#starr-ghost

on the one hand. LOVE ryan saving harry and finn. love mike listening as soon as he realises harry does have something to tell him. love the sheer rage from mike when he finds out the truth. also that car keys moment lives in my mind rent free it’s so iconic

on the other hand. FUCK tee taylor all my homies hate tee taylor /ref

okay maybe that’s too far but like… girl there are bigger things to worry about than ryan lying about his past. harry, who you have shared a care home with for at LEAST six years by now, just came back from an abusive foster home. ryan saved him. and you’re mad at ryan because he doesn’t want to tell you his past? tee.

and the writers’ clearly aren’t even aware of it because ryan is condemned for reading everyone’s files (as he should be!) because that’s an invasion of privacy, but tee is somehow in the right for threatening to do anything she can to find out ryan’s past? which is also an invasion of privacy? sure.

we’re definitely in the part of the show where some episodes tee is one of my absolute favourite characters and other episodes she’s insufferable. i LOVE her in the street artist episode and i love the home alone episode where her and kazima fuck up those burglars, and then whenever ryan’s involved we get her wildly out of character villain ball moments where she’s somehow written as in the right because we’re not supposed to like ryan. sighhhh

okay rant over lmao, how’s your week been? also congrats on almost 100 hollyoaks fics that is insane dedication!!

happend to the best of us! and ‘the long way home’ is such a good episode.

ryan being protective over harry is one of my favourite thing in the world (and also the parallels to ‘SOS’ are crazy). mike’s rage is beautiful, I truly love when he loses it over one of his kids <3 but you’re right, this is a bad episode for tee. like, kids are gonna lie. especially kids who have been through a lot of bad stuff (tracy beaker herself 👀) and it’s no wonder ryan didn’t want to open up to anyone. it’s really annoying that tee was kind of propped up to be in the right in this situation. the careworkers know his background, and they’re the only people who need to.

the street artist and home alone episodes were great (the home alone ones had me sobbing when she got scared and talked about keith though 😭). but yeah, she has some great episodes and then some awful ones. I kind of appreciate that for the sake of her having some serious flaws, but it’s so frustrating when the narrative doesn’t really point them out and instead acts like she didn’t really do anything wrong but apparently ryan can do no right.

watching in order always confuses me on this point actually, because i remember sasha, billie and toni from when i was a kid but i don’t remember ryan at all. even now i genuinely forget he arrives before any of those three. which is confusing! i guess i just never saw any of the episodes where he’s more heavily featured? idk

also, the s3 opener makes me so mad on so many levels. mainly about sally. i LOVE the way tyler’s arc is handled in the later seasons and his exit is incredible but i do kinda wish he’d let himself be fostered by that woman at the fostering day and stuck around as a visiting character like lily did. it bothers me more than a little that he could’ve thrived with her and then the show expects us to largely side with sally about tyler not being fostered??? crazy

hope you’re surviving the heatwave!! it’s not hitting too bad where i live but i know most of the uk is SUFFERING

Ryan!! Yeah, I get so annoyed with the others when it comes to Ryan.

And that's fair lol, watching a show like TDG in order is always quite confusing when you used to watch it based on whichever episode was on tv at the time xD

Oh yeah, that's totally valid. Tyler did deserve to be fostered by that woman, she was lovely, and him being fostered wouldn't have affected his relationship with his mum. I would've also been sad if he had become a visiting character, though, because we wouldn't have seen quite as much of him, and the stuff between him and Jody might not have happened if that was the case. But yeah, I kind of hated that Tyler felt like he had to stay for Sally's sake, he was so mature but he was just a baby :(

funny story, i work at a youth theatre and our end of year show this year was alice in wonderland! which makes this episode even more fun on a revisit. also, when we were first starting rehearsals, all the older kids were talking about jody in wonderland because most of them didn’t watch the disney movie as kids so this was their first intro to the story. which i’m kind of obsessed with

naturally i also love how the tdg characters are assigned as alice in wonderland characters. some of them don’t make the most sense, but some of them are FLAWLESS. like, i think elektra would’ve made more sense as the queen of hearts, but johnny as the mad hatter? incredible. and rick as the duchess… a whole generation introduced to drag <33

i love this silly little show

yesss, jody in wonderland is truly one of my favourite episodes. I used to watch it when I was really anxious or upset :')

I love that! that's such a fun way to be introduced to the story

oh yeah, johnny as the mad hatter was perfect. rick as the duchess is one of my favourite things xD was the reason elektra wasn't in it (as far as I can remember) because it was between two seasons and she'd just left? I might be remembering that wrong though

something i’m finding really interesting about tbr and early tdg is seeing bits of characterisation for long-running characters that could’ve been made into a major part of their arcs and were just… dropped. tdg s1 is prime for it because by the latter half of the season we’ve got floss, tyler, jody, tee, johnny, lily and carmen all together and some of them get characterisation that sticks (johnny especially) while some of them just… don’t. ‘a day in the past’ is SUCH a good example because so many of them have little moments that could’ve blossomed into their future lives! tyler turns out to be a pretty damn good cook and pretty interested in the idea of being a chef, jody’s got a creative streak and gets really invested in table setting once she realises it can be an art form, and unless i’m forgetting something neither of those things ever come up again! of all the characters who end up working in lily’s cafe (okay it’s only a few but still), tyler never does. and jody’s creativity is completely swept aside in favour of her being a tomboy archetype. i love jody, i think her story is the best written on the entire show, and god do i love the direction it takes when she starts boxing. but i really wish we’d had something like sasha helping her figure out how to vent her feelings through art as well as boxing. idk maybe that does happen and i’ve just forgotten, but… sighhh.

this is probably absolutely incoherent lmao i just have Thoughts

i think being older i understand george better but also his ego is unbearable. he’s not entirely wrong about teaching the kids about injustice the way he is but like… listen to mike my guy. the way he treats mike makes it so much clearer he’s in this job for the power first and actually teaching the kids second.

also uh, big shoutout to the strategic removal of faith from this episode so they don’t have to handle the racism aspect. bit odd that they include gina and carmen and make them both servants though. and tyler actually, although that’s getting into debates about the concept of being white-passing and i am NOT qualified to address that one.

it’s also really obvious that they had no idea where they were going with elektra by the time tdg rolled around. that, or these episodes aired out of order in some way, because some episodes she’s her usual rebellious self and others she’s wayyy more mature and doing things like convincing faith to run the half marathon or helping resolve johnny and tee’s fights. it is nice seeing hints of the character she becomes in her later cameos (and in my beloved care worker elektra au 😅)

getting ever-closer to what i consider the peak era of tdg so i’m pretty excited for that. soon enough we’ll have bailey, billie and toni, sasha, and of course ryan. it’s kind of wild realising how fast they actually moved from the og era to that era. huh.

hope you’ve had a good few days!!!

I love that episode! it was so chaotic, and it had some great moments with johnny, lily, carmen, etc. yeah, I get where george was coming from, but he really did need to listen to mike; the format of the lesson had to be different, because these kids live together. he really was in it for the power.

the choice of roles was definitely interesting. I do wish they'd addressed the racism aspect more (I still love the episode later with bailey and his coach).

and yeah, elektra's development was all over the place lol.

you're right, that was the best era of tdg. they really did move onto it quite fast.

this of course means i now have our beloved jody back on my screen (she is so tiny oh my god) and also faith, who i always forget about because she feels like a replacement sapphire half the time, especially this early on. i do love her in the home alone episodes though

i wasn’t going into this planning to pick an all time favourite episode but ‘what would gus want?’ might just be it. i love gus, i love seeing him get fostered, i love how well he fits with ronnie and dawn… AND it’s the johnny internalised homophobia episode. flawless combination, 10/10. ohh johnny. sidenote, i always forget that lily is also casually homophobic in this episode? i feel like that should’ve gotten some more acknowledgment idk

it is surprisingly easy to finish tbr quite quickly! jody was so tiny in the beginning 😭 and I loved faith at times!

finishing up tbr s2 right now and i’m starting to doubt i’m gonna have much of substance to say until at least tdg s1, but i am liking seeing certain character archetypes form early on.

i am remembering one of my biggest issues with this franchise though, which is that it teaches empathy and forgiveness for everyone… provided you are not the designated mean kid in the house. then you’re expected to take responsibility for things other people did to hurt you. yes this is about elektra and it will also be about ryan in a few seasons’ time. it’s such a weirdly harsh writing choice considering how much other characters are forgiven for? carmen is… kind of a terrible person in tbr, and tee becomes one later on in tdg, and both of them are forgiven everything they do. but elektra isn’t allowed to be upset! she’s mean and scary and queercoded! now i think about it, considering ryan is not exactly the most heteronormative character himself… hm. there’s a pattern here i’m not liking

i kinda feel bad criticising the show this harshly because i do love it but goddamn i’m gonna have to be on the lookout for the double standard some of these characters are held to 😭

(same 😭)

i forgot that the ONE SINGULAR REFERENCE to toby leaving between s1 and s2 is after mike keeps his job and tee’s like ‘we’re all back together again!’ and gus just goes “except toby. he never came back” and the episode just ENDS. that’s IT. what even is this show