#{|chat commentary|}

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[dayas]

This post contains spoilers for Wicked (2024) and the Broadway musical!

A word on Cynthia Erivo’s performance as Elphaba in Wicked: Phenomenal.

In regards to the critique that she plays her too timidly: in my opinion, she plays her exactly as she is meant to be played. Watching Elphaba navigate Shiz University was so clearly a parallel to how Black women have to operate in Predominantly White spaces. Every single time her powers went out of whack, she was labeled as dangerous, and at the end, the Wizard and Madame Morrible immediately painted her out to be monstrous, vicious, and angry. Seeing her poster produced a visceral reaction in me — not because it was terrifying, but because it reminded me of those old fashioned racist posters 💀 which! Isn’t a bad thing, I think it speaks to the larger message of making Elphaba out to be the Wicked Witch, despite her only crimes at that point (that we know about) being attempted Animal Liberation and further Civil Rights movements. To me, watching Elphaba at Shiz was watching another Black woman try to fit in despite knowing she will never truly be like those around her, and to not draw any more of their ire and to not fly off the handle and be labeled as ‘angry’ or further outcast. When she sings I’m Not That Girl, it hits harder having been in that position and truly understanding what it means to not be desired or considered pretty or beautiful by anyone around you while your friends are. Honestly, it adds more in my opinion. I think Cynthia Erivo’s performance carried an excellent nuance that speaks specifically to Black women and our experiences. While it is perfectly okay to have a differing opinion, it would be a major disservice to overlook that very intentional lens painted by the film. As many have noted, having Elphaba be played by a Black woman adds so much depth to the character. It also shifts and adjusts how she presents herself when her Broadway and Book counterpart may be considered bolder (which begets a whole other essay on White Women, oppression Olympics politics, and needing elements of Whiteness to appear in oppressive narratives for the sake of ‘relatability’ despite them coming off, in my opinion, more disingenuous than not). All of this to say: Elphaba is still fierce in her own right. She stands up for herself, sets her own terms, but she does so within the realm of what is socially acceptable for a reason. I’m gonna need y’all to think a little more critically ❤️

[xxplastic-cubexx]

cant stop thinkin bout charles and erik readin together on the couch but instead of reading with him charles is listening to eriks thoughts while he reads. Live mind commentary ……..

[shalom-iamcominghome]

I'm not in the mood to post, but there is a virtual candle memorial. Get a name, light a candle, and remember them 🕊️

[ranvwoop]

— some sort of doctrine in which you're already missed

bisexualdomtorreto / tinyhappy / the worm king’s lullaby - richard siken / in a dream you saw a way to survive - clementine von radics , for m - mikko harvey / the world is ending - judas h. / loose lips - kimya dawson / arcuiedbrunestud / scp-6476 - tsercele / catalogue of unabashed gratitude - ross gay / no one belongs here more than you - miranda july / creatinghelen / the light that shines when things end -  iaon s. thomas

[miraculousdoodle]

[thatswhatsushesaid]

just woke up from a weird quasi-nightmare where all my fandom pals were suddenly jgy haters who assumed that i, too, was a jgy hater 😬 ohno.jpeg

legit felt like i’d transmigrated into a bizarro alternate universe where AU me was a wwx stan and i had to ~pretend~ lest the system dock me -1000 badass points, thus consigning me to the fandom equivalent of the burial mounds.

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s2 episode 4 thoughts

i thought this episode sounded interesting! the plot was kinda: wasn't it fucked up when the vietnam war happened? and i was sitting here like, yeah, quite famously it was pretty fucked up. still, an interesting exploration into trauma and the american role of imperialism

the first thing i wrote was "a lot of people in this show fall asleep watching the tv but personally i have never done that". am i immune to the Curse or something?

so this guy who is a sleep doctor sees a fire and he calls the fire department right away, and everyone is evacuating, and we see a dude in the hallway with a suspicious smile and an even more suspicious scar across his neck. i am used to the episode structure by now, so i knew this was our mystery man of the week.

but the firemen get to the burning fellow's house and there is no fire! despite it looking so real to him that he actually burned to death... it's not there! well huh! must be our mystery man can psychically project fire

cutscene to mulder's place and it again looks like an entirely new set for his apartment. again, i ask, i'm not crazy, right?? can someone else confirm that this is an entirely different space than what we saw before?

(i hope we don't see scully in a new space as well- i thought her apartment was so cute in s1)

he gets a newspaper and a tape of the call dropped off at his door so he runs to skinner and begs with his big sad wet eyes to please let him take the case. and skinner is like maybe. but go transcribe a bunch of wiretaps first. so THAT is why he's always listening to weird stuff!

BUT WAIT! who enters our fair scene...? but a NEW CHARACTER? he is a guy who looks like he crawled out of a frat house where he majored in lacrosse and business... he introduces himself as alex and says that this is HIS case... mulder is PISSED he's all "i work alone >:(" but he can't shake the dude off... hmm.

(i recall seeing a post about people slash shipping mulder with a character in s2- i saw this post way before i started watching the show, so i only noted it in my passing interest of fandom history- and i'm wondering if this is the fellow they were referring to. in the same post i saw mulder in a speedo which i guess we'll get to in time)

scully's back at the academy!!! teaching another autopsy class! boy they must have a steady stream of bodies coming in for this. but an urgent call is coming from a "george hale" and she leaves class to go answer...

and it's mulder!!!!! he has a code name!!! he asks her to fly up to new york and do an autopsy and she's like "i'm in class til 4:30" and he's like "that's fine, we'll wrap it up for you and you can come up at 5!" and she sighs and. agrees.

now. again. this was shocking to me. mulder cannot have anyone else draw his blood or do an autopsy it HAS to be his friend scully. and she WILL get on a flight and do it. this is SICK and TWISTED how she will do anything for him.

mulder was being a real jerk to alex and alex said "i don't appreciate being ditched like a bad date" and to my shock and dismay i found myself agreeing with this new character... mulder WAS being unreasonable... i mean we knew he's been moody lately but this was downright hostile

(mulder walks in while scully puts an organ into a scale) "spleen or pancreas?" "stomach" <- LMAO his ass did NOT pass anatomy!

and they're all so smiley and happy to see each other when. scully sees this man behind him. and her smile fades SO fast.

(he tries to shake her hand but given that her hands are covered in stomach she wisely brushes him by. it may have seemed like a diss but i assume he doesn't want gore on his hands)

alex is GAGGING over the body (me too) so mulder gets realllllll close to scully to block out his amateur hour buffoonery...

(y'all need to not be that close and looking at each other in such a manner in front of a dead guy... or do it more for my sake)

she's whispering that it seems his body believed he burned to death despite there being no burns on him!

we see another guy with a same scar on his neck as the first!!! he knows the first guy and it seems initially that their reunion is wholesome... until preacher (scar man one) admits to killing the sleep doctor... and then things get... wild

"holy fuck", i mumbled to myself while also writing down the same phrase in my notes, as a blood soaked family appeared in the room, shooting the character we just met for his crimes. that escalated with an extreme quickness. it was clear that whatever traumas he had inflicted upon others in vietnam were being returned in equal measure via the psychic force of this preacher character

then we go back to mulder and alex, who i thought was handling mulder's hater energy quite well, all things considered. but little did i know what was to come...

so sleep doctor, the guy who just died, and preacher all knew each other... interesting... they were stationed at basic training together...

we get a visual on mulder's new source after deep throat's passing! he says he has no desire to be there, and that their mutual friend deep throat died for what he believed in, which he does not want to do. which is of course totally fair. at the end of the day the FBI is just a paycheck for some of these folks.

the sleep doctor was revealed to be doing experiments to make super advanced soldiers who don't need sleep so maybe that gives you the power to kill people magically. we can't really rule it out.

preacher then makes two cops kill EACH OTHER with his sorcery

back to scully cam <3 she's got her glasses on at the computer <3 she's got little yellow earrings in that look like flowers <3 and she thinks its so cool that they cut part of this guy's brain out and now he hasn't slept in 24 years... nerd

they're on the phone with each other and it is SO SAD because why. why can't they just be together! it's not fair. she says it sounds like his new partner is working out and he's like yeah he's okay...

"must be nice to not have someone poking holes in all your theories" "yeah, no idea how i put up with you for so long" and they're smiling into the phone while saying this

now, i won't lie. this scene, of all the scenes, was the first to bring tears to my eyes in the course of my streaming this show. because now we have seen what they'll do for each other and they're TAUNTING me by dangling it in front of my face. and i cannot stand it. i feel sick at the thought.

anyway back to mulder and his new partner. who i feel is too good to be true because he's willing to believe spooky mulder's theories. but they found another guy who also had the sleep surgery and he tells them that they went on a rampage committing atrocities in vietnam which was. very heavy for the alien show. but it is something that americans often pretend just didn't happen so i thought it was interesting that the idea of accountability was being explored in fiction.

so there's one more guy involved with the sleep surgery, and he's coming into town, so alex and mulder have to sprint down to the station and try and find him. they're really giving it a sprint, too. mulder is a track star. don't think i've forgotten

and mulder does see the guy they're looking for but preacher is behind him and shoots mulder! he falls to the ground! no, i yelled to my screen! not another bullet in mulder!

... but he gets up. the whole thing was a trick of preacher! it never actually happened!

alex is like dude wtf. and this is where he says "i want to believe" and this where i made the very astute note "i don't trust this guy, sorry"

so finally they find preacher still alive, and mulder tells alex to help out his victim, while mulder runs off to find him. mulder sees how much pain he is in, and tells him that maybe his pain can lessen if he testifies about what was done to him, and it seems they've come to an understanding...

until alex enters, pulls his gun up, so preacher also pulls his gun up, and alex and shoots him! preacher is dead

mulder looks deeply upset by this. he tells alex that he did the right thing, but you can tell he doesn't believe it in the slightest. i would venture to guess that this is when all the trust he had begun to place in alex vanishes. he seems entirely deflated at the unnecessary loss of life.

he goes back to the car and notices someone stole the secret files that his informant gave him, and he punches the car. this is simply too many L's for one day, and i sympathize.

but scully's freaking out too, because her office was broken into and all her stuff looked through! so what in the name of hell is going on here?!?!? ah, i realize, it is this alex fool... "i know ur related somehow" i wrote ominously in my quotes

and boy, i was right! the narrative the writers were going for was not lost on me! because remember skinner's old sidekick the cigarette guy? and how they had a sort of breakup moment? well, alex is reporting to him, and they have the file he stole from mulder!!!!!

alex says that scully is a "big problem" to which i say: keep talking like that, you overgrown varsity jock, and you're gonna have a big problem with my fucking hands catching your throat

anyway, interesting episode. i didn't want to like alex and then i did because i felt bad for him for being subjected to mulder's attitude and then i hated his guts by the end and reluctantly admitted to myself that mulder's crankiness was justified. i hope he won't stick around for long but i have a feeling he will.

also, they need to stop taunting me by dangling a real mulder and scully reunion in front of my head and then ripping it away. i had TEARS! in my eyeballs! i was sighing wistfully! it was sick!!!!!! this is my free time i'm spending here pining after these fools! it's me, the fan, asking for fan service!!!

[nemaliwrites]

For the directors cut ask game, I would absolutely love to here about ‘none of this is real’ it’s so surreal yet so painfully grounded.

ahhh i love None of This Is Real! i actually wrote this one so fast that i forgot all about it - i got a comment that was like 'i love this passage!' and i was like wait that passage slaps and i reread the fic and went :0

this fic was originally supposed to be for an AU-gust challenge! the prompt was 'case fic' and in the end, i decided not to post it for that bc the trope felt...kind of loose to me. the original idea for this fic was actually much different! it was supposed to be more of a case fic in the traditional sense: once Adrien is trapped in his own head, there's some kind of murder that he needs to solve before he can leave, but why is everyone treating him like he's the murderer?

in the end, i abandoned that idea mostly because it felt kind of wrong. if the point of the fic is that adrien's in his own head, the people he loves can't outwardly treat him like he's done something wrong - also having only ladybug be in that world with him i think made the vibe more like what i was going for. my initial idea was for the victim to be gabriel ofc, but then i realized that i didn't know how to make the monarch identity reveal play into that in a way that wasn't contrived, so i scrapped it.

another initial idea was for ladybug to lead adrien to the eiffel tower and they would find monarch's body underneath, kind of reminiscent of the eiffel tower being 'ground zero' in chat blanc's world. but then i was like...there's no suspence there. it's just a dude on the ground. and it also kind of takes away from the whole 'adrien and ladybug alone in a world of his making' thing if he just...sees monarch.

so that's when the gravedigging idea came along - and i think it definitely aligned more with my vision! then it felt like adrien making an active choice to find the truth rather than...randomly stumbling upon it lol

writing not!ladybug was actually surprisingly fun! she's kind of uncanny valley-ish i think - looks like ladybug and talks like ladybug but acts absolutely Nothing like her. but she still cares about adrien, because she's a part of him! fighting to protect his own mind!

there's a couple lil things i threw in this fic that i can highlight too!

The hand in Ladybug's is bare — he's detransformed, ring on his finger. He's alone with Ladybug, who knows his name. Who still takes his hand. -> the way he thinks the only way Ladybug could take his hand as Adrien is if none of this is real....as though she could never possibly want to otherwise

"I'm real to you," not-Ladybug says, and she sounds hurt. -> just a lil insight into adrien's pov of ladybug....she's always Real to him. she's always a Hero to him.

She smiles, then, and she looks so much like his lady that it makes his chest squeeze. "Not you. Us. Together." We're not together, Adrien wants to say to her. You're not really here. It's still me, alone, just like it's always been. -> more of his pov of ladybug! proof of how deeply her abandonment hurt him, even when his brain is actively fighting against it!

Why, he wonders, does a man like Monarch have such a beautiful coffin? A man who no one even bothered to give an epitaph? Did he pick it out for himself? Did Adrien pick it out for him, from the depths of his subconscious? -> yes. he did. and the fact that adrien never saw his mother's coffin....i like to think he'd think it's beautiful. he'd want his parents in matching coffins :')

There’s something odd about seeing him like this. The villain they’ve spent so long at war with, the most hated man in Paris is still just that: only a man. He can be buried. He can die. -> i think i push this concept a lot in my Hawk Moth reveal fics - i think i did the same thing back in Parable too? but i love the idea of the realization that this villain who has always seemed larger than life is just...a guy. just a dude. someone you could pass on the street. knowing that most of his strength is because you built him up in your head.

A world with no pain and no sadness and no hurt, and this is the requirement. Adrien must have no father. That is the trade the universe demands. -> in a way, exactly what happened in the S5 finale.

“Isn’t the world a better place without Monarch? Without your father?” “He’s my father,” Adrien says quietly. “How can you ask me that question? He’s my father.” -> and this is what it all comes down to.

He would laugh if he weren’t crying. Free? What does it mean to be free? Is it freedom to be a murderer, to know you’re a murderer? To know you’ve killed your own father, just as you’ve so often dreamed of doing — he, who is your worst enemy? He, whose love you desire above all else? Whose love you will never get, because he will die? Because of you? -> this is the passage a lovely commentator highlighted!! made me go damn and reread the whole fic. and this fic doesn't even go into the whole senti!adrien thing but again....what is freedom? is adrien truly free now with his rings in his own hands?

The momentum sends him flying forward and then he's falling, falling. A hand on his back, a clawed finger against his neck, and nothing in his vision but eyes so red he can hardly stand to look at them. So he doesn't. When he finally opens his eyes, he's flat on his stomach, cheek against the concrete. It's quiet. Feet in his vision, then: spotted, familiar. Ladybug.

The sensation of falling; his eyes are screwed shut, his father’s hand is slipping from his own, and then he's falling, falling. A hand on his forearm, ashes in his lungs, and nothing in his vision but eyes so violet he can hardly stand to look at them. So he doesn't. When he finally opens his eyes, he's flat on his stomach, cheek against the concrete. It's quiet. Feet in his vision, then: spotted, familiar. Ladybug. -> i like mirrors in writing.....the same prose to travel in and out of his head....ladybug and not!ladybug's actions mirroring each other.....images of monarch contrasting with the akuma...

“Ladybug,” he says quietly. “I know who Monarch is.” -> this final line was actually the first one i wrote! i was like 'i have NO idea what the fic will be like but this has to be the ending'

thank you for the ask! and for letting me ramble abt this fic! <333

[mandyzoe]

zoe and pete never interacted canonically and have probably never even met or heard of each other. but to me? best friends. inseparable. she’s so obsessed with him. opposite characters who are the same. they NEED to talk shit together at least once a day or they start having withdrawal symptoms. the type of bitches to side eye each other from across the room when they witness some fuck shit and they’re GONNA debrief about it later. he triggers her cuteness aggression and she tells him several times a day she wants to throw him at a brick wall and watch him splatter like an overripe tomato (affectionate) and he’s no longer fazed by it. he’s the only one who can destroy her at mario kart and she won’t be mad at him for it. he doesn’t feel annoying with her and can have an actual personality around her. she regularly calls him her soulmate and she’s only half joking. 4’11 5’11 unstoppable duo. absolutely everything. you understand this

[millyrocking]

the way shawn and bret wrestle each other gives……….ykw? i won’t go there today 😁

[xxplastic-cubexx]

ep 4 of xmen 92s desc lit being ‘magneto destroys a nuclear plant in order to attract professor x’ like i hate this bitch so much hes so petty and wants his ex to notice him SO bad

[trainerlynda]

WHEEZE-

[absentlyabbie]

i think a gentle reminder perhaps all of us need sometimes is that, though we have around here a very free culture about conversational tagging, and tumblr as a social ecosystem treats tags like muttering under your breath or a little aside...

unless they're deactivated or have deleted the original post, the person who made the post you're reblogging is still very likely to see your tags. so will the person you reblogged from directly.

commentary tagging may indeed be much like muttering under your breath, but take into consideration that you are muttering in a crowded room not all that far away from the person you've decided to comment on.

they can probably still hear you. the people around you hear you. and any of those may choose to ignore it or even just uncomfortably look away if your muttering edges into faux pas territory, others may find it very rude or even insulting and not simply pretend they didn't hear you.

you may reblog a post "muttering" about how you think the person who made it made a cringey stupid joke and you don't know why people are laughing. but in this analogy you are all in the same room at the same party and you run the risk that the person who told the joke hears you and turns to ask "hey what the fuck."

you might be fine with that and intentionally open to being confrontational, you may be one of those people who thinks "brutal honesty" is a valid form of connecting with others, but if you would be embarrassed or wince and feel guilty if op turned to you and said "hey. what the fuck. that was really unkind" maybe think twice about what you want to say and how you want to say it, and where you want to chance being heard.

it's not an outlandish expectation that we treat one another with kindness and respect, strangers and all.

[rosetheocto]

Watching A Failboat Video/Stream Moodboard!! ⛵‼️

…does this make sense-