#you shouldn't go through that

[wearenotjustnumbers2]

This child in gaza is screaming:

"I wish it was a dream. Oh, mom and dad. I wish it was a dream and my mom and dad are still alive" after being rescued from underneath the rubble to find his parents killed by Israel.

Share this, we are not numbers. Let our voices be heard in hopes that this stops.

[stump-not-found]

mabel pines #1 hater

[dykedvonte]

I think depictions of Anya being cruel to Curly or drawing out his suffering are artful and chilling but completely miss the point of the story and her character.

I'm not saying she doesn't deserve to have that "I told you so" moment with him but not in something callous or cold. Even if that is how it happened, she'd immediately feel guilty cause at that point she's not tormenting her tormenter or even the person truly at fault. She's doing something cathartic, similar to how Jimmy likely hits Curly to release rage he can't against the rest of the crew. She'd see herself as no different when she'd come back from the moment and see Curly cowering at her. She wants someone to take responsibility but how does being cruel to the defenseless help? Why would she want the power Jimmy has over her over Curly?

The idea of her extending someone else's pain is just so against the struggles she already faces and how she can't even bring herself to cause someone pain even to help them. Her very desire is to release herself from her own suffering and I doubt she'd even fine some sort of guilty release in being cruel to another.

[rubensmuse]

if justice dragonage has 100,000 fans i am one of them if justice dragonage has 5 fans i am one of them if justice dragonage has 1 fan i am that fan if justice dragonage has 0 fans i am no longer on this earth

[supremeladyoftherandom]

Imagine being me

Imagine you live in a country where popular american cartoon show gravity falls was not even heard of

Imagine growing up a little and going on the internet, and finding out about this show

Imagine seeing fanart on pinterest, of a boy in a pine hat and a girl in a shooting star sweater and two similar looking old men and a one eyed triangle

imagine seeing fanart of the fucking triangle being kissy kissy and tender with one of the old men/the boy with the pine hat/the girl with the shooting star

Imagine seeing the triangle looking over the boy reading a book/the girl knitting/anyone doing literally anything in the fanart

Imagine thinking the triangle must be a tinkerbell-type side character

Now imagine seeing the show for the first time

[gottagetgogottagetattahere]

with context this page becomes so fucked up on many, many levels

[extravagav]

Yk I never did truly recover from the sick fic chapter

[hazel2468]

I love how that person who was like "oh ew a Zionist" also has reblogged posts about not being antisemitic and buying into antisemitic conspiracies while ALSO like.

Reblogging posts about how Israel is a uniquely evil "colonial scar" and how Israel is "murdering children" and like. Literally straight up antisemtic shit.

Leveling criticism at Israel that positions it as a unique evil among all other countries and doing literal blood libel (IE, Israel murders Palestiaian babies in a way no other nation kills children) is FUCKING ANTISEMITIC. Israel is JUST A COUNTRY. It is JUST another nation, doing the shitty stuff that other nations do. And if you find yourself railing against Israel EXTRA hard right now, or ever, in ways that you do NOT rail against other shitty countries that do shitty things (and, I can't believe I have to say this, if you find yourself saying that the kidnap, rape, torture, and murder of any civilian ever is justified because "uwu this radical extremist group is freedom fighters"!) then you're a fucking antisemitic, racist bigot.

Like. It blows me away how so many people don't seem to see that Israel, the Jewish state (whether you agree with how it is run or not, whether you agree with how it came to be or not) gets SO MUCH MORE SHIT than other comparable shitty countries... Come on.

Because the alternative is that you DO see it. That you DO agree with all of those things that are STEEPED in age-old antisemitic conspiracy. And you agree.

[ineed-to-sleep]

*me immediately after going through a terrifying and traumatic experience* haha yeah I guess it was rough but I'm fine now like I'm totally chill. It was kinda funny actually if you think about it

[izel-scribbles]

ohhh i get it. so it will come back is jarthur from john's pov and francesca is from arthur's pov

[chirpsythismorning]

Fun fact: In the original pitch for Stranger Things, El had a little brother.

After being rejected by almost 20 studios for the Montauk pilot, the Duffers were finally green-lit by Netflix. It was at this time that they began casting and then writing the first season officially, which included reworking a lot of that first episode.

This led to the removal of the brother reference, and with it, removing any sort of arc El could have had about her apparent brother.

But the thing about this moment, is that it might not have been scrapped entirely...

Going into the final season, no one can explain why or how El recognized Will back in 1x02. And while there are plenty of things on the show that are left unexplained, with a small portion likely left that way with the intention to uncover it later, what sets this moment apart from the rest is that there are very few possibilities here.

Because for starters, the story presents El's ability to see people in the void in s1 as requiring either a picture of that person for reference, or having met that person before.

But when El see's this picture of Will, she's never met him before. Or maybe she has, but we wouldn't know because they never showed us. They could have just not done this scene at all, given that it's clearly a copy/paste/edit of something scrapped from the pitch. Or they could have even still included it, but explained it.

One explanation could be that the lab had shown El a picture of Will before, similar to what they did with the Russian agent they wanted to spy on. But then that begs to question, why would the lab show El a picture of Will? Why would they want to see what he was doing? That alone is incriminating in and of itself, implying that Will is more connected to the lab than we realize.

The only other, and frankly most likely explanation, would be that El stumbled across Will at some point on her journey between escaping the lab and Will going missing. This is actually something that happens in The Other Side comic, which explores all the things Will may have experienced during his time in the Upside Down.

Though it’s worth noting the comics aren’t technically canon, and I highly doubt they would outright spoil everything in relation to Will’s time there, years before it was intended to be revealed. But still, let's humor this for a moment given that I do think Will's time in the UD is going to be very relevant in s5, which means it's highly likely they will finally address how exactly El saw him.

Basically, in the comic, Will see’s El walking through the woods, almost apparition like, glowing as she passes by, while also sporting the Benny’s burgers shirt. This means they would have crossed passed within a short span of time, between when El escaped Benny’s when the agents arrived, but before she was found by the boys.

Though it’s worth noting that we’re seeing this all from Will’s perspective. This means from the UD, Will was capable of seeing El on the other side, despite them being on different sides. And not only that, but she also looks back at him.

What confuses me about this, is that it doesn’t make sense for El to be in the woods, only to randomly decide to pop in to the void for a moment. She was trying to escape the lab and everything that came with it. I doubt she had any desire to lurk back there for some reason, not until someone encouraged her to. Not to mention, it would make no sense for her to go there and see Will if she wasn't even looking for him in the first place. And so this would mean Will and El could see each other, with Will being in the UD, and El being on the other side.

While it does seem pretty far off, given that you would think Will and El wouldn't be able to see each other from different sides, it is true in the story that El not only recognizes Will, but knows that he is in danger. She mentions that he is hiding specifically.

Which means she has likely seen him within the last 24 hours regardless.

This, in combination with Will being able to respond to El in the void at the end of the season in Castle Byers, when no one else outside of Terry and flayed-Billy have been able to, seems to imply that there is indeed something special about Will that makes him capable of communicating with El from the UD. Not only that, but El also seems to have an ability to be in this constant knowing state of how Will is doing, without even checking again to confirm. She's just certain of it. And she seems terrified about it.

Going forward, El never uses a picture of Will to find him. She never did. And more often than not, they don’t show us what she see’s either, not until the very end. And that’s the moment they reveal that he was able to communicate with her.

Again, there was really no reason to have El recognize Will. If anything it complicates things. But the fact that they chose to introduce this concept, with a scene from the original pitch that was related to El’s younger brother, with her pointing at his name cryptically, startling Benny, only to revamp it and have El not say anything at all while pointing at the picture of Will, startling Mike… It just really makes you stop and think.

Which brings me to the other aspect of this that might have people doubting, which is that El’s brother was originally younger than her.

We know Will is not younger than El, so how could this apply to him?

Well, it might be helpful to consider that in the original script, El was actually 10 years old, while the boys were always 12. Meaning that for some reason, they decided to age her up to the age of the boys, aka the same age as Will…

Ever since @erikiara80 shared this brother discovery with me, I have been sort of reeling. It then led to other little discoveries of changes they made between Montauk and Stranger Things.

It’s important to understand that the Montauk bible and the original script precedes what we ended up with in the final product, with it finally changing and evolving months, maybe even a year since that original vision. Even casting occurred before writing started for the first season. We know this because casting announcements were made in June and August of 2015, with writing not starting until August going into early 2016, simultaneously while they were filming.

And believe it or not, what I've discovered is that a lot of the changes they made between their original plans and what we see in the final product, have to do with not only Willel, but also Byler.

If you've read the original script for Montauk, you'll know that Mike's crush on Jennifer Hayes was focused on right from the jump, along with the birthmark on his face being focused on, which was the main cause of the bullying he experienced.

This has actually been talked about recently, and some of the claims people make do fit with what I am genuinely starting to consider here, which is that the initial plan for what makes Mike an outcast shifted.

I think when they completed casting, and started actually deep diving into what they wanted this world to look like, both from a short-term and long-term standpoint, they were presented with some pretty interesting discoveries, arguably already hiding in their initial plans without realizing it.

And this is where it sort of becomes a 'chicken or the egg' situation. Because which one came first? Byler or Willel?

I can't say for certain, because obviously this is all just speculation. But in the case that Willel came first, I think Byler would come very naturally after that.

The Duffers themselves are twins. Then they hire Noah, who is a twin. Then they're thinking and planning for El's past and how her family all fits into this, and they're thinking... wait a damn minute... We could totally Star Wars this bitch!

And then when they think it couldn't get any better, they uncover another layer that they hadn't planned or really considered in their initial plans.

While Will was always going to have sexual identity issues according to the Montauk bible, meaning that the writing process for him likely involved sitting down imagining scenarios that encapsulated this arc for Will from the beginning, they were simultaneously now finding very interesting aspects of Mike's character that made it hard not to at least consider the possiblity that Mike is not exactly straight.

Just think about it. The Byers and Wheelers are basically polar opposites on the spectrum of what a family looks like. While Will's discovery and acceptance of his queerness is interesting to explore because he comes from a low-income, single-mom household, all while having been bullied for years based on his perceived queerness, he also has a mother and brother constantly reinforcing that they will accept him no matter what. They've been sort of hitting us over the head with it for years, and so it wouldn't be very satisfying for his entire arc to merely lead up to something we've known all along. It's pretty much a given at this point.

On the other side of the spectrum, Mike comes from a more upper-middle class family at the end of a cul-de-sac, more aligned with what a nuclear family looks like. Mike's family is also presented as being more conservative, and while Karen does give that very queer-coded speech to Mike in s1 (I'm convinced they only wrote this after deciding to explore queer-coding more heavily with Mike), it also comes with comments from Ted and even still Karen that hint that they are probably not as open-minded and accepting as Will's family is to him. Which means Mike's arc would be a lot more about acceptance around him from his loved ones who we have been led to believe might not be as accepting of his queerness in contrast to Will.

And so as they're putting this story together, and they're being presented with something very interesting. Two similar experiences that play out in different ways because of the characters circumstances.

Will goes missing, and his twin sister with a buzzcut pops up and has the ability to help them find Will.

This leads to several moments where El is being compared to as not only a boy, but Will as well.

Now suddenly, their initial plans to have Mike's arc be about having a girl be interested in him and to hopefully have his first kiss and feel like less of a loser, starts to look a lot like what the experience a queer kid in his position might encounter growing up in the environment that he did.

And if you don't want to take my word for it, just hear the Duffer's themselves hinting at what they initially planned for Mike and the fact that it changed.

The changes don't stop there.

Believe it or not, 'It was a seven', did not exist in the initial pitch. When the boys went outside bickering over Nancy, they leave right after that.

Another thing that changed from the first script, was Scott Clarke's introduction:

And so you might be thinking, who cares? What does that have to do with anything?

Well, it's interesting because the line we end up with on the show is arguably one of the most on the nose Twelvegate proofs to date. Mind you, this is from the first episode:

Why chuck the original version, which was arguably more interesting and fascinating in terms of it hinting at the mysteriousness surrounding this story, only to replace it with him listing off tips about their upcoming test?

Well, I think it's the irony of it all. Here Mr. Clarke is practically telling us where to look to figure stuff out for ourselves what is going on, with all the kids filing out and ignoring him...

I relate to Scott a litttle too much in this shot here, any time I try to drop Willel evidence.

And the changes go on, as they obviously would.

Things like Terry Ives not even being El's mom, but actually a man who more so aligns with the characterization of Murray.

And one very interesting one I almost overlooked was in Hopper's introduction, where instead of a kids drawing done by who we assume to be Sarah, we actually see a picture on the wall of him and his wife and daughter... Interesting that they decided to switch it something that is a lot less definitive in presenting what Hopper's past looked like...

If you've made it this far, congratulations.

If you still think I'm out of my mind, just remember that El was going to have a brother in the original script, but they scrapped the scene and gave a near identical one to introduce her connection to Will instead 😘

[spicyraeman]

The way Mol refers to the rest of the thieflings as 'my kids', my fuckin heart man..

[t-u-i-t-c]

"You're looking for a place to die, aren't you?" "A place to die...?"

[lizhly-writes]

hiiii welcome back to my shen jiu luo binghe roleswap. i wrote this today, and i think i might have to delete it, buuuuut i still like it, so: here you are.

There was a child kneeling obediently on the ground before him. His name was Shen Jiuyu.

Luo Qingling wondered about that name. ��雨. Take a character off, and the boy would be Jiu, lucky number nine in a long line of dirty children tied to the belts of cruel men scavenging through the streets. Luo Qingling still remembered what that was like. Sometimes too well, it seemed. Wasn't it a terrible thing, looking at a promising young disciple's face and only seeing how many coins they'd sell for?

Hey, do you know why everyone calls you Zero? It's because you're not even worth --

Sometimes, Luo Qingling hated children.

It wasn't nice. It wasn't fair. It wasn't good. Luo Qingling did his best not to think about it. An honorable, righteous cultivator couldn't hate children, and even if they did, they certainly weren't allowed to act on it.

The idea of it was there, nonetheless.

"Why did you come to Cang Qiong?" Luo Qingling asked steadily.

Even at first glance, it was obvious that Shen Jiuyu didn't need to. He might have worn the dust of the streets, but he was too polished to pass as any random throwaway urchin. His walk was too smooth, his manners too perfect. When he poured tea, he did so with the grace of a well-trained servant.

A well-trained servant of this young age, especially one that showed signs of literacy, was valuable. Certainly worth more than little Luo Ling. With enough time and ambition, it wasn't impossible for him to become the steward of some rich household and in that way, live a good life.

So, then: why Cang Qiong?

[ntshastark]

Cesar Cielo (Olympic gold medallist, 6x World Aquatic Championships gold medallist, 50m freestyle World Record holder for 15 years and counting) swam his last Olympics in 2012, and spent Paris 2024 not in the (Olympic) pool, but as a TV Globo/SporTV commentator and Brazilian social media darling.

Bonus:

[obsidianmichi]

The crazy part about Star Trek Online is that it's stuffed full of cameos and missions that repeatedly star characters from the main cast of every major Star Trek show except, I think, Enterprise, Strange New Worlds, and Lower Decks.

Like you can go on a fully voiced adventure with Michael Burnham and Seven of Nine in her Fenris Rangers era to decide whether the Excalbians will embrace good or evil and fight Seven's evil simulation created body double.

Worf, voiced by Michael Dorn, Worf is in the major Iconian missions and a central figure for Klingon players as they shoot up the ranks.

Martok, voiced by John Garman Hertzler Jr. (rescue him from the Tzenkethi and go on so many missions together as random space adventures, and he's just like he is in DS9.)

Almost the entire cast of Deep Space Nine, including René Auberjonois's final voicework as Odo before his passing, the same for Aron Eisberg as Nog, Nana Visitor as Kira Nerys, and there's an entire episode where you play as Quark and his Ferengi friends stealing from Iconians. Even Salome Jens pops up as the Female Changeling to play a villain in the Gamma Quandrant arcs. Plus, Chase Masterson got in ahead of them all to chew through the scenery as Leeta's Mirror counterpart, Admiral Leeta!

Levar Burton as Geordi LaForge!

Janeway and Mirror Janeway voiced by Kate Mulgrew. (Mirror Janeway is a Borg Queen!)

Denise Crosby as my Romulan main's new adopted mother, Empress Sela and her mother, Natasha Yar. There's also Tuvok (my love!), Tom Paris, Harry Kim, Seven of Nine, Jason Isaacs voicing Prime Gabriel Lorca (!!) in the Discovery missions, Tilly and my much beloathed nemesis Mirror Tilly, Stamets, and Michael Burnham. Most recently we've gotten Mirror Wesley Crusher and Mirror Doctor Crusher during Picard's third season, and Ezri Dax in the latest episodes.

There's also Leonard Nemoy, who voiced the major exploration sections and Fed character level ups in the initial game but that's been in at launch.

It's honestly impressive. Every time I turn around it feels like another Star Trek alum is lending their voice to the game. Star Trek Online is somehow the most blessed and the most cursed tie-in game in existence. The dream and the hellscape for Star Trek fans.

Also, the space combat is genuinely really fun.