom stage," Riven confirmed.

"And since Butchy and Miles refused to even hear us out, Mickie stepped up to the plate to handle it all on her own," Carrie added, looping her arm through the brunette's with a fond grin. "And she's doing a way better job than either of those two bozos would have done anyway." 

"Well, I don't know about that…" Mick said with a roguish chuckle. "But I am doing a pretty damn good job."

"Does this mean you're helping with both shows too?" Bentley then asked, turning behind him to look for the friend who'd brought him here, who could do nothing but offer him a sheepish smile. 

"...Yeah," August slowly admitted, before adding a quieter: "You know I'm terrible at saying 'no' to things."

"So your solution is just doing twice the work?" Bentley asked incredulously, the information just serving more of a purpose to fuel his growing need to help August grow a backbone. 

"Well they're not big parts-" he tried to reason.

"You're actually in both of them?" Bentley demanded, his eyes practically popping out of his head when he saw the knee and elbow pads the boy was sporting. "But you don't know how to roller skate."

"They're teaching me," August chuckled, shooting Carrie and Riven a grateful smile. And when Bentley's disbelieving gaze found theirs, they just offered him smug grins and little waves, showing off their own elbow pads as they did so.

Bentley's shock jumped to a whole new level when he spotted Mick's elbow pads though. "You're in it too, Mickie?!"

"Well I didn't like how quickly Butchy dismissed them when they asked him to take part," Mick began, smirking at the very thought. "So I thought I'd teach him a lesson about not judging things at face level."

"Well, we should have known not to expect his neanderthal brain to be able to comprehend such complex concepts as 'having fun'," Carrie retorted with a cheeky dig Mick luckily started to laugh at.

"I've gotta admit, it did sound really corny at first. But once you get past the fact it's all about trains, the show is pretty fun," Mick confessed.

"Duh, of course it's fun, we're directing it," Carrie added, gesturing to the auburn-haired giant behind her, who just laughed in his approval. 

"The whole show's done on roller skates - I still don't understand how anyone could know that and not automatically think it's awesome," Riven said between his chuckles. 

But at that revelation, Bentley's eyes started to grow wide again. "Hold on, you're not expecting me to have a part in your show too, are you?" he asked, horrified at the very idea. "I barely have a handle on what I'm doing in Viv's already, and that's just one show. Plus, I can't even roller skate so-"

"No, we don't need you to be in it," Riven cut in with a chuckle before the blonde's anxious ramblings could make him run out of breath. 

"Unless you want to be in it, then we'd totally find you a part," Carrie tagged on with an encouraging grin. 

"And teach you how to skate," Riven added with a mischievous smirk. "If we can teach Mick, we can teach anyone."

And although Mick's playful whack of Riven's arm did help him relax a touch, Bentley's stance on their offer was still firm: "No thanks, I'm good." But his curiosity was still running rampant as the others giggled at his reaction. "Well if you don't need me to have a part in the show, then what did you need my help for?"

"We wanted to see if you'd be willing to help us with designing and making the costumes," Riven explained.

Bentley thought he had to have misheard him. "The costumes?"

"Yeah," Riven chuckled at the boy's expression. "What's that face for?"

"I don't know the first thing about making costumes - I've never worked with fabric in my life."

Riven and Carrie exchanged another glance. "That's kind of why we need your help," Carrie started.

But when Bentley just looked more confused than ever, Riven went on to explain. "None of the stuff in the playhouse storage bins will work because, well, they're just regular people clothes, so we need to design our own stuff. Juliet's already said she can help construct any actual clothing garments we need, but our main problem is how to actually use the outfits to make us look like trains."

Bentley's thoughts came to a screeching halt. "Wait…you guys are the trains?"

"Yeah."

"You're acting as trains? Singing trains?" They had to be pranking him, right?

"Uh, yeah," Carrie said, sharing another quick glance with Riven.

"What did you think the show was about?" he snorted.

"I don't know, I thought you were just like people working on a railroad or something," Bentley retorted with an incredulous splutter.

"Well we're not, we're the trains," Riven chuckled.

"Yeah, why else would we need to do the whole thing on wheels?" Mick added with a playful wiggle of her skate-clad foot. 

"So what? You want me to…make you look like trains?" Bentley warily asked. "Like with big chimneys coming out of your heads and stuff?"

Fondly rolling her eyes at Bentley's poor attempts at stifling his laughter, Carrie stepped in to try to explain the proposal a little more clearly. "No - we just need to capture the vibe of trains - you don't need to shove us all in cardboard box models. We can show you the costumes of the official productions so you can get an idea of the sort of things we're looking for, but we don't have a huge budget, so we're gonna have to get creative - hence why we came to you," she finished with a proud grin. 

"All we want you to do is draw up some concepts that make us look enough like a train to sell the illusion to the audience. And as long as they're moveable enough for us to skate in, and can be constructed from stuff we've got access to, the rest of the design can be totally down to you," Riven added.

"So basically you've got free reign to make us look as ridiculous as you want," Mick tacked on with a chuckle. 

"But try to be a little nice with it," August gently offered from behind, which just set Bentley off to laugh more.

He did have to admit that the offer sounded quite tempting. After all, he'd never worked on anything like costume designs before - and from the sounds of things, this concept would let him get pretty creative with it; these weren't just average costumes - in fact, they were probably more sculpture than costume anyway. But there was something still holding him back. "I don't know, guys. I don't know if I've got the brain space to work on two shows at once-"

"Oh please, Bentley - come on," Riven pleaded. "We'll look like complete morons out there if we don't have good costumes."

"We will," Mick earnestly confirmed. "Trust me, It's not pretty."

"Well if I'm on Vivien's side then don't I want you guys to look like complete morons?" he asked with a mischievous giggle.

"Maybe, but where's the fun in a landslide victory?" Riven countered with a smirk. 

"Come on, Benny, please," came Carrie's attempt at begging. "I'll sit with you and help you learn all your lines whilst you work on the costumes."

Bentley's ears pricked up. "...Really?"

"Mhm," she confirmed with a kind nod. "And I can give you all my tips for breaking down the script into easier parts to manage; I know they can seem really daunting when you try to go through them all at once."

Now that sounded like an offer he could get behind. He'd already been toying with the idea of asking Carrie for help with the seemingly impossible task of learning his lines, but had chickened out every time. There were just so many - it was like they all blurred into one every time he'd even open a page. And he hated the thought of letting Vivien down because he couldn't get his brain to work how he wanted it to, so if Carrie could actually help him get through a scene without having to look at his script the entire time… Maybe it'd be worth giving up a few pages of his sketchbook to designing train-transformer-wannabes.

But he couldn't let them think he was that easy of a target… "I don't know guys, it just doesn't feel right going behind Viv's back like this-"

"Oh come on, Benny, please," Carrie tried again, with a touch more dramatic desperation.

"I'll do your dish duty for the rest of summer," Riven attempted to bribe.

But that just spurred on Bentley's reluctance even more. After all, he was rather curious about what else he could squeeze out of the pair to help sweeten the deal. "...I'm listening."

"You can have the rest of my pudding cups with dinner each night?" Riven offered. "And you don't have to go behind Viv's back," he added. "Don't go and tell her outright, but if she asks you about it then you're totally free to tell her. And if she's not happy about it, you can back out any time you want."

"Well, okay, but I still don't know if I'll have the time to-"

"If you say 'yes' we'll get you that rare Spiderman comic you want," Riven threw out in a moment of sheer desperation.

Bentley's heart skipped a beat. Damn, they really did want his help.. "...Seriously?" he breathed, eyes widening at the very prospect.

"Sure, Carrie'll cover it - won't you, Carrie?" Riven confirmed with a smirk as he gave the blonde's shoulder a squeeze. 

Shooting him a sharp glance, she hissed a tight: "I will?"

"Of course you will," Riven verified, his mischievous smirk only broadening as Carrie's mildly murderous glare was replaced with Bentley's whole-hearted satisfaction.

"Alright, done. Pass me a pen and some paper," he said, sealing the deal with a barked laugh and a cheesy grin before either one of them could back down on their offers again. 

"Welcome aboard, Bentley," Riven replied, shooting him a victorious smile as he reached across the table and shook the boy's hand. 

But just as Riven and the others were starting to unload all their ideas for potential costume concepts onto Bentley, with what he found to be startling levels of enthusiasm, the room's main lights flickered to life, illuminating a seething head of green hair in the doorway. Before Bentley could question the girl's sudden appearance, or could let his eyes adjust to the drastic shift in brightness though, she called out to her band partner with thunderous urgency.

"Riv, you've got a hell of a lot of explaining to do; I just looked up this 'Belle' character you want me to play - care to tell me why she's described as 'ancient' and 'peeling'?" an outraged Jade demanded. "Or why you thought I'd be so perfect to play her?"

Rolling his eyes and just laughing off the girl's anger, Riven quickly tried to appease her with a teasing: "That's not the version of her we're using, dummy. And don't you dare try to tell me you're not perfect for her - you nap all the fucking time."

As Riven and Jade broke off into their own friendly spat, and Mick and Carrie started up their own conversation about what Mick had been practising last on her skates, Bentley found himself turning to August - this time taking his turn to wear the awkwardly sheepish smile. "Why do I get the feeling I've signed up for way more than I can handle?"

"Oh come on, don't worry, it'll be fun," August reassured before offering a joke to further set him at ease. "And hey, at least you're getting a backstage job and a comic book out of it - all I'm gonna get is on-stage embarrassment and massive quads."

The guffaws spilled from Bentley's lips before he could stop them - and after glancing around to watch Carrie clumsily catching Mick (who looked as if she'd just stepped on a banana peel in an old cartoon) before she could fall, and Riven playfully bickering with Jade in the doorway, he started to think that working with them on this project might not be so bad after all. Plus, a whole costume concept all to himself? He could definitely have some fun with that…

[familyagrestefanblog]

Hot take: Toxinelle's design for the most part isnt as great as everyone makes it out to be, much less it being groundbreaking or the best emo design, since it's barely anything new at all:

it's just her head that's amazingly designed and the fact that Ladybug's regular suit honestly couldn't set the bar any lower.

Griffe Noire on the other hand is actually punk through and through. Not giving a single shit what you think of his look and being the punkest bitch by even going with a feminine-coded name in the french original bc he doesn't care about your single-minded bs when you for some reason automatically think he MUST be female just because he has two "e"s in his name:

One of these two got one hell of a save design where barely a single risk was taken so she remains universally pretty for every viewer

And the other one actually was allowed to embody a whole new fashion style and life style, that fits perfectly as an extension of his OG character, merely things went south.

In my opinion there is no competition who got the better character design.

It's the one that actually does something for the character besides looking pretty, cool and being inoffensively save.

I'll give you a hint: it ain't Toxinelle.

edit:

Just to clarify this, I'm not saying I fell out of love for Toxinelle's design to be a b*tch. I'm saying it from the stands of me wanting the show to put the same amount on effort into Marinette's designs as Adrien's.

Griffe Noire is allowed to be straight up punk and yet the most I can give Toxinelle is that her design is Gothic-INSPIRED:

Again, her head is the most well designed part and especially the mask going underneath her chin, the amazing hair style and the conveniently fitting red-black color scheme works perfectly for Gothic.

As are her already incorporated gloves, the fact that she's wearing a mask in the first place and her dark makeup. Especially her vampire red eyes (like Monarque Bug, I love that detail) and I'll also give credit to how the upper red part of her body suit looks like a sleeveless dress and the little Ladybug symbol looking like a necklace.

All that combiened with her overall Gothic-elegance shows how AMAZING Toxinelle could have looked if they had for once taken an actual risk with her and prioritized what the fashion style is actually supposed to be over her looking universally pretty for every viewer.

I'm being nitpicky here because of how frustrating I find it that Griffe Noire has such a phenomenal character design, straight up one of the best in the show, and yet Marinette is still stuck with the same one-layer body suits a la "just this time the stripes go to the left"

Character design is not decided by if EVERYONE thinks they look great. The priority is what the character design does for the character. It's visual story telling.

I personally dress much more like Juleka or Emo Marinette in real life and yet in my opinion it's still crystal clear that Rose as Pigella has one of the best hero character designs because of how unapologetically ROSE it is:

I personally don't have to want to wear it or even like it at all to think it's one of the best ones because of the simple fact that this design embodies Rose's PERSONALITY (as does her whole transformation) and tells me more about her.

Especially in direct comparison with Griffe Noire, or even civilian emo Adrien probably wearing his dead mother's jacket while Adrien HAS TO keep dressing more low-key, Toxinelle barely tells me a thing about this Marinette's personality besides "slay Queen"

Because there IS no personality. The most you can get out of this is her being even more uptight and closed off because of how her collar directly blends into her mask, keeping her in a visual choke hold.

But that's mostly it. For Griffe Noire they explicitly went with punk fashion, meaning everything punk stands for can now be put into new context with Adrien.

But Toxinelle barely embodies a fashion style, she's just Gothic-INSPIRED (at most). And that's such a shame because Gothic, especially if you wanna use it in a darker way, was a PERFECT fashion style to utilize here.

The most common Gothic styles are inspired by Victorian funeral wear and give off an aura of authority, seriousness and melancholic detachment, being kept in the past (this is in no way meant as generalization, fashion is complex)

In what reality COULDN'T we have gone with that for Toxinelle? She would have been the perfect complimentary style for Griffe Noire by her side.

And we don't even need to go with a dress. Gothic women wear pants too:

Can you imagine how amazing she could have looked as an actual goth? How much visual story telling through FASHION they could have put into her design when the evil Ladybug is a vampire goth whose fashion is inspired by funeral wear??

Yes, I AM pissed.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

[lonelier-version-of-you]

I feel like Dylan's autism diagnosis storyline is the perfect example of what Casualty's idea of "being progressive" seems to be lately.

Which is to say: it's taking a subject (Dylan's autism) that the show has already covered before and covered well, and ignoring the fact it had been covered before like "Oh, look at this New and Groundbreaking topic Casualty has never covered before (except all the times it did!)".

Dylan has been canonically autistic since 2011, and he was getting along fine as a canonically autistic character until Casualty suddenly retconned practically all of his character development - because a lot of that development was built on him being autistic and knowing it - just for a weirdly handled "Dylan finds out he's autistic" storyline.

Dylan has been well aware he's autistic since before work at Holby was even a twinkle in his eye! He's made clear statements on it himself (not to mention that Sam obviously knew - how could she know if Dylan didn't? Am I meant to believe she time travelled to 2024 to see Dylan get diagnosed?!). I'd even go so far as to say the show implied Dylan was into disability activism, considering things like terminology he used, his repeatedly forming friendships with other disabled people, his general tendency to be the most passionate character about disability rights, etc... and all of that goes back to long before his OCD diagnosis, so it can't be explained with "well he knew he was neurodivergent, just not that he was autistic" either.

Of course, I don't have a problem with the idea of a "finding out you're autistic in adulthood" storyline. It would have been great for Henrik or Eli or Ruby. It's an important story to tell. Dylan would have had his own realisation in adulthood... just the part of it before Holby.

I don't even mind a story about Dylan getting an autism diagnosis. I can't think of anything that wouldn't work with a "Dylan has assumed he's autistic since the 2000s, but never got officially diagnosed until now" setup. What I have a problem with is rewriting history just to do a "this is how Dylan realises he's autistic" story.

It's made all the more annoying by the fact that Casualty just recently had a character who would have worked really well for an adulthood autism realisation story: Sah! It would make so much sense for Sah to be autistic, and be sadly realistic for it to have gone unrecognised because of them being nonbinary. Why not give the story to Sah instead?

It's such a shame: what a waste of Dylan's characterisation and of the great idea of an adulthood autism realisation storyline.

[queenvhagar]

if they decide to make daeron a bastard imma scream... aside from the fact that it makes alicent even more of a hypocrite daeron being valyrian looking is actually pretty fucking important. in the books jace and daeron are only a few months apart in age and everyone was like "omg look at the queen giving birth to another targaryen looking baby while the princess had a baby that looks nothing like her or her husband!" also how the heck did daeron get a dragon if he's a bastard!?

first they give us no nettles now possibly this shit... I'm so over them adapting grrm's work into a version of whatever they think is cool.

also who the heck was princess aeriana. ik some folk are saying that it's possibly a made up character before aegon's conquest ... but the targaryen's weren't royalty at that point so wtf are the show makers high on, and i'm still mad at the stupid northern plot where they have jace talking about how aegon the conqueror went up north, plus cregan talking about how alyssane and jaehaerys visited winterfell during his dad's time which again makes zero fucking sense ... it was during alaric stark's time and he's probably cregan's grandpa or smth.

don't get me started on how they switched up addam and alyn's ages, plus didn't give us anything on marilda of hull ... oh and rhaenys apparently is totally cool with corlys having bastards and even thinks the boys mom must have been so pretty ...

this season is so boring and overall without context. daemon spends his time being high on harrenhal. alicent is going through major depressio arc. helaena is her usual mumbling self without any agency of her own. aemond is terrible. rhaenyra is ... idk what they're doing with her but i don't like it. aegon ii seems to be the only remotely interesting character but now he's gone.

so glad there's only one episode left of this disaster to get through ... can't believe they made us wait so long for this shit ... personally won't be waiting for season 3 because at this point it's probably going to be just as boring.

so disappointed we never got to see... jace negotiation with manderly's, sara snow, nettles, rhaenyra going mad with grief over luke, b&c going according to the books with helaena offering herself instead of her children, daeron in oldtown, book! accurate alyn and addam and daemon doing something instead of imagining how it'd be to fuck his mom...

sorry for the rant lol everything's just piled up for me since i waited until now to watch the shows and avoided spoilers to the best of my abilities. please do feel free to delete if you wish.

When people tell people that Game of Thrones was slow paced and technically very little happened and this season is just like that and to cope... nope.

As you mentioned in the second to last paragraph there were so many interesting things they could've done with this season to fill the time and expand on the story and characters... Instead there are 3 locations where morning scenes happen that don't grow the characters at all, nobody has any realistic motivations or emotions and reactions to events (and if they do they're framed as incorrect, like Jace or Aegon). It's oversimplified and redundant. No thoughts to be provoked. No depth to explore. No arcs for characters except maybe Daemon but it's been stretched way too far out and made irrelevant. No intrigue or politics. No scheming. Characters seem displaced from the setting...

I hope season 3 is the last season, and I won't be tuning into any other ASOIAF adaptations based on the crap fanfic quality of this one that they're trying to present as profound, deep, groundbreaking television.

[lordfarquadsexwife]

Hiiii!! So I don’t know if this note was directed at me (since you reblogged from me) or the original OP of that post:

“Ps you have singlehandedly changed my opinion of this movie. I am now reading the book.”

BUT either way I’m very excited about this and would love A) to know what your original thoughts on the movie were and how they’ve now changed and B) what you think of the book, both on its own and in relation to the movie at your current interest level. Only if you feel like explaining, of course. 🙏😁😘

Hi there! that note was for whoever was told that they were posting too much of that beautiful young man cuz like HUH?!

But yes! it was YOU who changed my views of the movie.

At first, I was like oh this is a little too formulaic (don't get mad! I promise I have seen the light) for me and some of the dialogue felt a little off. Kinda old school for their age. Like that scene in the museum when Alex "storms" the castle to get his man and the line was like... "So tell me to go, Henry, and I promise I will walk out that door and trouble you no longer." It seemed almost ... Shakespearean.

I think i'm jaded and/or comparing it to my obsession CMBYN.

But seeing it through your eyes and how much you loved it made me give it another chance. Listening again to what was said before, and watching with a little separation from CMBYN, has given me a new perspective.

TZP is so convincing NG is so vulnerable ( i swear his eyes were wet half the movie) it drew me in after I watched it again. The chemistry between the two is palpable. Alex looks so damn in love and Henry so vulnerable, trapped and scared...they really acted the hell out of this movie.

So now, I'm starting the book, cause I want to know more.

When you think of it, as progressive as we like to think we are, this story is still a rare gem. The fact that I even had the feeling that it was "formulaic" when in fact it was far from it because it was one Bi and one queer main character, who got to have basically a traditional rom-com is in and of itself pretty groundbreaking even in this day and age. No one died, no one was separated for long and it was a HEA which, even better, is being continued!

So anyway, yes you made me give it another chance and i'm glad I did.

[checkoutmybookshelf]

We're Back To UCMH!

I have been waiting for this book for literal months, and I am SO HAPPY that it is finally here. I'd have read it in one day, except that I got 1 hour of sleep in two days, so I did actually crash before getting to finish Halle and Henry's story. It was worth it though, because watching the dynamics between a neurodivergent-coded love interest and a demi-coded love interest was absolutely fascinating. I had so much fun with Halle and Henry, and it was nice to have Nate, Stassi, Russ, and Aurora around a little too. Like, the "adopted by a gang of hockey-playing golden retrievers" vibe that I loved from Icebreaker was still here, but we also get how Henry and Halle navigate a deeply gregarious group that loves them. Let's talk Daydream.

Hey, so this is your SPOILER WARNING because I'm going to SPOIL THE HECK out of this book. You were warned, proceed with caution.

Soooooooo...the fact that Henry DIDN'T take a swing at Will because he was so worried about how Halle would feel about a) what her dickhead ex-boyfriend said and b) about Henry's response just makes Henry the bigger man in so many ways, and that was just deeply satisfying to me as a reader. That and Halle letting her mom HAVE it because her mom has been using Halle as a third parent in the household since Halle was a kid. Hannah Grace has a knack for making character arc climaxes immensely satisfying and avoiding cliches, and I really appreciate that. I also loved how Halle and Henry both get climaxes that work WITH their character arcs. Halle learns to say no and prioritize herself, and Henry gets to BE himself and be loved and supported in his needs.

So I'm not neurodivergent, and I'm not always good at seeing it in books and book characters where it's not explicitly stated in the narrative, so I was grateful for the letter that my copy had about how there was explicitly NOT going to be a diagnosis. I will say I'd probably have caught it in Henry's case from the text and the context, but I appreciate the clarity and I also appreciate the opportunity taken to highlight that nobody needs a diagnosis to be valid or to explain their experiences and needs. Just the matter-of-fact acceptance Henry gets and the patience people in his life have to let Henry explain what he needs and then GIVING THAT TO HIM with no questions asked was lovely. I also love that it wasn't always perfect. People made mistakes in good faith when they were trying to help, and there cannot be enough good said about modeling communication, accepting new information, and doing better the next time.

Listening to and believing people when they tell you about their needs and experiences should not be groundbreaking, but holy crap do people still struggle with this, so I love that Henry never had to. He is surrounded by people who listen, hear, and support.

Which is extra nice narratively because Halle is not. Her dickhead ex-boyfriend is ten kinds of jerk, her family basically uses her as a stage manager/extra parent, and she was honestly super isolated and lonely before she got pulled into the house full of hockey playing golden retrievers (seriously, that wonderful lost keychain in a frat house tumblr post about how wonderful "boys will be boys" can be as a vibe when it isn't toxic absolutely applies here). I was never a Halle, but I have KNOWN Halles, and I cannot tell you how lovely it was to watch her learn how not to people please and to find herself in a girl squad that genuinely loved and valued her in addition to having Henry around. It was lovely and happy.

I also (and please feel free to correct me on this) read Halle as demisexual coded, and that's a dynamic that I'm not used to seeing in romance novels, but it was also one that I really enjoyed. It's never bad to reiterate that pressuring someone to do something they're not ready for or don't want to in bed is SUPER BAD, ACTUALLY, and that that behavior includes bullshit like trying to enforce arbitrary timelines or calling someone cold for not wanting sex. Also, asexual spectrum identities are entirely valid, and deserve more representation in romance.

Overall though, the thing that made this book for me was Halle and Henry's communication. They're really good at the communication thing and they're really good at BEING together, which does not mean sex, it means that they are good at existing in the same space while being aware and accommodating of each other's preferences, needs, and boundaries. AND THEY HAVE FRIEND SQUADS FOR SUPPORT. Because it is normal and healthy (and often hilarious) to have multiple sources of support in addition to your partner. I adore that Henry and Halle have that, and the side characters (both new ones and ones we know from other books) are still wonderful.

Other things I adored in this book in no particular order:

Henry being a fine arts major. That was such a fun alternative side to an MMC after Nate and Russ were SO sports-focused. Henry having that extra dimension was great.

Halle being a writer. This is very much a "ooh, it me!" moment, so your mileage may vary, but I do love me a writer character. (Yes, this is why I still have a deeply soft spot in my heart for Rick Castle. No, nobody asked. You just know this now.)

Henry being so worried about Halle being sick that he takes her home to his mother who is a literal doctor. Henry was correct, Halle needed to take care of herself, and honestly, this was the sweetest thing.

Halle getting to have her girl squad preparatory periods. As someone who also used to adore getting ready for stuff with her girl squad, there is something really wonderful about this dynamic, and it was a treat to see Halle get to experience it.

The sex painting. I was not expecting to do anything but roll my eyes at this scene, but actually? It was well handled, it was cute, it made sense in the context of their characters, and y'know what? Sure. The book not self-cringing at this also helped, and I was willing to let these two adorable college kids have their fun and make some art together.

Henry's gift giving. I am a Halle, I am SO BAD at gifting, but I appreciate the skill in others. And Henry NAILED it. A+, no notes.

Halle admitting to Gianna that she wasn't sorry she and Will broke up. That was big for Halle personally, and hot damn did it model something important to her little sister. Just excellent.

I had a delightful time with this book overall, and I'll be sad to leave Maple Hills. If we are lucky, there will be more Hannah Grace books in the future though!

[invisibleicewands]

Michael Sheen says 'it fills my heart' in passionate message about Wales that will give you goosebumps

Michael Sheen has been reflecting on what it is he loves about Wales ahead of his debut as Aneurin Bevan in new stage drama Nye - and his passionate message is enough to give you goosebumps.

Speaking to WalesOnline ahead of the play’s Cardiff run, Sheen opened up about why he keeps coming back to Wales and indeed now lives here again, even though his work takes him all over the world. “It’s my home,” he says. “It's where my family are, where my friends are, where I grew up. It's the country whose history is closest to my heart, whose people I care about the most, the communities that I care about the most. It is what shaped me, informed me, and what continues to shape and form me.

“Aside from anything to do with the natural beauty of the country, the warmth of the people, the history of the communities, how we grew up here, the challenges that we've had in the past and that we still face and that have shaped who we are now and why we are the way we are now and what our aspirations are, all of those things. [Wales is] what fills my head and fills my heart.”

The Newport-born, Port Talbot raised actor is recognised for his ability to transform into his characters, notably real life people like former Prime Minister Tony Blair, broadcaster David Frost, and controversial football manager Brian Clough.

Sheen, 55, who has more recently played Chris Tarrant in ITV drama Quiz and the angel Aziraphale in Good Omens opposite David Tennant, is now looking forward to starring in the title role of Nye, a co-production between the Wales Millennium Centre and the National Theatre, which sees the actor portray the founder of the National Health Service.

Interestingly, Nye will be the first time that Sheen performs on stage in his home country. Despite his groundbreaking performance as Jesus Christ in National Theatre Wales' The Passion which was staged on location across Port Talbot during Easter weekend in 2011, the actor revealed he's never actually fronted a show at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff.

“To be able to do this play and tell this story about this man on that stage is really exciting,” Sheen commented. “When we got there to start doing the tech and just stepped out onto the stage, it was really exciting. You could feel the whole company getting really excited and just looking out into that beautiful auditorium and just thinking about it being full of people coming to watch this play.

“The fact that we're telling this story, which is such a Welsh story about a Welsh legend, has been exciting from the very beginning. When we first started rehearsing, knowing that we'd be coming to Wales at the end of it, everyone was incredibly excited about that. To now actually be here and be just days away from starting the performance is quite thrilling.”

Sheen said that, perhaps for the first time in his career, he knew ‘everything’ about the man he was playing. A new play written by Tim Price, a synopsis for Nye reads: “Confronted with death, Nye's deepest memories lead him on a mind-bending journey back through his life; from childhood to mining underground, parliament and fights with Churchill in an epic Welsh fantasia.”

Sheen said of playing Bevan: “In the last 10 years I've come to really appreciate who [Aneurin Bevan] was and what he did and what he achieved. This was an opportunity to be able to put everything I knew and felt about him into a piece on stage.

“It’s a very particular challenge playing a real person who is very well known by the audience. That brings all kinds of unique challenges that you wouldn't normally get if you're playing a fictional character, obviously, or a real life person that people don't really know that well. And with playing Nye as well, it feels like a huge responsibility. I mean, it's a privilege to play him and to tell his story, but it's also a massive responsibility because there have been very few things out there about him, and it's such an important story.

“I already had such a strong feeling about him, a strong relationship to him and what he achieved. I know people who feel incredibly passionate about him and what he did. That brings an even greater level of responsibility to it. It was a great relief to know that once we started performing the play, people were accepting of me playing the part and were enjoying it and felt that it portrayed Bevan in a way that did him justice.”

Sheen added that the NHS itself has “always” been there for him throughout his life, citing moments in which he has lost family members and friends, as well as caring for his two children with Swedish actress partner Anna Lundberg, Lyra and Mabli. “It's not just one moment, it's a lifetime, lifelong relationship.”

Another relationship that Sheen has developed in recent years is with Doctor Who star David Tennant. The pair have been firm friends since appearing in both Staged and Good Omens with each other – both of which were hugely successful. Of his friendship with Tennant, Sheen jokes: “David and I will keep working together as long as we don't fall out!” While he ruled out more episodes of Staged, Sheen will reunite with Tennant when the third and final series of Good Omens enters production next year. When asked whether he knows what the future holds for his character, the actor said: “I know what's going to happen in the entire story but I'm not going to tell anyone.”

Before then Sheen will take on another real life role, playing Prince Andrew in a new series about the infamous Newsnight interview the royal did with Emily Maitlis. The story was adapted into Netflix film Scoop earlier this year: “I thought Rufus was fantastic,” Sheen said of Rufus Sewell’s performance as Prince Andrew in Scoop. “I thought he was brilliant as Andrew, he was much better than me. He was more a supporting character in that though. Our story is about Prince Andrew and Emily, it's much more they are the lead characters. It's a different focus and requires a different approach to the character. I was having to look at, as I'm sure Rufus did, the interview in particular. When we were working on it I was listening and watching the interview multiple times a day, every day for months.”

Reflecting on playing the divisive member of the Royal Family, Sheen said: “The level of controversy in that story brings an extra layer as well. The fact that for whatever all our personal opinions might be about what did or didn't happen, or what he did or didn't do, we don't know for definite. There's been no actual court case. We don't know exactly what happened.

"That requires a real level of sensitivity in how you deal with the story, apart from anything else because of legalities and that stuff, but when I read the script I thought that was handled really well. I thought it was a very clever way of allowing the audience to have a satisfying dramatic experience, but still keeping a level of ambiguity, which I thought was done very well on the script. Playing that character was challenging in all kinds of ways, as it is with every real-life character, but I also had to make certain choices and decisions about what was going on for him in my version.”

2024 has already been a busy year for Sheen as a few months ago, his directing debut The Way was released on BBC One – to mixed reviews. Reflecting on the project, which was shot in Wales, he said: “It was quite extraordinary to be attacked by Conservative ministers in the press on the day that it came out, and then to have right-wing newspapers having a concerted plan to try and smear it.

"We didn't expect that just before it came out the news would come out from the steelworks. It was a huge shock and obviously affected the way people perceive the story of the drama. It was never intended to be a socio-documentary about what was going on at the steelworks. It was my first time directing something and to be able to tell that story and film it around south Wales with an amazing Welsh cast was such a brilliant experience.”

[ngardgni]

...So, we've been reading a few posts about how "Warrior Nun" is the best because it isn't like all the other queer shows, where apparently the queer couples have sex right away or non-queer shows that queer bait viewers, etc.

Let's just get something straight:

The original L-Word came out in 2004. That show was criticized for being too white, too narrow, too limiting in its depiction of gay women. In fact, it was mostly lesbians, and one bi woman (Tina) and most were femmes. Over the years, the show tried to course correct with the addition of other characters, most notably Max (Daniela Sea) and even that was fraught with controversy. At the time, Daniela Sea was interviewed about this and she had said (and we're paraphrasing here, that was a long time ago), that L-Word doesn't claim to represent all gay women, and she had hoped that there would be more representation of gay women, more movies, more tv shows to show the diversity, the variety, the spectrum of the gay experience.

At the time, pre-L-Word, there were only a handful of les/bi movies, mostly indie, some of questionable quality (there were a lot, we're not going to name names), some good (our favorite being "When Night is Falling" and "Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love"). On TV, we had "Ellen" which was groundbreaking and promptly cancelled, and there was "Carol the Lesbian" on "Friends", who was treated more as a joke, along with Chandler's trans-mom.

Cut to now - where we have so much more to choose from: we have period dramas with A-List directors and actors ("Carol", "Tell it to the Bees", "Portrait of a Lady on Fire"), we have shows on TV networks and online streaming platforms (tho the line between those are blurring). So we can watch Cyrano de Bergerac style movies ("The Half of It") or Asian American ones ("Saving Face") or pretty straightforward ones, really ("Imagine Me and You"), and though some, if not half or most series/shows have been cancelled ("Teenage Bounty Hunters", "I Am Not Okay with This", etc.), we still have more shows/series now that tell our queer stories than ever before ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer", "The 100", "Glee", etc.) and we still think that's better than the time the only thing we had was stories with only subtext to keep us company ("Fried Green Tomatoes", "Thelma and Louise", "A League of their Own").

So, whenever we feel like it's getting bad, let's also remember the time when queer stories weren't even mainstream, when directors and actors wouldn't even touch or go near our stories, when we didn't have as many allies in the industry willing to put our stories out there. A lot of our queer stories from before, though far from perfect, paved the way for stories like "Warrior Nun"to see the light of day. And we love that yeah, "Warrior Nun" is about a friends-to-lovers queer story, but that isn't just the one queer story that can be told. The diversity and complexity of the queer experience can hardly be encompassed by just one series and it's not fair to ignore or put the others down just because they don't fit what you like. We like that we have the more adult, they-had-a-one-night-stand-right-away-and-fell-in-love story of Kacy on NCIS Hawai'i, the sex-positive one of Leighton on "The Sex Lives of College Girls", the stranded-on-an-island one of "The Wilds", the vampire-and-vampire-slayer-falling-in-love narrative of "First Kill", etc.

So, let's keep celebrating the diversity and complexity of the queer female experience onscreen but still honor the stories that came before them. They may not have been perfect, hell, they were even problematic, but, again, at least we got these stories and our lives are better for it.

And let's keep pushing for "Warrior Nun"and other stories to keep getting made and renewed.

Like and reblog if you agree.

Drop your favorite queer women story (movie, series, show) below.

[abigailnussbaum]

I put off watching it for a while because I was pretty sure I was going to have this reaction. But now that I've bitten the bullet, I'm sorry: the Strange New Worlds musical episode is bad. It's bad as a Star Trek story, it's bad as part of the Strange New Worlds story, and it's bad as a musical.

To start with, I think it's time to admit that the musical episode concept is pretty depleted. "Once More, With Feeling" was more than twenty years ago, and what was once fresh and shocking now feels almost rote. Very few shows really manage to earn it, because they don't have to - the musical episode of a non-musical show is an established trope, which means the very thing that made it so groundbreaking is now gone.

But it's specifically a bad fit for Star Trek, not because it can't justify the concept - there's honestly no daylight between Buffy's "a demon who makes people sing and dance" and SNW's "subspace anomaly pulls us into a universe where people habitually break into song" - but because that kind of fourth-wall-breaking, genre-aware storytelling doesn't belong in Star Trek (or, at the very least, it belongs in something a lot more heightened like Lower Decks).

Star Trek isn't knowing. It isn't genre-savvy. Star Trek is earnest. And it takes its world seriously and treats it like something coherent in its own right, not something you can poke holes in and peek into our own universe from. When it comes down to it, the core flaw of all NuTrek shows is that they're often less concerned with being Star Trek, the story, and more interested in being about Star Trek, the franchise.

Strange New Worlds is an odd duck in this respect, because there are parts of it that so clearly understand Star Trek, the story, and are so clearly interested in expanding it, that I can't help but fall in love. Episodes like "Spock Amok", "A Quality of Mercy", and "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" do such a great job of slotting into the existing story while making it their own (though I could wish the show was better at telling original stories). I'm especially wowed by how they're handling Kirk, who is such a smart, non-sensational take on the character while still having all the recognizable flaws and quirks of the original.

But it's also a show that thinks breaking the fourth wall is the height of sophistication, that is more than willing to comment on its storyness in a way that runs completely counter to its Star Trek-ness. You see this in episodes like "The Elysian Kingdom", "Those Old Scientists", and now "Subspace Rhapsody". And if the first two of those at least had a Star Trek link - "Elysian Kingdom" is essentially a holodeck episode (even if it isn't as good as any of them), and "Those Old Scientists" is obviously all about Star Trek (even if, like so many media franchises these days, it collapses living in the Star Trek universe into being a Star Trek fan). But "Subspace Rhapsody" is just a gimmick, fundamentally no different from similar episodes on Lucifer or Grey's Anatomy or The Flash.

And worst of all, it's a bad musical. One effect of the fact that this trope has become so familiar is that it has created an sideline for talented songwriters who can knock out an episode like this without putting much personality or style into it, just hitting the required beats. There's got to be a power ballad. There's got to be a comedy song. There's got to be a kicky saloon number and a big finale. "Subspace Rhapsody" feels like the nadir of that cottage industry's output. The songs are all generic. The lyrics are forgettable while you're listening to them. There's no unified theme or style, because the point isn't to be a musical. It's to convey a general sense of musical-ness. Beyond the novelty value of a Star Trek musical - which, as noted, is pretty degraded in 2023 - there's nothing here of artistic merit, much less something that feels uniquely like a Star Trek musical.

(Case in point: the Klingons. Having them do boy band music is a joke that's funny for the audience, probably means nothing to the characters, and most importantly, does not make sense within Star Trek. Of course Klingons would sing - they would sing opera.)

As if to add insult to injury, the biggest character development in the episode - which is also driven by the only memorable song - feels baffling, and ends up shortchanging a relationship that the show has been trying to get us to invest in for more than ten episodes. Spock and Chapel got together at the end of episode 6, had a crisis in episode 8, and are now, in episode 9, breaking up for another, unrelated reason. Seems like a better use of everyone's time might have been to let these characters and their relationship develop organically, rather than informing us, through song, that Chapel has suddenly decided to prioritize her career (by, um, leaving Enterprise for so short a period that most couples wouldn't even consider it a major relationship challenge). Are we meant to understand that something deeper was wrong, and that the internship has brought it to light? If so, why haven't we seen it? It's hard not to feel that the musical was being used as a shorthand for emotional development the show didn't feel equipped to deliver, which is only one more way in which it underserves the show.

[fangirl-erdariel]

If you were given the job of 'showrunner of a show about Faramir' what would you do?

Oh that's a fascinating question, thank you! I will freely admit that I don't necessarily consider myself the most knowledgeable person about Faramir or the best at writing him even in my immediate fandom circle, so this is unlikely to be anything particularly groundbreaking or interesting, but I'll give it a shot

I think, since you've not given me specific limitations on when in the timeline this will be set, and that I would go for a show that focuses on Faramir in the months leading up to Boromir leaving for Rivendell, ending with that event. Not that a show about him in the times after the War of the Ring wouldn't be fascinating, but I don't think it's something I'd be very good at writing. And I'm not necessarily interested in following the story through the events of LOTR, either. So, like I said, following Faramir in the times leading up to the event that basically ties him and Boromir so tightly into the events of the story.

Wouldn't be a very long show, obviously, with that sort of time frame, but I'm a firm believer in deciding on the limits of the story you want to tell and narrowing it down to something you can manage, before starting to tell it. (Let's ignore the fact that I don't actually do that irl when I write fanfic, I just sit down and write and see what happens; the imaginary me who is a showrunner of a tv show is obviously more organized than the real life me anyway.) Not everything needs to be ten seasons long. And you could still get a full-length season or two out of even that premise, I think.

I would probably go for a somewhat episodic problem-of-the-week format, but with some overarching themes and plotlines developing across the whole show. I can't off the top of my head give you a list of episodes or their synopsis (how do you pluralize that? synopsis? synopses? synopsises? why is English so difficult), but, you know, most episodes probably focusing on the various troubles of leading the soldiers in Ithilien, one episode focused on the planning of an attack on an enemy troop that will be moving through, another of "how the f*ck has the enemy been managing to constantly mess with our supply lines that we thought were secure and how do we stop them from doing that", maybe one of the classic "there's a spy among our midst but who is it??" plot, one where Faramir has to handle a bunch of young inexperienced soldiers who are either uncertain or too reckless and eager to pursue glory and probably going to get either themselves or other people killed if he can't get them to get their act together. And so on and so forth, I'm sure you get the gist. Probably mix it up sometimes and have some episodes set in Minas Tirith, maybe a couple bringing Faramir on some errand to more southern parts of Gondor, too. Ithilien episodes would probably have elements of military drama, Minas Tirith episodes elements of political drama.

I think the second-to-last episode of the show would have the first time Faramir has the dream that'll send Boromir to Gondor, and would have the attack on Osgiliath and that whole thing. And the absolute last episode would be just focused on the dream and what to do about it, and would see Boromir leaving on his journey.

I think one thing I'd explore a lot would be the differing ways that other characters see him. Both in terms of the relationships with his family, the way that he is a beloved little brother to Boromir but always the less capable and worthy in Denethor's eyes, but also in terms of outside that family circle. Like, we see in the books that he is adored by the people, and that he is greatly respected by the soldiers under his command, he is a captain they are glad to follow, a skilled leader who is able to keep troops from panicking and retain good order even in difficult, chaotic situations.

And then, going off of that, how does all that compare to the way Faramir sees himself? How does the place he is appointed by those around him fit, or not fit, what he himself would want to be, if he could choose? Even people who love or admire you can still view you in ways that aren't entirely true, or treat you in a way or put you in situations that you find constraining or poorly fit for you, and I think playing with that with Faramir could be interesting. I think I might go for making one of the conflicts carried through the show be that while Boromir loves Faramir, he doesn't always quite treat him as a responsible adult and an equal, but a little brother to be protected and watched over and helped, and for all that Faramir also loves Boromir, it's still frustrating. And though Boromir does insist on being the one to make the journey to Rivendell because he's older and stronger and doesn't like the idea of Faramir going off alone on a long journey to the unknown, it is still in some ways also an admission on his part that he trusts Faramir to be responsible and clever and capable enough to be in charge of the lives of soldiers and of various duties Boromir has that will fall on Faramir in his absence, without Boromir's constant oversight and being always somewhere near enough to come to his aid.

Besides that, I think I would like to incorporate hope and despair as one central theme, seeing as it's also so very central to LOTR. Also, this isn't anything about deep themes or being clever or whatever, it's really just self-indulgence, but I think I'd like to incorporate songs and poetry the characters actually sing and recite into the story. Just, like, whatever, military marches, funeral laments, narrative stuff sung to pass the time, people competing on who can most accurately memorize some tricky poem just for the hell of it, all that. Like, Middle-Earth just has music so intrinsically bound into the stories and it's an aspect of the books I really love, but so few adaptations incorporate it much at all! (I am tooootally not jealous to my mom because she got to see the 1988/-89 LOTR play that actually included a bunch of the poems from the books set to music, totally not, why are you asking)

Also, can we cast Luke Pasqualino as Faramir? No particular reason except that I think he's pretty

Geez, that got long ':D Idk how much sense any of that makes, but, hey, thanks for giving me an excuse to ramble!!

Out of curiosity, if you were given the same job of being a showrunner for a show about Faramir, what would you do with it?

[mauesartetc]

I liked your post on Winx Club.I like how you make the characters unique and still like Winx Club. I really liked that you revamped the DVD poster poses to work with each character's personality. You also drew their slim figure and made it stay true to Winx Club's mature style, but not sexist. Are we aloud to say "not sexist", but groundbreaking?

[Context]

Thanks! But I mean, the point of switching the poses around was to demonstrate just how little personality they did show. The fact that any of those poses could work with any character highlighted how generic they were. If we body-swapped the girls of Winx Club, would we be able to tell which character was in which body just by observing their poses and facial expressions? I don't think so.

Just like real people, properly fleshed-out characters have mannerisms that are unique to them. Folks who've been here for a while might remember this image:

...Which came from this post discussing character poses and how to make them distinct. The above image shows the poses that six of my characters' hands fall into on the regular, and all of them have details that set them apart from the others. If you can tell which character is on screen just by looking at their hands, the story has done a great job of establishing their unique mannerisms, as well as unique anatomical construction. Winx Club does neither.

In the prior post, I said this about the characters as displayed in promotional images:

"It'd help if they were posed in ways that showcased their individual traits rather than just... "feminine and vaguely playful" across the board. Where's Stella's cockiness, Flora's kindness, Musa's sarcasm, Techna's logic?"

Let's see if we can make those traits shine through.

Same face shapes, same body types, same proportions. But now their individual personalities are much more clear. If anyone involved in Winx Club's visual development just whipped up some notes and reference sketches for each character's mannerisms, sure, they'd still have the Sameface and Samebody issues, but at least then they'd have much more... well, character. Just wanted to clear that up real quick.