'survival shows are so bad and toxic and exploitative and misleading and biased :(' why are you still watching

call me crazy but maybe they should stop making documentaries about serial killers. especially when the victims’ families weren’t consulted or compensated. just a thought

NIMONA!!!!!

🇵🇸 please watch and remember this 🇵🇸

"PERSPECTIVE: In a world where some can close their eyes to suffering, others are forced to endure it without respite. Let’s remember our privilege to switch off, and consider the lives that can’t.”

by meeks_animates, 14/Apr/2024:

it might seem like im just a totk hater, and to be fair, i AM, but its not bc i think its bad in every way- if it was all bad, ok, then its all bad and we can forget it happened and can all accept that-

but totk specifically hit the jackpot of -things that frustrate me so much i cannot let go and need to talk about it-

its part of my current hyperfixation (or whatever is the right word), botw is one of my all time favorite games, and that one had so many mysteries i was DEEPLY invested in, its got great music and some absolutely fanatstic moments, some ideas are great to fine, but it doesnt make sense, i hate time travel like little else in games, it constantly contradicts itself, the franchise, even its previous game its supposed to be a sequel to, i felt like i was made fun of by the game itself, for caring so much about what they had set up or done in botw, the moment i saw what they did to the shrine of life i felt so devasted i could hear people pointing and laughing at me for having cared about it, the writing treating me like i am so brainless i cannot connect dot one and two when there are only two dots in front of me labeld 1 and 2 that it then tells me to connect directly, to my face, multiple times, before showing me how to draw a line, its full, so SO FULL of missed opportunities, its got choices in there that are just nothing but frustrating bc there were a hundred other ones, i can see what you could do wit hthe basic ideas, theres people that worship it to a point you cant say anything even mildly critical, even about objectively bad things (there is no excuse for that godawful arrow menu) bc they will jump at you like a rabid animal-

i could go on but you get the point, never in my life has anything hit me like that

love the idea of the Avengers adding new members but being stingy about rooms so the OG Avengers each get their own but Bucky and Loki are forced to share one under the guise of it being 'healthy interaction'

Other shippers: I hope they become canon soon!

Rayllum shippers: I hope they doom the world for each other soon 🥰

one of my favorite (/sarcastic but not really cuz its like funny idk) things in fandoms is when people make ocs or self inserts or 'x readers' being shipped with characters, but the oc/sona/reader is literally just another character from the source material.. its like youre shipping the characters but didnt want to admit it, so you made a kinsona and branded it as something else..

and its NEVER subtle, actually its super blatant every time and im always shocked when nobody points it out..

i have seen uncountable saiki k x readers where the description is like:

"saiki meets someone whose thoughts he cant read for the first time, and even though he doesnt trust her at first, she keeps proving that she is kind and has good intentions!" you mean nendo? reader is girl nendo?

"this time, he meets a girl whose thoughts honestly match up with her spoken words almost perfectly for the first time!" hairo. youre shipping saiki with girl hairo.

"saiki meets someone whose thoughts are too fast and jumbled to re-" ITS AKECHI, THATS AKECHI, ITS LITERALLY AKECHI.

"saiki meets someone whose just as immune to teruhashi as he is for the first and only tim-" this is hairo again, awe bae you secretly LOVE haisai ?!?

"saiki sees his old childhood friend for the first time in years after an incident caused them to be apart and then they fall in lov-" WHY DID YOU EVEN WRITE THIS AND NOT CALL IT SAIKECHI.

its even funnier when they say its like that characters little sister, but the way they write it is still literally just the character, like their personality, dialogue, even their relationship, is the same..

not all of them fit this exactly, but the ones that take a boy character and turn them into a girl oc to ship them with a boy, it reminds of how in equestria girls they couldnt make applejack and rarity endgame so they gave them boyfriends who looked IDENTICAL to each other.. thats what youre creating, guys, youre creating heterosexual rarijack.

Some creatures are more difficult to perceive than others

For $5 USD stop making everything about that goddamn show for five minutes.

Back with my wano zolu brainrot again<33

So yeah, this part:

I will never stop obsessing over this particular moment, hence this part being one of my favorite wano zolu moments. Like zoro is so worried?? he can't stop screaming out luffy's name. You can see that he is visibly distraught, and while both of them got stuck spinning around thanks to kaido's dragon twister, but of course luffy will always be zoro's number one priority (what's new honestly?)

I've been a zolu shipper for years, but i guess i'd never get used to seeing zoro's devotion towards luffy. No matter how many times i've seen it. And i think his devotion is one of the many things that i deeply love about zolu (from luffy's side it's all about subtlety but that's not what im going to talk about today lol)

Like, i dont even need to say anything, just look at him. Look at them.

Like i just think they are very neat and i want to cry or kms, thanks

it's so hard to take star wars seriously nowadays because i'll watch someone get skewered by a lightsaber and then somehow walk it off with a bacta patch and a slap on the ass. like you're telling me a weapon that can carve furrows into foot-thick solid durasteel doors, dripping melted slag in its wake, when applied to the flesh of a sentient being leaves behind nothing more than superficial damage. like be so ffr. "it cauterizes the wound instantly" this is not a little cut. this is not minor burns. you were IMPALED BY A BEAM OF PLASMA. your ORGANS have been COOKED. your BLOOD has BOILED. your BONES were INCINERATED. what are you TALKING ABOUTTTTTT

Ok time for my big Hadestown hot take and that���s that West End Hadestown doesn’t give you a 100% Hadestown experience. It’s still ridiculously good and 100% worth seeing, don’t get me wrong (I used my opportunity and saw it twice and will likely see it again if I’m in London), but it kinda made me realise a couple of things about OBC production that will always be my Roman Empire and make me deeply upset Broadway is too greedy to give us an OBC proshot.

So, here are some of my thoughts and reflections based on seeing Hadestown live on West End + seeing different versions (including London National theatre proshot) in boots. I think you can pretty solidly say that in Hadestown there are 2 main stories: Orpheus/Eurydice and Hades/Persephone. And even though arguably Orphedice is the main most important story, it my opinion it also wins from Hadesphone story being strong. Which works perfectly in OBC due to Amber Gray and Patrick Page delivering a very deep nuanced performances as their characters.

I think part of the success of Hadestown when it works on its fullest is how it creates a very deep emotional journey. And I feel that regardless which pair of Orpheus and Eurydice you have (if we take Broadway/tour/West End take on the characters) it’ll still work! Like you need to try really hard to mess up orphedice the way people wouldn’t root for Orpheus or wouldn’t empathise with Eurydice because they are so relatable and cute. You instantly love them, they are so so lovable. So orphedice part is one thing in Hadestown that imo works if not always then in 99% of the cases.

Hades and Persephone’s part of the story in the contrary is VERY hard to nail on 100%, in my opinion, and this is literally driving me crazy. Maybe seeing Amber Gray and Patrick page in professional recording awoken some feelings in me, I don’t know. I will state straight away that I also do enjoy other actors’ takes on characters and I do see some very interesting character moments there and there. However, I keep returning to the thought that Amber/Patrick’s characterisation works SO WELL for the main narrative. I’ll try to explain why I think so. Consider it my love letter to the OBC.

First and foremost, I feel like Hadesphone story has a very fine dynamic that the actors have to nail, so you would feel that: 1) these two still love each other; 2) these two are buried under their problems and see no way out, only a miracle (aka Orpheus and his song) can save their marriage.

And if the first one usually works at least due to Epic 3, the second one, imo, often (at least partially) falls victim to acting/directing choices which can cause troubles with point 1 as well. I think one big thing I’ve noticed is that often Persephone’s alcoholism gets forgotten in the acting performance. Like yeah sure her choreography includes drinking from a flask but in comparison to Amber you never get a feeling that she is absolutely wasted. Which, is in my opinion something that you should feel when you’re watching the show and something I was constantly forgetting about when I was watching the show on West End. I feel in Amber’s performance you can constantly see that her Persephone’s feel good attitude is a façade of a broken person who knows that her marriage is going to hell in front of her eyes yet she is too passive and hopeless to try to make an active change (well, she does try in Chant and nothing happens), so her only way is to chase the sense of normality that the “medicine” gives her. But when she is alone, if you get to catch a moment when people are not looking at her, you can see a deep sadness under her positive front and her memory of the old days when everything was more simple. Nevertheless, the main point that the lyrics literally say is that Persephone is blinded by the river of wine. And this is crucial to her character and her relationship with Hades because the story states that even though Hades is a problem and he is an active actor in creating more problems, he is not the only failure in this relationship. Persephone needs to be woken up from her apathy almost as much as Hades does and this is something that we see during If It’s True.

From Hades’ side I feel like it’s not a good decision to make him a total villain because when he is irredeemable you don’t feel like the whole “song that will fix the world” has any chance of working long term. I think Patrick nailed a deep antagonist very well. His Hades is weird and lowkey creepy and alien. He does objectively bad things but when you look at him you can’t stop thinking that he doesn’t operate in regular human logic or morality. When I look at him in Chant, it feels to me that his words about building stuff to impress Persephone are absolutely sincere, and I can absolutely see that his Hades doesn’t understand why she is so upset about it when his intentions are so so clear. Maybe it’s my vision but even before Epic 3 when he is so far gone and buried in his projects and messed up ideas I don’t have a single doubt that Persephone is a single motivator and goal of Patrick Hades’ life and that he literally doesn’t need any other being to care about. And tragically this fixation is what makes him blind to all other things he does even if those things ruin Persephone’s life (and other people’s but tbh I don’t think he cares).

I feel like by removing Persephone’s Chant 2 verse Hadestown created more problems for Hades and Persephone part of the story making it a much harder job for the actors to prove to the audience that Hades and Persephone have a chance to make their relationship work. Like I get that maybe it was a necessary things to do (even though I think the show is much better with it) but it made it so much harder to empathise with this particular part of the story unless the actors use the choices that work in the narrative. Because for example when I was watching the show on West End part of me was wondering “what is Persephone’s deal in all of that, what does she win by staying with Hades?” With the verse, and with Broadway Previews or London 2018 in particular this part was clear: Persephone still loves Hades and believes that he has the opportunity to change and become a better man he used to be. Without the verse, however, the actors should give you the same idea during the show which is a hard task considering Hades and Persephone have only 2 big conversations together (Chant and How Long). So apart from those songs there are only subtle mostly silent moments they get together through which the actors have to convey the same thought which is hella difficult and probably hardly will be appreciated by anyone apart from the people who sit closely.

So, maybe because in the actor combo I saw (Zachary and Lauren), I got a feeling that even though they were great separately, I didn’t feel much chemistry between them as a pair. I think, Persephone seemed pissed and tired of Hades all the time until How Long and I didn’t feel that she still believes in his willingness to change. And Zach Hades despite being entertaining, kinda gives the impression of Hades who has other options, he is not into Persephone enough. The only sparkle appears between the two in Epic III which is still cute but I’m not sure if it works just as well if that’s the first time you see the show? Also considering Zach Hades gives more malicious intent in His Kiss, The Riot it seems that he is not even slightly interested in Orpheus having any opportunity to succeed with his quest. Which is not bad, don’t get me wrong! But in comparison to Patrick who is deeply self projecting into Orpheus to the point where you could see that even though he doesn’t want to let him go, part of him does because it would prove he too could succeed in his challenge of waiting for Persephone, this take seems a bit lacking. And overall because of His Kiss, their promise in Wait For Me doesn’t seem as giving much hope that the story won’t repeat itself next Sunday. Which in its turn makes Orpheus’ sacrifice feel a bit… worthless. If on Broadway, when Orpheus turns, but spring comes again you feel like it is the start of something new: hopefully a kinder and softer time. On West End the show also wants you to feel it but when you think about Hades and Persephone you feel…less certainty that this sacrifice will have a long term effect?

I guess the creators wanted to concentrate on Orpheus and Eurydice more and forget about Hades and Persephone by making them more secondary story or maybe there was a lack of director’s involvement to give the cast some hints on how to make this particular part of the story work better, but it feels to me that in its current state the show works in its 85% power which is still great but once you know there is something missing you can’t stop thinking about it and wishing the show would give you those 15% you crave.

Sometimes being in love is like getting your eye gored in a fit of purifying violence, sometimes it's not

not to be a woman womaning all over the place but i feel like if you genuinely like. do not have friends that are women then you have something to work on. if you cant think of any female characters that you treat the same way you do male characters then you have something to work on. if you cant handle even seeing "i dont like being called a guy/bro/lad/etc because it doesnt feel gender neutral to me" but can understand when one of your masc besties is uncomfortable with being called girlie or sister then you have something to work on. if your default in regards to how you handle other people and even characters is to assume masculinity then you have something to work on. if you cant even let women and otherwise feminine people speak about our experiences without bringing up how you suffer too then you have something to work on.

it doesnt matter if youre queer or a poc or a minority in whatever which way, if you do not include women in your life and cant even stand a fucking inch of genuine feminism (and i dont mean terfs but god is it fucking agonizing that thats all you people can think of when you hear feminism anymore) where the point is to treat women, all women, equally then you have something to work on. listen to women, even the ones whose experiences completely dont align with yours (hell ESPECIALLY the ones whose experiences completely dont align with yours). just like how we all have to check ourselves for racism, ableism, queerphobia, we all have to check ourselves for misogyny too. stop acting like it got solved at some point. it still exists and it exists within you and you have to actually fucking work on that. "women should be included in your life and you should listen to them" shouldnt be a hard goddamn pill to swallow.