#I thought they handled it well

[words-writ-in-starlight]

honestly my mother was a huge champ about her eight-year-old asking to be bought an unabridged edition of the Odyssey for a birthday present, and then she was an equally huge champ about reading her eight-year-old the unabridged Odyssey as a bedtime story and pausing every four lines to define something for me, and let me just say that I have fucking TREASURED the opportunity to reverse that old tradition by more or less forcing her to sit on my couch and listen to Epic and pause it every four lines for my dissertation

[littlespoonevan]

actually what makes friends to lovers such a good trope and, in fact, what is Essential to making it a good trope is that the characters have to be friends. and you may say, well duh!! that's what the trope is!!! but no, no, no. you see, some people see friends to lovers and think: two people who are secretly in love/have feelings for each other throughout the entirety of their friendship and use that friendship to mask that. but the real slow burn is when they're legitimately friends. like, they feasibly might have 5 episodes/10 episodes/a whole season where there is No suggestion of romance between them (even if you know it'll head that way eventually) and instead they're just hanging out with no deeper meaning. so instead of seeing them hide their feelings the friendship is peppered with these ✨moments✨. moments where you think, oh there could be something more here. moments that slowly begin to happen more frequently and closer together until the character thinks, oh there could be something more here - by which point you, as the viewer, are Tearing your hair out because you already knew that!!!!! catch up and kiss already!!!!!! and so by the time they both actually realise it and are both actually ready to vocalise it you feel like you've run a marathon - exhausted, strung out, breathless, but also experiencing the greatest adrenaline high of all time

[corcjell]

The gort. He sits...

[mangoes-machinery]

i think Stone pre-Robotnik excelled in surviving torture tactics and de-escalating high-stress situations and thats why the government sent him to Robotnik. He works as his assistant but in reality he's Robotniks handler.

[wield-the-mighty-pen]

Sometimes I think about how Adrien must grieve

How, when he lost his mother, it was a gradual thing, where he lost more and more of her, where he was slowly prepared for an eventuality and a future in which she would not be there anymore. How it was longstanding and tormenting and how his grief began long before the day he would never see her again. How though the pain of loss must have been sharp and aching for him, and he must desperately miss Emilie, at least he achieved some solace in not having to see her in pain anymore.

But then once he's reached a healthy stage and coping style in his grief for Emilie, the wounds are reopened once again.

How his father went from existing to suddenly being gone to Adrien. How he had no warning, no indication that he would never see him again. How even though the grief is sudden and unexpected, it had really started months before Gabriel was gone, and even long before he became injured.

It's how despite the fact that Gabriel was seemingly in good health, and Adrien had no reason to fear losing him, Adrien has actually been grieving for Gabriel and their relationship for a long time. How Adrien has had to watch his father slip away, lose himself, and slowly give less and less of himself over to Adrien, until Adrien could hardly recognize the man that was supposed to be sitting across the table from him.

Sometimes I just think about how grief became a comfort for Adrien, a lifestyle, because he has been taught that all good things in his life, all things he loves, must come to an end eventually.

And I think about how that must affect him as a person.

[thebestusernamepossible]

People who don’t get the pregnancy motif in Severence and then turn around and get mad about it drive me crazy. ITS THE LOSS OF AUTONOMY AND RIGHTS SHOW! ITS THE MAKING A NEW PERSON TO CARRY YOUR BURDEN SHOW! Of COURSE pregnancy is a theme. It’s not like the show is being weird about it?? Do we not trust the show runners?? If Helena is pregnant I fully expect them to use it as a horrific plot point! If it’s the direction it’s going to be full of horror and plot twists (probally back alley abortion via Helly tbh. Bc you KNOW Helena would use Helly to give birth like that one Senator lady did).

[cent-scratchnsniff]

hoptal

[kelocitta]

I wanted to ask, I might have missed it, but how is the new Scav chieftain as a character? With her having to take over after her daughter’s passing, and the needed cleaning up after Artificers mess in this AU? It’s really interesting that shes now suffering a loss of a child, acting as a parallel to Artificer also.

Bolt of Silver (Although name has certainly changed) was an accomplished pirate* sharpshooter. Her particular skillset was in the execution of caravan/patrol captains from exceptional distances in order to induce panic for a followup assault. Her past is largely unknown, and as such she is not someone who would have ever been considered for the position of Chieftain had there not be a considerable amount of panic. She took the position because she, as an elder, is generally given respect of wisdom and also she herself showed quiet a bit of initiative and leadership during the panic that curried some favor- although she is notably more of a substitute than a properly recognized Chieftain, and will eventually step down once a replacement is formally put forth. Her daughter, in contrast, did not share her criminal history and was a rather accomplished explorer, archivist, and generally an upstanding Scavenger. The fact she acquired the position was a testament to her own skills, independent of her mother, who retired and integrated back into the larger community as a general assistant and expectant grandmother. *Pirate in the context of Scavengers does not refer to boat users, but rather caravans or groups of united thief or criminal rogue wandering groups. 'Unaffiliated' Scavenger groups are common, but many of them are merely small families, independents, or even particularly traveled traders and thus welcomed into the larger community even if they do not directly consider themselves a part of it. Pirate groups are distinct in that their activity is almost entirely criminal in nature, often violent, and ideally removed or pushed to the furthest fringes of territories.

[gudvina]

Anyways, i read a post that talked about how Haymitch's epilogue actually makes a big point about grief, about how some people want to keep their grief close and alive, because it's realistic and, on some extent, i do agree that there is a point to be made about grief sometimes being something one finds hard to overcome, if ever. I just don't feel like Haymitch's grief was handled well, or even realistically.

Again, the fact that Haymitch "killed her" by feeding her the gumdrops is not any different to his "killing" his family by participating in a rebellion. He did that. He was in a rebellion, and as punishment his family was killed. And yet his grief does not linger for his mother and eight year old brother, who died in such a horrific way and were taken from him so soon. His grief lingers only for Lenore Dove.

And also there is a point to be made about the fact that The Hunger Games as series is also about finding life even in the face of grief. There is a reason Katniss is able to live, be happy and find love even after Prim's death, after the devastation of her own games. And no, it was not because she ended up with Peeta, it was also her own growth and work. Haymitch, in his grief, never evolves. People are allowed to think the way his trauma and his grief were handled was shallow, and a device to further establish Lenore Dove's importance. Haymitch didn't only lose her; he lost his family, he lost his friends both prior and after his Games in both quarter quells, and I feel that it would have been a more realistic portrayal of grief if we were also shown that side. You can't tell me his grief was not instrumental, in this book, to further Lenore Dove's presence even after her death.

I guess these are jumbled thoughts I did not want to add to op's post, so I am taking it in my own tumblr, but wanting Haymitch to find beauty in life after grief is not an attempt to dismiss his trauma or his loss, it's just acknowledging that his character can be more than just his grief and, even if that was meant to be his portrayal (which I don't think, not in the of trilogy), he is capable of being more complex than the one dimensional way this novel presented.

There is love, happiness after loss, after violence, and that doesn't mean we stop feeling that loss, forget that fear, it just means we grow around it. It's an undeniable part of our lives, it's going to colour our every action or thought, but it's not all we are. And I feel that in the original trilogy that was an important theme, we see it in the way dandelions evoke continuously the concept of hope and growth. Suzanne Collins' backtracking on this theme in Sunrise on the Reaping does nothing but stripping Haymitch of a lot of complexity.

[luminique]

saw a japanese tweet about lighter during his underground fighting days and i am absolutely distraught. don’t treat this as canon though, they only used info in game to help build their own understanding of lighter.

they said that in his ep, he seemed to be someone who was constantly winning. but if you look at his story in the game, he mentioned having losses. a little headcanon that they had was that it wouldn’t be fun/entertaining if he always won his matches. you could put him against anyone and he’d honestly win against them so there were some match fixings and unfair advantages to his opponents to give the audience a ‘real’ show.

another thing that was mentioned was how he told us during the tour de inferno how he could just lower his head and bend his knees a little and he’d get money. this isn’t solid proof of anything but many do think that he may have been forced to provide extra services, considering the fact that he is canonically handsome (claims from bellum and other npcs have complimented him too).

then we learn that he felt like a zombie during his time in those fighting rings. opponent after opponent, his body deeply bruised and wounded, unable to look at his own reflection in their eyes. he had only done it for the money, to compensate for his actual losses in his life but then he was turned into an object for entertainment.

he was just a young man, he also had hope and ambitions. then it was ripped out of him starting with the deaths of his comrades, followed by his exploitation in those matches and the underground fighting rings. even though big daddy had paid off his debts, his ‘mistake’ as a leader didn’t disappear, the scars and marks on his body didn’t disappear, his own habits of self sacrifice and suicidal thoughts didn’t disappear.

we don’t actually know what went down during his days in the ember arena. personally, i would be more than fine if he chooses not to tell us the full details. i just hope that the game story treats him with care and we don’t have to consistently make him relive those days.

[jathun]

Hot take but Caleb is at least a little bit justified in the way he's acting in the main story. Not completely of course. He definitely takes it too far and he SHOULD have told the mc what the hell was going on in skyhaven from the get go so she could be better prepared.

But the mc is actively acting like a goddamn dumbass. She throws herself basically blind into a situation which even her supervisor says is suspicious at best and dangerous at worst AND which they know next to nothing about, with no backup and basically no plan except for a vague "infiltrate the fleet and find out what they know about the aether core". So OF COURSE she gets caught the moment she steps foot onto the place. And of course Caleb has to step in and clean up the mess before his superiors, or worse, Ever, look too much into this girl who's throwing herself headfirst into anything and everything even remotely connected to the aether core. All the while keeping up his persona as a heartless colonel so that what is likely a year's long plan to infiltrate the fleet and ever in order to destroy them from within wont go to waste - though that's more of an educated guess from going through his material and some theorising built upon said material.

Honestly the mc's foray into the N109 Zone was also bumbassery at its finest but there you could excuse it with grief making her not think things through...but with skyhaven? There's really no other explanation than idiocy.

She should know by now that everything connected to ever and the aether core is dangerous business. THEY BLEW UP HER HOUSE FOR GOODNESS SAKE! But she keeps acting with all the forethought and grace of a bull in a china shop. Or a pumpkin magus in a flower shop if you will.

At the end of the day though, since LADS is an otome game and the mc is a self-insert, there will never be any lasting consequences for her ill thought out actions. Nor will they be properly scrutinised in the same way the LIs actions will be.

So I guess I'll just sit in my little corner and grumble about the way Caleb gets misinterpreted by large swathes of the fandom as nothing but the manipulative yandere type when in truth he's still a sunflower - he's just grown in rotten soil.

[starflungwaddledee]

some rather strong first impressions were made.

required reading for the magical "voice" headcanon and another for starstruck's signature in particular. asked by @trainerbob23 !

[halfbaked00q]

Im soooo weak to when Bond is like casually being used or exploited at his expense for some ostensible Greater Good except the situation doesn't HAVE to come to that, not really, and he's so inured and even numb to it that he barely pays it any mind; meanwhile, Q absolutely minds and is very indignant on his behalf and works overtime to like either try to avert or forestall the situation before it gets to the point where Bond has to dig his own claws into more of his soft underbelly to offer up on the sacrificial alter of politics of all tawdry things, or to manufacture a way in which he does the needless "needful" so as to spare Bond at least one unnecessary additional wound upon his psyche.

bonus if Bond finds out and maybe after being angry or indignant about it - I don't need you to do my job for me, Q, this is what I'm here to do - and either Q tells him/lets slip or he deduces that like, this isn't Q thinking he can't get the job done, this is Q finding him precious and worthy of protecting, and like. he's just very in awe of that and does in fact feel very safe and cherished within the cradle of his Quartermaster's regard

[spicyvampire]

As someone who has not felt annoyance in centuries, Mark is handling it pretty well, could not be me, I'd start biting people's head off at the slightest inconvenience. Maybe that's why god won't let me be a vampire

[odo-apologist]

I was looking up information for a completely different post but Red Dwarf was inspired in part by a prison sitcom? Like, from the beginning??

The implications of this are getting to me

[skunkes]

does anyone else relate to dis btw. I keep thinking about it since someone posted it around the same time I was having this realization about myself