#I knew I Simply Had To

[exlimix1a]

And so it shall be done <3 @luluyamofficial

[reksink]

Beloved Residents of Dirtmouth (And Quirrel 👍)

[shakingparadigm]

I'm too tired to gather my thoughts cohesively on this but.

The Anakt Garden bears a lot of resemblance to the Garden of Eden, right? The landscape is an ideal nature paradise and the humans kept within it are expected to live in blissful ignorance and obedience. It's not far-fetched to say that a lot of religious inspiration was taken when making the Anakt Garden considering the prevalence of "gods" and worship in the series. What's more, there is apparently a whole subject in the Anakt Garden dedicated to religion.

Through this Garden it's almost as if the aliens are attempting to recreate or rewrite the genesis of mankind now that they have established themselves as beings of power. The aliens tend to "play god", creating artificial humans and modifying existing ones in order to suit their needs.

In past official arts, Sua and Ivan (two top students of Anakt Garden who know more about the truth of the system than they let on) have been depicted with apples. The same fruit that symbolizes disobedience and forbidden knowledge.

[turtleblogatlast]

[ cw: death mention / family death mention / ]

Mhmm I sure love thinking of the reality where we did get more time to really know Karai and her dynamics with the bros. Losing her hit hard in the finale, but it would’ve hit much, much harder had we known Karai longer and really saw her relationships develop with everyone.

I especially would have been interested in her dynamic with Leo, as past iterations often have the two of them clash in ideals and the like while still sharing many characteristics. Two sides of the same coin, and all that. Her specifically being the bros’ Gram-Gram also adds a whole new dynamic as well.

Imagine how interesting it would be, to have Karai start off on Leo’s side for once, showing wholly just how alike the two are at their cores and bonding as family without the worry of betrayal or animosity that other iterations suffer through, only to have Karai die anyway. Their parting hug and the desperate look of horror Leo wears later on would have hit that much harder, I feel.

[somegrumpynerd]

Do you think Nightmare ever wonders if Passive is still alive?

Like, okay. The way I think of it (because I want it to be possible for everyone to be happy in the end) is that when Passive ate all the apples, he and the corruption fused. Like, they both are controlling his body but the corruption had complete (or at least majority) control for a long time because of the concentrated power from all the apples. But Passive was still in there, and over time he was able to pry back more and more control over his body and mind.

But he probably wouldn't realise that was happening because how do you tell the different parts of you apart after so long. Do you think he thinks Passive died in the incident and he's just the sentience of the corruption? Do you think, in a truce situation, Dream calls him brother and Nightmare wonders if any part of Dream's brother is even in there anymore?

[puppyeared]

AND I MET THE CHANGE GOD TOO. OKAY. COOL OKAY

[heyclickadee]

I understand that people are going to cope how they are going to cope, and trying to find meaning in the handling of Tech in season three is part of that, but it’s also okay to criticize the show.

I like a good character death. Tech’s departure was not that. My issue is not that he’s presumed dead, my issue is that it and the handling of it is nonsense. So (I once again get very negative about my favorite show under the cut):

1. When you kill off a main character, you really have to kill them off. How you do so can vary from story to story, but you really have to do four things:

One, you need a good reason to kill them off in the first place. (“Stakes” is not a good reason. A secondary character, sure, but not a main one. More on that in a minute.)

Two, you need to make it perfectly clear that the character is, in fact, dead.

Three, you need to show the other characters processing and accepting that death. This is important because doing so will allow the audience to do the same and let the character go. This is especially important if you’re writing for a young audience.

Four, you need to make it explicitly clear that the character cannot come back. This is especially true in sci fi or fantasy. Especially if you’re the Character Resurrection franchise.

And guess what the show didn’t do?

Any of that. Any of it. What it did instead was ambiguously remove Tech from the story (uniquely in a show that loves making us watch characters die on screen; last time we saw Tech for sure he was alive), never gave a good reason for doing so in or out of the show, never showed us any character working through the impact of his loss (even though there was ample opportunity for Omega, especially, to do so), and ripped the “could he come back?” box wide open by parading CX-2 in front of our faces. It is never, at any point, handled like an actual main character death. It’s handled as a plot point from which the narrative moves fairly quickly, and treated by all parties as an absence. By all the rules of storytelling, Tech isn’t dead. He’s just ambiguously gone. And that means the writing team did a terrible job if what they wanted to do was kill him off. We should not be debating this after the show has ended if he’s actually dead.

2. I understand why some fans are trying to find meaning in losing Tech. I am not, because that meaning is not offered by the text itself. And, if the plan was to never bring him back, it should have been.

We are not, for example, offered a lesson about how not everyone comes home from the war. In order for that to have been the case, we would have needed to see someone, probably Omega, working through that. We would have needed to see her refusing to accept that Tech is gone—like we do in Plan 99, by the way—and slowly coming to terms with the idea that her brother isn’t coming home. But we don’t get that, not even as subtext.

Something else we could have gotten that would have worked with all the little visual reminders of Tech, empty chairs, name-drops, and even the CX-2 leading? The batch being so haunted by losing Tech and not really knowing what happened to him for sure that they start seeing him everywhere. But for that to work we would have needed, again, to see that as an explicit subplot where someone, probably Omega, again, gets really invested in the signs that Tech is coming back and even starts assuming that CX-2 is him, only to realize that she’s seeing what she wants to see and having to accept that Tech isn’t coming back, but that she can still keep Tech’s memory alive by following in his footsteps. That’s something you can kind of project onto what we’re given in the epilogue, but you do have to project it, because it’s entirely absent from the rest of the show.

As is, Tech’s sacrifice isn’t given any weight. From a narrative perspective, it was an incredibly contrived set of circumstances that accomplished nothing except punting Tech off a train, and gave Tech no choice but to remove himself from the story—exit, stage down. Losing Tech doesn’t, even sub-textually, serve as anyone’s motivation. It does nothing to move the plot or anyone’s character development forward. The primary motivators of season three were Omega’s kidnapping, Crosshair’s PTSD, and Hemlock needing to get Omega back.

Tech’s absence does nothing to move anything forward and only really serves to slow the plot down and make the others struggle to do anything because he’s not there to carry the team like he did in the first two seasons—and nothing about that would have played out any differently if Tech spent the season in a coma in a bacta tank. The only part of Tech’s sacrifice that has meaning is that he loved his family enough to offer it. And that is profound, but that’s not something that would be negated by a return because the love and the offer remain. As for his presumed death? His return couldn’t have taken meaning away from that, because the show never gave it any meaning in the first place.

And no, Tech “dying” isn’t something I have to accept. Tech isn’t a real person, he’s an idea, and an idea that didn’t come to fruition. I can point out the ways the handling of his departure didn’t work all day if I want.

3. CX-Tech was not an overly online theory. I need people to understand this. It was an assumption made by most of the casual audience. My sister, who has no contact with the fandom and doesn’t like me discussing the show at all until she’s seen it, assumed he was Tech. My brother-in-law, who was a die-hard Tech-has-to-be-dead-shut-up guy for the entire hiatus and the first half of season three, was convinced he was Tech. Every kid I’ve spoken to who watched the show thought he was Tech and is deeply confused that he got speared like that. My brother, who doesn’t even watch the show but who does walk by when I’m watching it sometimes, thought he was Tech. You can’t get more casual and away from the fandom than that.

The thing is, the answer we get isn’t that he’s not Tech. It’s, “We’re not telling.” Which means that as it currently stands, a season-and-a-half of CX buildup amounted to a five minute boss fight and a non-answer. That’s…not something that works! That’s atrocious writing if that was the whole sum of their intent all along.

And you can say, well, that was a clever misdirect! Plot twist! Except, one, misdirects and twists only work if the real answer is more satisfying than the false one, otherwise it just falls flat. Two, if it was a misdirect, it’s not one the creative team is willing to own. No one will touch the Tech-CX-2 parallels with a twenty-foot pole, except the Kiners, who have incredibly meaningful explanations for every musical choice but then say shit like, “that chord just sounds good in brass” about Battle of the Snipers (…before going on to say that the four note lose motif from “Plan 99” is Tech’s leitmotif…which is also all over Battle of the Snipers…and is only there according because the batch is divided in that scene, a scene in which Crosshair’s leitmotif is entirely absent even though he’s just supposed to be fighting his own dark side represented by a guy who’s totally not Tech. Sure. I’m going to go eat drywall.) Because acknowledging that and saying that was supposed to be Tech will just make the audience angrier, and they may not even be allowed to do so, and saying that it is Tech—you can understand why they can’t do that, right? The implications are horrific. But that horrific implication is probably what at least some of the casual audience who will never interact with the fandom or a single interview is going to walk away with.

4. The thing that bothers me most about all of this is the combined toxicity of the fandom and the leading from the marketing and social media. Part of the fandom saying that there were never any signs Tech could have survived (in Star Wars, no less) is starting to feel like gaslighting; and while I don’t think there was any malice in the leading in the marketing and social media—I’m even willing to give a tiny bit of leeway for the creative team maybe knowing something we don’t yet—it was handled badly, expectations for this season should have been set early and clearly, and as of right now it all feels like an incredibly cruel prank at autistic fans expense, whatever the intent may have been or may still be.

5. And finally, here’s the thing: I’m willing to give the writers a bit of leeway on this. I’m willing to grant that some choices may have been out of their hands for unknown reasons. I’m even willing to say that maybe they’re not really done with this story yet, that The Bad Batch could just be the first chapter of a longer show that was split up for stupid business reasons, and that the finale is the way it is because they had to have an ending of sorts without actually resolving anything. I’m willing to grant a lot of grace there. In fact, I actually think there’s a very good chance we’ll still get Tech back alive in canon, and sooner than later, if only because no one (not even the voice actors) seems happy about this, most fans are coping but disappointed at best, the creative team got asked about Tech non-stop for a solid year and a half, and the writers don’t seem at all committed. We know from the rest of the show that they know how to definitively kill a guy, and, frankly, Tech in the first two seasons comes across as something of a writer favorite. They like using him!

But whatever I’m hoping or suspecting, and whatever leeway I’m willing to grant the creative team here, the final product is all we have right now. And I am going to criticize that final product for badly handling a (presumed) character death and straight up breaking the central conceit of the show in doing so.

[sunforgrace]

you guys please understand they were going to say “CASTIEL’S PERSONAL HEAVEN” and paper the walls like a teen girls room with pictures of dean pictures of dean’s face PLASTERED onto the bodies of beefcakes all while cheek to cheek blares out. as brought to you by fucking metatron

[myokk]

“She’s tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me”😤😤😤

(Regency AU with Eloise and Sebastian inspired by my slow trek through Bridgerton these days & @bassicallymaestra ‘s AMAZING regency inspired art😮‍💨😇🙏)

[abirddogmoment]

I saw a reel yesterday that was like "top 10 hikes in Canada" and they were, as predicted, 100% mountain hikes in Banff and Jasper National Parks (and not even hidden gems! The ones on tourist brochures!). Someone made a comment like "you need to see more of Canada" and the 🌟influencer🌟 replied that the rest of Canada wasn't worth visiting when there are views like that in Banff.

Anyway here's a phone photo from a hike I drove four hours round trip to do in a part of Canada that "isn't worth visiting" 😂

[jays-doodle-spool]

dude in my lecture turned around to argue with me after overhearing me make a joke about “not going into medicine bc i can’t stand the sight of blood”

he felt it was of utmost importance that i know there are medical jobs where you don’t see blood and “just didn’t understand not going into medicine bc of a fear of blood”

dude

i don’t know you??

[sammaggs]

Butter Preference at the Movies:

The 2-7 Edition

[da-janela-lateral]

My perspective on The Queen's weird behavior is directly associated to my headcanon that the OFF world is illogical and fucked up because it was limited to Hugo's memories. He didn't know where anything came from, so there is metal from cows and plastic from the sea. Everybody is identical because its hard to distinguish the workers from the window of his room. Likewise, The Queen is based on his idea of a mother. He didn't remember his mom's face, so she is featureless. His mom was always far away, even though she cared for him, so it was natural to make a simulacra that becomes distant "for his best". It was impossible for The Queen be a good parent or ruler, as Hugo, her creator, had no concept of neither. She was an empty shell given the role of a nurturer at birth. She loved Hugo and wanted to fulfill her purpose, yet she never learnt how to deal with emotions or fragile lives, thus she could only load their world with everything she believed to be nice and normal. However, the Queen's source was inherently flawed. She could only imitate the ugly things Hugo lived through. And in her perfectionist attempts to build a place her creator-son could be happy in, she forgot her single function: to be there for him.

[dollsome-does-tumblr]

idk who this interviewer guy is (mehdi hasan apparently!), but i really appreciate his little romangerri manifesto and jsc answering with the most delightful tone in her voice when she says “i don’t think so” about it being over. (it wasn’t over! it still isn’t over!) i transcribed the clip just for fun!

Do you think that Roman and Gerri's story is over at that point? We can only imagine, I guess. JSC: I don't think so. I feel like, well, I don't know what's in Jesse and the other writers' minds, but I feel like the fact that even just so little bit [sic] of the narrative of their relationship is referenced in the very end ... but the fact that we're looking at each other and it's hard for us is proof that there's ... there's still some kind of attachment there. I mean, I've always thought that, you know, what Gerri wanted was a business relationship with him, but in the course of events I think, you know, he got under her skin. She got really attached to him, and she's not used to being attached to people and she probably didn't recognize what she was feeling. So I think she's, you know, not a sentimental person, but finding herself still feeling worried for him and, uh, empathy for him. I mean, Succession's kind of this cold, chilly, objective world where there really isn't empathy. It's like it doesn't really exist in the little pretend universe of it. But I feel like whatever version of it that there could be, that she's feeling that for him.

[livebloggingmydescentintomadness]

my mother, seeing that an episode was going to air on pbs, innocently asked me a question about bbc sherlock.

thirty minutes later, she told me that she regretted asking.

[saline-coelacanth]

Just checked the Splatfest results

NINJA NEVER QUIT BABY LET'S GOOOOOO!!!!!!!