#who had never seen the episodes

[inspectorspacetimerevisited]

During the 1980s, due to the fact that most Inspector Spacetime serials from before weren’t available to the public (and sometimes to the writers),

references made to those old serials frequently caused consternation amongst newer fans, who had never seen the episodes or events referenced.

[bidisasterevankinard]

To all the people in the fandom who forgot: Buck grown ass man who has no problems with asking people call him Buck not Evan if he wants them. He told 118 when he was super anxious about first day and they pranked him right before it, he told Maddie, he told HIS PARENTS. If I'm not mistaken he corrected A*by too. So you really think if he would be not ok with being called Evan by Tommy he would say nothing? He would ask to be called Buck. But he DIDN'T. Because he LOVES Tommy calling him Evan

Tommy is not toxic or transphobic to call Buck by his given name and not choosen name as he never was corrected

[silentsockfeet]

with the obvious addendum that act 3 isn’t out yet and we can’t form true opinions until the show’s officially done, i’m still really feeling like it could have maybe benefited from a third season. they’re hitting all the right plot points and those moments are full of really intense emotion, but everything in the middle feels so underwhelming in comparison and so much of it still feels rushed to me. idk

[wisegirl-seaweedbrain]

and the crowd… exchanges confused glances?

[arttsuka]

Mr. Nervous from The Mr. Men Show? He's super relatable, TBH.

I swear I've never seen that purple guy in my life. Always thought that pink wobbly one was supposed to be Mr. nervous (might be that language barrier)

[jq37]

Descendants: The Rise of Red is kind of a bizarre movie to talk about critically because, imo, it almost doesn't make sense to talk about it in the usual terms of good vs bad or enjoyable vs not enjoyable when the way more obvious tension is finished vs unfinished.

Because, more than any other movie I've ever seen, it does *not* read as a full movie. And I don't mean in a "this movie has a cliffhanger" kind of way. The Empire Strikes Back and Across the Spiderverse fit that description. They end on big dramatic cliffhangers that point to a resolution in the third installment.

But Rise of Red just sets all this stuff up and then...ends without concluding anything. It doesn't feel like the first movie in a trilogy (or duology). It feels like the first act of a two-act musical. It very specifically reminds me of the end of the first act of Into the Woods where all the main characters sing the song Ever After about how they all fixed their problems with magic and nothing bad will ever happen to them again and then the narrator ominously says "To be continued" before the curtain drops. But in Into the Woods you know there's a second act and this movie wasn't sold as the first act of a bigger story. Like sure, it has the, "You didn't think this was the end" tag at the end like all the other movies, but those movies were complete, self-contained stories even though they had sequels. This was NOT a full story. It's half of one story.

Like, if we're supposed to take this as a full story, there are so many bizarre choices:

Why did they make sure to mention that Cinderella and Charming fell in love at the ball at the top if it wasn't meant to set up Back to the Future style, "Oh no, I accidentally got my mom banned from the ball so she's not gonna fall in love with Dad and I won't be born" shenanigans?

Why did Maddox very pointedly have that bit about "you could lose your mom completely" if that was never going to come into play? Red never did anything to endanger Bridget or endanger her own birth so it doesn't make sense as a warning in that way.

Why was there all this focus on this Carrie on prom night moment for Bridget if we LITERALLY NEVER SAW CASTLECOMING? Why dance around this moment and talk about it all cloak and dagger with no specificity if they weren't building up to some big reveal that it wasn't as straightforward as it seemed? And like, they leaned in HARD with making Bridget the nicest, sweetest, cotton candy princess as a teen so I need WAY more than, "She got pranked by known bullies she's been enduring with a smile very handily up to this point" to buy that she went from that to "murderous dictator". And even if she did become murderous, I find it insanely hard to believe that she'd include her best and only friend on the list of people she wants to suffer unless there was a betrayal. I find it INSANE that there wasn't a falling out scene at any point in this movie with how thickly they were laying on the admiration and camaraderie.

(Note: And adult Cinderella def has guilty vibes re: the Queen at orientation. Which I know I'm not imagining because it's literally spelled out in the Jr Novelization!)

Before the time travel element of the movie started, I thought they were going for something like they go to the past and realize that Bridget was bullied not by the VKs but by the spoiled royals, and Ella ends up joining in the bullying once she gets with Charming, betraying Bridget and justifying her whole "Love Ain't It" philosophy. Or Ella ditching her at the last minute to be with Charming meaning she has to deal with the monster prank alone and it was the being alone rather than the prank itself that hurt her (though that is NOT a good enough reason to go all off with their heads on your subjects). The fact that, as far as we know right now, it literally was just a relatively mild and reversible prank that caused all of this is just, such flat storytelling, you know?

But! All of this makes way more sense if this is meant to be the first act of a single contained story. And I don't wanna be all "Pepe Silvia, secret good 4th episode of Sherlock" about this but I did see this picture:

Which seems to indicate that this was written as a Part One. Which, if so, idk why they wouldn't advertise it that way but whatever. The point is, if that's the case then it means that we're potentially in bad pacing territory rather than straight up bad storytelling territory. Because this isn't a bad place to be halfway through your story:

The heroes, warned that time travel is dangerous, have gone back in time to change the heart of a brutal tyrant before she can stage a coup. They seemingly succeed in their mission and when they come home, everything is great! But then, the side effects of time travel start to catch up with them. Chloe realizes that, in breaking the vase, she prevented her mother from going to the ball and falling in love with her dad (who was conspicuously absent from the final scene btw) which means she's starting to be forgotten and erased from the timeline. And Red realizes that though this new version of her mom is as sweet and kind as the teen she once met, she's a complete stranger to her (fulfilling the Hatter's warning that she could lose her mom completely). So they have to go back in time once more to make sure the Ella and Charming fall in love again, perhaps at the cost of whatever bad thing that happened to Bridget happening again and bringing back the original version of her future self. But, now with more context of how her mom became that way, Red can now talk to her mother and persuade her to give people another chance.

Boom, that gives us time to go back and hit everything we haven't yet hit. We can pay off the time travel tropes that were set up but not explored. We can go to Castlecoming which feels so obviously set up to be the centerpiece of this story (like, come on, Back to the Future literally does the school dance thing. This is Time Travel Storytelling 101). We can actually get info about what the prank was and why it affected Bridget so completely.

(Note: This is a side thing but it really strikes me as so crazy that Bridget would so SUCH a big 180 here. Like, I know the Queen of Hearts is a silly, goofy, campy villain, but she straight up murders people and there's no way to get around that if we're taking her out of the surreal story she comes from and putting her in a (comparatively) grounded story. If I wasn't doing a betrayal plot, I would make the twist that the spell that turned Bridget into a "monster" didn't just have a physical effect, it had a mental effect and it magically twisted her personality to be the way it is now. So they broke the physical half of the curse, but neglected the other half and it's been festering the whole time, turning her as evil as she was sweet. Because like, a simple physical transformation isn't that big of a deal to have such heavy security--Bridget made cupcakes with a transformative effect and that was totally fine. I'm not saying that that's what's gonna be the case. I just think it would be an explanation that makes sense for why she changed so crazy much that makes more sense than a simple prank or even a betrayal. Her mom wasn't even evil! How did she go from zero to murder without even an evil mom to push her onto the path? But I'm super digressing right now.)

(Note #2: OK, one last thing. The trap on the book presumably would have hit the VK's and trapped them in Merlin's office regardless of what Chloe and Red did, right? That's like, net zero influence on the timeline. I genuinely can't tell if that's a straight up plot hole or set up to be like, "Oh no. Actually when she said that she was turned into a monster in front of everyone it was meant in a less literal way." Like she was just made to look bad and that was the real thing that pushed her over the edge. Like idk. It really feels like the only thing they really did that would change the timeline was get Ella banned from the dance and presumably out of the way where she couldn't hurt Bridget. OK NOW I'm done.)

Anyway, my point is that this is not how I would have structured my movie and I think this was a super weird way to go into the second era of Descendants movies, but they can still tell a complete story if that's their plan. I'm genuinely really curious to see if this pans out to be a fairly competently told story that just happens to be split over two movies or a complete fumbling of the narrative bag because it could really be either at this point and it's fascinating to me.

[crimsonmonsoon]

Hitting you with my new design for Qi Rong. Here's the design things and changes I made:

I loved how stupidly the colors clashed on his Donghua fit but I wanted it to look a little different.

I also always pictured him with shorter scrappy hair but I really liked the braid in the Donghua so now he has both. I mean look how terrible his bangs are. He is the embodiment of perfection.

I gave him a bunch of skulls and bone themes stuff because it's cool and fits his vibe. I have no idea what the skull around his neck came from though. I'm gonna say it's the skull of an infant.

His teeth are really effed up too. I want him to just look really gross and disturbing and the teeth just gave that image to me. The toothgap is so fat you could fit a pencil, maybe even two pencils in it. And when his mouth is closed his bottom flat teeth are so short that in addition to the tooth gap, theres just this gaping hole which he probably sticks his tongue out of to be a chaotic little shit.

The scar on his neck was something I came up with based on my own headcannons. We don't really know for sure how he died as a mortal, just that it was probably in a massacre of the Xianle royalty. So if he was executed, I'd like to imagine he was beheaded as thats typically how exucutions would go. I also wanted the scar to mirror Xie Lian's cursed shackle because these two parralel to each other so hard it's not even funny.

The thumbless glove stayed because thats funny as shit. My boy really is just telling everyone to fuck off.

I kind of liked doing this and so I might go after Hua Cheng or He Xuan next.... it depends on how people react to feral goblin Qi Rong and his fucked up teeth.

[impostorsshow]

I'm actually so obsessed with him it's not even funny if i'm not listening to a TikTok or music directly related to him I can't focus free me free me

This is @/cherubpuppet's OC for a object show [au? pitch? wip show? How do I categorize this] and I've been destroyed by the fact that ruler art is infinitely superior [and 10x longer] and i don't have a good enough grasp on lip gloss's personality to make fanfiction so I am frozen in "want make fanart but fanart takes effort :["

[redrobin-detective]

So watching the newest Spy x Family, I see everyone squealing over Uncle Franky (don’t get me wrong I am too) but I also think his outsider’s perspective is kind of sad. When Anya is waiting for Yor and Loid to get home, the line he says there struck me.

“Hey, do you like your mom and dad?”

Like that’s a weird question to ask a young child who, hopefully, should love their parents. But Franky I think is acutely aware that they aren’t Anya’s real parents and the Forger family is fake. Franky has worked with Twilight for years, knows him very well and has presumably seen him make and drop identities like one would an article of clothes. We’ve even had Franky directly accusing Loid of being too clinical, focusing only the mission. I think Franky believes that once Operation Strix is completed, that he’ll leave and Anya and move on to the next assignment.

 I think that idea has colored a lot of Franky’s interactions with Anya. Yes, he’s also a big kid and wants to run around and be silly. But I also believe he’s trying to give this girl a sense of happiness and family presumably before she’s dropped off at the nearest orphanage once her usefulness is outlived. Like we all know Loid is catching feels but he’s a Good Actor and it might not be readily apparent to his coworker. Idk it must be so sad for Franky to watch this little family interact, to sweep up a child so clearly desperate for love and family in a spy operation, only to realize it won’t last.

[ivystitches]

shiv was so baby sister in this episode

[puppyeared]

Atla live action 😐

[proseka-headcanons]

Heyyyyyyy it's way late and I shouldn't be trusted to say shit buttttt

Ena means so much to me if she existed when I was a kid I would not be half as fucked up as I am today she is just like me frfr

[sisterdragonwithfeathers]

ok so was I just not paying attention (or not actually around anyone who talked about it when it was airing) or did everyone forget to tell me Gravity Falls is actually good

[lavender-ghosting]

If I had a nickel for everything I've seen lately that is insinuating I should read the great gatsby...I'd have 4???? Which is not a lot but it's really weird that it's happened that many times????

[ecoustsaintmein]

Thorsten's Love Language is 'Acts of Service'

[raayllum]

i also think one of the reasons Rayllum works whenever they have a solo (couples?) quest is because the circumstances leading up to said solo adventure make sense.

In S3 in particular, it's because Ezran has made the choice to go back, and while it does mean he'll interact with his brother and their friend less, it does flesh him out even more as an individual, and the core group (the main trio) was already pretty small. This is particularly true as the second a travelling companion is introduced (Nyx) she's meant to be an obtrusive obstacle and a threat, not necessarily a buffer.

In S4 when the whole group is together for the bulk of the season, we see different dynamics be explored through scenes and dialogue: we get to see more of Soren and Callum, Ezran and Rayla, Soren and Rayla, and of course the broyals, often times with scenes developing multiple relationships (4x05 in particular is great with this).

In S5 you could argue the split going a little bit more either way, but it still lets Callum and Rayla have more time to flesh out their dynamic (5x01, 5x02, 5x04 in particular) before taking more of a backseat in other episodes (5x03, 5x06, 5x07, 5x09) other than one or two small moments. And again we can assume in S6 that Ezran's duties as king will be what keeps him in Katolis, the same way he went off to deal with dragon diplomacy things earlier, and because Callum and Rayla both have the most individual incentive to go to the Starscraper / set up with Aaravos at this time.

Meanwhile in other shows, I've had it happen where it feels like the show is shoving two characters together by forcing them to regularly spend one-on-one times in ways they would not, and not only does it lead to a less than well developed romance, it also forces them to spend significant chunks of time away from the rest of the main cast (think 4 other main characters) for no real discernible reason other than to have awkward romantic tension.