#my pride webseries

[madamudeeaaarr]

I've been roamin' around, always lookin' down at all I see Painted faces fill the places I can't reach You know that I could use somebody

that lioness from the my pride series

didn´t like the writting but i like her

#my art #fanart #artists on tumblr #doodle #lionesses #my pride #my pride nothing #nothing #my pride webseries

[dreamcreature22]

Just some Redesigns and Reimagined characters i made from the animated series “MyPride”,

•Nothing: I wanted her design to reflect more of her father, now she has most of his colors, Quickmane actually manages to tear her front leg off during his attack, and blind her on the same side, now, instead of saying the weird line about Asra, Nothing is actually saved by one of Kansu’s thunderstorms, Sharptonge and Powerstrike find them during the storm, and Sharptonge proclaims that if he lays a paw on Nothing again, he will have to deal with the fury of their goddesses, and so Nothin’s life was spared. (Also, Nothing is Pansexual in this rewrite)

•Starmane:I wanted to make him more bulky, and give him a little more features, he actually lost his eye as well (I know, this would leave the cast with 3 blind characters, but that angry snout needed something more), in this rewrite, Starmane didn’t got his title as mane by conquest, he was actually a Nomane chosen by Embermane as a ward of sorts, believing him to be a good fit to lead his pride and daughters after him.

•Powerstrike: The oldest of Sharptongue and Embermane’s daughters.

•Spark/Sparkmane: That’s just an idea of how Spark (the Spark in my AU) could have looked like if he had survived into adulthood, in this AU, Spark and Nothing are the only cubs of Starmane and Powerstrike, Spark dies as a cub, so this design was just for fun ☺️☺️

#my pride #lions #lions mane #nothing #Starmane #Powerstrike #Myprideseries #artwork #fanart #redesign #my pride nothing #my pride webseries #my pride starmane #my pride Powerstrike

[atlasllm]

.

#shoutout to the phillipines #atlas speaks; #kicking my feet twirling my hair giggling at remembering dream's tweet #i'm pretty sure it was just a response to a twitter user who asked him to say it but like #man it warms my heart to see a huge cc just acknowledge the phillipines exists #i feel like filipino peeps get left out of a lot of asian pride moments :( at least it feels like it to me #my first filipino animated rep was an obscure webseries from 2011....... #we've come a long way since then i hope

[posi-pan]

july is disability pride month, so let’s highlight some disabled pan characters! 🌈💗💛💙

we got some physical disabilities, chronic illnesses, learning disabilities, developmental disabilities, and more in characters from books, comics, games, tv, webcomics, and webseries.

for all the specifics of the rep these characters offer (don’t want this post to be even longer) check out the details on my pan rep list.

unlike the books which have the title and author in the cover, the other characters might not be recognizable so: eliza han (archie comics), deadpool (marvel comics), fuse (apex legends), andre (inside job), finnegan (monster high), chris (friki romance), noah (sunflowers and lavender), abby (no end), maverick (no end), leo (cirque royale), and sulvain (novae).

(this post on ig)

#pansexual #pansexuality #panromantic #disabled #pan pride #pan positivity #pictures #mine #long post #i didn't include mental illness because i made these for instagram and i recently made a specific mentally ill pan rep post

[the-rewatch-rewind]

I love Poe Party too much to feel like any words will do it justice, but I keep trying.

Script below the break.

Hello and welcome back to the Rewatch Rewind! My name is Jane, and this is the podcast where I count down my top 40 most frequently rewatched movies of the last 20 years. And today I will be discussing number 13 on my list: Shipwrecked Comedy and American Black Market’s 2016 mystery comedy Edgar Allan Poe’s Murder Mystery Dinner Party, directed by William J Stribling, written by Sean Persaud and Sinéad Persaud, starring Sean Persaud, Sinéad Persaud, Mary Kate Wiles, Sarah Grace Hart, Joey Richter, Lauren Lopez, Ashley Clements, Tom de Trinis, Blake Silver, and a whole bunch of other incredibly talented and underrated actors.

Edgar Allan Poe (Sean Persaud) wishes to impress the beautiful Annabel Lee (Mary Kate Wiles), so he enlists the help of his ghost roommate Lenore (Sinéad Persaud) to throw a murder mystery party for Annabel and a group of famous authors. But then guests start actually being murdered.

So, first of all, I realize that this isn’t technically a movie; it’s an 11-episode webseries available to watch for free on YouTube, which you should absolutely pause this podcast to do if you haven’t seen it yet (link in the show notes). But there is a feature cut that’s about an hour and 45 minutes long, and that’s what I counted as a movie. If I’d kept track of the number of times I watched each episode, I’m sure that even my least-watched episode would easily beat number one on this list. But as for the feature cut, I watched it 12 times in 2017, three times in 2018, four times in 2019, twice in 2020, and three times in 2021. To a certain extent, every movie on the Rewatch Rewind has changed my life in some way, but this one has changed my life to a degree that I would never have believed possible. Every single day of the last seven plus years of my life would have looked different if not for Edgar Allan Poe’s Murder Mystery Dinner Party. All of the guests I have had on this podcast who are not my siblings, I met either directly or indirectly because of this show. So fasten your seatbelts: this episode is going to be a ride.

My journey to Edgar Allan Poe’s Murder Mystery Dinner Party, or Poe Party for short, or Edgar Allan Poe’s Murder Mystery Invite-Only Casual Dinner Party/Gala for Friends Potluck for long, began years before the project itself was even written. In the late 2000s-early 2010s, my sister was relatively plugged into the YouTube scene, at least compared to me, and she first introduced me to a group called Team Starkid around 2009-2010-ish. At the time, they were a bunch of college theater kids who had put together a Harry Potter parody musical and on a whim posted it to YouTube, where it went viral, so they started making and posting other musicals – which they are still doing. I feel like I might still have discovered Poe Party if I hadn’t been a Starkid fan, but that definitely helped. A more crucial step on my road to Poe Party started on April 9, 2012, when my sister posted a link to a new YouTube video on my Facebook wall, with the message, “Fictional vlogs by Lizzie Bennet. (actually Hank Green.) There’s only one so far, but I’m kind of crazily excited for this!” Hank Green, of course, along with his brother John, is basically one of the fathers of YouTube. I don’t think I’d seen a ton of their videos at that point, but I was familiar with and liked them. And of course, I knew Lizzie Bennet was the main character in Pride and Prejudice, a story that I loved very much – more on that in a future episode. So I was also very excited for this new show, called The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, but I could not have imagined the intense emotional journey it would take me on, through two short episodes a week (plus spinoffs) for almost a year. There had never been a TV show that I was more invested in than LBD. I was double majoring in college and working part time, but the main thing I cared about was these modern Pride and Prejudice characters. The show was clearly very low-budget, but I was blown away by the writing and acting. I was particularly impressed by the person playing Lizzie, Ashley Clements, and the person playing Lydia, Mary Kate Wiles. And, like, it wasn’t just me – LBD had a huge following for what it was. Not, like, millions of fans, but hundreds of thousands by the end. As the finale approached, the producers launched a Kickstarter to release the show on DVD and – ostensibly – pay significantly more to the cast and crew who had been incredibly underpaid. If you’re at all interested in hearing more about that, I highly recommend checking out The Look Back Diaries on Ashley Clements’s YouTube channel; she just did a whole deep dive into the show and its aftermath in honor of its 10th anniversary that I found fascinating. But anyway, coincidentally, right around that same time, Starkid also launched their first Kickstarter, since most of them had graduated from college and no longer had access to the same resources but wanted to keep making more musicals. So they were raising money for Twisted, a Wicked-style villain redemption retelling of Aladdin, which sounded interesting. I had never pledged to a Kickstarter before, but I backed both the LBD DVDs and Twisted on the same day: March 25, 2013, according to my emails.

After that, I kept following Starkid and some of the cast members of LBD, but not particularly closely. In early 2014, Mary Kate Wiles was in a webseries called Kissing in the Rain that I think I watched part of at the time, and I thought it was fine, but I wasn’t particularly into it (imagine, me, an aromantic, not particularly into a show about kissing!) and there was a lot of other stuff going on in my life so I honestly can’t remember if I saw all of it when it was first coming out. I definitely couldn’t have told you that it was on a channel called Shipwrecked, or even the name of the actor she was kissing. But in May of 2014, a new Kickstarter launched for a series called Muzzled the Musical, which was going to feature several cast members from LBD as well as Joey Richter from Team Starkid (Lauren Lopez also ended up being in it but I don’t think that was known during the Kickstarter). And I thought, whoa, cool, worlds colliding, and backed it. And promptly all but forgot about it.

A lot of strange, confusing, and rather upsetting things happened in 2015 that I don’t really want to get too deep into here, but I will say that in hindsight most of them had to do with a combination of amatonormativity and heteronormativity, and I started feeling pretty bad about myself. Before then I had managed to convince myself that I was too young to seriously fall in love anyway, but suddenly I was 25 years old and had never had any interest in dating anyone, and I felt like there was definitely something wrong with me. I didn’t exactly want to change, since I liked not dating, but I had always thought that that would just automatically change when I got older, and facing the fact that it wasn’t changing meant facing the fact that I didn’t know what the point of my life was. I liked my job but I didn’t want it to be my sole purpose. I loved movies, but that didn’t feel like it mattered. All my life I had taken in the message that finding a spouse and creating a family was what made the struggle of life worth it, and I felt lazy for not even trying to pursue that. I remember hearing at some point in my late teens that if you didn’t find your significant other in college, you needed to look online, but I didn’t even know what I would be looking for. And I truly don’t know where this line of thinking would have ended up if it had gone on much longer uninterrupted – I may have discovered my identity a bit sooner, or I may have ended up hurting someone by trying to pursue a relationship I ultimately didn’t want, or I may have just continued to spiral – but what actually happened was I got an email in late October that that random fantasy musical series I had backed on Kickstarter a year and a half earlier was being released on YouTube.

So I watched Muzzled, and it was very fun and silly, but the main thing I got out of it was, man I miss the Lizzie Bennet Diaries. So I finally opened that DVD set I’d gotten from the Kickstarter, and I binge-watched the whole show (I didn’t count it as a movie because there’s no feature cut, and also it is very long). And then I re-watched the whole thing with the DVD-exclusive commentary. And then I thought, I wonder what this cast has been up to lately, so I started searching for them on YouTube. And that’s when I learned that Mary Kate Wiles had been posting two videos per week on her channel for years, and I had been missing it. As I got caught up on her videos, I learned that I had just missed a Kickstarter for a musical she was going to be in called Spies are Forever, made by the Tin Can Brothers, which were a group of people who were also involved with Starkid, and that she seemed to be getting ready for a new Kickstarter with a group called Shipwrecked Comedy, the same people who had made that kissing show. They had also made a show called A Tell Tale Vlog about Edgar Allan Poe and the valley girl ghost Lenore who was haunting him, in which Poe had been played by Sean Persaud (the guy from Kissing in the Rain, who was apparently dating Mary Kate in real life) and his sister Sinéad (who was in the second half of Kissing in the Rain, which I definitely hadn’t watched before). Mary Kate had made a brief appearance in A Tell Tale Vlog as Annabel Lee, and this new show was going to be related to that, but bigger. I was so intrigued by this new project that I started supporting Mary Kate on Patreon to ensure that I didn’t miss any updates about it.

The Poe Party Kickstarter launched on February 2, 2016. By then, I had watched and enjoyed everything on Shipwrecked’s YouTube channel, but that Kickstarter video was my favorite thing they had made. I initially pledged the same amount that I had given to the Lizzie Bennet DVDs, thinking that would be my final pledge, but I ended up giving almost six times that much by the end of the campaign. Every $5,000 they raised, they revealed a new character and cast member with a poster, and each reveal made me more excited. Joey Richter was playing Ernest Hemingway?! Ashley Clements was playing Charlotte Brontë?! Lauren Lopez, who frequently played male characters, was playing George Eliot, a woman with a male pen name?! They got Jim O’Heir from Parks & Rec?! And then, as if the reveals weren’t enough, they had weekly 4-hour livestreams that I found incredibly entertaining. It had become clear that Shipwrecked Comedy now consisted of four people: Sean, Sinéad, Mary Kate, and Sarah Grace Hart, who had played Emily Dickinson in a stand-alone video and would be reprising that role in Poe Party. Various other cast members showed up in the streams with the Core Four, and I distinctly remember thinking, if these people are this entertaining to watch when they’re just hanging out, this show is going to be so amazing! In the second livestream of the campaign, they started writing people’s names on papers to stick on the wall if they pledged or raised their pledge during the streams, which was an excellent incentive, but I would have kept raising mine anyway, because I was desperate for this show to get made. Apart from a few weird troll messages, the stream chat was full of lovely conversations between people who seemed like my kindred spirits. I had never felt more at home in a community. And I had never been more excited than when the Kickstarter exceeded its goal.

And I’m telling you all of this because I need you to understand how astronomically high my hopes and expectations for Poe Party were. Some of the movies I’ve talked about so far ended up in my top 40 partly because I had fairly low expectations going into them and was pleasantly surprised, but that was absolutely not the case here. I had seen excellent work from several of the people involved before, and they seemed particularly dedicated to this project, and I knew they were going to make something incredible. I also desperately needed something in my life to go really well, and this seemed like it might be it, although I knew it wasn’t fair to put that kind of pressure on these independent filmmakers. I tried to temper my expectations, reminding myself that they had only raised a little over $72,000, and Kickstarter was going to take a chunk of that, and some of it had to go to perk fulfillment, so they weren’t going to have nearly enough to make anything super fancy. They released some prologue videos that were very fun but also very small, and I tried to tell myself that the actual show was also going to be small. And I kept reminding myself how long Muzzled had taken to come out, and that I was probably going to have to wait a while for Poe Party too, so I needed to chill. But then in late July – only four and a half months after the Kickstarter had ended – Shipwrecked released a trailer for Poe Party, which said it was starting in less than a month, and there was no tempering my expectations after that. The trailer looked fabulous. It was witty and clever and dramatic and intriguing, the music was perfection, and, shockingly, it looked like an actual studio movie. Not like a super high-budget one, but like they had at least a million dollars. Certainly way more than $60k. My already-ridiculously-high expectations soared to new heights. Part of me was sure I was setting myself up for disappointment, but I couldn’t help it.

And then it was August 22 and the first episode (Chapter 1: The Bells) dropped and it was so much better than I was hoping for. First of all, the look set the tone perfectly. The lighting was exquisite, and the location – incidentally the same house where Muzzled was filmed – was perfect. And then there was the writing. One thing the Persauds had mentioned during the Kickstarter was that they were inspired by the movie Clue, which will be featured in a future episode of this podcast, so I was expecting similar vibes to that, but I was not expecting there to be so many direct references to Clue. All of them made me extremely happy. It felt like the show was made specifically for me. It was like Clue, but even better. I already loved every single character and knew I would be sad to see some of them get murdered. It was also very clear from even just that first episode that this was going to fall into the “everybody was having way too much fun” category of film that I love. But while most movies like that tend to have pretty weak stories and just overall mediocre scripts, and the cast having fun makes up for that, Poe Party was different. The writing was fantastic, AND the acting was perfect, AND it looked gorgeous, AND everybody was having fun. Again, I tried not to have unrealistic expectations, I tried to tell myself that not every episode could be quite the banger that the first one was, but I was still incredibly excited for the rest of the show. And I was not at all disappointed. Somehow it just kept getting better. The running joke about everyone forgetting Emily Dickinson was there or who she was just kept getting funnier. Ditto the joke about George Eliot thinking she needed to convince everyone she was a man when everyone was clearly fine with her being a woman. I remember at one point, when around three or four chapters were out, Mary Kate tweeted that they were working on editing her favorite part of the show, and I thought, surely it doesn’t get better than what I’ve seen already. But it turned out she was talking about chapter 8, and yes, it absolutely was better. The constables, Jim and Jimmy – played by Jim O’Heir and Jimmy Wong – and everyone else trying to fool them, are so delightful to watch. Even though chapter 8 features probably the second saddest death in the series, it’s overall the funniest episode. This show touches an incredibly wide range of emotions and moods, especially considering it takes place in one house over one night.

I want to make it clear that I would still love Poe Party even if I’d stumbled upon it years after it came out, and even if I didn’t recognize any of the actors. The show is excellent enough to stand on its own. But being part of it from the Kickstarter, being familiar with some of the actors, and being online as it was coming out, certainly enhanced my enjoyment of it. Shipwrecked had a weekly “competition” of sorts where they would give a vague prompt and people would make fan art or write fan fiction and post it on social media (#PoePartyFTW), and each of the four members of Shipwrecked would pick their favorite to re-post. I wrote a fic after each of the episodes, and several of them got chosen by Shipwrecked, and I hadn’t felt that good about myself in years. I loved the show so much that I couldn’t confine it just into weekly fics; I was shouting about it on every social media platform. I also started weekly speculation Tumblr posts, using Clue references as my guide, many of which led me astray – I was convinced there must be a secret passage between the kitchen and the study that didn’t turn out to exist – but I did figure out part of the solution relatively early on. While the mystery aspect of Clue is ultimately nonsense if you think about it too hard, Poe Party actually tracks. And if you’ve listened this far and you still haven’t seen Poe Party, please go watch it now, because I’m going to start getting into story specifics and spoilers, and I think everybody should get to see it once without knowing what’s coming. (I’m also going to spoil some of Clue, so you could go watch that too if you want, although I don’t feel like Clue spoilers matter that much.)

In her episode of A Tell Tale Vlog, Annabel mentioned that she had started seeing a banker named Eddie, and then in the Poe Party Kickstarter video, she asked Edgar if she could bring Eddie as her plus one to his party. So Eddie (played by Ryan W. Garcia) shows up late to the party with Annabel, and then becomes the first murder victim. EXCEPT, spoiler alert: he’s actually NOT DEAD, and is, in fact, one of the murderers. And from the very first episode, I recognized Eddie’s similarities to Mr. Boddy in Clue, who is also not dead when you first think he is, and I was therefore suspicious of him from the get-go. But I was still very much open to any possibility (or so I thought) because the Persauds had done an excellent job of making everyone at least somewhat fishy. But there was one thing I was not prepared for, and that was the end of chapter 9. Because it absolutely never occurred to me that Poe’s beautiful Annabel Lee would die, and I’m honestly still kind of devastated about it, even understanding why it had to happen, and at the time I was almost inconsolable. Mary Kate Wiles had led me to this brilliant show, in which she played the kindest, most likable character, only to be brutally murdered? Some fans at the time had thought Annabel might be the killer, which I never did, and honestly I would have been kind of angry if she had been because we need to have more genuinely nice characters in things. I was upset that she died, but I would have been more so if she’d turned evil. (Not that I have anything against MK playing villains – I’m all for it, under the right circumstances. And thankfully the Persauds know when the right circumstances are.) And like, okay, I know I complain about too much romance in stories, but Annabel’s “It was always you” as she died in Edgar’s arms – that got me. Annabel had been planning to marry Eddie because he was more respectable than the unhinged poet she actually loved, and I think that that whole trying to fake the life you think you’re supposed to have thing spoke to me. I had been so tempted to try that, and this was almost as clear of a message as the constables’ “Don’t Do Murder”: Don’t Fake Romance.

At that point, I was pretty much convinced that Eddie must have had something to do with this; why would anyone else kill Annabel? Also, chapter 9 reveals that Annabel wrote the invite list, and I thought it made sense that Eddie, her boyfriend, could have told her whom to include, especially since it had already been established that most of the guests had some connection to Eddie. The prompt for that week’s Poe Party FTW competition was “Confession,” so I decided to try something different from the short stories I’d been submitting, and I re-wrote the poem “Annabel Lee” from Eddie’s perspective as if he was the murderer. And I know this episode is already longer than most of my solo episodes and I have a lot more to say, but I’m still proud of this poem (even though it’s not completely accurate, since it turned out that Eddie didn’t kill everybody), so I need to share it with you:

It was many and many a month ago,

           In her cottage by the sea,

That I first read the words that Edgar wrote

           For my girlfriend Annabel Lee;

And he said that she lived with no other thought

           Than to love and be loved by he.

“He’s just my friend and I’m just his friend,”

           She quickly explained to me;

But we loved with a love which was worse than love –

           I and my Annabel Lee –

With a love that was founded on secrets and lies,

           Fueled by jealousy.

And this was the reason that, later on,

           Faced with opportunity,

I took advantage of an offer made

           To innocent Annabel Lee;

For when Lenore asked whom to invite

           To that cad’s dinner party,

Annabel deferred to my input

           Which I gave most willingly.

All authors, not half so worthy as bankers,

           Who had e’er quarreled with me –

Yes! – they were the ones (no one would know;

           I’d met them all secretly)

That Edgar would invite to his house that night,

           At the behest of “his” Annabel Lee.

For our love it was weaker by far than the love

           Of vengeance I carried in me –

           Of justice toward those who’d wronged me –

And neither the psychics who bring back the dead,

           Nor the cops fresh from Academy,

Can hinder my murderous plan; no one can!

           No, not even my Annabel Lee.

As I watch them point fingers I find my gaze lingers

           On the beautiful Annabel Lee;

When they mention invites, she suspects, knows she’s right,

           Out the door runs my Annabel Lee;

Can’t let her get away: who knows what she might say?

So I kill her – I kill her – my eleventh kill today.

           Instead of revealing me,

           Her last breath says it was always he.

So yeah. I was deep into this. But then nobody in Shipwrecked chose it that week, and I thought, okay, maybe it wasn’t that good, or, maybe my theory is laughably far off the mark. Maybe Eddie’s too obvious. Maybe he really is dead. Then in chapter 10, Charlotte Brontë confessed, and revealed that her sister Anne had been there the whole time helping, and at that point I was pretty sure Eddie was also involved again. We clearly saw that Annabel’s killer was wearing pants, unlike either Brontë sister. And then it was Halloween and the finale finally arrived, and I was right about Eddie, but I was still completely unprepared for how awesome that final chapter would be. I think there was still a small part of me that didn’t believe it was possible for the end to live up to the buildup of the first ten incredible chapters. But it absolutely did. The finale was everything – everything, I say – that I wanted it to be and much more. The evil slow clap. The revolving villain trio of creepy neck touching. The flashbacks. The fights. The pet rock’s revenge. The literary references. And of course, the surprise reveal of Jane Austen, played by Laura Spencer, who had also played Jane Bennet in the Lizzie Bennet Diaries. The episodes were posted at 9 am on Mondays, when I was at work, so I couldn’t watch them right when they dropped, but after the first one I couldn’t wait until I got home either. My work’s wifi blocked YouTube, and I had an extremely limited data plan at the time, so on my lunch break I would walk to the McDonald’s down the street and watch the new episode using their wifi. And when the camera panned to Jane Austen, it was all I could do not to yell “OH MY GOSH IT’S LAURA SPENCER!” in that McDonald’s. I definitely audibly gasped, but I don’t think anyone noticed. The thing is, I would have still been blown away by the finale without that extra surprise. But that’s what Shipwrecked does. They make things that can appeal to a wide audience, and then they sprinkle in some extra treats for people who have been following them for a while. Of course, LBD was not a Shipwrecked project, but finding Shipwrecked through LBD is a fairly common path. And I’m still so impressed with how well they kept Laura as Jane Austen a secret. As a Kickstarter perk, I’d had a video chat with the Core Four that summer, and I’d mentioned that Jane Austen was my favorite author, and I was disappointed that she wasn’t going to be in Poe Party, and they were just like, “Yeah, we thought about including her, but we figured she would be too similar to Charlotte Brontë,” and betrayed not a SINGLE HINT that she was, in fact, in the show. Which is another thing Shipwrecked does: make a very specific, deliberate plan about what to reveal when, and stick to it.

As another example of that, the Poe Party Kickstarter had reached a stretch goal to produce an epilogue. I had completely forgotten about that, but other backers remembered and started asking about it after the finale. Shipwrecked was pretty cagey with their answers, but then directed us to a mysterious Twitter account that was dropping strange clues. I watched as the Shipwrecked fan Facebook group decoded them and ultimately unlocked the epilogue a day before it was released publicly. The epilogue is not included in the feature cut, and now I don’t really think of it as part of the show. Chapter 11 ends so perfectly – Poe stares at the floor as the heartbeat grows louder, a floorboard creaks, fade to black: chef’s kiss. But at the time I was feeling so many overwhelming feels about this show that I desperately needed that epilogue. I was so utterly relieved to see Annabel and HG thriving as ghosts. And I was so thrilled to be surrounded by such a great fandom, who all worked together and helped each other to solve the puzzles – it was a beautiful weekend. And it was also the last weekend before Donald Trump was elected president of the United States and I had to face the fact that the country was more broken and divided than I’d wanted to believe, which definitely adds to my nostalgia for that epilogue adventure.

The show may have ended, and the world may have been falling apart faster than usual, but I could not have gotten Poe Party out of my head even if I’d wanted to, which I didn’t. For over a decade I’d been searching for something that felt like a classic movie, but with some modern sensibilities, and these independent filmmakers had made exactly what I was looking for, zillions of times better than I’d imagined it. That clever, witty dialogue, perfectly delivered by quirky characters, almost felt like it came from a 1930s screwball comedy. But it also felt fresh and new and different from anything I’d seen before. It had so many similarities to Clue – in fact, I taught myself how to make gifs, or [other pronunciation] gifs, in order to highlight specific parallels between Poe Party and Clue – and yet remained unique. Where Clue was mostly just comedy, Poe Party was comedy, tragedy, romance, and intrigue, and absolutely nailed all of those. (Sadly no ravens, though, they didn’t have the budget for that.) Anyway, the series held up shockingly well upon rewatch, and I could not get enough of it. And despite the socially anxious part of my brain that remains convinced that everyone always is annoyed with me, that I have nothing worthwhile to say, that I should just shut up and stop bothering others with my existence – people seemed to like what I was posting about Poe Party. Other fans would engage me in conversation, and I started making internet friends for the first time. And, shockingly, the members of Shipwrecked seemed to genuinely appreciate what I was saying as well. After the finale had aired, Mary Kate reblogged my Annabel Lee poem on Tumblr and said, “I legitimately thought this was brilliant, and only didn’t choose it that week because of spoilers. Every single fic Jane wrote for this ftw has been wonderful, and I have so enjoyed them all, but this was above and beyond.” And maybe it sounds like I’m just boasting at this point, but the reason I’m sharing this is because a year earlier I had felt like a failure of a human who had no place in the world, and now this incredible actress/producer I greatly admired, who had just made my new favorite show, was saying that I had enhanced her experience of releasing it. People were liking and appreciating me, just for being myself and enthusiastically enjoying a movie. And I no longer felt like I was supposed to change who I was.

In early 2017, I got the rest of my Kickstarter perks, including behind-the-scenes goodies that featured not one but two fabulous commentaries. I love them both, but the second one is particularly chaotic in the best way. Ashley Clements and Ryan W Garcia, true to the villainous characters they played in the show, keep derailing the conversation and it’s incredibly amusing. The commentaries are over the feature cut, so many if not most of the views that I counted were with one of the commentaries. And I also bought the feature cut without commentary so I could show it to other people and still count it on my list. Now I tend to watch it episodically because I want the Shipwrecked YouTube channel to get more views for the algorithm, although I’m not sure that actually helps. But anyway, the feature cut and commentaries and other bonus features are still available to rent or buy on shipwrecked.vhx.tv, which I will also link in the show notes, if you’re interested.

Also in 2017, the first episode of Poe Party was shown at a festival near me, so I got to meet the Core Four members of Shipwrecked and some fans in person. That was very exciting, but I was also extremely nervous, although I didn’t need to be. The Shipwrecked people were so lovely and actually wanted to talk to me and the other fans who were there. And then I got to see Poe Party win some awards, which was awesome. And then a few months later, Shipwrecked launched another Kickstarter, and I pledged even more to it than I had to Poe Party even though the goal was lower, and then they kept making more stuff and I kept supporting it, and also continued to love everything they made (yes, even the Fart Feud with the Tin Can Brothers). I continued to support Mary Kate on Patreon, and I also started supporting other cast members on Patreon, like Whitney Avalon who had played Mary Shelley and does a lot of her own stuff on YouTube, and of course Ashley Clements, as I’ve mentioned previously, and as soon as Shipwrecked finally got their own Patreon, I was all in at the top tier. And, like, I don’t want to go on about this too much, because I do truly believe that I would love their work even if I’d never interacted with them, but I don’t know that I’d be quite the die-hard, take-all-my-money-to-make-more-things Shipwrecked fan that I am, if I hadn’t had so many wonderful interactions with the members of Shipwrecked over the years. I didn’t set out to become friends with them, but I kind of have – although I still feel a little weird and presumptuous to claim that. I feel like this will sound to some people like an out-of-control parasocial relationship, but like, it’s not that, because they do know me. Other people in my life have referred to Shipwrecked as “the people you pay to be your friends,” but it’s not that either: I give them money so they can keep making things, and we also happened to hit it off as friends – which again feels like a presumptuous label, but I can’t come up with a more accurate word. They make what they love and I love what they make, so it’s not that surprising that we’d get along. And for similar reasons, it’s not surprising that I’ve made so many very close friendships with other Shipwrecked fans. Our love for these projects brought us together, and then turned out to be far from the only thing we have in common.

I feel like I’m talking way too much about my own personal experiences, I’m so sorry if this is boring. Back to Poe Party itself. I’ve hinted at it already, but I need to emphasize again both how incredible the script is, and how amazingly the cast brought it to life. The story was so well thought out: every scene, every character, every moment was there for a reason. Like, I thought George Eliot disguising herself as a man was just a nod to female authors having to use male pen names, but then that turned into an important clue that led to the Brontës. Yes, you can poke plenty of holes in Poe Party if you want to – not all of the characters based on real people were actually alive at the same time, some of the technology is anachronistic, etc – but none of that stuff really matters. It’s clearly meant to be silly and fun, so you don’t really need to know what year it is. But the fact that they managed to write something silly and fun that didn’t completely devolve into absolute nonsense is so incredibly impressive. Sean and Sinéad wrote an absolutely brilliant script, and then they assembled the perfect cast for it. Every actor is on the exact same page about what this project is, and they each know exactly how their character fits in. Even when they’re in the background, everyone is giving 100%. I want to especially shout out Joey Richter, since Ernest Hemingway is drinking all night, and Joey did a tremendous job of tracking how drunk he was supposed to be. By the finale he’s having to slap himself to stay awake in the background, and it’s hilarious. Everyone else is also a delight to watch, and I feel like I’m still noticing little background moments I hadn’t clocked before. There aren’t very many close-ups, which I think was mainly because they didn’t have the budget for the time it would take to shoot them, but it works perfectly because a lot of the funny moments become even funnier when you can see multiple characters’ reactions at once. If you’re watching the background acting closely enough, you may notice a few instances of people almost breaking, but personally I just choose to interpret that as the characters finding it difficult to keep it together when other characters around them are being silly, and who can blame them? I appreciate that the writers and director trusted the cast enough to let them play around and improvise, because some great ad-libbed lines ended up in the final cut, and many more went into the best blooper reel ever, which is 24 minutes long and I love every second of it. There are some moments from the bloopers that I find myself saying sometimes when I’m watching the actual show – Ashley’s “Don’t be mean to me!” is probably the one I quote the most.

There is definitely romance in Poe Party – the whole reason for the party is because Edgar is in love with Annabel. Lenore and HG Wells develop feelings for each other over the course of the evening…until he dies. And several other characters flirt with each other. But none of the romances end well, and throughout the story, there is a lot of emphasis on friendship, and acquaintanceship, and other types of relationship. And that’s a running theme in most of Shipwrecked’s projects. There hasn’t been a kiss in any of them since Kissing in the Rain. Of course, much of the Poe Party fandom was, and is, into shipping characters with each other – for any listeners who may not be terminally online, shipping characters means that you want them to be in a romantic relationship with each other. I joined in somewhat, mostly because I felt like I was supposed to, but I couldn’t have articulated that at the time. And, as I mentioned earlier, I was particularly fascinated by the Eddie/Annabel dynamic, but I was only able to fully comprehend how much I needed the “don’t fake romance” message in hindsight. This show and its fandom made me feel less alone and adrift, but I still didn’t figure out I was aroace for a few more years. Although it was friends I made in the Shipwrecked fan community who first really helped me understand and accept that part of my identity, so I can still say that Poe Party was an important step on that journey.

I want to say so much more about this utterly brilliant show – I don’t feel like I’ve even come close to doing it justice here – but there truly are no words to adequately express my love for it. It still holds up nearly 7 years later, but Shipwrecked has come a long way since then. When their most recent webseries, Headless: A Sleepy Hollow Story, was about to come out, they said it made Poe Party look like it had been done by a bunch of kindergarteners, and I was upset at the Poe Party slander, but once I watched that series, I understood what they meant. Headless is so far above and beyond, but unfortunately it came out too recently to make it into my top 40. Currently they’re releasing an audio narrative called The Case of the Greater Gatsby, which should be on the same platform you’re listening to this on. That is a sequel to their short film The Case of the Gilded Lily, which I will be discussing in a future episode. I really hope that someday Shipwrecked gets the level of recognition they deserve – their fandom is still relatively small, although we are mighty and devoted. At the very least, I hope that the current strikes will help enable them to make a living from writing and acting.

Thank you for listening to me discuss another of my most frequently rewatched movies, or at least attempt to. Following this will be a two-way tie of movies I watched 25 times, both of which feature Cary Grant, my favorite leading man apart from Sean Persaud. As always, I will leave you with a quote from the next movie: “Hi! Mellow greetings, ukie-dukie!”

#poe party #edgar allan poe's murder mystery dinner party #shipwrecked comedy #the rewatch rewind

[ch1ckpeapancake]

Intro Post

Hello! Welcome to my blog! My name is Charlie and I use He/Him pronouns.

I am physically disabled and very involved in the Cpunk space.

I follow back, and I love interactions with moots!

DNI

I can’t control who interacts with me and I won’t try to. I will not hesitate to block you if you are a dick or a bigot. Please be kind, and when in doubt, would you say it to your grandmother?

Identities

I currently identify as a trans masculine omnisexual person, but I have previously used the labels bisexual, lesbian, pansexual, and Queer.

Trigger Warnings

I do not often tag my posts with triggers, but I do for major ones. Flash warnings are not tagged but I do not frequently post/reblog things that would need them. My blog has a lot of politics and in some pro-Palestine posts there might be violence. I also RB posts with reclaimed slurs often. I enjoy “problematic” media, so be aware.

Fandoms

- Night in the Woods (Video Game)

- The Secret History - Donna Tart

- Homestuck

- Undertale (Video Game)

- Warrior Cats - Erin Hunter

- Portal (Video Game)

- Wings of Fire - Tui T. Sutherland

- Dream SMP

- Minecraft (Video Game)

- Sky: Children of the Light (Video Game)

- The Owl House (Cartoon)

- Amphibia (Cartoon)

- Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared (Web Series)

- Brandon rodgers

- Helluva Boss (Web Series)

- FNAF

- Sherlock (TV)

- She-Ra and the Princess of Power (2018)

- Foxtrot (Comics)

- Calvin & Hobbes

- Dilbert

- Peanuts - Charles M. Shulz (Comics)

- Zits (comics)

- Jerma985

- We Bare Bears (Cartoon)

- The Last of Us (Video Game)

- The Last of Us (TV)

- Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan

- Voltron: legendary defender

- 전지적 독자 시점 - 싱송 | 0mniscient Reader - Sing-Shong

- Ghost Eyes (Web Comic)

- Hollow Night (Video Game)

- Gravity Falls

- Stardew valley (Video Game)

- 况術廻戰 1 Jujutsu Kaisen (Anime)

- Hunger games trilogy- Suzanne Colins

- Bluey (Cartoon 2018)

- Steven universe (Cartoon)

- Arcane: League of Legends (Cartoon 2021)

- Heartstopper (Webcomic)

- Heartstopper (TV)

- Ducktales (Cartoon 2017)

- The Song of Achilles - Madeleine Miller

- Discworld - Terry Pratchet

- Hiccup series - Cressida Cowell

- Barbie (Movie 2023)

- Nimona (2023)

- Nimona (Webcomic)

- OMORI (Video Game)

- A Short Hike (Video Game)

- Dead Poets Society (1989)

- とつくにの少女 I Totsukuni no Shoujo | The Girl from the Other Side (Manga)

- Stray (Video Game)

- If We Were Villains - M.L Rio

- Pride and Prejudice & related fandoms

- Adventure Time (Cartoon 2010)

- Cult of the lamb (Video Game)

- Girl Interrupted (1999)

- The Amazing Digital Circus (Web Series)

- My Little Pony Friendship is Magic (TV)

- Scott Pilgrim - All media types

- Ramshackle (Webseries)

- Good Omens (TV)

- Sonic (All Media Types)

[booasaur]

As someone at 27 y/o bi leaning towards women.. who’s born in a country that doesn’t support lgbt rights and also in the closet because of homophobic dad/relatives, im honestly so upset by this. The only way I can live my truth is to live vicariously through the wlw media that I consume and it fuckin hurts. It’s heartbreaking that even just being who I am is impossible and the only way I can is being ripped away from me. I don’t know how much more I can take, especially during pride month

Oof, I get you, anon. When it's your only outlet to something that for others can manifest in so many life-changing ways, crushes, first kisses, dating, sex, marriage, children, it can be so stifling when even the one avenue you have is closed off. And however far away it's happening, it's a reminder of the same homophobia and restrictions you see right around you, so it feels even more hopeless, knowing that in places that are supposedly better off, there are still these major battles to be fought.

I don't know your exact situation, but here are some of the things that helped me come to terms with these same frustrations:

First, focus on individual people more than trends. That's tough to do, for sure, especially when, again, you see so much homophobia directly around you so it seems ubiquitous, but if you're particularly taking WN's case to heart, remember that as much as Netflix tried to shut it down, the cast and crew fought for it! For all these cancellations, there are people who made the original media in the first place and tried to keep it going. It's not hopeless, there's so much support and so many allies.

This next part might be hard to accept, and you know, maybe it's not what'll work for you, but for me, I really did have to learn to not get really deep into any one show or ship. When things are good, they're so good, it all sucks you in, you check the updates all the time, and maybe most importantly, there's this whole community you become a part of. But when you lose it, not if, because in f/f you will, even if things end well, there aren't enough people to keep it going, the more you've made it a part of your life, the more you feel that loss.

All fans should exercise moderation and keep things in perspective, but I'm speaking more to people like us, who don't have anything in real life to balance out what we experience through media.

I answered this ask a little late because I did get sucked up into other shows airing right now that have f/f and that doesn't negate the core issue, this will be the final season for most of them, if not all, but there's still something to get into, even just in f/f media. Perhaps you may prefer lesfic, or the f/f Youtube/Tiktok scene, or webseries.

It's also worth getting into non-media hobbies. Or, you know, at least consuming non-f/f media. I remember being angry at seeing the m/f couples in pretty much everything else while we couldn't have anything, so I just didn't watch anything at all and instead just did those elaborate adult paint by numbers and listened to comedy podcasts. And once I did feel more in the mood to watch stuff again, it was goofy sitcoms and old school murder mysteries, where it wasn't really like, oh, I wish this had more of us. :P

Lastly, it really does sting at you if you feel isolated and alone even from your own family, so try to see if there are other ways you can connect with them. Otherwise it just adds to your negative feelings to resent and fear them.

None of this may work for you, there are so many other possibilities, moving away, coming out, getting involved with LGBT organizations near you or just meeting other queer people, but I'm sure you've already considered those options and they're not currently doing enough for you. But I would at least give some of this a shot, try some distance at first, and hopefully it'll start to feel better. It really doesn't help that we're globally going through a pretty rough time, but just focus on feeling better yourself.

#replies #femslash related stuff #sent on 20230606 #Anonymous #5

[citizenoftmrrwlnd]

blacklist (mobile friendly)

info under the "read more!" /safe

BLACKLIST: a source being on this blacklist is not an indication of its morality, just my comfort level.

general kins - factkins

shows/movies - south park - hetalia - beastars - euphoria - boku no hero academia - attack on titan - our flag means death - the emoji movie - sausage party - harry potter and related sources

webseries/internet media - aphmau sources - helluva boss - hazbin hotel - tribetwelve - welcome home - hlvrai - country humans - eddsworld - battle for dream island and related sources - cupcakes creepypasta - homestuck^2/homestuck epilogues - sparklecare/cometcare

games - witch's house - boyfriend to death - your boyfriend - mogeko sources - dramatical murder - poppy playtime

misc - hamilton the musical - ghost and pal's songs

THEMES/TOPICS: (sources including these are not inherently blacklisted and will be handled on a case-by-case basis)

nsfw / sexual content - this includes sources with pornographic content as i cannot verify the ages of anons- if you really want a request from a source like this, please dm me with verification of your age! i will never, and i mean NEVER out someone’s url without permission - similarly, i do try to avoid including items that are labelled as being for kink use/are made by fetish shops. collars and harnesses may show up in my kits, but the ones i select are for fashion purposes ONLY.

agere/petre (i do not feel qualified to create things for these needs!)

traumacore (dreamcore and weirdcore are okay though)

murder

cannibalism

requests that directly contradict canonical identities (like a gay man pride flag for, say, pearl from steven universe — this specific blacklist topic however does NOT apply to fictives/introjects!)

e/ds

s/h

religious trauma

yanderes

SHIPS:

generally immoral ships (incest, bestiality, pedophilia, glorifies abuse)

habit/vinnie

techza

any of the addisons/spamton

toriel/asgore

ships involving c!tommy

pearl (steven universe)/male characters

philever aka r/sugarduo

CHARACTERS/CREATURES:

habit (EMH)

d-team [dreamwastaken, georgenotfound, sapnap (any source)]

william afton (fnaf)

harumi (ninjago)

not-deer and [redacted]

succubi/incubi

foreverplayer

#💫blog resource

[sketch-shepherd-art]

Illustrating a character that originated from a dream I had a while back

So my dream was about this indie YouTube animated webseries with an early 2010's YouTube series vibe to it. It was either called "Light Lion" or "Lion Light" (btw yes I'm aware there actually is a YouTube webseries called Lion's Light). And the protagonist was this very colorful lion cub who had special light-related powers but they were connected to his emotions and he couldn't utilize them because of his cowardly attitude.

Then there was a scene in the climax where a bunch of dogs (literally just ordinary domesticated dogs) were chasing him down trying to maul him but then he ends up using his light powers to scare them off. Also he was apparently going to make a cameo in My Pride lol.

_______

So yeah this was way too interesting to NOT make an actual OC so I drew him. His name is Mkali (Swahili word for "bright") and his light powers come from his colorful spots that light up so he can use it as a defense mechanism against his foes and whatnot. The dogs from my dream could even be reimagined as African Wild Dogs or something.

idk probably not gonna develop this character past this design but what the hell

#and yes i did shamelessly trace/re edit my own art again which is why the proportions are so shitty just gimme a break #my art #my ocs #lion #lion cub

[sugaredoleander]

looking for very specific friends

a list of media ranging from being incredibly niche to not incredibly niche but that i'm deeply obsessed with and would like to talk to someone about

the search for signs of intelligent life

subnormality (webcomic)

people watching (webseries)

legends of tomorrow

smoke gets in your eyes, from here to eternity, will my cat eat my eyeballs, the death positive movement in general, even just caitlin doughty's youtube channel

alice isn't dead

the magnus archives

i'm thinking of ending things (book & movie)

tuca and bertie

the mad ones (the musical)

compatibility is based off specifity, so i will now list some of my favourite things that haven't already been listed

movies

everything everywhere all at once

mamma mia!

promising young woman

the handmaiden

pride

fear street

the half of it

saving face

but i'm a cheerleader

kajillionaire

tv shows

killing eve

the haunting of hill house

the haunting of bly manor

midnight mass

russian doll

sense8

crazy ex-girlfriend

wynonna earp

a series of unfortunate events (also grew up with the books, which is Very evident in my writing)

derry girls

one day at a time

books

less

the secret history

this is how you lose the time war

war of the foxes

crush

music

the mountain goats

mitski

indigo girls

zolita

ABBA

some of my all-time most played songs on spotify

i guess - mitski

ghost - indigo girls

working for the knife - mitski

JUDAS - the reverent marigold

this is a life - son lux

putting the dog to sleep - the antlers

amy aka spent gladiator 1 - the mountain goats

a better son/daughter - rilo kiley

misc.

interior design & architecture

country & folk music but especially specifically lesbian country & folk music

hannah gadsby

mary oliver

lefttube

museums

dark academia

stabat mater by vivaldi but specifically the version on the talented mr. ripley soundtrack

tove jansson

dykes to watch out for

queer horror & narrative podcasts

oh. the very concept of hobbies. the artistic, the culinary, the physical, if you bounce from interest to interest & have an incessant curiosity for the world

add ten points if you are a

medstudent

lesbian

leftist

writer

ADHD-er

live in italy bc i'm (hopefully, assuming i do well enough on the IMAT*) moving there this fall & don't have any local friends *if you're also studying for the IMAT, add 20 points, i need a study buddy

do NOT reach out if you

are under 18

don't support lgbtq rights, terfs do not interact

don't support BLM

are anti-choice

in any way do not support the liberation of marginalised people

if you went through this whole list, add ten points because i talk a lot & type very fast so expect a lot of reading. and if, going through the list, you found yourself thinking, hey, i do that! repeatedly, the inbox is open, come chat!

#the search for signs of intelligent life in the universe #submormality #people watching #legends of tomorrow #everything everywhere all at once #caitlin doughty #death positivity #medstudent #lesbian #alice isn't dead #the magnus archives #tuca and bertie #the mad ones #i'm thinking of ending things #a series of unfortunate events #killing eve #wynonna earp #russian doll #one day at a time #the haunting of hill house #the haunting of bly manor #mitski #looking for friends #friends #the mountain goats #indigo girls #zolita #richard siken #mary oliver #crazy ex girlfriend

[flutishly]

LBD rewatch, full show summary

Rewatches will never fully recreate the experience of the first time around, for good and for bad. Sometimes, a rewatch strips away some of the joy from a well executed plot twist. Sometimes, it adds entirely new dimensions that could not possibly have been noticed on the first pass. Sometimes the art itself has “changed” in the interim, due to cultural or technical development. No matter what, the viewing experience will be different.

For popular media - and more specifically popular media with involved fandoms - a huge factor can be the post-show narrative. Any good fan will know that a show doesn’t have to be currently airing in order to have an active fandom (Star Trek, anyone?), but there is immense weight to how a longform story that has grown and changed over time is perceived by its longterm fandom. Some shows have huge followings while they’re airing and then basically disappear from the cultural consciousness soon after they finish, often due to burning bridges with their own fanbase or having endings that don’t live up to their earlier seasons (Game of Thrones, How I Met Your Mother), some shows simply fizzle out and nobody remembers that they still exist (I loved Call the Midwife, but I’m about four seasons behind and it very much no longer has the active fandom it had a decade ago...), and then there are the shows that keep chugging along, maintaining their own moderate success and cultural appeal even years after completion (The Office, a show I expected would not have a lasting impact, remains confidently present).

What’s this to say about the Lizzie Bennet Diaries, though?

When it began airing, LBD felt like a minor media earthquake. The show leaned into its vlog-style presentation, integrated different social media platforms as an active part of its storytelling (”transmedia”), bounced between different accounts without minding if someone suddenly missed a part of the story (but trusting their ex-world media to do the job, and also trusting the viewer to find what needed to be found), and doing so in a way that felt shockingly believable. There’s a reason that LBD sparked the imaginations of so many different young creators across the world, who wanted to emulate this sort of storytelling. LBD set the stage.

A common narrative that’s emerged in the years since LBD ended is one that admires how it set that stage, but then adds a caveat about its implementation. Hardcore fans of what became known as “literary inspired webseries” (LIWs) will often point out that LBD was a “flawed” show, obviously not their favorite, “not very good” in retrospect, and so on. I’ve seen countless posts and tags to this extent and have even on occasion caught myself thinking that too. Of course I liked LBD, I would tell myself, but I didn’t love it the way that I went on to love other shows. As time passed and the LBD-specific fandom quieted down, I accepted this narrative as truth.

And this is where a unique benefit of rewatches comes into play: Rewatches can set the record straight.

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is, ultimately, still not my favorite webseries. It’s still not what I would call the “best” literary webseries I’ve seen, either. It doesn’t have the best transmedia. It isn’t the best adaptation of a webseries I’ve seen, nor the best adaptation of the original work itself. (Some might argue that it’s not even the best modernized adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, but here I find myself disagreeing somewhat; I’ll elaborate on that some other time.) Lizzie Bennet Diaries was, in a way, eclipsed in my mind by some of the series that came after it.

All that being said, it’s also a very good series. And it’s not a stretch to say that I loved this rewatch.

I’ve gone through some of the show’s features and flaws in my previous posts (parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5), but a recurring theme from my recap posts was that a lot of things that I remembered being bad simply weren’t there. I remembered Lydia’s transformation into her Wickham arc being abrupt, but it wasn’t; her loneliness and sense of not fitting in start extremely early on. I remembered Lizzie as being presented much more kindly/positively than what she actually is, in part because of her growth during the series and attempt to be less judgemental (which is all explicitly laid out in the text!). I remembered the show feeling slow, but it wasn’t. I remembered the parts that were/weren’t on camera feeling like MASSIVE stretches, but they’re mostly discussed in-text. I remembered feeling like there was a clumsiness in the show actually feeling real and fresh, especially compared to shows that came afterward, in terms of acting.

A lot of these stem from two main issues: 1) the last part of the show is a lot less well paced than the beginning, and 2) there are acting inconsistencies with the medium. The first of these is something similar to what I described earlier in terms of the end of the show being weaker than the beginning. The second is a problem that recurs across the vast majority of webseries that I’ve watched, but I think I remembered it being worse for LBD is because of how good the good parts are. 

So here are some of those good parts: Ashley Clements’ Lizzie is absolutely brilliant. I feel like she’s rarely remembered for being tremendously well-acted, I think because it’s sort of assumed to be an easy role, while someone like Mary Kate Wiles garnered obvious (mostly justified) admiration for the more obvious work she did as Lydia. Meanwhile, Laura Spencer and Julia Cho are also both excellent in their respective roles as Jane and Charlotte, rounding out the main cast in a way that feels almost unbelievably good. Of the lead four, I actually continue to have the most nitpicks with small things in Lydia’s acting (which could also be about directing), but these also feel unimportant in the grand scheme of how her story played out so richly. It seems trivial to say it now, more than a decade since LBD first aired, but the active choice to make Lydia a second lead character is inspired, even if I’m still a little uncomfortable with how some of her story played out. And none of this would have worked without good acting and writing, especially in how Lizzie builds and presents her story.

The acting inconsistencies mostly occur in the side characters and much of that is also down to the show’s insistence on having people show up on camera when they frankly didn’t need to. Having Fitz be a random friend who shows up on camera with Lizzie was fun because he wasn’t a plot-central character, he was just sort of... there. His appearances feel casual. (It’s helps that he’s one of the characters who is clearly most comfortable being filmed.) But I cringed just a little bit every time Bing appeared onscreen, and Gigi too for the most part. It’s not necessarily poor acting, to be clear, but it’s inconsistent with their environment and it makes it harder to buy into the “real”ness of those videos. Darcy, at least, carries his obvious discomfort with being on camera like an absolute burden (which is entirely believable), but this didn’t help alleviate my sense that Lizzie should not have been uploading those videos.

The fact that the ending is weaker than the entire run of the show is a more serious issue, I think, and certainly helped contribute to my sense of the show being less well-paced than it actually was. One of the things I’m grateful for, at least, is that “The End” is an episode that centers around Lizzie, Charlotte, and Lydia. Part of what didn’t work for me with LBD’s end was the fact that it felt like the show forgot that it wasn’t actually a romance, but more Lizzie’s becoming and growth process, with Lydia, Jane, and Charlotte as crucial linchpins during this process. Darcy is an obvious presence in the story, but the Lizzie Bennet Diaries as a show isn’t about Lizzie and Darcy getting together, just like Pride and Prejudice isn’t a romance novel. The problem with ending LBD within a couple of episodes of Lizzie and Darcy getting together is that it makes it seem like that was the whole point of the story.

But on this point, there’s also a reminder of the fact that for the most part, Lizzie Bennet Diaries is a good adaptation. I’d remembered feeling like it was old-fashioned because of things like the Jane/Bing subplot and how Lizzie and Darcy spoke with each other (...stiffly), but the majority of the show does a really nice job of loosening up Pride and Prejudice to match the modern day. The way that many of the romantic gestures end up tied to jobs is a nice nod to the fact that modern women have aspirations and goals that aren’t just about bagging a rich husband (coughcough). I also still really admire that the show decided to fully humanize Lydia, without stripping away the weight of what happens to her. Except instead of it being a burden on others and All About Lizzie, it’s actually a story about the ways in which a young woman’s value can be easily erased and recognizing that event as the abuse that it is. I still don’t love all the ways in which that arc plays out, but the fact that it exists? Excellent.

This rewatch was the obvious choice to start my Great Webseries Rewatch and it earns its stripes; even more than a decade later, the Lizzie Bennet Diaries is a mostly well-made, well-written, and well-acted show. It also has the distinct honor of being a show that had genuine widespread appeal, garnering attention beyond a small fanbase of loyal viewers. LBD set the stage, performed, and earned its standing ovation. The fact that others came up onto that stage afterward and performed their own wonderful art should not take away from its achievements.

#The Great Webseries Rewatch #series analyses #lizzie bennet diaries #lbd #webseries #essays #Longer thoughts

[gayest-classiclit]

a list of media on the adaptation bracket:

gates of delirium by yes (song)

romeo + juliet (1996 movie)

clueless (movie)

natasha, pierre, and the great comet of 1812 (musical)

like you like it (musical)

10 things i hate about you (movie)

the lion king (movie)

pride and prejudice (2005 movie)

carmilla (webseries)

the lizzie bennett diaries (webseries)

max goosebooks' duodecimal (short story)

the last true poets of the sea (book)

i bleed by dahlia adler (short story)

she's the man (movie)

metal gear solid v: the phantom pain (video game)

much ado about nothing (2011 filmed production)

send them off! by bastille (song)

secret shanghai series by chloe gong (books)

diamond dogs by david bowie (album)

ophelja by the lumineers (song)

rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead (play)

dark hallucinations by steel prophet (album)

emma (2020 movie)

my own private idaho (movie)

public works' twelfth night (musical)

ghost quartet (musical)

the emma agenda (webseries)

earnest 101 (webseries)

the great gatsby (video game)

arm joe (video game)

fahrenheit 451 (video game)

bible adventures (video game)

#classic lit adaptation bracket

[obsidiancreates]

An Interpretation Of DHMIS 6: PTSD, Living With Trauma, and The Cycle Of Abuse

When it comes to DHMIS, especially the Webseries version, I like to keep my view of it Nebulous. I don't like having any one True Interpretation/Theory because to me, the magic of the series is in the lack of answers/clarity. That being said, I do have a favorite personal interpritation, which is this: the webseries is it's a great examination, by intent or by accident, of abuse, trauma, and PTSD.

I don't think that was the intent in it's creation, of course. I like to leave the interpretation nebulous, it can all mean anything- it *does* mean anything, everything, nothing. But it's certainly an easy lens to view the series through. This post specifically focuses on this idea in relation to Episode 6, however.

So, when we begin the episode, Yellow Guy is alone now. Duck died, Red Guy left. He's alone with The Teachers, continuing to undergo the torment. He's stuck in the active abuse still.

Red Guy is now in a boring office with people who just... don't understand him. Going with our theme, this is him trying to fit into the normal, expected life and actions despite all that he's gone through. And he tries his best, but his experiences have left him Changed, and his coworkers and peers just... can't connect with him. Not that they really try, mind you, but the point here is he is emotionally isolated. He's been through something none of them can understand. When he tries to express some of his feelings, he gets rejected. They think his singing file idea is boring. When he takes to the stage they all boo him off. He's not palatable to them anymore.

And then he sees Roy, and literally the world just... falls apart around him, and suddenly he's back in the world he escaped from. Following our theme here, I'd say it's a representation of being triggered.

He's acting differently because of what he endured, and the people around him don't understand it. They find it odd, unlikeable. Then he sees something that reminds him of what he went through, and everything else vanishes, and he's right back there, going through it all again.

He finds the control panel and sees Yellow Guy still undergoing the torment. He frantically starts messing with it, changing what's happening to Yellow. Again, since we're intentionally interpreting everything to fit this theme of PTSD/abuse/trauma, this can viewed as a representation of the cycle of abuse. Red Guy is trying to help, but is instead making things worse, inflicting the same horrors on Yellow Guy but in a different way. He doesn't mean to! But he's also not stopping! Through our chosen lens this makes a fantastic representation of how abuse cycles are often not perpetuated fully on purpose. If someone hasn't processed, healed... they can do a lot of damage without ever intending to, maybe even while actively trying to avoid it and trying to help.

Roy comes out of the shadows, puts a hand on Red Guy's shoulder, startles him and so Red Guy stops messing with the panel. Now, Roy's and Red Guy's interaction could represent a lot of things here. It could be coming to terms with your trauma and being able to stop taking your feelings about it out on others. It could be the way your trauma is always lingering at the back of your mind, affecting how you interact with others, and can sneak up on you with more intense episodes out of nowhere. It could even be seen as an abuser feeling pride or satisfaction that their victim is doing the same to others, even unintentionally. Viewing it through the lens we are, these all work for what happens next. Red Guy notices the plug, and pulls it.

"I wonder what will happen," he says. Again, many ways to interpret this from the idea we're going with here, but my favorite is it could be interpreted as Red Guy realizing he's perpetuating the cycle and deciding to stop it somehow. The ending of them all being their previously mentioned favorite color, to me, means things are Better. Red Guy did something good, and now things are better, and healing can be done.

Maybe Red Guy started over and these are their descendants, benefitting from the healing done. Maybe it's them, finally able to move beyond what happened to them and that's why the day finally changes on the calendar, they're finally able to live their lives without being stuck in that cycle.

Maybe it needn't be so literal and linear and it just... means something changed. Could be for better, could be for worse. But it's changed, at least.

I hope this makes sense, I tried to edit it and like, organize it better, but I'll be real I've been having the worst insomnia lately and I'm like, hanging on by a thread lol.

#dhmis #don't hug me i'm scared #abuse mention #discussion of abuse

[willow-lark]

Hi Lark! You seem really cool! I was wondering, what's your favorite Pride and Prejudice adaptation, if you have one? Have a nice day!

hello hello!! how's it going?

okay. okay. honestly THANK YOU for sending this to me. p&p is my FAVORITE NOVEL and i simply do not talk about it enough on here (or at all regarding my own personal thoughts). but i also hope u understand what u have unleashed within me. bc p&p is a topic that i will not shut up about once prompted. so without further ado:

The Complete Ranking of Every Pride and Prejudice Adaptation that I Have Seen Thus Far (*not including books/written work, bc i have read far too many of those)

Pride & Prejudice (2005 film)

this one is gonna be controversial, whichever one i pick as first. you know, it's got its merits and pitfalls in comparison with the 1995 miniseries, but this film is my comfort movie. it looks pretty, and it's got a pretty soundtrack, and keira knightley is pretty, and i think it adapts the story quite well for having to fit everything into two hours. each character is done well & it artfully represents the book. i just love this film okay!!

2. Pride and Prejudice (1995 miniseries)

okay i ranked this one #2 is everyone happy now!! but yeah. i mean. no one can outdo colin firth. that's a fact of life. this one adapts the books soso faithfully, it's so amazing to see. the whole tone is so well transferred onto the screen. collins is appropriately slimy, mrs. bennet is over the top, & COLIN FIRTH!!!!

3. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (2012-2013 webseries)

i found this one only a couple of years ago, and i was so mad to be late to the party >:( i love every single part of this adaptation. all the tongue-in-cheek references are so great and i loved how they adapted the bennet sisters, as well as the whole situation to the modern day. just spectacular.

4. Death Comes to Pemberley (2013 miniseries)

okay i will be completely fair i haven't seen this one in a while, but i did just talk to my mother, who's seen it more recently than i, and she insisted that i place this one as far as up as i could. from what i remember it was a very good story, with good acting and an interesting take on all the characters and what they would be doing years after the end of the book. definitely recommend!

5. Bridget Jones's Diary (2001 film)

another one i haven't seen in ages, and also of which my mother was very passionate about the ranking. colin firth AGAIN!! and another fantastically funny modern au that presents a new angle on it. still middle of the pack, though, since i don't have much to say about it 😭

6. Pride and Prejudice (1940 film)

ok now we're getting into territory that is just. not worth your while lmao. like this one was interesting to watch as an old movie but i was overall not impressed. like maybe there's some film buff out there who can tell me something or other about how it pioneered some technique or something, but...

7. Pride and Prejudice (1980 miniseries)

i... could not get through much of this one at all. it just seemed off? in tone, in plot, in characterization... i don't actually know that i finished it! it definitely could not compare with any of the films or miniseries that are higher up on my list.

8. Pride and Prejudice: A New Musical (2020 musical)

just... augh. when i saw that this existed i was super excited! like a p&p musical??? that sounds so cool! but i found it just to be so tedious. the characters & acting were poor, i didn't enjoy any of the musical numbers, and they styled the actor playing mr. darcy to make him look akin to a corpse. not everyone can pull off the colin firth look and you shouldn't force it!! there's this one moment about half an hour in when darcy & wickham meet for the first time that CRACKS ME UP. legitimately hysterical. i didn't make it much further than that in watching it.

/end rant. that was longer than i thought it would be & probably longer than u were asking for 😆 but THANK YOU for giving me the opportunity to talk a bit ab p&p bc i do adore it dearly and would always love to scream about it!! 💕🫂 i'm sure i've seen more adaptations than on this list, but these were the first to come to mind, lol

#angerycat!! #lark answers #pride & prejudice #pride and prejudice

[skekteksfurby]

I know a lot of wolf media have words like "pack" and "alpha" in the title but what IS it with lion media and using the word pride in theirs. there's so damn many

Pride of Baghdad (a comic)

Simba's Pride (lion king sequel)

My Pride (webseries)

Pride (early 2000s children's movie)

Pride (documentary duology by director Reinhard Radke)

Pride of the Savannah (old webseries, now lost media)

and I'm sure there's more. I mean I get that it's a cool word but a wider, more original range of titles for lion media would be nice lmao

#tekrim text

[acircusfullofdemons]

PARAMAY DAY 13 (CREATION)

*inhales* oh boy, here we go…

Claypso was created on January 12, 2018, the day/day after I had seen the movie “The Greatest Showman”. It Unlocked something in my brain because the MOMENT I got home I pulled up Pinterest & started looking for inspo to make a Cool New ~*Self Insert OC*~. I can't really remember my exact thought process (who knows wtf 14yo Luka was on) BUT I do know I specifically made Calypso to represent "me". I would then joke for the next 2ish years on how, despite this, I made Calypso a boy when I identified as a Cis Girl. Idk I just find that fact so funny now that I’m nonbinary. (In the same vein, I also made him confident/proud of his bisexuality when I still had no clue if I was bi or not. We love projecting onto our own ocs/paras <3).

Calypso is the parame I remember actively making, thinking, "this Character is me but runs a circus" (I had just seen The Greatest Showman so inspo was strong there lol). Which is funny, because if you look at Cali, then look at me, I don't think you'd think/realize that?? His personality is very much…the opposite of mine lol. I am not a super cool extrovert that has multiple friend groups and goes on odd adventures. I’m on tumblr participating in a month-long oc challenge. Clearly something went wrong /j.

Uh. I made him at a time when I was questioning if I was Bi or not (I mean i was a freshman/starting highschool. Do any of us know who we truly are then?) so I kinda projected that into him??? In all honesty I feel like he should fall somewhere on the aro spectrum as well, since I'm aro & that's important to me, but I want it to evolve naturally if it at all happens so I won't entertain the idea just yet.

Funny enough, homeboy has always been a homeboy. Er, what I mean by that is, even tho I made him based off of me/representing me, having him be a (cis) male was one of my first decisions for him. At the time I wasn't 100% sure why, maybe I was influenced by the movie, which had Hugh Jackman star/play as PT Barnum, both males. But uh *looks @ nonbinary flag* I think there's a reason why now. Also part of the reason he's so feminine / """girly""" I guess. Tbh I probably projected into him a lot more than I realize (coughdaddyissuescough) but he is my parame & started out as a paraself, so it's fair.

Oh wow I haven’t even gotten into the original version of his story yet. It’s honestly not that different from how it is now, with a few minor differences. Originally, he was just the circus’ ringleader and died trying to save Clairette from a lion attack. The time loop was because he was the son of Persephone and Morpheus (yes..the greek gods…they were a thing in this once) so I think Persephone allowed him to be a Poltergeist?? OH and Macbeth was his half brother which made their relationship kind of sad because Cali genuinely wanted a sibling relationship but Macbeth just wanted him dead (Macbeth is a Reaper and his job is to collect Souls Cali is literally a lost soul do u see the problem here).

The VR stuff was always canon (except for that brief period of time where I got insecure and it wasn’t and everything was just their normal life which made things less confusing but also there was literally no plot lmao). Idk what else to say uhm fun facts: 

His default playlist is a little over 8hrs long and is currently the longest playlist I have on Spotify (that I listen to. My instrumental playlist is a little longer but tbh I rarely touch it).

He used to have gold eyes. They were quickly changed to blue and got shifted into the turquoise they are now! In addition to that, his first design used to have him wearing an actual ringleader outfit. He also used to have black hair, then light purple, and finally the dark purple it is now. In total he’s been through roughly 7-8 redesigns.

Cali is combined with a previous character, Anthony Morningstar. Anthony was inspired by Pride!Roman (an AU of Roman Sanders from the webseries “Sanders Sides”) and is the reason Calypso is now a prince! I scrapped Anthony because I had no idea what to do with his character and felt like him & Cali were too similar to really justify them being different people.

The tarot cards that represent him are “The Magician” and “Page of Wands”.

“A Million Dreams” from The Greatest Showman is his theme song.

....this is all probably Too Much. hm. have the first drawing of Cali I ever did (it is from 2018 😞)

#paramay #paraportal #luka.txt #console: phantasmagoria #game: im not the one #game: dreamset circus #calypso raymond