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popculturebuffet · 2 years

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Top 20 Cartoon Episodes of 2021: #’s 10-1

CLICK HERE FOR PART 1

Getting anyone just coming to part 2 up to speed: I’m Jake, I review stuff and since last year I take all the animated shows I got around to watching last year, pick 5 episodes from each and pick the best of the best. This is the top 10. If you want to see who else made the list, my thoughts on the year and other good stuff, click on that link above then come back for the final countdown. Otherwise join me under the cut as I finish counting down one truly excellent year of animation.

Warning: Entry Five contains talks of sexual trauma, so please skip past it if you must for your own mental health.

10. The Flood (Tuca and Bertie)

“Maybe it’s me... maybe i’m the reason I’m alone” “Tuca.. your never alone”

Tuca and Bertie got a raw deal with it’s half assed cancelation after being out only a month, despite plenty of people loving it and more slowly finding it. Thankfully the second time’s the charm and not only did Adult Swim snap up the show, but they promoted it to hell and back, including a giant floatie in a river. Sadly no merch but thankfully i’m covered there thanks to some wonderful fan merch my buddy @jess-the-vampire got me for christmas

And despite having some hills to climb: having to reach a new audience despite not being able to re-air season 1, being on cable instead of streaming this go round and of course having to follow a giant incest baby TWICE, the show rose to new heights, deftly easing new viewers in while not throwing out season one as a whole, having tons of call backs and followup to the previous season. The result was a true work of art, taking what made season one great and making it even better, with more deep themes, more delightful weirdness and way more Speckle. I didn’t know I needed him making out with a translucent toilet but it made my day better so thank you Speckle. Thank you toilet.

So it’s not a huge shock Tuca and Bertie not only kicks off the top 10, but has two more entries. So keep out for that. But this one’s no slouch, ending season 2 in a flood of tears and on a wave of vibrator fish and hope.

This episode brings Season 2′s main arcs to a conclusion: After months/a season of therapy with her wonderful therapist played by Pamela Aadlon, Bertie is worried she’s made no progress. Meanwhile Tuca is at the end of her abusive relationship with Kara, a seagull nurse she met with a ton of chemistry, meetings we’ll get to.. before Kara’s selfishness, desire to change Tuca in ways she didn’t need ,and refusal to really let Tuca’s friends into her life slowly reared their ugly head. Now Tuca’s desperatley trying to hold onto something she knows is unhelathy while Bertie’s trying not to interfere due to finding out Tuca blames her for keeping her alone, having screamed that anxiety and others into a cup.

The two end up flooded out of the apartment though, and that’s where the episodes amazing gimmick comes into play: Tuca unleashes those anxieties which manefest into neat forms from birds cirlcing her iwth doubts, to her intrusive nighttime thoughts allowing Tuca to become their impromptu boat’s motor, to the most heartbreaking, a giant whale representing Tuca’s unresolved issues iwth her deceased mother.

But most heartbreaking is Tuca’s denial her situation is unhelathy and her desperaton to get to Kara.. only to find her just fine, partying with her friends and not even remotely bothered by Tuca’s clear anguish or risking her life for her. It sums up their relationship in the most painfully accurate way possible: Tuca puts in tons of work and love.. and gets nothing back. It’s there both threads mentioned come together: Therapy allows Bertie to have the healthy perpsecitve to help her friend, inslirping Tuca to get her own. The two also pick up Speckle who sees his dream house flooded and learns he was the prettiest doorknob all along. And for those who haven’t watched the show, no i’m not giving you context there. It’s a stirring, warm ending to a truly spectacular season.

9. Cats Do Dance (Jellystone!)

“Wait hold up why’d you draw yourself like that?” “Like what?” “Like wiith Gorgeous Muscular Legs”

Jellystone was easily one of my most anticipated shows coming to HBO Max. The next cartoon by CH Greenblaht after the shoddy way Nick treated him, CH came home to Warner and was given free reign to do whatever the hell he wanted with the Hannah Barbera Cinematic Universe.

The result is the wonderfully offbeat, insane and heartfelt jellystone. Going back to a more chowder style of madcap humor, Jellystone takes the vast library of HB funny animals, from big names like Yogi Bear, Top Cat and Huckleberry hound, to smaller ones I only found out about thanks to this series like Loopy De Loup, and lovingly taking their own spin on them. The result is pure comedy gold, succesfully updating the properties for a new millnium, givng us some nice trans represntation, and in general just being fucking hilarous.

And while I had plenty of options, the one that made it’s way to the top of the heap was Cats Do Dance, our first ep focusing on what I consider to be the show’s best group: Top Cat and his gang. Though Jabberjaw and Loopy are a close second, they just need more episodes.

Top Cat, played to perfection by Thomas Lennon, is as always trying to hustle, but this time around his gang face a new threat: the main cast of forgotten Happy Days knockoff Heyyyy It’s the King who dance them out of their beloved ally home and into Peter Potamus’ house, whose gone from asking if you got that thing he sentcha to being a hardcore weeb who tries our heroes patience but at least netted Choo Choo a girlfriend and me my most popular post of the year.

As you can tell this one’s all about the jokes, the finest of these being the gang’s brainstorming session which.. I can’t even put into words and that’s my job.

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The rest of the ep is a whilrwind of half assed schemes, blasters, and a bonkers climax where all of this turns out ot have been a delicate plan that results in Choo Choo sicking a KILL SAT ON THEM. Killabunga indeed. This series is fucking great and I won’t be shocked if it makes the list next year. I’d be suprised if it didn’t honestly.

8. Yesterday’s Lie (The Owl House)

“You chose to stay there?”

Whelp this one hurt even more than I was expecting. As I said last time Owl House is having it’s best season, and sadly that will likely remain true given season 3 has the unenviable task of cramming an entire seasons worth of content into essentially 6 episodes. It’ll still be good, don’t get me wrong, I have faith in Dana to pull it off. She just shoudln’t of HAD to.

So with this one we get some long hinted at payoff as Luz finally returns home. And what I expected to be a tense confrontation with a malvelonet mysterious doppleganger who stole Luz’s life... ended up being somethign far diffrent, wtih the crew wisely leaning on the audience thinking Doppleluz would be something sinister.. only to turn out to just be someone deeply scared longing for home.

Upon finding a way home, albeit as a mirorr projection that won’t last forever, Luz finds someone else living her life and takes it about as well as you’d expect... as does Vee the person living her life.

It’s only when Vee gets caught in a trap, and finds her shapeshifting breaking down, that she finally listens to Luz who while understandably suprised at what’s going on, is willing to listen. Vee turns out not to be some monster.. but just a lost child herself, a baslisk jurassic parked by belos who escaped. However given Belos is such a resonable and sexy man.. he naturlaly had the poor creature hunted till she just so happened to wonder through the open portal to earth shortly after Luz arrived back in episode 1. With Luz’s quirky nature helping ease things, she went to camp then fit in fine afterwords.

This swereve is brilliant not only adding further worldbuilding and hinting at just what Belos is doing, hello hunter sorry you didn’t make the list, but also allowing Luz a look at what would’ve happened had she stayed, finding her mother with the daughter she always wanted and Vee having made the kind of friends at camp Luz has been desperate for her whole life. We can’t blame her for running, Conformist Camp looked like a horrible place and Camilla came off a bit bad trying to get her daughter to let go of herself. Wanting Luz to change was fine, as we’ve seen these two seasons Luz needed to grow as a person, but wanting her to give up who she was wasn’t.

Thankfully this episode fixes the Pilot’s mess by showing that Camillia.. didn’t want that. For starters we find out her first actions to Luz after the book thing.. was to apologize and offer to drive her down, with it all but stated she realized she was a bit hard on the girl, gets she’s diffrent, and wants their last memory together not be leaving the girl on a bus while she’s already upset.. but taking her there herself and sharing a few hours together before they won’t see each other for months.

The rest of the ep fully fleshes out Camillia, showing her as a kind compasionate woman who lets an animal out of a trap and helps treat it, supports her daughters intrest and even salvages Luz’s old stuff when Vee tries to throw it out, seeing it as a phase and something she’ll regret actaully doing down the line. She’s not perfect, but no parent is and having a kid whose neurodivergent, especially as a single parent can be difficult. My mom had to deal with that all through middle and high school after my parents divorce. While dad didn’t abandon me he wasn’t the one attending IEP meetings or being called when I had a mental breakdown. It was mom who had to carry that weight so seeing Camillia a second time helped me empathize more, realize she was carrying that same weight.

And we see her compassion and empathy at it’s best when she finally find sout just what’s going on, when luz is forced to bring Camillia to help a captive vee when a local asshole wants to disect her live. While the shock of her daughter being replaced by a changeling is naturally a lot, once Camillia has a second she sees vee for what she is: another child and just as much her daughter as the one currently trapped in a world she never made. So she quickly dispatches Qanon Roger Craig Smith.

But things aren’t so easily resolved with Luz.. especailly one Camillia found out her daughter chose to stay.. and Luz isn’t given enough time to explain it’s not Camillia’s fault. She just had.. nothing else but her mom back there. She was alone. She’s not here.. which makes Camilla promising luz to come back tos tay all the more tragic. Luz can’t possibly keep that, especially with the stakes as high as they are with Bellos.. but can she possibly do this to her mom again? We’ll see soon enough and the wait is as painful as it is intresting.

7. True Colors (Amphibia)

Did it ever occur to you — Anne, Sasha — that one of you knew more than she was letting on? That one of you might've gotten you stranded in Amphibia... on purpose?

I ranted at length about how much of a clusterfuck this episodes airing was.

The episode was delayed at the last minute, leaked and thus had a LOT of pressure put on it. Lesser episodes would be swallowed entirely by this level of controversy, stupidity and network dumbfuckery.

Thankfully True Colors is NOT that kind of episode and after a season’s build to it and an extra month of tension waiting, it proved to be the culmiation of everything Season 2 had acomplished and the springboard for the show’s best season yet.

Season 2 itself was a bit lopsided. The first quarter was a mess, mostly wasting the road trip premise that got me pumped for the season, with hardly any of the worldbuilding you’d expect and only two standout episodes. The Newtopia arc was slightly better, giving us a new city and part of amphbian society to explore, the glory that is Marcy Wu, and some truly fun and sometimes heartbreaking character stuff. It’s only true flaw was a lack of Marcy, especailly given they KNEW she wouldn’t be there next season.. or at least not the same.

Thankfully the second half ratcheted things up to the quality the show has now with a return to wartwood with tons of character development, plot progression via the temple and reflection on how much Anne’s grown.

And it all lead here: with the gems charged and Sasha reunited with the group, our heroes prepare to go home.. only for Sasha to flip the script and sweep the leg, staging a Coup. This ends up being the last straw for Anne, Anne ends up fighting to stop her.. and Sasha ends up fighting knowing Anne freeing andrias will be VERY bad after seeing a tapestry. It’s not as good as what’s to come but the opening act nicely sets things up, leaving us with a no win scneario: sasha and grime becoming dictators isn’t much better than Andrias winning, but while we don’t know his full plan, it’s not good. Whoever wins we loose and the tension in the sword fight because of that makes it an utter joy to watch.. and crushing when Sasha looses.

I also have to give props to an often forgotten part of this ep: Sprig Vs Grime. It’s a matchup I never expected, mostly because I thought it’d be one sided: a seasoned warrior with a mythical war hammer versus a kid who while resourceful and scrappy and no slouch as a fighter.. is still going up against a brick wall with a sledgehammer that has rockets to it.

Instead what I got was a spider-man, or daredevil if you prefer both fights have the same kinds of rythum, vs kingpin style slugfest: a much more agile oponent going up against a much stronger brickier one and in a mostly up close fight, going against Sprig’s strengths as a sniper. Seeing sprig have a close but ultimately triumphant fight with grime wher ehe uses the enviroment and grimes own weapon to sucker the old toad was a brilliant and awesome thing I was not expecting.

The next half though blows an already great first half out of the water, starting with that truly amazing shot of Andrias.

Just how unsettling he looks as he’s only moments from his goal... and how Anne unknowingly gives him the tools he needs to carry out multiversal conquest. it’s brilliant.

And while the rest of the cast does briliantly from here on out, the star of the show is far and away Keith David. He spent a season having to hold back, playing the goofily charming king.. all while the Audience knew there was something worse under there, but we coudln’t quite figure out what. Just who WAS this guy under his facade.

And the answer is the best kind of villian; totally, thoughly loathsome but immensely engaging to watch. We find out his backstory where he was betrayed by his closest friends, robbed of his possible multiversal empire and left sething and playing the long game for a thousand years.. and how he played everyone there to see it finished. He told Marcy his people were exploerers.. but their really conquerers, earth is next, and going home isn’t an option as they could warn people. The true meance and cruetly David gives Andrias is awe inspiring, being laughably evil one minute and terrifyingly petty and vindictive the next, throwing out cruel jokes as he murders, attempted murders and ruins lives.

Which leads to the best and most utterly crushing moment in the episode: Marcy reveals she was only on board as traveling, to keep her friends together after the amazing opening revealed she sent them there on purpose, even if she didn’t know it’d work. And being a petty sort of bastard, Andrias reveals this right in front of Sasha and anne and that Marcy was mereley another piece to be sacrficed in his grand game of flipwart.

The resulting scene is easily Haley Tju’s finest work. I’ve raved about how good she is in past articles and reviews, but it bears repearting: this woman is fantastic and her delivery here as Marcy DESPERATLEY tries to justify the unjustifable, all while Anne, Sasha and Sprig back away from her and Anne, already betrayed horribly once today seems utterly broken by it.. it’s fucking powerful. She tries to justfiy it with all she gave, and while we empathize given the circumstances.. it dosen’t make what she did any less harmful as Anne, in Brenda Song’s own finest hour, fires back with what it put her parents through, how much danger they were in. It’s painful.

The insuing fight is also great as our heroes easily overpower the frobo’s andrias has produced and get the box.. only for Andrias to pull the classic “i’ll kill your friend if you don’t” move by threatneing to drop sprig out a window.. and then doing it anyway because he’s an evil dick. And this is AFTER killing frobo and telling a fucking BABY “don’t worry you’ll be with him soon” good good he’s amazingly evil.

This leads to another shocker as Anne’s hinted at blue gem powers finally make her go super sayian god super sayian in a sequence that echoes and easily matches Dragon Ball’s most iconic super sayian transformatoins with Goku and SS2 Gohan. The sheer fury in her voice, the fear and majesty coming out of the transformation it’s awesome as is the cathartic beating she briefly gives andrias. Thankfully Marcy’s woken from her shock and saved sprig and then we get the devastating ending as one by one Anne’s best friends are left behind, first Sasha who, hoping to make up for her terrible actions helping cause this, holds the line (love is always on time), while Marcy gets them the box for the same reasons.. only to get gutted

I’ve used this shot for comedic effect plenty.. and will again, but it dosen’t make it any less horrifying to see a 13 year old suddenly stabbed by her mentor figure while he mutters a low gutteral “look what you made me do”. And it all ends with a brilliant flipping of the series on it’s head: Anne stranded back home in LA.. but with the Plantars by her side, now with her froggy family trapped in a world they never made. Add in the season 3 opening after this and you have an utter masterpiece. True brilliance and the fact it’s only #7.. speaks to how high the bar’s been this year.

6. What If?... Dr. Strange Lost his Heart Instead of His Hands? (What If?)

“ I know, but the world! The world shouldn't pay for my arrogance. I-I read about you; sensed your presence. You're a god. You can undo this.” “ I'm not a god. And neither are you.”

This year saw a WELCOME return of animated superhero shows. After Marvel had been easing off them due to the failure of their Disney XD universe and there sorta attempt at a new one with Marvel’s Spider-Man and DC has been sticking to slice of life comedies and utter garbage, we hadn’t got many. But thankfully this year Young Justice returned, Kid Cosmic Debuted and I failed to get to both. Luckily I Managed to get to two aimed at mostly adults that were tremendous and give me hope for the future, this one especially given Marvel has MORE animated shows coming. And wanting to catch up on X-Men TAS before the sequel series means i’ll probably be covering that series soon so look for that.

What If? is marvel’s first stab at animation for the MCU and is the perfect property for animation. Like the original comic it asks the titular questoin and shows us what happens when things go slightly diffrently from Hank Pym massacering the avengers before they could avenge, to a zombie outbreak to Black Panther becoming Star Lord instead. It’s all damn good stuff though I was reluctant to jump into the show at first, not sure if it’d really grab me. while Episode 3 got my attention it was this episode that cemented the true potetial for the show, how it could take things from the movies that hadn’t quite landed and make them matter

In this case it goes back to one of my faviorite MCU Outings, Dr. Strange and uses it’s weakest element to tell a truly heartbreaking and unvierse shattering tale. In this case that element is Dr. Christine Palmer, Strange’s love intrest whose just sorta there, dosen’t really impact him or the plot, and felt utterly anniclary in a tale with this scope.

So What If? finds a way to both lampshade that and show just what she brought ot the table: she was Stephen’s heart and together or not, was the only person he HAD before Kamar Taj. And this ep shows just what would happen if instead of being to operate.. he lost her instead.

Said lampshading is the fact that the events of the film.. don’t change. Christine’s death is now what brings Stephen to learn magic, he still does, things with forgetable bland guy and Dormmamu still happen, all that. It’s very much pushing the film to the side quick to get to the story.. but the story’s so good I can’t balme them.

So Strange, now sorcrer supreme, wallows in his grief despite saving the world.. and plans to undo that night, not realizing he’s trying to undo a fixed point in time and unlike the doctor not getting that this is a VERY bad thing. But we also wee WHY he goes so far with the first act: with the time stone he keeps going back to that night, keeps trying to change it.. but true to final destination rules chrstine somehow dies no matter what he does? Take her for pizza? a mugger gets her. Not go at all? She dies anyway in an unrealted accident, try and make himself die instead? Dosen’t work. No matter what he tries he’s left in an awful loop of watching the love of his life die again. and again. AND AGAIN.

So the lengths he goes.. aren’t suprising but are horrifying, slowly eating eldtich monster after monster till he’s left a pale, nightmarish, barely human shell of himself ready to tear apart everything to bring back one person. This leaves The Spirit of the Ancient ONe forced to call in a strange form an earlier piece of time, a plot device that would be used in a diffrent but still awesome way in the comics with the death of dr. strange, to stop him. This fails.. and what happens next is miserable. Strange saves christine.. but not only is she now afraid of him.. but it destroys reality.

And the final scene is what REALLY brought it up this high. While the rest of it is amazing from the horrifying time loop of deaths to the spellbinding and equally nightmarish scnee of strange absorbing beings while taking on their traits, it’s this that truly puts it over the top: Strange begging the watcher, who he can see, for help. Bendect Cumberbatch truly owns this episode from his arrogance, to his slow slide into evil, to his heartbreak but here he’s at the best he’s been as the character, and the movies he’s been in have given it PLENTY to compete against, begging the watcher to undo it.. with Jeffery Wright equalling him, being stern but not unfeeling. He’d undo this if he could. but it’d only put more unvierses at risk.. so even if he dosen’t WANT to watch multiversal genocide. He has no choice but to watch as Stephen is trapped in a prison of his own making, alone and broken. God damn this was some good stuff, can’t wait for season 2 or multiverse of madness. hot dam.

5. Vibe Check (Tuca and Bertie)

“That hurts my cervix just looking at it”

If you thought going back to colorful birds after the last one would be a break...

This ep is packed with great jokes: from Tuca’s build a vibe up there which as quoted hurts Bertie’s cervix just looking at it, to the entire concept of a vuild a vibe in the first place, to bertie throwing her vibarator into a river leading to it mating with a fish somehow (and those children coming back as a chekovs gun0, to Speckle deciding to just farm instead of quest with his best bud HairyStallion69, and yes he does use that sign on despite knowing the horses name and yes there is context to that your not getting, and finally the clerk at the store telling Bertie vibrators aren’t responsible for sex nightmares.. except the sex nightmare of course.

But what brings the episode here is how this bucket of fun is deftly ballanced around two mature and deeply intresting plots: the first is the lighter one as Tuca has a flirty relationship with Kara, the nurse she met in a later entry on this list and who utterly broke her heart earlier on this list. We get some fun bits with the two having great chemstiry and tuca accidently liking one of Kara’s old pictures while scrolling instagram.. only for Kara to do the same as a joking response to. But it goes from loose as a goose and ready to gander to “poor tuca” as Tuca tries to find Kara after she gets those dreaed three conversation dots. While this leads to another great gag of everyone bringing it up, from Speckle pointing out his sister dottie to Bertie bringing up her period, which leads to a phone smash and Tuca crashing Kara’s night with the girls.. but not before a forboding warning from a bartender who SEEMS to just be smarting from the breakup.. but instead sets up just how bad things are going to go later.

Though the two end up sharing a passionate kiss that had me playing this on loop for a few days

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This.. this can’t not have been intentional.

The darker plot of the episode though that gives it both it’s name and gave us the sex nightmare, is Bertie’s own sex nightmares. While having some vibrator alone time while Speckle games, something I applaud the series for as it tackles bertie having a vibrator as normal and simply makes vibrator jokes out of fun instead of “oh look sex thign”. I’ve seen too many sitcom back massager jokes for one lifetime.

But it soon takes a turn when Bertie’s abuser from last season, Pastry Pete, who she had a weird and horrifying psychosexual attraction to, intrudes the dream. While her therapist tells her it’s normal and something she’ll have to deal with bertie spirals, literally falling apart.

And what fixes it.. is easily the most touching scene of the year. Bertie games with Speckle so she can finally talk this out with him and while fighting a dragon due to a messup, finally admits what’s been making her act erratic all week (she also threw out their bed).. and Speckle is understanding. Not only was he aware of her crush on Pastry Pete, and thus easily figures out he abused her, but he sympathizes with her, pointing out that ther’es nothing wrong with her, he’s here for her and ther’es nothing to be ashamed about. He also relates his own far less traumtizing story about having a crush on a friends mom who baked... and thus revealing par tof why he likes Bertie is a baking fetish. Not the main reasons, he’s a good boy but he does want his dick rolled up in a crossant if possible, which he knows it isn’t. The two find a way to have rough sex without it fuly traumtizing Bertie and the episode is resolved not with shouting like most couples resolve things on tv or big emotinal moments.. but with two adults talking through a serious bout of ptsd like mature responsbale people and growing closer as a result. And that, that is the sohws true magic: taking very serious topics and not overblowing them or getting melodramatic, but not underselling how bad things are either. They simply play things are realistic.. despite being in a world of vibrator fish and bara tomatoes, it works.

4. Knock Knock Knockin On Hooty’s Door (The Owl House)

“Dang Hooty.. you really are something”

So yeah let’s discuss the elephant in the room: no one had high expectations going into this episode. While we all love and begrudingly tolerate Hooty much like our main trio, we all understandably expected a Hootycentric episode to be a fun side plot before things got more serious and we got to more intresting things like Lumity next week. Cue the episode actually coming out and..

Yeah Dana got us good, not only adding depth to our beloved owl tube but managing to advance ALL THREE of the main cast’s arcs for the season in one episode. How someone pulls that off I do not know but those glorious sons, daughters and others of bitches did it.

And I do mean it gives depth as we find out beneath the screechness, oblviousness and clingyness hooty radiates the guy has some talents as well as genuine insight into his friends, being an expert with his own contacts on the three demon types, a master baker, phrasing, and shockingly knowing luz and romance well enough to land a 3 point romantic gesture for his young friend. And it all starts finding a useful way to use one of the dumber decisions this season to their advantage: Lilith leaving. While i’m still against Lilith’s exit, as I feel her addition to the main cast added something for her breif tenure and nicely shook things up, this episode almost justifes it by showing the impact it has on her only friend: Hooty. Hooty is naturally devistated the one person who ever respected him and cared about his company at the house has left and is in a deep depression. Lilith, seeing her friends pain, messages him back with hope and that he CAN help his friends. So naturally he sets about it in the most hooty way possible leading to three seperate but equally great stories.

First off is king who Hooty kidnaps/eats for the venture.. despite taking him to King’s own room for it. But as I said Hooty is an expert on demons so we learn the three types, including hooty’s which is suprisingly insect as he’s some form of worm.

Did.. did not need to know that. After some tests including our good old friend big nose (”I gwaduated from med school!” , good for you sweetie), we find out King.. isn’t a demon. It’s a suprising and intresting twist that begs the question of just what he is.. and leaves the poor boy spiraling, both at his abandoment issues and at not knowing who he is.. and gaining a sonic scream that would make Banshee and Black Canary both deaf and proud.

Hooty thinks he failed and tries eda and once again his way of starting things is some crimes... this time by giving eda some mmmmm drugs to get her to sleep as Eda’s been hyperfocused on trying to stop Belos, which is fair but she can’t fight tyranny if she dosen’t sleep.

Said sleep forces her to deal with her least faviorite person: the owl beast, who takes her through a traumatastic tour of her life that shows just how horribly the curse, and eda’s own hangups about it have impacted her life, from a horrifying incident where she claws her dad’s eye out to refusing to open up to Rahne, destroying their relationship.

But with the third flashback Eda finally gets some clarity: the owl beast isn’t some heartless monster trying to ruin her life on purpose.. but a lost beast horifically bound to the curse by a mysterious question mark man whose just as trapped as she was. It’s at it’s core.. just an animal who was lashing out due to it’s own extreme emotions meshing with eda’s. It didn’t MEAN to hurt anyone it just does what an animal does when cornered.. and this twist is both utterly awesome, taking a character I honestly didn’t think was one and giving them a heartbreaking twist, and allowing eda to finally accept her curse.. and thus unlock a kick ass new mode. And hot too, and hey she said it first i’m just confirming.

So onto our final contestant. Luz is distracted by her feelings for amity as well as her inablility to get the echo mouse to talk.. so to speak. So Hooty does one more crime and kidnaps Amity. Just straight up naps her. It’s a hilaroius reveal just having her burst out of a sack.

And once again he proves to have the right idea, making a tunnel of love that’s ENTIRELY something Luz would do. Out of all of these it showed the most thought and consideration, the only thing Hooty didn’t consider was Luz’s own insecurities. We find out Luz has been rejected quite a bit for being too cheesy, which helps explain WHY she was so oblivious at first to Amity’s affections: having a lifetime of people she liked NOT feel the same way meant she coudln’t possibly fathom Amity feeling that way until the proof was calling her mine while fighting a giant blob monster.

And even then she panics, and while Amity likes the gesture, luz has no serenade, no fire brigade just pyromania for the tunnel, making Amity think she dosen’t want her.

This, in a painfully relatable way sends Hooty spiraling. Like the creepy tube man, I too am constantly afraid of fucking up and thus overreact when I think I have. Granted I don’t try to yank myself out of the walls but that’s not how my anatomy works. Trust me I would if I could.

So King and eda are forced to clean up this mess while Luz is forced to be honest.. and thus it FINALLY happens. we FINALLY , after generous well set up build up, see Luz and Lumity come together, with Amity asking her out, Luz doing the same in return and the two finally being a couple.

Look I havent’ remotely held back on how well written and adorable I find this romance is, why start now. While it was a shock to get it an episode earlier, it was the best way to do it, forcing Luz to realize she dosen’t have to be “cool enough”, she IS enough and having Hooty realize he’s truly the richest man of all.. and to please never do that again. All in all a truly great episode.. feels like i’m forgetting something. oh yeah kings dad, the letter, all that... just in case you thought there HADN’T been enough plot movement dana smacks us with another bit that’s bound to come back. Truly spectacular.

3. OZZIE’S (Helluva Boss)

“ Stolas, don't act like what we have is anything but you wanting me to fuck you. Okay? You make that really clear all the time. But I just... I-I can't do it tonight. Okay? I'm sorry.

So we’re back from mildly painful to good god this is a gaping wound with Helluva Boss’ last episode for the year and part one of a season finale. As of this article we haven’t gotten anything close to a release date for part 2 but given the show moves at a “when it’s done and at it’s best” pace, I can patiently wait for the resolution to this episode kali ma-ing my heart out of my chest.

This episode is the blow-up that’s been building all season: Blitzo’s clear loninless.. and Stolas treatment of him keeping the two from having an actual relationship. At first Stolas harrasment of blitz was largely played for laughs, something he put up with because he had to and to the show’s credit lead to easily it’s funniest moment in the series back in episode 2

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But the same ep also showed the core of the two’s broken dynamic: Blitzo tries to keep Stolas at arms length due to seemingly having no romantic intrest in the bhird, while Stolas agressively flirts and is oblivious to just how unequal their paring is or how demeaning he treats blitzo, his position as royal menaing he never really HAD to enagage anyone lower than him on the totem pole as an equal, and thus dosen’t know HOW to treat Blitzo.

And as the episodes go on we see that Blitzo.. is just as emotoinally stuntned, trying to wedge himself into Moxxie and Milie’s relationship at every opportunity to have what they have while being overly protective of a daughter who can take care of herself. It’s clear from the start Blitzo has attachment issues.. but it isn’t til lthe episode beofre this that we get full clarity. Via his drug trip, we, along with Blitzo realize he has a terrible habit of putting up walls pushing and pushing at people till they leave him because he feels it’s inentivitble. And ONCE AGAIN, that’ ssomething I can relate to. Most tellingly though his vision of stolas.. is being forced to crawl to the guy in chains, badly wanting something more but feeling he can’t get it because Stolas dosen’t treat him like more than a plaything. While the vision helps Blitzo not push Moxxie away and helps a little with stolas.. one person in a relationshp having an ephinay isn’t enough to solve it.. and the messy end that was always coming came next episode.

And it’s natural starting Point is blitzo’s desperatoin to have what M and M have. When Moxxie decides to take Milie out for his anniversary to the hottest joint in the lust ring, Blitzo decides to do his usual thing and stalk them. But it comes off diffrent: normally it’s mildly creepy but entirely played for laughs, hiding in a fridge, recording their dates, hiding in the celing. Here though it’s just.. sad. It hits home the guy ONLY has three people in his life, two of them happily married and would be fine without him, and one who while his adopted daughter struggles to accept their family, that he just WANTS what they have desperatley but isn’t healthy enough to have that. And while I haven’t stalked anyone, it again hits close to home: wanting that to fill the void but not being emotoinalyl ready or having a prospective partner.

So needing to get in, he does something somehow even lower than stalking his two employees on a date. He calls Stolas. And we see Stolas isn’t doing so well, sulking at home in an empty mansion, watching hella novellas (”That’s a mood gabriella”) and naturally darting to the phone when Blitzy calls him. We learn at the end that he and Stella have, thank Lucifier, gotten a seperation. And while that’s good in the long run, it leaves Stolas in the same position: without the one person in his life. The two’s situation mirror each other: two broken, lonely people who would be happier together.. but they don’t know HOW to do that. Stolas can’t stop treating Blitzo as beneath him and as a result Blitzo can’t see him as anything other than an annoyance. While Blitzo calling Stolas for a date seems cruel, to him he simply dosen’t get Stolas does love him.. he’s just an idiot.. but after treating him like a fucktoy and nothing else for so long nad never really seeming to care about him till now, how could he? Things only get worse after an awkard silence when we meet the clubs MC: Fizzarolli, aka that jester what had a robot him. I honestly didn’t pay robofizz much attention, figuring that while Blitzo probably had some issue with the real one, that the real one didn’t matter. In hindsight that waas dumb: not only did they get beetlejuice himself Alex Brightman to play him, a big get honestly in a cast full of stacked talent, but it was clear the two had more of a history and Blitzo himself had a history with the original.

And we find out here that a long time ago they used to be friends, then clearly more, then it fell apart. .and judging by the season 2 trailer and his positoin as right hand for Asmoedus, Fizz abandoned blitzo for both a better career and a fucking hell lord to fuck. So having to face him isn’t great. Stolas also isn’ tstoked one of the 7 deadly sins is running this club.

And while the two MIGHT have dodged the clubs heads... something happens. Moxxie decides to sing a lovestruck ballid to millie.. in the middle of a club dedicated to F-U-C-K-I-N-G. Sure people are on dates and it’s a couples club, but it’s less about the sappy aside and more about the getting nasty side. Nothing wrong with that mind you, especailly for Stolas butler who has a harem. Good for him. Cannot be an easy job especailly when Stella was around. But it awakens the sleeping giant and for the first time in either side of this franchise, we’re introduce to a hell lord, Asmodeus, lord of lust, actually giant cock, and velvety voiced assholed played by James Monroe Engleheart, who went from not really doing any voice acting to jumping hard into it first with Tarus Bulba last year, then with vortex and ozzie this year. Good for him, he’s damn good at it.

This results in at least a third if not more of the episode being a big, showy music number as the ambigiously coupled assholes torment Moxxie. And once in a nice moment of noblility, knowing he’s painting a target on his back and revealing his scam to Stolas as well as his pathetic stalking to moxxie and millie, Blitzo stands up for them (If also revealing he’s watched the happy couple have sex multiple times which while gross and horrible.. is also not suprising).. and thus gets verbally demolished by both Fizz and Veroskia, who happens to be there both because we missed her.. and because let’s face it if your going to make blitzo’s life hell might as well tag in the person who doe sit best. We also find out that , as hinted at in “Truth Seekers”, their relationship falling apart was his fault: he was all take and no give and it clearly does bother him to have his failures brougth up. While before he was utterly defensive with her and her bitchy with him.. i’ts VERY clear he hurt her, even if she tries not to show it.

Stolas dosent escape either: not only does he not try to help blitzo but he’s left hiding behind a menu when Ozzie zeroes in on him, pointing out he “gave up his life for a thrust”. And while ti’s more complicated than that, it still hits him enough to not do anything.. and for blitzo to leave miserable and humilated, seemingly validated that Stolas dosen’t care about him. For her part though MIllie bludgons fizz and given she beat up the secret boyfriend of a hell-god, and all she and her husband god for it was a GET OUT, props to her. The fact Ozzie IDND’T kill her for it and simply asked her to get out, something more reasonable, is remarkable as these two.

So we get an utterly devistating scene as Blitzo drives stolas home and Stolas tries to simply have cuddles inside, tries to do the right thing.. but it’s too little too late, with Blitzo, as quoted above making it painfully clear how he thinks the owl man feels.. and how frankly Stolas has MADE HIM FEEL. It may of been accidentla.. but it still hurts and i’ts clear saying this.. is a lot for Blitzo. He wants to like him on some level but to Blitz.. all Stolas sees is a toy. And unless that changes... there’s nothing worth saving there.

So that leaves our hero, with Loona having gone out partying, to sob on the couch as he revisits his lfie.. with seeing his sisters hitting him the hardest. What this means... we’ll have to wait for next time but Brandon Rogers kills it, both before this finally breaking it to stolas.. and after with his quite sobs. God damn man, this may be his first major voice roll but god damn he could be one of the greats if he keeps going like this. Truly amazing stuff. Waiting on part 2.

2. Nighttime Friend (Tuca and Bertie)

“Tuca. Tell. Bertie. About. This. Shit. “

And coming in second we have Tuca and Bertie with it’s most inventive episode yet. It reminds me of the format breaks Bojack Horseman tended to do, doing more as the series go on, playing with the medium to create something truly memorable from the scratchy writing based drawings of “Good Damage” to the silent episode to Free Churro being a monologe. And given LIsa Hanawalt is both a very visual creator and was responsible for Bojack’s visuals, it’s no shocked she decided to do an ep like this herself and even less of a suprise hers is a masterpiece.

This one focuses entirley on Tuca as she wonders around bird town every night due to her insomina. The other half of our main duo isn’t absent, as each night starts with Bertie TRYIGN to watch the latest prestige drama on Nestflix, something I can relate to. Best Boy Speckle also isn’t left out as he gets a fitness watch.. and ends up sleepwalking every night, escalating to biking, canoing and other swole activites with his legs getting super jacked, a nice running gag.

As such we get an absolutely gorgous nighttime view of the city, done in sharp contrasts with the backgrounds almost entirely back with only dots of light or the people around illuminating it. The buildnigs Tuca enters are also starkly lit, a diner she goes to is bathed in pink, the convience store she goes to in green, etc.

There’s also a really nice runner with an adorable elderly couple who play checkers and get fresh.. only for night 2 to have one of them gone, clearly dead... and a truly happy ending when a bunch of teens from an earlier event accidently bring his ghost back, reuniting them.

There’s other connective tissue too: a kid, who turns out to be a teen in a great payoff, asking Tuca to sing him to sleep, and said teens, who Tuca interupts when they have a screning of vintage campy sexy movie, aka rocky horror but with brids. God I want that whole sexual eagle song.

But the main one is Tuca’s aunt Talula. Coming back from last season where Tuca broke off her relationship with the woman, despite getting cut off as a result, due to Talulua’s constant abuse, here the two have reconnected... albeit still unhealhlity sneaking her booze. Talula decides to give Tuca power of attorney, something Talula’s nurce Kara questoins. We’ve seen her before here, but this is where Kara first showed up, serving as a mildly judgmental but ultimately right concisence. With an added push from Bertie Tuca takes her duty seriously.. only for Talula to shift back to Tuca’s sister Terri once i’ts clear she won’t be able to easily manipulate her niece.

This leads to Tuca finding some solace in Kara, the two hanging out and having real chemstiry and Tuca finding her the next night, leading to a truly sweet ending where Kara sings her to sleep. Granted things quickly went down hill as should be obvious, but it dosen’t lesson the ending’s impact as Tuca finally has good nigh’ts sleep and hope for her future. And frankly the later abuse is more effective given that Kara , like most abusers, STARTS OUT nice. There’s hints of the gaslighting bitch she is deep down, but the story wouldn’t of worked if we didn’t buy into the romance as much as tuca did before the cracks settled in. Still even with future events this is a brilliant, atmospheric episode with some of the best animation all year. And with it we’re down to 1. And given the cover image and the fact it hasn’t come up yet, you all know what’s coming.

1. Where I Really Come From (Invincible)

“ WHY DID YOU MAKE ME DO THIS?! YOU'RE FIGHTING SO YOU CAN WATCH EVERYONE AROUND YOU DIE! THINK, MARK! You'll outlast every fragile, insignificant being on this PLANET! You'll live to see this world crumble to dust and BLOW AWAY! EVERYONE and EVERYTHING you know WILL BE GONE! WHAT WILL YOU HAVE AFTER FIVE HUNDRED YEARS!?” “ ...You, dad...I'd still have you...”

Invincible.. was one of my most anticipated shows for some time. Not only were they adapting a comic I truly enjoyed, even more so having now finished the entire run, but as they announced the voice cast I only got MORE excited. JK Simmons, Steven Yuen, Gillian Jacobs, Jason Mantzokus, Andrew Rannels, Mahershala Ali. I could go on and on, but I was hyped.

That said I had some understandable worries too: I worried about the budget, since an adult superhero animated show that wasn’t a comedy hadn’t been attempted in decades, about the show finding an audience, and about the streamer as Amazon Prime had previously canceled the utterly brilliant Tick Reboot after two seasons.

And once the show started airing.. all those worries were sent hurtling away like a teeange boy tossing some garbage only to find out he’s super strong now. The animation was gorgeous, with only the ocasional corner cut. The audience quickly found it as the show became massively popular, and Amazon Prime , unlike last time, realized what they had and quickly gave it two more seasons.

The show is easily one of the best adaptations i’ve ever seen and being a big fan of superheros, a work that, much like the source material, is both a deconsturction and love letter to superheroes. Like many works it shows what it’d take to actually have superheroes around, a shadowy goverment orginzation ran by an equally shadowy and dubious head in Cecil who nonetheless makes sure superheroes widows are taken care of, helps cover up identites and helps out when needed, as well as the real cost: unlike most super hero works Invincible in both mediums is CAKED in blood, nicely lampshaded by the titlecards which get bloodier with each episode, and shows the massive damage taken by both the heroes and the environment. The show goes a step farther even by showing how the silver age concept of hiding your idtenity from your love intrest.. is deeply stupid after a certain point.

But unlike other deconsturctions like the boys or kick ass (and especially their far more edge lordy comic versions), Invincible shows these heroes are still NECESSARY, and that underneath most of them are good people trying to make some diffrence in the world. And that in the end if you have the power to help someone, you should, wether it works out or not.

The other aspect that makes it work is remixing thigns: some plots are moved up, some are taken out all together (an insufferable plot about William dating eve was removed, in part because the series choose to make him gay from minute one instead of in the closet), and it all works, helping keep the plot moving at a steady clip and compress hundreds of issues of story into what will likely be 5 or 6 seasons. Maybe 7.

All that comes together in the cumilation of the season’s major arc: At the start, the show comes off as a breezy, if honest look at a teen superhero. Marc Grayson, played by the utterly spectacular Steven Yuen whose gladly getting the career he deserves and thankfully has this roll to replace his wonderful one as Little Cato, the son of the world’s greatest hero Omni Man (Played by JK “Get me pictures of spider-man” Simmons”) and Debbie, played by the utterly awesome Sandrah Oh)

The show seems normal.. until the end of episode 1. See both series have a major twist, one now widely known thanks to the “think mark” meme I couldnt resist using as the image here as it’s also the perfect one for this episode: Omni Man isn’t some beneveloent hero from another world, but a conquerer, sent to see if they can breed offspring, and protect the world till the Villtrumite Empire comes for it. And he first shows this off by brutally and horrifcally murdering the Global Guardians, basically thin stand ins for the justice league of america.

Where the show improved on it was captalizing on a regret Robert Kirkman had: Rob had regretted NOT having this as the ending ot issue one, a big twist that he could then develop in the background. As such season 1 is spent on investigating Omni Man’s massacre of the guardians, as Cecil naturally suspects him but wonders what the actual hell he can do to STOP Omni Man. LIkewise Debbie starts to grow suspcious of her husband, taking her from what was essentially a block of wood for the first 20 or so issues of the comic, to an dynamic charcter who dosen’t like her husband showing his true colors, and serves as a necessary counterballance to the more viltrum flavored way Nolan’s teaching their son, even leaving the guy with a fuck you. Despite KNOWING he could snap her in half.

This season long manhunt cumilates in the way it had to: the episode before this had Nolan easily tearing thorugh most of Cecil’s stalling tactcs to keep nolan from grabbing mark, who was busy working through stuff. The father and son reunite to fight a giant monster.. only to be interupted during it bythe Immortal, one of the heroes killed. Because really he’s a guy called the immortal, Nolan should’ve seen this coming.

Much like the comic, Nolan rips him in half... and Mark sees it leading into this masterpiece of the episode. While we see plenty of the others as they worry for mark and the world, the global guardians get a paticuarlly nice moment defying ceciil’s orders to go save lives, the real action is where it was in the issues this adapts: Between father and son as Mark reels at his dad’s true nature. It’s the painful confrontation I knew was coming, the moment I waited all season to see adapted.. and as you can tell by the fact it’s # 1 it not only didn’t disapoint, it IMPROVED on the original, beautifulyl adapting the best bits while expanding it in horrifying annd mesmerising ways.

For starters Mark, naturally given he’s a superhero and this is a comic book universe, tries to snap his dad out of brainwashing. This fails because he’s NOT brainwashed and quickly explains the whole conquerer bit in a great flashback. But naturally Nolan trying to pitch “hey son let’s enslave everyone you’ve ever cared about and go against everythign your mom and I ever taught you” dosen’t work. Mark is the true hero Nolan PRETENDED to be. Thanks to his father’s inspriation and his mom’s kind nature, Mark truly grew up to be a great hero. Flawed sure, who isn’t, but a good kid.. who now , depsite KNOWING he likely stands no chance against his dad, KNOWING his dad will likely kill him, stands firm. Nolan isn’t taking this planet without a fight.

And the fight that insues.. is a total, nightmarish curbstomp. Mark does his best but he’s mostly a punching bag for his dad. It shows Mark’s badassery in his own way, refusing to back down no matter HOW much his dad puts him thorugh, but it dosen’t make it any easier to watch as Nolan absolutley destroys his son.

And the cartoon decided to somehow make a grown man beating up his child for doing the right thing even worse as Nolan goes out of his way to try to mentally break his son. He kills as many people as possible, tells mark how he only saw his mother as a pet, and in a peak dick move when Mark manages to save a person... nolan makes sure they die JUST to spite the boy.

The peak of this though is the train sequence. Good fucking god the train sequence. Nolan PLOWS HIS SON THORUGH A TRAIN. And we see ALL THE PEOPLE DIE ALONG THE WAY.

This cumilates in the comic’s best scene (still plenty of great stuff after it, but still), which the cartoon takes and makes better. It’s the scene I was waiting for all season, that I could easily here Yuen and Simmons deliver in my head based on how great their performances were. And they did not disapoint.

It starts with Nolan psyotically and savagely beating his son, giving up on breaking him and settling for killing him “What’s another 17 years”. The show then goes into a flashabck of Mark getting his first homerun.. and of Debbie teaching Nolan to be invested in her son and his job.

His facade of not carring abotu earth, or debbie or his son cracking, Nolan screams the rant above, taken exactly from the comics and performed as well as you’d expect from JK motherfucking Simmons... and with the gutpunch of a response that utterly destroys Nolan and the audeince emotinally “You dad, i’d still have you” Even after EVERYTHING, Mark still loves his dad.

We get one final improvment as the animation shows every emotin on NOlans face, from his pain, to his relization of what he truly is, to his decison to leave, crying as he leaves atmosphere. If you haven’t seen the scene.. well here’s yoru chance go do it now.

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The rest of the episode is great, dealing with the faloout and mark taking ab reak from the trauma. Granted Season 2′s coming so he’ll be back and the final scene is great: Mark talks with Alan, an alien who showed up earlier in the season, fill shim in on wha thappened, and we get an awesome montage preparing us for season 2 set to “Hate to say I told you so”. The button gag is also great.

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But let’s face it, that scene above? Everything before it. It’s instnatly iconic. And I don’t throw that around. This is the scene that MAKES a show and makes me excited to see what’s next and really.. I can’t think of antyhing that could top this. It’s #1 and I have a feeling next year Invincible might just take it again.

And that’s really this year in a nutshell: what we have here is fantastic.. and with the vast majority of these shows either having at least one act left for us or in most cases only having just begun, it gives me hope for animation. At the end of last year, I was worried this golden age was ending, that with so many classics going away the roof was about to cave in. And maybe it will some day. But for now.. we have some damn fine programs holding it up.

If you enjoyed this look back at the year, please follow this blog for more reviews every week. I’ve got some stacked plans this year: an ongoing venture bros retrospective, wrapping up some ongoing retrospectives.. and launching some new. We’ve got a watchmen retrospective starting next week, a sonic month in april, and more I have up my sleeve I’m trying not to announce till i’m sure it’s happening. But stick around kids, we’ve only just begun. And i’d like to thank you all, new, old, and what have you for reading this and for reading this blog. I never thought i’d make it to another year. but now i’m confident i’ll be here again next year. If you’d like to help me kepe it going consider joining my patreon., link’s bellow. See ya real soon.

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shades-of-stony · 3 years

Text

ABO Stony AUs! (Part 2)

As promised, here is part 2! [link to Part 1] I’m not sure if I’m gonna make part 3 but there are still a bit ABO fics left.

A King For Christmas by iam93percentstardust

Summary: In 1867, Tony Stark flees New York after refusing to marry the alpha his parents chose for him. His money runs out in the small kingdom of Dacia, ruled over by King Steven of the Rogers line. Somehow, and he’s not entirely sure how, he ends up accepting the position of nanny to the king’s four children: Harley, Peter, Sarah, and Morgan.

Tony bonds with the children easily but their father is harder to get to know. Steve is still grieving his wife’s death four years earlier. His continued mourning has turned the once bright halls into dark and somber shadows of their former glory. Tony isn’t entirely certain what he can do but he knows that he has to do something or else the whole country, so attuned to their leader, will sink into despair. He begins by reconciling the king with his young children.

Meanwhile, the children have decided that it’s high time their father fall in love again—and Tony is the obvious choice. They concoct elaborate plans to force the two together, hardly realizing that Steve and Tony are falling in love, not through their shenanigans but through the quiet moments they share bonding over the love they have for the children.

What, Like It’s Hard? by JehBeeEh

Summary: Omega Tony Stark has it all, until his alpha boyfriend breaks his heart. In an effort to win him back, he follows the alpha of his dreams to Harvard Law School, where he discovers there might be more to being the first omega at the prestigious school. He also meets another alpha that might just make him forget the one he drove across the country for.

Two-Point Perspective by FestiveFerret for sabrecmc

Dear omega,

Congratulations! You've been selected. Alpha #95847872 has been assigned as your pre-bondee. A group bonding ceremony will take place on the 14th, unless other arrangements have been made by your alpha or their family. A valid bonding license must be submitted to Omega Services within 45 days of this letter or all services will be cancelled and any transferable benefits will not be applied to your alpha's package.

If there is some reason why you cannot be bonded on this date, please apply for an extension by calling 1-800-555-6827 within 7 days of receiving this letter.

Sincerely, National Omega Services

I Love You (From the Bottom to the Top) by RomancebyFaye for Reioka

Summary: Steve and Tony have a great relationship. They may have only been dating for a few months, but the truth is, they had been in love for years before that. Their relationship is only getting better from adding this new intimacy and Steve is very satisfied with how open Tony is in the bedroom. He’s giving and generous, sometimes to a fault, just as he is with everything.

And then Steve comes home early and catches sight of something he wasn’t meant to see. The shock he gets from the sight of watching his alpha ride a toy might not have been meant for him, but it doesn't stop him from wanting.

Now, if he can just figure out how to tell Tony how much he wants what he witnessed without putting his foot in his mouth…

Or Tony offers Steve something in the bedroom and Steve misunderstands the offer.

Until he doesn’t.

A Prime, Divided by avengersasssemble

Summary: Facing his and his infant son's possible death sentence, young prince Tony runs away to the only place where his father would dare not follow: the Northern Territories, known to house the most savage and brutal Alphas--including their bloodthirsty leader, the Prime Alpha. Forced to navigate fatherhood and diplomacy while being unable to speak the Northern language, Tony has to make decisions to save his son, even at his own expense.

Oversight by ShyOwl

Summary: It really wasn’t Steve’s fault that no one knew he was an omega.

I Love You 3000 by NazakiSama166

Summary: After the death of his husband, the only thing Steven Rogers could think of was going on and dying in one of his missions, and Steven was happy to get his wish.... that was until he woke up in a strange universe when people can shift into wolves and men can get pregnant... Oh, and did he mention that Tony was there too and was in love with his younger jackass self? And let's not forget about Peggy...

Life just loves to mess with him...

Dear Enemy by AvengersNewB

Summary: Alpha Steve and omega Tony are SHIELD agents who don't always see eye to eye, but some benefits on the side help them work things out in the most non-traditional way. Steve's jealousy after an unfortunate encounter with Ty Stone, however, makes things complicated.

Love Match by FestiveFerret

Summary: Tony had but one goal for the season: secure a marriage proposal from an alpha with the position and means enough to remove him from his father's house. Love was wholly irrelevant to the matter.

Stuck in a... by Annie D (scaramouche)

Summary: Steve gets into a serum-enhanced rut. Tony figures that there’d be a long list of people who’d volunteer to help Steve out, but there’s only one person Steve wants.

A Late-Night Snacks, and Other Good Ideas by Annie D (scaramouche)

Summary: Steve's heightened senses means that he always knows when Tony's in heat. One night, he finally does something about it.

citrus and lavender by JehBeeEh

Summary: Steve laid Tony on his bed as delicately as he could manage. Which was ridiculous because he knew, logically, that Tony was absolutely fine. JARVIS himself had told him. And that’s 100% why he had fought Natasha so hard on Tony not needing to go to medical when they came back, even though he probably could use the check up. Yup. That was definitely the only reason he had insisted on bringing Tony back to the penthouse. No other reason at all. If you keep this up, you just might start believing it, he thought to himself ruefully. Tony wasn’t his. He had made it very clear that he didn’t need some alpha in his life to mess with everything he’d worked so hard to accomplish. Especially not Steve Rogers.

Found Love in a Hopeless Place by crispybacon

Summary: Steve really, really did not want to tag along with his brother to the bar, no matter how many times the jerk nagged him that he needed to get laid. Just because Bucky’s known his Omega since kindergarten, and the pair have loud obnoxious sex in their shared small two bedroom apartment, didn’t mean Steve needed to stick his knot in any Omega that looks his way.

That’s not the kind of Alpha Steve was.

Or, Steve goes to a bar and meets an Omega with a complicated past that changes his life forever.

This is Not a Drill by sabrecmc

Summary: “Can I—can I see him? I mean meet him. Uh…welcome him to the team?” Tony clarified, probably not very well, he knew.

“Well…there’s a bit of an issue with that,” Fury said, and Tony figured this was where Fury got to whatever it was that had really forced his hand and made him call Tony in, knowing how much the man detested having to do so. “You see, well. He was suspended in the ice for nearly seventy years,” Fury began. Tony nodded along, because he could do math.

“I’m sure he has a lot of adjusting to do—“ Tony started.

“Seventy years,” Fury repeated, cutting Tony off and leaning back in his chair and making it rock slightly. “Of no suppressants.”

“Oh,” Tony managed to choke out past the lump that had suddenly formed in his throat. “Oh.”

Everybody's got a hungry heart. by Perlmutt for ShadowsintheClouds

Summary: Tony Stark has never experienced a true heat due to the suppressants he's taking on a daily basis. Society accepts him as a beta, together with his friends and teammates and the alpha he's secretly in love with. But some things are just too big to be kept hidden forever. An unfortunate turn of events forces Tony to reveal his biggest secret to the world...

Baby, Just Say Yes by betheflame for starksnack

Summary: In a world where Tony's life looks a lot like Taylor Swift's, Steve realizes there always more to omegas than meets the eye.

Apple Pie and Sunshine by betheflame, starksnack

Summary: Even though they've loved each other for years, Steve and Tony have each convinced themselves that their one-night-stand was a fluke. Thing is, it also resulted in Tony getting pregnant and as the birth approaches, perhaps it's time to use their words.

blue since the day we parted by funkyspacegirlfriend

Summary: When he's twenty, the man Tony thinks will be his alpha and mate walks away, leaving Tony with a gift he'll never regret.

The same alpha reappears fifteen years later in the form of SI's new military liaison.

In my Favorite Dreams (I feel your heat) by Corsets_and_Cardigans for wingheads

Summary: Steve is on his morning run in DC when a ghost from his past comes back into his life. And he's not alone. *** “Steve?” Sam’s voice cut through the veil of the past, the crushing weight of memory that stole his breath. “What’s wrong, buddy?”

His staring must have finally alerted another parent, a woman eyeing him warily while tugging on Tony’s sleeve until he turned around. His eyes were just as expressive and wide as they were ten years ago, piercing the cold morning air straight to Steve’s own.

“Tony.”

“Wait. Tony Tony? The Tony? The Tony that Bucky busts your chops over Tony?”

His voice cracked, wrent into pieces at seeing his omega who wasn’t his anymore, body flaring in pain. Years worth of aching denial like a hot fireplace poker to his soul. “Yeah.”

“Okay then, who’s the kid?”

The Couch by Perlmutt

Summary: Steve overstepped a mark, when he accidentally called Tony, his mate, tiny. Because his omega was very self-conscious when it came to his height. So he needed to show him that he thought Tony's perfect just the way he was, if he didn't want to sleep on the couch for the next week. Luckily Steve was the man with a plan...

be the summer in my heart by billyscissors

Summary: After Obadiah betrays the Southern Isles, he offers Omega Prince Anthony Stark as tribute to appease the Warlord of the North

#stony #stony fics #stony fanfic #steve and tony #stevetony #stevetony fanfic #stevetony fic rec #stevetony fic #stony fic #SUPERHUSBANDS #fic rec

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scrabbleknight · 2 years

Note

2, 3, and 10 for the fic ask meme.

2. In terms of fanfiction, I'd love to write a TFA or Gwenpool fanfic.

Transformers Animated was always my favourite cartoon of the franchise. It's fun and stylistic and rarely takes itself too seriously. That's not to say it doesn't have serious moments. But sadly, it was cancelled after the 2nd season, just as Sari Sumdac (the MC) was about to leave for Cybertron for the very first time.

If I could, I'd write a continuation for that story, focusing on Sari adjusting to the new life among her people. She grew up as human for a very long time so it can be difficult to try and live as a Cybertronian, especially considering she's a Technorganic (half organic, half machine). There's a stigma against organics (humans) in that show btw, with some even afraid of touching one.

As for Gwenpool, she's my favourite Marvel superhero, being a pseudo-Mutant with the power to perceive reality as a comic book. This also comes with quirks such as jumping in and out of reality, traveling through time, using comic book logic, knowing anything that's been shown in comic form (because she has access to all the pages) and in one small Deadpool release, even create anything out of nothing just by drawing it.

Is she OP? Yes. Is she unstoppable? Hardly. Because despite her powers, she's still quite human. She can't shoot lasers or have super strength or anything like that. So she has a hard time fighting against powerhouses like the Hulk. But the main focus of her character is that she's constantly under threat of being retconned, so she tries her best to be popular.

I wanted to write a fanfic exploring that. One idea I had was her being at the edge of the universe, just sitting alone and contemplating with her thoughts, only for Galactus to appear and become her talking buddy. Being all-powerful, he knows how powerful Gwen is and sees her as an equal, all while observing her very mortal issues. Another idea was that she erases her own memory with the help of her wizard friend Terrible Eye and went to college. But then, a great catastrophe is about to occur so the heroes need Gwen's help to get the Infinity Gems and save the universe. But to do that, they need to go through a series of quirky challenges (placed by Gwen) to release her memories. In doing so, they also see the world through her eyes. So far, the only person who believes her abilities are the co-characters from her own series (Terrible Eye, Batroc the Leaper, Mega Tony, Cecil).

The problem is that both franchises have decades of storytelling, and I'm not American. So I don't have access and resources, nor the reason to even try. It's a HUGE WALL and frankly, I'm unprepared to try and climb that.

3. I'd describe my writing as direct and straight to the point.

Look, I'm not very good at fluffing my words. I see people writing a single scene and that alone takes up 1-2k words. Meanwhile, I write entire episodes in 6-8k words. Do you know how many scenes there are in one episode? A lot.

If I wrote like they do, a single episode could easily be up to 20k. This is also the reason why my uploads are very slow. I technically put in more ideas per chapter than most, even if it's a lower word count.

10. That would be Unchosen One, For Want a Nail and of course, Heroic BSOD.

The Unchosen One basically means a person who is not the chosen one but says "Fuck you" to fate and ends up doing the thing the chosen one was supposed to do anyway. For example, Link from Wind Waker (exclusively) was not the reincarnation of the Hero of Time and didn't have the Triforce of Courage. But because his sister got kidnapped, he ends up going on the quest to save her and even the world.

For Want a Nail is an alternate universe/what-if trope that asks "What if you change one small thing? What happens?". It comes from the tale where a horse got a nail stuck to its hooves and thus, the messenger couldn't deliver an important letter and one thing led to another and now, an entire kingdom is in ruins. The difference between FWaN with The Butterfly Effect is that no time travel is involved, and that it's not about cause and effect.

Finally, the Heroic BSOD. What happens when the hero is so utterly traumatized by certain events? They shut down. This is a tragic trope and it breaks down a heroic character down to their fleshy fragile core. It's chilling, deafening and really dangerous to everyone involved because if the hero can't do anything, then who can? So this episode of theirs is really compelling! I love it!

You can probably see all of this in SatF...

#ask meme #ask answered #gwenpool #tfa #transformers animated #transformers #fanfiction #fanfic #writing #tropes #heroic bsod #unchosen one #for want a nail #fwan #writing asks

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snowdice · 4 years

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Road Trips and Missing Persons (Part 24)

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Relationships: Patton & Virgil, Virgil & Janus, Logan & Patton, Emile & Remy, Roman & Remus & Janus

Characters: Patton, Virgil, Janus, Remus, Roman, Logan, Emile, Remy

Summary: Patton was just getting groceries. The next thing he knew, there was a knife at his throat and he was an unwilling uber driver. Virgil’s on the run after the murder of his dad, and it’s not just his paranoia that’s telling him he’s being chased down. He has to get somewhere safe, somewhere he can trust, and all he has is a couple of stories from his dad and a name: “Green Bellow Foods and Dispensary.”

Meanwhile, everyone else is trying to find a missing 15 year old, all with different pieces of the puzzle about where he is. It really is too bad that no one is answering their phones.

Notes: Secret Agents AU, knives, carjacking, kidnapping, murder mentioned, guns mentioned, pepper spray, blood mentioned, drugs mentioned, explosions, car crashes (more to be added)

This is a fic I’ve been writing on study breaks that you have probably all already seen at this point. I’ve affectionately named it the Goblin Brain Fic because it’s helping my brain actually get motivated for studying. I’ve slightly edited it for wording and grammar, but not for content from my previous posts. Feel free to send in asks to direct it because I’m not 100% sure where this is going and you can help decide if you feel so inclined! You can see the process I went through to build this at this link.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16 Part 17 Part 18 Part 19 Part 20 Part 21 Part 22 Part 23 My Master Post

Logan had kept them in the meeting room for literal hours, pausing only to feed everyone except Patton and Virgil (who had actually eaten dinner). Eventually, he decided that he was satisfied with the explanations (Well, no, perhaps not satisfied, he was still very displeased with everyone except Virgil and maybe Emile, though Emile had not helped himself when he’d realized that he’d spoken both to Patton and Remus in the grocery store near Remy’s house early and he and Patton had proceeded to go off on a tangent about pasta.) and had taken them all to some of the hotel style rooms in the base.

The room Remy, Emile, Janus, and Virgil were in had two double beds. Virgil and Janus had claimed one of the beds already and were currently curled up together on it both asleep. Janus had apparently picked up Virgil’s stuffed spider from home and stuck it in his pocket. He had ordered Remy to dry the slightly damp toy with a hair dryer before consenting to laying down. The two of them had fallen asleep easily after their long days, the stuffed spider laying on the top of Janus’s chest and Virgil’s arm thrown around him loosely.

Emile had stayed up longer and taken a shower before emailing his receptionist asking her to cancel all of his appointments for tomorrow (or today as it was by now). He’d climbed into bed a couple of minutes ago, leaving Remy the only conscious one in the room.

Virgil stirred awake as Remy stood up from the chair he’d been sitting on and stepped towards the door. “Dad?” he asked.

Remy took a detour to stand by his bedside and stroke a few of the curls that were still damp from his shower away from his face. “Go back to sleep, kid.”

“Where’re you going?” he asked.

“Just gonna go grab some coffee,” he said.

“It’s night,” he pointed out.

Remy cracked a grin. “Yeah, well, you know me.” He tapped him on the nose. “I’ll be right in the mini kitchen outside.”

“Kay,” Virgil agreed, laying his head back on Janus’s chest. Janus never stirred, dead to the world in the way he only ever was when Virgil was snuggled up against him.

Remy closed the door quietly behind himself and wandered over towards the kitchen.

“Can’t sleep?” Patton asked when he stepped into the little area. The man was sitting at the small two-person table with a mug of what looked like tea and a box of Oreos.

“Having trouble chilling out,” Remy replied. “You know how it is.” Patton hummed in acknowledgement as Remy investigated the coffee maker.

“You know,” Patton said amused. “If your trying to calm down and sleep, coffee may not be the best solution.”

“Babe, do you know me at all?” Remy asked. Patton just shook his head.

“Besides,” Remy continued. “Who said I was planning on sleeping any time soon?”

“You should try to sleep,” Patton said, frown clear in his tone even though Remy was turned away, putting coffee grounds into the machine.

“Says the man already out here eating cookies at half past 1.”

“Touché.”

They were silent until Remy’s coffee was finished. Remy poured himself a cup and went to sit across from him. “Thanks for not shanking the little bastard on sight.”

Patton’s nose scrunched. “I should have known he was yours with that mouth of his,” Patton said, then he shook his head. “He’s a cute kid.”

“He held a knife to your neck.”

Patton shrugged. “It’s not the first time I befriended someone with a deadly weapon on me,” he said. He pushed the packet of Oreos over to him. “I hope you realize I’m filing for joint custody.”

Remy laughed. “I figured after I heard you spent over 3 hours in a car with him.”

“I’m going to teach him how not to curse and why falling asleep during a kidnapping is not ideal.”

“Well, Emile’s already tried his hardest on the first front, so good luck, and the boy likes to nap at inopportune times, what can I say?”

“Takes after his dad.”

“I am both insulted and flattered simultaneously.”

Patton giggled softly.

“But, seriously,” Remy said. “I do owe you for making sure Virgil was okay even if you didn’t know he was my spawn.”

Patton shrugged. “You don’t owe me anything.” He paused. “Well, you could buy me some cheese since I’d just bought a bunch to make mac and cheese, and it all went bad during the long car ride.”

Remy snorted. “Why do the lactose intolerant fear no god?” he asked. “But, sure, I’ll be happy to reimburse you and endorse your hedonistic ways.”

Patton smiled at him and finished off his tea.

Despite his suggestion that Remy head to bed a few minutes before, he did not put his mug in the sink, but filled it back up with water and popped it into the microwave. Remy turned back to his coffee for a moment and immediately felt arms come around him. “Thanks for not being dead,” Patton said into his ear.

Remy chuckled and patted his arm. “You’re welcome Patty, but really what did everyone expect? I’ve got a couple of kids to raise still.”

Patton just hummed and kept hugging him until the microwave beeped. He grabbed his mug then and plopped another tea bag into it.

“So, not what you planned for your weekend, huh?” Remy asked.

Patton shook his head sitting back down. “I was going to make the mac and cheese and watch reruns of Parks and Rec,” he said wistfully. Then he grinned. “I probably would have still been awake at this hour anyway.”

“Oh, Pat. How many times have you watched that show?”

Patton just smiled at him, eyes sparkling. “We really should try to get some sleep,” Patton said.

“Yeah, well, Emmy snores.”

“And Lo kicks,” Patton said, “when he’s not trying to crush me. Not that trying to sleep in the same bed as one of the twins is any better.”

Remy snorted. “Didn’t take Logan for a cuddling type.”

“Oh, he always tries to deny it, but he’s a big softie.”

“Explains why I’m not dead all over again.”

“Hmmm,” Patton agreed. Then he grinned. “I have the Netflix app on my phone,” he divulged.

“…We’re starting with season 3.”

“Of course,” Patton agreed, pulling out his phone.

They got yelled at in the morning by Logan for falling asleep at the table.

The end! Except for the epilogue.

#sanders sides #patton sanders #remy sanders #virgil sanders #janus sanders #emile piccani #remus sanders #roman sanders #logan sanders #road trips and missing persons #road trips and everything in between #adriana writes

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femalechibiblogger · 4 years

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5 Underrated Cartoons That Were Cancelled Too Soon

1. Clone High

Clone High is set in a high school in the fictional town of Exclamation, USA, that is secretly being run as an elaborate military experiment orchestrated by a government office called the Secret Board of Shadowy Figures. The school is entirely populated by the clones of famous historical figures that have been created and raised with the intent of having their various strengths and abilities harnessed by the United States military. The principal of the high school, Cinnamon J. Scudworth, has his own plans for the clones, and secretly tries to undermine the wishes of the Board (Scudworth wants to use the clones to create a clone-themed amusement park, dubbed "Cloney Island", a decidedly less evil intention than that of the Board). He is assisted by his robot butler/vice principal/dehumidifier, Mr. Butlertron (a parody of Mr. Belvedere), who is programmed to call everyone "Wesley" and speak in two distinct intonations.

The main protagonists of Clone High are the clones of Abraham Lincoln (referred to as "Abe"), Joan of Arc, and Mahatma Gandhi. Much of the plot of the show revolves around the attempts of Abe to woo the vain and promiscuous clone of Cleopatra, while being oblivious to the fact that his friend Joan of Arc is attracted to him. Meanwhile, John F. Kennedy's clone (referred to as "JFK"), a macho, narcissistic womanizer, is also attempting to win over Cleopatra and has a long-standing rivalry with Abe. Gandhi acts in many of the episodes as the comic relief. Also on a few occasions, the characters that we see learn most of "Life's Lessons" the hard way.

Why it was cancelled: An article in Maxim Magazine depicting Mahatma Gandhi being beaten up by a muscular man sparked outrage in India. Clone High was caught in a crossfire when citizens in the country conducted internet searches on the Maxim article but also found out about the show's Gandhi character on MTV's website. This sparked an outrage in India over the show's depiction of Gandhi. On January 30, 2003, the 55th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi's assassination, approximately 150 protesters (including members of parliament) gathered in New Delhi and vowed to fast in response to Clone High. Tom Freston, the head of Viacom (owner of MTV), was visiting the network's India branch and was "trapped in the building", according to Miller. In 2014, he recalled that protestors "basically threatened that they'd revoke MTV's broadcasting license in India if they didn't take the show off the air". MTV offered a quick apology, stating that "Clone High was created and intended for an American audience", and "we recognize and respect that various cultures may view this programming differently, and we regret any offense taken by the content in the show". Miller would later recall that executives at MTV enjoyed the show, and asked for the duo to pitch a second season without Gandhi. Lord and Miller's two potential versions of a second season included one that made no mention of Gandhi's absence, and another that revealed that the character was, in fact, a clone of actor Gary Coleman all along, and the show continued as normal. "We pitched that, and it went up to the top at Viacom again and it got a big no," he remembered.

youtube

2. The Awesomes

The show follows a group of superheroes who step in and replace the members of a legendary but disbanding superhero team. Under new leadership, The Awesomes attempt to put themselves back together in the face of intense media and government skepticism.

Why it was cancelled: On December 17, 2015, Hulu canceled The Awesomes after three seasons and did not renew it for a fourth season due to low ratings. The Awesomes was the first time Michael Tavera composed music for an adult animated series.

youtube

3. Invader Zim

Zim dreams of greatness. Unfortunately, though, he's hopelessly inept as a space invader. Desperate to be rid of the annoying Zim, his planet's leaders send him on a mission to infiltrate Earth, providing him with leftover, cobbled-together equipment. To their consternation, Zim succeeds in setting up a base on Earth and infiltrating human culture, posing as a human child as he plots the planet's downfall. Only Zim's archnemesis, Dib, recognizes that Zim is an alien, and of course, nobody believes Dib's claims.

Why it was cancelled: On the subject of why Invader Zim was cancelled, creator of the show Jhonen Vasquez said, "I could go on and on with variations of the most fantastic reasons for why the show was cancelled, but in the end, even I couldn't give you the whole and accurate truth for why the show got pulled," he wrote in a lengthy post on his website in 2010, nearly eight years after the show wrapped. "The most likely culprits are simply ratings and the sheer expense of the show, which was monstrously expensive at the time, especially when compared to more modern, flash-based savings fests."Nearly nine years later in 2019, Vasquez was interviewed by Syfy and said:

I never point to any one particular thing [as the reason for why Invader Zim was cancelled. The show could've come out at any point in history and I don't think it would ever really be appropriate... I think there's always horrible things happening in the world and genuine comedy comes from horrible things. At the time, it just happened to be things like Columbine and 9/11 and then people freak out because they don't want to offend anyone's sensibilities. It's a justified response to a certain extent; there's people who have been affected and they don't want to be reminded of this awful stuff… I just think that it did not jive well with Nickelodeon's image.

In an interview with Syfy in 2018, Richard Horvitz, the voice of Zim, was questioned about why the show got cancelled; he responded:

There's been a lot of rumors that have abounded for years about why Invader Zim was canceled. People think it's the Bloody GIR episode, because there's a quick subliminal shot of GIR all bloodied, but that’s not it at all. Nickelodeon knew about that shot and they didn't seem to mind. But what [the cancellation really was] is this plain simple fact: We had horrible ratings. There were two things that were going on in 2001. Our ratings were not doing well, our demographic at the time was not The Fairly OddParents demographic, which is what we premiered with, and we premiered to really, really good critical acclaim. But ratings-wise, the only real barometer [was the] target audience, 6 to 10 year olds, and I think that it was a little too much for that [demographic], and the parents also might have thought it was a little graphic for them. Our ratings never really got off the ground. One other thing that people often forget, is that the show premiered in March of 2001. By September of 2001, we had the horrible downing of the twin towers. Given the mood of the country at the time, I don't think people wanted to see shows that were about any kind of destruction or anything that had to do with someone trying to conquer the Earth.

youtube

4. The Oblongs

A clever comic parable of society's ills, "The Oblongs" depicts the warped world of a bizarre yet loving family of have-nots who live in a toxic valley and can't seem to beat the caste system of the beautiful people living high on the hill. The animated series is based on characters created by author Angus Oblong ("Creepy Susie and 13 Other Tragic Tales for Troubled Children").

Why it was cancelled: Could not find a specific answer. The WB network just decided to cancel it even though it had good ratings.

youtube

5. Wander Over Yonder

The series follows Wander, a nomadic and overly-optimistic intergalactic traveller and his best friend and steed, Sylvia the Zbornak, as they travel from planet to planet helping people to have fun and live free, despite the continuing encroachment of Lord Hater, one of the most powerful villains in the galaxy, and his army of Watchdogs.

The show's first season is episodic; there are very few strong ties between episodes, and they can be viewed independently of each other. In the second season, however, a more sequential story is introduced; as Lord Dominator begins to conquer the galaxy, the show's tone becomes more serious and the focus moves from stopping the rather incompetent Lord Hater to stopping the extremely competent Lord Dominator. As a result, the episodes are more closely linked and there are several developments in the overarching plot.

Why it was cancelled: The creators of the show were not given a specific reason, even though they had plans for a third season.

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#cartoon #animation #cancelled #clone high #the awesomes #invader zim #the oblongs #wander over yonder #top 5 list #Top List

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nutellarghh · 3 years

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Jealousy Is An Ugly Disease

https://liliaeth.tumblr.com/post/645856051888013313/random-teen-wolf-musings-i-have-to-give-all-the#notes

https://lukessideboob.tumblr.com/post/645860034972090368/since-people-always-use-stiless-many-over-the-top#notes

https://alan713ch.tumblr.com/post/645870048268910592/please-based-on-the-string-of-jobs-obrien-has#notes

@lukessideboob:

Since people always use Stiles’s many over the top moments to prove DOB is the better actor I think it’s worth meantioning that I can’t think of a single instance in which Scott gets to lose his temper. I can easily think of the many times Stiles is able to have an outburst. In the hospital, In the rain, in the police station, and I can point to say Crystal getting to really act when Victoria Argent dies or Holland Roden getting all those moments within her banshee arc. It goes without saying that Derek and Peter have big moments but the closest Scott ever getting to losing his head is when he tells off Rafael and while he’s clearly seathing in that moment he doesn’t yell, so if your metric for “good acting” is big hammy emotions than Tyler Posey was never even given a chance to impress you in Teen Wolf which is a shame because especially in Jane the Virgin he has a lot of subtle moments that blow me away.

(It’s also a commentary on the way the show progressively heaps more and more emotional burdens onto Scott without ever letting him process it but that’s a whole other can of worms)

@alan713ch: Please, based on the string of jobs O’Brien has had, and how safe they are, you can tell he’s acknowledged he has a very niche range

#they tried to make him the in boy a la tom holland right now #and it didn’t stick #because he doesn’t have the range #posey on the other hand does have it #even if he is still being passed over #just look at the jobs he’s done after teen wolf #o'brien would never

Lmfao the jealousy and delusion are strong within the Scott McCall Defense Squad circle jerk

Everyone acknowledged that Dylan O’Brien is the star AND the breakout star of Teen Wolf and that he’s the best actor on the show. Even Posey:

https://subbie-dreamz.tumblr.com/post/627810910664376320/dylan-obrien-is-the-best-actor-on-teen-wolf#notes

https://msmischief101.tumblr.com/post/616021130634035200/dylan-obrien-was-always-this-incredible

https://dans-eyelash.tumblr.com/post/618398883143450624/msmischief101-it-is-a-truth-universally

https://nephilimeq.tumblr.com/post/628922302402379776/fandomslash

https://punchedbymarkesmith.tumblr.com/post/642133466628177920/ian-bohen-praising-dylan-obrien-in-an-interview

https://lovelyleniece.tumblr.com/post/100856807554/hobriened-i-mean-the-way-he-plays-that

https://wellhalesbells.tumblr.com/post/78358191535/fairydustedtheory-tyler-hoechlin-wolfsbane-on#notes

https://haletostilinski.tumblr.com/post/60291934739

https://carlospy.tumblr.com/post/612307070495211520/tyler-talking-about-dylan-stiles-at-wolfsbane-c

https://hoechlinlovesstiles.tumblr.com/post/76947862109/hes-gonna-be-a-massive-movie-star

https://hoechlinlovesstiles.tumblr.com/post/56594213399/pilot-commentary-pt-1

https://hoechlinlovesstiles.tumblr.com/post/56599625147/codebreaker-commentary-pt-2

https://fandomslash.tumblr.com/post/186311236574/pilot-commentary-pt-2

https://urnotgettingmyurl.tumblr.com/tagged/commentaries *the whole tag*

Antis always bemoan the fact that Scott McCall wasn’t given any complex, “juicy” emotional scene to impress the audience with in Teen Wolf. But they conveniently forget that the only reason Tyler Posey wasn’t given any complex, emotional scene to work with is because Tyler Posey is an objectively shitty actor who can’t act to save his life. The truth is that Tyler Posey couldn’t deliver any complex, emotional scene. So the Teen Wolf writers didn’t give him any ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Dylan O’Brien and Tyler Hoechlin are out there having successful careers, getting praised for their phenomenal acting talent, and booking major lead roles in critically acclaimed movies.

Meanwhile, Tyler Posey shows his below average dick on OF to be “relevant” and keeps begging his buddy Jeff Davis to bring Teen Wolf back for another season because he needs a job and no one wants to hire his talentless ass. (And based on the few minor gigs Posey has had, and how safe they are, you can tell he’s acknowledged he can’t act for shit.)

Tyler Posey and his stans thought he was gonna be the next big thing when he booked the role of Scott, but that never happened because he can’t act and doesn’t have the range, and Tyler Posey went from “Teen Wolf” to “Teen Flop” right after the show got cancelled.

***********************

I am publishing this anonymous message I got purely because obviously a lot of work and effort went into collecting the sources.

But please, please let’s not turn this into an argument. I honestly love movies, and I go deep into character analysis and debates about the actors are useful - they can point something out that we have missed in the first impressions we got.

Let’s keep this a debate, not an argument.

#teen wolf #dylan o'brien #tyler posey #submission

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simastysims · 3 years

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SIMASTY Season 1 Episode 4 “The Homecoming”

Originally posted January 2019 on simasty.com

It was finally the morning of the wedding and the Siloli mansion was abuzz with the sound of preparations under way. Whilst Brystle had insisted on a low key wedding, Burke still wanted to ensure that every detail was meticulously carried out. And so as Brystle went down the grand staircase in her silk robe and mule slippers that morning she was a little overwhelmed with all the comings and goings of the servants. Of all the staff at Siloli Brystle felt she had made a connection with Nannette Bobbins, the head of housekeeping. Nannette, unlike the other staff at Siloli, was not hired by the first Mrs Simmington and as such had no allegiance to her or the rules she had put in place. She felt that the other staff, particularly Joseph and Mrs Bummerson, were unjustly making things hard for Brystle. Nannette had made her decision to be supportive of the future Mrs Simmington from day one and on this happiest of days she went out of her way to brighten Brystle’s morning. After chatting with Nannette, Brystle returned to her bedroom and got a beautiful surprise as she opened the doors. The room had been totally filled with flowers in the short time she had been gone.

As Brystle took it all in, she was unaware that Burke had crept in the room behind her. He made his presence known by gently kissing her neck. Brystle turned around and gazed at the man she loved.

Burke took Brystle in his arms and pulled her close for a lingering smooch.

Brystle felt more confident than ever in her decision to marry Burke. Last night her telephone conversation with Mayhew was a fading memory. She had made her choice and that choice was to be with Burke. They moved in for one last kiss as boyfriend and girlfriend.

Mayhew had arrived at the hospital to collect his wife Malaudia. She was being released after a prolonged stay in the simitarium. Whilst Mayhew was relieved that his wife was well enough to be leaving the hospital, it was also with a heavy heart for deep down he knew he was no longer in love with his wife. He cared for her deeply and she was the mother of his daughter. But for Mayhew the passion was gone in their marriage for he was in love with Brystle.Mayhew was shown by a friendly nurse to the office of Dr Mick Broscanni, the psymchiatrist who had been treating Malaudia the past year. The two men firmly shook hands as they greeted one another.

Mayhew nodded in acceptance. He could not turn his back on Malaudia at this time. A few moments later Mick showed Mayhew out into the courtyard at the rear of the hospital. Here a lone Malaudia sat taking in the tranquil garden scenery. Mayhew walked over to join his wife.

Mayhew could see how fragile his wife still was. And as he still cared deeply for her he couldn’t let her feel that she was going to be a let down so he tried to lighten the mood.

Mayhew held his wife’s hand as he nodded and looked away from her. Malaudia meanwhile was having serious anxious doubts.

Heathen was dressed in his wedding suit already. He had decided on a fabulous red tuxedo number and hoped his bold choice of colour would not upstage the bride. It would probably infuriate his father but that was his problem not Heathen’s. Besides Heathen was feeling on top of the world right now and he wanted to express himself through his outfits. As he descended the grand staircase Joseph, the major-domo of the house, appeared.

Heathen told Joseph that would not be necessary. Whilst Fred was an unexpected arrival Heathen was glad that he was here. When he had left San Myshuno to return home it had not been on the best of terms with Fred. The pair were lovers and whilst it had only been for a relatively short time it had been intense. When Fred had been persistent in advising Heathen to accept the wedding invitation and to make up with his father, Heathen had got angry and left the city after a blazing row. But now after everything had worked out with his father, for the time being at least, Heathen wanted to tell Fred that he had been right all along in urging Heathen to come home. And so he rushed to the drawing room to greet his lover.

Heathen took Fred by the hand and led him to the sofa where they sat together.

The young men giggled as they got up from the sofa. Both were in a very flirty mood by this stage. Suddenly Fred took Heathen in his arms and pulled him close for an impromptu kiss that took Heathen by total surprise.

They both came up for air, Heathen’s heart racing. And he knew right there that he was in love with Fred Rimmard. Did Fred feel the same way?

After much passionate smooching, Heathen led Fred out of the drawing room. Joseph was re-arranging some flowers in the hallway when he saw the young Simmington heir take the young man up the grand stairway, no doubt leading him to his boudoir for some raw, passionate woohoo making. There was no doubt about it. Heathen definitely took after his mother when it came to men…

Later that morning young Mimsy Drysdale was spending time with her granny, Mother Drysdale, in the kitchen of their new home. Mimsy loved spending time with her grandmother and vice versa. For Mother Drysdale this past year had been invaluable bonding time with her grand-daughter. It was over this period that the spiteful woman had been poisoning the impressionable young girl’s mind against her mother Malaudia. Mother Drysdale was confident that young Mimsy would totally shun her mother and hopefully that would be instrumental in sending Malaudia back to the simitarium. If not, Mother had a few tricks up her sleeve. But for now she was enjoying watching her grand-daughter wash up in the kitchen.

The vindictive old woman loved her nectar and would drink a bottle a day. So what if it was only noon now and she was already on her 3rd glass? Mimsy wouldn’t tell on her. Mother had seen to that with her emotional blackmail – if Mimsy ever told on granny then she would have to go away and Mimsy would be left all alone and she wouldn’t want that would she? Mimsy was quite joyful today and suddenly mentioned her mother for the first time in weeks.

Any mention of Malaudia from Mimsy was shot down quite quickly. Mother would not allow any form of an attachment to commence. It was then they heard Mayhew’s car pull up into the drive. Mimsy quickly ran into the hall. Outside Mayhew and Malaudia approached the front door. Malaudia paused and took in the building for it was a home she did not know.

Once inside Mimsy rushed to hug her father but did not say anything to Malaudia. As her daughter hugged Mayhew, Malaudia took in her surroundings. Mother Drysdale approached them from the kitchen.

Mayhew saw that Mimsy’s indifference and comment had stung Malaudia and he tried to reassure her as Mimsy babbled on.

Malaudia nodded and continued to look around. Mayhew looked at his mother and shook his head for he didn’t know what else to say. Mother Drysdale was not one lost for words.

Mother Drysdale then turned to Malaudia and did what she did best – continuing to be a two faced witch to her daughter-in-law.

As soon as her family were out if sight in the living room the fake smile vanished from the unforgiving old woman’s face.

The wedding was just an hour away and some guests were arriving. Per Brystle’s request, the wedding had been kept quite low key. Guests were kept to a bare minimum. No magazine photospread of the nuptials. In fact, a sizeable donation to a charity of Brystle’s choice, The Foundation for Underachieving Children, Kids Or Famished Families, was made instead.However there were a few guests Burke had deemed a necessity to come. Such as the Flump couple, Ronald and Salamia. Ronald was the Mayor of the city and considered himself to be of vast importance. Burke normally couldn’t stand the man but Ronald, through his political connections, had been instrumental in securing the contracts in the South Shang Simla Sea Leases . This was a multi-billion deal between Burke’s company and the Shang Simla government that allowed the tankers of WindenburgSimmington to pass through the busy trading route of the ocean that was part of Shang Simla. Of course Ronald, being a corrupt businessman as well as a so called politician had pocketed quite a few Simoleons himself through the deal, a fact he liked to brag about.

Burke smiled and looked over at the silent Salamia. She was completely vacant. How could anyone compare her to his sweet Brystle? Just then Burke caught sight of his son coming down the stairs with a young man Burke was unfamiliar with. Burke made a mental note to question Heathen later about who this young man was. Heathen meanwhile caught sight of the notorious Flumps and nudged Fred to tell them who they were. Fred, who was now dressed in a spare suit of Heathen’s snorted with laughter at what Heathen was whispering to him. Burke turned his attention back to Ronald who was continuing to boast and brag about himself.

As Ronald continued talking himself up and Salamia clapped her hands in glee as the money rained down on the floor, Heathen couldn’t help point out to Fred through hushed giggling about the inadequate size of Ronald’s lower extremities.

As the Flumps were arriving, Fathom was wandering the house feeling bored. She had dressed for the wedding even though she had knowledge, through overhearing a telephone conversation the previous evening, that could potentially cause the cancelation of the whole thing. For now Fathom had not decided what she would do with that knowledge and instead had been drawn to the kitchen’s of Siloli mansion and the wonderful smells of Mrs Bummerson’s baking.

With one quick swoop Fathom cut herself a large piece of cake. She was about to leave when she looked at the wedding topper again. The 2 intertwined hearts and what they symbolized infuriated her knowing what she did. Fathom took the topper of the cake and shoved it entirely into her mouth before taking her cake and eating it.

Meanwhile upstairs Brystle, with the help of Nanette, had finished getting ready for her pending nuptials to Burke. She was feeling both excited and nervous at the same time. Her wedding hour was finally upon her.

Nanette followed Brystle as she took a seat on the couch. Brystle kept crossing her legs and tapping her fingers. She was clearly nervous so Nanette tried her best to keep her mind focused.

Brystle stood up and grabbed her phone from the dressing table. She realised there was a call she had to make. Without waiting for Nanette to leave the room she dialled the number she thought she would never call again.

Meanwhile downstairs, Joseph had discovered the half eaten wedding cake in the kitchen. With only moments to go before the wedding he had to break the bad news to Mrs Bummerson.

Joseph remained stern and Mrs Bummerson knew this was no prank. The full horror of what had happened quickly descended upon her…

Will Mrs Bummerson get to make another cake on time? Was Nanette being sincere about not being jealous at all? Why are Ronald’s feet so small? And what will Mother Drysdale do next to poor Malaudia? Tune in for the next episode where some of these questions may get answered….

#dynasty #the sims 4 #thesims4 #thesims #simlit #fanfiction #fanfic #simblr #soap opera #soapopera #80stv #80stv shows #soap #blake carrington #krystle carrington #fallon carrington #steven carrington

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ks-caster · 4 years

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It’s Like Watching Fanfiction – An (Un)Necessarily Long Critique of The 100 Seasons 6 and 7

Ah, the familiar cry of the content-starved fan, particularly as our favorite shows descend into the depths of mischaracterization, unexpected ships, hiatus, abrupt cancellation and shock-value death endings. I’ve said it myself about so many of my shows, while wanting to spend some time watching the characters but not wanting to re-hash episodes I’ve nearly memorized: “I wish I could just watch fanfiction!”

But the further into seasons 6 and 7 I’ve gotten, the more I’ve come to realize that my dream of having new and exciting possibilities for the characters come miraculously to a screen near me wouldn’t be the pleasant experience I’d imagined.

Now, depending on the type of ending you like – hopeful but with a lot of lose ends left to your imagination, or bittersweet but more definite, you could consider either seasons 1-4 or 1-5 their own complete stories.

Both seasons 4 and 5 ended in a way that suggested an unknown but likely positive future. They could have been considered conclusions for the main characters’ developmental arcs, and while season 5 went a little off the rails in terms of offscreen character development and sudden new characters, they both stayed fairly close to the original concept: survivors living in the ruins of the apocalypse. All four (or five) seasons emphasized the importance of the found family dynamic (although those dynamics shifted radically in season 5 due to the time-skip, they remained an important source of character motivation).

But seasons 6 and 7? Those feel like I’m watching fanfiction. And I don’t love it.

A story told on a whole new planet with a new environment, culture and cast of original characters was always going to feel like an AU – it sort of is, no matter how you swing it. If that was all that had changed, then I think the story would still feel cohesive.

If it weren’t for the timey whimey bullshit.

Now, fun fact: when reading fanfiction, I love time travel stories. I haven’t posted any myself but I’ve sought out and read them voraciously, for every fandom I’m in. I love the idea of characters meeting themselves or their friends at radically different ages, plot points and levels of experience and the way that changes things for both groups. (Yes, I’m also a Whovian if that wasn’t blatantly obvious). I also love a good amnesia arc. And I DID think that the Josephine/Clarke body possession thing was pretty cool.

So why did season 6 and most* of season 7 fall as flat for me as they did?

The simple fact is that some things – and characters’ emotional dynamics are one of those things – are so much easier to get across in writing than on screen. A good actor can make us feel the character’s emotions, but unless the film goes full-on Clarke’s mind space, we can’t really know what they’re thinking in individual moments. For the most part film as a genre has ways around this, but if it’s mishandled, then the emotional beats come off all wrong. (See for reference Tony Stark’s funeral where half the actors didn’t know what was going on due to Disney’s spoiler fears.)

If you’re going to include time skips in which things have happened and character dynamics have changed, you cannot handle it wrong.

Which brings us back to seasons 6 and (so far) 7 of The 100. So far to date we’ve had all of this occur either offscreen or asynchronously enough to be confusing to an audience watching the episodes in real time:

Jordan’s entire life prior to meeting Napkru in the waking world

Octavia’s character development while living on Skyring with the Diyozas

Hope’s first 22 years of life, on Skyring and (I presume) Bardo

Echo, Hope and Gabriel living on Skyring for 5 years with Orlando

Going back a little further, we also have the season 5 timeskip, which brought us Spacekru as found family, Clarke adopting tiny!heda, and Octavia building Wonkru. Now season 5 took care to show us Wonkru flashbacks and dedicate time to show Spacekru and the Griffin family loving on each other, making inside jokes etc. But it was still incredibly jarring for the audience in a lot of ways, because at the end of the day, we’ve spent four years with the character dynamics and development doing one thing, and no amount of telling us that they’ve had 6 years to do another thing while our time with them only lasted about one year in comparison is ever going to undo the importance of “show don’t tell.”

Let’s take Bellarkers’ beef with Becho for example. (Disclaimer: Since I don’t really have a strong opinion either way on the popular Bellamy ships, I hope that I’m representing what I’ve read from other people accurately.)

I understand cognitively that Bellamy and Clarke knew each other for one year (during which they were in a lot of intense situations that really didn’t leave them the emotional space to figure out how they felt about each other outside of “I don’t want to lose this person”) and Bellamy and Echo knew each other for seven years (six of which they had plenty of low-stress time to get to know each other, grow and mature side-by-side, etc.).

But that doesn’t compute on an emotional level when I as a watcher went straight from watching Bellamy and Raven tearfully eulogizing Clarke on the ring, to him turning up with a coffee mug and a plucky attitude to rescue her the second he finds out she’s alive and in trouble. I don’t think that could compute emotionally for me without having spent the last few years watching the dynamics shift and Becho happen. And that was with the writers giving me as a watcher an episode at the end of season 4 where Bellamy stops Echo from killing herself and connects with her on an emotional level, and then one at the beginning of season 5 where we got to see the spacekru dynamics, including them being together.

So we’re watching this show, many of us for the found family character relationships (god knows it’s not for all the positive happy feeling I get from watching *checks notes* ah, yes, characters having to constantly choose who to kill off in a string of increasingly huge and horrible genocides. *Side-eyes my life choices for getting into this fandom in the first place.*) Okay, we’re watching this show for the characters, and between seasons 4 and 5, many of those dynamics radically shift offscreen. Becho is the easiest and probably most talked-about example (well, and the Blake siblings, but the radical change shown in Octavia’s character between 4 and 5 makes that at least a little easier to choke down) but there are plenty of others, take your pick.

Although it makes perfect sense for a lot to change between separated groups of people in a half dozen years, it makes a lot less sense to an audience watching week to week, particularly when the show’s limited amount of screen time was too focused on plot to really delve into those changes and let us see and understand them. That was what made me think that the show was headed into jump the shark territory in season 5, but I really wanted to know what happened to my faves (Octavia, Raven and Memori, to be specific) so I kept watching.

Our fandom’s excellent writers spent the hiatus crafting mid-time-skip vignettes and missing character moments, and I spent the hiatus reading them. And I remember thinking that it would have been great if even a quarter of this content could have been put into the show to ease the audience into the dynamic shifts – but of course they’d never have the screen time to do all of that.

Especially, coming back to the main point, since written fiction allows the audience to see inside the characters’ heads, while television (usually) does not. It’s much easier to write a scene in which, say, two characters who have known each other for 7 years show that they’ve gotten into a relationship some time before the scene, and convince the audience that their relationship is good and healthy and genuine, than it would be to produce one for TV.

And then we come to seasons 6 and 7 – the 2-part AU longfic, stuffed full of OCs, loosely connected to the “science” of the original show, and heavily reliant on memory-bending time travel as a plot device.

As season 6 airs, the audience hasn’t really had a chance to process all the radical changes from season 5, and already we have a Marper child running around furthering the plot, and Octavia walks into the Green Flash from Pirates of the Caribbean and walks back out with a personality transplant.

Meanwhile, Clarke gets an actual personality transplant, and it takes even the people closest to her a concerningly long time to notice. Now, if I’d read that in a fic, the writer might’ve taken care to remind me as a reader – particularly after a long hiatus between seasons – that with the exception of Madi none of Clarke’s friends have seen her for more than a couple of weeks in 6 years, so them not noticing for a while that she’s behaving strangely isn’t really all that strange. But on TV, I don’t get to see Gaia’s thoughts when Clarke lets Madi go to school despite the danger – Tati Gabrielle’s facial expressions can only do so much to make up the difference. Because the time spent apart was not (and really could not be, based on the structure of the show) properly acknowledged on screen, scenes like that one leave audiences floundering and pointing out bad writing.

Having watched 7x02 The Garden, I think if I went back and watched season 6 after Octavia returns from the Anomaly, her conduct – especially around Bellamy – would make a lot more sense. (That was the plan for this weekend actually – but my damn Wi-Fi conked out…) However at the time it just seemed weird and unnatural. Had it been the only example of off-screen or asynchronous character development, it would have been a lot easier to swallow. However, season 5 happened, meaning both that I was still getting used to all of the new dynamics and that I had a higher standard for Octavia’s off-screen development, because we got enough bunker flashbacks that I felt like I at least understood Blodreina.

What would have made the whole thing make a lot more sense a year ago would have been if the hair and makeup department had made an effort to make her look older, so that we could see time had passed for her. Now, Marie is 33 in real life, and so was the Octavia who figured out that up is down and got Davy Jones Locker to send her back ran out of the Anomaly, so yes, that is what an actual 33-year-old looks like, and the media has distorted my perception of age. But from an audience perspective, I saw an actress playing a 23-year-old go in, and the same actress playing the same 23-year-old come out.

Gabriel pointed out that her hair was longer, but that only accounted for a few months of time. Since she went in looking dirty, wounded and exhausted, and came out clean, healthy and energetic, she could have passed for younger before I would have thought she was older. (In fact, I want to say there was a theory circulating at that time that the Octavia who came out of the Anomaly was actually a younger version of herself, and she was missing memories because she’d never formed them. I don’t remember whose theory this was though. If you know or if it’s your content I’m referencing please feel free to let me know and I’ll edit!)

In addition, the shifting loyalties in Wonkru near the end of season 5 complicated the character situation – in season 6, the majority of Wonkru peeps (lookin’ at you, Miller and Indra) switched over to the commander’s side. While Indra didn’t really have enough screen time to express an opinion about Octavia, Miller was very clear in season 6 that she was anathema now – which although that was probably a semi-reasonable step for his character, it just felt like someone took his Bellamy-and-or-Clarke-following season 1-4 character and popped it into his season 6 costume without taking the time to address the road he took to get there.

Post-lockerAnomaly Octavia had to face and slay her demons. (Grumbles and links the interested reader to this POST from @osleyakomwonkru regarding that horseshit.) Afterwards, she shows a major shift in personality, particularly towards her brother. Because we as the audience wouldn’t see her time on skyring for about year in real time (or learn that she was ten years older and therefore a lot more mature, the chemical changes of which would account for at least some of the difference even if she couldn’t remember anything else) we had no choice but to associate her change with the slaying of Blodreina, which seemed like a ham-fisted way of forcing her a quick and slick redemption arc and prepping The Blake Siblings to go back to being ride-or-die for each other in season 7.

Raven’s season 6 personality was also radically different from her 1-5 development – while I understand her having a remaining beef with Clarke and being emotional due to Shaw’s death (RIP!) the fact that the writing in season 6 reduced her to the nagging shrew trope until they needed her to do a coding deus ex machina just added to the feeling that I was watching someone take the characters around, change them to their own preferences (even if that preference was to push some into the background and make them tools for the B-plot) and toss them into an AU story. Which I could have enjoyed more if I had been reading it and therefore seeing inside the characters’ heads – and if I hadn’t paid for the privilege with ad revenue instead of voluntary clicks of the kudos/like/reblog/comment buttons.

Another issue with time skip relationship is exposition for the lesser known characters’ backstories. Both seasons 6 and 7 have so far had dramatic character mother death reveals that were conveniently not told to their most important people specifically because the appropriate time to tell those stories would have been during the offscreen time skips. I will (grudgingly) accept Echo, an adult making a conscious (and familiar) decision to change up her personality to fit into and survive within her environment, choosing not to tell a traumatic story that reminds her of her past. (She’s my next meta – stay tuned!)

I will not in a million years, however, believe that the Clarke Griffin who I watched for four seasons be set up as the blatantly obvious “compassionate mom-friend protagonist” adopted a traumatized 6-year-old, moved into said child’s village, burned or buried the bodies of everyone who lived there, and never ever brought up the child’s dead birth parents.

No way. The ONLY reason that could have possibly been scripted in that way was because that conversation needed to be there for plot reasons and the appropriate time for it to have been had was during the 6 years they spent off screen. Similarly, while (again) I’ll buy that Echo chose not to talk about her mom’s death with Bellamy before he decided to be a dick about it, I fully believe that the timing of that conversation was only there because if it had occurred on the ring where it would have been more appropriate, the audience would have missed it.

Now, picture this: if the scene with Madi had been in a written fanfic, Clarke could have said “you didn’t lose me,” Madi could have said “I didn’t mean you,” and Clarke could have remembered Madi telling her the story of her birth mom dying in her arms. Then Clarke could have mentally made the decision that she didn’t want Madi to relive that in an attempt to empathize with her, and she makes an effort to convince her that she’s fine. In just 2 or 3 paragraphs a written story could have effectively conveyed both the exposition and the emotional beats of the scene, concluding with Clarke making a (maybe misguided but still sweet) attempt to be a good mom by not dredging that up for Madi (or something – I’m not defending the crappy and inconsistent writing of Clarke’s parenting we’ve on screen so far).

Moving right along, we had a lovely flashback montage of Hope and Dev, which was sufficient to make me (and several of the tumblrs I follow) care about Dev at least enough to be saddened by his death. However, what we didn’t get was a damn crumb of flashback showing Orlando and Anomalykru developing any kind of familial relationship between him agreeing to train them, and whatever dynamic we were supposed to pick up on at the end of that episode. I got a little protective big sister vibe from Echo and Hope but that’s it. They apparently expended their allotment of emotion-inducing flashbacks on the dead guy, and failed entirely to make me give a shit about (as it turned out) the next dead guy.

Now we’re going into an episode with Octavia on (presumably) Bardo in the promo, so I’m guessing we get to see her skyring-self link up with her return-to-Gabriel-with-clean-hair self. As least with Octavia’s jumping storyline it seems like the writers have consistently made some kind of effort to fill in the blanks.

But we’re also looking at the rest of the season where Echo, Gabriel, Hope, oh hi Jordan I forgot about you again, Diyoza, Octavia, and probably Bellamy and Hoth!Kru (AKA team let’s follow Raven onto a strange planet without putting on suits or having an exit strategy, yay!) have all experienced asynchronous development over periods of multiple years. Given the show’s track record from seasons 5 and 6, I strongly suspect that this won’t be handled any better, meaning that the final season of this show is going to try not only to resolve all the plot points, but to toss in a bunch MORE offscreen character development and hope we catch on.

Beyond character development jumps, we also have Raven and Murphy losing their seasons 1-5 development in season 6 only to have to re-learn and re-change back to who they already were in seasons 4 and 5. Murphy learned to value his spacekru family and stop putting himself first 100% of the time, and yet his arc in season 6 happened. Raven has always been involved in the big life-or-death decisions, and had her being-the-bad-guy moment in season 4 with the rationing, but as we saw in 7x03 the writers really wanted to… redo all of that for her? The girl blew up a bridge full of guys and flash-fried a 300-person army when she was 18; blood on her hands may not be fun but what’s with seasons 6 and 7 acting like it’s something new?

While I’m aware that Jason said his seasons are individual movies (don’t admit that you’re bad at continuity buddy ‘cause that’s what it sounds like) seasons 1-5 and 6&7 are clearly telling separate stories (or 1-4, 5, 6-7 if you prefer). The trouble with 6&7 is that unlike seasons 1-4 (and sort-of 5) we no longer know the characters. Every time someone sits still too long, character-development wise, plot comes along and hits the reset button, tosses them into a wormhole for a couple of years and they come back with the same face but no continuity. It was difficult enough to deal with in season 5 – between 6 and 7 I just can’t keep up. (Even writing this meta, I have to keep going back because I remembered another character who fell into this trap.)

Now if a fanfic writer had done the exact same thing – same plot, same time skips, same organization – it would have played out completely different to the readers. We could have gotten to see inside the character’s minds when they arrived back on screen, seeing things with new, older eyes. We could have had minimally invasive flashbacks to show important exposition (like the disaster that was the conversation about Madi’s mom) and verbal descriptions to point out differences like Octavia’s ten-years-older body. Additionally, the plots of seasons 6 and 7 are so different yet full of overdone callbacks to the earlier seasons – if a fan was writing their own AU story but still wanted some of the trappings of the original plot I’d get it, but on a TV show written by the same people it just feels like they ran out of ideas.

Watching seasons 6 and 7 is exactly like watching fanfiction would be – but without the written and fan-made advantages of fanfiction, they fall flat.

*I do like season 7 better than season 6 because the content of the individual episodes containing Murphy/Emori/Raven and Octavia/Diyoza/bbyHope was still enjoyable content, so 2 out of 4 I have liked so far, despite this very very long rant I’ve just written explaining why as a whole I rather hate the season overall.

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twiststreet · 4 years

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Best TV 2019

I think I’m not going to see anything that cracks my top 10 list for the rest of the year, so... here’s my top 10 because I like making top 10 lists when years end...

1) Fleabag - the Finale

That episode could have gone a million other ways. I’m glad it went this way. A perfect landing. If I made a list for the decade, it’d be on it, though way, way, way behind Twin Peaks, because duh. But I group Peaks, Atlanta and Fleabag in my head, just for how they each... commit not to soap opera like most of television, but to texture and expression. Yes, the “plot” of the season feels like a very classical 50′s story-- forbidden love, and priests and all of that-- but if you really dig into why it works, it’s those fucking gorgeous monologues, the way scenes are both hot or deeply disturbing depending on who’s watching and what they’re bringing to it, how it feels to be “seen” by the show in all its various ways (whether as part of the plot or in its main character’s loneliness and self-loathing). The texture of that show!

There’s a Phoebe Bridge interview where she talks about how she was excited to meet Donald Glover because she thought they were doing the same things, and Glover in turn talks about showing Fleabag to the Atlanta writer’s room, and I just think both those shows and Twin Peaks even moreso just... gets what’s worth watching more than cliffhanger shows or whatever, in how... they all use discord notes (e.g. Fleabag’s bracing “score”) or whatever other techniques to throw the audience off caring about some “what’s going to happen next” and really put them more within the moment, surrounded by a moment. Unmooring the audience.

Nothing as funny as the penis sculpture gag from season 1 in it, though.

2) Barry - Ronny/Lily

Constant delights. The tree gag. The tree gag. The tree gag.

Just a perfect episode of TV. Sort of the exact opposite of whatever the hell it was I was talking about before, because this one’s just a lesson in sort of classical “Because of that, then this” screenwriting. But with the pleasures of that, of just.... All the stuff in the car. Just a delightful memory, you know? A half hour where you just have to watch it and can’t turn away from it.

And the most exciting part of it being... I think it gives that crew a new North Star to chase after. What does Barry look like in season 3 after they know they can do an episode like Ronny/Lilly and the show can accommodate that and that they have that in them? It’s the kind of episode that makes you excited to see more, but for artistic reasons, because it makes you excited about the people creating the show.

3) Lodge 49 - Le Reve Impossible

Everything in season 2 built to this episode-- Lodge 49 is a show about people coming together, about people needing to come together because of the collapses in their economies, narratives, lives, etc., and in this episode, after a tough season, they finally do, to watch Paul Giamatti in a food-eating contest and have an adventure that completely satisfies what I wanted the show to be all season. Levitating.

I thought my pick for this year would be the episode that flashed-back to the frustrated woman’s story at the very core of this season, and I really admired that episode and all sorts of choices they made in it (the staging of that one, with characters from different timelines blending, or just how much it made explicit how the narratives of the women characters on the show were more important or deeply felt than the Boy’s Adventure stories), but ... This one is the one I really love, and that speaks more to what I’ll miss about that show.

Time, Vulture, New York Times-- it’s on the Top 10 lists for all of them, the cancelled show no one watched. We have a million streaming networks now and yet there’s really no space on any of them for this show??? Bullshit.

4) Documentary Now - Coop

Richard Kind. Paula Pell, too, but more importantly, Richard Kind.

RICHARD KIND.

5) Russian Doll - “Ariadne”, the Season Finale

Not as fun a showcase for Natasha Lyonne as the other ones, but that final sequence. That final shot with the timelines merging, I found that very memorable and extremely satisfying. Maybe the single best thing visually all year, besides the tree gag in Barry. Lyonne’s performance in this show, though-- I thought she was so goddamn much fun to watch...

6) Righteous Gemstones -- Episode 3, “They are Weak But He is Strong”

This is the episode that introduces Walt Goggins’s character, Baby Billy Freeman. I never got tired of hearing someone on the show say “Baby Billy.” Not once. The best character name, the absolute best character name. Plus, this episode ends with this site gag at a mall that...That crew has done that site gag before, in one of their movies, but I just like it when they do it, I guess.

And this was also my favorite showcase for John Goodman on the show. I mean, yes, obviously Edi Patterson’s Judy Gemstone is the funniest thing without question on that show. But that show having John Goodman and Walt Goggins in it, the other characters could really be played by pretty much anybody and I’d probably still be pretty high on the show.

I also like that the show wasn’t as judgmental as I was expecting. I think a West-Coast-TV-liberals version of the show would be much more cynical about televangelism, whereas I think this show gets... that yeah, there’s a money part and a flawed people part, but that’s not all incompatible with there being an element of a sincerity there, too. I may not be a fan of what they’re sincere about, not being religious or a big supporter of that flavor of mind-juice, you know, but... I think it’s more dimensional than like... what I can easily imagine what some LA shitheads making. Without going the other way and being treacly about it either...

7) Get Krackin -- Season 2, Episode 2

I like the one where the Kates had a studio audience. I didn’t know about this show, barely heard of it when I did find it, because no one cares about Australia in the U.S., at all, even a little, not since Kangeroo Jack broke our hearts. Meanwhile, the down-under-ers had this show! Why didn’t they find a way to let us know about this show? Or the Katering Show?

This was one of my favorite things this year just because... how often do you get to discover things anymore with the internet? I loved discovering things when I was a kid, which... I suspect is something that’s getting lost with people now. Everything’s more accessible but my suspicion is that’s making fewer craphounds rather than more, you know? And so to just be randomly surfing around and find something... You just have to be extra-appreciative now when that happens because it’s just... Either it’s gotten harder or probably more likely, I’ve gotten lazier (because I mean, obviously there are tons of movies I haven’t seen, but)...

8) This Time with Alan Partridge-- Episode 2

The bleacher gag.

9) Pen15 - “AIM”

A TV episode about what it was like for teenage girls to discover AOL chat rooms. I just liked how specific that was. I thought Plus One from this team was funnier than Pen15, but Pen15 just found a lot of things to do episodes about that felt really fresh to me, or stuff I hadn’t seen shows about before.

I kinda roll my eyes when I hear people talk about representation because ... I think people miss what’s important, which is ... An experience being represented like with this show, rather than just a racial phenotype, you know...? Like, who gives a shit if they put an Indian character in Black Widow or whatever because (a) it’s not going to have anything to do with me or anyone I’ve known’s experience because it’s in the middle of the usual same-old-same-old boring shit, and (b) it’ll probably be played by ScarJo, she likes to do that, whatever, we all have weird fetishes.

10) Succession -- Season Finale

I’m not as hyped about Succession as the rest of the internet because I think this season, I really got in my head about how... You know, it’s wealth porn. Is it as bad as Entourage? No. But is it from a different universe than that show? I’m not sure. People can talk about “oh the rich characters are bad” but I think the thing underneath it is just... The same reason they sell Vanity Fair magazines, or that people used to watch Lifestyles of the Rich and the Famous back in the 80′s, or whatever. Middle class people liking to hear about how the rich are bad, but not in a way that really challenges them, in a way that’s just sort of ... porn-y. Or I don’t know. I kinda just circled this season in my head more.

Plus, I mean, this season also kinda felt more like just a soap opera to me, like Dynasty or something, just with characters I like a lot (aka Geri!!!), more than the last one did where... Discovering who the characters were was more of the delight of that first season, especially with Tom or Cousin Greg, and that pleasure became sort of absent here as it became more about ... the different characters maneuvering or coping or whatever. (Plus last season had the sin eater monologue which I think about, like, all the time so...).

But the finale really delivered the goods on that soap level. It was very satisfying to see the seasons’ Big Move. (And I mean, the rap scene from an episode or two before that, but...).

WORST TV: that episode of GLOW where the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling go out to the desert to reminisce about the holocaust.

#year in review

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god-hunter · 4 years

Text

Everything Has Changed

Remember when I said, “What the Fuck am I doing?” Remember how I said that was a rant for another day??

Well so much went down between weekends that now it’s just “What the Fuck happened?”

After 5 Years of dating, my girlfriend and I broke up!

4 days before her birthday too... Ouch.

This was a long time and coming. It was a conversation that really needed to happen. And neither of us expected it to go down the way it did. But we were both really unhappy. And neither of us really understood why.

But the more we talked and agreed about what isn’t working... The more we both agreed that this doesn’t make sense anymore. And then we just started to realize what was happening. What made the most logical sense...

I gotta get the fuck outta here.

So maybe, I should back up. To the outsider, everything will be out of context. But I’ll try to give solid highlights of the relationship, to show all the red flags that we ignored.

* During our flirt-ship, non-dating phase she told me that she was Bi while we had drinks. Immediately I thought, “Oh man... I’ve done this before. That’s gonna suck.” I must’ve said something like that in a funny way, because she reassured me not to worry. She’s a boring one. She just likes seeing naked women.

* Right before our 1st date, I unknowingly trolled this girl on Facebook for being bitchy to our mutual friend. I didn’t know it was her! I forgot the topic, but her and I completely disagreed. And with the identity completely out of my mind, my unfiltered response pissed her off. So it was on our 1st date that we even had a talk about our differences regarding the topic, whatever that was. I recall being very surprised that it was her. I had no idea. But we both explained ourselves and took it as an opportunity to tell our personal stories, which made us meet in the middle.

* On the 2nd date, we made out and it was go time. It was going to happen. I didn’t bring condoms because I had no idea where it was gonna go yet. She had some, and it was very clear. Tonight I was gonna fuck a fat chick. [This isn’t about that.]. I recall being very tentative and not being sure if I wanted it to happen at all. But she was so into me and everything I was doing, and bit by bit it felt really good. And right.

* Our 3rd date was at a Wedding, honestly the day after our 2nd date. Everything just worked out at the last minute and I was able to change my Plus1. [The original Plus1 cancelled on me and was very upset that she couldn’t make it. But it all worked out.]. Outside of all the fun dancing and introducing her to all of my friends, we talked about stuff we want in life. She said she doesn’t want kids, and I knew that I did. I wanted a son. But I didn’t want to fight about it or blow up a good thing. We were both like, “Alright. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

* After it became official we went on a random date where we weren’t sure what was on the radio at a pizza place. And we were starting to borderline argue whether it was a cover or not. To the point where I said, “Relax, it’s okay.” And that threw her off. I had said a trigger word. She always hated that word as a Hardcore Feminist.

* At another date, we got into the whole “Relax” argument again and how I need to curb that word out of my vocabulary and say something different. Or just... not feel like I have to tell her to calm down when she’s acting all irate over seemingly nothing. But meanwhile, anytime I got too anxious about traffic or upset about things, she could always tell me to calm down, right? I remember telling her right then that this isn’t gonna work if I can’t be myself.

* Broader strokes now. There was an incident at Ikea over getting a piece of furniture for my room that she wanted to change, because she was visiting all the time and she just wanted to make it nicer. Put her touch on things, I guess. Well, I didn’t really want to by this shelf/cubby thing, but I looked at it anyway, and in the end when I didn’t want to buy it she got really upset with me, and even walked away. This in turn, spiked my anger up and the two of us fed off of each other’s negativity. She was being stubborn and not listening to me or dropping it. Instead I flew off the handle and caused a scene. I knocked her dinner plate over for being a bitch and just left. This was awful, and I thought we were gonna break up right then. That night we had a plan to go to a Comedy Show, and somehow it still happened. The plan changed to “Meet me at the show, then we’re gonna have a talk at my house.”

* The talk was about my anger and how it’s unhealthy. How I need to change because that is never happening again. I’ll admit. Yes, in this instance it was really bad. But also, she crossed a boundary and upset me about borderline forcing me into something I wasn’t comfortable with. I stood up for myself. Then I just fed off of her bitchiness and it was no good. ...Outside of that incident, the new thing was just, “Let’s do Meditation. That’s what we need to do. All the time.” And I hated it. I don’t believe in it. Sure, it can be relaxing after a hard day. But the whole zen closing your eyes and emptying your mind thing, just isn’t for me. I’d rather talk and walk it out than sit and focus on letting go. Yes, it has it’s place. But Meditation time, just felt like a waste of time to me.

* Then I noticed her anger. Whenever I would go over to her place, she really hated her living space. We used to love watching Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. together, but during a particularly bad season, she would just yell at the TV or be unpleasant in my space, when I was setting out time for her. We almost got into fights about it, but not really. Not to mention there was a whole issue of dealing with her cat pissing all over her furniture, and even the new couch I bought for her...

* On our 1 year Anniversary, we made out so hard during sex, that I kissed her in a way that she didn’t like. With too much tongue. Meanwhile, that’s my favorite kind of kissing. I used to kiss like that all the time in previous relationships and my partners have loved it. This time, however though, she turned it into a joke and went, “bluah bluah bluah” with her tongue out and tried to laugh at me. Immediately I was turned off and we weren’t doing this that night. We made up the next day, but since Year 1, I knew that I couldn’t kiss this Woman the way I truly wanted to. That was a big red flag, but Iwas still willing to make this work.

* Somewhere into the 2 years was when we definitely experienced the pitfalls with the anger issues stirring up between both of us. But this also brought forth the idea of her needing to get the fuck out of her house. When I wasn’t ready. Eventually I felt more ready, but I remember her asking me stuff about this at like, 3 months and then 6 months. So... Yeah. We were either at the 1 or 2 year point where we were both finally Looking. Still, the arguments would pervade over where. I didn’t want to move too far South, and she didn’t want to move too far into North.

* Around this time, my Sleep Apnea was also too much for her to bear, and she insisted/downright demanded I get a sleep study to figure my shit out. Because I wasn’t breathing for like 30 seconds in my sleep. And I was definitely falling asleep at work all the time. Forever attached to a C-Pap Machine in bed now, I definitely felt the spontaneity of the romance dwindle.

* Also... side-note. Sex became very clinical with her. She used to get so wet just at the thought of me, or from a simple touch. In the beginning, I used to be able to wake her up, and she’d be interested in getting a quickie in before I leave or go to work. Eventually, she didn’t want to be woken up for sex, but rather for it to happen after she woke up. That’s fine... But also, she got on birth control, just to make it easier for both of us, but whatever she was taking dried her the fuck out. So now it was all about using lotion, which.. no matter what I did, wasn’t really hot. I could go further and further, but there were so many times where I did something and she’d be like, “Ouch! Gentle.. What are you doing??” And it was just... not great.

*At 3 years, we moved in to a place that would take us. That happened to be really far from a job that used to be 5 minutes from me. Now it was a 50 minute commute! Adjusting to live together was a strong contributing factor. SO many new arguments arose in our shared living space.

* I stepped it up and learned how to wash a dish/take out the trash on the regular. But the frequency of it all still wasn’t to her liking. Regardless, she was the better cook, so she took care of dinner more often at first. I cooked too, so we definitely took turns. But I’d say that at first, she cooked about 3 times a week and I cooked 2. By the end of the relationship, she wasn't cooking...

* It took a very long time for me to notice this, but eventually I discovered that she doesn’t shave her legs. Or her armpits... That’s very personal, but frankly... it grosses me out. I found this out at the WORST possible time, right before we were going to my best friend’s Engagement Party. STILL I worked it out and was willing to let it go, because we ain’t come this far. I’m not shallow and petty. I love this Woman. But I begged for a Compromise.

* That compromise came once, in the form of me trimming her underarms one night. And she hated it. It tickled, the process felt weird... and she just wanted to do that herself on her own time from now on. Well, that never happened.

* It’s almost needless to say that our sex life dwindled to once a month. And then barely that. I knew something was wrong.

* I definitely did me, more. I’d be on the computer, taking care of my needs, hobby wise or horny wise. (Thank you Tumblr). But we’d also have separate hang outs with our own friends. And separate vacations even.

Which basically brings us to where we were at year 4 and 5.

She stopped wanting to go Grocery Shopping with me. We’d go separately. I hated that. We could never agree on a day.

We weren’t really going on any dates, but I put in some extra effort recently. Doesn’t matter. She just doesn’t like spending time with me, it feels. She takes it for granted. Instead it’s all complaints about how tired she is. Or how much her feet hurt. Or how hungry she is. Great... conversation man.

And I got to the point where I was like, “I don’t want this for the rest of my life.” And frankly, she was really short with me. The moment I didn’t hear her, or understand something she said immediately, she’d get louder and be like, “I SAID THIS!!” Or I’d say something that she didn’t get, and she’d immediately spike up and be like, “WHAT?”

I felt like this became a relationship without respect.

And the craziest part is that when we brought this up to each other on Monday, she agreed and said the same thing. She felt that neither of us respected each other.

All of the above was mentioned, but I just need to put out 2 more things that cement the deal.

When I told her, “Why do you think I haven’t asked you to marry me yet? It’s because I’m not sure I wanna live like this for the rest of my life.” She responded with, “I was so afraid that this was gonna be the year that you propose to me and I say no to you.”

The last part that sealed the deal was that we both realized we were truly just friends. We’ve been living together, on the rocks for so long, that we don’t want to do anything together physically. We’ve been avoiding all the fights, and just trying to have fun with the stuff that we do like. We’ve just been watching our shows, and chilling with beers, food and in her case, weed. This absolutely turned into a plain old Friendship.

And once that was out in the air, I actually felt better.

The only thing that sucks now is figuring out what comes next.

There’s no question about it, I have to leave. I can’t afford this place by myself, and neither can she, but she can do better on her own than I could before getting a new roommate. She has more stake in this place. She always had. She’s got the cats.. She has the run of this place anyway. This was always for her.

She’s always been on me about getting a better job. That's something I still want to do for myself, but now I have to do better, if I want to fully be able to support myself independently at my own place.

So I’ve been doing 2 things - Applying to better jobs and looking at new places.

At first, it was really hard, man. But now I’m getting more excited about the change. It comes and goes in waves. But I can’t live here forever, especially not with her.

But here’s the best part. As we Are still friends, she’s not kicking me out. She’s letting me take my time to comfortably find a new place to live. She’s even helping me look for stuff. Financially we had a lot of things put together to get into this place, and likewise, she’s going to give me my half of everything when finally leaving this place. I’m getting half the security deposit back, my half of the joint account, then we’ll close it. She’s paying for my half of the bed...

She’s being really good about all of this. We’re business partners in this.

The love is still there, but it’s purely platonic at this point.

A final quote about the relationship is that she said, “I think we both expected each other to be different partners for one-another that neither could provide.”

Something along those lines. And it’s so true.

I want someone to go to shows with me. My Music! I want a Metal Girl. And a Gamer girl. Not just a girl that’s gonna be on her phone all the time and ignore you during TV time.

TV Shows have their place, but my next girl needs to have a fucking hobby that she’s passionate about, dude.

My Ex had crocheting, but she stopped doing it, once it became a job. She used to do commissions for friends, and it stopped being fun. Now she only does it when she’s making a gift for someone. Which is nice, but... outside of that, her only source of entertainment is the TV or her phone...

I dunno. None of that matters any more. I need to create a New Normal this year and there’ll probably be more rants about the process of doing that.

But in the mean time, I have one last little bit, which has also changed the entire playing field at work.

Remember how I was all down about Dancing Girl?

Well, none of that matters any more. She’s still gorgeous and way too young for me, but I noticed a significant change in her behavior since last Friday. Exactly what I was fearing.

She definitely hung around the other work friends more during break. On Tuesday when I shared the insane news about the break up, she like.. walked away and gave me zero eye contact. Instead she focussed on herself, taking selfies from her phone. Fucking Gen-Z...

Wednesday I didn’t show up to work. That’s it’s own story, but it doesn’t matter.

On Thursday when I was back, she talked to me a little bit and was wondering if there was still a chance that we could reconcile, and I was like, “No man. Her and I are done! We’re too different and there’s no going back, now.”

At first, during the week I was down because there was absolute silence on the phone. I didn’t bother texting her, she didn’t bother texting me. In the group chat, only one dude was texting me and on the day I didn’t come in, he was like, “Good to hear from you Dude.” I got emo and said, “Yeah, you’re the only one!” That was really dumb of me.

The reason why I didn’t go into work on Wednesday was because the night before I told 2 close friends about what happened. And they kept me up until 4 in the morning talking about everything!!!! I didn’t care. Nothing mattered now. But I had to call out and catch up on my sleep.

The rest of my day off was looking for jobs and places. Until 2 other co-workers reached out and saw me that night for drinks and apps. That was really awesome of them, and I really appreciated that.

Then on Thursday, I swear I heard Dancing Girl talk to someone else about how someone was hitting her up and saying stuff like, “I think about you all the time...” bla bla bla. I didn’t eavesdrop. But it made me wonder. Was this Muscle Dude from the other night??

On Friday, Valentines Day she was pissed during 2nd break. It was just the 2 of us for a moment, and she actually confided in me. She told me how pissed she was at her boyfriend for not wanting to go out on V-Day.

I was her ear and happy to provide any feedback or advice. But then when the others came, she immediately gravitated to them and side-vented to them. That was fine, I guess, but still, I felt a barrier.

Today, I broke that barrier. I gave up on No Contact, and just hit her up on FB, because it doesn’t matter any more. I hit a lot of people up on FB and informed more about the news. As I’m slowly coming to terms with my reality.

But yeah, I asked about her night. She asked about mine. We talked a short bit about the awkwardness of this transition, but then I asked her ‘the question of the hour’.

Tell me about your other man. What’s going on with that?

This, was the Friend move. Maybe she picked up on it, maybe she didn’t. But I think she definitely appreciated it, because she opened up to me. It felt like the way we were talking before 2/7.

I ended up finding out that she’s been talking to this guy for like a month, and she’ll just see where it goes.

So now I knew it wasn’t Muscle Dude from the club. And that made me feel immediately better.

I also know that any nice interactions we had since December don’t really matter, because this dude quickly came into her life and built up whatever chemistry that they have.

So maybe it was all in my head. And frankly, that’s a relief. I was already coming to terms with the idea that she doesn’t think of me that way. But now, I think I can fully accept the fact that I am her older friend that she feels comfortable with. Someone she can confide in.

And like I said in the other rant, that’s probably exactly what needed to happen.

So now the issues seem resolved with Dancing Girl, and my worries about My Girl are dissolved, because well... she’s not My Girl anymore!

I am NOT looking forward to getting back into the dating scene, but ya know what? Right now I don’t even have time for that. This year is about focussing on me, now.

New Developments are happening in 2020, way quicker and more abrupt than I’d anticipated. But it’s time to move on. For like, 3 years I’ve been struggling to be Happy. Even in the first 2 years of this relationship, it’s debatable about how “Happy” we were, when we were in the Honey Moon phase.

So let’s do this 2020! Let’s see what we get??

If you made it this far, I am ever-grateful for your time and company.

I hope you enjoyed this edition of the GodHunter rants.

#Everything Has Changed #Long-Term Relationships #Ending #Breaking Up #Moving #New Normal #Dancing Girl

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