#together in every iteration and lesbians this time round

[gonetoforks]

tragic crossover crackship yuri save me tragic crossover crackship yuri

Hero who came from little but has others x Villain who came from everything but has no one

What if she is violent like Toga and sees herself as needing to be useful like Deku what then. What if Uraraka is determined to not only save her because she believes she can be a hero but to help Frida want to save herself so that she can live happily like Toga couldn’t what then. WHAT IF SHE WANTS TO PROTECT THE SMILE THAT HAS ONLY BEEN HIDDEN UNDER HER MASK AND HER MOTHER’S MAKEUP HER WHOLE LIFE AND NOT LET HER BE HARMED LIKE LAST TIME WHAT THEN. WHAT IF-

[sparkerinparadise]

rating every jack frost iteration that i can think of off of the top of my head rn bc sleep is a myth

SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI: i have never touched an atlus game but oh my god look at him. he’s just a little guy and it’s his birthday!!! i love his fun hat and how small and round he is, and his :D face with little fangs. apparently he’s also a demon??? that gives you a gun in one of the games?? that’s always a plus!! i don’t like the fact that he’s british though. 10/10 instant improvement to any game

FROSTY’S WINTER WONDERLAND: this movie is very much a product of its time w how it treats crystal and is VERY much trying to capitalize off of the success of the original frosty, but idk i still think it’s kinda cute. but this isn’t rating the movie. this is rating jack frost. here he is a silly little man!! his whole spiel is that he’s jealous that frosty is more popular than him so he wants to murder him. y’know, typical cartoon villain stuff. don’t worry though, he gets defeated by the power of friendship and a Kiss from a Cute Snowlady, and decides he’s going to make winter last forever for frosty and his new wife crystal bc they’re probably the first people to validate him in years. wow. what a guy. also his design’s excellent and his voice sounds exactly what u think it sounds like, it’s great. 10/10 i want to see him and smt jack commit crimes together

RISE OF THE GUARDIANS: here he is. the tumblr sexyman himself. i don’t remember anything from this movie except that no one can see him and he’s sad about it, i think. also he has a big magic stick and i have no idea what it’s actually used for. ice, i think?? but yeah, he is literally just some generic modern-looking white boy. with a big stick. i don’t understand the appeal, but then again i’m a lesbian and i don’t own an air fryer. 2/10 best and only anime i’ve ever seen /j

JACK FROST (1979): “wait a minute, u already put the rankin-bass one on here!! they’re the same character!!” shut up this is my list, i get to do what i want. anyways i literally just finished watching this movie for the first time and i thought it was cute. his outfit’s changed a little bit from winter wonderland and the colors here are a little too similar for my taste but it’s still a SUPER solid design. like, a pointy hat, tunic, boots AND leggings?? too much power. he is significantly less bastardly here but he’s still super silly and nice. we love to see it!! 8/10 i want in on that groundhog con deal

SANTA CLAUSE 3: i watched this movie several times as a kid, and i couldn’t tell u for the life of me why. i was actually kinda surprised when rewatching some clips of this guy on youtube! his design’s... okay i guess, but his lines are so corny and his acting is so over-the-top that he actually ends up being kinda funny. anyways he wants to ruin santa's life so he can…. travel into the past and sabotage santa’s backstory?? so he can be capitalist santa??? i don’t remember how any of that worked but it was bc of some weird magic law i think, because its the fucking santa clause. anyways uhhh.... he exists!! that’s all i can really say about him!! 5/10 eat the rich

FROSTY AND RUDOLPH’S CHRISTMAS IN JULY: gee rankin-bass jack, how come YOUR mom lets u have THREE designs??? i like what they were trying to go for by combining the first 2 designs they made, but oh my god i literally cannot stand to look at him. i don’t know if it’s just his absurdly long neck, but that head just does NOT look like it belongs on that body. what were they thinking. 0/10 u had one job

JACK FROST (1998): an irl friend actually told me about this one and all i gotta say is... what the fuck, sarah???? i’ve read the wikipedia article and like. this jack’s a regular dude who’s a musician w/ kids, right??? and uh... he just fucking dies. and comes back to life as a snowman to help his son move on from his death. and then he dies again. i don’t know how anyone could take something like this seriously. this movie doesn’t even sound real, it’s like someone based it off of a really fucked up fever dream or something. anyways 4/10 i don’t have anything clever to say about this

[butchlilith]

writing meme part 1: synchronicity

this is the first round of some commentary i’m giving on stuff i’ve written! if you’d like to send in parts you’d like me to discuss, i would be indescribably thrilled. check out this post if you’re wondering what’s going on or this post if you’ve somehow escaped my bullying everyone into reading this fic. all of these were suggested by the delightful @ladynoblesong to whom i owe my life

under the cut learn all about...

daphne wearing niles’s clothes

mel’s introduction

lilith’s invitation

daphne wearing niles’s clothes

Daphne tucks in her shirt (your shirt, that is, but this conjures up all sorts of images of domesticity more shameful than sex), and grins back at you. Her lipstick has accidentally adorned the collar, and your mind flickers only briefly to Maris before Daphne’s voice draws you back to her. “There we are,” she says, impossibly pleased. Then, slipping suspenders over her shoulders, she walks to your mirror. Immediately, her wide eyes go bright, and she reaches for your arm, pulling you beside her.

“Don’t we look dapper?” she asks.

You know precisely what you look like, what you’re sure to look like to everyone who sees you together, and some part of her must know too, but dapper is hardly it. All the same, Daphne is electrified every time she catches the two of you reflected in a window.

Though it surely says more about you than her, you realize later that no one’s ever been so proud to be seen with you in your life. If this thing were real, you would have to stop seeing her because of it.

For once, you feel relieved that you could never be together.

Not that it was ever anything more than a fantasy; Maris, after all, is all you have ever known, all you could ever want.

sdfghjkl you really picked a scene here. it’s a charming combination of “wish fulfillment” and “therapy session material,” which… is honestly very reflective of this fic. so… yeah. i guess we’ll just start with the parenthetical, because it’s a solid dozen suitcases worth of unpacking to do. borne from my wanting to say “your shirt” to highlight that it is not her own but realizing that this would suggest her tucking in a shirt that is on another person’s body i was like, “let’s get into this.” because i have never let a single thing go ever in my life. & it ended up being something of an important detail imo, that this is the way niles approaches sex and love? i think it’s relatively similar to canon niles but presumably with different cause. in this case the cause would be, you know, living in a culture that does not provide too many models of what it is to love a woman and be in a healthy relationship with one as a woman yourself? so it’s much easier to say, “i’m happy having this non-relationship of a relationship” or “i’m only interested in sex with this woman” or whatever because what else do you have to go by? and that’s also sort of what i’m going for with the last line in this excerpt. so. we’ll move on, then.

i think even for women who don’t have a particular relationship with gender that can sometimes manifest as butchness etc. there’s still something very powerful in being something other than the woman you’re meant to and in seeing models of other women doing the same. i wanted daphne to have a moment like that. also… it’s hot. also hot: lipstick on button-ups. these last two are just objective facts more than analysis but it was what was going through my head at the time of writing.

but niles’s feelings in response to daphne’s excitement. well. that’s a moment and a half right there. i can’t fully remember my thought process—i think i might have thought of the situation while unable to write it down, so it was already a bit diluted once it got to the page. basically, though, it’s just that realization that she has largely (as a lesbian, as a butch woman) felt ignored at best, and that to be in a relationship with the first person who did recognize her and want to be recognized with her as herself would have… some layers to it that are not entirely… the healthiest. so that’s one of my many excuses for why this iteration of niles and daphne cannot get together for another six or seven years: they both needed to grow as people! because this is from niles’s pov we mostly get niles’s end of that but we see as well daphne kind of dealing with stuff as well even if it’s more obscured by niles’s lust/10000 other emotions.

on a lighter note, a fun fact for you: i hate the word dapper! but i thought daphne would use it in this context so i wrote it and i hated it every step of the way. i’m allowed to say this because as a certified stuffy butch i have an unfortunate degree of intimacy with the word.

mel’s introduction

You take the rest of your queries regarding your lingering financial ties to Maris to their sources.

The first, her surgeon, is fastidious and beautiful, and her airy voice informs you of four things as you call to schedule a third appointment with her. First, that she would not have expected a woman like you to have such an affinity for her line of work. Second, that she has never met a pair of friends that exchanged cosmetic procedures in the tens of thousands for the holidays. Third, that she is gay, too. (She does say, “too,” with her laugh floating through your cell phone smooth and half-threatening.) But, fourth, perhaps frightening you the most, she tells you that she wouldn’t mind if you took her to dinner sometime.

“You know,” you say, with a just-there laugh, “I’ve been meaning to ask you that very question.”

Frasier, of course, is aghast at each word of your account, but you have, by the end of it, obtained symphony tickets and a somewhat backhanded compliment on your uncharacteristic boldness. You take the opportunity to comment on his substandard squash performance, then fly out the door before he can return the blow with his usual ineptitude.

God, if he knew he was responsible for the best night you’ve had in years. The moment Mel leaves your car, you long to spend hours recounting what a wonderful night you had had. The strange thing is that you long to tell Daphne, long to tell her that you know, now, what she had meant when she told you that she loved first dates, that Mel is exactly like you, and impossibly beautiful and—

ooohh boy. the first sentence-and-a-half of this are probably among the last i wrote for this fic. i very seldom write things in the order they appear, so i always end up with the task of pasting these scenes together in a way that doesn’t seem entirely ridiculous. i think this is especially obvious with this and the preceding scene, which i wanted to happen in the opposite order before i remembered that, hm, canon does technically exist and i should maybe follow the barest outline of how that proceeds. but it worked out because i was able to pretend like there was an explanation for niles having a divorce lawyer without ever having been married.

but. that aside. i think we all know by this point that i love first dates. i love asking people on first dates and going on first dates and telling my friends about first dates and all of it. and basically i wanted to show that feeling as well as niles’s relationship with daphne as a friendship for both of them, not just daphne.

so on that first item! i wanted to preserve niles’s cowardice, obviously, but because she doesn’t have quite the same relationship with frasier as canon niles, there wasn’t really anyone to say “you realize this is exactly the reason you’re not with daphne now, right?” so i had mel take some (or… all) of the responsibility there, but i didn’t really feel mel was the sort to frame it as a question and certainly not the sort to let personal details about herself into the world without their recipient knowing that she knows even more of them. i mean, she literally doesn’t even present it as something she wants so much as something she knows niles does dfghjkl. and honestly? it’s hot. sorry but i’m right. if you’ve never been asked out by a woman in the form of a statement i need you to know that it is the hottest experience on earth. anyway. i just really don’t care for love stories that center on jealousy or the singularity of love. i’m not saying every good first date is love, but i wanted to show that there was genuine excitement here that could lead to love. i know mel is maybe not the most lovable character in the frasier universe, but i do feel like she truly cared for niles and niles for her.

with regard to the last line, that way daphne cuts off niles is something i do a couple times as well, which i wish i’d maybe explored a little bit more. it’s mostly leading up to daphne’s cutting her off with the kiss as in canon during that balcony scene, but i think it appears afterward as well. it often shows up when niles is overthinking, and, especially as we progress, it’s when daphne doesn’t want to think about what niles is thinking about. this particular line isn’t quite at the peak of that, but it would be a fair interpretation if you wish to believe she (consciously or not) wished to avoid hearing about niles’s infatuation with mel. you might even be able to make an argument for the other cases of interruption being similarly motivated (though this may prove most difficult with the moon dance instance), but my intention was for it to reach its peak toward the end of the pining stage and into the beginning of their relationship, iirc.

honestly, there’s more i could comment on in this scene, but i don’t know that it would be particularly interesting, and i’ve rambled enough, so i’ll leave it here!

lilith’s invitation

Lilith calls you that evening offering any help you need should you feel any sudden fondness for the state of Massachusetts. “And, Daphne,” she says, though you can scarcely remember when they last spoke, “if you’re looking for a rat breeder, there’s an excellent couple just north of the city. I’d be glad to introduce them to you.”

Somehow, the two of you accept both offers immediately.

this is part two of the payoff for the wish-fulfillment tidbit in the niles/frasier banter we get earlier on that reveals lilith is a huge dyke, the first part being when niles and lilith have sex. i just feel like the amount that lilith truly cares for her family is underutilized in the frasier canon and i think that would be amplified in a familial gay solidarity situation. also i just really want them all to be friends! i’ve already said that this was wish fulfillment and i won’t hide from that truth.

wrt why i wanted them to accept these offers, i a) feel that, even though obviously we as gay people have been getting married long before there was actual legal recognition of the fact, all three of these people (albeit in different ways) do value that system and that recognition imo b) am FOREVER bitter that daphne’s interests are just kind of… tossed aside in canon as being too weird or unrefined, when they’re really cool (or just… normal!) things? and because i think i hopefully provided a little more evidence of niles and daphne making efforts toward understanding over placation, i think niles would be in a place to say, “let’s do it!” even if she is… moderately horrified at first. so yeah. this response did kind of become “why i think i’m better than late-season frasier writers” but… yeah. i was just having fun and writing what i would want to see.

[milady-milord-lj]

Community Re-Watch Season 1: Introduction to Film and Football, Feminism, and You

Community Re-Watch:  Season 1

Hello Everyone! We're going to try something a little bit different in this go-round, and that is to watch in the intended order, rather than the order in which the episodes aired. As a result, we're getting "Football, Feminism, and You" this week instead of next week. Enjoy!

Introduction to Film

Commentary by Dan Harmon, Gillian Jacobs, Danny Pudi, Donald Glover

They thought John Michael Higgins was awesome. They absolutely loved him. Danny said he was sorry that he didn’t get to work with him.

Donald says that he loves watching the beginning of the series because they hadn’t quite found themselves yet.

It’s interesting how Dan treats Donald as a peer, even this early on in the series as Dan and Donald talk a little bit about Community's tonal shift from the early episodes to later episodes in the season.

One of Dan’s favorite bits in the episode is when Pierce is trying to use voice recognition on his phone and failing spectacularly. Dan says that in this bit, they were showing that Britta is “the cool one.” He notes in a roundabout way that the audience seemed to push back on this (“Wait a minute! I get to decide who the ‘cool one’ is!”), and they came up with the idea to “beat on her” a little bit to make her ‘Charlie Brown’ instead of ‘saddling her with status.’

Gillian response is basically, “I don’t care what you do. You can call me an ugly lesbian all you want. But don’t take my coat!” (She’s referencing Britta’s leather coat in this episode.)

Donald admits that he finds it funny when Pierce calls Britta (and by extension other people) mean names, mostly because Pierce obviously has a whole bunch of problems himself.

Both Dan and Donald agree that what makes it funny is that Pierce is bagging on Britta for being “ugly” even though it’s obvious she’s pretty. Or, as Dan puts it, “It’s better than him sexually harassing people all the time.”

Gillian remarked that she had to write Abed’s check and rip it out of the checkbook very quickly so the pacing of the table scene wouldn’t be broken.

Donald and Danny say that their favorite joke in the episode is when Jeff times Pierce on how long it’ll take him to say something offensive.

Dan complains that the cootie catcher/fortuneteller at the beginning doesn’t look like real paper. Gillian notes that Chevy’s doodle has changed from the naked woman to ‘weird eyes.’ Dan re-iterates that NBC made them change it.

Dan notes that the lower vocal register Yvette uses in her first scene in Professor Whitman’s class is the last time you’ll hear it (at least in first season), because she slowly starts sounding more and more like Miss Piggy. Danny jokes that the switchover marks the point at which the show finds itself.

Donald notes that the stunt lady who falls off the desk during the “stand on your desk” scene is a real pro. He remembers that she got injured and started bleeding after taking the fall for the third time. He was so concerned that she was hurt that he asked if she was all right. She told him that she was fine. She’s paid to get hurt and be okay with it.

Dan says that “the thing that’s wrong with the show at this point is that there’s nothing wrong with the show at this point.” He clarifies that the characters don’t really know each other that well, so the character dynamics feel off, even though they really aren’t considering that all of these people are still strangers at this point.

Gillian notes that this episode is the only time she wears a watch onscreen in the entire series (or at least during season one). Donald says that he discussed with the costuming people about his wearing a watch during season one, and they decided that he would no longer wear a watch starting with season two.

Seems like everyone likes Iqbal Theba (Abed’s Dad and the principal on Glee). Gillian notes that the cast loves quoting all of his meanest lines to each other.

Dan notes that during the scene where Britta and Abed’s Dad argue, there was something like 75 different colors of tape on the ground so the actors could hit their marks during the scene.

Dan and the cast admit that they don’t hate Glee. They’re jealous of Glee. Donald notes that Community and Glee shoot on the same lot. He says the Glee cast is really sweet and nice to them. He also comments that Community is kind of Glee’s dirty, disreputable cousin.

After talking a bit about Jeff’s “Mork from Orc” suspenders, Gillian admits that she only recently learned that Mork and Mindy was actually a spinoff from Happy Days. (Yes, it’s true. Mork’s — and consequently Robin Williams’ — first television appearance was on an episode of Happy Days.) Dan is the only one who actually knew that information.

Dan says the scene between Troy and Pierce talking about Troy’s girly sneeze had to be cut down a lot. He talks a little bit about the cut scene, where Pierce says that Troy has lost his status and that he’s become a joke to other people, but in a way where you get the sense that Pierce is really talking about himself. Both Donald and Dan say that the cut bits showed some really good acting from Chevy.

Dan says that in the beginning, the scripts were 29 to 31 pages, but they had to cut the scripts down because they usually ended up cutting eight minutes out of the show during editing. He notes that the script for “Modern Warfare” was 23 pages. Usually, the scripts average about 25 pages.

They talk a little bit about Gillian’s costuming in the episode. Gillian says it’s to show Britta’s “skanky-ness.”

Donald says he loves the end of the episode with Abed’s video. He also notes that the episode’s ending was not the original ending.

Dan said the concept of the episode was for Abed to capture Jeff’s encroaching phobia that the study group was becoming a family and that he had been cast as the dad and Britta had been cast as the mom. The problem is that the intended “joke” where Jeff is the unwitting father figure did not come through in the episode at all. Gillian noted Dan had told her the intent during shooting, so she doesn’t have an objective take on whether he succeeded.

Donald jokes that Community is all about “dad issues.” He adds, “It’s a lot like Lost in that way.”

Donald remarks that the scene where both Britta, and eventually Jeff, storm out of the study room after Britta confronts Abed about how he is spending the money she loaned him struck the cast as a pretty dark ending to the scene.

Dan dislikes the sweater that Joel is wearing during the denouement where Britta and Abed’s dad have their final argument and Abed shows his film.

Gillian says that the scene where Abed shows his film is a re-shoot, and that it took eight hours to complete. It was originally shot in the cafeteria.

Dan says that some people from Channel 101 put together Abed’s movie.

The woman who “played” Abed’s mom in Abed’s film was a random photo chosen out of a book.

Danny says he likes that the episode is kind of dark.

Dan comments that it’s obvious that Jeff and Britta totally don’t get Abed’s film, while Abed’s dad does. He’s proud of the fact that Jeff and Britta are fundamentally petty characters.

Danny says that he likes that the show was willing “to go there” so early on in the run. Donald adds that he enjoys the fact that you’re learning about characters’ backgrounds from the start, and that even though it’s sad also it’s funny.

Dan somewhat responds to critics who were upset that “a half-Indian” guy was cast as an Arab. He says Danny was cast because he was the best person for the part, although he gets why people were upset. Donald jokes, “But truthfully, it’s because none of us can tell the difference anyway.”

Dan says the whole point of the first season was to remove the “will-they-won’t-they” element between Jeff and Britta. He states that it was meant to be cynical.

Donald and Danny say that everyone involved in the crumping scene in the closing tag was very sore the next day. Apparently they did numerous takes of it.

Dan says that Joe Russo didn’t think the closing tag was funny and pushed to air a commercial instead. Dan says he and Joe ended up getting into a fight over it.

Football, Feminism, and You

Commentaries by Dan Harmon, Joel McHale, Alison Brie, Donald Glover, and Joe Russo

Dan says that this is the first episode where the Dean interacts with the group and it’s the first time he’s in the study room. Alison says she likes his entrance and his comments that “there’s one of every kind of you.” Donald notes that it’s a pretty self-aware statement.

Dan notes that the episode was shown “out of order” on NBC in that it was filmed earlier, but shown sixth.

Joel says one of his most favorite lines of the season is “They’ve been called animals their whole lives.” Joel says it’s the way Jim Rash says it that sells it.

Joel jokes that Annie is dressing less conservatively with the “plunge neckline” top she’s wearing in this episode. You can practically hear Alison rolling her eyes as she notes that Annie is still in her “gross Annie phase” costume-wise.

Joel really likes his coat in this study room scene.

Donald is having a hard time wrapping his head around the characterizations in this episode, because apparently the episodes in filmed order was careful about building the relationships between characters and the acting had evolved. But he finds it jarring when watching the episodes in the ‘as-aired on NBC order.’ His actual comment, “It’s almost like watching a completely different cast.”

Britta’s characterization as “the cool girl” actually got the hardest push-back from the women in the writers’ room. According to Dan, Hillary Winston (one of the writers) point-blank said that Britta was not someone she’d want to be friends with. Dan said that rather than correcting it, he decided to make that unlikeability part of her character and to explore what that meant and how it affected the other characters. Dan adds that in the end, Hillary Winston was basically the driving force behind Britta’s season one arc and eventually become the biggest champion for Britta in the writers’ room.

Joe says that this episode is one of his top five episodes of the season, in large part because this is the episode where they figured out how to group the characters together; how to make the A and B stories work together; and how to set up group problems that need to be resolved by the end of the episode.

Alison says that the two bathroom scenes in this episode were shot back-to-back. The Shirley-Britta scene was shot first, and then the Annie-Britta-Shirley scene was shot second.

Dan says that Yvette’s acting in the first bathroom scene was great.

Donald and Alison joke about “foreshadowing” in the first bathroom scene. For Donald, fixing the sinks later in the season. For Alison, copying Britta’s robotic voice in “the chicken fingers” episode.

Everyone basically loves Jim Rash. Apparently, the scene between Pierce and the Dean in the Dean’s office is really what sealed the deal for everyone.

Dan says he almost deleted the line “Seal and Seal’s teeth” (when talking about what color the Human Being should be), because it felt too much like Wisconsin racism where the white students talk about the black students. He just thought it was too creepy, but when it got a big laugh during the table read, he decided to keep it in the script.

Joe says Dan had a deliberate strategy to pair Jeff up one-on-one with each of the characters in the B story. Funny enough, this episode was supposed to be about Jeff-and-Troy. Reaction from the other people in the commentary (sans Dan), “Well, whoops!”

Donald says that Troy doesn’t really say much in the episode until Jeff starts manipulating Troy into playing football. He thought it was deliberate because Troy is 1) kind of dumb and 2) doesn’t really make decisions for himself. Dan admits it’s because they were trying to figure out the character, until they decided to go with, “Troy is Donald being funny.” The big thing, Dan says, is that Donald is a talented guy, and they have him playing a dumb jock, which put the character and Donald into too much of a box.

Donald says that he likes the fact that after this episode, Troy never plays football again. He likes the fact that Troy goes from football jock to “let’s eat this big cookie!” Alison points out that it’s because Abed replaced football in Troy’s life.

Joe says the original concept for Troy was that he was a big, dumb white football player. However, during the casting process they realized that it was too-on-the-nose stereotypical because it was something they all had seen before. So they decided to open up the concept. Donald got the part based on his work with Derrick Comedy. Joe said that once they got Donald, they decided that the original concept was too limited for someone of Donald’s talent, so they deliberately worked to open up the character so they could take advantage of what Donald could do with it. Joel agrees that Troy changed a lot over the course of the first half of the season. Dan remarks that at least with Troy and Annie, they had a good excuse because the characters are both 18, so they’re still finding themselves.

During the football field scene, Joel points out the pregnant woman playing football in the background.

The back-and-forth between Joel and Troy on the football field was written by Dan at 7 in the morning and sent to the set at the last minute to Joel and Donald. In short, they got the pages shortly before they shot the scene. Alison remarks that the same thing happened for Jeff and Annie’s big fight scene.

Donald says that he considers his scene with Joel on the football field to be his first real acting on a television show. He also notes that it was really, really hot that day and it was made worse by the fact that they’re wearing these heavy sweatshirts.

Joe says that it took Donald 39 takes before he could hit one of the other actors in the head with a football. Looking back, he says that they probably should have gone with a digital effect. Donald says that when they were done shooting the scene, he was in so much pain he was crying and was wearing ice packs on his arm. Joel says that the really weird thing about the whole shoot was that Donald kept overthrowing the football so it kept going through the uprights instead of hitting the actor.

Donald Glover makes a joke about being Danny Glover’s son. Then he realizes that someone might take him seriously and states for the record that he’s not Danny Glover’s son.

Dan says the scene where Shirley confronts Britta about being a bad bathroom friend had to be severely cut down for time. Alison remembers the cut jokes where Britta talks about the other girls calling her “Brooba” and “Titta” because she got boobs before all the other girls.

Alison says that Troy’s out-dated weirdly conservative rap scene was the last scene shot for the episode. And they had to film the whole thing in 20 minutes.

Dan loves the fact that Alison is a fast talker and can still be understood. He says he tends to write a lot for people, but not everyone can get those lines out, so he had to learn how to write shorter for the actors.

Donald remarks that when he talks to people about the show, people are happy with the fact that the student population pretty much looks like the kind of population you’d see in a community college.

Dan admits that Jeff’s line, “I think not being racist is the new racism” is kind of a personal axe of his to grind. That sometimes overcorrecting for racism ends up becoming a form of racism in and of itself. He says it pretty much sums up the Dean’s administration for Greendale.

Joel admits that during the Jeff-and-Annie fight scene, Alison actually made him feel terrible.

Alison said that this was the first episode where she had a lot of dialog and a good storyline. She notes that they got the script pages for the Jeff-and-Annie fight scene 20 minutes before they shot it. She felt pressure because “this is now really real, this is where I have to make it happen.” Joel jokes that when he got the pages he was thinking, “I can’t do it. There’s no way I can do it.”

Alison gives a shout-out to Jeff-Annie shippers. She says that from their perspective it’s weird that this scene gets used in so many Jeff-Annie fan videos because it’s kind of a nasty scene. Dan points out that there are only so many shots of Jeff and Annie actually looking at each other during season one, so there’s not a lot to choose from. Alison thinks it’s Annie dramatically turning away that’s the key. Donald says his favorite Jeff-Annie video is the one that includes a shot of him and Gillian turning away from Jeff and Annie, mostly because he can’t figure out where those scenes come from. Alison jokes that the funniest thing about the fan videos is that the cast has watched every single one of them.

Donald says that Alison can cry really well, and it’s really believable. He jokes, “I’d hate to have you as a daughter. Or a girlfriend. Because you would get whatever you want.” This leads to everyone joking about Alison’s “Disney eyes.” Alison points out that in “English as a Second Language” Joel was the one who added the “her eyelids flutter but never close” because he’d witnessed it way too many times.

Joel says he loves the Greendale football team.

Dan says that he got some crap about Greendale having a pep rally because community colleges don’t do that. Donald says it’s obvious to him that Greendale spends its money on the wrong things, like pep rallies and dances.

Dan says they had a hard time ending the episode. They had to reshoot the ending.

The closing scene between Jeff and Annie was shot several weeks after they wrapped filming on the episode. Joe says it’s because they realized they needed to wrap the Jeff-Annie storyline after they were done editing the episode.

Alison points out that this episode was the third episode shot.

Joe states that the first five or six episodes of a series is difficult because there’s a lot of re-shooting and repositioning of the characters because everyone’s still in discovery mode. As the series goes on, the days get shorter. This prompts Alison to joke that she’s still waiting for those shorter days to happen. Donald counter-jokes that they get shorter because they know going in how long they really are.

Everyone loves the Human Being. Alison said they had a different person in the costume for the debate episode and she was unhappy and went to Joe to complain because the person in that episode was too stocky, buff, and confident. She likes it better when the person behind the mask kind of hates himself.

Dan says that his most favorite thing about the closing tags is that they cut out just as the joke starts to happen.

[tragicbooks]

The lesbian and bisexual characters I saw on TV kept dying, so I switched to comic books.

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There is no shortage of ways to kill off a lesbian, bisexual, or queer woman on TV.

Gun violence. Cancer. Suicide. Car accidents. Poison. Crossbow. Sunken ship. Even murder by a murder of crows.

Merritt Wever as Dr. Denise Cloyd, "The Walking Dead." Photo by Gene Page/AMC. Samira Wiley as Poussey Washington, "Orange Is the New Black." Photo by  Eric Leibowitz/Netflix/Everett Collection. Naomi Campbell as Camillia Marks-Whiteman, "Empire." Photo by Chuck Hodes/FOX. Alycia Debnam-Carey as Lexa, "The 100." Photo by Cate Cameron/The CW.

Is it too much to ask to have perfectly imperfect complex characters with speaking parts and partners (or a rich dating life) who survive more than five episodes? Apparently the answer is yes.

It's not that characters don't get to die. For some genres, that just comes with the territory. But as Marie Lyn Bernard, aka Riese, said in her piece on the topic for Autostraddle, "We comprise such a teeny-tiny fraction of characters on television to begin with that killing us off so haphazardly feels especially cruel."

But there is a magical place where queer characters are leading stories, falling in love, being heroes, and (GASP!) not dying: comic books.

Finally, there's a place for LGBTQ women and femmes to kick ass, fall in and out of love, travel through time, grow old, work together as a team, and save the day.

From "Wonder Woman" to the hardcore campers of "Lumberjanes," queer heroines are staking their place in an industry long dominated by white, cis, straight men.

"Lumberjanes" cover via Noelle Stevenson/BOOM! Box, used with permission.

As an adult, it's refreshing. As someone with eyes on the next generation, particularly LGBTQ kids, it's inspiring. Kids — especially kids who aren't cisgender or straight — need to see themselves in the media they consume. What better place to stoke the imagination and power big dreams than the pages of comic books?

Author and cartoonist Sarah Graley writes queer characters to tell the stories she wishes she had.

Graley, 25 and from Birmingham in the United Kingdom, is the creative powerhouse behind "Our Super Adventure" and "Pizza Witch." Her latest comic book, "Kim Reaper," follows Becka, a college student with an unrequited crush on Kim, a goth girl with an untraditional side hustle — she's a part-time grim reaper.

"Kim Reaper #1" images via Oni Press, used with permission.

Including a queer couple was an obvious choice for Graley, a bisexual woman who never imagined a space for herself in the superhero comics she saw growing up.

"Growing up though, I don't remember any media that featured queer woman, let alone starred?" she writes in an e-mail interview. "I really wish I had that as a kid! Or as a teen! I just want that all the time to be honest, more media featuring rad queer women. So I make my own!"

"Kim Reaper #1" images via Oni Press, used with permission.

For many, including Graley, web comics and crowdfunding are helping underrepresented creators break into the industry and tell their own stories.

"I think webcomics being more of a thing and possible funding avenues like Patreon and Kickstarter have given people the platform to write/draw their own comics featuring underrepresented women, which is awesome!" she writes. "I think publishers have taken notice that these are stories that people want."

The renaissance of queer women doesn't leave behind women of color as characters or contributors.

The Marvel superheroine Miss America has been in print since 1943. But a brand new iteration, America Chavez, debuted in 2011 as part of the miniseries "Vengeance" and later appeared in "Young Avengers," "A-Force," and "The Ultimates." This year, America Chavez got her own story. And she's got a helluva story.

"America #1" variant cover by Jamie McKelvie, used with permission.

The daughter of two women, America is a queer, Latina college student with exceptional strength and the ability to kick down doors between dimensions. The book was written by Gabby Rivera, the gay, Latinx author of "Juliet Takes a Breath."

"I’m a queer brown weirdo, and I love every short inch of myself," Rivera said in an interview with Autostraddle. "I’m bringing all that round, brown, goodness to this story. All the things that make me laugh and make me feel strong, they’re going to be in America’s world."

Thank you @Marvel & Gabby Rivera for giving us the first lesbian Latina superhero, America Chavez!#AmericaChavez #TheNewCaptainAmerica http://pic.twitter.com/Z67gDSiImb

— Chris Beffa (@chrisbeffa) April 4, 2017

America is joined by countless LGBTQ characters of color in comics and webcomics like "Witchy," "Agents of the Realm," and "Trans Girl Next Door."

No matter your genre of choice, there are queer women and femme characters ready to transport you to other worlds, new dimensions, or provide some insight into another person's lived experience.

There are spaces where TV writers aren't burying your gays and characters (and writers and artists) to fall in love with.

In addition to the books and sites I've mentioned already, check out "Bitch Planet," "Rat Queens," and Alison Bechdel's widely acclaimed strip "Dykes to Watch Out For."

Creator of "Fun Home" Alison Bechdel attends the re-opening of the Curran Theater in San Francisco, California. Photo by Steve Jennings/Getty Images for Curran.

There are new books, zines, anthologies, and webcomics coming out every month, so make friends with Tumblr, the amazing Autostraddle series "Drawn to Comics," or your local comic shop to keep up to date.

By supporting the creators who are making these stories happen, we can continue to see these queer characters grow, save the day, and — most importantly — live.

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