watching the sdcc panel and i am just very :) about how sweet their answers to “what are some of the micro moments from the game that have stuck with you the most over the years?” are. taliesin saying what the fuck is up with that which was the first like The Party Gets To Know Each Other moments of c3. travis saying asking his wife if he could kiss her in campaign. marisha going way back to the cannonball competition in campaign one. ashley choosing the beauyasha date but also just the silly goat noise matt made. liam adding onto that to compliment matt roleplaying grass so well and then saying his favourite moment was writing a story for laura and reading it to her as caleb for jester. and then matt saying that was his answer, and that his favourite moments of the game are when they find ways to give gifts to each other whether tangible or not. and sam saying his favourite moments have less to do with the story and is more so when he can just. see his friends across the table from him. when marisha perches and when laura and ashley are (badly) drawing dicks and liam saying he loves when sam sneezes and ashley tells him to stop it and just. yeah. they Are an extremely popular online powerhouse, but i’m so happy that they’re also friends building a world together out of gifts to and love for one another.
like i Am so enamoured with the characters and the world of exandria but the moments when you can feel the love that those people have for each other reach out from behind the stained glass of their performances (to steal a metaphor from brennan lee mulligan) are so extremely special and i am endlessly grateful that they decided to share their silly little home game with the world.
just finished rewatching EXU: Calamity and once again cried so much. It really is one of the most masterful stories I've ever seen/heard, and absolutely the best actual play series ever done, bar none. I'm in such awe of Brennan's dm'ing skills, I adore Marisha's beautiful showing of emotions, I love seeing how much Sam and Travis love their children via how much they feel for these fictional ones, Luis' portrayal of Zerxus was so heartfelt and grounded, Lou always brings his whole soul into what he does and this was no exception, and Aabria being willing to make the difficult choices and how she shows Laerryn's dedication is just. Ugh. chefs kiss. Not to mention the group dynamics, the Aabria-Travis hype man squad, the Marisha-Lou/Marisha-Luis grabby shenanigans, how Sam and Aabria play the perfect divorcees, they're all just so fantastic and did such a good job, etc etc. I truly love Calamity so much, I can't believe it's a real show, I can't believe how fucking GOOD it is. Every single one of those people brought their A-game, but I really do especially have to call out Brennan Lee Mulligan. The way that man portrays people and humanity, how even in the end of things he speaks of the importance of hope, how he narrates and weaves the most beautiful tales and makes it so alive and tangible, how he knows exactly when to drop in some comedy amidst tragedy without detracting from it... he's simply fantastic. I'm in awe of them all!!
there's a message in yellowjackets that really resonates, about what it looks like to "overcome" trauma. you live through something indescribable, you're "rescued" from that thing, and you have a grace period. how long? a week? a month? a year? how long before the world stops giving you grace, how long before the world expects you to give them a pretty little story with a happy little ending so they can stop feeling weird when they look at you, for the way what you've been through makes them feel? how long before you have to be a wife and mother to prove you're fine, or a successful politician, or a respectable nurse. or, how long before they want to see you in the psych ward or rehab so they can frown and ooh and ahh at your failure to assimilate back into a world you can no longer see in the same light? they don't want to help you. they want to watch you. they want to make a feel-good story out of you. a quippy headline. and if they can't, they'll make you their cautionary tale. if you can give them neither, you'd better hide yourself away. everybody asks "what really happened out there?" what was it like how did it feel what did you have to do to survive it? and the answer is there is no answer. it is still happening. it is happening every night in your dreams, it is happening every time you look in the mirror, it is happening over and over and over again forever. hitting the "recovery milestones"–the socially acceptable You Did It life markers such as a successful career, a successful family, a successful whatever the fuck–meeting those marks isn't for you. you don't see the merit in those things anymore. and why would you? you know a different way of living now. it's for the audience who wants to be placated by your okayness or entertained by your insanity, and will not rest until you've given them one or the other. the wilderness may have taken indiscriminately, cruelly, violently. but society is worse. that's the difference between hunger and gluttony. you ate your friends to survive. they are eating you to throw you up to eat you again to complain about how unpalatable you are now. and then they still ask for more.
Thinking about how much Taylor probably wanted her partner to experience the show that she spent so much time creating and rehearsing, that included music they made together and he saw her write about their life and she was probably so excited for him to see it and then he just never went…And now she sings “and if you wanted me you really should’ve showed” every night and is now talking to someone that went to that show, has been gushing about it and her and it’s making me feel a lot of things.
The yj subreddit is a cesspool of bad takes most of the time but I just saw someone make the connection between the strawberry lube and the fact that Shauna is shown eating "strawberries" when she's eating Jackie and I'm vibrating
I want to meet the woman who had not one but TWO kids with Hermes. Two kids so close in age and are so alike people just assume that they're twins, two kids who are chaos personified, who singlehandedly run the camp shop, who are in charge of the biggest cabin at camp and look after their equally chaotic gremlin siblings plus every unclaimed kid at camp like Lou Ellen a daughter of Hecate and another being of chaos who learnt it all from them, and who take every opportunity to fuck shit up, to prank their camp mates or to steal shit. Their last name, which they get from their mama? Stoll by the way. Neither child notices the pun.
I want to meet Mama Stoll, who saw the chaos, who saw the bullshit Hermes brought into her life the first go around and said tonight's the night let's do it again. She is either the world's greatest cat burglar who enticed the god of Thieves or the messenger god was enchanted by the best god dam delivery woman on the planet. There's no in-between. It was just a bonus that her surname was the perfect pun. Her and Hermes laugh about it. In my head, it's all canon. Regardless, she unleashed two agents of unlimited chaos onto an unsuspecting world, and I love her for it. I take my hat off to her, I kneel before her.
Oh, and the oldest kid, Travis? He's dating a girl called Katie, who is the daughter of Demeter. Her last name? Gardner. Fucking Gardner. She has a sister called Miranda Gardiner, by the way. Mama Stoll finds it hilarious. Her sons still don't get the pun, but at least she gets on with her future daughter in law like a house on fire.
que the puppets fleeing while a heavy working crew fuckin snatches everyone up in nets to clean the place us
"should we muzzle sally?"
"she fuckin bit me!"
"doesnt answer the question"
"wally stole my wallet!"
"hes legally allowed to, travis."
yk what i'd really wanna see is how they wrangle the massive dog & the equally tall four-armed caterpillar. Wally would get netted and Barnaby would appear behind the person, about to ruin their entire career
It shouldn't need to be said but I'm seeing a lot of vitriol towards Ashton about their actions and I have to say I don't agree with them.
At the clock tower Fearne brought up the shard, stated that in her opinion Ashton should take the shard because she didn't want it. Ashton decided then as a result they'd take it, but because it was an extreme risk made very aware to them all they knew the other Hells wouldn't allow them to go through with it. Ashton asked Fearne if she was okay with both of them going together alone with the plan, reiterating that they didn't want to put this on Fearne, that if they died Fearne would not be to blame, and that they have no intention of dying, and Fearne said yes.
Fearne having second thoughts at the Ziggurat was just worry, because she cares deeply for Ashton, Ashton kissing her was not manipulation either; it was letting go of fear, having no regret with the person they also care deeply for and taking the risk. And yeah, it was frightening, 10 rounds of perpetual fiery near-death situations and one actual death situation; Laura is fuming, Ashley cannot look, Liam is playing Mad World on loop in his mind, even Matt is completely on edge, but they survived. Accusations that Ashton manipulated Fearne to selfishly take the shard seem to misinterpret the shard saga as well as Fearne and Ashton's characters, they will get a very intense amount of chastising for sure, but it will be out of love, out of the fear that they were going to lose them, not because they thought Ash was manipulative.
I have loved Travis and I will continue to love Travis because how can you not! how can you not love someone who is sooo easily convinced to stay how can you not love him when for all the faults he was taught would make him a man he's just a deeply lonely person who desperately wants someone to hold him gently and he didn't want to go on the plane and he didn't want to go on tai's expedition and he didn't necessarily want to go upstairs and how can you not love him when he just wants someone anyone to be a totally selfish asshole and ask him to stay