#this freaking hapepned

[quodekash]

well. that. that happened. 

um. the show is over now. 

it took me until 2am to finish it, again, and who is surprised? that’s right, no one. 

anyway. uh. 

soundwin kissed first and im dying. 

and im not okay because attachment issues + graduations in any media = full blown mental breakdown 

but like its fine 

um. i have commentary on the episode but at the moment i need to process the fact that a) all of that actually happened, b) soundwin actually kissed, and c) the show is now over entirely and theres no more friday nights/saturday mornings of happy feelings from happy high schoolers in their happy band 

and by ‘process’ i mean i need to go to sleep. 

also i wouldve been content with the little cheek kisses we got BUT THEN THEY FULLY KISSED AND THEY KISSED BEFORE TINNGUN 

WHICH MEANS, AS PER USUAL, SOUNDWIN DID IT FIRST 

[harryfeatgaga]

so it was a false alarm but there was a shooting threat at the elementary school in my town today.... literally 1st-4th graders... no one really knows what happened but I guess someone 911 saying there was a shooter, obvi the police went in and they said it was all a false alarm but it's just so fucking terrible i hate this so much

jesus christ yeah that hapepned here like 2 weeks ago a local town all the schools got one and then a bunch of random ones surrounding boston got false alarms too its so weird and fucked up people are just calling in all these false alarms to freak people out

[neometalpussy]

did you see what hapepned to that guy... he got turned to Freaking Dust... by the Poop Beam.

[solemn, head hung, vague air of sadness] i regret to inform you... that it's still... Poop Beam.

[gglitcha]

sometimes   you’ll   catch   glitch   with   her   hands   stuck   in   her   innards   with   blood   and   viscera   and   general   gore   SPILLING   from   her   very   calmly   fussing   with   something   internal ,   and   to   HER   it   just   looks   like   she’s   rearranging   her   code   and   fixing   up   her   systems ,   but   in   her   human   guise   it   translates   to   looking   like   she’s   having   to   shove   her   own   intestines   back   into   her   abdomen   after   they’ve   tumbled   out   of   a   gaping   wound

[popculturebuffet]

Amphibia Reviews: The Shut-In

More Halloween Havoc, whoop woop! The Plantars return just in time for Halloween! It’s Shut-In in Wartwood, their version of halloween, but less of a focus on getting candy and more on getting suplies to protect yourselve and barricade yourself in so the moon dosen’t turn you into a monster. I remain not suprised. To pass the time our heroes tell some true spooky stories and Polly tries to find one they weren’t around for.  Phone-Mo: Anne and humanized versions of Polly, Maddie, and Toady watch a cursed video and soon disappear by one. Nothing ominous about that! Dead End: A young Hop Pop serves as Chauffer for a mysterious man played by george takei and death seems to follow them at every stop. Oh myyyyyyyy.  Skin Deep: Sprig and Ivy go to fetch a lost ball and end up running into the skin stealing seamstress. Arson naturally insues..  It’s Terror Time again, with full recap and spoilers, under the cut. 

Whelp, no dancing around it this airing order is weird. And look airing shit in a weird way has been disney’s past time since the 90′s, Darkwing Duck’s airing order is a waking nightmare, and this very show had all of season 1 air within the span of a month and a week in order to get it on disney plus by launch, star vs had it’s last season burned off in three months, and Ducktales pre-covid flip flopped from airing week to week to just one for some reason and then no others for months. Consitency is not their strong suit is what i’m saying and it’s not new.  And yes I get these holiday special episodes are mecurial: their built specifically to slot in wherever without really upsetting continuity: The Casagrandes recently aired their first season 2 episode before even finishing season 1, so this isn’t just a disney thing, while speaking of disney things ducktales had it’s first proper halloweeen episode air the week before a spring break set episode, with a christmas episode set to air next month. What i’m saying is I get these things sometimes don’t air in production order, but it’s less excuable on Disney’s part here when it’d take airing exactly one episode for this not to be a tad jarring. Not enough that it spoils the episode nor does the episode effect the ongoing story or continuity in any way, so it’s not TERRIBLE but it smacks of lazy incompetence on Disney’s part and I wish they’d do better already. 

Okay that rant out of the way we can dive right in! It’s the annual Shut-In in Wartwood! Basically their verison of halloween but instead of a fun spooky holiday, it’s the annual tradition of getting various things from the neighbors to help stay indoors during the blue moon, which in wartwood turns whoever views into a monster. Because of course their halloween is a fight for suvival. Also theirs pumpkins everywhere with their versions of jack o lanterns being fear gourds which.. okay. Point is instead of candy the kids trick or treating has turned up rusty nails, a hatchet, a first aid kit and anne, winning the night, a flamethrower! On one hand it’s neat these exist in wartwood via fire breathing slugs. On the other I do worry about Anne accidently burning everyone and everything down so please take that from her. 

The Plantars then lock themselves in. To stave off bordeom, Shut-In tradition is to go around the fire and tell each other creepy true stories that happened to them. Polly tries going first but just has the Inn story from last season which they were all there for.. thought hat dosen’t make complete sense as they werent’ awake for all of it and shoudl’ve just let her tell her side of things. But eh it sets up polly’s plot so fair enough. Luckily anne has one. So we get our first tale of terror Terror Tales of the Park/Treehouse of Horror III Styles...

Phone-Mo 

Anne’s story is very clearly made up, though no one really calls her on it and it DOES add elemnts from the domino II story from last season so fair enough.  Rather than use her real friends, which is fair enough since she just sadly had to say goodbye to Marcy and probably isn’t handeling the guilt well and Sasha you know.. tried to stab her a few months back then tried sacrifcing herself for Anne’s own well being. Point is thnking about them is a loaaded issue right now so instead she dreams up human versions of Sprig, Polly, with a bucket on her foot for a shot which is a nice visual gag, as is how we meet them, along with Maddie and for some weird reason Toady. I mean I do get Ivy is in our third story, so fair enough, but they could’ve used.. anyone else. Wally would’ve made more sense honestly and he’s also an adult but he’s also you know Anne’s friend and not some town asshole she vaugley knows. It’s just weird. That said I do love the human designs for everyone and they clearly put a lot of work in knowing the fans would like them, with little touches like Polly having pink hair, sprig having his normal haircut he does under the hat but not covered up and toady’s phone having a little keychain of his amphibia version. Also while they all have diffrent names including Anne I won’t be using them on the grounds that I don’t wanna. 

Anne and the plantars are watching a funny internet video when Toady and Maddie offer to show them one that’s apparently cursed and makes whoever watched it disappear. Sprig talks Anne out of it and keeps her from watching anyway but Polly’s naturally all in. ON the way to class, once sprig is gone, anne ends up watching it and liking it anyway because she has no self control and freely admits it.  Naturally given this is a halloween episode, the others start disapearing, with Maddie coming to anne with support after Toady vanishes which again is just.. weird. It’s just weird to hear anyone car about wether toady lives or dies. It keeps throwing me off. Anne reasssures her but sure enough the second anne’s gone Maddie’s phone eats her alive. Still nice to see her again. Regular Maddie should get a hoodie. Also anne apparently eats the corners of her sandwitch so she dosen’t have to share. Clever girl.  Back at home where Anne continues to mock whoever it is told her she can’t write stories as she makes a gila monster and a flamingo make out, where are they I must hurt them, when Sprig calls panicked that polly is missing and admits i’ts a good thing they ddin’t watch the video.. yeah about that. Sprig is of course freaked, and soon the video pops on anne’s phone and soon the weird cat thing inside comes to life and then turns deadly.. also it turns out it eats the host then forces them to be int he background of the video, which was hinted at earlier with one guy having been in there for 35 years.. despite having a smartphone. Well this is anne’s story I don’t think she knows those didn’t exist once. 

Luckily Anne figures out how to beat it.. in the most hilarious way possible. by disliking it, since liking and commeting linked it to her, she weakens it before finishing it with a rude comment. It’s.. i’ts purespun comedy gold. This frees everyone else and they leave along with sprig.. but eggs are left behind. Dun dun dun.  Final Thoughts on Phone Mo:

First off .. I have no idea what FOMO means so the title left me as lost at first at the plantars... oh okay it’s fear of missing out.. should’ve remebered that from brooklyn nine nine and amy’s legendadrily bad case of it. Aw well a decent story, if the weakest of the three. It does have an incredibly funny conclusion, neat human designs, and an intresting setting given while school stories are common, usually we don’t get that here so it’s a nice break from the norm. But compared to the genuinely chilling with a funny and odd climax next two, it’s just okay. Not bad, but not quite as good.  Back in the present, Polly once again tries this time with children of the spore, once again being shot down though that being said hop pop’s line of “I was responsible for that one” was given a great delvery by charlie addler. Also Anne missed Wally’s birthday and he’s sad. oh Wally. Though i’m sure she’ll make it up to him.. at least he’s back home. So anyways speaking of HOp Pop, it’s his turn for a story...

Dead End:  And it’s a story from Hop Pop’s Youth! Given we’ve never SEEN hop pop beyond his present day and only heard the ocasional scrap, it’s REALLY nice to hear. It dosen’t tell us a ton more granted, but we at least see what he looked like, get to hear charlie adler use a slightly less aged voice for him and get to see him with a luxrious golden mane of johnny bravo hair, which is as hilaroius and glorious as it sounds. 

Back in those days Hop Pop was a coachman. He still had the farm, but given how tight things are now it’s not a stretch to assume he could always use some extra coppers to keep his family we never get to know about besides the grandkids fed. He also prides himself on honest work, not taking payment till the rides finished and the customer is satisfied which is INCREIDBLY risky, but I do kinda get it both for Hopidah’s sense of honor and because it seems clear he mostly does it in town by the fact all his stops this ep are within wartwood or close enough, so clearly it’s mostly people he knows personally.  This time though the rider is the well dressed, crimson red Mr. Littlepot, played by George Takei. Best known for Star Trek, being out and proud and since coming out after years and years in the closet, using his celebrity to help promote gay rights and other good stuff. He’s also known for saying ohhhh myyy and this clip from futurama. 

I got a lot of respect for the guy, He was even in archie comics once after Kevin Keller was introduced. So it’s nice to see him doing some voice work and he kills it here.. pun intended but more on that in a sec. Littlepot has some simple rule: keep driving no matter what hapepned where he was.. and given both places he ends up have someone dying, once by a horrifying looking snake, it’s clear somethings up. IT also nicely builds the tension as hop pop tries to steady himself, but is clearly cracking as he realizes his client might be murdering people he knows.. and he could be next. As Hopidiah KNOWS each person Littlepot visits and it nicely ratches up the tension. But turns out he’s not a killer.. he’s simplyd eath himself come to collect those already about to die. 

It’s a nice twist: The genuine trappings of the guy make you think h’es some form of the devil, the crimson skin, yellow eyes and cultured demanor.. it’s only as he goes you start to realize what the man actually is and even then he easily could still be frog satan. But no he’s just the frog reaper and defends himself to Hop Pop when confronted: He’s just doing his job, just like Hopidiah, getting people where they need to be. Unforutnately for Hop Pop his final stop is the farm.. though thankfully for him he hasnt come for Hopidiah.. just his hair. Yeah it’s a nice comedic twist on an otherwise chiling and well done story that what the devil came to take is his hair.. which he starts wearing hilariously. So Hop Pop lives but sobs, and Anne points out it was pretty fucked up. 

Final Thoughts for Dead End:  Not much to say. This one was dripping with atmosphere, Takei was utterly awesome and need to do more voice work, and the comedic ending twist was really damn funny. Top notch. 

Polly tries again, gets shut down again and is now really understandably frustrated at not having a story. Naturally given the other plantars have gone though, Sprig does. And he dosen’t have at itle at first until one cuts him off ....

Skin Deep:

Ivy’s Back! 

Yeah I was genuinely worried the return ep would break up either her and sprig or hop pop and silvia.. and while the second one remains a horrifying sword of damocles over my head, Sprig and Ivy are fine and Ivy gets a nice spotlight episode here. It was a pleasant surprise to get some fresh info since i’tll be months till we find out anything else.  So the young couple are playing bugball down at the old courts, when a couple of guys they were up to no good, started making trouble in the neghborhood. Sprig got in one little fight and Hop Pop got scared he said “your moving with your auntie and uncle to bell air”. He begged and pleaded day after day but Hop Pop packed his suit case and sent him on his way. He gave him a kiss and then he gave him a ticket Sprig put his walkman on and thought he might as well kick it. First class yo this ain’t bad, drinking orange juice out of a champagne glass. Is this what the people of bel air live like, yo, this might be alirght!   He whistled for a cab and when it came near the liscene plate said fresh and it had dice in the mirror, if anything he could say that this cab was rare but he thought man forget it yo holmes to bell air. He pulled up to the cab about 7 or 8 and yelled to the cabbie yo holmes smell ya later. He looked at his kingdom and he was finally there to sit on his throne as the fresh prince of bell air. 

So then Will walked into the mansion and wait.. wrong show.. so the young couple are playing bugball when they loose their ball, and it goes off into the creepy part of the woods. Ivy also looses her hat and is self concious about her hair. Looks fine to sprig but she’d rather not. Aww she’s insecure. But the two head off with Sprig getting more and more nervous, as Ivy details a legend about the area of the seamstress, a mysterious recluse who steals your skin! Naturally Sprig is nettled while Ivy says it’s fine and does what anyone would do upon finding out the ball went into a creepy abandoned shack in a world where it’s clear murderers are pretty common: kick down the door! It’s the perfect crime. 

Naturally Sprig gets more unernved, finding a set of needles and thread, which gets a great gag as Ivy points out that’s nto that uncommon.. but the giant pile of skin they find sure is!

Oh.. it gets worse me. Sprig finds the ball. and the Seamstress who has a horrifying patchwork of skins on her and wants to add theirs.. the kids are naturally spooked and prepare to flee but she wants their skin and grabs ivy! Thankfully she breaks free and Sprig busts some off.. OH GOD.. and it turns out she’s a glass frog! .. turns out theres a kind of frog that has translucent skin.

But yeah obvoiusly the show takes it a step further, and her skin is entirely see through. Poor girl. Ivy sympathizes shows off her hair.. then puts her hat over the Seamstress’ eyes and tells sprig now, and sprig starts a fire, and the two start to escape when he grabs Ivy’s leg!

Thankfully Ivy breaks free and the two leave her to die. Sprig compliments ivy’s hair, ivy gets him a smooch it’s all adorable and they defintely murdered someone who defintely murdered a lot of people. Horay!

Naturally the rest of the family is freaked out by this with Anne wanting to know if ivy being bitten means sh’es infected and Hop Pop wanting to know if one of her skins was his friend fred he hasn’t seen in a while. Sprig then spooks them by having ivy show up, complete with a burlap frog skin.. maybe. She could’ve been lying. We dunno. Ivy heads home to risk her life for a good gag, depsite the fact her boyfriend’s house is right there and her mom and grandmom clearly had to sign off on this shenanigan given the night. But this life risking prank naturally risks some life as Polly has ran off to look at the moon to get her own story. The rest of hte family runs after her only tfind it did.. ntohing. She’s apparently fine just fine and they assure her the fear they felt thinking she might become some kind of monster was scarier than any story and the rest of them head home with polly following.. after transofrming. Turns out the moon DOES make you into monsters but she’s fine with it. She’s got her legs now! Everyone screams understandably, Anne finally realizes this isn’t quite a holiday the end. 

Final Thoughts on Skin Game and the special as a whole: Easily my faviorite, partly for shipping reasons as I do like Ivy and Sprig together, and partly because it really let Ivy have a roll OTHER than sprig’s love intrest. Sure she still smooched his cheek and their clearly still together, but she got to be proactive, badass and hilariously impulsive and trollish. It was a nice change of pace and the story itslef was the best of the bunch to me becuase of that, though Dead End was really close.  Overall this was a nice treat, a good anthology with lots of fright and humor and a nice wraparound story arc with polly, as well as some nice call backs to previous episodes. An utterly excellent halloween special i’ll probably be revisiting every year and another slam dunk from disney this year. The airing snaufu really dosen’t hurt it any and in the future this one will likely be after Return to Wartwood on D+ anyway so no harm done. Great all around. If you liked this review follow me for more amphibia whenever it comes back, ducktales reviews every monday, and loud house reviews every saturday or sunday depending. And until next time stay safe, stay spooky and happy halloween!

[chaekkung]

??? iM FREAKING OUT WHY DID ALL THESE FANSITES JUST GO ON REST AT THE SAME TIME??? WHAT HAPEPNED?? WHATS GOING ON OMFG IM LITERALY STRESSING THE FUCK OUT,, NONE OF THIS MAKES SENSE...

[fierceawakening]

Whereas to me? I think some ’ people in this discussion might disagree, but if. All that a paradigmatic expression of empathy. At the very least it’s the kind of thing my therapist calls empathy all the time. when I tell my therapist things like “I texted her because something just seemed off, and she was really grateful and I’m glad I did” my therapists reaction is “that shows your empathy. You’re very attuned to other people’s feelings.”

And I mean, I’m paying this woman so. Any that’s just her saying what I want to hear for her paycheck? But it seems like she means something, and she seems consistent about when she notices is. And she’ll Tell me to stop doing it if she things I’m not being patient enough with myself, so I don’t think it’s that. (Once I did this to her, could tell from the tone of her text something bad had hapepned and she was distracted by it. Freaked her out becUse Fierce, YOU’RE not supposed to try to protect ME, stoppit!

I think it’s a real thing, and I think all kinds of people have it or don’t.’6 doesn’t seem to me like an autism thing, precisely for this reason. I’ll have it when somebody’s frowning and I’ll have it when somebody’s spinning.

That’s why when people say bullies have high empathy imtilt my head. Like, they’ll descdibe a Nice Lady Therapist who’s really saccharine and mean and go “she’s got empathy.” And I’m like “she what. She spent *that whole ass meeting* making you feel like a crumb!”

And so the question is: is it empathy when someone knows how you feel and uses it to be cruel? I never thought so but... maybe yes.

But anyway my understanding of what it means in terms of sociopathy and narcissism isn’t that it JUST means you can’t tell how people are feeling, it means you also don’t care or think their feelings are dumb anyway. “If he didn’t want his car stolen he shouldn’t have left it there.” “If she didn’t want my x in her y she shouldn’t have worn that.” Etc. “Everybody plays the game.” It’s supposedly from what I read at lead why so many psychopaths succeed in business—because the business world is structured in ways their minds arLrwady work. “Today’s WINNERS and LOSERS!”

Which isn’t how the autistic people I know act. They just more often ask “how are you feeling” directly, in my experience.

@chavisory No, you're not wrong. That was Mel's take on more than just empathy...that the diagnostic tools we have do a bad job of measuring what's going on w/ autistic people, because they're normed to non-autistic expression.

Thank you. That’s what I remembered, and what it looked like sie was saying when I reread, but this whole back and forth, coupled with the... weirdly unquestioned acceptance of SBC’s theories... made me wonder if I’d been reading it wrong or if the thinking had been modified in ways I hadn’t seen.

One not by Mel blog post I remember that influenced my thinking on this very strongly was by an autistic guy who I think went by griffin or griffen or something? Anyway what he said was that he didn’t so mich lack empathy as that he had trouble parsing fine grained emotional distinction (in NTs? In other autistic people? I recall it as in NTs but could be wrong.)

So he might know that his partner was experiencing negative emotions but not be able to tell if they were angry or sad, or know they were positive but not whether they were excited or content. So he would need to ask, and his partner would need to remember to specify, “what sort of bad is this bad emotion?” to know how to most appropriately respond.

And his point about that (at least how I remember it) was that it wasn’t “lack” of empathy—it was noticing emotions in partner and reacting and caring, which is what I think we all agreed “empathy” was at that time.

It was just needing further clarification because the parser was more coarse than fine.

That’s why when autistic people started saying “I lack empathy” at first I said “no you don’t.”

But people then took that as me telling them they don’t know their own experiences,w hen I was saying “having a parser set to Linux rather than win10 is *not* having no parser.”

[forestcryptid16]

So being queer has its downsides in that I honestly cannot tell when someone just wants to be my friend or might be crushing on me.

I’ve been texting this person I have a crush on for the last few days and tonight we watched a movie together (sorta). They are in another time zone visiting family for the holiday and I suggested we watch the same movie and text each other during it. 

They just asked me if I enjoyed watching the movie this way (which I did because they had a lot of cute things to say) but I told them that I liked our running commentary but my preferred moving watching experience is to be in the same room. 

UGH. I just don’t know whats happening. Its been forever since I flirted or tried dating anyone and I dont want to put pressure on anything and I like them a lot so I’d love to be their friend too. 

FUck.