I've been stressed lately so here have some angsty sidon sketches. I can't believe there isn't more Sidon's dead mom angst out there it's like nintendo just waved a magic wand and said "sidon and mipha do not have a mom she is never seen or mentioned she is not relevant she never existed dorephan simply willed them both into existence with the power of his mind and no one will ever wonder where their mom is or what happened to her you will never wonder" and then it just... worked LMFAO
so. y’all know simon greenall is the speaking voice of barnacles. i’m sure some of you know that he’s had a different singing voice since the beginning. up through season 4, barnacles’ singing vocals are done by ross breen, and then (above and) beyond that, we don’t talk about it. but anyways, ross breen is not only an incredible singer, but he sounds so much like greenall that the majority of people don’t know the difference until they look it up, myself included.
so as you may have gathered, i like to do a deep dive on the actors and voice actors behind my comfort characters. do you know how much i had to dig to find that clip of greenall jumping off the pier? it was in his showreel compiled by his agent, ruth young. that’s how deep i dig. i also found a sex scene, but that’s irrelevant.
SO last night, i was bored, and since i wasn’t satisfied by the amount of comfort content i collected from my simon greenall dig, i said fuck it and looked into ross breen.
AND IT ACTUALLY SLAPS??? LIKE, I’D LISTEN TO THIS SHIT REGARDLESS OF WHO WROTE AND SANG IT. ITS FUCKING GORGEOUS, AND IT ONLY HAS 48 MONTHLY LISTENERS. SO YALL BEST GET ON THAT.
and if there was any doubt that this was barnacles, i’d say this proves it FHJFDHH:
LIKE. GRRRRRRRRRRRR /VPOS.
‼️‼️BUT WAIT, IT GETS BETTER‼️‼️
BECAUSE in 2020ish, bestie boo bear rebranded. that’s right. this man has TWO SPOTIFIES!!!!
may i present to you…
✨Jazzy Comfort Barnacles✨
no i am not okay.
it only has 3 songs on the second spotify, but those three songs man. i will be posting about them separately bc holy fucking shit, it’s all comfort.
i fell asleep last night with “Flowing to you, Flowing Through” on loop and woke up feeling. so safe. i’m. it gives somewhere over the rainbow vibes yk? it’s bjarki’s song. and it just hits so fucking close to home lyrically for personal reasons and. ugh. later. this post is long enough as it is.
OH. AND IT HAS <1000 LISTENS. GIVE THIS MAN SOME LOVE GUYS. WE NEED TO FIX THAT.
his first spotify, ross breen, has several full-length albums. so far, we’ve only listened to one, “when i met the devil,” which came out in 2011 and is ALL BANGERS. we’ve only gotten through the one album bc we’ve been looping it all day. it has 15 songs, but quite a few instrumental transition tracks, so it comes to a little under 40 mins. my favorite songs are “when i met the devil,” “elephant’s foot” (which i will also expand upon in its own post), “life support,” “thin sheep,” and “jigsaw.” my favorite more chill songs are “monet,” and “keep the light on,” which made me cry like a baby during class.
from ross a., my favs are “flowing to you, flowing through” obviously, and “be ok”, which also made me sob hysterically and will be getting its own post too.
“When I held you, actually saw you for the first time, I fully realized how vulnerable you were. You’re such a small thing, can’t see or hear, just have to trust the people around you are friendly, won’t hurt you. I… thought of hurting you, Skip. It would’ve been so easy to have crushed you, to have killed you and never have to worry about you taking over my body again. But you were there in my hands, trembling, terrified, and despite where my thoughts travelled, all I wanted to do in that moment was protect you.”
Was looking at some of my old doodles of these two and wanted to redraw this one. Never posted the original cus I didn’t like how it came out, but I still liked the little paragraph I had next to it, so here :-]
Your influence in this world doesn't need to be all-encompassing and World Changing. It can be small ripples. It can be gentle and easily missed.
Let yourself do small things. So often, people have this idea that to do "good things," it must be a grand gesture that changes every little thing. Honestly, that can be so intimidating and scary. We weren't meant to carry the world by ourselves. We each contribute, often in small ways, often in ways that aren't seen by everybody. But the people you affect might just take that kindness you gave them and let it light them home. Let yourself be that in whatever way you want. You don't need to carry the world alone.
btw this might be me swinging a bat at a hornets nest but like. absolutely none of my disappointment from the tl finale comes from ship baiting or any relationships that didn’t happen (though to be clear, i think the tedbecca fake outs were meanspirited and served no narrative purpose - in noted contrast to the season's earlier jamiekeeley fakeouts, for example, which were explicitly there to demonstrate jamie's growth + maturity)
tedpendant is a really fun concept for me, and i LOVE the characterisation + thematic potential there!
but as someone who personally resonated with a lot of ted’s struggles, the idea that ted could leave richmond so… seamlessly, for lack of a better word, really doesn’t sit right with me. the thesis of the shows entire first season - assuming it can be said to have only one - was about how everyone needs the love and support of a community, whether that comes in the flavour of someone who hypes u tf up or someone who will relentlessly call u on ur shit (or, as happened quite frequently, both!).
rebecca, roy, jamie are the clearest examples as the characters with the most screentime: they were all deeply isolated and disconnected from the people around them, and that was making them miserable. the connections they made with the team, the vulnerability they finally allowed themselves to express (the ghost banishing ceremony comes to mind!), and them going on to want *more* out of their life are what made their arcs about *progression* rather than *regression*. without that clear theme of compassion + community inspiring positive growth in everyone who encounters it, there is, frankly, no season one.
my personal favourite scene from season one comes right after michelle walks away from ted, when they’ve agreed to get divorced. ted sits down on the bench looking gutted, and a little shell shocked - and beard sits down with him. hands him the drink, and they sit there together. silent, but together. to me, that scene is an implicit promise from the episode, to the audience: ‘it’ll be okay. it’s going to be hard, but ted isn’t alone, and his friends won’t leave him behind.’
it also makes it clear to the audience that ted isn’t the saintly-giver-of-grace who needs nothing in return, as one might assume on first brush, but rather that he’s Also struggling with his own shit (as is everyone, always, in real life!) and he has something he needs from the people around him too.
and looking at the text of s3, and the conclusion to his arc in the finale, i just don’t believe that he got it. he wasn’t just sad that he was leaving (which would be understandable!), he was completely closed off. unresponsive to the people around him reaching out, borderline confused as to why they were trying so hard!
(side note, while i completely respect the read of ted and trents last interaction being rather rude + ooc on ted’s part, i personally read a different motive into it. for me, it was more like… he didn’t understand where trents enthusiasm was coming from? like, he read that as trent being too invested in what other people think of him, and responded in a way that he hoped would emphasise that ted doesn’t *need* to laugh at everything trent wrote, bc trent Already Knows that he’s done something really cool and kickass, and he shouldn’t value anyone else’s reactions above that. basically, based on his demeanour in the episode, i genuinely don’t think it would’ve even occurred to him that trent was more invested in HIS reaction than he would’ve been with anyone else.)
again, looking purely at the text, the show had already established that ted has really strong depressive + avoidant tendencies, as well as panic attacks (largely triggered by his fear of not being ‘good enough’ in various roles, ie: a father). we saw one area he was able to calm HIMSELF abt these fears (worry for henry, which is a Hell of a choice considering the ending…), but in literally every other heightened moment, he had to rely on his support system to help him make the choices that he WANTED to make, rather than ones inspired by avoidance and fear (ie: confronting michelle abt jake, talking to his mum abt why she was visiting + his dads death).
and to be clear, this is a GOOD THING! we’re not supposed to go through life alone, no matter how bad OR well we’re doing. rebecca and keeleys friendship isn’t worth less for all the scenes where they’re both in good places. if anything, the opposite is true - it’s lovely that they both have someone who want to celebrate the achievements in their life!
and fuck it, we’re sure as hell not supposed to go through life with exactly one (1) person whom we expect to fulfill ALL of our emotional needs at all times either! like, im sure i don’t need to labour my point here, but tying everything to one (1) person in ur life doesn’t make u any less isolated than if u were going it completely alone, whether it’s a family member, a friend, or a partner. i won’t pretend to know the first thing abt what it’s like to be a parent, but i don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that no parent would be at their best if they had absolutely no support/camaraderie/general love provided to them from Anyone other than their child.
so when ted is SPECIFICALLY shown to be in a bad place, over and over again (did he come to terms w his fear to be close to henry overnight???????), and then removed from his community? of COURSE the audience is left feeling unsettled, and like the rug has been pulled out from under them. there was no time in this finale dedicated to how ted would still be in contact with anyone from richmond. no promises of visits, or phone calls - fuck, nothing about emails!! according to the text, we might as well assume this is a clean break (and the maybe-dream-sequence does Fuck All to assure us otherwise. if ted doesn’t go to beards wedding, what WOULD he go to????). and since the show has ALSO completely failed to give us even an IMPLICATION of who/what ted’s support system would be in kansas, there’s… a reasonable argument to be made that this is It for ted. that, after two seasons doing NOTHING but attesting otherwise, the audience is supposed to suddenly believe that ted can (and SHOULD!) pull himself up by his bootstraps, and cope entirely on his own.
that, to me, is a betrayal of the show’s premise. we were promised a show about how, no matter how dark things may get, none of the characters would be left to struggle alone. and then they ended the show with ted alone.
i don’t know. i guess if i had to give this post a tldr; if anyone has any gen fic/meta/Literally Anything in the pipeline, i would absolutely love to be tagged/directed towards it. i’ll be endeavouring to write something myself, as well, but it might take a while before i can return to my WIP, lol.
as much as i hated my fucking master's degree, in the grand scheme of things i see how it fits into my life. it wasn't a path forward to a career or whatever. it was a way out of home. the path of least resistance for my parents and i.
So yeah avoiding my phone didn't work and also meant I sat on the kitchen floor staring into space for about 3 hours before Alfie woke up but hey at least I didn't break anything
Them being around is helping a little but they're also struggling and it fuckin sucks bc I know we're both just. Rotating money stress in our minds
I love the brand of neurodivergent that’s like “I have very specific ways of doing things and if I don’t do these things in those specific ways I will no longer be able to function in any way and I will have a mental breakdown. But I am horrible at planning and sticking to schedules or anything. So I’m random and sporadic, but there’s my specific things that have to be done specific ways or I’ll cry”
Hi. Poll! I want to write another one-shot of kian coming out to the other two but this time for the bith oneshots collection (aka with like all the stuff from the therapy fic) but cannot decide things soooo
it's officially hallmark christmas movie season in my country which means im getting ads for them everywhere. which made me remember my hilarious revelation from last year that silvio / emma / rio can be fit almost perfectly into the 'rich and kind of asshole big city boyfriend'/'career driven but kind and independent woman'/ 'small town sweetheart' christmas movie archetypes
to be completely honest, the only christmas movie i know by heart is the first two Home Alone movies HAHA
bUT YOU ARE CORRECT!! those archetypes fit them so well and you got me freaking daydreaming about it the moment i saw this in my inbox.
particularly...rioemma
oh, you made my brain rot fURTHERRRR. but i shan't. ill keep my mouth shut.
silvio / emma / rio is a good trio for me. i like thinking about them ...be it their relationship purely platonic/familial. or one of the riccis got together with emma. their dynamic is just too good...
hihi, if they're in a typical Christmas movie. i would watch it.
i'm not really one to post snippets but... you know, since i'm unlikely to publish any of this anyway... i was going back through my fics and i am thoroughly charmed by how much i forgot i wrote. in about two minutes i'm going to forget i'm a fine writer and i enjoy my work again but for now i'm riding the high... such is life