#what I’d give for a tv version of this episode

[kaycode1999]

What's your favorite incarnation/version of Bumblebee?

And which is your least favorite?

Just curious bruh :P

Damn that’s a hard one😂😂. God I love them all so much (to clarify I don’t play any of the video games so this is strictly the TV shows and movies

It would probably be easier just to rate them (scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the best)

Long post warning 😂 I’m sorry I just love this bot so much and I have so many feelings about him😂😂

80’s/original Bumblebee- 10/10

Sweet sweet wholesome boy who is also friend shaped just

TFA Bumblebee- 9/10

I relate to him so much (ADHD coded much?), mischievous snarky boy with a heart of gold

Bayverse Bumblebee- 10/10

Bayverse was what got me into the franchise and solidified Bumblebee as my forever favorite and love of my life so I definitely have a special regard for him

TFP Bumblebee- 9/10

Precious precious boy. Can do no wrong (P.S I could get lost in those beautiful blue optics)

RID Bumblebee- 7/10

I don’t think the series did him justice as the leader at the start but he did get there in the end. Also the art style change from TFP was a bit weird to get used to. All around a sweet heart goofball though

War for Cybertron Bumblebee- 6/10

Not a very good series but decent enough for mindless entertainment. Bee is still a good boy but very different from the normal happy and sweet Bumblebee I’m used to

Cyberverse Bumblebee- 11/10

AAAAAHHHHHHHHHH

The most wholesome sweetie to ever live. I would die for him. I want to put my hands on his cheeks and give him Eskimo kisses

Knightverse/ROTB Bumblebee- 15/10

Such a beautiful, bad ass, kind hearted bot. He represents exactly what this character should be to the best degree

Earthspark Bumblebee- 20/10

There’s only been 18 episodes so far and more to come but FFFUUUUUCCCCKKKK

He’s so handsome, he has a great relationship with his found family and I love how he needed a moment to get adjusted after being isolated for many years but quickly gained such a love and respect for his new family also freaking Dany Pudi voices him who I love very much

Sorry for my long rant😂. Hope you enjoyed and let me know which is your favorite and least favorite cause I’d love to know

#transformers #bumblebee #transformers bumblebee #autobots #decepticons #transformers original #bumblebee x reader #transformers bumblebee x reader #transformers earthspark #g1 bumblebee #tfa bumblebee #TFA #bayverse bumblebee #tf war for cybertron #wfc bumblebee #transformers prime #tfp bumblebee #RID #rid bumblebee #tf cyberverse #cyberverse bumblebee #knightverse #knight verse bumblebee #ROTB #rotb bumblebee #earthspark bumblebee

[dinolich]

FAQ

One click spot for frequently asked questions, pertaining to HELLAWEEN and art in general. This will be linked in my bio and updated over time.

HELLAWEEN -What was the inspiration behind HELLAWEEN/How did it come to be?

In 2014 I had just graduated college and moved across the country for a storyboard internship at a film studio. I had a huge quarter life crisis when the environment clashed with me in every way, which left me questioning if I had made a massive career choice mistake. To help take the edge off I decided I needed to come up with some characters that were as self indulgent as possible. So I asked myself "What if there was Halloween level of a Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater game?" and "What if My Chemical Romance wrote the soundtrack to Scooby Doo?" and thus, the main cast was born. Originally I didn't have any plans with them, I was just having fun drawing them for inktober and developing their personalities. Once the internship ended and I was able to set my career back in motion with some significantly better studio atmosphere fits for me in California, I started getting more serious about developing a linear story. I spent some time pitching different versions to tv studios and shorts programs. Got some great feedback but no real bites. Fortunately, I had a post blow up that caught the attention of my publisher who reached out to see if I was interested in doing a book instead and I LEAPED at the opportunity! HELLAWEEN is very much inspired by my own teenage years, growing up in the Bay Area, being surrounded by alt and skate cultures in the 2000's. As well as exploring identity, and growing up queer but the words for "how" didn't really exist yet. Plus a deep love for spooky cartoons and stylish anime, of course.

-What kind of music pairs the story/characters?

Great news I have playlists for everyone

Gwen- Ashnikko and My Chemical Romance Miles- 100 gecs and Oingo Boingo Sloane- PUP and The Cure Hiro- Gorillaz and Maximum the Hormone Bea- AFI and The Used -Do you have any voice claims for the cast?

I’d mostly want them to be played by actual teenagers. But I have a couple in mind that I think could work—

Gwen I could see Valeria Rodriguez (Lagoona and Spectra on the current MH series) Miles maybe someone like Zeno Robinson (Hunter Owlhouse) Sloane I have no idea, but definitely a VO who’s non binary

With Hiro and Bea it’s impossible to not hear Dante Basco and Grey Griffin in my head.

-What are the character's pronouns/orientations? Gwen- She/Her Miles- He/Him Sloane- They/Them Hiro- He/him Bea- She/Her In general I don't want to define their sexual orientations. I'm an aroace author and it's not something I'm interested in writing about. Ideally, I'd like to give the audience room to project themselves onto the characters. Don't get me wrong this book is QUEER and themes of identity are important, just don't expect any kissing in the canon story. Headcanons on the other hand, go nuts!!! Can I get HELLAWEEN in ____ country/language?

Getting it published outside of the US is not out of the question, but at the moment I don't have any concrete info on that. I've heard folks have had good luck getting the book through their country's Amazon site or Bookshop.org Can I draw fanart/make my own playlists/write fanfiction/make a character?

oh my GOD yes ART Who are your artistic inspirations?

Jhonen Vasquez and Aaron Alexovich, FLCL, Jamie Hewlett, The Muppets, Mike Mignola, Mob Psycho 100, Rem's Devil's Candy, 2000's age Neopets, Pokemon, plus online artists I’ve looked up to for years or grew up drawing with. What programs do you use?

Comics- Clipstudio Paint Sketching- Procreate Storyboarding- Storyboard Pro What ink markers do you use in your sketchbook?

Copic markers, pentel pocket brush, pilot brush pens, micron fine liners Check out my episode of Creative Block!

#ask dinolich #faq

[delyth88]

Loki episode 5 reaction and initial thoughts

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! I can’t believe it! I’m so unused to getting what I hope for with Loki in movies and TV that I almost don’t know what to do when you get almost exactly what you’d hoped for!!!!!   (Within the bounds of this being the TVA version of Loki of course.) That was excellent!  And hit most of the key things I was hoping for as well as giving some absolutely charming additions!

It packed in a lot of story, and it was a delight to see the characters on the timeline. It wasn’t as gripping and tense as the last episode, but that's probably a good thing for my stress levels lol! But it was a really lovely time travel story.

And Loki has unlocked a new ability. Maybe.

The opening music!! Perfectly creepy!  And even more so than the music over the credits of the last episode. It really sounded like the disintegration of reality!

And I loved the way the letters disappeared from the Loki title card… *shivers*

It was a small thing, but nice to see at least one thing I’d guessed correct – that they started the episode with the reverse of this shot at the end of episode 4.

I loved how spooky it was having Loki walk through the corridors of the TVA by himself. And I did rather enjoy the moment he almost met himself.  That was cute. But it was clear that they needed to get on to other things quite quickly – there was a lot in this episode!!

The imagery of the universe disintegrating was perfectly terrifying! (Although I was getting big “snap” vibes.)  And what is Fail Safe Mode? And does it matter?

I was a little sad to see Casey was a prisoner. 😔   But I wonder if we’ll see these timeline versions of the characters again?  I feel like the need for them is over? Unless maybe briefly at the start of the last episode. So we didn't have to watch him being particularly horrible.

I didn’t pick that he’d be the first person Loki would visit, nor did I pick that it would all be unintentional. 

I did like the way Loki still hoped that Mobius would recognise him. And the conversation itself was ambiguous enough I suppose for the first couple of sentences that you could interpret it that way. Poor Loki looked so disappointed!

I laughed as was intended at the imitation of the inflatable advertising character.  😁

And then OB!!!  Omg!  I LOVE what they chose to do with his character!!!  He was so sweet, and retained his enthusiastic and super intelligent personality! I hadn’t really settled on what I thought OB might have been like on the timeline, but this was so much better! And how he was like “and I had to get a PHD to keep my day job as a theoretical physicist”….!  😄

And @pinkpondofasgard I hope you’ve seen this episode when you see this mention, because spoilers - looks like you were right about this being a location from OB’s past!  Which I think is super cool!  I don’t have any idea what this would be in the 1990s in the US, but obviously it worked so well for OB that he replicated it in the TVA!  Unless this whole series all turns out to be his dream… Ha ha! Ha…. ha…… er…  Anyway. I love that so many of the shelves are covered in books instead of technical TVA equipment.

Okay, so now I’m seriously thinking there’s a chance OB might actually be the founder of the TVA.  HWR could easily have come along later and taken over the leadership and wiped his memories.  But the fact the rooms are sooooo similar is just a bit too weird.

I did like how they handled Loki explaining things to Mobius.  Mobius was suitably sceptical and Loki was trying so hard not to sound threatening, but that’s not really his bag, is it. Lol! Things would definitely have gone pear shaped if OB hadn’t turned up.

I feel like Loki’s getting a lot of use out of the phrase “I promise you this will make sense” lol!

While I was kinda looking forward to the multiple crazy conversations while Loki tries to convince people he’s not mad, I do appreciate they had to make this quick, and I liked how they made each interaction shorter than the one before it, until he didn’t even need to say anything after stepping through the time door.

Then there was Sylvie.  I was by this point just as surprised as Loki that she kept her memories.  Now I have to assume that’s because she wasn’t ever a TVA worker who had her memories wiped.  But if that’s the case, then why wasn’t she in the Loom room with Loki when he ‘woke up’?  I’m assuming we’re meant to understand that this is because Loki feels most at home in the TVA, rather than Asgard. I find that's a little bit much, personally.  But I guess I’ll put that one to the side for the moment.

I did not expect her to be so adamant about not helping.  I mean I should have, but I didn’t. Their conversation at the bar was interesting, and I liked that Loki was so concerned that the TVA folk get a choice.  (And I kinda think now that they might, come the end of the season.  With OB choosing to stay because it’s literally his dream, Casey because it’s better than being an escaped prisoner, and B-15 and Mobius choosing to leave.)

The whole scene in the record shop – that was cool!  The small things that went wrong first, and the way the store owner slowly noticed it. *shivers*

Although again, very similar to the snap. I like how small objects vanish first, and I really should have seen that coming when the tempad went missing, but I didn’t.  I think there was just so much squashed into this episode!

And this was such a haunting image.

And then Sylvie says “there’s nowhere left to go” before she too disintegrates.  Eeeee!

Again, this looked really cool!  Are we meant to understand that Loki could hear a moment in the timeline of a person each time he touched a thread?  I wonder if that holds for any thread? Or was that just illustrating his memories?

I’m not sure that’s important though, given he almost immediately jumps back to the TVA, but we haven’t seen this image from the mid-season trailer yet. Not one from this angle where Sylvie is still whole, and where Loki is standing confidently and making this specific gesture.  I wonder now if he’s just snapped his fingers? Perhaps this moment is revisited, or perhaps just an alternate take that looked cool for the trailer.

I did like the ending, and how he jumped back to them all to tell them he’d figured out how to do it.  I wonder if he’ll be able to come back to them under his own steam at a later date? 

I’m still not entirely sure if this is something that in integral to Loki now or whether its related to circumstances. Like will it be possible to time-slip after the TVA is restored? If that means going back within the TVA before the moment he started time-slipping in the first place. *shrug*

So, what point did he jump back to?  There’s an alarm blaring in the background, but no other identifying things.  So I’m guessing this is just as they watch Timely go down the stairs to suit up?

Does he try to stop Timely from going out there? Explain it didn’t work, and then ask OB for information in the last few moment before jumping back further?

And more importantly, after the multiverse is saved, does this mean he can jump to the time and place of any person he cares about?  Could he visit his Mum? Or a Thor?!! 🥲

Ah!  This was a really great time travel episode! And I'm thoroughly looking forward to the final episode.

Tagging @sparklegemstone @pinkpondofasgard @woodelf68 @scintillatingshortgirl19 @projectprotectloki @ladyofthestayingpower @juliabohemian @galaxythreads @makerofrunevests @thelightofthingshopedfor

As usual, please let me know if you'd rather not be tagged. :)

#loki #loki series #loki season 2 #loki review #loki show #loki s2 #loki series speculation #tva #loki s2 ep5 #surely they can't have him die at the end of the series.... #right...? #right............? #loki spoilers

[alloutofgoddesses]

Percy Jackson TV Thoughts

(I’m a book reader so I know things and will reference them in this)

EPISODE ONE

THE WORD FOR WORD OPENING FROM THE BOOKS!!!!! GOD I love it

(all of us the moment we see a black Pegasus) BLACKJACK!! He’s looking after Percy even as he’s a baby 🥺

The actor for young(er) Percy does such a good job at being Percy

Who let an armoured Rhino loose in the city?

THE MYTHOMAGIC CARDS

Every time I look at Mr. Brunner’s wheelchair I just think about how eventually he’s going to be #pranked by the campers changing his fake legs out for Rocky Horror inspired legs

SALLY JACKSON MOTHER OF THE YEAR 17 YEARS RUNNING

Oh Percy oh my baby someone take his suffering and give it to Octavian

Mrs. Dodds is SO GOOD I desperately wish we had more of her

He doesn’t know that he can actually write with it though

Grover and Percy exchanging the stuff in their sandwiches is such a good little detail to add in there

Walker is an incredible Percy and Aryan is an incredible Grover

I LOVE the way Mrs. Dodds transforms into her Fury self (do we know which one she is? I always forget)

Is that Rick on the other side of the headmaster? Hey dude

Grover selling out Percy is WILD like I know they had a time limit for moving the plot along but I’d be mad at him too dam

Eddie yelling at Gabe was so funny… Gabe eat more fruits you don’t know how much time you have left to do so

People saying Gabe’s awfulness have been reduced aren’t necessarily wrong but… he answers Sally’s phone which suggests some stuff. I do hope they sprinkle in some of his terribleness throughout the season though

D’Angelos you say? 👀

As my mom said, his bags were already packed

what on earth is this little Kronos dude and why is he holding a lantern. I love his voice though

Did. Did they make Percy in a bunk bed? Sally. Please tell me there’s another bed in this cabin

I do appreciate Sally TV version being more forthcoming than Sally book version

My parents Did Not laugh at the Jesus joke which is unfortunate, it’s hilarious

Percy littol baby it IS okay honey

Aryan is doing an AMAZING job of acting like an adult who’s Done This Before… it was always hard for me to remember Grover being older than Percy in the books but Aryan has made it clear from the beginning

SALLY JACKSON BAMF OF ALL TIME

The boundary looks so far away y’all how are you gonna get there

What are we swearing on guys? Certainly not a river

Sally I love you SO MUCH all mothers, current or future should be TAKING NOTES

When is Chiron going to explain Anaklusmos if Percy kept it?

The Minotaur has such soft looking ears I cannot lie to you. I would try to pet them probably

Chiron he IS the one though. Both in the way Annabeth expects him to be and not

Oh my god these end credits??? Amazing they’re incredible! And so chalk full of spoilers

Omg a little teaser at the end!

EPISODE TWO

Annabeth that’s dramatic as HELL I love you bby girl

What is that thing on the nightstand next to Percy? It looks like someone fused a hairdryer to a kettle

PERCYYYYYY

I WISHED that’s how this worked my dude

I have seen this clip on the internet before so I knew it was coming but it’s Very Funny

“But did you?” PERCY

The first and last time Percy will ever be respectful to a god

Mr. D is so goddamn funny, thank you to the casting director, the actor, and the actor’s friend’s child who told him how big of a deal this is (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, the actor went on a talk show for press)

I’ve never experienced a New York summer but how is Chiron wearing THREE layers

They’re ancient and they’re COWORKERS it’s amazing

Helpful little ‘gods make demigods do stuff they can’t’ sprinkle there good foreshadowing

These cabins are beautiful

THE HEARTH IN THE MIDDLE HI HESTIA

Not Percy thinking he’s immediately going to get bullied 🥺

YES love that we get to see a dryad and a little of Grover talking to the Cloven Council!

TRANSITIONS

They would get really squishy you’re right Grover

I can’t wait to see Mr. D do some god shit

Ope Kronos is back hey dude. Is he wearing a cloak?

Me, turning to my cat, named Hermes: You’re a FATHER?!?!

Seriously though what is Clarisse’s deal? Why bully the new kid? I have to assume it comes not only from her dad being Ares but other stuff

WHEELCHAIR!!! Disabled rep is AMAZING

Hey I’m pretty sure I won that lighter

I love that Chris is like “Yeah technically but she’s the goddess of failure” like that’s helpful but not helpful

Percy trying to talk to his mom is adorable!!! I wonder if it actually got to his mom or if someone else heard it, like Hades or Poseidon

He’s made some friends!! Oh Percy you don’t even KNOW how many friends you’re gonna make

Perseus I love you

Okay but who’s fixing the stall

Glad Annabeth got to stay dry this time

SPEAKING OF ANNABETH GOD I LOVE HER SO MUCH!! She was one of my IDOLS as a kid and now I get to experience her being a kid and watch Leah crush it

Luke you stay away from her you don’t get to call her your little sister

The forbidden kids? Different from The Big Three but I don’t hate it

Oops well I’ve been pronouncing Thalia wrong more times that I have pronounced it right

The actor for Luke, Charlie, is showing just enough subtle dislike for the gods and his life at camp that it’s only obvious if you’re looking for it. I can’t wait for people to be able to go back and see the hints being laid out

How many generations of campers did it take for the rope bridge to get full of ribbons, and do they serve any purpose

I can’t wait for the armour adjusting moment to be paralleled. Even more so, I can’t wait for the gif sets that will come out of it

I also floss if I am made to stand still. It’s a great stim, I can’t blame Percy

AND HE GETS TO PET A LITTLE CREATURE?!?! Honestly he’s living his best life

The only rule you paid attention to maybe

FIGHT CHOREO MY BELOVED

Sorry Clarisse but maybe you shouldn’t go after the new guy with unknown skill levels

ANNABETH THAT WAS SUCH A HARD SHOVE

Omg the lake, the infamous lake, the very important lake

Honestly I’m sad that 1) no hellhound 2) we don’t get to see Chiron pronounce him the Son of Poseidon? I’d like to know why they made that choice

Love that Chiron went “Congrats on the dad reveal you have to go solve his problems now”

HE IS SALLY JACKSON’S SON FUCK POSEIDON

Grover Underwood you will always be famous

Give me more immediately!! Next week I’ll be at my grandparents house with EIGHT other people, including a five year old. I’m hoping his mom will give me permission to indoctrinate him into the fandom. If not I’ll just make everyone still awake watch it after the kid goes to bed

NEXT WEEK TEASER!!! Very exciting

#pjo disney+ #percy jackson #percy jackon and the olympians

[laylajeffany]

What's your favorite piece of Addams Family media? P.S. be warned I have a list of all my burning questions about your amazing fic

The original comics featured in The New Yorker and in compilations over time by Charles Addams are my favorite. I write Wednesday just slightly more in line with that interpretation than the 2022 series in CftF (including her extra toe 😘).

Layla doesn't know how write anything short, so here's more on my opinions of The Addams Family interpretations over time:

I frequently watch the ’64 Addams family television series, have been through it in order with the DVD box set a few times (the very first time I ever saw it, I was five and a flower girl in my cousin’s wedding and I was the only child in the limousine and the adults were boozing and wild - my parents were not there - and my cousin put on the TV that was in the back and The Addams Family was the only thing that would come in on the signal. I was TICKLED by Cousin Its and told my dad about it and he would sometimes find reruns it on TV and tell me to come watch because he was a big fan growing up when it was originally airing). It’s also on free on its own channel on FreeVee 24/7 in the USA with Amazon Prime and I fall asleep to it. If you’ve not watched - like, let’s remember this was filming literally at the same time the Civil Rights act of 1964 was passed so it’s not going to completely fall in line with today’s views of race/gender/culture, etc. For the time, the Addams Family was considered progressive for showing a loving couple on television and poking fun at traditional US expectations (Morticia and Gomez are horrified when Pugsley wants to join the Boy Scouts, for example). In this version, Morticia is far less cold and detached than she is in the comics. She’s sweet on Gomez even if she rolls her eyes at him regularly and when the kids are actually present (Pugs&Wednesday are often not in episodes at all which is probably for the best given we know about everything with children on television sets) she is far warmer than in the original; I probably write her closer to this Morticia than the original or W22. 

Next I’d say Addams Family Values, followed by The Addams Family ‘90s movies, and then Wednesday 2022. I think that the ‘90s movies were a pretty “bold departure from the source material” (to quote the Beetlejuice musical lol) on Wednesday’s character, in particular, than either of the previous media, and then it seems like the ‘90s version of her is what T.B. was running with for her characterization in W22.  I’m not keen on the musical (though I wish I could see Michelle Visage as Morticia in the West End) and I don’t care for the animation style from the 2019 movie so I haven’t watched it and I haven’t ever seen the ’92 animated series. 

I think like anything that’s been done and redone, you can enjoy each interpretation for what it is, understanding it’s more inspired by the source material, rather than a 1:1 match of it. Much on the source material and if you like it, you like it - if not, walk away. I LOVE all three versions of Beetlejucie for completely separate reasons and they all barely mirror each other besides the actual character names and premise (not so sure about this new movie though IGBH, I will be going in with ZERO expectations). In the opposite lens, I ONLY like the ‘90s sitcom of Sabrina and don’t care for the original comics and (believe it or not) I don’t like the Netflix series. These examples are just that this sort of genre is for different audiences at different times, and sometimes you’ll like it and sometimes you won’t. I think taking this fun/macabre genre that is for us weirdos and giving it new life every few generations is a nice way to include other people in on the gags and the kooky and the spooky who otherwise might never have given it a try. IDK - I’m just down to clown with the Addams Family in a variety of ways and there’s really fewer families I’d personally fit in. ☠️

#ask #layla answers questions

[magicofthepen]

so i accidentally bought a used copy of Human Nature last weekend and read it all on Tuesday. and the TV episodes are fresh in my mind too, so Immediate Reactions (spoiler warning):

fascinating that in book!HN, the Doctor decides to become human for the hell of it, for emotional reasons. I’d assumed that it would be revealed eventually that of course he was doing it to hide from the Family (erm, I forget their species name in the book), but no, the Family was the one who turned him human. I do think the TV version works better as a premise—and the Doctor not explaining much and giving limited instructions works better if he was genuinely in a rush, rather than it being a personal choice. but still. huh.

dear lord this book is much darker than the TV version. the whole school getting blown up and most of the students dying, the bullies literally killing Tim and him being brought back to life…..

the one thing I liked better in the book was how it explored the Doctor-as-an-Ideal more—how anyone can be the Doctor. John Smith didn’t have to change back to embrace what the Doctor stood for—he chose to be the sort of hero the Doctor was himself, while he was still human. Tim learned that he can say no to being a soldier and there are other ways to do good — and literally became a doctor.

I am fascinated by John Smith surviving briefly as a separate person from the Doctor. I liked it as a plot resolution—the villain trying to absorb the Doctor and instead being thwarted because he absorbed the mind of a human. weird that he then. dies(?) but there was something quite interesting there briefly, about humanity being his undoing. and the Doctor and John Smith getting to talk to each other. and it was definitely unexpected, given how nothing of the sort happens in TV!HN. (the mechanics of becoming human and the Doctor’s memories being stored separately also being different.)

yes I did read this because I knew Romana would be mentioned. I’d heard that seeing a vision of her was what led the Doctor to realize the threat the Family posed—which is true! but I’d assumed that this vision was before the adventure, that this vision sparked his plan to thwart the Family by hiding as a human. so I was emotionally unprepared for it being John Smith having the vision. he didn’t even remember her, but seeing Romana executed was what convinced him to resist, to not give the Family what they wanted. y’all I’m feeling things 🥺

#emily reads dw books #that’s a tag now #i truly didn’t *plan* to buy and inhale this book so quickly but hey! #it was genuinely really interesting seeing the similarities and differences to the tv version! #dw vnas #doctor who #dw eu #ramblings #romana #doctor x romana

[centrally-unplanned]

Comic Box 1997 End of Evangelion Issue - Archive Scan

Comic Box was a magazine in Japan launched in, from what I can gather, 1982. It was a bit of an ‘alt” magazine - it has an imprint, Comic Box Jr, which focused on doujinshi for example - and would cover anything anime-adjacent, including western films. The October 1997 release of the magazine was dedicated to the release of the End of Evangelion film, and to answering the question “what was the phenomenon called Evangelion?”. Towards that end it features fan submissions, art, comics, essays, all talking about what Eva meant to them. Some are serious, some are fully comedic, way way more than I expected are erotic, and overall it is a time capsule of how the anime community was thinking about Evangelion when EoE came out. The magazine dissolved in 1998 from what I can tell, so this was one of its last releases - you can still see its absolutely vintage website here! Complete with dashing chibi cat gif.

I discovered this magazine through japanese anime/manga archivist-in-residence ehoba on twitter, who provided photos and rough summaries of some of the pages. They are just camera photos of an open magazine though, not scans, and not at all complete. I hunted around for a while to find a scanned version, messaged ehoba and a few others, posted on forums like Evageeks, and drew total blanks. I couldn’t find any listings of it online, so I set the quest aside...until I was placing another order for some artbooks for import and decide to check Yahoo Auctions Japan and lo and behold, there is was! It arrived this week.

So that image above is not one pulled from the internet - I have scanned the entire Evangelion segment of Comic Box - October 1997 issue. I am a neophyte scanner & image editor, these aren’t gonna be amazing or anything, but while I hope to make a more polished version I wanted to share the drafts now. I really aspire to translate it, but of course I don’t speak Japanese, so I am going to see how far working with some people I know and brute-forcing with AI would go. If you are interested or know someone who would be, definitely reach out! 100% would crowdsource this. If someone already scanned and translated this, also let me know, I would groan heavily and curse my google skills but i’d rather it be available and know, and not waste time.

Below will be some reduced-down PNG’s of the magazine to fit Tumblr image limits with Ehoba’s notes and a few of my own attached to them. A link to the full images as a singular PDF is on the Internet Archive [Here]

A reflection of a very known thing in this magazine is that, from my perspective, End of Evangelion is definitely Asuka’s moment to shine, but it didn’t matter because the 90′s Eva fandom *loved* Rei. She was the most popular by far, and I think dethroned Sailor Mercury on the ‘best girl’ polls in magazines of the era. Nowadays if you poll audiences - as the NHK did recently - Asuka is the most popular girl, but it was a different, proto-moe-boom time.

"Evangelion was fake. A fake made by one director, or by the staff. However, it was a very real fake. God, it was so good."

Watermelon Kaji absolute goat here; so cool indeed

How much Asuka is suffering in all these images vs god-salvation Rei is, again, saying alot about the waifu wars.

"I don't think episode 25 and 26 were professional work. I understand that the ADR script and previews with layout sheets are supposed to be avant-garde, but something is wrong with it." "TV show is not an individual's job, so I wanted them to deal with the schedule limitation."

90% sure this Asuka ‘escaped’ and I saw it on the internet in the early 2000′s - maybe the author published it elsewhere in a doujin, I assume a lot of this art would have been repurposed for other mediums.

Honestly the art is incredible for this magazine sometimes, the splash pages they have are filled with Evangelion’s anime-spiritual energy.

"Unit 02 has a mouth, which means it can give a blow job." "The biggest surprise is Rei in cowgirl position. The official content does that, so hentai authors have nothing to do."

(Gainax putting hard-working hentai doujin authors out of a job, what assholes!)

"My heated up feeling toward Evangelion was quick-freezed by episode 25 and 26. EoE defrosted it, but now I feel distant from Evangelion."

How much Episode 25-26 come up here is great evidence for how divisive they were - End of Eva is absolutely seen as commentary on, and opposition to, the TV ending. I think in the west the initial reception of the original ending is overall more positive? Certainly nowadays, would be curious how it is seen in Japan today.

OCR’ing this image will literally murder me, pls I can’t

"Bullshit plot, surficial information, shallow dialogues, inconsistent direction, story with tons of plot holes, the director's masturbation, the otaku's useless attempt to enlighten other otaku..." "BUT I LOVE IT."

10/10 take

"'Sincerity' of someone I don't like just confirms that I still don't like them. Anno apparently thought that honest depiction of himself can be depiction of otaku, but that's not wrong. Anno is exceptionally creepy."

God-tier Anno portrait here. I love how many of this art showcases “settings” from End of Eva and which ones hit the audience - re-using the movie theatre seats for Shinji, that is really cool!

Evangelion - Slayers edition! The artist names are in the black box panel on the page lining, I absolutely hope to track down a few of them and see what kind of works they made.

"I think each material of Evangelion was nothing new. In the early half, however, I was moved by their techniques of arranging and remixing those materials." "Creators' strong desire for expression supported this story, but I'm not sure."

"Adam and Eve in the Eden East" "I hope they will live happily after the ending."

"The theater was like a funeral after the screening. No, I should say it was a literal funeral. Evangelion ended, it died. In terms of entertainment, Evangelion was completely and brilliantly killed."

Kaworu’s insta-inclusion into the ranks of the kid cast is always amusing to me; he is in one episode of the show after all, barely in Eva! But he is all over the art immediately. The power of design - and also being one of the first gay characters on television (as opposed to OVA’s) in Japan.

Hopefully if I can make progress on translation I can have actual thoughts to add to the scan, certainly I will post results if I get them.

I value, way too deeply to be honest, the preservation of the other side of the ‘media mix’ - how people responded to the media in question and what it meant to them. It is way more likely to be lost than the media itself or documents from the production side. May this contribution to preserving a bit of that experience be of value to those out there who would be interested in the history of Evangelion, and anime more generally.

If you think you know anyone or your followers overall would be interested in translation help, I would appreciate the broadcasting!

#evangelion #anime archives #90's anime zeitgeist

[skyfall8600]

Sucked In. Chap 1: In Loving Colour

A/N: Welcome to my first ever Eddie Munson Fanfic! This is going to be a long series, and I apologise if I get any details wrong.

I love seeing your reactions so please comment and Reblog!

Warnings: Swearing

Pairings: Eddie x y/n. 

Summary: What happens if you get sucked into the world of Stranger Things, and come face to face with the big brown eyed metal-head you couldn’t get enough of. 

Series Masterlist

Eddie Munson Masterlist <3

[0.9k Words]

It has been a year since Season 4 of Stranger Things had graced your TV screen. After ugly crying over that devastating death of Eddie Munson in the last episode, you found yourself even more fascinated and captivated with that world and him. 

For Halloween 2022, you rocked your Hellfire shirt and joined your friends as makeshift versions of the Stranger Things gang. Your friends did nothing to stop your obsession, giving you small bracelets and pins for your birthday. 

“What’s your take on this one?” your friend said, showing you her phone screen with the latest theory on how season 5 might continue. 

“Vampire Eddie?” you laughed and blushed slightly, “I’d let him have me.” 

“Y/n!” they squealed, nudging your shoulder slightly. “It’s rather cool though, can you imagine? He’d be the second blood sucking Edward you’ve ever loved!” 

It was natural for them to make fun of your first movie crush, you had been so young when Twilight came out, but it seems as though some things never change. 

“Yeah... yeah.. laugh all you want.” You muttered, your eyes darting back to the inked pages of your book. “I have no shame in loving fictional men, they’re better than the real thing.” 

You remembered your attempts at normal teenage romances, most of the boys you dated often turning out to be disgusting pigs or unbearable to be around. It almost made it even more heartbreaking to know that you’d most likely never meet anyone with the same charm, passion and respect as the fictional men in your heart. 

At the ripe of age of 19, you were the last one in your group to never had a proper boyfriend, to never have that desire or passion of needing to be close to someone. You were constantly wrapped up in all your fantasy shows, books and imaginations. 

“Oh fuck, its 1am! I’ve gotta head off, see you next weekend yeah?” they said, grabbing their things and heading out of the room slowly. 

“I can’t do next weekend, got a job interview at that book store.” You replied, your face falling a bit. Ever since school ended, it has been getting harder and harder to see each other and stay as close as you used to. 

“Are you serious?! This is the fourth time you’ve had to cancel on me lately.” 

“I know, I know! It’s just so hard to find times, between college classes starting soon and trying to get some work-”

“Save it. I’ll see if Rebecca would wanna come instead.” they huffed, avoiding your eye. “I’ll see you around, text me whenever you’re free.” 

You said your goodbyes and were left alone in the silence of your small apartment. You looked fondly at the few pictures frames scattered on your bookshelf, missing the days of having a tight nit group. From 6 of you, it’s slowly died down to just the two of you. 

You sat quietly on your bed, trying to not let your emotions get the best of you. You turned on the TV and let the bright lights flicker around the room. You let Netflix play on random, continuing the end of Season 3 of Stranger Things. You knew that you would fall asleep, but hearing the voices of the characters gave you a small sense of comfort. 

The night air was unnaturally cold as you slept, causing you to shiver and pull the blanket above you as you stayed cocooned on the couch. Your whole body started to sweat, the air almost thick and slicing down your throat. 

You shifted slightly, feeling suddenly uncomfortable with the couch underneath you feeling almost as hard as stone. You opened your eyes and instantly panicked, your room gone and replaced with rocks, leafs and trees. 

“Did I fucking sleep walk?” you mutter to yourself. Your eyes trying to see between the trees, the soft glow of the sunrise giving you more colour to your surroundings. 

You followed the path, hearing slightly more commotion and cars speeding past. A small milk bar was near by and you walked in instantly, everything was oddly familiar but outdated. 

“May I help you miss?” the shopkeeper asked, he looked you up and down with a raised brow. You had fallen asleep in your clothes from the day before, not really understanding why that made him eye you down. Him on the other hand, had the highest, thickest and curliest set of hair that radiated the smell of hairspray from a mile away. 

“Um, am I able to use your bathroom?” you asked. He nodded his head to the right, giving you the approval. Walking slightly you noticed the so called store phone. “Oh no way, is this some sort of joke?” you laughed.

The man just stared at you, “What’d you mean sweetheart?” 

“It’s a fucking dial up phone! Oh my god, its still ringing! That’s sick as.” 

“I wasn’t aware there were any other types of phones, darlin’.” 

Your eyes widened, suddenly taking in all of your surroundings. Your chest became heavy, “Do you.... do you have today’s paper?” you whisper on a whim. 

“Here you are.” The thick news paper slapped down in front of you on the counter. “21st February, 1986″.

1986

1986

1986..... Hawkins Daily News.

“I’m sorry, WHAT!” You screamed. 

___________________________________________________________________________

And that wraps up the first chapter! This is a little side project for me, so not sure how often I will be able to post more BUT there is definitely more planned. Sorry no Eddie yet! 

TAGLIST:  @preciousbabypeter

#eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson blurb #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson x reader fluff #eddie munson drabble #eddie munson fanfiction #stranger things 4

[ember-not-amber]

Ok, here’s all of my thoughts on S2 episode 6

• It was very interesting to see that flashback of when Aunt Julia and Susannah were closer and I’d like to see more of those so we can better understand why Julia always felt so left out in her own family. I mean yeah basically everything was explained in that scene but I just want more you know? It seems to be implied that Julia wasn’t biologically related to one of or both of their parents since the mom didn’t like her. Was this at all talked about in episode 5 and I forgot? Was this talked about in the books, too or no?

• Hear me out, what if…………………hypothetically just like, as a concept…………………..Steven x Conrad 🫣🏃‍♀️💨

• OMG DELICATE (TAYLOR’S VERSION)?!!?! AND IN A JELLY SCENE WHERE THEY’RE IN A POOL AGAIN AAAAAHIDKFJFJEJSBS

- Swiftie side rant: OMFG ARE WE GONNA GET REPUTATION TV!? I’m convinced Taylor’s gonna announce it at some point bc SHE ALLOWED DELICATE TV TO BE PUT IN THIS SHOW and that’s gotta mean way more than the 1989 Easter eggs!!! -

Anyway, I WANTED THEM TO KISS SO BAD IN THIS SCENE WHY ARE THE WRITERS TEASING ME SO MUCH OMFGGGG

• I was super suspicious about Conrad and Belly going on a supply run alone together so I’m glad Jeremiah went, too

• That scene where Belly got Jeremiah a soda was so cuuuttee🥺

Conrad saying “And I thought cocoa was your specialty” right after Jeremiah said that half cherry half Coke was her specialty was weird, idk what that was supposed to mean🤨

• JEREMIAH PUT HIS ARM AROUND BELLY AT THE STORRREEEE

• OMG BELLY SAID KISSING JEREMIAH WAS REALLY REALLY HOT AND SHE SMILED SO BIG WHILE REMEMBERING IT SLKAKSBDJFJNF

• I find it weird that Belly told Skye “Your first kiss is supposed to feel like a dream” bc I remember reading somewhere that someone said that first kisses are like, overhyped and in reality your first kiss most likely isn’t going to feel like a dream or like “fireworks” it’ll just feel like just a kiss and I think we should normalize the reality of what your first kiss actually feels like most of the time and it’s more possible that any other kiss that comes after your first will feel better especially since you’ll have more experience with kissing.

• “You’ve been looking at him all day like he’s this ice cream cone that you’re dying to lick” what the actual fuck💀 WHY did they make Taylor say that??

• OMG BELLY TRIPPING AND THEN FALLING INTO JEREMIAH’S ARMS AND HIM WHISPERING “You don’t need to hurt yourself to get my attention” WAS SOOOO HOOOTTT❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥

• I think it was so gross of Conrad to not call Steven out more on trying to get Taylor to be with him WHILE SHE HAS A BOYFRIEND and even if Milo is “all wrong for her” it is not Steven’s place to decide for Taylor who she should date or not, it is Taylor’s decision only. Steven is really giving Nice Guy energy in this episode.

• I find it so weird that Cam left his DJ-ing thingy (I’m sorry idk what it’s called😭) to also find Taylor bc shouldn’t he stay there so no one takes control of the playlist and plays sth else?? But I guess it’s ok since in the fight scene that guy Jumper is the one DJ-ing, oh well.

• I don’t remember if I already said this so excuse me if I sound like a broken record but I don’t get why so many people do not like the idea of Cam and Skye together. People are saying “Skye isn’t good enough for Cam” but I don’t see any reason that Skye is a bad person or unlikable besides maybe them being Julia’s kid but that’s a stupid reason bc they are not exactly like Julia and I think that’s been pretty obvious since their character was introduced. I like Skye, I think they’re great and while I did see a besties vibes with them and Cam I don’t mind that they kissed and I’m not against it and I don’t mind if they become a couple. I’m confused about who these people want Cam to end up with if not Skye bc there haven’t been a lot of scenes with just him and Belly and it’s very clear that that ship has sailed so who tf did these Skye haters want him to be with?? Are they just transphobic? Bc I just saw the official ig account for TSITP post about their kiss scene and a few people are saying that so many people in the comments are being transphobic and homophobic which I guess could definitely be a reason why ppl hate Skye even if they deny that’s the reason.

Also I was just informed that a lot of people think that Skye is cringe and I think I understand that a little bit but I mostly just interpreted them as having their own different personality compared to the more outgoing main characters and I just thought that they were more comfortable doing other things besides what the main characters like to do (I’m referring to S2 episode 5) and I don’t really see how they’re cringe but ig I’ll have to look at some compilations to see why so many people think that they are.

• I find it very hard to believe that Steven liked Taylor even way back when she had a big crush on him or as he puts it “even when you were just my little sister’s annoying best friend” bc he literally dated Shayla in the last season and he loved her so this isn’t making any sense to me and I don’t believe it.

• Oh how I wish that Steven didn’t get into a stupid fight with Milo so that Belly and Jeremiah didn’t have their KISS INTERRUPTED AKSJSBIDORHEJNFNG MY GOD WE ALMOST HAD THEM!!!!

• Steven rubs me the wrong way this season bc he’s been going after Taylor while she was still with Milo and I really, really hate that and I hated when he tried to speak for her during his fight with Milo like she can speak for herself on whether or not she wanted Milo to be there STFU and physically fighting another dude over a girl is not attractive at all like can we stop putting that in shows and books? It’s stupid and embarrassing.

• Conrad encouraging Steven to “kick Milo’s ass” was just…ew

• “It’s Madison. Her middle name is Madison.” Ooh I’m such a nice guy, I know absolutely everything about Taylor and you don’t and that’s why she shouldn’t be with you and she should be with me instead🤡

• That condition that Aunt Julia put into the sale for the cousins house seems like a pretty good deal. They get to rent the house for one week every summer, it’s not their house anymore but at least they’re still allowed to go back to it and keep having their fun summers, Conrad should be grateful.

• I honestly don’t think it was necessary for Jeremiah to use Belly and Conrad’s breakup to get to Conrad, I think he could have brought up anything else along with him refusing to accept the condition Julia put into the sale of the house and him not seeing their mom every day after they found out she had cancer, and it would have been nice to learn the specifics of what their relationship was like when they were younger and Jeremiah dealing with people telling him Conrad was better than him and more specific examples of Conrad “throwing things away instead of fixing them when they’re not perfect”. I get that he was mad at Conrad and it was all in the moment and everything was happening so fast but I just feel like the writers could have made him focus less on Conrad and Belly’s breakup and more on their relationship as brothers maybe?? Even though it does track with him in episode 5 thinking “I could have done everything right, I could have given Belly the perfect prom night and Conrad ruined it for her” I just don’t think that he should have blown up about it in front of Belly at the very least.

• Girly, so what if he remembered your middle name?💀 that is the bare minimum, Taylor could have at least said more about why she caught feelings for Steven again besides that

• I’ve been on edge this whole time about Belly and Steven staying at the summer house for too long that their mom will find out that they’re gone and I was rooting for them to go back home before their mom got back home but I guess she’s gonna find out now that Belly left her that voicemail giving it away and I’m so ready to see what happens next!!

• Okay clearly there was a lot of miscommunication caused by assumptions in Belly and Conrad’s relationship. Belly says that if she knew that Conrad cared about her and their relationship then she would have fought for their relationship and Conrad says that he thought she knew he cared about her from the moment that they kissed on the beach and I think that based on that, when things were getting tough he should have reassured her that he cared about her and loved her bc that just sounds like during that tough time he didn’t tell her that he loved her and so she thought he didn’t care. In relationships you need to always be communicating so both parties are on the same page and clearly Conrad isn’t good at communicating when he goes through a rough time and that hurt Belly. And I looked at the script for this episode and he never answered her question “Why did you throw it all away?” Why did he break up with her if he thought she knew he cared about her? That is a really good question that I’m only 50% interested in hearing the answer to, sooo Team Jeremiah for the win, I hope🤞

#the summer i turned pretty #staylor #steven conklin #taylor jewel #Taylor Madison Jewel #tsitp show #tsitp season 2 #tsitp s2 #tsitp spoilers #tsitp #tsitp steven #tsitp jeremiah #team jeremiah #tsitp conrad #team jelly #jeremiah fisher #belly x jeremiah #jeremiah x belly #belly and jeremiah #jeremiah and belly #anti bonrad #tsitp skye #tsitp cam #spoilers?? #this episode has been out for a few days now idk if this counts as spoilers #original post

[literatemisfit]

Hi! I don’t have a subscription so I can’t read this full article you posted.

https://www.tumblr.com/literatemisfit/720928934490980352/david-tennant-on-his-wife-georgias-cancer-scare

Could you possibly give a summary or copy/paste what it says (if you’re comfortable with it)? Especially that last part you mentioned as being especially sweet?

Somehow when I went to open it I also got stuck behind a paywall so they must have added one. But I was able to use incognito mode and get access to it anyway. I've copy pasted the entire thing for you so you can see what I mean by sweet ;)

See below:

Georgia Tennant is recalling the moment, at the start of the pandemic, when she realised she was going to be locked down with her husband. ‘David was supposed to be filming in South Africa,’ explains the 38-year-old actor and producer. ‘But then there was a series of phone calls, South Africa shut down, and he turned to me and said: “I’m not going back”.’

Georgia and I share a look that speaks volumes: about the slo-mo dawning experienced by wives all over the world when it became clear they would be trapped with the man they’d promised to love and cherish – but not, crucially, have lunch with every day for weeks on end. About what became more like the premise of a twisted reality TV show when those weeks turned into months

‘I remember having this sudden realisation…’ Glancing at her Scottish stage and screen star husband, Georgia pauses, blue eyes wide, and at this point I’m already smiling because I think I know what’s coming. ‘That, oh my gosh, David’s just going to be here, the whole time.’ I nod compassionately. ‘Which obviously I’d never had before.’ Another nod. We’ve all been there. 

‘And just thinking: that’s really exciting!’

Oh… It’s a needle-across-vinyl moment and I stop mid-nod and stare. Georgia and I are not on the same page. In fact, she seems to be reading an entirely different book: this wife can’t think of anything nicer than being holed up with her husband of 12 years.

‘We just really like each other,’ she says once all three of us have stopped laughing. ‘Even now, we like hanging out with each other more than we like hanging out with anyone else.’ Some might say that’s a pretty good basis for a marriage. ‘Exactly. And when all the kids are around it’s like a commune here, which I love.’

With a semi-apologetic shrug the 52-year-old Doctor Who and Broadchurch star confirms, ‘It’s true.’ There’s no way around it: he too just really likes his wife. ‘In fact, the more time we spend together the more we get on,’ he says. And although I’m not sure I can deal with any more bombshell revelations so early on in an interview, this is probably just as well. Because the Tennants didn’t just end up marooned on the couch together for the duration of the pandemic – with their five children, Ty, 21, Olive, 12, Wilfred, 10, Doris, seven, and Birdie, three – but filming a lockdown TV comedy series, Staged, which became the surprise summer comedy hit of 2020.

The whimsical meta sitcom follows David’s fractious friendship with Welsh actor Michael Sheen as they plan various ill-fated ventures from either side of the world on Zoom. Only this isn’t reality TV, but a hammed-up version. Its two actors forever making a drama out of a crisis, as their partners watch, bemused, occasionally stepping in when things get out of hand.

Georgia and Swedish actress Anna Lundberg’s attitude is probably best described by the bumper sticker quote: ‘Behind every successful man is a woman rolling her eyes’, and audiences liked them so much that their roles get progressively bigger with each series.

Amazingly, Staged outlived the pandemic premise it was built on and I’m here today, in a sleek home office at the back of the couple’s west London home, to talk about the third and final series, which is currently airing on BBC One. Having spent the past 24 hours binge-watching six episodes of the show, I’m slightly thrown by how dialled-down the real David and Georgia are compared with their on-screen personas. He’s far less wild-haired and neurotic in real life – perhaps in part because after a trip to the dental hygienist this morning, he’s not yet been allowed his coffee – and she’s just as beautiful, with the same poise she maintains throughout Staged, but more amused than exasperated, today, by her man.

‘This wasn’t our first project together,’ David reminds me when I ask whether working on the show together over three years didn’t tip this perfect partnership over the edge. ‘After all, Georgia and I did meet on set.’

It’s true that it was while he was playing the Tenth Doctor in 2008 that he met his future wife, who was cast as his genetically engineered daughter in the BBC show. Does Georgia still get endless joy from that? ‘Oh, I’ve had 15 years of joy from that,’ she flings back. ‘Of course, I was already 900 years old at the time,’ David deadpans.

After the Doctor Who years, the pair went on to co-star in the 2017 film, You, Me and Him, which Georgia also produced. Still, when it came to filming Staged, he got ‘incredibly nervous’, he admits. ‘I think we were quite anxious about what that would… do, weren’t we?’

His wife murmurs her agreement, although like her Staged character she seems serene and in control and it’s easy to imagine her talking David down from various ledges in daily life. 

For all their harmony, they seem quite different. Certainly, they come from different backgrounds. As the daughter of actors Peter Davison and Sandra Dickinson, Georgia was born into the profession, making her debut at 15 in ITV’s Peak Practice, before going on to appear in shows such as Where the Heart Is, Like Father Like Son and The Last Detective.

Bathgate-born David, meanwhile, is the son of a Presbyterian church minister, who attended the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and established himself with the Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre early on. After winning the game-changing role of Doctor Who at 34, he has continued to demonstrate his versatility as an actor, flitting from hard-hitting TV dramas like Des in 2020 (playing serial killer Dennis Nilsen) and Litvinenko in 2022 (as the former Russian spy) to playing a demon in Amazon’s ongoing fantasy series Good Omens. Then there’s his stage work: the recent West End play Good, in which he played a professor drawn into Nazism, and a forthcoming stint as Macbeth at London’s Donmar Warehouse in December.

Despite his success, the actor has suffered from acute anxiety ever since he was a boy, fretting about everything from ‘not being good enough’ and ‘being found out’ (as he told one interviewer in 2019) to the loss of anonymity he knew he’d experience back in 2005, when he was cast as a TV hero he’d idolised from the age of three. ‘Because with a show like Doctor Who,’ he tells me, ‘it’s on a different scale.’ 

As anyone who suffers from anxiety knows, the primary, all-consuming worry is that everything ‘probably will go wrong’ at any given moment. In 2018 something did go very wrong when Georgia was diagnosed with cervical cancer – something she shared in her blog, despite usually being a private person. ‘I thought it was easier than having to phone everyone and tell them,’ she explains today.

‘It was a very weird experience,’ muses David. ‘Because we found out the bad news after it had been dealt with, so we had the relief at the same time as the horror.’ 

Following an abnormal smear test result, Georgia had a biopsy and a cervical excision to remove the tissue causing concern. It was only after that procedure that test results showed the cells had been cancerous. David pauses, looking at his wife. ‘At least we were spared the prospect of living with, “You’ve got this, and can it be caught?” But I still have these flashbacks of “What if you hadn’t…?”’ He shakes his head. ‘I don’t think I acknowledged at the time how serious it could have been.’

The couple were too busy ‘just dealing with each stage’, David goes on. ‘The slightly funky test and then going in and having the biopsy.’ 

‘But I did make you answer the phone, when we were waiting to hear [the results],’ Georgia cuts in. ‘I obviously knew there was going to be something, so David got the news first: that it was bad but that they’d got rid of it. And then he made me get on the phone so that I could hear it from the doctor myself, because he knew that was something I needed to do.’

Afterwards, ‘both of us were just numb,’ David murmurs. ‘It was such a Sliding Doors moment. Even a few months later it could have been too late.’ 

‘Which is why now,’ Georgia concludes wryly, ‘I’ll tell everyone with a cervix: go and get yourself checked.’

With the couple’s eldest son Ty now a successful actor – having starred in the TV series War of the Worlds and HBO’s House of the Dragon – and Olive, then 10, making her big-screen debut in Kenneth Branagh’s Oscar-winning film Belfast, two years ago, I’m curious to know how they both feel about their brood following in their footsteps? ‘I just want them to be happy and to be able to survive in the world,’ Georgia says. ‘So if acting is what they want to do…’

It helps that the industry feels fairer now in almost every way, they believe, and we segue into a discussion about inclusivity and ‘real representation’ in acting – meaning, for example, that only LGBTQ actors should play LGBTQ roles. Until we’re all caught up, David maintains, ‘you have to protect those spaces for actors who come from those communities’.

It also helps that the industry is a safer place for women now than it was 10 years ago, says Georgia. ‘Because it 

definitely is,’ she adds. ‘Things happened to me when I was younger that I now realise were not great, but at the time I thought it was all part of it – that I had to laugh them off. I’m talking about situations that made me feel uncomfortable,’ she explains. ‘Now I would be able to say so, but at the time the dialogue just wasn’t there. And I don’t think any of our kids would have to feel like that now. Even if they did, they would have the words and the people behind them to say: “that’s not OK”.’

David is currently filming the Disney+ series Rivals, based on Jilly Cooper’s famous bonkbuster, he tells me. ‘And there’s an “intimacy co-ordinator” on that because there’s quite a lot of shagging, so everyone’s being very appropriate and careful.’ 

But doesn’t it feel strange having your sex scenes ‘co-ordinated’? ‘Oh, it’s ludicrous.’ He grins. ‘Because it means you’re making the most intimate, private moments very compartmentalised and that there’s someone there asking the embarrassing questions nobody did historically – but that’s because you’re not doing these things with your actual partner. So that’s another thing that has got better over the years.’ He tilts his head to one side, narrows his eyes: ‘That said, there are still lots of reasons not to become an actor.’

This seems as good a place to end as any, and as the Tennants take me back through the garden to a side gate, Georgia tells her husband she’s ‘going for a manicure – and you have to come with me’. When I leave they’re still bickering gently, with David asking: ‘Why do I have to come?’ I don’t catch his wife’s reply, but I suspect it’s just because she really likes him.

#david tennant #georgia tennant #interview

[myvirtualife]

Stumbled upon (or should I say, fallen hard for?) the Lucifer TV series while idly exploring on Netflix, one rare quiet evening. The irony is I’d always been aware about Lucifer from years back, but never checked it out as I’d mistakenly thought it was a rather superficial occult show about the devil on earth, deviating too much from the version that Neil Gaiman conceived or the origin story from Genesis in the Bible. I know, I deserve to be punished for that 👿

But … after seeing the pilot and subsequently binge watching these past few weeks, how wrong I was! And I love that underneath all that surface irreverence is actually a thought provoking, gut wrenching and at times, humorous retelling of the world’s oldest and most dysfunctional family 😈 with its share of supernatural liberties and LA jokes. Plus, the storyteller in me appreciates how each episode cleverly links the case Lucifer’s own circumstances. And the music, oh! I could just watch Bloody Celestial Karoake Jam over and over again.

I am now crushed that it all ended after six seasons. So many untold stories! What led to Lucifer/Samael’s rebellion in the first place? What were his first few moments / years in hell like? How did his relationship with Mazikeen evolve? Did Michael ever find redemption there? Why did God banish his Goddess to hell, and what have they been up to in retirement in their new universe? How was Chloe’s life on earth with her daughters without Lucifer, and how is she taking to her new eternal partnership with him? “Younger” Lucifer, Michael, Lilith and Eve back in the garden? Do Charlie and Rory ever swap notes about their crazy celestial family and arch-angel-turned-ruler of Heaven and Hell-dads?

Also, fan fiction links below. A virtual Pentecostal coin for anyone who sends good recs over! 🪙

The other side of giving in by ViolettaMondarev

gravitational collapse by AlexiaBlackbriar13

Love, or the lack thereof by lucimoment

My word is my bond by PerpetuallyCold

To Hell and back by RadRanz. Alternate series ending.

Caging the Devil by Hircine_Taoist. AU after season 3. Warnings: hurt!Lucifer and really bad!Cain.

Bigger plans by Ermmm67

The Fallen Shall Rise by HarmonyWhitlock. Added bonus crossover with Rush!

Rushed Job by Kat_d86. Another Rush crossover alternate ending.

Ta Biblia by Allicat9 (so many great ones by this author, go check them all out!)

Rational Creatures by Allicat9. Bridgerton AU.

Theogony by Allicat9. AU after episode 324. Constantine crossover and significant OCs.

Detonation by MightBeAWriter. AU after episode 209. (Similarly, go read all of this author’s works)

Rebehold the Stars by MightBeAWriter. Deckerstar season 3 AU. Conflicted!Dan and bad!Michael.

The Perils of Dealing by stickdonkeys. Warnings: Hurt!Lucifer with bad!God series.

Shifting Patterns by waiting_for_the_rain. AU after season 2. Warnings: hurt!Lucifer, good!Cain and bad!God.

Lucifer fanfic collection

#lucifer morningstar #lucifer netflix #lucifer #fanfiction #tom ellis

[phoenixtakaramono]

Sending another ask, because of lack of space: I loved the idea of the Fix-it because billy in it is pretty much steering HL away from his worst impulses, not because HL is automatically a better person when he's in love, but because their association has taught him how to think for himself, how to be more subtle, to not trust Vought uncritically and to gather information when possible before making a decision, and to think through how to present it to the public, instead of depending on PR only

Re: Fix-It AU Threadfic (🔗)

Initially I started this threadfic because I saw a tweet of someone saying how there were no Fix-Its in the 200+ Butchlander fics on AO3 (sorry, my mistake 🙏, someone has reminded me that there is at least one):

At the end of the day, I’m glad I was operating under an erroneous assumption because if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have bothered writing this.

The way I’d envisioned it: we start with that Diabolical episode where Homelander had just had his hero debut (~18 y/o), and that’s our future husbands’ first official Meet Cute (/j). Billy, at this juncture, is a young CIA operative (~23 y/o) but he has not met Becca yet. It’s essentially a honeypot/ honeytrap operation—but without the seduction at least not from Billy’s POV; the readers voted for the yandere speedrun option with Homelander planting cameras in Billy’s flat at the Flatiron, haha, so obviously certain things will follow because of that chosen route. It also allows us an opportunity to play with HL’s past as a lab-rat (I’m playing with the possibilities), and have that affect the threadfic.

We then tie in the more important The Boys canon comic events and events from the TV version—and “fix” a couple of the more pivotal disastrous f*ck-ups such as the Cruz Chemical incident (animated show canon) and the crash of Transoceanic Flight 37 (TV canon), etc, with a couple original incidents if I’m feeling up to it.

I love what you wrote about how HL’s not automatically made a better person just because he’s in love. Billy can steer him from his worst impulses to an extent. But at the end of the day, the idea is that whilst it is a Fix-It, and we are rewarding him with Billy as a boyfriend for his “good behavior” (later, so he gets his crush fulfilled), John as The Homelander is still not a very good man. I very much enjoy reading about a psycho narcissistic HL who has an obsessive crush, and I think a lot of people like reading that too. We have Billy as the hot older European young and bright CIA operative whomst HL wishes desperately to impress (gotta give it to a guy who’s infatuated). He one-sidedly envisions William Butcher as his partner-in-crime. William, in the threadfic, represents the CIA, a secret government intelligence agency that has the legitimacy Vought desperately wants—and so far only Homelander’s been given this opportunity. It’s a resource that only he has access to—and it makes him feel ✨special✨ —> William is special —> thus, William can only be his. Homelander doesn’t like to share (in this AU).

The silver lining is this HL, while still objectively awful, haha, is encouraged at his younger age to not be so reliant on Vought—and that impact will carry into his 20s, 30s, and 40s. We are essentially weaning our brainwashed murderous baby from sucking the teat of corporate.

#butchlander #the boys #the boys tv #billy butcher x homelander #homelander #billy butcher #Fix-It AU #ask #tocadoguara #ty for the ask! one more to go

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

This is a post about my list of media to watch/hear in the past/future. I'll put a cut here for the many people who justifably do not care about my list of media.

Guess what, everyone? I have, for the first time in over a year, knocked everything off my “to watch” and “to listen to” lists. Obviously, not everything in the world that I ever want to do. But everything that I’d started. Because I’d keep downloading stuff and starting it and then getting into other stuff and putting it on hold and filling up my working folders with it. Well, I spent the last couple of weeks determinedly avoiding starting anything new, so I could go back and finish the “on hold” things.

I'll put a cut here, just for the sake of the many, many people who justifiably do not give a shit about my list of media.

It was mostly a bunch of episodes of the Comedian’s Comedian podcast, which I enjoyed finally hearing. This podcast episode my brother did nearly a year ago, where he talks for two hours about his experiences in comedy and how he believes no one can “make it” in comedy without succumbing to the pressure to cut all their stuff up into tiny chunks for Tik-Tok and shit. It was fucking bleak. But I also downloaded episodes of that same podcast by a few other local comedians I’ve met, include two by the guys who run the local comedy night where I've performed; I listened to those last week too, and they were less depressing. They’re people who like comedy – that’s all I want, really. People around here who perform comedy and sound like they don’t fucking hate comedy.

So there was that. I finished off a few bits of Stewart Lee bootlegs (many of which are on YouTube, I did not realize until recently how many Stewart Lee bootlegs are on YouTube, that’s obviously a fair thing for me to mention because if he had a problem with bootlegs being out there I’m sure Lee could get them taken off YouTube, I will say that I’ve come to appreciate several of his shows far more after hearing the bootlegged versions than I did from the DVD version). Finished all the Lee and Herring stuff. Watched Taskmaster NZ season 4 (I meant to post about it and then I got busy with work and I don’t even think I did that – cliff notes are I didn’t quite agree with the people I’ve seen say it’s as good as season 2, but I did greatly enjoy it). Lots of little things.

I said months ago that once I finally get caught up on things, I’m going to start a new long audio thing. I made a post at the time listing all the things I was considering. The main candidates were/are: John Robins and Ellis James radio/podcasts, Peacock and Gamble podcast, the Adam and Joe things, Do the Right Thing podcast (see, I’m not exclusively into listening to two white guys talk to each other in a studio), and Pappy’s podcasts (there’s the Flatshare thing, but then there are also other things – look into what these are, then listen). I have also had Three Bean Salad recommended to me pretty hard.

I still don’t know which way I want to go – I’m leaning toward Pappy’s or Peacock and Gamble at this point. But I’ve decided not to make that decision yet, because I do have a couple of new things, but shorter things, that I want to start first.

I have all three seasons of Alan Partridge: From the Oasthouse downloaded, so that’s next on the agenda. A few years ago, I watched/heard all the Alan Partridge TV/radio things in chronological order: On the Hour, The Day Today, Knowing Me Knowing You radio show, Knowing Me Knowing You TV show, I’m Alan Partridge, Alpha Papa, Mid-Morning Matters, This Time. I enjoyed them to varying degrees – my biggest comment is that Mid-Morning Matters surprised me because I thought it would be a weaker thing, just a little internet show, but it ended up being one of the best, I thought, and Tim Key was fucking brilliant in it.

Anyway, I’ve never heard any of the other Alan Partridge things. And I’ve recently been told by a reliable source that this latest one is very very good. The three seasons combined are about 15 hours, so that’ll give me some time to decide what I next want to commit hundreds of hours of my life to.

I’ve also had John Finnemore’s Cabin Fever recommended to me quite a bit, and I’ve downloaded that recently too so I think I’ll do that after Alan Partridge. It’s 13 hours, not too long. I know very little of what to expect from that, but enough people whose tastes otherwise overlap with mine have told me it’s very good to make me interested. Also, I’d love to be a comedy fan who rejects the Oxbridge ilk for very good class solidarity reasons, but actually an annoyingly large number of my favourite comedians have been Footlights members, so I’ll probably love John Finnemore.

Anyway, on the subject of my obsession with listening to two white guys talk to each other in a studio, a bunch of weeks ago now I made a post about hearing the Lee and Herring radio show episodes that were broadcast live from Edinburgh in 1994, and how that was cool, a preservation of a bit of Edinburgh Festival history. And then I said that’s not the first time I’ve heard a radio-based audio diary of Edinburgh, as Russell Howard and Jon Richardson did their radio show from Edinburgh in 2007. And I’m sure there were lots of references there that went over my head at the time but that I would now appreciate as a person with an inexplicable obsession with 00s-era Edinburgh comedy. An audio diary of the Chocolate Milk Gang-era Edinburgh Festival from someone who was, at the time, a CMG member (has definitely squandered his cred since then, but Russell Howard was a fully paid-up member for a time). How have I not already combed through that in my efforts to gather and preserve every bit of information I can about CMG history?

I said I should re-listen to some of those episodes to see what references are in them, and then I didn’t do that, because obviously going through old radio show episodes looking for gossip is a waste of time when I have actual comedy/comedy analysis to listen to. But as I’ve just said, at this moment, I don’t have actual comedy to listen to. I finished all the old stuff and I haven’t started the new stuff yet, and I think I’ll keep it that way for a couple of days. Give my brain a short break from keeping track of everything on my lists before jumping into something new. Going back over old stuff doesn’t require the same focus, as my brain doesn’t obsessively insist that I hear/watch every single bit of it in order and file it in all appropriate places and check it all off on a spreadsheet as I go.

I realize I’m making this hobby that I truly love sound like a chore, and it isn’t that, my brain is just compulsive about always focusing on what’s “on my list”, so it’s nice to occasionally have breaks in the list. You see why I so enjoyed hearing the senselessly compulsive thought patterns of 2007-era Jon Richardson. That was a man who understood a list.

So anyway, I think I’ll do that tonight. It’s a long weekend, which I barely noticed last year when I was working from home anyway but those sure seem like a bigger deal when I have to be out of the house for 9-10 hours on weekdays. I’ve got Thanksgiving dinner with family tonight, and then I think I’ll listen to some old things. I’ll let you all know if I discover anything exciting.

[delyth88]

My immediate I-just-finished-watching-Loki-episode-4 reaction post

There be spoilers ahead.  Oh damn there be spoilers!

Okay.  Firstly, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

Secondly, that was awesome!

Thirdly, so many things!  In no particular order…

Did they just create the Kang problem?  By spagettifying Timely near the Loom did they just somehow seed the multiverse with Kang variants who know more than they should?

“I don’t know”. Agh!  What does this mean! Why is this important to Loki?  What has he just realised? “What’d we do wrong?” “I don’t know”.

The time loop scene was just beautiful! I loved how they cut to Loki from the past and it took me a couple of seconds to realise that wasn’t our present Loki. (Not that I’m complaining, I could happily watch him running desperately through the TVA for a long time lol.) I’d had a feeling the show was going to tie back to the time slipping thing more strongly in this episode so had just rewatched episode 1, for which I am very glad. Made following things a little easier. But it was also great to be able to more closely compare the scene to the on in my memory from ep 1.  I totally thought it was going to be Loki on the phone too though, so that it was OB was almost a disappointment lol!  I’d thought perhaps it was going to be a future version of Loki making the call at that time to bring his past self to that location to be pruned. But unless things are even more convoluted than they appear it seems it wasn’t a call from anyone with that purpose in mind.

The music that starts playing as present Loki realises what’s going on and makes the decision to prune his past self – is that the beginnings of a heroic theme for him!?  Eeeee!  (I feel like it’s going to be my deathbed wish to see Loki straight up play the hero in something, lol!)  Even if not, the music here was great!  From tense and creepy to determined and uplifting!  I didn’t notice it on first viewing, it was just there unconsciously guiding how I felt, but clearly being very effective!

So. That ending eh? OMG! I was NOT expecting that!!!

I was genuinely shocked at the spaghettification.  And then how quickly the Loom went critical and that they actually showed us how everyone handled their last moments.  Mobius disbelieving, Sylvie and OB quietly resigned, B-15 terrified, and Loki, with tears in his eyes, facing death head on.  Lmao.O does that count as another death for Loki? *cackles madly* Also, so THAT’S what that shot from the trailer was from.  No wonder he looked so… much.

And then OMG!  The flickering lights! That was so well done!  Now you’re gonna laugh, but my TV and living room lights regularly flicker and the TV turns off. Something about the wifi and picking up signals from phones and alarms.  For instance it always turns off at 9pm when my alarm goes off.  So you can imagine why it took me watching the final scene three times before I was convinced it wasn’t a technical glitch at my end.  LOL! 

I love how it’s tied in with the flickering of the lights in the TVA itself. And I love how it works as a symbol for a glitch in time itself – which is what I assume these events have caused.  And the music over the end credits – good lord I still have shills! It’s all so very wrong! Like reality is disintegrating. Like a Dali painting. It’s sooo uncomfortable!  And so very, very, well done!  Such a fantastic blend of the show with reality!  Agh! I love it!  I also love that this is something new, something I’ve never experienced in film or TV before and it’s going to stick with me for life.

So did Timely sabotage things, or do something other than what OB was expecting? Or was he just bluffing with Renslayer? Did he volunteer for the reasons he said, or was he planning something? I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I’m just… not… sure.  Did he intend for that to happen to him?  Or did he miscalculate? Or was everything played straight?

I’m sympathetic towards Timely.  The trouble is we haven’t seen him for long enough to really know who he is. In the brief time we’ve been shown conflicting things – he’s a confidence trickster, but he seems harmless enough in the scheme of things. His wonder at all the things in the TVA (including the hot chocolate machine) are very endearing.  He seems genuinely scared of… well… pretty much everyone at some point (except OB), and the way Loki and Mobius show him trust and are kind to him is sweet. But then he hadn’t really been around the TVA long enough for us to see what sort of schemes he could think of to work to his advantage, so perhaps it’s just a matter of time.

So where to from here?  I can see why they showed the press up until this point, and I can see why some of the reviews talked about how episode 4 turned things on it’s head. 

I’m going to assume that episodes 5 and 6 are about Loki working out how to fix things. Or maybe not quite fix, but at least not completely destroy. I feel like things at the TVA won’t be the same by the end of the season.

Something makes it so that Loki starts timeslipping again, and into the branched timelines too.  Or is it perhaps just along his own timeline?? We’ve heard him asking how they could do things differently, so I assume that’s what he’ll be trying.  Maybe many different attempts.  Maybe all of those in the room are now unstably jumping about within their own timelines.  I don’t know, but there certainly look to be lots of super cool possibilities!  I half expect the start of the next episode is Loki opening his eyes to find himself in another place/time, and then working out wtf is happening. 

Also, we’ve been working on the premise that Timely is a variant, but what if he actually is He Who Remains? What if HWR is in a permanent time loop? (That is of course assuming that Timely somehow didn’t actually die. Or at least not permanently.)

I think I might have to stop thinking about it there or else I might go mad. *cackles*

Some other things:

OB learning everything from Timely!!!  OMG!  I didn’t expect that but I love it.  That was never fully explained, was it?  Does someone take Timely’s TVA book waaay back into the past? They were as cute as imagined in their meeting.  Part of me is still sad they never signed each other’s copy of the TVA book.  But if Timely’s book goes back to OB then it couldn’t be signed by OB I suppose.

Renslayer and Miss Minutes going outright evil.  Well at least I know what side of things she’s on now, I guess. I’m glad they never showed us the results of the machine, because the expressions of those watching was terrifying enough.

Dox defending B-15’s integrity was great. I should have known she wouldn’t live after that.

Nice to have the memory erasing confirmed.

Interesting convo between Sylvie and Mobius. I thought that was interesting and reflected their experiences and positions well.  I really feel for Mobius. I think I’d probably react similarly to him and just not want to know for fear of it being better than the life I knew.  So I have a lot of sympathy for him, but I can totally see Sylvie’s point.  But sometimes you have to narrow your scope of caring to survive.

Loki and Sylvie’s conversation in the Automat may actually be my favourite interaction between them so far.  Loki seemed to be more confident in himself.  He wasn’t trying to please her or desperate for her to do/not do something. It seemed a more mature conversation where he recognised there was no right answer, and was prepared to walk away rather than try to convince her, and equally, she didn’t just push him away or run herself. I might actually be starting to buy the fact that these tow have a history of some sort.

The fact that OB can reset the TVA’s system and enable magic to be used within the TVA – and Loki and Sylvie’s shouted response – Brilliant!!!  I feel like that’s going to be significant later on.  I mean it did allow Sylvie to enchant X-5, so maybe that’s the payoff already, but maybe it also allows Loki (or Sylvie) to do something bigger in that brief window if he’s jumping through time again. I wonder f also it’ll turn out that some other people in the TVA will turn out to be magic users? (I’m assuming not Mobius because of the 90’s and jetski thing, but maybe?)

So I had really quite low expectations for this season.  As I’ve said before I didn’t like several fundamental things about season 1, but we’re 4 episodes in and I am *almost* confident enough to say that most of those are absent from season 2. Or at least so far.  They key thing being Loki’s characterisation – it’s still not entirely consistent with OG Loki, but it’s no longer excruciating to watch him clown about. There are still a few moments this season that have been beyond my comfort zone, but 90% of the time he’s been more assured and has been treated seriously by the show.  He’s also been the driver of events and the eyes through which we see things more than in the first season. And I am so thankful for this.

The tone of this episode is more aligned with episode 1, but that makes sense because it’s both more similar in topic and by the same directing team.  And given Episode 1 was my favourite before this, I’m more than happy!

There’s still a couple of episodes to go, but 4 episodes in and I’ve gone from, ‘yeah, I’ll watch it but only out of curiosity and some weird lingering sense of obligation because I’m a Loki fan’, to ‘this is actually potentially great and I can’t wait to see what happens next’.  Which has been a bit of a shock.  Lol!  I’ve been a Loki fan for too long to have the confidence to call it yet, but I’m leaning more towards the optimistic end of ‘cautiously optimistic’.

Okay, my mutuals and anyone else who wants to discuss – what did you think?  :D

Tagging a few folk since I’m a day or so late.  But please let me know if you’d rather not be tagged (or would like to be added). @sparklegemstone @pinkpondofasgard @woodelf68 @galaxythreads @ladyofthestayingpower @scintillatingshortgirl19 @projectprotectloki

#loki #loki series #loki season 2 #loki s2 #loki spoilers #loki series spoilers #loki show #loki series review #loki review #loki reaction #loki s2 ep4

[reluctantjoe]

Mathew Baynton: ‘I sometimes think the culture wars only happen in people’s minds’

As he prepares to play Bottom at the RSC, the Ghosts star talks about why making comedy in the UK is no laughing matter

Before I meet Mathew Baynton I’m half expecting to encounter a version of the Regency poet he played with such expressive romanticism in the BBC’s exquisite hit sitcom Ghosts. Or the flamboyant rapping Charles II, just one of the many historical characters the collective reimagined with antic gusto in the children’s TV series Horrible Histories. Or even the fabulously reptilian Mr Fickelgruber from the recent blockbuster hit Wonka. In other words, surely an actor renowned for playing delicious Technicolour caricatures would be a bit outsized himself?

Instead when we meet at the RSC rehearsal studios in Clapham, Baynton slides along the wall as though trying to disappear into the paintwork. “I don’t like entertaining people socially,” he says apologetically. “At a recent wedding I was too shy to dance. I’d have no hesitation dancing my socks off in a show and looking very silly, but not at a wedding thank you very much.”

Baynton, 43, is about to play one of the silliest characters in the western canon, Bottom, the hapless, deluded wannabe actor in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the RSC. It’s Baynton’s first theatre gig in 10 years. The reasons he hasn’t trod the boards for so long are perhaps predictable – the combination of screen and family commitments, he says: he has two children, 12 and eight, with his partner, the film historian Kelly Robinson. But also perhaps because no other stage role until now has made him think that “if I said no, I might spend the rest of my life wondering if I’d made a massive mistake”.

He’s been relieved to discover the Mechanicals, the amateur acting troupe of whom Bottom is arguably the least talented, are not the “beer-swilling rotund yokels with West Country accents” he remembers from mediocre productions in his youth. “My feeling with Bottom is that someone once said to him he was quite good at acting, and that’s been enough to make a monster out of him. He has precious little experience but just enough to make him think he can do it all. My Bottom will be ridiculous. But there is a real sweetness to his enthusiasm.”

Baynton is very good at finding the sweetness in the patently ridiculous. It’s there in Ghosts (which he co-created) about a mismatched bunch of spectral beings trapped together in a crumbling old house and whose final episode after five seasons last Christmas attracted 6.6 million viewers. There was an endearing bumbling charm to his pathologically helpless Berkshire county council worker Sam Pinkett in the 2013 cult sitcom The Wrong Mans, which he developed with James Corden. Even Fickelgruber wasn’t too menacing.

Surely, though, he would have been even better casting as Wonka himself? “Er, I don’t quite have the global reach of Timothée Chalamet,” he splutters. “Although, a bit like Bottom, I always think: I’d have a go at that!” He adores the way the film embraces old-fashioned spectacular storytelling. “It’s lovely to see budget being used for big choreography and lots of people dancing in a town square, and not just explosions and fights which are usually the things budget buys.”

He deplores, though, how hard it is now to get original family blockbuster entertainment greenlit. “I grew up in a golden era of that sort of thing – ET; Back to the Future. These days you can’t do anything in that area that doesn’t have existing IP. You need to give the financiers a pre-existing brand. You can’t say ‘I’ve written this idea about this kid who is friends with a crazy scientist’ and hope to make it into a big film. And that is very sad.”

You can, though, just about, still pitch original ideas with cross-generational appeal to TV. Ghosts was a rare example of a TV sitcom that enthralled adults as much as it did their children. What’s more, it did so with almost surreal placidity. In a cultural climate that seems to trade on people being as loud and divisive as possible, Baynton’s faith in an inclusive gentle comic mayhem feels positively subversive.

“Everything these days is designed to agitate because agitation is the quickest way to get someone’s attention,” he says dispiritedly. “In season two of Ghosts, we had an episode featuring a gay marriage, much to the outrage of Lady Button. But eventually she realised that the unhappiness in her own marriage stemmed from her sexually repressed homosexual husband. Softly softly, there is a thesis there. Which is that if we could just put our f---ing phones away and sit down with each face to face and talk, then [these polemical attitudes] will loosen.”

Baynton grew up in Southend, the youngest of three brothers, and spent an awful lot of time watching Monty Python and Dad’s Army with his father. He attended Rose Bruford College and then trained in clowning at the Ecole Philippe Gaulier in Paris. His first major professional success was Horrible Histories, which ran for five years from 2009; around the same time he started working with James Corden. 

“We immediately hit it off,” Baynton tells me. “We were laughing at similar things,” Corden wrote him a part in Gavin and Stacey and Baynton then approached him with the idea for The Wrong Mans. A classic British sitcom pretending to be a Hollywood thriller, in which two jobsworths find themselves inadvertently embroiled in a fast-spinning web of crime and conspiracy, like much of his work it’s quietly radical.

“I had this bee in my bonnet about how comedy at the time was never allowed to have high production values. You had single-camera family sitcoms and you had brightly lit studio sitcoms but never anything that looked like a Coen brothers movie because the budgets are so low. So we thought, if we write something along those lines with James in it, maybe someone would take a punt. But the BBC said they couldn’t afford it. They said, either you rewrite it, or we junk a lot of it. So we went to America. In the end, it became one of the first America/UK co-productions [it was a co-production between BBC Two and the US streaming platform Hulu]. And that’s now become a widespread model.”

Baynton seems to be permanently busy: he’s currently writing a comedy film, which he can’t discuss, and this year will appear in the BBC’s forthcoming adaptation of Holly Jackson’s young adult thriller A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder. He worries, though, for the future of comedy on TV. “For the sixth year running Ofcom has labelled scripted comedy [at the BBC] to be at risk,” he says. “The amount being produced is at an all-time low. I know commissioners wish they could commission more, but for whatever reason they aren’t given the budgets. Which is mad when you think about how much comedy means to people over other sorts of programmes. No one puts ‘good sense of drama’ on dating apps.” Does he think comedy has become a casualty of the culture wars in which people are increasingly fearful of causing offence?

“You might think that if you only paid attention to the culture wars,” he says. “I sometimes think the culture wars only happen in people’s minds. Comedy is wide enough to accommodate many voices. And if you just get out there and go to a comedy gig, you will see brilliant people being funny all the time.”

#mathew baynton #mat baynton #the telegraph #rj: interview #rj: mathew baynton #rj: 2024 #making a seperate post with these pictures #because WOW #he looks GOODDD

[gffa]

Buncha scattered thoughts about trying out some different TV shows and whether or not I’d recommend them so far: - The Last of Us, with only a basic understanding of the plot of the games, I’m otherwise going in basically blind on this one and I’ve been enjoying the HBO adaptation a ton so far!  Very much at the top of the “if you’re looking for a show to binge and don’t mind horror and sad stories, TO WATCH” list!  The chemistry of the characters and the stunning scenery and well-paced scenes makes it thoroughly watchable. - Shrinking, I’ll give pretty much anything Bill Lawrence produces a shot (Scrubs, Cougar Town, Ted Lasso) and I’m charmed from the first episode.  You’ll always get fun banter and funny dialogue, but I’m already engaged with the characters because he has a way of writing snarky characters who still have a ton of heart.  The therapist’s hot mess of a life is offset by how genuinely he cares about his patients, openly and honestly.  I am a sucker for people who banter but aren’t afraid to put their heart on their sleeve. - The Light in the Hall, which I can’t talk about without spoiling the ending, but I wound up disappointed by this one.  The story is fairly predictable and the acting is top-notch, but I was frustrated by [redacted] being the only [redacted] and of course they end up being the murderer, all in service of making a woobie out of the [redacted].  It left a bad taste in what was otherwise a strong show. - Poker Face, I am not Rian Johnson’s biggest fan, but I like his work a lot more when he seems to be writing a love letter to a genre that he wants to pay homage to, to build a tribute to it, rather than subvert it.  I like that it’s quirky but keeps a lid on the amount of it, it feels like it’s having fun with the concept of this version of Columbo, and it knows that you’re here to watch Natasha Lyonne do her thing and it loves watching Natasha Lyonne do her thing, too. - His Dark Materials, which I love the adaptation, having never read the books it still feels like you can tell they were adapted with love and it works as a coherent storyline.  The actors are incredible, each of them are great on their own, but then having fantastic chemistry with each other, and I’m very taken with the themes of the story, around religion and knowledge and free will and independent thought.  Sprinkle in that the main character gets to be an angry, often messy, often very loud about her feelings character, and I’m in. - The Price of Glee, I went into this one hoping that it would at least be something of a tell-all about what went on behind the scenes, because I bet that would be fucking wild, given what we already know.  But after the first episode and skimming the later ones, it seems to be focused more on (as the title suggests) how much it cost these people to be part of it.  Which, you know, fair.  But not quite what I was looking for, so I’ve set it aside for now. - The Owl House, 10/10 no notes.  It’s been so satisfying to see a lot of character arcs come to fruition, even if the season has been massively truncated.  Luz’s struggle between which world she wants to stay in, the maturation of her relationship with Amity, the reconnection with her mother, all of that is fantastic.  The acknowledgement of Willow’s feelings and the support she gets from her friends, Hunter’s willingness to open up about his own feelings, also so much good.  Worldbuilding bits and pieces with the Collector and that I’m already engaged with wanting that poor kid to have better influences, yeah, that’s the stuff. - Three Pines, which I mostly picked up because I like Alfred Molina and he is indeed very charismatic and warm in this series, which has some pretty scenery and a very cozy feeling.  I’ve never read the books this is based on, but it feels like the show very much knew that it wanted to be a charming little murder mystery series with a connective throughline and it was exactly that.  I wouldn’t call it light-hearted, it has some lovely emotional weight, it has characters who very openly care about others, but I would still say it was a very warm show. - Avenue 5, which got off to a bit of a rocky start in its second season for me, but by the end of it, I was enjoying the absolute flaming trainwreck the whole thing is and how, when you lean into the chaos along with the show, it’s pretty hilarious.  I love the characters and I want to know where it’s going from here, I’m going to be so pissed if HBO doesn’t renew it for a third season. - The Sex Lives of College Girls, I enjoyed the first season of the show enough to binge the whole thing and I liked the girls’ friendships with each other and it felt like there was a lot of heart here.  I don’t know what happened with the second season, if it’s me or the show but nothing felt like it was clicking anymore and I finally had to drop it.  First season is adorable, totally worth watching as a stand-alone show!  Second season, idk maybe others liked it more than I did! - Criminal Mind Evolution, I was willing to pick this show back up again because I still have fondness for the actors and the characters, but after two episodes I had to rage quit.  The writing just isn’t working for me, its leaning into everything I grew to be frustrated with or outright hate about the original and even a character like Garcia’s warmth feels forced and unearned.  Dropped and will not be going back.

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