(Other than the really weird bit about "Male presenting Doctor") what were your thoughts about the specials?

pretty mixed bag, pretty messy, but good overall. i think they were very obviously a nostalgia trip for people around my age lol and it worked! i loved seeing tennant and tate back onscreen together, their chemistry hasn't aged a bit, and honestly just watching doctor who that wasn't written by chris chibnall was a breath of fresh air. they weren't boring, like seasons 11 and 12 were, and they didn't go too far off the other end into nonsense like flux did. characters want things again! the show can let itself just be silly! i was literally cheering out loud when donna and the doctor were just saying random scifi gobbledegook at each other for like a solid several minutes during the star beast.

the structure of the specials kind of baffles me. i love wild blue yonder--i think it's definitively the best of the specials as a standalone, it's absolutely fantastic, creepy and atmospheric and bringing things around to RTD's strength, which is well-written characters interacting with each other and letting good actors just act. but at the same time i dont understand why it exists? it feels like...idk. imagine if you watched the star wars original trilogy but instead of the empire strikes back the middle film was just a feature length film about luke and han surviving on an ice planet with no reference to anything that happens in the last film except the two characters' relationship. and then the next film was still return of the jedi, unchanged. it felt like that

i liked all the weird campy silliness of the star beast and the giggle, and they were both very fun! neil patrick harris gave a fantastic performance, there are a lot of very memorable sequences from the giggle, but it's very very all over the place. so many threads get kind of picked up and go nowhere. the toymaker's haunted house dimension goes nowhere. RTD's eyerolling social media commetnary goes nowhere (thank god tbh but yknow im illustrating something here). even the toymaker kind of goes nowhere, after ncuti gatwa shows up he's bascially an afterthought who loses by dropping a ball. obvious parallels to david tennant's first episode with that ball scene could be made, but just... aren't. it feels like load-bearing sectikons of the plot and themes were cut out to make room for a backdoor pilot for the stupid fucking UNIT spinoff

oh and it goes without saying i fucking hate all the UNIT wank in the star beast and the giggle. i hope space nine eleven 2 happens to their stupid fucking avengers tower i cannot stand kate stewart who is constantly a murderous bonehead (in the giggle alone she gets two pepole killed by not listening to the doctor and assuming that this teleporting godlike entity could be restrainted by Two Guys) who is both in and out of universe just a boring nepo baby with no merit of her own

um. i still dont know what happened with the regeneration. i think the implication is that when david tennant dies hell time travel back to become ncuti gatwa inside himself--at least the rehab dialogue seems to make that implication. but it's not really explained or explored? baffling. i do think that fourteen getting to settle down and live a peaceful life with his friends is cute.

oh yeah and the ask said other than that but goddd there was some good stuff in the star beast and honestly with the state of the UK media i will take any perspective on trans people that includes baseline human erespect but some of those lines made me cringe so bad. anyway overall i am cautiously optimistic for the future of the show--oh ncuti was fucking great did i mention that i instantly bnought him as the doctor he owned the scene, the moment he was there it was clear he was the protagonist, and i liked the church on ruby road well enough too--i am cautiously optimistic but i worry that a big UNIT-shaped tumor will devour huge chunks of it and it'll be annoying. also russel t davies is like 60 and i just dont want to hear what he has to say about twitter so im not looking forward to dot and bubble

bendy, "ink demon", and trauma responses

I've recently got back into Bendy. (tbh this shit is never gonna be going away this has been my special interest for 7 years FDKJNDSJKFD) and I did some thinking on him again. It's crazy to me on how... dehumanized Bendy was. While, yes, he's not an actual human, but he's still, y'know a person. He has feelings, he's conscious. He just doesn't have a soul. Which brings me to this post. The Ink Demon has never been called by Bendy. Which, you're all like "well, duh. That's his ink form. His other form is his toon form, just to tell which forms apart." I know that's possible the case. But I do wanna look into this attitude a bit more. When Bendy was first created, Joey literally called Bendy a THING, and for him to lock him away because he wasn't what he wanted. His literal crime was looking scary. So, Thomas Connor and Gent by the request of Joey, locked Bendy away for... God knows how long. Tbh, it's never clear on how Bendy ever acts, but Bendy was probably scared out of his mind. Can you imagine you're finally made and some people are talking. You have no idea what's going on, but this Joey dude says that you're wrong. You came out wrong. You are a mistake. You're suppose to be loveable, silent, and small. But you're not that. You're tall, empowering, posing, and not even a real chance to prove you're not as scary as you look. You aren't even called by your name, nor the title you would gain via your infamy. You are a thing. You are not someone who has emotions or needs, a thing. You are a monster. Now, you're locked away, probably terrified, and calling for help but people around you are too scared of you to help or don't wanna face the wrath of this Joey Drew.

I think Alice said this best back in Chapter 4 of the original game. At the studio, you were in someone's pocket, or someone was in yours. The studio was a disaster pit. Even if not everything happened was "real" or w/e, Joey was still a dickhead to everyone around him. Bendy was no exception. I think Bendy probably learned the best way to survive the studio, and the harsh reality around him was to manipulate. Bendy is a pretty good manipulator, he can get into someone's head, mess with them, and still taunt them. No one is born or created evil. That's a learned method.

In extreme cases of trauma, many people are in survival mode and thinking about themselves to survive, and how they can get by. This is because their safety, wants, and needs weren't being met. Not to mention, Joey and Gent just threw Bendy into the cartoon world, probably to just lock him away forever. Joey locked Bendy up for God knows how long, and now he's in this like- cartoon world version of the studio. He goes from nothing to everything in one fell swoop. This just made Bendy retreat more into himself. It just made his coping mechanism of always having to be on top, always being in control, the one everyone needs to fear. Because, fuck it.

If he's so horrible, if he's so monstrous, if he's so terrible, than he'll just become it. Minus when Bendy meets Audrey in his toon form, Bendy doesn't have anyone. Bendy has never been shown any warmth, kindness, or love in his entire life. The only thing he does know is pain, suffering, coldness, been abandoned, and been made out to be a monster. Which brings me to this - no one has every called the Ink Demon by his real name.

Even when he's technically no longer being locked away, and ruling the cartoon studio, he's still been dehumanized. Or never seen as a fellow victim of the machine and Joey. Everyone has said to BEWARE the Ink Demon, look out for him, and watch your back. The one rule down there was always beware the Ink Demon. Hell, Bendy calls himself the Ink Demon. Bendy has just embraced the title of being seen as this almighty, opposing figure. People either blindly worshipped him or feared him. They never saw him as someone who was unjustly hurt. Unjustly locked away and abandoned. Unjustly painted as a monster because he didn't turn out the way Joey wanted him to be.

You know who has called Bendy by his name? Someone, for the first time, called him by his real name and not some title?

Audrey.

Audrey is the first person to show Bendy any kindness or warmth. While, yes, it was in his toon form. He actually gets treated like a person. Someone who has emotions, and even APOLOGIZED when she, on accident, hurt him. And Hell, dude accepts it! I really hope, going forward, as a way for Bendy to heal when he's in his Ink Demon form, Audrey shows him the same compassion and kindness in that form of his. But she also calls him by his name. Bendy. Not to mention...

The cycles are interesting to me. It could possibly just being a plot thing. But it could be seen as a continuing of generational trauma and toxicity, and Audrey is the one who stops it. Joey clearly has some shit going on. He hates not being in control and wants to be in control of how other people perceive him. So, he turns out destructive towards everyone. Which is... eerily similar to how Bendy treats his own trauma. Bendy and Joey were physically and emotionally destructive to the people around them. It's also kind of sad because Bendy thinks he's in control of the studio. Dude says it's his domain, when Joey was still in control all along.

Bendy is continuing that toxic cycle. Then Wilson comes along and projects his own trauma, and issues. While the cycle stopped, Wilson didn't make it any better, and probably made the cycle for everyone in the studio just worse. By Audrey having the book now, she's putting a stop to the generational trauma via helping out everyone still trapped and helping Bendy out. That's why I've been calling Ink Demon, Bendy.

Because that's his name, after all.

ADD ON-; I just wanna say that Bendy was HARDCORE self projecting on Audrey near the end. I also wanna touch on Bendy and suffering. Bendy was so miserable, and had nobody he just gave into his own suffering, and became the Ink Demon. If he has to suffer, he's going to make everyone else in the studio suffer. He only found any purpose was in harming others. Also, obvious disclaimer this doesn't justify what he does to the people he has hurt. It explains it, doesn't justify it.

It's just downright depressing that he thinks he had no purpose, his existence was a lie, thought of himself as a mistake, and monster. To be frank, I wouldn't be surprised if Joey called Bendy a monster or a mistake. He did call Bendy a THING after all. I really hope Bendy does get to heal and realize his purpose doesn't need to be him suffering and he can have SOME peace.

okay, so. the hannibal panel at c2e2.

this might be a hot take, but it was a rehash of basically every other interview they've ever done. regardless, i highly enjoyed attending the panel and getting to see a live interview between them with lovely fannibal friends. they have a great dynamic and it was heartwarming to watch in-person.

it's been 11 years since the show aired, so they probably stuck to the same/safe questions/answers bc hugh and mads didn't remember much of it. which is fair! but even they looked exhausted from the same repetitive questions and were itching to hear something new. mads did answer one of the q's which was like, "what was your favorite memory on set?" with "there's tons of them. the problem with favorite stories is that you can't remember them. but when you're in the midst of it, it's funny and crazy. but when you get the question, you can't remember." which is true.

and also tbf (i think) hugh said that he flew in and got drunk with mads. if i remember correctly, they joked about how hugh was late for his first fan op (bc the had such a good time drinking the night prior), but mads made it a point to say that he still showed up to his. 😂 mads also said he missed hugh and it was sweet. you could tell he was being genuine.

thus, you have 2 hungover older actors doing a panel about a show they did 11 years ago at an event that was hastily thrown together at the last minute. it's no surprise they played it safe. the fan q's were pretty lame tbh. some were what i consider inappropriate. but hugh/mads seemed to light up at the silly questions the most. (which ofc, they're there to have fun). the fans would cheer/clap/shout "i love you!" after everything they said, which you could tell was grating on them after a while. like there were definitely appropriate times for commotion, but it happened after EVERY SINGLE QUESTION/COMMENT. (it's impossible to focus in a setting like that) also the "hugh dancy loves fake blood" bit got old real quick and you could tell he was over it lol.

on top of that, bc it's a reunion, they probably went for the nostalgia angle vs trying to do something contemporary. it's the safest way to ensure the guests/fans have an easy, fun time. the moderator had the right energy and knew how to ask questions/transition the convo properly. just the questions themselves were not interesting or new. they also cut the panel like 10 mins early.

the only real "new" bits we got was hugh dancy's answer to the q "why did will graham wear glasses sometimes?" his original answer from back in the day was "because i thought it/will would look cool with blood on his glasses" but his updated response was sth like "because it helps shield him from the world"

that's all for now lol. i'll post more panel bits as i remember them.

So I watched That 90′s show pilot and I have two (strong) things to say: (put under the cut so not to spoil people that don’t want to be spoiled)

How does Kelso’s kid and Eric’s kid NOT know each other? Like I get it, maybe people don’t stay close as they age so I get that maybe the kids didn’t recognize each other because it had been a few years since they were all together but Leia was literally like “who are you?” and when he said “Jay Kelso” there was no reaction. In all these stories that Eric told his daughter about him and Donna’s high school shenanigans he never once mentioned Michael Kelso by name? Kelso never dropped by for a visit? Eric and Donna never visited him? COME ON WRITER’S!

They ruined Jackie Burkhart’s entire s5-s7 development by Mila Kunis’ 60 second appearance. So Jackie is re-marrying Kelso (for the second time apparently?). She’s screeching at him to hurry up like they never left high school? It killed me. Absolutely killed me. Jackie, my love, you deserve better.

monster gfs wreak havoc on saint denis

Man. I just get so actually legitimately sad each time I remember that toh ended and that we live in the post-toh world. Like it really is over.

Ms Dana Terrace has said that she'd like to do more given the chance (and after some quality time off of bigger projects, just to chill), but as far as we know, it's the end.

Heck, we barely got anything after the final episode, no books, no special merch, no dedicated little chibi shorts, nothing really, aside from the, thankfully fun, get-togethers of the cast and crew!

Idk. Ah well actually nah, I do know, that this show just meant an enormous lot to me. Incredibly huge, the kind that you can't break away from and wouldn't want to anyway. The kind that feels like, man, where would I be without it.

Happy 1 Year, to the end of The Owl House. Thank you, The Owl House.

I hope the future is bright, for all of us.

charlie slimecicle slash lore very clearly knows codeflippa isn’t juanaflippa somewhere inside of him. the specific avoidance of questions with codeflippa points us in that direction and is further confirmed by the direct questions he asked juanaflippa today during dia de los muertos— are you safe? are you in a happier place? he’s not in any level of denial barring performative, he’s just willing to settle for a codeflippa rather than no flippa at all, and that’s paraphrased but he’s said something very akin to it out loud. plus today he realized that if the missing eggs don’t have ofrendas they’re likely still alive, and i think to some end even after really processing that his current flippa isn’t the original juanaflippa, he’d still want her around emotionally to cope with the possibility of bearing witness to everybody else’s real egg reunifications. mariana isn’t around, his entire family was fundamentally gone at one point. he doesn’t want to have nothing again. and if codeflippa leaves, he’s left with nothing. again.

...so, we know that decim got his job after the 15th floor was vacated by quin. but. was there a previous arbiter of viginti??? who were they and where tf are they now??? i'm-

Really random, but sometimes I get hardcore sucked back into the Royal Scandal series. The vibes and the stories are just A+, and so many muses get so noisy.

The only issue with that is the muses being really noisy doesn't lend itself very well to headcanons and stuff, so I'm sitting here trying to answer these Corruption questions for Creation, and the muses are in the back of my head. Doing concerning things. Being generally distracting.

Edit: Just realized that link only includes the main episode songs in their release order...which isn't the chronological order for the series. It's on the same channel if anyone wants to see the rest of the songs!

If you told Phone Guy you lost your arm during your shift, he would probably say something like “Welcome to adulthood!” Or “Those kind of things happen, you’ll get used to it” like it’s a completely normal thing.

GUESS WHO HAS BUILT A DEMO THAT ACTUALLY RUNS LOCALLY ON A COMPUTER AND NOT JUST IN A BROWSER!!! ...now to be fair it's Unity doing all the work here, but I did have to spend about an hour adjusting player settings so that if you fullscreen it doesn't break the 4x3 aspect ratio which makes the game unplayable. (literally unplayable. not in the meme sense but literally actually the game does not work if it isn't in 4x3 much of it is HARD CODED around that aspect ratio)

things left to do:

test this on an old 2015 pre-Catalina mac to see if the build is backwards compatible or if i need to do another build for older versions

figure out player settings to build for windows as well

test on my ~2016 Windows 10 PC, which I have every reason to believe can run it silky smoothly as long as I get the build settings right

test on my ~2011 Windows 7 laptop, which I have every reason to believe will NOT be able to run it on account of being ancient, but will be a good test of just how bloated and not-optimized my shit is (since it can run pure VNs from early/mid 2000s just fine).

I would love nothing more than to ensure the final game can run on a shitty 2011 laptop running Windows 7 but unfortunately that's not a #1 priority. It probably looks terrible on a 4k screen but I don't really give a shit about that. I also want to build for Linux but that depends on whether a Linuxpilled friend is available to playtest for me, otherwise it has to wait until I have the time to set up Linux on a machine and test myself.

BUT ANYWAY! GAME IS ALMOST READY? THIS NEVER FELT LIKE IT WOULD ACTUALLY HAPPEN. I've been saying "almost ready" for so many months solid now that the fact "almost" now means "i literally have like 4 more minor things to draw and put in and then it's DONE done, plus i ALREADY have A VERSION OF IT THAT PLAYS LOCALLY ON A COMPUTER START TO FINISH"

HASHTAG GAME DEV??????

you guys are being so unfair to the new VAs just cause you're attached to the old ones. it's unfortunate that they weren't asked to return, but i'm sure there were reasons behind it. especially with a certain someone who, bless his heart, cannot sing (at least in a character voice), which is really bad for a musical show, and probably was a motivating factor in the recasting. instead of harping on the past and bothering the old VAs about it, why can't you just wait to see how things shake out in the show? you could grow to like the new people. we have only a few seconds of dialogue for most of the characters, so don't be so quick to pass judgment.

me like four days ago to an old friend who msged me to reconnect: "yeah no i think things are settling down maybe after this last month of actual hell"

today: mother's medical situation has been handed a kablooey and the next few months are going to be Even Harder

btw if u support that ukranian nazi for "fighting against the soviet union during wwii" aka siding w hitler. please develop human sense and empathy for jewish ppl or die <3

antisemites are not welcome here!

top ten guys who would uhhhhhhhh never hurt a fly. yeah we’ll go with that.

Rant incoming hee hoo

Uhhh not too much on him but his name is Archibald. Archie for short. Sometimes referred to as “The Finchman.” He gets a cool badass nickname why? Because all good serial killers get one yeah?

Sorry I meant uh. He’s so nice to you just as long as he doesn’t seem you weak. He’s got a weird “Survival of the Fittest” complex going on. Deems people weak based on an assortment of things and tries to eradicate the world of the weak cause uh. Yeah he’s just. He’s like that for some reason. Huh.

Also he’s like. One of the very few people who’ve managed to outlast that of Cuckoo. Yeah he’s a Bliss character.

(Special thanks to @pazam for helping me out with his face— I was having a little trouble with it initially!)