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ingravinoveritas · 1 year

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How will you feel if Georgia and Anna turn up in GO2? Or any other assorted family members?

(Grouping all of the GO 2 Anons together since there are quite a few, and in order of take hotness level from Mild to Medium to Habanero Spicy...)

So, to recap the seeming order of events up until now (though I'm sure everyone is probably well aware): Three weeks ago, Neil made this post featuring a behind the scenes photo from GO season 2. Almost immediately, Twitter detectives set to work trying to ascertain the identities of the three people in the photo, and it very quickly came to light that both Peter Davison and Ty Tennant have roles in GO 2 listed on their respective CVs on their shared agent's website:

Shortly after that, the news appeared to be confirmed on the Radio Times website, and was subsequently picked up by a number of other media outlets. Most of these seem to be repeating what was reported by Radio Times, and while (from what I have seen, at least) there has been no official confirmation from either Amazon or Neil, the roles being on Peter and Ty's CVs seem to have convinced most of the fandom that they are in the second season.

I think there are several things we have to consider when talking about all of this. The first season of GO came out in 2019, and since then, the world has, well...I suppose "gone completely tits up" is one way of putting it, but the world has changed dramatically, and the circumstances around filming and production of television have also changed. Thus, when GO season 2 was filmed in Scotland from October of 2021 to March of 2022, the set was extremely locked down tight due to Covid safety protocols.

In all likelihood, it probably would've been very difficult to get actors for smaller roles or as extras, so from a purely logistical/practical standpoint, that is what could have led to the casting of Peter and Ty. There is also no way to know who the characters of Alastair and Ennon are, so for all we know, these could be very brief appearances where the characters are in one scene and then never appear again.

With that in mind, let's turn to the subject of nepotism, which I have seen mentioned quite frequently since the alleged casting was announced. I think what people may not be seeing is that there has been a marked difference in the reaction to Peter/Ty's casting from the hardcore GO fans vs. the wider public on Twitter. With the GO fans, there seems to be this attitude of tiptoeing around the word nepotism and everyone needing to be super happy/thrilled at the prospect of Peter and Ty (and possibly Georgia, but more on that ion a minute) being in GO 2, or otherwise you're a "bad" GO/David fan.

The wider public, however, has no such compunction about saying the word, often repeatedly, and with additional color commentary. What I wish the fans on Twitter understood is that this is something to be genuinely concerned about, because when the second season comes out, it won't be enough for just the hardcore fans to watch it. The show needs to bring in new viewers, and if people are as turned off by perceived nepotism as they seem to be, they won't tune in. Without those viewers, season 2 may not perform well, and if that is the case, Amazon could easily say "Well, GO season 2 didn't perform, so we're not going to greenlight a third season."

That is why it matters. Because even if casting Peter/Ty was done out of necessity/practicality, it ultimately comes down to people's perceptions, and overwhelmingly those perceptions are of nepotism and/or stunt casting.

For me personally, I certainly was and am not thrilled at the idea of Peter and Ty being in GO 2 (let alone Georgia and Anna, which...I might need a stronger drink before I write out my thoughts on that). But this does not in any way have anything to do with me disliking Peter or Ty, and in fact goes back to what I've always been most concerned with, and that's the integrity of the show.

Thinking back to 2020, I'm reminded of the heart-achingly beautiful audio clip that was released just a few months into lockdown, in honor of the 30th anniversary of GO's publication. Neil didn't write a new scene for Shadwell and Madame Tracy or Newt and Anathema...he wrote a scene for Aziraphale and Crowley. It was Michael and David whose performances resonated so strongly with all of us and with him, and he specifically chose to bring them back as Aziraphale and Crowley to mark that occasion.

When Staged came along shortly thereafter, it was created to build on that chemistry and relationship between Michael and David. Staged was meant to remind us of Good Omens, not the other way around. So I do feel that, when it comes to Peter and Ty (and Georgia/AL) being in GO season 2, it would be a distraction to have them there, rather than an enhancement. Not even because of the acting--as Peter is a seasoned actor and Ty/Georgia are decent enough (though AL is the exception, as she categorically cannot act, which we have seen)--but because of the principle.

The reason so many of us have greatly anticipated the second season is the relationship between Aziraphale and Crowley. So for me, casting any of these folks in the show (but particularly Georgia and AL) draws attention away from the Husbands, almost as if to say the relationship between Aziraphale and Crowley is somehow less/not as worth our attention as their "real" relationships. It also goes back to what I mentioned above about stunt casting, and again, if the viewers the show very much relies on see it that way and are turned off by that/perceived nepotism, it may cause the show itself to suffer overall.

So those are my thoughts on the potential casting of Peter Davison/Ty Tennant and Georgia/AL being in GO 2. I suspect we won't really know the truth about who is or isn't in the show until it's released, but to the Anons who felt they are alone in having feelings of hesitation over these casting decisions: You are very much not the only one who feels as you do, and I'm glad you felt comfortable enough to write in and share your feelings with me. We'll just have to wait and see what happens...

#anonymous #reply post #good omens 2 #michael sheen #welsh seduction machine #david tennant #soft scottish hipster gigolo #georgia tennant #peter davison #ty tennant #also i'm not sure if people realize the personal attacks David would be subject to if this does happen #i know people irrationally hate him already for DW reasons #but i hate the thought of the asshats online having more to come after him over #so much happening here #probably going to have to turn off anons for a bit while i answer the rest #fandom woes #anna lundberg #discourse

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difeisheng · 9 months

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Hi!! Hope this isn't too much work for you rn, and no pressure answering this! But your constant endorsement plus knowing so many of these DMBJ men from various other dramas has convinced me to give it a go. If I wanna watch all the seasons + movies, which order do you suggest I go in? (came across a whole bunch of different opinions on this, so decided to come to the resident DMBJ expert on my dash <3)

omg welcome to dmbj territory!! hope you end up staying hehe, these stories are a good time :P

alrighty, watching order: first things first, dmbj is not broken up into different seasons, but rather a timeline of individual dramas + side movies adapting different parts of the book series. the casts shift between dramas (some actors do reprise roles), and they were not adapted in chronological book order nor necessarily in continuity with one another. the tone varies wildly between shows/films as a result, and a lot of things in different dramas will not line up between them. timeline whomst. don't think about it too hard just go with it shhhh

for starting points, i've seen people who've started at wildly differing places along the dmbj timeline and made the most of it. others are correct, and there's no 'right' starting point. however, you asked for my opinion, and so with the proviso that i've only actually finished 4/7 of the dramas released so far and can only speak from those experiences, imo the best starting point would be Ultimate Note (2020), or The Lost Tomb Reboot/Reunion: The Sound of the Providence (2020).

Ultimate Note covers most of the latter half of the original book series, and feels made to offer an entry point for people who didn't break into watching the adaptations releasing since 2015. it's the first dmbj show i watched, coming off of heroes because it had a younger cast including zeng shunxi and liu yuning, and i'd say it was a really good experience. the production is snappy, the pacing is decent, and the plot keeps you well engaged for its 37 episodes. for what it's worth, it also feels like the show that tried its hardest to be a bl hehe. one thing to warn is that the ending of the show does not wrap up well, as it's supposed to tie into the next installment in the dmbj chronology (that has not been adapted yet and may not ever), but aside from that it's a satisfying story.

The Lost Tomb Reboot is set ten years after the end of the main series, and adapts one of the sequel novels. like Ultimate Note, it feels like a natural start point, and i'm pretty sure a lot of people went through Reboot as their first dmbj show. it's an older-led cast including zhu yilong, chen minghao, and chen chuhe, with characters who have long settled into their relationships with one another. for me that's where this show shines, as the character dynamics are great and there's a full ensemble cast that gets their own arcs. the production values on it are also decent and the plot twists are good. i will say that for me this show struggled with very uneven pacing, and Reboot is a longer commitment than other shows with two seasons at ~30 episodes each. but overall it was still worth it!

after one of those shows, you have a general grasp of the worldbuilding, and so honestly you can pretty much go anywhere depending on what vibe or maybe actors you're looking for. my personal trajectory was Ultimate Note → Sha Hai/Tomb of the Sea (2018) → The Lost Tomb Reboot, which are all in chronological order, and then i doubled back and watched The Lost Tomb 2 (2019) which is set before Ultimate Note. that's all been a lot of fun for me, but there's a lot of choices.

something that was really helpful for me in deciding what to watch was foxofninetales' guide you can find here, which gives a more in-depth overview of each drama adaptation as starting points and the pros and cons of each. (while we're at it, this character guide may also be useful for tracking who's who across adaptations.) the side movies are not essential to understanding the main dmbj narrative, but are nice for filling in parts of different characters' backstories and events in between/after various shows :)

okay, uh, i'll stop talking now. i hope this was at least somewhat helpful or gave you a place to start looking, and i'm looking forward to seeing your journey through dmbj 👀

#not quite connected to the main post but sha hai is my baby. it's the part of the dmbj universe i find the crunchiest and i love it #also don't listen to anyone who says tlt2 isn't worth watching #there's so much good character stuff and it's got cheng yi!!! i don't recommend it for starting personally but it's Good #dmbj #ashton answers #nutcasewithaknife

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thatmutantcat · 18 days

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List 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the askbox for the last 10 people who liked or reblogged something from you! Get to know your mutuals and followers :)

Okokok so first I'll shotgun my first 4 answers n be insane about my fifth bc I have to I have to dude I HAAAAAAVVVVEEE TOOOOOO

1.) FNAF/Ethgoesboom, which I'm putting into the same answer since there's 0 reason to not do that

2.) Super Mario Bros

3.) Slasher flicks

4.) DND, which I admittedly haven't played since 2020 but. That's neither here nor there or whatever the saying is rip

But 5. Oooh 5. I'm gonna have to give it to Shipwrecked 64. I recently watched Pastra's vod of the first half of the game and it reminded me of how peak it is. The horror is absolutely fucking magnificent, that was the most like. Spooked I've ever been from even just watching *somebody else* play the game it was CRAZY /vposvposvpos

I can't exactly get into what makes it so good bc it's spoilers tho GRAH!!

So. If you'd wanna look into it but would rather and/or be best off doing so in like. Video format. Here's some I watched that I'd think give the best experience from that typa pov for reasons totally unrelated to first watch bias or something /silly

David Baron - the spoopiest n64 game ever made

Shows about the full game, edited down to about an hour and fifteen minutes time. May as well get a snack and a drink lolz. Out of all 3 of these I'd recommend watching this before so much as considering the other 2

Pastra - Shipwrecked 64 with Th3Badd3st

Five-and-a-half hour vod of around half the game. This one is on a more recent version of the game, and shows a few neat secrets the David Baron video doesn't show, and just generally has its own experience in comparison so. 100% worth, if you can find the time or something like that, ofc

pappo - Shipwrecked 64: The Best ARG You Never Played

This one's more a video essay, which I'm including bc it has stuff like story analysis that you may not instantly pick up on either in watching someone else play or even in playing yourself, bc either way, some of this stuff can be missed someway somehow. Which yeah missing a few things won't brick the whole game but it could mean you accidentally passed some story details you might want to have.

The game itself has a "play with caution warning" bc it contains violent scenes and mature subject matters, which I feel I should bring up because fuck man, it sure does, stay safe, ya know?

In all tho, Shipwrecked 64 is. Awesome. Absolutely worth taking a look at it goes so hard‼️‼️‼️‼️

#gnawing at the bars of my enclosure

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thepatchycat · 4 months

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hellooo! 👋

i hope it as okay to tag you in the WIP game!!! 😅😅 you have so many cool projects underway!!

I would love to hear more about your Defiance series! Side stories and spin offs?! What a world you must be creating! 🤩

thanks and have a lovely day !!☀️

Certainly! :D I don't always respond to tag games, but I do always appreciate being tagged in them. This one especially makes for a nice excuse to ramble about projects, and I'm delighted to talk about Defiance~

I'm pretty sure Defiance (the main fic) is the second fanfiction I've ever worked on in earnest and also my first and only longfic (not counting some sort of journal thing for Pokemon X I think I started many years ago, as I quickly lost interest in that project; otherwise, I hadn't really tried my hand at writing fic until 2020, despite reading it for much longer). Back in early 2021, with far too much time on my hands and having recently finished binge-watching all of The Clone Wars TV show, I felt very strongly that Fives needed to live and everyone deserved a happier ending, so I started planning a fix-it (actually the idea may have begun cooking back even before I finished the show, but February 2021 is apparently when I created the first doc).

It, uh, spiraled a little.

The planning/notes document is currently sitting at 102 pages (~46k words) of loose outline, worldbuilding notes, character notes, media notes, etc. The fic document itself is at 127 pages (~49k words) of stuff ranging from rough outline to fully written chapters and outtakes. There is also a Sheets file with timelines so I can track who is where, and when. The Sidestories doc is for ideas that would probably take place during Defiance but not be part of the more central plot, like bonus side chapters, and the Spin-offs doc is for other fic ideas that would take place in the same universe—some of which have graduated to their own documents. Though I've not been making consistent progress in the actual writing and have a very long way to go, I am lost in this sauce.

Anyway, the general plot of Defiance is as follows: unbeknownst to Palpatine and the general public, a timely intervention saves Fives' life. This allows him to actually explain himself to the Jedi, who along with the clones investigate the chips further and work behind the scenes to prevent Order 66 from happening while trying to figure out how to take down who's behind it. Critically, despite their suspicions they do not have hard evidence of Palpatine's involvement, so most events parallel canon up through ROTS with the investigation/preparation taking place discreetly, until the train hops off the rails to avoid sailing off the cliff.

If you'd like a sneak peak snippet, here's the first page or so of the main fic below the cut!

Something is wrong. The Force is muddled with a constant and indistinct unease, as it has been for years now—moreso on Coruscant than anywhere else, to Shaak Ti's perceptions. Its warnings are difficult to discern with any specificity. Even so, it murmurs them now. And Shaak possesses her own instincts, enhanced by the Force but extant outside her connection to it; these, too, whisper to her that something is wrong, as she watches Knight Skywalker leave the Jedi Temple conference room to find Captain Rex and investigate the situation with Fives. They are the best fit to track him down and the most likely to confront the rogue clone without further violence. Shaak warned Skywalker that Fives has been acting differently without his chip, that he may not be the man they knew—though she herself is reluctant to believe it—and the Knight and Captain are plenty capable of handling themselves. They will be all right. Still, something is wrong in a way she cannot yet define, and so Shaak Ti decides to join the hunt. Since the Jedi have not been asked to search for Fives, she does not contact the Coruscant Guard when she leaves the Temple. Instead she steps out of the building, pulls up the hood of her cloak, and makes for one of the speeder bikes kept at the Temple for general use. It whirs to life under her hands, and she rides to the nearest transportation portal leading down into the undercity. As she descends, passing speeders of all makes and sizes, Shaak Ti considers what she knows. She is well aware of her own struggles in becoming emotionally attached to the clones; her role on Kamino requires her to balance her care for them as people with the need to defend the galaxy. But many of them, such as Domino Squad, inevitably leave an impression. She watched Echo and Fives grow from bickering cadets to determined protectors, some of the best of their brothers. Her belief in their character during their final tests had not been misplaced. And yet, over these past few days Fives repeatedly defied the Kaminoan doctors, removed his chip, claimed something about a conspiracy, then attacked the Chancellor and fled. Shaak cannot deny these facts, and she must not allow personal feelings to cloud the truth. Then there are the Kaminoans. Shaak clashes frequently with their attitudes toward the clones, the way they view them as products rather than sentients. Nala Se’s arguments for terminating Tup and assurance that the chips are not a problem fall in line with her position as a manufacturer. And Shaak is well aware that the Kaminoans have not shared all of their secrets with her, as she is not owed them. But the medical scientist's resistance had been… spirited. None of this paints a clear picture. As they concluded in the meeting back at the Temple, the Jedi need more information. The familiar sound of a military engine hums past, and Shaak turns her head to watch a pair of gunships heading down the portal through one of the military lanes. She swerves out of the civilian traffic and dives after them, further and further below the surface of the city.

#Thanks for asking! :D #I'm really excited about this 'verse even though it's quite far from getting published #I want to finish at least the first draft of the whole thing before starting to post but that's gonna take quite some time #It'll probably be somewhere between 35 and 50 chapters #Out of which I have...maybe 10-ish written (and around 20 more vaguely outlined). So. Long way to go.#But by golly we're gonna get there!#Patchy Babbles #Patchy Writes #Tag Games

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palukoo · 2 months

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💖🧐⏳if you'd like!!

thank you so much for the ask :) i always end up making my answers so long so its under a cut

💖 What made you start writing?

so this one is basically impossible for me to answer. the first story i remember writing/trying to write was when i was 6 years old, and i think it was just bc i had ideas i thought were cool! the first fanfic i remember writing was when i was in like 5th grade and i remember i would do some writing and then my friends basically being like oh would you write this and i would handwrite fic during class or lunch or recess or whatever and give it to them, and at that point i was also constantly writing parts of original works, and then it just all spiraled! so at this point it's literally like. why wouldn't i write, what would that be like?

🧐 Do you spend much time researching for your stories?

oh my god yes. it's awful. i mean, okay, it really really depends on the fic but there tends to be at least one detail i get really hung up on and spend hours researching, which honestly more often than not doesn't end up in the final product? i mean, long time followers, embarrassingly, may remember the agent carter roller derby au which i did research on the history of roller derby to try to make it actually reflect the state of the sport, in some way, in the 1940s. its extremely inconsistent though, even internally. like, for the cats that walk alone, i read the whole play of the women and the short story i named it after and read a little about reno divorces but i did not in fact even rewatch the film before posting it (i did watch it after posting and go oh so i got the timeline a little off but the title works out so much better than i originally intended??) probably the most gratuitous example is the amy fic, because i literally would have well over twenty tabs open in like congress.gov to try to incorporate bills/legislative debate that would actually be somewhat accurate for the early 2000s, and i also did a ton of research on like electoral maps and various theories and whatnot. more of that actually probably shows up in the second, currently unfinished and unpublished part which isn't exactly abandoned but its been a hot minute, because since that's post canon it involves a lot more of me making shit up and often drawing inspiration from actual real bills from corresponding or close to corresponding legislative sessions and modified numbers from elections. which was always :/ bc like. neither early 2000s politics nor tww ideas of politics are really things i agree with but i was like really committed to a degree of real world and canon accuracy. more recent examples for things that are unfinished and unpublished would be like doing research on the climates and demographics of various parishes and towns in louisiana, trying to find a map of railroads in 1940s arizona, reading about the state of maternal medicine specifically with regards to childbirth in the 1940s, and trying to find real postcards sold in melbourne, australia in the 1940s. the first i'm probably never gonna actually really write the fic associated with it and the last three i basically ended up getting vaguer in the writing to avoid specifics. typing this out is fascinating bc damn i've done some specific research abt the 1940s...

⌛ How long does it take you to write a fic, or a chapter?

okay this depends so fucking much. i mean like, in 2020 when i was starting the amy fic, i wrote so fast. like its long as hell so it took me a long time but i would write like 5k in a day some days and i wrote that whole thing at a velocity that i had never done before and never have since. some things i also agonize over more than others i guess? my kiradax body swap au was a wip that i rewrote multiple times over the course of multiple years, but the final version probably didn't actually take that long? idk. the cats that walk alone is the most recent thing i have published and i made the file for it in mid june and published it in early september, but i think i had it mostly done sitting in my docs for a while. my current high focus wip is one i've been working on since november, but its also multi-chapter and shaping up to be longer than anticipated... i'm gonna say the answer varies but tends towards several months, but at a very uneven pace within that. ultimately, i also have the adhd thing of like, if i don't finish a project within a certain amount of time/at a certain level of hyperfixation, it usually will die, and that timing tends to max out within a year, give or take a few months.

#would that i could answer asks concisely... im a rambler; a qualifier and overexplainer of every statement i make #(which works out great writing fanfic lmfaoo)#asks #answered #hideyseek #my writing #side note the brain rot is severe... read 'if you'd like' in the voice of anne baxter as eve harrington <3

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metalheadmickey · 1 year

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it's tag game tuesday wednesday THURSDAY. fandom edition, baby! thank you to our beloved @celestialmickey for kicking it off and for tagging me, and also to @energievie & @tanktopgallavich !! 💛💛

your name: jessie

your age: 33

your first fandom(s): i usually say supernatural, but fuck it, i think it was spartacus. i may have engaged with it in a very different way, but i was hyperfixated as hell. i went to my first and only fan conventions. by myself! i never want to go to fan conventions! so yeah. spartacus.

your current fandom(s): shameless, and to a lesser degree these days, supernatural

how did you first get into fandom? hyperfixated on a show, stumbled upon the fandom side of tumblr, did not make a tumblr but lurked a little bit, decided fic was cringey and that i didn't like reading it (it was a v small fandom with not a lot of quality content), hyperfixated on another show and decided to try reading fic again, had my entire world rocked to its core, made a blog, been around ever since.

how long have you been engaging with fandom spaces? like nine years?

how often do you read fanfics? i'd say every day, usually when i'm in bed.

top 3 characters from your current fandom(s): mickey milkovich, dean winchester, castiel.

have you ever written a fic for a fandom? if so, shout it out! i sure have!

have you ever drawn fanart for a fandom? if so, drop a link! nope!

share a personal headcanon that you feel very strongly about: mickey was thinking about yevgeny when he and ian had the parenthood conversation in 11x12.

you’re trying to convince a friend to get into your current fandom(s) with you. what episode, clip, or scene are you showing them? okay so i actually did this with one of my closest irl friends and she got...possibly more into supernatural than i am, and she reads destiel fic, and has had intense gallavich fic phases as well. and it was actually super easy lol. she just has the same kind of brain that i have, and i just had to tell her to watch the shows because i knew they'd fuck her up the same way they fucked me up. she saw my reaction after november 5th 2020 and wanted to know everything, so i told her everything, and she started watching spn the next day. i watched shameless a couple months later and lost my entire mind, and all i had to do was tell her that she NEEDED to watch it, and she started watching it right away. i think if i had to show her a specific scene though, it probably would've been mickey coming out in 4x11. iconic, legendary. she would've eaten that up even with no context. also special shoutout to this friend, because she's the person who taught me to not be embarrassed about being interested in fic, or fandom in general. i always thought she was so brave for being open about her hyperfixations in her everyday life, like for real lol. i still struggle with it, but i've gotten more open about it because of her.

and finally, what does fandom mean to you? a community of some of my best friends, and the place where i learned that i can actually be a creative person. i'm doing all kinds of fulfilling things with my life because of this space 🥹

tagging @howlinchickhowl @whatwouldmickeydo @gardenerian @gallawitchxx @heymrspatel @whatthebodygraspsnot @you-are-so-much-better-than-that @iansfreckles @squidyyy23 @auds-and-evens @mishervellous @7x10mickey @lalazeewrites and anyone else who wants to play 🖤🖤🖤

#tag game tuesday! 💛#tag game #if anyone else tagged me to do this and i didn't see it i'm sorry! tumblr hasn't been consistently notifying me of mentions

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fallynleaf · 8 months

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I'm trying to get my wrestling journal caught up, and am succeeding with mixed results. I wrote over 10k words on stuff from July alone, 4k of which were just about AEW Blood & Guts on July 19 (the Golden Lovers' first match back together since 2018). I've been toying with the thought of publishing that piece somewhere where people might actually read it, so I thought why not post it here?

(The usual disclaimer on my journal applies: please don't reprint any of these translations, as they're pretty rough and I haven't gotten them looked over by anyone.)

Kenny Omega & Kota Ibushi & “Hangman” Adam Page & Matt Jackson & Nick Jackson vs Konosuke Takeshita & Jon Moxley & Claudio Castagnoli & Wheeler Yuta & Pac

July 19

I’m at a loss of words to describe this match. Unfortunately, I’m at a loss of images, too. There is nothing I can put in this space that’ll do proper justice to the emotions I felt watching this. But I’ll try.

I don’t think Blood & Guts was the right match format for this story. There are simply too many moving pieces, too many distractions, too much for the cameras to keep up with. But pro wrestling teaches us to see things not as they are, but as they feel, so I will talk about how this match felt.

The feud between The Elite and the Blackpool Combat Club started a long time ago. So long ago that I can’t even pin down an exact start date in my memory. I suppose in some way, it started in the closing moments of the very first AEW show, when Mox made his surprise debut and breathed in his first taste of freedom, stained with Kenny’s blood.

Kenny vs Mox is such old history for AEW, it’s practically primordial. It’s in the company’s DNA.

Like many great wrestling feuds, there’s an ideological disagreement at the heart of this one, a disagreement concerning the fundamental nature of professional wrestling. More than anything, though, it’s about love.

Bryan Danielson said as much in the promo he cut on April 5 after the Blackpool Combat Club attacked Hangman on Dynamite. Interestingly, in this promo, Bryan seems to draw an equivalence between love and true professional wrestling. He treats them as one and the same. He talks about loving Mox, Claudio, and Yuta, whom he goes on to describe as “professionals” in contrast to the Elite, who are “amateurs”, and who don’t have love, or even understand the concept of it.

To Hangman, he says: “And I love these men! I love these men! Do you know what? You don’t have anybody who loves you. Is anybody coming out from the back? No! Not a damn person! ‘Cause nobody loves this man! In fact, they don’t even know what love is! But I know what love is. In fact, when I’ve been at home, I’ve been teaching my kids a few things. A few things about how to fix up your house. And I think the house that is AEW needs to be fixed up. From all these amateurs.”

The house metaphor immediately caught my attention. It reminded me of an extended metaphor that Hangman employed in his monologue from episode 204 of Being The Elite, which was released on May 18, 2020, and which to this day remains one of the few pieces of art about the pandemic that I can actually tolerate. In his metaphor, he compares AEW to a house, and The Elite are both in the house and they are the house.

In Hangman’s own words: “I nearly won the prestigious ‘Man of the House’ award in May. I’d teamed up with our broom to clean the house better than anyone had ever swept it before. And I feel like I might have been starting to… patch up the holes of the walls of the house. The walls that made the house what it was in the first place.”

The Man of the House award is his failed attempt to become AEW World Champion in May 2019. Teaming up with the broom refers to his tag team with Kenny and their 6-star tag title match with the Young Bucks, which was considered by many people to be the best tag match in history. And the Elite are the walls. He’s talking about the slow, tentative process of repairing his relationship with the faction that quite literally made AEW.

I suppose in a very literal sense, The Elite are in AEW and also are AEW, in the sense that they’re the “Elite” in “All Elite Wrestling”. Hangman’s mixed metaphor is only as messy as reality.

The “AEW as a house” metaphor came up again two years later, on May 25, 2022, in a now infamous promo segment building up to Hangman vs CM Punk at Double or Nothing, where, with just two words, Hangman unknowingly set off a chain of events that would end up almost tearing the entire company apart, though no one realized it at the time.

He tells Punk: “You talk a big game about workers rights, yeah? Well, you’ve shown the exact opposite since you’ve gotten here. I love this place! I care about this place! This is my home! And this Sunday at Double or Nothing, I will not, I will not be defending this championship against you. No, for the first time in my life, I will be defending All Elite Wrestling from you.”

And Punk tells him: “Win, lose, or draw, I respect you, Hangman. But remember, those roads you traveled to get here? They were paved by me. This house that you built? It was constructed with lumber from trees that I chopped down. The world you traveled to get here, to create All Elite Wrestling, happened because I gave you the blueprint.”

Hangman fails to defend the championship against Punk. And in the months that follow, he fails to defend All Elite Wrestling from Punk, too. The philosophical divide was so true to reality and so exquisitely foreshadowed that it caused me to initially assume that the rumored backstage altercation between Punk and The Elite was part of an intricate work that connected back to this very promo. I was more right than I knew, but I didn’t know that the reason for the connection was not because it was a well-planned story, but because the conflict at the center of the story was real.

AEW is the house that Hangman built, and Punk says that it was made with lumber from trees that he chopped down. In saying so, he takes credit for The Elite’s work and implies that without them, he could simply fill the space left by their absence on his own.

But can he? Can anyone? Can there be an All Elite Wrestling without The Elite, or would the whole building crumble without its walls? For a few months in late 2022, we got to experience AEW without The Elite. It was not a particularly encouraging time for the company.

Which brings us here, to 2023. Bryan Danielson says that the house that is AEW needs to be fixed up. He doesn’t think the Elite can compare to the Blackpool Combat Club, not in terms of love or in terms of pro wrestling.

I’ll admit, when Bryan said that The Elite don’t even know what love is, I laughed. Kenny Omega has centered his entire wrestling career around love, to the point where “A Wrestling Love Story” is in the title of his documentary. I once heard someone sum him up by saying “in pro wrestling, you can choose to be whatever you want to be, and Kenny Omega chose to be in love.”

Before he beat Kazuchika Okada to win the IWGP Heavyweight Championship in 2018 in what is widely considered to be the best match of his career, Kenny said: “I’m not saying that I’m arriving to this arena with a bunch of new moves, but I am saying that this version of Kenny Omega might be the most prepared. And a big part of that is because I’ve let someone back into my life that I cared about, that I loved, and that together with that power, we can’t lose.”

He says basically the same thing outside of kayfabe as well. In his documentary, he credits Kota’s support as being essential for preparing him physically and emotionally so that he’d be ready to pour his heart out in a match that he knew was going to last over an hour. Many of the hard lessons that his character had to learn about the pain of isolation and loneliness, and the redemptive power of love, are things that Kenny himself had struggled with.

In 2018, Kenny once gestured to Chuck Taylor and Trent Beretta, the Best Friends, and said “This is what friendship looks like.” Then he put his arm around Kota and said, “And this is what love looks like.” This is a man who knows what love is. He knows the pain of love as keenly as he knows the triumph and the sweetness of it.

In a way, I think of Kota not coming with Kenny to AEW as sort of the original heartbreak. It’s there in the background subtext of the entire major arc of AEW’s first chapter. It’s an unhealed wound that only leads to more hurt as time goes on.

Which brings us to Blood & Guts. The Blackpool Combat Club and The Elite are both lacking a 5th member for the match. The BCC has Jon Moxley, Claudio Castagnoli, and Wheeler Yuta, but not Bryan Danielson (who is out with an injury). Their fourth member is Konosuke Takeshita, who is fighting with a single-minded purpose, which is to surpass Kenny Omega. Their fifth member later turns out to be Pac, who has no real immediate story reason to be there, besides past grudges. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and all that.

The Elite has Kenny Omega, Hangman Adam Page, and Matt and Nick Jackson. I can’t recall the precise moment I knew that Kota Ibushi would be their fifth member, but it was before the Blood & Guts match was even announced.

The moment I knew for sure, though, was when I saw this clip, which was filmed after Dynamite on July 5. Speaking to the crowd, Kenny says that during the week when his whereabouts were unknown, he didn’t stay home, and he didn’t go to Canada. “But where I went was for a good old friend, someone who is very near and dear to my heart.” He smiles when he says that last part, and his smile alone is a dead giveaway.

If there was any remaining doubt, this article by Michael Nakazawa on the DDT site cleared it up for me. The article sums up Konosuke Takeshita’s AEW story, which of course I know very well, but I wanted to see Nak’s take on it. This part was another giveaway that Kota Ibushi was going to be the 5th person on The Elite’s side: "そして竹下が抜け一人欠けたジ・エリート側には誰が入るのか？DDTファンにとっては竹下とケニーという顔合わせは見逃せないものになるだろう。(ここで多く触れるつもりはないがジ・エリート側の伏せられたメンバーとの顔合わせも見逃せないものになるだろう。) " (“And with Takeshita out, The Elite are down a member. Who will fill in on their side? DDT fans won’t want to miss the face-off between Takeshita and Kenny. (I’m not going to touch on it too much, but I’m sure that the confrontation with the unknown member of The Elite is also something not to be missed.”)

On July 12, the week before Blood & Guts, they reveal the 5th member of the Elite’s team. The Blackpool Combat Club has Kenny at their mercy, a chair around his neck. Mox offers him the microphone so that he can say his last words. Kenny says, “We still have a fifth member, too.” He’s laughing, even though he struggles to breathe. “Check the screen. Check the screen, you bitch.” The look on his face is absolutely serene.

The arena goes dark. Kota’s new music plays, though the crowd doesn’t recognize it. But everyone cheers when he shows up onscreen. I’d been wondering if a Canadian crowd would be more familiar with Kota Ibushi than an American one, since I’ve heard that the TV station that AEW airs on frequently plays Kenny’s documentary, so many regular AEW watchers in Canada likely have seen it. This crowd certainly knows who he is.

At the end of the video, The Elite is now listed as the Golden Elite instead.

The lights turn back on. The Young Bucks and Hangman are here now, ready to save Kenny. As the Blackpool Combat Club clears out of the ring, Kenny picks up the mic. He says, “We might be one man down, but we’re never out. Next week, Blood & Guts, we’re gonna show you guys it’s more than about fighting, it’s more than about your kill-jitsu; this is about more than that. Heart, passion, soul, friendship, love.” He smiles as he says love, his voice almost breaking.

He knows they’ve already won. Kota Ibushi is coming, and it’s all going to be okay.

After the reveal, Kota tweeted about it (he also posted it in English). That “AEW見ていたよ、ずっとね” (“I’ve been watching AEW, this whole time”) line in particular, I am overcome. I don’t even know how to put into words what it felt like to read that. Golden Lovers fans have been waiting four long years for Kota Ibushi to make an AEW appearance.

I don’t think any of us expected it would be anything like this.

Kota arrived in the US a few days before the match. He tweeted a photo of him and Kenny and Nak at Kenny’s house, which still feels utterly surreal to me.

And here at last we’ve reached the match.

I’m going to preface this by saying that AEW did a spectacularly bad job with the production on this match, which isn’t exactly unusual for them, but I’m less forgiving with this one. I think every single time the Golden Lovers started interacting, the camera basically immediately cut away. It’s hard to interpret it as intentional malice, considering how bad their usual production is, but it was jarring how little the production team seemed to understand what people actually wanted to see here.

The photos on the official website are also an incredibly poor selection (Kota and Takeshita aren’t in a single one of them), which seems to be a theme with every Blood & Guts show. And because AEW bans fan photography, if Scott Lesh isn’t there, and the official photographers drop the ball, we’re basically entirely out of luck. I got desperate enough, I actually attempted the bold and unprecedented strategy of just asking AEW for access to more photos. I couldn’t get them retroactively, unfortunately, but I should have more photos for shows going forward.

The whole thing made me extra appreciative of the work of Japanese fan photographers, who are so good at not only capturing vivid and dynamic photographs of moves, but who also capture the quieter moments, like exchanges between wrestlers at the corner. A lot of pro wrestling lives in those quiet moments, not in the bloody violence or flashy athleticism.

I think fundamentally that’s where me and this match were at odds. I was watching for the quiet moments, and what AEW thought they were delivering to viewers was the blood and violence.

In the end, the Golden Lovers were only one of like a dozen things that were going on in this match. So ultimately, it wasn’t really about them. I’m more at peace with that fact now at the time of writing, over a month after the match, than I was when I watched the match live. I think when you’ve waited so long for something that means so much to you, it’s almost impossible not to be disappointed when you finally get that thing, because it’s competing with all of the versions of it that played out in your head.

Kenny entered first for their team, and Kota entered last. The two of them were the bookends for the Golden Elite, the beginning and the end, containing the entirety of the faction between them. Kenny wore fully Kota Ibushi themed gear, so the two of them matched. The Young Bucks and Hangman had their own set of matching gear, which was white and purple in contrast to the Golden Lovers’ white and blue (I’m sure this divide won’t become important later).

Leading up to this match, the Blackpool Combat Club had repeatedly had The Elite’s number. They’d beaten them up more times than I can count, had mutilated them with screwdrivers, and had dragged Kenny through the hell of Don Callis’s and Takeshita’s betrayal.

But now The Elite had their secret weapon. They were finally whole again.

From the second act onward, as soon as Kota Ibushi, the final member, made his entrance, the story of the match was that the Golden Elite needed him to save them. Whenever things started going too badly for them, he’d come in and change the course of the match so that it was in their favor. Every time.

I think my favorite spot in the match involved this horrific bed of nails which turned out to actually be a bed of screwdrivers. Very thematically apt. Mox was laid out on it, and Kota approached him, and I knew immediately what he was about to do, yet still gasped when he actually did it. He did his trademark standing moonsault, his knees impacting directly with Mox’s chest, driving Mox’s body deeper into the screwdriver heads.

The Golden Lovers reunited over Mox’s prone body. They reached for each other in relief, and I looked to see their expressions, my heart pounding, and the camera had already cut away from them.

Some other things I remember: Matt Jackson poured a sack of thumbtacks down from the roof of the cage into the ring, and Pac stomped Nick Jackson through a table in a dramatic spot that looked far better in the replays than it had in the original shot. Mox brought the wild violence probably more than anyone else in the match.

I wish we’d gotten a little more with Takeshita and Kota, as it was their first time sharing a ring together in many years. But this match wasn’t really about that, either.

In the final minutes of the match, Pac and Claudio get into an argument, then Pac cuts his losses and bails. Don Callis pulls Takeshita out shortly after, realizing that their side is almost definitely losing. The match has now become a 5-on-3.

The Golden Elite unleash everything they have left onto poor Wheeler Yuta. Then they hoist him up with the chain around his neck, and he starts to pass out. The referee calls for the bell. I didn’t realize exactly what had happened at first, because the production failed to show it, but it was actually Mox who had ended the match. He surrendered to save Yuta.

Someone summed up the story very succinctly in a discord screenshot from somewhere. A person with the display name “V….” said: “So in the end the story is that despite how much conflict the Elite have had over the years when the time came, they were the ultimate cohesive unit and the BCC, despite how much they crow about being professionals and loving each other, had to rely on mercenaries that coincidentally had grudges against the Elite that bailed because they didn’t have as much skin in the game and in the end Moxley, a man who tries to portray himself as nothing but violent and merciless, had to surrender to save his protege in practically a perfect mirror of him submitting to Hangman at Revolution.”

For once, I actually found myself in near perfect agreement with what seems to be the IWC’s general consensus of the story of that match. I really liked how my friend described it: “mox literally had to surrender to love in more ways than one”.

The end of the match ran up against the end of their TV timeslot, the enemy of televised wrestling in America, though we did get one final shot of the Golden Lovers together right as the show went off the air. The post-match stuff didn’t quite make it onto the show, but some fans captured video of it. Kenny spoke on the mic for a bit, and one of the things he said is that we’ll probably be seeing Kota in AEW again.

Kota was unfortunately at a pretty severe disadvantage this whole match for several reasons. This was only his third match since coming back from his 2021 injury, for one thing, and it was much more demanding than either of his GCW matches in March. It was also a match style he was not at all accustomed to, and it was his first time wrestling in AEW.

We found out in a tweet he made later that he hadn’t realized that his normal wrestling shoes wouldn’t be well-suited for the match, so the thumbtacks and glass pierced through his shoes and hurt him throughout the match. Reminds me a bit of the original Little Mermaid story, where every step the mermaid takes on land hurts…

He didn’t actually come in contact much with the thumbtacks during the match itself, besides the ones that made it through his shoes. The thumbtacks in the photo in the above tweet came into play after the match. When they went off the air, Kota intentionally threw himself onto the thumbtacks, just for fun. Kenny had a pretty funny reaction, haha. He looked at him like he knew he’d be the person picking every single one of those tacks out of Kota’s back later.

And sure enough, Being The Elite featured a clip of Kenny doing exactly that. They talk briefly in Japanese while Kenny’s taking the tacks out of Kota’s back. Here’s a transcription of the Japanese. I love how Kenny takes care of Kota before getting his own wounds tended to, despite his own back being in far worse shape.

Kota explained the reason why he jumped into the tacks in a reply to El Desperado (English translation) (Despy also recently took a totally unnecessary tack bump himself). Since it was Kota’s first time in AEW, he decided to take a bump onto the tacks in lieu of a greeting. I think he knew that he really had to do something memorable to leave a strong impression in the minds of all of the American fans who’d never seen him before, so this is what he chose to do. It did make me smile seeing the reactions from Japanese fans. As soon as that moment happened, a lot of Japanese fans on twitter were like, “yep, that’s him; Kota Ibushi is back”.

After the match, apparently all ten of the guys in it were visibly emotional that they’d gotten that chance to wrestle each other, and Matt Jackson had them all sign one of his shoes so that he had a memento to remember the occasion by.

In Kenny’s unaired post-match promo, he says, “I'm a lover, not a fighter. You guys don't know by now, I'm a lover, not a fighter. There's one thing I learned throughout this rivalry of ours. When push comes to shove, you guys are as tough as they come. You taught us what it means to not only be a professional wrestler, but to be a wrestler.” He says, “I'm willing to stick my hand out and shake yours if you guys wanna let bygones be bygones, because love you or freaking hate you, Moxley, love you or hate you, Claudio, love you or hate your ugly ass [to Wheeler Yuta], I respect each and every one of you.”

And that’s that. The end of the feud.

In an interview, Claudio said what they wanted to come across was that: “We lost that battle, but we won the war. Thanks to the Blackpool Combat Club, now The Elite is better than ever. We brought them to a place they’ve never been.”

In a way, the BCC did end up fixing up the house that is AEW. They patched up the walls by bringing the Golden Elite back together, thus repairing the original heartbreak that was what caused the cracks to form initially. The Golden Elite is the best version of The Elite. It is their truest form, shining with love.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CvC9uVHOHJZ/

https://twitter.com/JJWilliamsWON/status/1682966137187778560

#see my wrestling journal for most of my wrestling writing this year that is not my TJPW translations! (some of those are in there too)#hoping to get it caught up by the beginning of october but i'm not optimistic jkfdghdfg #i also want to be back on tumblr properly but i've been so busy lately... rip #golden lovers #wrassling #love and genuine feeling

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the-damnable-fool · 11 months

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Dracula (2020), the most disappointing piece of media I've ever seen

This fury has been rotting into my brain for at least two years now, so now I'm going to subject you to it. This is going to be a very long rant/critique/violent catharsis.

Netflix's Dracula miniseries is a three episode series starring Claes Bang, Dolly Wells, and John Hefferman. The show ran for three episodes and was written by Stephen Moffat. You may recognize him as the longtime writer for a relatively insignificant little program known as "Doctor Who".

Episode one presents us with an interesting and well executed premise. Jonathan Harker, scarred and deformed from his encounter with the eponymous Dracula, recounts his experience to Sister Agatha Van Helsing. Much of what transpires is based heavily on the events of the original novel, though you may have already gleaned from the name "Agatha Van Helsing" that some creative liberties have been taken. I won't spoil much, since I believe this episode to be worth watching. Suffice to say that the whole of the main cast is great, Harker and Agatha Van Helsing doubly so, and there's some excellent special effects work being done.

Episode two is, by and large, my favorite episode of the lot. Because of that, I'll speak even less of it. The entire episode is framed as a murder mystery aboard a boat which Dracula himself recounts to Agatha Van Helsing, which is an interesting parallel to draw with the first episode. Dracula is, obviously, the murderer, but the actual twist is truly unexpected. Agatha Van Helsing is one of those rare and delightful characters that comes across as genuinely witty, intelligent, and dangerous in all the best ways. There's very few times a character has done something and I've thought to myself "wow, that makes perfect sense, but I never would've thought to do it". She's a treat, and that wonderful character writing makes every interaction between her and Dracula come across as a devilish battle of wits. What's more, there's some genuinely heartfelt and emotional moments between the background characters that stick with me to this day.

Then you hit the cutoff point.

If you've liked the series so far, and have become attached to its tone, characters, and general quality of writing, you should stop watching five minutes before the ending of the second episode. Unless you want to be disappointed in the worst sort of way I would encourage you to cut your losses, switch off your TV, say to yourself "Damn, that was a really good two-part movie", and move on. It is not worth it. You have been warned.

Beyond this point there be spoilers.

So Episode Fucking Three

Up until now, the series had been doing a great job of constructing some very compelling, well written, and likeable characters. Agatha Van Helsing in particular was genuinely intelligent, witty, bitingly cynical, and had a character dynamic with Dracula that could only be described as "If we weren't diametrically morally opposed to one another, we'd be fucking". The crewmen of the ship they came in on were, while not heavily characterized, very human and easy to sympathize with. Johnathan Harker was both tragic and heroic while he lasted and, while I don't remember much of Mina, I remember liking her well enough. So, what do you do with a slam dunk roster of characters like that?

Well, you kill them all off in an offscreen time jump of course!

Episode three takes place in modern London and I immediately hate it. Agatha, my favorite character, is gone, as are all of the characters we've come to know and love. In their place is Agatha's indirect descendant, played by the same actress and so woefully boring that I don't remember her name at time of writing, and a couple of other generic stooges. There's a junior researcher at the facility, a couple of wildly shallow club-girl side characters that he pines after, and a few others that I forget.

If I'm completely honest with you, I didn't watch the entirety of episode three, and you'll see why in a second.

So the episode starts. We open up on Dracula, soaking wet and crawling out of the ocean on the shore of modern day London. He's immediately surrounded by a group of mercenaries armed with cameras, a helicopter, and conventional firearms, along with our new Agatha Van Helsing wannabe. Long story short, he kills a mercenary and escapes into the city as day breaks, has his cliche little "woah I'm immortal and experiencing the modern world for the first time" bit, and then gets captured in the sloppiest way imaginable.

Turns out, Mina spent the vast majority of her inherited money on creating a foundation in memory of John Harker with the specific purpose of locating and containing Dracula. It's sort of like the Foundation from the SCP universe except they only contain one mildly boring, vaguely bisexual anomaly. They've got money, professional mercenaries, trained scientists, a secret Dracula holding chamber specifically for holding Dracula, the works.

So Dracula gets dragged into the Dracula containment chamber, and this thing is the real deal. Constructed of bulletproof plexiglass and steel, able to be remotely exposed to sunlight at any time, surrounded by open floor and armed mercenaries, it's pretty safe to say that this Dracula containment chamber is easily the finest chamber ever constructed with the sole intention of containing Dracula. All he's got is a table, a chemical toilet, and an ipad loaded with digital books. He gets fed blood through a tube at regular intervals and occasionally gets poked at by researchers trying to figure out just what the fuck he is.

Now, by this point, we the audience were doing our best to get back onboard. Sure, our favorite characters were gone, save for the villain, and sure, the tone had taken a weird lurch with the time jump, but that was all fine. Just have Agatha's great great grand-niece be just as charming as she was and we can all have a grand time watching Dracula masterfully manipulate his way out of the Dracula time-out box. We've seen his guile before, so we're all primed and ready for another fantastic battle of wits, just like on the boat.

But that doesn't happen.

What follows is a brief summary of events that happen in the episode in vaguely chronological order. By reading it you may be made privy to the sudden and utter incompetence of the new lead character and to the wildly stupid turn that the writing took in episode three.

The Harker Foundation finds Draculas coffin at the bottom of the sea in the wreckage of the ship from episode two. For no good reason, Agatha's descendant (the director of this foundation) personally goes to scuba dive into the ocean to take a look at the unconscious Drac.

Also for no good goddamn reason, she sticks her whole ass thumb in his mouth to feel his fangs. He bites her thumb off instinctively, giving him the small amount of blood he needs to reawaken. That's one instance of complete incompetence before the ten minute mark.

Instead of recovering the coffin immediately, the Foundation pulls back and waits on shore with armed mercenaries until night falls hours later. Why they don't just nab him immediately while hes sleeping, I don't know, but I'll count that as a second instance of complete incompetence.

Drac escapes and kills some people, including a few mercenaries. It is established that the Foundation has the power and influence to make these deaths disappear.

Drac is transported to the Dracula holding chamber.

In the course of less than 24 hours, Dracula FIGURES OUT HOW A TABLET WORKS, GUESSES THE FUCKING WIFI PASSWORD BECAUSE ITS HIS FUCKING NAME, AND SKYPE CALLS THE LAW FIRM THAT USED TO REPRESENT HIM TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

Do you see why I was furious? Do you see why my friends and I stood up and yelled at the TV screen? Do you see why we turned it off immediately? Do you see why I want to hit Stephen Moffat with a chair?

Needless to say, the lawyer takes a call from someone claiming to be a man that employed his firm two centuries prior completely seriously. He walks directly into the facility with no explanation as to how he found out where it was or why the guards let him past, and threatens to sue the Foundation if they continue to hold his client against his will.

The inferior Agatha throws up her hands and says "welp, guess we gotta let him go" and just. Let's Dracula leave. No consideration for the consequences of doing so beforehand. No thought given to the possibility that they might simply inform the relevant authorities that he'd killed people that very night and therefore should be contained and studied. They just fuckin' let him leave.

So lets recount all the insane leaps of logic that need to have transpired in order for this to happen.

One, Dracula would need to have figured out how the internet works within the span of 24 hours despite having only just learned that electricity existed. I'll give that a pass since its implied he can absorb knowledge by drinking blood.

Two, Dracula would have to guess the wifi password for this top secret, high security facility... Which is literally just DRACULA. Why the fuck was it set to his name? Why was he given a tablet that's physically capable of connecting to wifi? Why didn't the mercenaries that guard him at all times not see him using Skype and say "Hmm, maybe we should stop him from doing that"? Moreover, why the fuck does the room he's contained in even have wifi? Isn't everything I just said a massive security oversight for an organization that's poured millions into this containment facility?

Three, Dracula's lawyer would have to believe that an unknown, unsolicited caller, who has neither modern means of identifying himself nor any records verifying his existence for over two hundred years, is genuinely a client of his from two hundred years ago in need of legal counsel. Furthermore, Dracula would need to have some way of communicating his exact location to this man.

Four, the security teams responsible for keeping the facility safe and free of intruders would have to not only let this lawyer into a top secret facility based solely on his own claim that his client was inside, but let him directly into the main holding chamber that is under constant guard all without so much as warning the fucking director of the Facility.

Five, the director of this facility would have had to completely thrown out any alternative to letting a known mass murdering superbeing out of confinement despite full knowledge of what that would entail. They could've just fought the battle in court. It's easy to prove that he needs to be locked up when you can show the judge the bodies of the people he killed that day. Even if that's too much trouble, why not pop the lawyer in the back of the skull and make him disappear like the mercenary? Or Dracula's victims? It can't be that hard if you've done it three times this episode.

It's the kind of twist you would expect out of a piece of satire, not an actual, serious work written by an accredited writer. To this day I have not seen any other work of fiction take such a sudden and sharp decline in quality, and I doubt that I ever will again. It's as though the writers intentionally made every character at least thirty percent stupider just for the sake of giving Dracula his "gotcha".

So what went wrong?

Honestly, I think that the writers mistook their villain for the main character of the series, which ultimately just doesn't work. Sure, we love Dracula. We didn't come to watch the Dracula show out of our rabid love for Johnathan Harker, we came for the big scary villain. The problem is that a villain still has to be a villain. While we do love him, we don't root for him, we root for the people that oppose him despite the odds. They killed off every recurring character except for Dracula and changed the setting and tone so massively that it was completely unrecognizable from the first two episodes, and they did this because they thought the audience be invested enough in this villain for it not to matter. Not only did it backfire, but the ridiculous amount of plot mandated stupidity and Deus Ex Machina that it took to get Dracula out of his first jam in that new setting completely killed any further drive that I had to continue watching.

This lazy twist not only made the main characters look incompetent, it made Dracula look lame. He's the Prince of Darkness. The fucking Nightwalker. The King of Vampires does not call his fucking lawyer.

Anyway, I'm finished with my rant now. Congrats on sticking it out this long. There's no prize or anything.

#dracula 2020 #dracula spoilers #jonathan harker #agatha van helsing #dracula #media critique #long

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aquaticsoul · 4 months

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happy munday!

i would like to share a fraction of how my 2024 looks, as it pertains to myself and this blog. buckle in for me, it's a little bit on the lengthy side but important regardless. under a cut just in case anyone's on mobile this fine morning.

• i have never set resolutions before, at least not ones that i can remember. i spent the last half of 2023 setting up my resolutions for 2024.

• i have been a creative person my whole life, starting with piano when i was four years old. the past few years, music school sucked out my soul and beat down my self esteem.

• on top of that, i suffered repeated overuse injuries in both hands. carpal tunnel and an injured ulnar nerve in one, sprains four separate times in the other, and overall just total loss of use of both hands. i continued playing anyway despite the pain and watched my technical abilities plummet. by the end of 2022, i could no longer hold a pen for longer than required to sign my rent check and i was barely able to keep my music scholarship.

• i have since quit music school to pursue... business, surprisingly! my degree is set up like two, one being global business with the other being risk management & insurance. i finally quit music school fully in late may of 2023 due to a severe jaw injury that allowed me to cut my scholarship contract as a bass clarinetist & clarinetist.

• since then, i have battled feeling even worse about myself. as you can imagine, a total career change and a loss of my favored outlet have been rough to say the least. i love business a lot, but it's not music and never will be.

• however, there have been GOOD things that happened in 2023. the 30 or so hours per week i used to spend practicing are now dedicated to my new job as a barista (which i love), spending time with my dog, relearning how to hold a pen, writing, composing music i actually want to compose, hanging out with people outside of rehearsal time, and figuring out what i want out of my life.

• most importantly, though (and i do mean most importantly): i've started creating again. i'm tripping, i'm stumbling, and i feel a bit lost sometimes, but i'm creating nonetheless.

• i made a friend this past year (well, late 2022, but y'know) who has taken time to show me the ropes when it comes to art, who has been patient with my gazillion questions, who handed me sielu and let me run free with him (and his family), and who has sat with me in the mud at the bottom until i was ready to climb back to the top again. (thank you for the millionth time, kira. you've become one of my very very BEST friends. and no, the distance between my house and your house does not deter me from saying this. whether you meant to or not, you saved me. and now you're stuck with me.)

• this blog has given me a spark that i haven't had since september 2019. i mean, for crying out loud, i'm writing music again! of my own free will and desire to write it! i haven't wanted to do that since... hell, at LEAST 2020, and i haven't been EXCITED about it since september 2019. i even made a blanket! a whole entire blanket! by myself! without prompting! i went out and bought fabric and just... made a blanket because i felt like it! and that was nice.

• anyway, all that said, my number one resolution for this year is to engage in something creative every day regardless of what the medium is. i don't have to do a project to completion, i don't have to post it, i don't have to let the idea go anywhere. i just have to engage with whatever i engage with that day with no expectations of it or myself. the constant high expectations of my own creativity were what put out my fire in the first place.

• sielu has given me a spark again, and i fully intend to let that spark grow into a huge bonfire. i will not let the expectations of others be the expectations i have for myself. i will not let my own expectations be perfection.

• for 2024, for better or for worse, i will not give up on myself again. i will do the things i love to do alongside the people i love. i am going to drag myself out of this slump kicking and screaming if i have to. and each and every person who follows this blog is going to ride along with me.

• a smaller resolution i have was given to me by kira: one art piece a month, minimum. that art summary ain't gonna make itself... so y'all better look forward to more of my silly music man and puffs of every color.

#dealing with the paperwork ; ooc.#injury tw #depression tw #<- just in case #long post tw #this is a good post i promise

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tellthemeerkatsitsfine · 4 months

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If anyone's interested in stand-up comedy but doesn't have a NextUp subscription, now may be a good time to acquire one. Mark Watson is putting on the Access Festival again (its first year was last year, January 2023), an online-only livestreamed comedy festival. Last year I watched I watched a bunch of the stuff, and this year's looks even better.

Sarah Keyworth's set at the Access Festival last year was quite good so I'm pleased that they're back. Also Paul Sinha, I've been wanting to see what his stand-up is right now (I think his Parkinson's is getting worse and he's saying he's getting to close to the end of when he'll be physically functional enough to keep doing stand-up, which is terrible, but makes me extra glad that some of his stuff now is getting filmed so it can be preserved. Obviously I want to see what Mark Watson's working on for his own 2024 show, even if I'm still mildly annoyed at him. I keep thinking I should watch the Anna Mann shows that are on NextUp, I think I might like Colin Hoult. Joe Wells is the guy who did that autism stand-up hour that was recently released on YouTube and I'd like to see his next thing. Lost Voice Guy and Stuart Laws are people I've seen around in bits and pieces that are all right and I'd watch a longer thing by them.

And finally, obviously, most excitingly of all: DO'D!! I haven't seen any of his material since 2020 (aside from a little clip from last year's Melbourne Festival Gala), when he recorded his most recent album and filmed that set from his basement at Christmas. Can't wait to see the new stuff (by which I mean, anything from the last three years).

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leighlew3 · 1 year

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Leigh, I'm so sorry to burden you with this, but I've followed you for a few years and witnessed how supportive you've been with SuperCorp fans and the shared disappointment with how the show ended, so I feel safe writing to you.

All the WLW shows getting cancelled fucking sucks. And it hurts. Not because I've necessarily been a big fan of them all, but simply because my voice and story, as a consumer and queer woman, doesn't feel valued.

When I heard Netflix cancelled Warrior Nun, I got angry, and I've been so ever since. It somehow hit different this time, and the cancellation doesn't make sense to me. I've loved the show since its first day on Netflix in 2020. I fell in love with the characters and the actors who portrayed them. I fell in love with the story they were telling and how it was told. Something about Warrior Nun just felt different to me.

Now it's almost 7 in the morning where I live, and I haven't been able to sleep. I was reading a Warrior Nun fic - as one does - and then all the feelings suddenly hit me. Angry turned into sad, and I feel sort of silly for admitting this, but I actually cried. I read somewhere that the brain can't differentiate real people from fictional ones, and I think I'm kind of mourning the loss of the characters 🤷🏻‍♀️ I've never felt this way before and I honestly don't know what to do about it. The whole situation just sucks.

Do you have any advice on how the consumers can be heard by big companies like Netflix and how we can get them to actually value their WLW shows?

Again, I'm sorry to lay this on you, but I don't really have anyone to talk to about this, and I'm just sick and tired of the situation and needed to rant.

(I appreciate you and wish you and your loved ones a happy new year)

It's not a burden at all, I'm glad you feel this is a safe space. 💜

Everything you're saying is relatable and valid as heck. When a show means the world to you, especially if you're part of a marginalized group and taking hit after hit after hit no less... it can be exhausting, infuriating, demoralizing, and so many other complicated emotions when you lose that art that struck you so deeply, that you related to, and that you looked forward to more of to get you through life.

To be honest, I feel like for the most part, fans are doing as best they can as far as efforts to keep shows around. There really are no more tangible specific solutions for fans aside from what's being done, and that's what's frustrating. The endless rewatches, fans doing street team style spreading the word on their own (even spending a lot of money) to make up for lack of official marketing, getting influencers and press behind them, etc. It's actually a sad state of affairs that in recent years, LGBTQ fans have WORK, and FIGHT and PUSH and even PAY constantly to keep a wlw show on the air or to try to get someone to make a ship canon after queerbaiting, or to get more screen time or respectful exploration for a wlw pairing, or to make TPTB see how bad the bury your gays trope is (time and again and again), etc -- rather than just sit back and watch and enjoy.

Fans shouldn't have to work so hard for entertainment, and yet queer fans so often do. And even when people successfully give a show solid numbers, sometimes it's still not enough, and like WN, a well-reviewed, heavily watched series gets the axe anyway.

So it's not on the fans. It's on those at the top, at the end of the day.

Alas, if I had to make some kind of a suggestion... all I can think to say is on the macro, bigger picture level. And this will take some self reflection and increased empathy for some people (sadly a thing some may not be capable of). But... collectively, some people in fandom spaces (small portions, but loud ones) for wlw shows have got to try to stop the silly fanon vs canon wars, and gatekeeping, and jealousies, and creating unnecessary drama and toxicity. There really should be no rival fandoms in wlw spaces at all, unless a show has a fully wlw love triangle or something and people are Team Ship 1 vs Team Ship 2, lol, but even still -- it should be a 'fun' battle, not a toxic war that hurts real people, drives away viewership, etc.

If most people in queer fandoms stuck together, and respected each other's ships even if they don't ship it or watch the show, and generally were supportive of each other as fellow queer fans in their battles against cancellations, in demanding queerbait to be made canon, fighting the BYG trope, etc -- LGBTQ fandoms would have such a collective, expanded power behind these positive efforts. And either way, even if all efforts fail to save a show, etc, at the very least, it would help create a safer, healthier space for queer fans online.

And I know, asking toxic people to not be toxic seems futile, but some people simply need to be reminded that we're all in this together and working together is always going to be ideal when facing off against the real opposition: corporate bias / phobia in the media / industry space.

Ultimately, it's 100% on TPTB at the shows and networks/streamers/studios to do better -- at times creatively, and other times as far as marketing efforts. Sometimes both.

But in the meantime, as far as fandom spaces, some LGBTQ fans gotta try to learn to stick together as much as possible. While there will ALWAYS be toxicity in every fandom from all backgrounds, and fans cannot control each other, I am noticing that as time goes on, and as more wlw fandoms get hurt by networks and streamers, the more angry people are understandably getting, the more reactive and protective of their shows and ships people are getting, and the more then they lash out and try to gatekeep and attack their fellow queer fans and allies, which is... just not it. It's counter productive.

Point is... fans are doing all they can IMO as far as tangible efforts to save (or fix) certain shows. And the rest is on the creatives, the networks and streamers, etc. But in the meantime, at the very least, people shouldn't attack true allies who have proven their support, nor especially attack fellow queer fans who just want to see what a show or ship is about or make positive parallels to their other faves, etc as it could be extra viewers for the show that they're running off.

TLDR: Stay focused on the real problem: corporate media's bias / phobia. Fight them collectively, not each other.

#lgbtq #lgbtq representation #fandom #wlw #sapphic tv

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raayllum · 1 year

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Opinion about the first episode of season 4?

My first watch it did feel a little clunky, but I think that's also bc 1) as a super fan I'd seen all the clips released already and 2) had read the SDCC twitter thread, so nothing about the episode was a surprise in terms of like, scene by scene stuff. 4x01 in particular hinges on two mis-directs where what we think may be conflict (Sunfire ambush, 'plot against the king'") only for them to both be happier things. Which is why I think Callum's plotline ending badly (aka sadly) is important because otherwise it's too much of a positive note.

AKA I've watched the episode 3 times since and it 100% worked for me (which is also how it worked for S3 feeling a little fast the first time I saw it, but I was also hyped up on so much adrenaline and very little sleep and - shockingly - that makes a difference, I know). I've seen people complain about the tone but I think people tend to have nostalgia perfection goggles on for things they love and compared TDP to (largely ATLA, which had "Zuko angrily visiting Iroh in prison" and "Aang throwing a secret dance party" intercut immediately with one another) and it's like - TDP has always done a very good job at balancing its tone, same as ATLA, but it does feel hypocritical to watch fans of both not realize what they're "excusing" just cause they're used to it vs being hard on TDP.

This goes for TDP too since besides 1x01, this is probably the most packed premiere episode we've had. 2x01 was very exposition heavy when it came to magic and not much else actually happened in it, and like... 3 things happen in 3x01 and the most important stuff is all near the end of the episode, basically? So while 4x01 is absolutely doing the heavy work of catching us up and doing set up for the season, I think it does that difficult job as well as it reasonably can, tbh. Again: I don't mind people complaining, but the complaints gotta be grounded in merit, y'know? (That said: soft blocking people with negativity in the tags because I'm not about that with this show and never will be).

I have also been tickled pink by all the more casual reviewers / watchers who was surprised at Callum's behaviour with Soren and his lack of patience for bullshit now, since not only is it exactly how I thought he'd be post-timeskip and TTM, I thought it was exactly how he'd behave post-a speculative timeskip back in January 2020 with excerpts like this from "If Time Is Money" - so fucking satisfying, man:

She could perfectly picture the haughty look on Runaan’s face as he said, in a rather bored voice, as though whatever conversation that was about to be had was pointless. Runaan wasn’t necessarily a proud individual, but he had little patience for what he deemed illusions of youth or other perceived wastes of time. “Listen, boy—” “No, you listen,” Callum said, fair more sternly. Sterner than Tiadrin would have thought possible, given the softness he generally carried. “We’re never going to like each other, for obvious reasons. I think I have a far better one, as yours is based in prejudice, and mine is based on the fact you literally murdered my father, but that’s not the point. The point is that while I don’t care what you say about me, as I’ve heard far worse from other elves like you, Rayla does and you are still her father and she deserves to have you in her life and to have a good relationship with you. So when she’s not around, you can say whatever you want, even to my face. I don’t care and I don’t plan on rising to it anyway. But when she is around, you keep that shit to yourself, because it’s only going to upset her, and she’s been through more than enough.” Runaan’s face was stiff and barely readable, when Tiadrin stole a look. It was only because she knew him so well that she could tell he was at least a little gobsmacked, and so, quite frankly, was she. The prince’s tone left no room for debate, as she carefully watched Runaan try and scrounge up anything to say at all.

Adored all the Viren and Callum parallels since I've also thought since S2 that S4 would ramp it up majorly and it's super gratifying / interesting / exciting to watch that come to fruition. I also loved the Janaya proposal and thought it was super sweet. I gotta adjust to some of the small animation changes (I think possibly character / face silhouette line work and being even more fluid than before) but I love the flexing, updated character designs, and all the little microexpressions.

I'm so pumped for the rest of the season, it's going to be unreal (and just like, 2.5 days away now)!

#thanks for asking #reviews #mine #lmao #s4 #4x01 #fandom nonsense #ever so slightly #darkwolfgoddess #and listen i have my own biases #i think 1x07's highlight as an episode besides human rayla is the scene where callum and ezran #are sitting around looking cute as hell with lil cups in their hands #this is My show and i'm gonna appreciate it as such #s4 spoilers #tdp #tdp spoilers #the dragon prince #fic: if time is money #characterization

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