citalsmamcgovern

[citalsmamcgovern]

Ruby being named after the road is actually a common misconception. She was actually named after all the ruby-red herrings that seem to follow her around.

[citalsmamcgovern]

I have not stopped thinking about this

[citalsmamcgovern]

Sutekh clinging to the TARDIS all this time is SO funny considering what the TARDIS has been through since then

Jack Harkness and Sutekh clinging to the TARDIS at the same time

When the TARDIS got all bighuge on Trenzalore?

When the TARDIS was exploding for an entire season?

When the Doctor was in the confession dial for billions of years, and also when Eleven stayed on that one planet for thousands of years. Sutekh just waiting in the same spot with nothing to do lmao

All the times the TARDIS got shot at, or dropped in lava, or crashed into things, etc

And the many times the Doctor's enemies scanned the TARDIS with much more advanced sensors than UNIT has!

Were they all just like "well thats none of my business" or what

Or as my friend @cakesandfail suggested: Maybe they all saw Sutekh and he was just there shaking his head and going "shh it's a surprise!"

[citalsmamcgovern]

Certainly this isn't an uncommon theory, but I think Mrs. Flood is the Master. I think she seems a little too villain-y to be Susan. But also-- Missy was one of the most popular fan favorite New Who characters, and versions of the Master. And Mrs. Flood's scenes so far have been really reminiscent of the early teasing of Missy as a character when everyone was like "WHO IS SHE??" With this being Disney rebranding of Doctor Who as a "new era," Ruby being somewhat similar to Rose, and Rogue being an obvious replacement for Jack Harkness, in addition to bringing back a bunch of classic who characters and villains, it seems like they are trying to puzzle together some of the best most popular pieces of former eras, so introducing a new version of The Master/Missy would make perfect sense. I reckon even if she isn't actually the Master, she will still play a very similar narrative role to what Missy did. So far she definitely does.

EDIT: Clara is also a distinct possibility especially since her saying "clever boy" but I firmly refuse to believe that it's Clara simply because that is the worst possible option. Also- Missy and Clara were around at the same time so the Master could've easily picked up that phrase teasingly.

[citalsmamcgovern]

Finally listening to the Indomitable Duelist and gotta say I'm missing Lord Arum's tktktktktktktks. Especially among the monster senate with all the weird monster voices. Need a good tktktktktktktk.

[citalsmamcgovern]

Bad photo of a rough sketch of the TMagP crew.

[citalsmamcgovern]

The School Shooting Generation

This Is a longish essay/thought piece so brace yourself

TW: School Shootings

The School Shooting Generation

I saw a post on instagram today where a mom spoke about putting bulletproof shields into the backpacks of her children.  She was angry, and frustrated; she felt like she was doing anything she could and it wasn’t enough to keep her kids safe.  

I felt the expected wave of anger and frustration and perhaps less expected, guilt.  These were not the emotions of a parent stuck in an unimaginable situation of trying to protect their child.  I am not a parent.  I graduated high school in 2019.

I am on the upper end of Gen Z.  By many things people have tried to define our generation: by smartphones and social media, by covid, and by political tensions.  Those things do shape our generation, but some of the oldest of us don’t feel we grew up with the same relation to those factors as those only five years younger.  But what defines all of us in the US, all of our psychology as a generation, is the fear of gunfire in the halls. Columbine happened shortly before we were born.  We knew through our entire lives this was a possibility.  We heard teachers whispering in the halls around the country, having no idea what, if anything, they were supposed to say to their own students after classrooms of second graders died in Sandy Hook.  We practiced the switch from Code Red drills where we hid like sitting ducks under desks to ALICE training, where we were taught to build barricades, to run, and to fight for survival.  We knew this training was more effective under the premise that it saved more children, sacrificing whichever few were fighting up front, or running in the rear.  It wasn’t about saving everyone.  

When the Parkland shooting happened, we were in high school.  It could have been any school, it could have been our school.  It was not my school.  Despite a few scares, and a plethora of threats made entirely out the ass of whatever dumb kid wanted classes canceled, it was never my school.  It could have been my school.  

We felt so powerless.  We all wondered: When will it be here? Will I know the shooter? Will I know the victims? Will I live or die? Will I be a hero? Do you finish out the football season if someone on the team dies? What will we lose because it will be considered unsafe? Will anyone really care?

Then, the students from Parkland, they started screaming.  They led a movement.  They spoke up and faced down a world that said they weren’t old enough to vote but they were old enough to be sacrifices to a culture where guns were more protected than kids.  We followed them into the streets.  We felt like maybe, finally, we had a voice.  Maybe, finally, we were screaming loudly enough to be heard over the gunfire.  Maybe things would change.  We would not let it be our school next.  We would not let it be any school next.  We would not let it reach our younger siblings, our nieces, our nephews, the kids we coached and babysat.  They would not see the carnage.  

And nothing changed.  

We continued to have more school shootings every year.

Children continued dying.

We had been screaming in vain.

We fought like hell.

We lost.

I lived to graduate.

I went to college, adopted a cat, eventually stopped jumping every time there was noise in the hallways.  Universities aren’t spared, but they are so vast it’s not the same.  We aren’t fish in a barrel.

And I heard the news.  Again.  Again.  Again.  

And I felt guilty.  Maybe it is survivor’s guilt.  It never was my school though.  I never knew the victims.  But I did live to graduate.  Maybe it is guilt we did not fix the world.  That we failed.  This is an absurd reason to feel guilt.  We were children fighting like hell to be able to go to school safely.  We weren’t the ones responsible.  We should never have had to be fighting.  We didn’t break this world.  But we couldn’t fix it.  And now parents send their children to school with bulletproof backpacks, and those children are taught to fight for their lives.  Maybe it is guilt because if we are no longer the children, then we are part of the society that excuses their deaths as an acceptable price to pay to defend people’s ‘right’ to carry assault weapons without proper background checks.  It’s a shameful society to be a part of.  We are still voting for gun reform.  We are still fighting.  I don’t know if we’re screaming anymore.  Sometimes, we breathe a sigh of relief before the grief and the anger kick in, because we made it out.  

Thank you for your participation in the American Education System.  We hope you have learned your lesson in futility.  Here is your diploma of (dis)honorable discharge.  

[citalsmamcgovern]

John’s first time petting a cat 🐈‍⬛ (I used my own cat as a model)

[citalsmamcgovern]

Malevolent is a show that is impossible to engage with if you believe that certain things make a character irredeemable.

John has murdered for fun and gone out of his way to actively hurt Arthur in the past.

Arthur has ended a life due to his own negligence and savored ending another.

The audience can’t continue listening if they hold onto the idea that people become worthless or irredeemable after that.

These two have done unspeakable things and we still want them to get a happy ending because they want to be better and that’s the whole point.

And I think that’s pretty damn neat

[citalsmamcgovern]

I think a lot of this stems from the fact our culture doesn't have much language or recognition for platonic relationships don't fall into the realm of familial or even friends. And like. CLEARLY what they have doesn't feel like it quite fits in those categories, since they literally share a body, must do everything together, and have a lot of tension from being quickly thrown into a codependent high stakes relationship without a familiar background. It's honestly not something we have a common real world version of, usually if it's a new relationship without familiar background it isn't so immediately codependent and high stakes, unless it's triggered by passionate hormonal emotions. Friendships and QPP relationships can fall near that, but still usually take more ?agreement? I guess? And have more options on how to go forward. I don't really see them as romantic but also within easily accessible and universally understood language, that's the closest description I can get to what I feel they really are. Idk that was kinda word soup but yeah.

Sometimes I get so weird about the malevolent community because of the insistence that privateyes MUST be a homosexual partnership. I'm not bashing people for having their headcanons but it confuses me that every positive relationship is interpreted as romantic. Their love for each other means just as much if it's platonic. I'm not even saying I dislike romantic interpretations but I don't like the hierarchy that's placed on that particular POV as if their relationship somehow isn't as interesting if it's not a romantic partnership :((

[citalsmamcgovern]

*I took inspiration from a similar meme*

[citalsmamcgovern]

oh my god this is why in Man in Glass Nureyev asked Juno to "call me what you used to" instead of saying his own name and relaxed when Juno could say it unprompted...

[citalsmamcgovern]

This was causing me so much anxiety going into the finale NGL.

don’t know what’s worse: if the ruby goes with jet, or if it doesn’t.

[citalsmamcgovern]

Taking this discourse in a slightly different direction the fact that glasses are so normalized now is amazing for people with poor vision. Of course it's a disability. I can't see clearly past 6 inches without corrective lenses. If I drop them it's a frustrating scramble to find something I cannot see often with the aid of my phone camera. But the fact that I can have pair eyewear glasses and match my glasses to my earrings every day and put fun charms on them and make them a fun accessory that feels like me not like a tool I have to use is amazing. Compare this to when my mom or grandma got glasses and they basically just had big round metal frames.

Accessibility aids reaching the point where people can express themselves with the device instead of despite it are so freaking cool. I will always remember the episode of House MD where his cane breaks and he is adamant about not using a boring hospital issued one and goes to a cool old antique shop to pick out one.

Or another great real life example: when I got my first pair of compression gloves maybe 5 or 6 years ago they basically came in grey. Or black. There were other colors maybe but not easy to find. Now you can buy compression gloves in every color of the rainbow and I even just got ones with a lace overlay for band concerts. They feel so glamorous and it's amazing because I always felt a little embarrassed as a musician who needed compression gloves to play my instrument but now they will look like a part of concert attire.

Something becoming normalized so it can be a part of self expression and less ostracized by society should just be a standard goal for accessibility aids and this is the hill I will die on.

Thinking today about a post I saw some time ago about how wearing glasses shouldn't be considered a disability because it's "socially acceptable" and also about how I haven't been able to update my prescription for 2 years because I just cannot afford an optometrist visit or new frames.

I understand the impulse to say bad vision doesn't count because glasses are such a normal part of our society we don't even think of them as a disability tool anymore, bur the fact is if something happens to my glasses, I am Fucked. I can't drive. I can barely do everyday tasks. Working is going to be impossible. Even if I scrounge the money to get new frames, I have to wait WEEKS for them to arrive. And what happens to me in that time frame? Nothing good, I can tell you that. I literally need this tool to function on a daily basis, because my vision is bad enough to seriously disrupt my life without them.

If anything, glasses are a great example of what society could be if we took MORE disability seriously. If we had actual tools so readily available and normalized you saw them everywhere. But that doesn't make me not disabled, because the minute I lose access to that tool, I can't function.

[citalsmamcgovern]

My parents keep saying my cat is brain damaged or senile. I have to keep explaining that actually he's just orange.

[citalsmamcgovern]

most haunting piece of john steinbecks writing is actually these excerpts from the journal of a novel. literally ever since i read this i have not stopped thinking about it. theres no resolution about this paperweight. what the fuck did he make.