#(actually the fact that I have to be describing her with that analogy instead of the other way around is a little absurd)

[notallthosewho-wanderarelost]

Excited for any superhero projects?

Hi Anon! I am, yes. Off the top of my head, in terms of things coming out in the future, I’m very much looking forward to the Thunderbolts movie. And you have good timing because I was just thinking about the Thunderbolts movie yesterday. What If? season 2 looks like it could be very fun, and I’m tentatively looking forward to Avengers 5 and 6. Depending on if they treat the characters well of course- I can’t take another mess like Endgame. Will fully admit that if they let me see Natasha, Wanda (main Wanda, none of this rumored multiverse nonsense), Pietro (ditto), Tony, Steve (an actual in-character version please), and/or Loki again, bring Jane back as a Valkyrie, or write Thor well I might be willing to forgive a lot though.

I’m also pretty excited for Armor Wars since I love Rhodey, though admittedly that excitement took a bit of a hit when I saw the relevant Secret Invasion spoilers. Blade as a character isn’t really my jam, but I am looking forward to seeing Dane Whitman again in that movie, especially as Black Knight, so I’m gonna list that too. And I’m very curious about the Agatha tv show rumors I’ve heard and if we might be getting Billy, potentially with Teddy, and if Wanda might be back.

…Nearly forgot Cap 4! Looking forward to that, with a few caveats. Those caveats being I need them to not villainize Sharon and take back the Power Broker thing, and I… truly have no idea how to feel about Sabra, given current events. I was excited for her inclusion, if dreading the discourse, now I don’t know how to feel about it because the likelihood of her inclusion being tone-deaf is even higher, and said discourse is going to be 100 times worse.

I also still have to watch the Loki finale episode and The Marvels. Very much looking forward to The Marvels; I have mixed feelings on the Loki finale since I’ve gotten a little spoiled for it, but I want to see how it ends just the same.

I’m super behind on Marvel movies, I kind of lost steam after Multiverse of Madness and haven’t seen the last 4 or 5 movies. Of those, I’m most looking forward to watching Wakanda Forever. (That would’ve been Love and Thunder because I adore both Jane and Thor but uh, 😬 I’ve heard about it and I had no faith in Taika Waititi to begin with, so…) After WF I think I’m most looking forward to watching GOTG 3 even though I’m fully aware I’m probably gonna cry my eyes out. Feeling a bit meh on Quantumania sadly, despite loving Cassie Lang in comics, based on what friends who’ve seen it have said, and fully expecting to have to grin and bear it through Love and Thunder.

In terms of unconfirmed projects, I need Eternals 2 yesterday. Also a Shang-Chi sequel and a second season of Moon Knight. The rumored Vision Quest show could be very good or alternately very bad, but I love Vision and he deserves a starring role, so I’m crossing my fingers it happens and isn’t just a retread of Tom King’s Vision because that comic was incredibly depressing. (Adore Viv Vision though, and would love a proper robotic Sparky the dog!) I also saw a rumor a bit ago that we might get a Clea backstory show, which I would be incredibly down for since comics Clea is one of my favorite underused characters, and has a really coolbackstory with a lot of potential for an interesting story. And I love the Young Avengers, so if we get to see them as an official team in the future I’ll be hyped for that.

For non-MCU things, I’m vaguely looking forward to Deadpool 3 despite not being a mutants/X-Men enthusiast because a. Deadpool is just fun, b. the Taylor Swift Dazzler rumors. For DC, The Superman: Legacy casting has me really really excited. I love Superman and it seems like we might actually get a good take on him this time! In terms of things farther down the DC pipeline, I’m a big Supergirl fan so naturally I’m hyped for the planned Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow movie, despite being halfway through that comic and still unsure if I like or not. And I love Damian Wayne so cautiously excited for the rumored Batman movie featuring Bruce and Dami.

[queen0fm0nsterz]

Also guys, about the locations of the podcasts: they are real places. 100%. They are real places somewhere in the Nowhere - most importantely, somewhen.

Prophetic dreams are very real in Little Nightmares and they are things that often happen: however, I do not believe this is yet the case for Noone. She describes feeling sensations and smells multiple times, something that can only happen if the plane of reality one is in is... well. Real. She also describes feeling Jester's presence as she does with Otto's, who is a real person in the real world alongside her. The fact that Noone isn't currently fully there yet doesn't necessarely mean the places aren't real.

Now, whether she's visiting the past versions of some already existing locations is up to debate (COUGH THE BATHHOUSE COUGH), and that locations and habitants of said locations can be parallels to some already existing ones, but the only certainty we have at this point is that these other places that are being described and witnessed by Noone are real places somewhere. After all, the Nowhere is an incredibly vast place of which we have explored incredibly little.

Would it be so surprising if the places Noone visits are separate from the, like, 3 ones we have visited?

(map is from LN II, the school, and is supposedly rappresenting a region of which we only see a single city.)

And another thing, actually: I have seen many compare the Lady to the Woman in Chains, but honestly, after reading through the transcript of the first episode of TSON made by @softichill... the two sound like the complete opposite of each other, appearence and behaviour wise.

The Woman in Chains is described as having a "stretched back face", therefore causing her to have wrinkles due to how her face is structured, which explains Noone talking about her as being "both old and young". There is no concealing, no mask, nothing to hide her face. She doesn't live in secrecy like the Lady does -- quite the contrary, infact.

And about features: in both her forms, the Lady's face looks the opposite of hers. Either completely relaxed, or... nearly like it's melting.

I have also seen some people try to claim that the "familiar outfit" as a reference to the Lady's kimono, but you must remember who the narrator is. The outfit is familiar to Noone. Not us. It is likely that the Woman is wearing either a nun's dress (Noone mentions seeing three laying on a bed in the Prisoner's bedroom) or something Noone might have seen from the institution she's kept in.

While the Lady does thrive in her occupation, she doesn't necessarely take joy in it like the Woman in Chains (Prison Ward, atp) does. For the Lady, it's much more a matter of survival. She is on the Maw because it's convenient, see as she's in a powerful position. The Woman in Chains is instead happily preparing torture devices to haunt the Prisoners with.

Some parallels are certainly there. Referring to them as being, even metaphorically, the same person... it would mean that the team wrote a very bad analogy. They are nothing alike in any other aspect BUT their occupation. Funnily enough, you could say the Thin Man and the Signal Tower operate in a near identical manner to both these places. He's also the living center/battery of his own mechanism.

Noone also mentions that the Workers seem to be made of shadows, similarly to the Shadow Children. However, it is also evident that these beings are different, as they work and can hold objects much like the nomes. Later, when she meets a living child, she notes that they have black goo in their hair that moves like shadows. If that's the same material the Workers are made of, then this would make them some sort of liquid entities.

Lastly, about the inhabitants themselves: no one else in this Prison is here because they want to be. The Prisoners are not like the Guests, who come on the Maw willingly. The Workers are mindless beings, unlike the Nomes who draw and the Shadow Kids who play just like children. The child and Noone want to leave... and that's understandable.

My friend @chorusofkhonshu smartly pointed this out, so I'm just gonna copy and paste what he said word for word.

"So I thought, if these creatures are made of liquid, it has to come from somewhere. So my mind wandered to the prisoners, their purpose. Perhaps like the Maw and Signal Tower need to absorb people. The Signal Towers thru TVs and the Maw thru the Lady. What if those prisoners are only alive to be bled dry so long as they live. Noone smells the prisoner rotting. All those prisoners have to share some purpose, they might be tortured. Some device that the lady there has. She uses straps and cranks. Masks with spikes in the mouth. It runs on tortured souls."

And just as Noone mentions later on:

Swelling.

If anything... rather than paralleling Six's journey, Noone seems to be living it backwards. Completely backwards.

... Mh.

[comikadraws]

Whats tobirama's beef with the Uchiha?

An Analysis of Tobirama's Prejudice

EDIT: If you have headed here via another user's post, here is a note. That user has never interacted with me. They clearly also haven't read any of my previous or linked posts, as far as I can tell. They simply just blocked me and then made that post to harass me afterward - completely out of the blue. My post has since been edited to better combat bad-faith takes and bullies like her.

Oh boi. More Tobirama. Once again, I am probably biased but these are my thoughts on him.

First of all, the guy definitely had beef with the Uchiha Clan, but I personally find the "racist" allegations he often gets to be... difficult, to say the least (not that I necessarily disagree with them). It is just that there are some very oversimplified, black-and-white takes out there with zero nuance.

Not that I am necessarily better but I'm definitely trying xD

Tobirama's Prejudice

Tobirama doesn't "hate" the Uchiha Clan but considers them to be a danger to Konoha. That is because

The Uchiha were more loyal/attached to the concept of "clan" rather than the concept of "village" (which stood in conflict with one of Konoha's main philosophies). Hence Tobirama sees them as "rebellious".

The Uchiha are more likely to lose themselves to intense hatred (aka "Curse of Hatred"). And, in the world of Naruto, hate is one of the main motivations of war, ever since the Warring States.

Combine that with the several bad experiences Tobirama and other Senju have had with the Uchiha (centuries of recurring battles, the death of Kawarama and Itama, Madara leaving the village) and you can see why Tobirama would think the Uchiha Clan is dangerous. Beyond that, Tobirama's character actually makes a lot of sense - more so than if he didn't have any prejudice. The prejudice he has is realistic.

He also personally does not believe that he "hates" the Uchiha and describes his bias as "caution".

The Racist Allegations

As I have already covered in this post about the Curse of Hatred, there might be parallels to our world's definition of racism, but Tobirama is not intended as a racist by Kishimoto.

What is important to understand is that perceived themes of racism in fantasy settings (where made-up races can have all sorts of magical differences between them, even those that are undesirable) do not equal actual racism in the real world (where racial differences are purely cosmetic) and often make for a bad analogy.

What I have also covered in the same post is that the Curse of Hatred very much does exist and Tobirama was right to assume that there is something "wrong" with the Uchiha. (For all of you not interested in reading, the TL;DR is that Zetsu's been manipulating the Uchiha for centuries, hence the illusion of a "curse")

Whether his theory was correct or not, however, is up to the audience's interpretation. The problem here is that Kishimoto never contradicted Tobirama's theories and also that they were presented and treated as exposition by the narrative. I am basing my own theory specifically on the exposition given by Hagoromo (chapters 670-671) and Zetsu (chapter 681) who are both relatively reliable sources and seem to imply (emphasis on "imply") that the Curse of Hatred mostly just affects Indra's reincarnates rather than the entire clan (again, reference to my other post because it has nothing to do with Indra specifically but rather just with Zetsu being manipulative).

Not that Tobirama could reasonably know about that detail, though. What he saw instead were centuries of war and Madara's defection, leading him to believe that there must be something influencing the Uchiha's decision-making. (And yes, assuming that my own interpretation about Zetsu is correct, that would make Tobirama a racist as his theories are not based on fact).

Systemic Oppression of the Uchiha?

Another misconception that people apparently have is that Tobirama ostracized the Uchiha Clan, which is untrue. Yes, the guy was horrible, was far too wrapped up in his own trauma, and should not have become Hokage. Not even because I think he was a bad leader necessarily but simply on principle.

That being said, the Uchiha were not being purposefully isolated from the rest of the village. The police force is neither entirely comprised of Uchihas nor are Uchihas forced to join the police. Instead, it is implied to be a choice in the manga.

Somebody else pointed out Orochimaru mentioning that the Uchiha had their clan compound near the prison. But this is not a criterion of ostracization. All the other canonical information we have on the Uchiha's supposed ostracization is based on Obito, who is famously a liar and not a reliable source (therefore it is up to headcanon).

Tobirama also practically gave away permanent leadership of the police. The police are part of the executive branch in any government, just like the military or, in this case, the ANBU - with the only difference being that the police don't require Hokage orders for everything they do. The Uchihas working at the police are in a position of power rather than in a position of suppression. It is also implied that they are able to arrest anybody they want (except ANBU members) without a warrant (again, emphasis on "imply" because the context implies that arrest without a warrant is possible for all non-ANBU citizens).

Keeping this in mind, the establishment of the Uchiha Military Police Force was (most likely) indeed a gesture of goodwill and trust. It was not a slight and it was not an attempt at ostrachization. If anything, it shows that Konoha (and by extension, the police) was corrupt and abusing power on a regular basis (though that is not the point of this post but yes, Konoha's politics are no unchangeable gospel).

There are more misconceptions about Tobirama that are often twisted to fit people's agenda, but I'll leave it at that for now.

My personal conclusion is that Tobirama might fit our real-world definition of "racist". But that heavily depends on your interpretation. Either way, Tobirama was a product of his times.

[markantonys]

today's gawynposting topic is: the "gawyn wants to be a hero" fandom narrative

i think it is complete nonsense to believe he still holds this attitude by the second half of the series, and i will fight brandon sanderson himself on it. we all know that sanderson's characterizations should be taken with a grain of salt at best, and at worst dismissed as inaccurate contradictions of jordan's characterizations, and he simply missed the mark on this aspect of gawyn's character. (in my opinion he struggled with the 3 trakand siblings even more than he did with mat, but that's another topic.) and unfortunately, recency bias makes this the general fandom memory of gawyn, even though it contradicts what we saw of him under jordan's pen.

gawyn's actual arc in this regard is more nuanced. to me, he reads as a representation of a young man who's been fed patriotic idealizations of war ever since he was a kid, and maybe at first he's eager to get a taste of real war, but when he actually does, he's given a brutal and immediate awakening as to the true horrors of war. it is nothing like it was told to him growing up, and he doesn't want anything to do with it anymore, but he's already signed up for it and so he has no choice but to keep going.

and that brutal awakening happens aallll the way back in book 4, the tower coup:

Most frightening to Min, with that blood-masked face and half-glazed eyes, with his body tensed almost to quivering and his hand upflung as if he had forgotten it, he never raised his voice or put any emotion into it. He only sounded tired, more tired than she had ever heard anyone sound in her life.

“If anything happens to them,” he said in that expressionless voice, “to Egwene or my sister, I will find you, wherever you hide, and I will make sure the same happens to you.” Abruptly he stalked a dozen paces away and stood with his arms folded, head down as if he could not bear to look at them any longer.

here min is doing what she does best - completely misinterpreting other people's behavior - but to the observant reader, it's obvious that gawyn hasn't turned into some violent, emotionless psychopath all of a sudden. instead, he's incredibly traumatized by what's happened today and has shut down as a coping mechanism. in fact, his behavior here is very very very similar to trauma behavior rand frequently demonstrates. a later line in this scene even describes gawyn as "brittle, ready to shatter at the wrong blow", aka the same analogy used for rand's whole "hardness vs. strength" arc.

as of today, book FOUR, gawyn no longer has any delusions about battle and heroism and glory. for further evidence, let's take a look at some of his reactions to dumai's wells, this time from his own point of view:

Young, as indeed all the Younglings were—many did not need to shave beyond every third day, and a few still only pretended even that—but Jisao wore the silver tower on his collar, marking him a veteran of the fighting when Siuan Sanche was deposed, and scars beneath his clothes from fighting since. He was one of those who could skip the razor most mornings; his dark eyes belonged to a man thirty years older, though. What did his own eyes look like, Gawyn wondered.

the younglings as a whole are meant to represent young men - boys, really - getting indoctrinated with patriotic ideals to make them eager to join up, and ultimately ending up dead or traumatized beyond repair because of it. these are teenage soldiers being manipulated and used by adults & institutions for their own ends, and yet fandom treats them like they're psychopathic monsters who love to murder their own mentors. jordan literally chose to name them the YOUNGLINGS, guys, like, i think he was trying to say something here.

Once he would have felt regret; he had grown up believing that if two men must fight, the duel should proceed honorably and cleanly. More than half a year of battles and skirmishes had taught him better. He put a foot on the Aiel man’s chest and wrenched his blade free. Ungallant, but fast, and in battle, slow was often dead.

Turning his bay with a sigh, he rode back down to see what the butcher’s bill had been this time. That had been his first real lesson as a soldier. You always had to pay the butcher. He had a feeling there would be bigger bills due soon. The world would forget Dumai’s Wells in what was coming.

in both of these passages, we see very clearly that gawyn has long since lost the idealization of war he grew up with. he is very aware of the true cost of war, and the prospect of future battles fills him with grim resignation rather than eagerness at more chances for Glory. he knows by the ACOS prologue that there is no glory to be found in war, only death. but he keeps on going because he feels trapped out of any other path, and because he feels a responsibility to the younglings and to the white tower.

and so sanderson's TOM passage where gawyn muses about how maybe the reason he hates rand so much is because rand gets to be a hero the way gawyn wants to be - total bullshit. as of the coup and certainly as of dumai's wells, gawyn has been thoroughly disabused of any heroic notions and has no interest at all in being a hero or gaining glory. if we think that incorrectly blaming him for morgase's death isn't a good enough reason for gawyn to hate rand for so long, then i can definitely buy that he hates him because in his mind rand is responsible for overturning the world in a way that caused gawyn all this trauma and loss of innocence and that broke his family apart, but i cannot buy that he's jealous of rand for getting to be the big hero despite being a lowly peasant.

that being said, in AMOL gawyn's characterization is more or less back on track, and his stated reason for going after demandred is because it needs to be done for the good of the last battle and he considers himself someone unimportant who can be risked for the task*. the idea that his motive is Wanting To Be A Hero is a fandom invention caused by that wonky OOC scene in TOM which apparently dictated gawyn's entire characterization forever despite 12 previous books of him not being like that.

*on this note, i came across one more line from his ACOS prologue that broke my heart: the inscription on his spyglass from morgase

“From Morgase, Queen of Andor, to her beloved son, Gawyn. May he be a living sword for his sister and Andor.”

a sword for others' use. that's how gawyn sees himself, because his own mother (along with gareth bryne and many others, i'm sure) taught him to see himself that way ever since he was a child. is it any wonder that gawyn is so self-sacrificial in the last battle without stopping to consider how his death might harm others? a sword is only worth anything if it's useful, and no one mourns it if it gets broken in battle.

of course he knows egwene will be hurt by his death because of the bond, but at the same time, he so deeply thinks of himself as disposable and as a sword meant to protect people who are more important than him that when he is put into a situation where he can sacrifice himself for a chance of saving someone more important (activating the rings which will kill him for a chance of helping egwene escape the sharans; going after demandred for a chance of taking out the person doing the most damage to the light's army without needing to risk more important people in the attempt), he's going to take it. he's a LOT like lan and rand in that way, convinced their duty is to die to protect others, but lan and rand got to unlearn that and live, and gawyn never did. and i am tired of people writing him off as a character meant to embody "cautionary tale of a mediocre white man arrogantly assuming he's more capable than he is" because that is so completely not what his character is actually about, and what his character IS actually about is really fucking sad!

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Doctor Who, but Chronologically: 46

Well. Tonal whiplash.

We advance three years, to 1986, and therefore we go from an almost aggressively mid Gatiss story on a Russian submarine to World Enough and Time, the Capaldi season finale that opens with the Doctor stepping out of the TARDIS mid-regeneration (which we've seen! It was a WW1 story with Mark Gatiss as an actor! He's a much better actor than writer), then cuts back in time to show us lovely companion Bill being horrifically cyber-converted on a Mondasian colony ship. I wish we were still on that submarine.

LOADS of plot though WOW. We get so many answers! Can't wait to update the list. The story proper starts with Bill, the ever-confusing Nardole ("I should go back to being blue" he muses at one point, because what the fuck is he), and of all people, Missy. They step out onto a 400 mile long colony ship stuck by a black hole which therefore has fun timey-wimey stuff going on whereby the top of the ship is moving much more slowly in time than the bottom. This is, to be clear, an absolutely fantastic concept to base a sci-fi horror story around, but only if you have a writer capable of spotting plot holes big enough to drive a bus through, which alas we do not have, so the whole thing is permeated with a constant urge to scream "JUST GET BACK IN THE ELEVATOR YOU FUCKING IDIOTS" at the screen.

So. They arrive, and Missy is pretending to be the Doctor while he listens in from the TARDIS. She describes Bill and Nardole as "Exposition and Comic Relief."

"Those aren't our names," Bill says.

"They aren't names, they're genders," Missy replies.

We are then treated to a flashback in which the Doctor says Time Lords don't care about genders and their associated stereotypes. This juxtaposition seems to be entirely unintentional.

BUT! So many answers. The Doctor explains that Missy is his oldest friend and a fellow Time Lord (our first Other Time Lord! Interesting, since we've been told repeatedly that the Doctor is the only one left.) They were friends together in the Academy, they've both changed gender since, and she's very like him so he wants her to be good.

"She's a murderer" says Bill, and the Doctor straight up compares sapient people to animals in an analogy I suspect Moffat thought was Really Clever, but I suppose it's a very Colin Baker response. In any case, this is presumably why Missy was living in a vault in the TARDIS, and could fly a TARDIS, and it confirms now that she is not, in fact, another regeneration of River. Origins for both! Huzzah. Let's see what's happening back on the ship.

A blue man immediately shoots Bill for being human.

Ah.

He does this because as soon as they arrive, the lifts start moving and rising to their current floor, and whatever is inside is specifically attracted to humans. The Doctor could in fact have prevented him shooting, but rather than actually stressing to the blue man that he will just put Bill back in the TARDIS to hide her, he instead chooses to go on an extensive self-aggrandising monologue about how great he is and is still mid-sentence when the lifts arrive so blue guy just fucking blasts a dinner plate sized hole right through her chest. Some patients in bandages step out, and take Bill's cooling corpse for 'repair'. They go down in the lift.

So at this point two things happen, to whit:

Bill wakes up in a hospital with a sort of coffee maker strapped to her chest, and spends the episode variously befriending a weird fake Russian (why so many fake Russians atm?) with a nakedly rubber face. His name is Mr Razor, and he does provide excellent comic relief. It turns out that the bottom of the ship has been here for generations and so is decaying - the air is engine fumes, the walls are rust, so some medical personnel are trying to upgrade everyone so they can move up in the lift and escape to a higher floor.

The Doctor realises the time difference as the lift with Bill is still going down. Rather than immediately following, he spends ten minutes explaining how black holes warp time to the blue guy who is not even going to be coming with him, and whom they ultimately abandon. This means Bill is down there for years.

Still, good to know the limitations of the TARDIS, eh? I mean, everything would have been solved if they'd simply been able to, I don't know, materialise outside the ship at a safe distance and then tow it away from the black hole. Clearly black holes must defeat the TARDIS. Got it. I shall remember this for future stories.

Anyway, here are several issues:

Of the 50 odd staff who were running this empty colony ship, many went down to the bottom floor when they first got stuck by the black hole. At this point, they did not bother going back up in the lift. Instead, for reasons that are entirely unexplained, they decided to stay down there and form a society, so the ship is now filled with their descendants. We literally know the lifts work; the people came for Bill immediately. There is no reason for the original staff to have done this.

The only difference it should make is that the blue guy would appear to the crew to have not moved in the ten minutes they were down there. They absolutely could still get back, though.

Like I have had days when I have felt 1000% done with my job but I have never decided to just build a house where I'm standing and start a colony so I don't have to go back to the office.

Perhaps, Tumblrs, you are wondering, like me, why the people on the bottom floor now can't just. You know. Get in the lift. Once again, in order to get Bill, several patients immediately got in the lift and came up for her, and then returned with her. So they do literally know it's possible. Bill asks this of Mr Razor. "We sent up an expedition to the higher floors once," he says. "But we never heard back from them."

Yes, that is blatantly the time difference, isn't it.

If there are still humans on those middle floors, why haven't they been retrieved by the patients? They came immediately for Bill, and she was on the top floor.

...and on, and on...

ANYWAY then Mr Razor BETRAYS Bill and has her cyber-converted. There is, fair play, an excellent reveal that these are Mondasian cybermen, which admittedly I did guess but still, credit where it's due. The conversion is shown to be more horrific than you can imagine, too. Semi-converted patients at one point are on a ward, repeatedly pressing speech buttons that say "Pain" and "Kill me", and the nurse who comes in just turns off the volume so they can't be heard. It is, imho, way too fucking dark for this show, actually, but that largely sums up Capaldi's era.

And that's the cliffhanger! The Doctor and Nardole staring in horror at crying Cyber-Bill (apparently she's still flesh inside the suit, though, that sure does imply it's reversible). BUT!

Also Mr Razor finds Missy and he peels off his rubber face.

"I had to wear this mask because I used to be Prime Minister on a different planet," he declares, which is baffling to us as we have not seen this, and also that doesn't make sense. "I'm a past incarnation of you and also the Master."

SO THAT'S THE MASTER! A character we have only heard named in passing. SO MANY answers in this episode.

I also still don't understand Nardole.

“She” (an unknown person) is returning (NEW INFO: perhaps River returned as Missy. River and Missy are separate! Could be either of them I suppose. Maybe Me? Maybe Clara???!)

There is something on Donna’s back

An entire planet, Pyrovilia, just… disappeared, somehow. (Maybe because the TARDIS is exploding??? Saturnine was also lost, and that WAS because of the TARDIS exploding. The lion man’s planet was also lost but he was a bit of a knob about it if I’m honest. The Thijarian planet was destroyed by some sort of impact). Is this the Flux?

Amy is maybe dead (she’s not)

The Doctor has been cubed (he’s out, but how?)

River is possibly blown up  (NEW INFO: unless she’s Missy. She's not Missy. Nope: she is definitely not blown up)

The TARDIS has blown up  (It’s fine now. Except it’s sort of melting now because it’s corrupted, but it’s fine again. NOPE, back to not working.)

The universe appears to have ended  (the universe is back again)

The Doctor has employed(?) Nardole

(And Nardole was “reassembled???” Nardole had glass nipples and invisible hair?? NEW INFO: he used to be blue, and could apparently go back to it??? WHAT THE FUCK IS HE)

NEW INFO: There’s a vault in the TARDIS and it contains Missy but we don’t know why (sometimes she knocks for the bants) She's a murderer and a fellow Time Lord and he's trying to rehabilitate her.

There’s an immortal Viking girl now. Her name is Me and she’s now looking after the people the Doctor abandons

Why was Rory entirely unconcerned by the entire world suddenly going silent when that is Not Normal and should have been, at the very least, extremely disconcerting?

What did the Doctor do to Queen Lizzie One?

Why is Amy seeing a one-eyed woman in a vanishing window? (She’s with the Silents, but we don’t know why Amy saw her)

Why is Amy’s pregnancy inconclusive? (Maybe because the baby had Time Lord DNA?) She’s deffo pregnant and the baby becomes River, but why inconclusive?

Who is Sarah-Jane Smith?

How is the Doctor Bill’s teacher and why/where does he have an office?

What is going on with the Cyber War and the Cyberium???

What happened with the Other Cyber War?

What happened with the Third War that deleted the void?

Why does Rose seem particularly important?

What order do these Doctors go in? (Eccleston, Tennant, uncertain, Smith, Capaldi, Whittaker)

Which companion just… forgot the Doctor, and how?

Yaz and Vinder are about to die as Mori/Mwri/Muuri (Not anymore, somehow)

There is a Lupari shield around Earth.

What’s a Time War?

What’s the Rift?

What’s Bad Wolf?

In which war did the Doctor become a war criminal, and how?

Who is the Master? NEW INFO: This is now resolved! The Doctor's oldest friend, a fellow Time Lord, but also a murderer.

Why has Amy forgotten Rory? How did she forget a Dalek invasion?

Is Rory plastic or not? Yeah, must be, he couldn’t possibly remember being plastic otherwise

Why is the Doctor sulking on a cloud?

How exactly does the Doctor have a cloud?

What exactly happened with Strax to, uh, tame him?

Which friend killed Strax?

Which friend brought Strax back?

Where did this lesbian lizard and human couple come from?

What happened with Clara as Souffle Girl and the Daleks?

How does Clara actually join?

Why so many Claras? A psychic midwife says she’s just normal human

Why is Missy apparently in robo-heaven?

Why is probably!Missy pushing Clara and the Doctor together?

What is Trensilor and what happened there?

Who is Handles?

The Doctor is about to be dissolved by a beautiful geode man

The universe is being crushed by the Flux

Will the Doctor open the fobwatch?

Sontarans are invading Earth again

Who is Kate?

Who is Osgood? Another name of Clara’s again?

The fuck is the deal with the Grand Serpent

Does Martha get to go to an ice cream planet with 12-fingered massage aliens?

How did the Doctor forget Clara?

Who is Bill’s puddle girlfriend Heather?

How did Nardole die?

When does Bill get Cyberman-ed and die? NEW INFO: Resolved! On a colony ship stuck by a black hole

When does the Doctor shrink and enter a Dalek called Rusty?

Whittaker is falling to her death rn

Was that ring relevant?

Does anyone know the Doctor’s name?

When did Yaz talk to Dan about fancying the Doctor?

When did Dan talk to the Doctor about fancying Yaz?

What’s happening with the bees?

What happened with Donna’s ex and a giant spider?

What war wiped out the Daleks, and is it one of the ones already mentioned?

What did the Doctor mean when he said “The (Daleks) always live, while I lose everything?”

If Dalek Caan is the last Dalek left why are there more now?

How did the rest of the Time Lords die?

How and why did Amy melt?

What’s the question that will make silence fall?

Why do the Silents… want silence to fall?

How and why are Silents at war with the Doctor when he… hasn’t even heard of them?

How does Hitler get out of the cupboard?

What’s the significance of fish fingers and custard?

Why does the Doctor feel guilt about Rose, Martha and Donna?

What happened with the space whale?

When does Rory defend Amy for 2000 years? Since Roman times, it seems

How does the Doctor survive River? He doesn’t, apparently

How does he erase himself from history

Did Captain Jack lose his memories to the same people as the Doctor? What did he lose?

When did the Doctor send the Daleks into a void to save the universe?

What’s with the weird crack in the wall and is it affecting memories?

Why do Amy and Rory think the Doctor is dead? Is it because of River as an astronaut?

Is Matt Smith’s Doctor a tree racist?

Why is the beautiful geode woman stealing people into a Passenger form?

River says she’ll die one day when the Doctor doesn’t remember her, let’s hope she doesn’t mean it

Why doesn’t the TARDIS like Clara?

When was the Master Prime Minister?

[irithnova]

Can't believe I'm discourse posting again but whatever.

While I may not have 100% been on board with the uh. Rusame edging response post because I have extremely "problematic" ships myself and have described Mongolia and China's relationship as being "married/divorced" so I'm not really any better than the edging shit in that sense, I think a lot of the replies were made in extremely bad faith and some pretty nasty people took advantage of the situation in their own ways.

The person who was vagued about had the right to respond of course and yeah it can be classified as ship hate considering it was put in the tags however people are seriously running over the fact that the poster themselves are Uzbek-Korean so yeah they'd understandably have some complex feelings about Russia and America if you know even the general history. The post perhaps wasn't worded that well and was an attack on rusame simply because of a comedic analogy of the relationship made by a shipper, but that anger didn't just come from like. Absolutely nowhere.

You had people in the comments slinging fucking 4chan lingo at OP (same person who did this supports a well known Zionist in the fandom why am I not surprised) and then much bigger content creators making posts and comments about how OP and their entire friendgroup are nothing more than butthurt sjws who are pushing people out of the fandom (and I can't believe people are still unironically using "sjw" in 2024 I guess anything is possible).

Extremely bad faith actors coming out of the woodworks who have had problems with OP and their friendgroup for completely different reasons using OPs hate post about rusame and the subsequent dogpiling as an excuse to publicly lie about the nature of the friendship and how it broke down. I find it extremely cowardly that months ago, when confronted privately about bad behaviour such as gossiping behind people's backs and confronted with the fact the person she was gossipping with is a prolific emotional abuser and racist, Verta blocked everyone and said she didn't want to get involved in "drama".

Now that someone within the group - a minor no less, who barely engaged with Verta herself during the course of her contact with them group, is being publicly dogpiled by multiple big creators - NOW Verta has the courage to come rear her head, engage in drama be like "they're all a bunch of sjws who hate white people!".

If you want to go back to 2016 for fresh "SJWS/feminists OWNED!" compilations, be my guest.

I find it extremely ironic how Verta is calling OP "fandom police" when Verta herself tried to gatekeep someone's identity/relationship to China....over hetalia art. I guess it's not policing when you want to be a bigot, but it's policing when someone from a certain background has unpleasant feelings towards a ship.

A lot of the vague posting about "WOW I LOVE RUSAME SO MUCH" afterwards I think was also extremely childish considering *gestures to the fact that OP is Uzbek-Korean* so yeah. They made an angry post about rusame that should have been handled privately between them and the person they were vaguing about however they do have some extremely personal reasons as to why they may have strong feelings about it.

It wasn't just an ordinary "rusame sucks and rusame shippers should die lol!" post made by an angry rando who likes perhaps Russia x [different country] and is butthurt at the attention rusame is getting but the way people are responding with "rusame is the beat ship evaa <33" posts in response to it - you'd think that was what OP posted instead of like. An emotionally charged (but poorly handled) post about Russian and American imperialism as someone who's family/countries has been affected by both.

Again I'm not in a place to judge rusame shippers considering the shit I ship and say - you can do what you want and I actually like cold war stuff myself. I just find a few of the responses extremely childish considering the circumstances surrounding why the post was made and a few were absolutely done in bad faith in order to paint OP as being nothing more than an angry sJw!!1 when. Again. *Gestures at Uzbekistan's history with Russia and Korea's history with America*

Also. I'm sorry but rusame is the most popular ship in the fandom right now. You guys will live if (1) child who comes from that background makes an emotionally charged post about it. There's no need for an onslaught of personal attacks and hateful anons. Jesus Christ I received death threats for shipping Monchu and I didn't even respond like that.

[chronicler-of-narrative]

Would love to hear more about Operator!Chronicler and Drifter!Chronicler :) any casual fun facts? Fav colour, drink, or food? (can be as close to Warframe canon or not lol)

Any embarrassing secrets only close friends would know about them? Any notable flaws they need to work on? I always find it fun to explore flaws in ocs when you’re struggling to flesh them out and also cause it can be silly lol!

Ok, starting with casual facts, I'm not sure I have many, but one meta fact is that operator!Chronicler originally started as a sort of character I would play for a warframe lore/worldbuilding exploration series on youtube, though that has unfortunately be abbandoned.

However, I can also mention that operator!Chronicler loves The Orb Vallis, its his favorite place in general and also and especially because of the wildlife.

Drifter Chronicler is still rather recent, but if i Remember any i'll reblog! (Also, the rest of the questions will be under a read more break)

As for embarassing secrets, operator Chronicler's entire character is actually built off of one! I already described it in a story I'll link at the end, but let's just say his past isn't the most honorable one, and that is actually the main reason he goes by that monicker: He doesn't wanna associate himself anyone with his past.

Drifter Chronicler doesn't really experience shame, like at all, there are a multitude of experiments some might consider sily or embarassing. Like that one cycle where he tried to defeat Kullervo by basically catapulting Tamms into his arena, or that time he was testing the jaw strength of Golden Maws and almost dropped Terra (the Rablid, thats how I called her) into one! (I came up with these on the spot, but you get the gist)

As for character flaws, oh boy do I have a lot to unpack.

For operator Chronicler, it's rather simple: He both has a severe guilt complex from his past, and also has a workaholicism issue. He's so laser focused on archival of information that he often loses himself in it and has to be broken out of his daze by others.

Drifted Chronicler is where we get to the main meat of character flows. Drifter Chronicler's time in Duviri didn't impact him the best...Instead of losing his emotions, he lost all sense of boundary. He kept each cycle busy with interesting experiments, so much so that now he literally can't differentiat between what's socially acceptable and what isn't. He'll start proposing very morally dubious plans, not out of any malice, but just because it piqued his curiosity and he still forgets that things won't restart the next morning (a go to example of an experiment like this would be inject a live infested charger with kuva, or exposing a captive batalyst to void-based technology and recording the severity of their pain. He's not doing it because he likes watching others suffer, he does it because he doesn't realize that what he's doing is actually damaging.

I also mentioned that he doesn't respect boundaries, and that also applies to people. Operator Chronicler normally handles the interviews because he knows how to be careful around others in speech, and tries his best to get enough info out of them without potentially forcing them to remember painful experiences. Drifter Chronicler on the other hand? Nope, zero style, zero grace. His conversation style can be best described with the analogy of him being a jackhammer, and the person he's interviewing being a slab of stond. He will ask for the nitty gritty details, ask you to elaborate, be pushy about sensitive issues. And all the while being blissfully unaware of the phsychological distress he's causing go the other party.

So yea. Thank you so much for the ask, and as a little gift, I'll link that small ao3 fic about operator Chronicler right now:

[kae-karo]

for the ask game: 27 for kaeya and the huge bread, and then 37, 41, 42 and 49 if you'd like :D

AWE hi hello tyty so much anon !!!! for context (x)

27. How long did it take to write Kaeya and the Huge Bread? Describe the process.

hooooooooooo boy okay so according to gdocs, i started writing it in mid february lmao. and i'm not entirely sure what day exactly i finished, but i did start posting it on childe's bday (july 20), and my usual process is to take a week or two prior to posting a chaptered fic to edit it, so...give or take 4.5-5mo or so to write?

tbh when i run headfirst into longfics like that, i rarely have much of a process lmao. i really don't outline anything, but i'll have usually a few key points i want to hit on throughout the story, or a few scenes/dialogue bits that i'm particularly excited to write, and then i really just work my way from one bit to the next lmao. i really have to write linearly, which sort of helps me make progress cause if i only wrote the stuff i was super excited for, i wouldn't bother to fill in the blanks or figure out any of the other cool stuff that i usually discover along the way

for example, the fact that the irodori festival was going to be a big part of the story/a big part of kaeya's reveal wasn't something i even really uncovered til halfway through writing the story lmao AND actually it didn't even occur to me til long after i conceived the idea for certain plot points that the reason kaeya struggled with not wanting childe to hold him to too-high romantic standards was not only bc he didn't feel like his writing reflected himself as a romantic partner but also cause he's aromantic!

this one was also fun cause i have all these commercial breaks, which started as an excuse to write zhongluc but quickly evolved into an excuse to write some other ships that i otherwise would have no reason or groundwork to write outside the context of this au, but those often got written actually After i worked on most of the main fic (my brain didn't demand linear writing since each one was sort of a Separate story) and also cause the main fic didn't get divided properly into chapters til basically i was done lmao

i also had a snag at one point during that writing period where i deadass wrote a whole scene, then immediately realized i was cramming too much into one single situation, and i actually ended up having to go back and rewrite the whole thing as two distinct scenes lmaoooo

37. Promote one of your own “deep cut” fics (an underrated one, or one that never got as much traction as you think it deserves!). What do you like about it?

i adore this question and i have to limit the number of times i plug my first chaeya fic lmao so instead i will mention a kaeluc fic that got a surprisingly small amount of traction for the fact that it's klk?

our names were meant to have arrows drawn through (x) is a fun lil spring break fic where klk meet as strangers and - in a wildly impulsive move on diluc's part - spend the night together

41. Link a fic that made you think, “Wow, I want to write like that.”

am i a simp for my wife? yes. but she's basically nonexistent on tumblr now so i can do that >:} seriously tho, there's just something poetic about the way she writes, and the first time i read smth of hers i was just. enamored with her writing style? i'm not entirely sure i had a 'this is what i want my writing to look like' vibe exactly (and i'm not sure i've had that really with any fic, per se - i like the way i write! and i know it's influenced by what i read as well, but it's rarely a conscious decision to point my writing in a particular direction)

anyway, that said, sometimes i feel inspired to write a little more poetically and i think it has to do with how lovely her writing sounds to me. she doesn't write for genshin, but if any of u bktdbks follow me, be sure to check out her fics - analog love (x) is a sweet one abt oranges

42. Have you ever received a comment that particularly stood out to you for whatever reason?

ohhhh this is both simultaneously a hard question to answer and a very easy one. the hard answer is: i have the memory of goldfish with amnesia and even the comments i've received that i know have been particularly meaningful to me or particularly poignant have slipped my mind

the easy answer is that, although i can't recall specific examples of exact comments, i do know the things in comments that i've received that genuinely mean the world to me. comments about my stories being immersive or that the reader couldn't put it down, comments about rereading, comments that pick out tropes or ideas or specific things that transcend some of my stories that the reader appreciates, comments that quote favorite lines (especially if, by coincidence, they quote some of my favorite lines from a story). comments that say i got someone into a ship !!!! comments that mention that my story got them through a rough time. comments from serial commenters whose names i recognize from my other fics

idk if this is conceited or smth but some day i would really just love to go print out like. all the comments i've gotten and paste them on big posterboards or smth to hang on my walls. i do not have the wall space for that but perhaps some day i will lmao cause like. idk sometimes my brain just forgets that like. this is from a whole entire real person !!!! who read my words !!! and LIKED THEM and wanted to let me know !!!!! like !!!! holy shit bro !!!!!

49. What are you currently working on? Share a few lines if you’re up for it!

LMAO what am i currently not working on? i keep saying i'll get back to my prince kaeya x many fic some day soon, but ideas keep cropping up and bopping me in the head lmao. perhaps once things slow down a bit for me, i'll have time and energy to swing back to it

currently i'm working on something as a request which i'm not quite ready to share bits of yet (still early stages atm as i am irritatingly busy rn and haven't been able to really get a flow going just yet)

i am also probably going to try to bash out another lil fic of the chiluc variety cause i got a bit of brainrot lmao assuming i have any time!!

so, alas, nothing really to share from a wip perspective atm, but i do still have quite the backlog of completed oneshots (i believe we still have some zhongchi, klk, chaeya, chennett, xiaoven, a surprise that i can't talk about for Reasons, plus some bktdbk and shinbaku on the bnha side)

[send me writing asks from this list!]

[moonssugar]

(sigh). let me preface this by saying i don’t defend jessica drew or miguel or peter b. parker for what they did and how they did so thats going to color what i think about them. before anyone starts shit, im black as well and i do not like jessica drew. i think people have valid reasons to dislike her that arent just chalked up to fandom racism. i also think the movie narrative wise wants audiences to criticize her, peter and miguel, but instead people fawn over miguel and ignore the crimes. its complicated but because all three of those characters are flawed their actions can be critiqued, yes that includes jessica

lets break some of this down starting with the last part

that’s why shes like I can’t help you - its like when youre a little kid acting bad as hell and ur mama is like 'iight wait till ur dad get home just wait’ and youre like 'FUCK’ because u didn’t listen to her and now have to deal with him

you know this actually rubbed me the wrong way for a lot of reasons. one reason is my belief that not only is miguel, the guy in charge of the whole spider society, is fundamentally wrong, projecting his mistakes onto miles and overall making spider society a negative environment. the second reason is parenting and since we’re talking about atsv, mentorship. see this example which is being used as an analogy here is actually a perfect example of bad parenting because — the child in question is living in fear of their father and the mother uses that fear to get the child to obey. the issue here is the use of power imbalance (parent over child) and the use of fear. i don’t believe children should be raised with fear or be afraid of their parents and that makes me anomaly in a lot of ways (see what i did there). the only reason this phrase works is because the child has an instilled fear of their father already but instead of addressing this mothers (and often black mothers, yes ive experienced this as a child) use it to their advantage. 

in the case of jessica whos going to be a mother eventually and was a mentor before that, she never questions why gwen should be and is afraid of miguel, ie she never questions why her boss has 15 year old children and hundreds or thousands of grown ass adults extremely afraid of him. she doesn’t question his violent behavior in much the same way mothers don’t question the father’s violent and intimidating behavior they just use it to control the child if we want to expand that analogy. she doesn’t question the position she’s in, she just either tries to shield gwen from it whiles its looming threat remains (and doesn’t shield miles at all but we’ll get to this in a second) or throw up her hands when “dad” gets home and says “i can’t help you” when shit finally hits the fan. “i can’t help you” meaning “i am not going to intervene” meaning “if miguel gets mad at you then its your problem” meaning “if i intervene i may suffer consequences myself”. she warns gwen...instead of questioning why she warns her and why she’s using it to keep gwen in line with what miguel envisions. she knows what will happen to gwen if she goes back to her own dimension and jessica uses that too. she never questions miguel if his methods or goal or means to an end are good or not. she seems perfectly content with this system. thats one my problems with jessica drew (and why alternatively i love hobie brown so much)

now, i am not ignoring the fact that jessica is pregnant and wants a future for her baby or that peter b. parker already has a mayday and wants to keep her safe from the danger miguel has described to them. i want to point out that miguel is using these to manipulate them into cooperating by implying that they will also loose their family like he did (ignoring the fact that she was never truly that 2099 miguel’s daughter in the first place but whatever). its a good, effective threat but we have to see that it is a threat and that is how miguel is holding everything together: through fear and collective trauma. a structure like that is bound to fall apart in the ugliest and most damaging of ways. jessica is a part of that structure, a quite integral part of it actually since she's so close to miguel. she plays her part and lets it continue.

second thing about why i dislike jessica: we’re all focused on how jessica interacts with gwen because she’s seen with gwen the most but nobody is talking about the fact that jessica willingly lead miles to miguel knowing what she already knows miguel thinks about him and that her shitty boss miguel o’hara physically assaulted — beat up — a black boy, almost killing him on a chase that not only jessica was a part of but fully endorsed and encouraged his friend (her trainee) to help with. a grown black woman allowed a young black boy to be physically assaulted, chased and entrapped on her watch without ever questioning if this was the right path, the right way to do things, morally right or ethically right. of all the characters she looks out for, jessica looks out for miles the least which is astonishing to me. again, shes just a black woman doing her job, right? she threw him under the bus with no hesitation and then did the same to gwen once miles escaped. jessica drew flaked not on just one teenager but two in the same day. this is the biggest and second reason i dislike jessica drew. because if i were in her position i would not tolerate that, miles being an "anomaly" or not, as a black person i would not allow it. i think the violence miles experiences at the climax of this movie is coded in a specific way and thats purposeful. when rio talked to her son, she meant people like miguel and jessica. unfortunately, just because miles has two things in common with jessica doesnt mean she wants to see him succeed. as the old saying goes...you know which one.

completely different rant beneath the cut because this is responding not to op but a reblog from them which got on my last nerve. dont read unless you want to be genuinely angry lol

minor thing: ive been reading tags that are saying “oh yall are just mad jessica wont defend the white girl or cater to the white girl” when the white girl in question is in danger of imprisonment if she returns home and also is a teenager. like what the fuck. im sorry, if jessica drew was actually a good mentor that still wouldnt make her a mammy stereotype but just say you think the idea nurturing black women are just mammies. an adult black mentor taking care of a white teenager trainee isnt what a fucking mammy is holy shit none of yall know what that stereotype is if youre saying that. honestly if thats all you see in jessica maybe the issue is with you actually. showing compassion and intervening with child abuse doesnt make you a mammy if youre a black woman while doing it holy fucking shit rant over

Y’all get mad at Jessica - the black Woman doing her job and trying to hold the multiverse together so her baby can have a universe to live in more than y’all blame Peter, the whites man who knew and trained Miles and still chose to believe he was an anomaly.

Like Peter TAUGHT Miles how to swing and he still was like ‘oh yeah miguel that makes sense yeah miles isn’t suppose to be spiderman’ HOW

[baeddel]

speaking of trans boys. re: this post: it’s funnily enough been picked up by people i would typically consider my enemies, who tag it with #transandrophobia #transmisandry. you’ll laugh, but perhaps they’re right to tag it that way. if we have to be a theorist of transandrophobia lets at least try and do so seriously.

it’s worth reading the replies to that post from my friends. i may overemphasize the differences between the US and the UK in that post. one of the examples i use, Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage, was actually published in the US and not the UK (by the far-right Regnery Publishing, built on the Regnery fortune one of the heirs to which uses his wealth to fund the activities of the white supremacist National Policy Institute and the Charles Martel Society; how do you like them apples?). but i still think it is the case, correct me if i’m wrong, that TERFs have enjoyed the most success at legal reform in the US pursuing a transmisogynist scaremongering agenda about potential predators, and that TERFs have enjoyed the most success at legal reform in the UK pursuing a #TransgenderTrend moral panic centered around the dangers posed to young cafabs (the two other major areas worth considering apart from legal reform would be medical reform and public attitudes; we wouldn’t be surprised to find the same trend in those areas, but we would also not be surprised to find a different trend).

anyway, the analysis i make about reproductive futurity (where transmascs themselves embody the Child as victims of transgender ideology who must be rescued, their fertility restored) is i think vulnerable to the same criticism made in this post. where sybil says “TERFs view you as a misguided corrupted victim”, and the rest, fig (sybil’s interlocutor) responds that what they are describing “are v much white transmasc experiences” and that black and brown transmascs are instead treated by white women “as threats, due to the intersecting views on manhood/masculinity and race.”

sybil accepts this argument and i accepted it at the time because it makes intuitive sense; this corresponds to how i understand racism to work. but i don’t really like accepting arguments on intuition like this because competing narratives would convince me equally based on the same principles. look at it this way: if we wanted to apply fig’s argument to my post we would say that transmascs of colour cannot embody the Child in this way because white women protray men of colour (even, people of colour quite generally) as dangerous, masculine, predatory, etc. we would bring up a number of examples to prove this, such as the role of ‘masculinity’ in the repressively reconstrued diagnostic criteria of schizophrenia applied to black male radicals in the 60s, the many instances where news writers refer to black 16 year old victims of police shootings as “men”, and so forth. we have a coherent story that people of colour are denied any notion of childhood and are seen to possess a sort of inaliable masculinity.

however, we could also tell the opposite story. there are many discourses where black and brown people figure as Children par excellence. i can’t find it now (frustrating!) but there is a very demonstrative old painting: it has a white woman who is meant to represent Europe nursing several children of colour (one for each ‘race’, as they saw it). this metaphor of mother Europe and her dependant colonies was very common (eg. here {warning: obscenely racist image}; common enough to be mocked in László Moholy-Nagy’s 1925 collage Mother Europe Cares for Her Colonies). further, the notion of the ‘childhood of man’ implicit in discourses about savages and primitives, important to liberal humanist evolutionism, became more than merely a discourse when deployed in eg. the reserve schools of America and Canada and the missionary schools of French Polynesia which sought to save native Children from their own indigineity—this in fact very much resembles our narrative about transmascs and their perverse salvation. in our conversation about this dev reminded me that people conflate “the capacity for self-infantilism and the use of infantilism as a means of social control.” one remembers what Eldridge Cleaver had to say about what he called the emasculation of black men, to such an extent that he analogized black men in America to court eunuchs (this is perhaps the only feature of his thought that stayed with him throughout his transition from black muslim to revolutionary communist to conservative fundamentalist).

you can see how i now have two competing stories that i might find intuitively convincing. both have historical analogues. i don’t want to arbitrarily decide one is the right version over the other without seeing good evidence and hearing good arguments. but even if i did, i should remain mindful that one might predominate in some discourses, might predominate in certain epochs, but may easily become its opposite under different conditions. if it can i’d like to know how, if it can’t i’d like to know why. in any case, it’s significant to me that personally i have never seen TERFs talk about cafabs of colour. of course they aren’t likely to talk about it to me, but this seems to be something that they acknowledge themselves (in a paraliptic way). Shrier confines her discussion to “(mostly white) girls,” by girls meaning trans men, who previously would have “[fallen] prey to anorexia and bulimia or multiple personality disorder“ (citation needed???). i can already imagine the sort of paper you could write about this parenthetical suggestion, (mostly white).

[ribbonstrawberrysurprise]

Hi! I am a big fan of the Tokyo Mew series, and I was wondering if you could do an analysis on the Mew Mew's projected elements and animals and colors, and how they all tie into their powers as magical girls?? I've always wondered if there is a certain mythology or reason behind it, but it seems like the girls' colors are mostly based on their names(Strawberry- red and pink, Lettuce-green, etc), but what about their powers?

Like you said, TMM colors are much more based on their food names than on their animals. (Although, based on that one 4-panel side comic in volume 1, it seems that the colors came first, then the characters were given food names that matched.) There are two seeming exceptions:

1) Mint, but it is relatively common for mint flavored candy and gum to have blue packaging.

2) Berry, whose theme color doesn’t seem obviously related to her fruit. There are a few plants with white berries (snowberries, white beautyberry, etc.), but none that are very common in cuisine or native to Japan as far as I can tell.

Actually it seems to be the opposite (at least for the manga), with characters’ animal parts being colored as to fit with their food/theme color! Zakuro’s ears are colored much more purple than on an actual wolf, and Berry has pure white ears and tail despite neither of her animals being that color irl.

I guess it’s possible she’s supposed to be based on albino plants and animals? Her Mew form does pointedly have pale blond hair and red eyes…

Anyway, as for their powers/elements…

The Mews don’t really have defined elements, with the exception of Lettuce! They more so seem to have different methods of using generic light/emotion-based attacks.

Lettuce obviously has water powers in both the manga and anime. She’s introduced telekinetically controlling a swimming pool, and her attacks are always drawn/animated as water. (Except possibly in ReTurn? It’s hard to tell if LettuSniping Shot is a jet of water.)

Her power is clearly based on her animal and not at all on her theme color. She’s actually one of the few water powered magical girls who isn’t blue! I guess you could also make a connection with her name, in that Lettuce tends to have a lot of water in it (at least Iceberg does), but I’m not convinced that’s relevant.

Ichigo seems to have the power of love/heart/purification, in that her attacks can purify the Chimera Anima. You could also argue something to do with harmony/friendship, as she tends to get upgrades by receiving power from the other girls. Also, maybe healing, considering she brings Masaya back to life? In a way, it seems like the Mew Mews powers are very analogous to the Mew Aqua. As for her animal…. I guess people do love cats? But again, it seems more based in genre conventions than exclusive to Ichigo. Pink is classic love, but it’s also classic magical girl leader.

Berry seems to have the same powerset as Ichigo (logical, since she’s her replacement), at least at first. Her powers seem to be emotion-based, as she’s able to undo mind control with Ribbon Loveberry Check, but the other girls’ words (plus the fact that they attack her classmates first) imply this is true of all Mew Mew powers, not just hers. In ReTurn, however, she seems to explicitly have healing powers, which does seem like a natural direction to go from purification/love. Same as Ichigo for the animal connection. White does seem very associated with purity and healing (at least via association with nurses/doctors). Plus white mage.

Speaking of healing, Ringo pretty much exclusively has healing powers, plus her ability to grant power to Ichigo. Very appropriate for a Mew Aqua powered character! She also has a little bit of a music theme since her mini attacks are named after solfege and involve music notes. Penguins aren’t really associated with healing or music (really, you’d expect ice), nor are red or apples (really, they’re more associated with poison!), plus Ringo was explicitly designed to be a healer so your party wouldn’t get wiped out in the RPG. So, her powerset came first, then her design…

Next up is Pudding! Her element, as it were, seems to be… pudding! Sort of… It really looks more like gelatin than crème caramel. In the anime, she does raise up the ground to protect herself in her first appearance, and her attack animation does show it tunneling through the ground, so I can see why you’d make the argument her element is earth, but she never really does anything with this again. Even when it could really come in handy, like when she's trapped underground. And her attack is edible, as per the manga, so it can’t be clay or something! As for an animal connection, I guess you could say that monkeys are kind of known for eating things, I feel like this is clearly based solely on her name.

Zakuro…. sort of has an element? Her whip is called a “whip of light” in the anime, and in the manga it’s literally a glowing cross-shaped whip. This plus the “Cross” and “Pure” give it definite holy/purification/light vibes. But, in my opinion, this isn’t unique to Zakuro! Mint’s arrows are also pure light/energy, Ichigo’s attack is also very glowy, and Pudding’s… puddings(?) seem to form from light/energy. It seems like rather than a unique light element, she has the normal Mew powerset but used in a way that can cut or tie up the enemies. I can’t say wolves are particularly associated with light. Really, I’d assume dark, if anything, since they tend to be cast as villains? Same for purple…

Moving on to Mint! I’ve seen it claimed that Mint’s element is sound, but she never really does anything sound-based. Sure, her weapon has “Tone” in it, and her attack has “Echo”, but Pudding’s attack has “Inferno” despite having absolutely nothing to do with fire. “Check”, “Surprise”, and “Pop” are also seemingly unrelated to the attacks they describe. As for her weapon being lyre-shaped, yeah! All of the anime-style weapons are based on instruments!

As a a ballerina, she has an association with music, but she isn’t particularly useful in the fight in episode 6 vs Mary McGuire Chimera Anima, who really does attack with music. When she fights the ballerina bird Chimera Anima in episode 9, she doesn’t use music, or even really dancing! She defeats it with the power of Kicking Really Hard. And she does hear the Mew Aqua swan calling for help, but that’s just an extension of the generic “can talk to animals closely related to their infused genes” power that Ichigo and Zakuro also demonstrate.

Really, it seems like her power is just “arrow”. Like Zakuro, she doesn’t have an element; she’s just the one who’s able to aim the best from a distance. I guess when Lettuce steals her thunder in ReTurn, she's forced to upgrade to “a whole bunch of arrows all at once” and hit everything.

All Mew Mews basically have light and emotion based powers that they use slightly differently, with the exception of Lettuce, who seems to actually just generate water out of nowhere. But her powers are obviously connected to her emotions still (see how they manifest when she first awakens them). Them all having the same base power is supported by the way the manga will often not depict each attack individually, instead having each girl say her attack name and then showing the Chimera Anima exploding in a collective burst of light.

In short, rather than individual elements, I think it’s more like:

Ichigo: big finishing move

Mint: long range precision attack

Lettuce: knocking back the enemy? area of effect? (water)

Pudding: holding the enemy in place

Zakuro: cutting through small fry or holding the enemy in place

Berry: big finishing move, healing

Ringo: healing (music)

So, none of their character traits (color, animal, power) are that related? There’s some stuff that seems linked, but overall it seems like they’re most informed by genre tropes. (Also, a lot of the details of their powers were hammered out by the anime.)

[kaypeace21]

Will’s fear of clowns

*Ps -not mine. this is a submission from an anon. tw: for s.a. It’s an interesting submission. ANON-please make a tumblr account already . I’m begging you XD

Hi! It’s me, Lonnie Meth Anon. Back with more depressing thoughts about Lonnie!

I just read your post on Jonathan’s ab*se at the hands of Lonnie, and I second it all. It breaks my heart. But it also got me thinking deeper about Will’s fear of clowns. I think you’re right that part of the horror for Will is that the clown attacks in bed. The bed is, obviously, like you say, a common site for s*xual assault. (Doesn’t El’s picture of “three legged Brenner” also have a bed in it? In a picture with not much else?) The fact that Will needed Joyce to sleep with him for a week suggests he was specifically feeling unsafe in bed, or at night. 

But maybe it’s not just the location of the attack in Poltergeist that Will found so harrowing. Maybe it’s the combination of that location with the fact of a clown being the attacker. 

I think Lonnie might have dressed up as a clown for Will’s birthday one year, and something happened. 

In this instance, I don’t think Joyce would know what happened. I think the incident in her mind would be something like “Lonnie dressed up and Will was scared of the costume”. She might even have thought it was cute. Just a typical little kid fear of something mundane. When she teases him about Poltergeist, she doesn’t actually say the movie was the START of his fear of clowns. Just that he was afraid of that particular clown. The general fear of clowns could have been an older one, going back to when Will was even younger.

Maybe Will even liked clowns, before whatever happened with Lonnie turned them into a source of fear for him. Will has a lion plushie (lions are commonly found in the circus) and the circus seems like the kind of vibrant, colorful environment full of outcast, that a young gay kid would really enjoy. If Will did like circuses and Lonnie poisoned that for him, that’s just another reason to hate Lonnie. But it definitely seems possible. 

Lonnie is a deadbeat dad in general, but we’ve seen before that he’s capable of faking the “family man” act in front of Joyce and their neighbors. We’ve also seen that even though he treats Will horribly, he would also try and keep Will on his side with father son bonding activities, like baseball. And Will’s birthday is one of the few occasions Lonnie makes a half-assed kind of effort, even when there’s nothing directly in it for him. He sends that card, even though it’s late. Maybe Joyce made called him up and made him send it, but she always seemed happy to keep Lonnie out of the picture. She didn’t even want to involve him when Will went missing. And we know Jonathan would never try and facilitate more interactions between Lonnie and Will. So it seems like Lonnie did this of his own accord, when he realized he’d missed the day. Kind of weird. And it’s classic abuser behavior, to make contact on an anniversary date, reminding you they exist and you can’t escape them. Reminding you to keep quiet. Or hoping you’ll miss them, remember the “good times” when they made an effort, and let them back into your life. (Ugh.)

So, anyway, back to my theory. Young Will likes circuses, and the Byers family are poor, so they can’t afford to take him to one, or throw him a party at an ice cream parlor or a bowling alley, like other kids. It makes sense that they would have a party at home instead, and that the family themselves might dress up. We know Joyce made Will’s Ghostbusters costume in season two, and a clown is a pretty easy costume. Most of it is just make up. It’s possible the whole thing was Joyce’s idea, and she made the costume, and Lonnie just went along with it to look like a good dad in her eyes. 

Remember how we see Bob (Will’s new father figure) dressing up in costume for Halloween? Joyce loves it. This is a thing good dads do, to have fun with their kids. That’s also the same episode we see Will scared by a guy in a clown costume, and Jonathan is hyper-protective of him that night. School is okay, but he doesn’t want him trick or treating. (Like he knows that school is a safe environment, but in other contexts, costumes and parties might be a trigger for Will.) Jonathan is convinced to leave Will and “let him have fun” and what happens? The clown attacks. Later that night Jonathan goes to a costume party himself, where he finds Nancy upset and takes her safely home.  Maybe this is how Will’s birthday party ended - with Jonathan finding Will upset, and trying to comfort him. The whole night could be playing out like a parallel to that birthday party, from Jonathan’s perspective. 

What actually happened with Will and Lonnie is up for debate. It’s possible there was a s*xual assault, and that’s why the clown scene in Poltergeist was such a trigger for Will. Or maybe Lonnie thought circuses weren’t “manly” enough for his son to like, and actively tried to scare Will, so he wouldn’t like them anymore. It’s hard to know. Something would have happened though, and probably something pretty formative, because the fear of clowns lasts a long time. 

Something else interesting is that when Mr Clarke is talking about the Upside Down in season one, he uses the metaphor of the flea and the acrobat. Acrobats are a main act in the circus, and, well … fleas. Flea circuses. That’s a thing. Maybe it’s a hint that the trauma that created the Upside Down was circus / clown - related?

Kali, El, and their gang wear clown masks too, when they’re going to confront their childhood trauma, and the child-like Alexei is surrounded by clowns when he is killed at the fair. 

Clowns are just so associated with birthday parties and little kids, that it doesn’t seem like a coincidence to me they’re Will’s biggest fear. Especially as the show keeps dropping hints about Lonnie and Will’s birthday. It feels like there’s more to the story. I have a horrible feeling SOMETHING happened. 

RESPONE (kaypeace):

I think it’s very possible-that maybe he did dress as a clown for Will’s birthday and something happened. We have alexi (paralleled to Will) playing carnival games with kids. Then he's attacked by the Lonnie-look alike : and alexi looks at his wound then stares at all the clowns laughing around him. Joyce and Murray find Alexi bleeding/dy*ng next to a clown statue. As joyce looks in horror and Murray says to her, he was “only gone for a second” (which sounds like something you’d say in relation to a kid you were supposed to watch-running off ). We also had sarah at age 7 die while wearing a gown with clowns on it (Will: it was a 7 the demogorgan it got me). Death of innocence symbolism? Hopper also describes his depression as a cave- he goes through the carnival ride where it mentions a "cave of horrors", which had decor of a tiger and a clown painting. So yeah... whatever happened probably isn't good. So- there may be some symbolism there in relation to Will’s past. Not only because (like I and you have mentioned before) Lonnie is highly associated with birthdays. And canonically we know he mentally scarred jonathan on his b-day. But also, s4’s ‘victor creel’ may be an easteregg to the xmen character victor creed- who had a tradition of tra*matizing family members specifically on their bdays

As another alternative:I could also totally see Lonnie “ruining” circuses for Will because it’s not “manly” to him. Like how Jonathan liked thumper the rabbit-from the film bambi. in the film, Thumper is bambi’s bff, and the hunters are the bad guys who k*ll Bambi’s mother and terrorize all the wildlife. SO yeah- making Jonathan become a hunter, and k*ll a rabbit ,despite this fact, is really messed up. And shows Lonnie has already tried to ‘ruin’ things the boys like. By mentally scarring them in one way or another…

I also mentioned how Will’s bday could even be a trigger for jonathan in a diff post.

if the s4 bts calender hinting it’ll be near Will’s bday and easter it could be relevant to Jonathan.we know in s1 el has tra*matic flashbacks when seeing certain things- coke, closet, cat, etc. And Will in s2 has his ‘anniversary effect’ where memories flood back based on the time of year.But like … Easter has bunnies - could seeing rabbits jog stuff up for Jonathan? El seeing a cat made her have a flashback of brenner trying to make her kill a cat. Would Jonathan seeing like Easter bunny decor jog up a flashback of lonnie making him kill a rabbit? (It happened on his bday too). So Will’s b day being around easter would only fuel that memory. (heck even popped balloons may trigger gunshot symbolism idk). And then for Will there is clowns that could be a tr*gger at a party.

The flea and the acrobat analogy (in relation to Will and circuses is very interesting) and could be foreshadowing- it’s even a title for an episode so I feel like it’s narratively an important hint to …something. similar to a s1 ep being called “the bathtub”.  Also, Will was compared to a circus flea- which were placed in an enclosed space, where heat was applied as they jumped  and tried to escape the increasing temperatures as they burned .Which could relate to my theory about Will having a se*zure due his body overheating due to Lonnie injecting him with m*th.

 If Will’s bday is in s4- I feel like Lonnie will come back in some capacity (flashback or literally). The ‘sorry, I forgot you b day’ card from Lonnie in s2, in Lonnie’s shed Joyce mentioning Will’s b day, the rainbow ‘happy birthday cup’ placed next to Will at Mike’s -while Will explains the supernatural, Lonnie already tra*matizing Jonathan on his bday, etc…

[spike-and-faye]

Hello, I require your infinite wisdom please!! :O So I just finished cowboy bebop and I am so confused like who the fuck was Julia. WHAT was Faye's past. I literally never process tv shows and the bebop was not immune to my stupidity LMAO like... I guess the ending just really confused me, from what I gathered Spike and Vicious were friends? But then they weren't? And Julia dated Vicious but also Spike? And he? Went after Vicious even after Julia had died? I am Confusion. Please help. Thank u...

Oh BABEY I am so glad you asked! :) Be prepared for a long answer and I apologize in advance for how incoherent it will probably be.

ALSO Please note: this show is fucking complicated. I have watched it all the way through several times a year, every single year, for over a decade now, and I am *STILL* finding new shit every time I watch it. It's packed with symbols, motifs, allusions and underlying themes that are just so rich. It is so extraordinarily well-written that it could give a lot of classic literature a run for its money. I'm literally working on an in depth literary/film analysis my husband lovingly calls my Manifesto on the series right now. SO PLEASE don't beat yourself up about not catching everything on the first go round.

HEY BTW for anyone who hasn't finished the show, please know there will be MANY spoilers ahead!

Anyways ~

1.     Spike / Julia / Vicious:

The information we get on Spike's past, including Vicious and Julia, is pretty limited considering how big of an impact they have on the story. We get our first glimpse in Session 1: Asteroid Blues, then again in Session 5: Ballad of Fallen Angels, Sessions 12 + 13: Jupiter Jazz, and Sessions 25 + 26: Real Folk Blues. I recommend reviewing these episodes for you Julia and Vicious fix.

What we know:

Spike and Vicious were both members of an organized crime syndicate called the Red Dragons, which is roughly analogous to the Yakuza or the Mafia. Their positions in the organization are not clear, but there are some images alluding to them being hitmen, and they likely rose up in the ranks as they were close acquaintances of Mao Yenrai, a Capo of the Red Dragon.

Spike and Vicious were close comrades. Spike taught Vicious everything he knew about fighting, and the two had a deep trust in each other. Which Spike fucked up ….

^^Vicious looks hot asf here

Julia was Vicious' lover/girlfriend. One night in 2068 (three years prior to the time we watch in the Bebop) Spike is injured, presumably from a syndicate-related fight and he passes out in front of her door. She takes him in and nurses him back to health and he SIMPS HARD for her. We’re all but told he's in LOVE love with her. They start an affair, and Spike tells her he's ready to abandon the whole life - the syndicate, Vicious, Mao, all of it - and they could run away together.

WELL Vicious finds out about this whole affair, and is DOUBLY betrayed because his literal best friend and girlfriend have been having an affair, and tbh I think he was just as jealous of Spike's attentions as he was of Julia's. (Whether or not it’s a sexual thing for Spike … well … I have my own headcanons about that). SO when he finds out they're going to run away together, he gives Julia an ultimatum: you can either kill him, or I'll just kill you both. Spike had written her a letter about meeting him in the graveyard to start their new life together, which she tears up to hide his location from Vicious. (This is the falling ripped up pieces of paper we see in Spike's flash back in Session 5).

^^ r/gifsyoucanhear

**NOTE: There are those who disagree with this view, (looking at you Cowboy Bebop wiki) instead suggesting Vicious and Spike were buds in the past, but then hated each other once they were both considered as potential successors to Mao. That's why Vicious wanted him dead, and he was enlisting Julia (who he didn't necessarily have a romantic connection to) to help kill Spike since he knew Spike loved her. Personally, I think there is plenty of evidence that Vicious also wanted Julia, and in fact was already with her, when Spike started seeing her. If you want me to cite my sources please send an me an ask about it :)

Spike gets the idea, whether by her just not showing up or word around the syndicate being like YO Vicious wants you dead. Despite Vicious' ultimatum to Julia, he was gunna kill Spike either way. SO he sets up an ambush, and SadBoy™ Spike walks intentionally into their trap. Somehow, he doesn't die, though the entire syndicate thinks he did. (Note Annie's reaction to seeing him alive in Session 5). It’s also implied that this is where he lost his eye.

HIS EYE - possibly the most important symbol in the show so I do have to mention it. In episode 26, he explicitly explains to Faye that one of his eyes only sees the past. (PS this isn't dissimilar to Jet's arm… we can get into that another time). Basically, he's constantly living halfway in the past and halfway in the present, and describes the past like a dream he can never wake up from. Because dysfunctional or not - the syndicate WAS his family. (Again - see his relationship with Annie, Mao, and Vicious (prior to Spike's betrayal)). It's his reminder that Julia didn't run away with him, and that he'd left behind that life for her. (He didn’t know she was being threatened until the final episode). Basically Spike is hyper-fixated on what he had and what could've been.

Not long after this, Spike starts bounty hunting because like? What else is he going to do. He doesn't care if he lives or dies but if he has to be alive, he may as well be able to eat. He joins up with Jet Black on the Bebop.

TL; DR: Spike stole Vicious' lover, Julia, so Vicious made Julia choose between her killing Spike or Vicious killing them both. She instead went into hiding and Spike thought he'd been stood up. He fake died and got the hell outta dodge.

2.     What was Faye's past?

Ok let me start by saying Faye is my wife and my life. HOWEVER I hated her the first time I watched this show circa age 13 because I thought she was annoying/vain/shallow (also because #internalizedmisogyny lol am I right fam). Good news! She is all those things! But she's also very lonely and scared and an amnesiac and secretly a sweetie and she realizes she loves the crew of the Bebop like family.

SO my wife's backstory:

she was born in the 1990s (#only90skidsremember). There's some debate over her race/nationality, but due to the images of her hanging out in Merlion Park in Singapore, my bet is that she's Singaporean. She comes from a wealthy family with a big house, and we see some utterly *adorable* film of her as a child/young adolescent in Session 18: Speak Like a Child. I cry everytime </3

^^ Holla for the representation

In 2014, circa age 20, she and her parents were going into space when the shuttle they were on had some kind of malfunction/accident and it killed an unknown number of people, including her parents. At the time, the technology didn’t exist to be able to save her, so she was put into a cryogenic sleep state. Meanwhile, the Lunar Gate accident occurs, breaking up the moon and causing rock showers on Earth's surface. Most people died, moved to Mars, or settled underground.

She wakes up from her cryogenic sleep in 2068. (Also the year Spike leaves the syndicate.) She's 'woken' by the corrupt Dr. Bacchus who plans on charging her for the years and years of medical debt she's accrued. (See Session 15: My Funny Valentine.) Luckily a lawyer takes interest in her case (Whitney Haggus Matsumoto) and tries to help get rid of her debt. The two fall in love, but turns out Whitney is a Scumbag. He's actually Dr. Bacchus's nephew, and faked his death, writing Faye as the sole inheritor to his will. This means she'll take on all his debts. So baby girl has LOTS of debt at this point.

In the intervening years prior to her joining the Bebop, she gambles, cheats, gains a lot of street smarts, and adopts a very seductive character to get her way. She joins the crew on the Bebop in Session 3: Honky Tonk Women.

TL;DR: Faye is Austin powers

YIKES this is so long I am so sorry. Bitches are obsessed with this show. (I am bitches)

3.     The Ending

Okay I'm going to present this in the way, in my scholarly opinion, would be correct, though there are SO many interpretations other than simply 'Spike died :/".

To understand the plot of the last couple episodes we actually have to go back to Session 5: Mao is instructed* to sign a treaty with a rival syndicate called the White Tigers. (*He's instructed by The Van (Council of identical creepy old men) who are the actual head of the dragon. I think we only see them in Session 26.) Well - Vicious is a Bastard Man and he and his fellow mutineers blow up the White Tiger guys' ship and slit Mao's throat. Before he dies, Mao is like "Gotdamnit if Spike was still here this shit wouldn't have happened." Later in the Cathedral battle, Vicious explains to Spike he killed Mao because Mao 'lost his fangs'. He planned on killing Spike for good her, IMO, so there'd be no rival to take over as Capo for the Dragons.

^^These guys are The Van btw

THEN in Session 25, the Van basically catches Vicious and is like “you killed Mao and now you have to go to Time Out.” The Van also decides to just kill everyone associated with Vicious, just 2 B safe. That's why there's a big ass shootout at the Loser Bar where Jet and Spike are chilling, drinking, (missing Faye and Ed and Ein lol) and Shin (younger brother to Lin, who's helping Vicious overthrow the Dragon) explains all this to Spike. OH and PS JULIA IS ALIVE AND HERE IS HER LOCATION :). (**Notice Spike's reaction at this point is different than his reaction in Jupiter Jazz when he hears there's a Julia on Calisto. Much less excited… hmm…).

SO THEN you know we get some flashbacks of the past as previously explained *and* Julia just happens to run into Faye. She recognizes that Faye is one of Spike's friends from the Bebop (she was keeping tabs on him it seems) and picks her up. Faye doesn't know who Julia is but is like damn bitch I'm a little gay for you. (I mean … that may just be my bi ass projecting, but Faye is REALLY struck with her. Look at how she describes her to Jet, I mean come on.)

 Faye's like, 'we should team up' and Julia says 'no thanks but also tell Spike to meet me at *the place*'. Meanwhile back on the Bebop Spike and Jet are talking and Spike goes on about some dream woman who was his other half. (We assume he means Julia … I have my reasons to doubt this … I have a lot of angry DMs about my opinion here lol but I just do not give a fuck (: I can expand on this in another post or you can refer to the title of my fucking blog haha) Personally, I think Watanabe personally left this specific scene open ended, the same way he does with the ending and various other things.

more like SIMP Spiegel

ANYWAY Faye comes back to the Bebop to tell Spike about Julia, and Jet gets intel from a former cop buddy that there's some shit going down with the Dragons. (Again, the Van is hunting down everyone ever associated with Vicious, including your pal Spike). Bebop is attacked, Faye tells Spike what's up with Julia, and he heads out.

 PAN TO VICIOUS chained up - about to be executed - but what's that!? It's a bird!? It's a pla- no it's just a bird. (With one glowing red eye … hm … reminds me of Spike, also the drug Red Eye. Pls let me know if you have any thoughts on this). Just a bird with a BOMB! Explosion (RIP bird c. 2065 - too soon), Vicious kills the elders, his buddies show up and are ready to go fuck shit up.

this show could not be more of an aesthetic

MMMPhhh okay RAINY CEMETERY. Spike and Julia. She draws a gun, explains why she didn't meet him that day, and then hugs him. Now Spike is not *great* at showing his emotions but he literally just stands there. Maybe it's a stoic expression of how sad he is that he never knew she still cared, when it seemed like she dumped him. Maybe he's finally getting some closure on his past. Maybe the past doesn't mean the same thing it used to. (I'll elaborate later on this).

They go to Annie's to get stocked up on stuff, she lets them know she denied knowing Spike was still alive and hey also the Van was assassinated by Vicious and his guys so. Watch out for that. Then her shop is surrounded by Vicious' guys and she dies :(. Spike and Julia escape to the roof, but she's shot and dies in Spike's arms, and says 'it's all just a dream' :(. (Refer to: Spike living in a dream of the past).

Anyway Jet SAID he wasn't gunna go after Spike but. Jet's parental instincts kick in (oh yeah he was shot in the leg earlier btw) and he goes to Sitting Bull to see if he knows where Spike is. He basically says yeah Spike's about to die somewhere. (I want to do a further analysis on all the Sitting Bull scenes.) Well conveniently Spike returns to the Bebop, eats, tells his story about a tiger-striped cat. (At one point Jet asks if he's going there for her, and Spike is like well she's dead now so whatever). THEN we get to the scene where Faye is like HEY YOU CAN'T GO OFF AND DIE ASSHOLE and he's like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I 've been living in the past so I might as well see if I'm living now. (**This will play heavily into my interpretation of the ending). Faye is pissed, shoots the ceiling and he goes off to the syndicate headquarters to fuck shit up.

He basically John Wicks his way through the building, Shin dies, he and Vicious have the big boss battle and whatnot. He kills Vicious and stumbles back out down the stairs and says "Bang!" and collapses. We pan to the sky and see a star fade away.

Well that explains the plot … now here's what I think happened!!! ALSO may I mention, anon - you picked up on something I feel like a lot of people miss out on. Why *did* Spike go back to kill Vicious if Julia was already dead??

Basically, once it became clear that anyone associated with Vicious was being killed, Spike knew they'd hunt him down, and they weren't beneath Kill-Billing their way to him, (i.e. systematically destroying this companions to get to him). And for all his apparent indifference - he really loves his new found family. Jet is literally like an older brother to him. Ed is a little sister. Ein is well … a very good boy. And Faye? Well the relationship is complicated, and I'm not going to get into the 69,420 reasons I ship them here, but I think it is beyond argument that he really does care for her, even if that just in a filial way. He didn't want the syndicates to kill them for their association to him, or in order to get to him. So he did what he had to do to protect them. *AND NO* I am not saying that he didn't love Julia. But it was clear that his desire was no longer to run away with her. I think he genuinely loved and cared about her, but at some point between Jupiter Jazz Pt 2 and now, he accepted that their time together was over. Now he had a new raison d'etre, which is the Bebop.

I think at this point Spike has 'woken up' to reality (as he implied to Faye in their final conversation in episode 26: "Look at these eyes. One of them is a fake, because I lost it in an accident. Since then, I have been seeing the past in one eye, and the present in the other. I had believed that what I saw was not all of reality...I thought I was watching a dream that I would never awaken from. Before I knew it, the dream was all over." (This is from the sub btw I'm too lazy to look up the dub transcript.) He wasn't going there to die, he's going to find out if he's really alive. This line is fucking cool and everything - but it's implications are multitude. I won't go into them all here but basically : what makes him alive now is that he's free from his past. He's alive because he has this new family and protecting them is all he really wants now. Spike was protecting Jet, Faye, Ed, (and Ein) by going and facing the entire syndicate, knowing that their lives would all be in danger.

SO - did Spike die? Well again - Watanabe has purposely and artfully left this open ended. Well, if we're following the symbolism from Sitting Bull, then yeah, the man is as dead as disco, and wouldn't that be a fitting ending? BUT at the same time, Spike always refers to having 'died' before (meaning when he was ambushed by the syndicate, and they all thought he died, and he pretty much did). Don't forget that in  movie (takes places roughly between episodes 22 + 23, and yes, was made AFTER the series but whatever) he like .. DIES dies. He goes to the afterlife and everything. He wakes up to find he's chilling with Sitting Bull, who's like nah it wasn't your time to die yet. So the fact Sitting Bull confirms Spike will die in the final episode, means yeah, Spike is pretty much dead.

BUT -- okay now hear me out -- could this death in the final episode be a death to his previous life? The person he was in the syndicate? Now that he's extinguished the Red Dragons for good, is it not possible that its merely *that* life which has ended? That's the optimist in me saying that, but if it keeps me from staying up all night crying, I guess it'll have to do. Watanabe definitely wants to leave it up to the viewer, so whatever you think, I feel like there's validity to it.

WELL any anon, sorry for the fucking lecture - and believe me, I could've said MUCH, MUCH more - but I enjoyed this question. I always love talking about this show so please all you fuckers feel free to message me or send an ask about anything any time. I am really slow at replying because #life'sAbitch.

Love you all.

SY,SCB <3

[freewillacquired]

"Yeah... it's a lit-tle... late thor that..." Nemesis agreed. "I was try-ing... to do that... when they catured ne. I guess... I didn't do... such a great jod." Jod? For the love of god, he wished he could speak like a normal human being! Yeah, there was a lot that Nemesis wished he could do as a normal human being that he knew he never would again. "I'll thind a way... to hold then... ac-count-a-dle... thor their... a-tro-ci-ties," he said, practically growling out the words for all his emotional determination to follow through on that promise.

"O-kay!" Nemesis said with no small amount of enthusiasm. He could use some jokes right about now, and although he knew they should probably wait until they were somewhere safer, he couldn't help but tell her at least one. "What do you call... a na-ked zondie?" Well, he couldn't say "zombie" very well, but hopefully she could understand. "A nudie." With that terrible opener, Nemesis laughed at himself. Man, that really was a terrible joke. If it made her laugh, though, it'd be worth it.

"The way they said it... I donded with it... on a cell-u-lar lethel," he said. "Instead oth kill-ing ne... it is using ne... to nutate. It's using ny ge-ne-tics... to etholthe." Wow, the word "evolve" isn't happening any time soon. "To... nake ne... detter suited... thor... surthithal." Nope, still terrible. For god's sake. Nemesis sighed. "So I don't die." There we go. "Thor others... it's a thatal disease. Thor me... it's like... a chro-nic... ill-ness..." There, that was a good analogy.

He couldn't believe how she was actually taking him seriously on him potentially keeping her warm later on. Sure, if she wanted to curl up next to him, it'd be a lot warmer, but... he just didn't understand why she wasn't completely grossed the hell out by what he was, what he looked like, and the fact that he had freaking tentacles. It made him feel good, though. More human.

And now she was trusting him to lower her into the sewers. Well, okay, here we go, I guess... He held her hands tightly enough to not drop her from too high up, but not so tightly that he hurt her. With his superhuman strength, Nemesis definitely needed to be mindful of such things. He lifted her up off her feet, dangled her over the mangled manhole opening and slowly lowered her down into it, getting onto his knees and then his stomach to get her as low as possible before the drop. She only had about five more feet to go to the bottom. "O-kay?" he asked before letting her go, hoping she'd be okay when she landed.

Wasting no time, so as not to leave her alone down there, Nemesis said, "Stand clear," and then jumped down into the hole, crushing the stone underneath his feet as he landed. Rats squeaked out their protests at having a creature like him so close, scurrying away to hide. Everything down here was dark, moist, and had an objectionable odor, but... honestly... some people might have described him in the same way, so... Moving on...

"O-kay... let's track these tun-nels... out oth the city..." he said, accessing subterranean maps of Raccoon City using his digital retinal display. They'd be helpful in determining which of these corridors might lead out, and which would lead them right back in. "Stay close," he warned Sara, not wanting her to get lost... or dragged off by something carnivorous.

“Well aren’t you a big boy? Are you alone? Or should I be looking out for more soldiers?” (Sara; @mxrvelouscreations

@mxrvelouscreations

Was she talking to him? Nemesis slowly turned to look over one shoulder, and then the other. Yeah, I think she is talking to me! Wasn't she scared shitless? He was. Not of the undead, but of what he had become. After being caught in a small explosion, Nemesis suddenly found that his mental tether to Umbrella had been severed. He could make his own decisions, disobey orders all he wanted, and more importantly... he knew who he was now. His name was Matt Addison, and he hated the Umbrella Corporation with a passion.

"I'n a-lone. Thor now, at least," he said, hating his deep, growling voice. He sounded viciously homicidal no matter how he tried to speak. "Do you need helt? We hath... to leathe... the city. They're go-ing... to de-stroy it soon." Hey, if she wanted his help then great, wonderful. It was one person he could save. And that meant a lot to him after he'd screwed up so badly and inadvertently helped the virus escape into the general public...

[harveyscape]

IM BORED. my top three farscape eps from each season::::::: looking at these i think season two has the best EPISODE concepts (it was hard choosing faves from that season bc i love so many) but season 4 is my favorite for just,,,,,,, the hecking Yearning + domestication in each episode but i dont particularly favor the episodes themselves 

Season 1:

through the looking glass - i always saw this ep as being the first completely filler ep that really felt like farscape with the crew all working together and having a VERY CUTE little laugh about it at the end. i love the vagueness of it, it’s not annoying or cliche??? and i’m particularly fond of the yellow moya scenes like rygel’s like “shall i disrobe so it will be memorable” is one of my fave lines from him.

a human reaction - mY TRASH. MYYYY TRASH. just one of those farscape eps that are so Abstract in concept, they are just Default Faves for me like Always haha. so many good little j/a crumbs, the kiss in this ep is one of my BIG FAVES, i love everything about that scene and the ones leading up to it. LOVE THE RAIN SCENE. it’s probably the very first time john is like ‘maybe Earth bad’ and,,, ‘maybe space girl Good’ and i love that thruline of the show. this ep stands soooooo far apart from the majority of season 1 for me.

nerve: the hidden memory - “THE RADIANT AERYN SUN.” stark isn’t unbearable in his debut episodes woah! i like him as a sad boy who isnt a plot device! love gilina, love her death (rip), love seeing how far john and aeryn have come since they’d last seen her, love aeryn and crais’s interaction in this episode like YES GIRL SLAY, love whenever aeryn has to juggle with feeling WEAK and having to put her big girl pants on to save her himbo, love any interaction between d’argo and aeryn LOVE THAT.

Season 2:

crackers don't matter - the DIALOGUE in this episode is Insane and i LOVE IT i think there are so many line deliveries in this ep that are so memorable and Iconic they all just live in my mind rent FREE. i wish the commentary for this episode wasn’t about the more practical aspects of it because UUUHUUH i genuinely would love to just Absorb the mindset behind it. GOD TIER FILLER. 

out of their minds - i am such a whore for body swap tropes it’s humiliating. another ep with a lot of iconic line deliveries! i love cb playing as john! love that for her! bb as rygel too is amazing i love all their stupid accent switching SO MUCH. love the skeksis love that they joke about them looking like skeksis because it’s jim henson and they can DO THAT. 

won't get fooled again - any time i think about this ep im like man how Opened Third Eye was it to have john just immediately be like “haha ok this is fake lmao” like it’s so SUBVERSIVE in what it does pretty much right off the bat in introducing the moya crew as “normal” humans. eps like these are just ALWAYS my faves in tv series because of how crazy they can get and this one does and i love it so much for that.

Season 3: 

scratch n' sniff - any time i get the moya crew on a pleasure planet or at a rave im like HELLO. :) I LOVE RAXIL she’s such a funky little freak. describing this ep is so weird its like Oh Yeah The Boob Juice Sucking One. JUST JOHN AND D’ARGO BEING BACHELORS, WHAT BLISS. i wish i got more john + d’argo shenanigans in this show ‘cause they are like such a fave together dynamically mwah mwah mwah. <3 

into the lion's den: wolf in sheep's clothing - its a little crazy how much i Hate the first half of this two-parter which is super PANDERY AND BAD and then the last half is like so Insane and such a good close for the season. EVERYONE’S SO MISERABLE. the scorp shots with the imploding ship and the water UGHGUGHUGH <33333 love aeryn in this love her trying to save the Peacekeepers, love JOHN, love the little scientist nerd who works under Scorp i forget his name WHOOPS he has a nice design. THE CRAIS + TALYN DEATH IS SO GOOD;;;; LOVE THAT FOR THEM;;;;; <3333

 dog with two bones - i think the fact that literally no other tv show has pulled THIS MESS off really speaks to the uniqueness of farscape and its ABILITY TO TELL ROMANCE??? theres so much in this that is just like WOWOWOWOW THIS EP IS SO GOOD. the part where they kill the rogue leviathan and rygel is celebrating on the comms and it transitions to aeryn Going Insane in her prowler over everything that’s happening. FIRE. the dog with two bones analogy UGHGUGHGUGH <333333 I LOVE THE AERYN > EARTH THRULINE WITH JOHN SO MUCH ITS JUST AT ITS PEAK HERE WHICH MAKES IT GREAT BY DEFAULT. the coin scene is SOOOOOO GOOOOOOOOD THE ENDING SCENE OF THIS EPISODE IS SOOOO GOOOOOD.

Season 4: 

john quixote - MY FAVE EP OF THE SERIES LOL. love the COSTUMING love the POP CULTURE REFERENCES love that its SEASON 4 love that we GET A ZHAAN CRAIS JOOL AND STARK CAMEO. another conceptually abstract episode so of course i love it lol. love the scene in the end with john and zhaan where he’s kinda a sad boy!!!!! actually funny story about this ep the first time i watched this i was in elementary school still, i grew up on this show this is my Nostalgia Baby series, and did not know what the word “porn” was so like for a very concerning amount of time i always assumed “porn” was an Alien Word and not a real word. BECAUSE LIKE, in context you see chiana holding up a Gooey Boy and going “and this? porn!” and that was all i had to go by the end.

crichton kicks - I LOOOOVE SAD JOHN. I LOVE HIM. I love the character beats we get out of a john that CHOSE THE GIRL over his home and instead of GETTING HER he is punished for it, losing his chance at BOTH OUTCOMES like mentioned in “dog with two bones” despite him having chosen One of the options and not both. love the introduction to 1812 whenever john gets a named thing i am like Yes. :~) my boy, my little man. he’s a little crazy and a little sad.

terra firma - the YEARNING in this ep man!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this ep waters my CROPS one of my Biggest Fave scenes is when Aeryn and Jack are in her prowler talking about john and he’s like Do You Wish You Were Human and she doesnt answer and im like LORD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! more of that John Not Vibing With Earth Anymore trope which I LOVE. literally all fics surrounding this episode i will SNORT LIKE CRACK. 

[katnissmellarkkk]

Okay, onto my liveblog for chapter two of The Hunger Games :

Katniss’ flashback to falling out of a tree and being unable to breathe is such a good analogy, I steal it all the time in my own fics.

I wish the boy who held her up so she didn’t fall was given a name? Katniss just can’t provide names very easily, can she? 😅

“The odds had been entirely in her favor. But it hadn’t mattered” is actually an amazing quotable moment, someone make an edit pronto 👏

No one’s happy when a twelve year old is chosen but ya know. As soon as that kid turns thirteen, off with them! Fair game! 😭😂😅🙃

Hmmm how many of these kids knew immediately Katniss would volunteer for her sister? The way there was a boy ready to catch her before she fell and the way they all just cleared a path for her...

Katniss’ love for Prim had to be prominent because the other kids all seemed to be aware she would volunteer and Katniss claims this is a completely radical, unheard of thing to do. Sooo yeah. Her school peers probably noticed her a lot more than she realized.

Ooo. I just noticed the word choice in “district twelve hasn’t had a volunteer in decades”

Was there a point in time when Twelve had volunteers?

Awww the mayor being sad that Katniss is probably gonna die because he knows her as Madge’s friend 😭😩🤧.

Awww Katniss got presented a medal when her father died, I forgot 🥺🥺🥺

“Bet my buttons” is the worst phrase in history 🤨😐🤭

I like that Katniss’ dead father still has a reputation around these parts 🤧

Helps my fic writing brain to clock it for future reference

Maybe I’m just not nice but I don’t see how Prim is so wonderful that no one can help but love her. Like idk. I feel like this is just Katniss’ bias leaking through. Which is fine it’s better than some clinically detached narrator I hate those FYI

Omg everyone is saluting Katniss and she’s realizing people adore her 🥰🥰

Also ... does this mean Peeta did the three finger salute to her just before being called himself? Idk random thoughts, ignore me.

Katniss is in danger of crying. If this was me, I’d just be sobbing on the ground already.

Haymitch , the og rebel. Looking right into the cameras and calling the Capitol out.

Also ironic how the first thing Haymitch says to / about Katniss is “I like her!” when he spends the rest of the series pretending he, in fact, does not.

“Oh no, not him” is such a love interest introduction, y’all. Gale never stood a chance.

I like how Katniss considers it bad luck for her that Peeta was called 😅. Like... already taking ownership of the boy, sweetheart?

I feel like this is a good time to remind people that medium height is like 5’10. Stop headcanoning Peeta short. Poor Joshy though.

I like how she has never spoken to Peeta but describes the way his hair falls in waves over his forehead 😭🤧

Seems like Katniss thinks Peeta took being called relatively well.

“He has two older brothers, I know, I’ve seen them in the bakery” why is she already trying to defend herself to the audience like “I wasn’t really paying any attention to Peeta Mellark I just happened to notice he had brothers because I saw them once okay?”

Omg Katniss just outright asserting that Peeta’s middle brother definitively won’t volunteer for him. Girl, you just said you don’t know him or his family 😅😅😅.

“Why him?” Still has such a destined, soulmates feel to it. I know they weren’t destined and that’s what a lot of people admire about their relationship but the writing here has always had such a “this guy right here is her soulmate” slant to it, I’m sorry.

“He’s probably forgotten our only interaction. But I haven’t. And I know I never will.” Still continuing with the soulmate-y narration here, Suz Suz, I see.

Oh my god I don’t even remember this line but it’s so sad 🥺🥺🥺🥺🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧😩😩😩😩😩

“The numbness of his loss had passed, and the pain would hit me out of nowhere, doubling me over, racking my body with sobs. ‘Where are you?’ I would cry out in my mind. ‘Where have you gone?’”

I’m so sad now. 😭😭😭

I like that Katniss said “no amount of pleading from Prim” would affect her mother’s depression, as if Katniss easily believes that her own pleas don’t matter but her sister’s are what’s impossible to ignore.

She really needs to stop putting Primmy on this pedestal though it’s not as cute the second or third read around.

“I suppose now that my mother was locked in some dark world of sadness, but at the time, all I knew was that I had lost not only a father, but a mother as well.” I feel like this is just criminally undiscussed. Katniss didn’t know or understand or grasp what depression even was. Like it’s hard enough for kids to forgive parents who abandon them to mental illness when they’re aware what mental illness is. Let alone if you’re just stuck for months / years, not knowing that your mother was sick, instead thinking she just stopped caring for you.

Omg Katniss saying she couldn’t let Prim go to a community home 🤧. Selfless of her. But also sister worry about yourself.

I’m just kidding, I know it’s her character to only be concerned with her little sister above all else.

Mr. Everdeen hating how coal dust settled on everything in the Seam is such a small but interesting detail.

Omg so the meadow is a common place to find corpses of those who starved to death? We maybe should stop romanticizing it.

I like that Mr. Everdeen took Katniss places with him but was like “Hmm, imma leave Prim home, she isn’t cut out for the hunting life”

Idk Katniss being too afraid and shy to go to the Hob without her dad is such a little kid thing though.

Katniss explaining that she was essentially in the merchants backyard

She was essentially dying in Peeta’s backyard 🤧

Wow, I forgot how blatantly violent Peeta’s mother was

Maybe it’s just Katniss’ perspective but every interaction is just her screaming

Aww, his mother called him a stupid creature, why don’t I remember this.

This is so sad omg.

Poor both of them.

One’s starving to death, the other’s utterly abused mentally, verbally and physically.

What’s a weal?

I always read that word as a welt.

Ok I googled it, it’s a big red swollen mark.

So same thing.

Omg now Katniss is saying Mrs. Mellark hit him with an object weapon. This just keeps getting more and more.... sad.

Honestly I haven’t read the books cover to cover since I was a teenager, some of this is a surprise to me.

I always wondered though how that bread was any good, it literally fell onto the wet ground. 😟🤢

Aww, Katniss saying Peeta would get a full beat down if discovered that he burned the breads to feed her 🥵🥵🥵

Okay but if his mother hit him with an object and his eye swoll up and blackened the next day, that could be another reason why he tossed the bread in her general direction and didn’t look at her. I know it was so he wouldn’t be caught by his mother but also he probably couldn’t even see clearly where she was.

The dandelion symbolism 🤧😅😭🥳

Her sarcasm 🤣🤣🤣

Katniss just keeps comparing Peeta to the loaves of bread 😅😅😅

Also she keeps calling him warm and solid and steady

I’m starting to think unconsciously she was already finding herself attracted to him even here.

Him squeezing her hand reassuringly and her chalking it up to a nervous spasm 🙃

I hope when they got married they got a nice screencap of this shot of them on TV facing the crowd, shaking hands.

Make a nice anniversary photo.

Okay, that’s all for my thoughts on chapter two! 🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳