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Should I watch this Yes or No

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somewhere out there, andrew robinson and alexander siddig are looking thoughtful and typing "how much did unification cost, asking for a friend"

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1: Garashir is an adorable ship and I can’t get enough 2: Garak’s scales are all I really want to draw because they’re so fun 3: There needs to be more forehead spoon boops. Seriously I love being off on Christmas and also having the desire to draw. Nothing makes me happier when those two circumstances line up perfectly. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

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I know Julian didn't get to be an Emergency Medical Holographic program himself because of that whole illegal genetic engineering thing but like. Can you imagine. Can you even imagine what that would be like Can you IMAGINE-

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They better not pull a multiverse of madness of us again.

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Day 10 - Part 3 - Flower Strikes Back

Well… apparently the flower Julian so carelessly plucked from it’s home is actually very sentient. Who knew? Surely not Julian when he gave it to Garak. Garak is a bit shell shocked and Sisko is not too happy.

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i know they said no tng characters will appear in picard, but i for one see no reason these two can’t show up and bicker like the old married couple we all know they are

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was having a minor crisis but this appeared in my head and it was so stupid it just snapped me right out of it

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Okay, not gonna lie, every time I get to a fight scene in DanDaDan, I can’t unsee Momo and Okarun as Daisy Johnson and Robbie Reyes from Agents of SHIELD.

Here’s my reference pic:

And this is why Momo and Okarun remind me of Daisy and Robbie:

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Can’t believe Dandadan made me believe in straight people again

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Episode 5: Yeah this is the obligatory mean girl love rival.

Episode 6: Haha watch her misunderstand things and be a hinderance to our main protagonists. She literally thinks she's chosen by a higher power! #quirky

Episode 7: She died. They've been parkouring her corpse around the whole time. Nothing our heroes did could have saved her. She died and got revived by the spirit of a sex worker who already gave her life for her daughter once.

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Spoilers for Dandadan, but I find it really funny how Dandadan has two simultaneous solutions for the Fermi paradox:

1. The aliens are already here, but like any other immigrants, they're just trying to live their life and just kinda fade into the background, so nobody really notices that they're even there.

2. Earth's haunted. The planet-conquering aliens are not ready to deal with that shit.

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I cannot believe I have to say this, but also shoutout to Dan Da Dan for not sexualizing CPR...

It was really refreshing to see Okarun not argue or make any weird comments about it when Momo suggests it. Mouth-to-mouth respiration is an emergency procedure to save somebody's life, why does it only get equated to kissing in pop culture?

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To a Kinder World. by @HerrinAlexander

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he like water

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Dandadan really comes out and says that spirits should be treated with kindness and respect because what they are now is not a representation of who they were in life. They were once normal people who, through no fault of their own, have gone through something horrible, and that deserves compassion.

But fuck aliens though, for real.

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Lilia and Agatha: The Comfort of Fate and Death

I've been pondering Lilia's arc in Episode 7 and what it might say about Agatha's arc and the show's exploration of fate, choices, and death, because they all seem intertwined.

Let's take a walk through my thinky thoughts, shall we?

Fate and Agency

Lilia hid from her power because all she saw was death, and she couldn't stop or change it. She had been chased away for trying to warn others of disaster. And because MCU witches can apparently live a damn long time, all this death and loss and sense of helplessness crippled her.

So she forgot herself, forgot her power. And just like Agatha, Lilia also gave up on having a coven because it didn't work out the first time.

But despite everything, Lilia did still try to make a difference in helping Billy using the sigil. She saw the boy needing help and decided to try.

And she realises she did make a difference. He's standing with her now. Despite running away from it for years, her power enabled her to do something that mattered.

And when confronted with a vision of her own death, Lilia decides not to leave the road but to go to her coven who need her. She embraces her fate (her death) and saves her coven.

It's interesting because it feels like Lilia's destiny coming true but it also feels like Lilia is making her decisions and driving her story. Because we're with Lilia as she goes through this journey.

But is it all ultimately a matter of fate? Can fate be changed or are these points fixed regardless of what we do? Because divination means they can be perceived in advance? I don't think the show will give us any definite answers. And maybe there aren't any.

Maybe it doesn't matter if it's fated or not, but what we decide to do with the information and power that we're given in a moment. I like to go back to that quote from the Angel TV series, because it sums it up so nicely:

If nothing we do matters, all that matters is what we do.

The fate and commonality of Death

It is what we all have in common.

Lilia's story also makes an important point about death: Yes, death can be frightening, and lead to pain and grief and sorrow, but it's part of being alive, part of the common human experience.

Death can tear a person apart but it can also bring people together, if you let it. It can be a comfort.

And every living thing's fate will be death, one way or another. We don’t need divination powers to know what awaits us at the end. But what will you do, knowing this fate? Not just for you but for the ones you love?

This issue is further compounded for these witches, who seem capable of living for centuries or longer. They can experience the pain of deaths across many human lifetimes and they also deal with death more often as a persecuted or misunderstood community.

Lilia tries to escape the pain of death by isolating herself from other witches and hiding away as a hermit. She doesn’t want to see, to keep futilely trying, so she runs from her power.

Agatha, on the other hand, is a creature of ego and hubris. She believes that rules can bend to her power. She refuses death, refutes it. To Agatha, death is a challenge, and perhaps the ultimate mystery – and she’s big ol' nerd who loves a mystery – so she's fascinated by it.

Complicating things is how Agatha ends up falling for Death and vice versa. And in so doing, she gets emboldened about bending the rules. She's not above manipulating Death to keep herself just a bit more safe.

But the end result for Agatha is still isolation, like Lilia, because Agatha removes herself from that common experience.

There's no one to grieve with her, to comfort her, when Nicky dies. Especially if Agatha's first instinct is to hate and blame Rio for not bending the rules for Nicky (especially if Rio did bend them a little for her).

It's actually a similar message to the Death tarot card: Change will happen. Resisting the change, not letting go, will only make the transition more painful.

Agatha clings to control but there's only so much one can control, and it's ultimately harming her. Lilia struggles with this before she is reminded that her role is only to see.

To see and ask her question to the cards, and in so doing remember herself. What she's missing, what she actually wanted to find walking the Road.

For Agatha, I think she has to come to terms with fate being bigger than her, and with having less control than she wants, than is healthy. And in so doing, open herself to a coven she deeply wants.