#IT WILL NOT GET BETTER THAN THAT THIS SEASON I FEAR

[gold-onthe-inside]

flu season

who? aaron hotchner (s7) x fem!reader summary: when you catch the same bug that's been going round at jack's school, your favourite person returns the favour to take care of you. content warnings: sickness obv, lots of praise (smart/best girl) word count: 0.8k a/n: wrote this for my best girl @minswriting to help her feel better <3 love you bby ; listened to flu season by koffer

You don’t fall sick that often — your record had been 6 sick days last year — but flu season gets to everyone, especially when you spent the better half of a week taking care of a 10 year old with your boyfriend while he was working on a case. You’d felt the odd tickle of a sneeze but nothing more, and Aaron had shown his gratitude in more ways than one. You didn’t mind, you never minded. Just like Aaron, Jack had made a home for himself in your heart, complete with a pillow fort and all.

Except come Tuesday, you’ve got the same bug he did, waking up much later than you normally did, your whole body aching and sore and your head woozy. There’s no choice, you have to call in sick - for fear you might pass out behind the wheel. You wouldn’t have called him if there was another choice either, but it’s just your luck that you’re out of any medication that might help — no painkillers, no cold syrup, nothing.

He can hear it in your voice, the frail hoarseness to it, the stuffy nose that means your voice is a little more nasally than usual. It’s a no-brainer; he tells Rossi to hold down the fort for a day, to which he receives a knowing smirk, and then he’s out of the office, stopping only at a general store in your neighbourhood to pick up everything you need. He splurges on the hypoallergenic eucalyptus tissues, the softest ones he can find, and strawberry cold syrup because he’d be a lousy profiler to not remember your favourite flavour. The next stop is groceries — chicken, eggs, and vegetables, seeing as you wouldn’t go shopping until Thursday — and then he’s at your apartment, sliding the key you’d given him for emergencies into the door.

You look, and feel, like death warmed up, all laid up on the couch with your red-tinged nose and pale skin, tissues scattered around you. “Hey, honey, how are you feeling?” he asked, instantly making a beeline to kneel at your side. He doesn’t even take off his dress shoes first.

“M sorry,” you managed, reaching out for his handsome face, which he covers with his own large palm, kissing the inside of your wrist.

“You have nothing to be sorry about,” he murmured, closing his hand over your hand and frowning with concern. “You do seem a little warm, though. You check your temperature?”

“Mhm, was 100 degrees this morning. Figured I should stay warm.”

“Smart girl,” he praised, pressing his lips to your temple. “Food?”

“Toast and orange juice,” you said, looking at him as he stroked your hair. “Were you very busy?”

“Never too busy to take care of my best girl,” he replied. “Let’s get some medication in you and then you need to rest, okay?”

You nodded, uncaring of how childish you felt yourself being. Not when he was so caring. He measured out the exact dose of cold syrup for you, had you follow it with a painkiller to help with the body ache, praising you the whole time. “Stay with me?” you asked in your sleepy voice, and he can’t say no. You shift to make space for him on the couch, laying your head on his lap, drifting off to his hand stroking your hair.

You stirred a couple hours later, rubbing your eyes groggily as you try to make sense of everything. Aaron’s suit jacket hung on the back of a chair, and the curtains had been drawn to help you sleep better, and you feel too hot in your hoodie and blanket. You pulled off the hoodie, leaving it beside you just as Aaron walked over, carefully holding a tray with bowl of chicken soup.

“This is officially too much,” you said, your voice a little stronger than it had been when he’d come through the door.

“It’s not nearly enough,” he said firmly. “Go on, sit properly.” He waits until you oblige, his look firm, but a fondness in his eyes as you crossed your legs, leaving him plenty of space to sit beside you. He pressed the back of his hand to your forehead, drifting down to check your neck. “Not as warm as before, but you can do better,” he said and you pursed your lips at him.

“You may be a boss at work, but you don’t boss me around here, understood?” you told him, threatening him with your spoon and he tried not to laugh.

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, sinking back into the couch while you return your attention to the soup, his hand rubbing your back. “Anything else I can do for you?” he asked, and you know he’s being genuine, because there’s nothing he loves more than being of service.

“You’re here,” you said softly. “That’s enough.” And you mean it, of course. You also make him watch Moulin Rouge, even though he hates watching movies that make you cry, and he doesn’t leave your side, spending the day in his slightly unbuttoned dress shirt and slacks, letting you use him like a large body pillow for the rest of the day.

[fangdokja]

Rivals, fanboys, and haters all agree: your fanfic is a masterpiece… in the worst way.

♡ Book. Whispers in the Dark (WITD): Subtle Devotion, Lingering Shadows.

♡ Word Count. 494

♡ Yandere! Fanboy who has dedicated his life to success, power, and the complete monopolization of your existence. Who is, by all means, an untouchable CEO, a name that inspires fear and admiration alike—except behind closed doors, he’s the most dedicated, sleep-deprived, and utterly deranged fan of you to have ever existed.

♡ Yandere! Fanboy who owns every single piece of merchandise, every illegally obtained behind-the-scenes clip, every audition tape, and an archive of interviews that not even your own company has access to. Who can quote your lines better than you can, analyze your performances with the depth of a seasoned scholar dissecting philosophy, and who has, in his spare time, written a multi-chapter, 500k-word slow-burn angst fic of you that is currently the number one trending fic on AO3.

♡ Yandere! Producer who absolutely loathes fanfiction. Who has spent years perfecting your brand, crafting your public persona, and micromanaging your every move only to find out that some hormonal keyboard warrior had the audacity to make you submissive in a fic. Who is two seconds away from tracking the IP addresses of these degenerates and making sure they never write a single word again.

♡ Yandere! Rival who finds it hilarious. Who screenshots the most ridiculous fics and sends them to you at 3 AM with messages like "LMAO THIS U?" Who has no shame and will absolutely read smut aloud to your face just to watch you suffer. Who, after discovering Yandere! Fanboy’s fic, has immediately made it his mission to ruin his life by reading it in the most obnoxious voice possible.

♡ Yandere! Hater who pretends he doesn’t care. Who sneers and calls it cringe but has, in reality, read every single one of them and even left anonymous comments because he needs to correct these brain-dead interpretations of your character. Who treats it like a full-time job, dissecting each fic, criticizing bad dialogue, and complaining when a writer gets your personality wrong. Who definitely had an aneurysm when he found out Yandere! Fanboy wrote the number one fic.

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General TAG LIST of “Whispers In The Dark”: @keisocool , @elvabeth , @elloredef , @mjsjshhd , @lem-hhn , @yuki-istired , @lilyalone , @starryperson , @yandreams-storageblog , @tiffyisme3760 , @songbirdgardensworld , @yune1337

❤︎ Fang Dokja's Books.

♡ Book 1. A Heart Devoured (AHD): A Dark Yandere Anthology ♡ Book 2. Forbidden Fruits (FF): Intimate Obsessions, Unhinged Desires. ♡ Book 3. World Ablaze (WA) : For You, I'd Burn the World. ♡ Book 4 [you are here]. Whispers in the Dark (WITD): Subtle Devotion, Lingering Shadows. ♡ Book 5. Ink & Insight (I&I): From Dead Dove to Daydreams. ♡ Library MASTERPOST 1. The Librarian’s Ledger: A Map to The Library of Forbidden Texts.

♡ Disclaimer. Not all stories are included in the masterpost due to Tumblr’s link limitations. However, most long-form stories can be found here. If you're searching for a specific yandere or theme, this guide will help you navigate The Library of Forbidden Texts. Proceed with caution—these tales explore obsession, madness, and devotion in their rawest forms.

[tvckerwash]

I reblogged this already but I'm reblogging it again because during my rewatch yesterday I realized jayce being the leader of piltover was in fact a plan mel set in motion starting all the way back in episode 4 of season one:

2/3rds of season one was spent on this plot line, that's not something that happens only for it to go nowhere. it was painfully clear that it was always the plan for jayce to be piltover’s figure head. he IS the golden boy, the man of progress, the defender of tomorrow, as you say, but the writers of season two decided to ignore that for whatever reason—which really sucks! his role as piltover’s hero/propagandic figure who just so happened to be a scientist was always a very underutilized aspect of his league lore imo, which does unfortunately make sense because iirc he was designed to be a foil to viktor first—who existed as a standalone character before jayce was around—and everything else was second. season one worked so hard to build him up as a character outside of that relationship, and season two threw him straight back into the hole they had dug him out of. to fuck something that practically writes itself up so badly is just....ugh. the cognitive disconnect from the story as it was written necessary to achieve that is sort of impressive in way.

re: jayce's recklessness, I would like to point out that most of his really reckless actions are things he's talked into doing by someone else. mel is the one who made him blurt out the truth of his work at his trial, viktor is the one who talked him into breaking into heimerdinger's office, marcus (unintentionally) gave him the idea to set up the barricade on the bridge, ambessa and mel are the ones who (highkey and lowkey respectively) fear mongered him into making hextech weapons, vi is the one who talked him into the shimmer raid, etc.

caitlyn's story in season one was about finding out the truth: the truth about silco, the truth about zaun, the truth about piltover. she was your average sheltered rich girl whose parents wanted to keep her from seeing the real world in order to protect her. she despises the power her family name holds, she despises that she has to question whether any of her achievements are due to her own merit or her parents buying them for her, and yet she still constantly uses the name she hates to get her way and do whatever she wants (and jayce’s name! she used his new position as a councilor to get vi released from prison without his knowledge! and she used it to convince ekko to let her take gemstone back to piltover!)

her arc in season two should've been about her having to confront her name and legacy as the new head of house kiramman, and her recognizing that she's been doing the exact same thing her parents did. her doing so was probably going to be portrayed as though it was justified because she's using it for good because that's what riot set up—which I'm fine with because I never expected them to address her privilege much more than they already did in season one because that's just how they treat their lore.

but making someone as kind as cait, a dictator who gassed people was totally unnecessary and insultingly out of character, for her AND jayce. even if they were blinded by rage, I refuse to accept that these two characters—who are fundamentally good people that care very deeply about doing the right thing and making things better—would go to such lengths:

+

side note: I kind of doubt jayce would've made caitlyn sheriff at the beginning of season two considering his reaction to her being caught in jinx’s attack in act two, and especially not after she was kidnapped in act three. it's not impossible of course, but I think it'd make sense for it to happen later in the season after things have calmed down some, or it could've made a really good finale for her too ngl.

The thing that bugs me most about Caitlyn's arc is how obviously she was forced into the position Jayce had been set up to fill.

Jayce was the de facto head of the council that Sheriff Marcus (keep that in mind) reported directly to for city security.

He was the Golden Boy, Man of Progress, beloved by everyone in Piltover for the invention of Hextech! Charismatic! Handsome!

They didn't NEED martial law. After Jayce emerged unscathed from the terrorist attack, most of the council dead, Piltover would have been falling over itself to give him sole authority regardless of him wanting to quit the council right before the attack.

And Jayce should have been beside himself with rage! Jinx turned his invention, his dream, into a weapon that nearly killed him and the two people he loves most! Mel and Viktor, at the same time! She ruined his peace deal! (And killed Silco, but for some reason Cait and Vi never tell anyone about that)

But nope. He's just sad, and tries to talk Caitlyn down from wanting to kill Jinx.... Like wtf!! Where did his passion go?? His recklessness? Caitlyn got it all.

Let's say he's still reeling after killing the kid in his shimmer raid and fearing the consequences of violent intervention. Fine. But then there is the attack at the memorial. Now it's bigger than Jinx, and his entire city is threatened.

Picture the end of episode 1, with the council gathering in the basement after the memorial attack and it is JAYCE marching in to announce the strike team, with Caitlyn and Vi beside him, with their shiny Hextech weapons.

They didn't need to give Caitlyn political power. She could have become Sheriff under Jayce! She would have had nearly the EXACT same scenes. She doesn't get a single moment where she acts like a political leader in Act 2 anyway!

We never see her do anything the sheriff wouldn't do, which tells me this was a late change to cram all the remaining story into one season, to every character's detriment. If Caitlyn had just been following Jayce's orders until running into Vi, her flip would not have felt so jarring.

She loves Jayce as an older brother, she's grieving her mother, she and Jayce could have BOTH been manipulated by Ambessa. Let Caitlyn be at the forefront of all the awful shit she's ORDERED to do, instead of ordering it HERSELF.

By giving her ultimate authority instead, the few clipped scenes of her redemption, her "I know" and letting Jinx go free are nowhere near enough to get the audience back on her side. As evidenced by how many people hated her arc this season.

[doux-amer]

Helena thought she could go undetected if she acted kind, which is frankly patronizing and says volumes about her lack of understanding of Helly and the innies. From what I can tell, she (and Lumon?) only cared to watch the day the innies enacted their OTC plan, so she thought, "Okay, they're all fond of one another, and they have team spirit" and decided to act warm, nice, and collaborative. That must be why they like and trust Helly! Except Helly's more than that.

Helena doesn't care to think of Helly as an actual person, just a role she can slip into, and surely it can't be hard to be her because she is Helly. But Helly is headstrong, inquisitive (and demands that others question things as much as she does), and highly skeptical, and as much as she's kind, she's also quick to sarcastic retorts and teasing. You don't see that on display in season 2. She's soft and she doesn't go off snooping on her own, not caring whether or not anyone follows her. She lets Mark take the initiative on everything. Her hatred towards Lumon is absent; the only time you see her actively dissent is when she laughs over the story about Dieter—and she gets it wrong because the others are confused and a bit uncomfortable before they hesitantly join her in laughter whereas Helly would have been able to say something that would have landed with the others immediately. She doesn't get the group dynamics either. She makes a snow seal for Irving, and her "sympathy" for Irving is cruel and condescending because Helena is cruel. I think part of her wanted to shut Irving down, but she's also clueless enough to genuinely believe she would come off as kind. Gotta be gentle with poor, breakable Irving, guys.

She's incapable of understanding Irving's loss and she underestimates him. She's never been a position like he's been in. He has nothing, his entire belief system that he's been indoctrinated into since birth is a lie that has caused him profound suffering, and he found love so powerful that it transcended everything and made him willing to sacrifice everything. He doesn't have anything to lose. He sees no point in being at work anymore so that means he'll take massive risks and have no fear. She doesn't understand that because she doesn't understand love or loss.

She doesn't actually get what drove the innies to rebel and risk everything for the OTC because of that. One of the first things anyone in Helena's shoes would think when she learned she has to go back to the severed floor is how they would have to come up with a lie. She's quick to see that's necessary when it comes to the gala fiasco because she values the attendees' trust and understands how their support or lack thereof can affect Lumon, but it doesn't cross her mind for the innies until the MDR members ask one another what they saw. Did she really think they wouldn't talk about this? These are people who risked their entire existence just to get a glimpse of the outside world and learn a little about who they are. They'd be eager to talk about everything as mundane as how vast the sky is (which was one of the first comments Dylan made on the ORTBO!) and as intimate as the most minute details about their outies' lives and identities.

Helly herself is the one who got the ball rolling for the plan in the first place because of how much she rebelled. They would expect her to be candid regardless of what she found. Helena seems to forget and find incomprehensible Helly's deep-seated loathing of her and Lumon. Obviously, it's possible that Helly would be afraid of judgment and of losing her team's trust. She was broken when she found out who she was, so full of regret when she recited the break room apology in the bathroom at the gala. But Helly immediately moved into action and knew she had to get the word out there about the unjust treatment of innies. It's not just curiosity motivating her, but a desire for her life and the lives of the other severed employees to be better, for them to be treated as equals. To have freedom and agency.

Regardless of whether Helly would have told the others who she was on the outside or not (and I do believe she would have if not immediately, then very soon after), she would have wanted to destroy Lumon. She already hates Helena and was willing to hurt her and even kill her not only to escape her claustrophobic, prison-like life but also as revenge. She would want to raze Lumon to the ground even more than before after her discovery.

In that sense, I think that's why Irving was highly suspicious of Helena. Sure, there's the "night gardener" comment, but that was just a seed. If it had been Helly and that had just been a terrible lie born out of shame, he would have quickly dismissed it if she acted like Helly. But he continued to observe her and thought she wasn't acting like Helly. Everyone on the team is gung-ho about rebelling, but Helly and Irving were alike because they were driven by a type of anger that set them apart from Mark and Dylan. Mark and Dylan also felt mistreated, but they were driven by curiosity as well. They wanted to know more about themselves and their lives. For Helly and Irving, that was of interest to them too, but it wasn't the priority; they operated from a place of feeling like they had nothing to lose, which is why Helly was the one to provide the spark, the fuel for the fire, and Irving was the one to fan it into a conflagration, to inspire them by declaring, "Let's burn this place to the ground."

Helena doesn't seem to know this. She doesn't try to understand the innies because she doesn't see them as real people, as equals with their own interiority, with deep thoughts and emotions. She just chalks it up to the innies being unhappy, which is right, but it's a superficial interpretation. She doesn't dig into why or try to sympathize, and that leads her to be this weirdly placid version of Helly. One with a complete lack of fire. One who's complacent and just does enough to give a shallow impression of whom she assumes Helly is by reducing her to a handful of traits: curious and kind.

I think she vastly underestimated how important Helly is to the others and ultimately that backfires on her spectacularly. If you love someone, you know them. She's never had someone truly see her except on the severed floor because she's never had love until then and she's never been accepted for who she is and encouraged to be herself. For all her condescension towards the innies and Helly especially, she has limited, childlike knowledge of how complex a person can be and how relationships can work.

[raininyourblackeyes]

LOPAREVA/BRISSAUD HOLY FUCK WHAT WAS THAT

[weatherman667]

Part XII - Food

Something near and dear to myself as a fat guy.

And something pretty much every historian gets wrong.

Well, how do I know history better than historians?

Historians only care about what was written down.

Archeology is a better source of food. Especially since archeologists will drink the bog mead and eat the tomb cheese.

People ate - everything - they could get their hands on. This limits the food to:

What is produced locally in the area.

What is either in season, preserved, or shelf stable.

What is not too expensive.

The too expensive is pretty easy, it's whatever was written down.

Here's a great example, 1950's.

People will often talk how terrible the food was. What was their source? Cook books. But, the reason it was in a cook book was that it wasn't a common recipe. People were more likely to eat meat + veggies + starch. How do you cook the meat? 350˚ oven, 1/2hr per pound.

What happened in the 1950's was a sudden influx of new ingredients, the creation of new technology, and things that were formerly only available to the rich suddenly became cheap enough to try. This is why they had all of the outlandish recipes, as the middle classes could now try these weird, rich things.

My mother, when she was growing up, learned to cook on a wood-fired oven.

The most common form for cooking in history as the hearth. The hearth consists of a flat rock that you build a fire on. You would normally surround it by stone or masonry to keep the fire contained. You either have a smoke hole in the roof, or just let it filter through the thatch. If the hearthstone is big enough, you build the house - around - it.

The reason why a pot for cooking shares the same root as pottery is that pots were originally ceramic. Ceramic is both a good insulator, and has a high heat capacity to hold in the heat. This makes it almost perfect for cooking on an open fire, keeping the temperature even. Metal pots and dutch ovens were a sign of wealth.

So, the choices for most people were in a pot over an open fire, or on a stick over and open fire, or suspended high above the open fire so it's mostly smoke and not heat.

Proper ovens were expensive, and so only found in cities, or among wealthy individuals, like bakers.

Corn when properly processed last forever, (as long as they are kept dry). Corn is the edible seeds from grasses, like wheat, barley, and oats in England. Rice and Maize also qualify.

Roots and tubers can last a year if kept it a cold, dry, dark place.

Vegetables are a different story, and often only last a single season, (or even much shorter time), if not pickled.

Meat has an extremely short shelf-life, unless cured, (salt) and smoked, in which case it lasts for almost ever.

And worst, fire. Without modern mechanisms, creating fire was extremely difficult. It was time consuming and taxing, and even if you do have modern lighters, it can still be time consuming and taxing. So, a lot of ancient civilizations would have someone who's job is firekeeper, (Dark Souls is about the primeval fear that the fire - might - go out). So, the fire was just kept going, forever. The Vestal Virgins of Rome were literally tasked with maintained the symbolic hearth of Rome.

All of those movies where they walk in and there's a fire in the background cooking a pot is... very accurate. Pots were often left on the stove for days, if not forever. And by forever, I mean

A batch of pot-au-feu was claimed by one writer to be maintained as a perpetual stew in Perpignan from the 15th century until World War II, when it ran out of ingredients to keep the stew going due to the German occupation.

--Wikipedia

And by foodsafe, as long as it is kept at 60˚F, which is barely simmering, it's perfectly safe to do this, forever.

As for bread, wheat was the goal of all civilization, and even then, the gluten in bread was dramatically increased in the US. So, while bread was common, but nowhere near as fluffy without the gluten. If they didn't have wheat, they would make something similar to pancake, which it seems like almost every single society has something similar.

Every family would have a grain ark. You would often have a larder, where meat was covered in fat for protection, (it effectively creates an air-proof barrier). Every family had a pig, as you could feed it food scraps, which it turns into pork. Some towns would have a municipal swineherd, who's job was to gather up the pigs and take them to the woods for foraging. The Roman standard, meaning the European standard when considering woodlands for tax purposes was how many pigs they could forage. Having a milk animals was the goal of most families. A calf can be bought for a few hundred, and it takes $20-ish dollars per day to feed. And they produced like 18L of milk per day. Chickens were typically not eaten, but kept for eggs. Or you can get a rope and a bucket and climb up/down a cliff to steal them from the birds that fish there. Wild game was freely available, until lords restricted it's use. You just had to hunt it and kill it, or pay a hunter to do it for you. Everyone with a square food of land had an herb/vegetable garden.

Most rent was paid in either work or grain, and the work was often to harvest the lord's own grain. If we take Grain as a general category, then it is the most common currency in Human history. Which is why it makes so much sense for Cybertronians to use Energon.

You Want to Make a Fantasy World: Part I - Magick

The first thing you need to decide when making a fantasy world is how magick works.

That might seem heady, but let's go over what you have to decide:

Who can use magick.

How do they use magick.

And how powerful can magick get.

Do you want 9th level magick, that can rip a giant hole in the world and summon unkillable monsters?

Because, honestly, you don't need it.

Can 9th level magick only be used by decrepid old wizards with one foot in their grave? Only it be used by chosen heroes? Only be by inhuman things, like Dragons and Daemons and Liches?

Low level but common magick can have a huge effect on the setting. Being able to light a fire can allow you to save the time and effort it takes to start a fire. Heating a rock can be used to heat a home, or even a bath, giving the equivalent of modern sanitation. Hand washing, bathing, and toilets have done the most for Human longevity. Can you go to a priest, give him a penny, and have him cure your cancer?

Sure, curing cancer isn't as cool as curing sword wounds, but the medical effects it can have on longevity are staggering.

Maybe magic is something that can only be done by a minority of the population, that dedicate themselves to the study.

None of them are wrong answers, so long as they are CONSISTENT.

If magickal ability depends on your bloodline, then someone, somewhere is going to think it's a good idea to selectively breed mages to keep the magics strong. The mages might become the noble classes, they might form their own class, which they breed endogenously, like Hindus.

If only inhuman things can cast upper level magick, and you see a seemingly ordinary Human cast that kind of magick, then guess what? He's not actually an ordinary Human.

Does magick need a physical catalyst? Does it consume reagents? How rare are these reagents? Do they come in one of a few types, or is every twig of berries a reagent for a different spell? Maybe upper level spells require expensive reagents, and that's the limiting factor? Maybe these spells use too much mana, and therefore can only be done by places of power?

Does teleportation require Line of Sight? Can you open long-range portals only if you have local knowledge? Can you target places of power from a distance?

We start with the simple, coarse questions, and get to the finer ones later on. When? When you come up with a good idea for how it works? Or, honestly, when you need to use it. It's perfectly fine to wait until the characters need/want to teleport to decide how it functions.

Another way to limit spells if by giving the heroes a rare magickal item. Why can they use portals?, because they have the Staff of the Herald. Why do they have the staff of the herald?

Given by someone important.

Monster loot.

They found it in an old, abandoned building.

They earned it by accomplishing some feat, or level of training.

Again, all you have to decide is how rare the item is, and maybe if you need some sort of innate/trained ability to use it.

[hamletshoeratio]

Apparently, Eloise is a mean girl and is not a girls' girl???

[clowndensation]

it's like. louis attempted to tell this story to daniel the first time, broke down, and attacked him before he could finish it.

and then decades later he's convinced himself that it was leaving the story unresolved that's holding him back from living his life fully now. so he invites daniel back again. and louis is sitting poised and put together, confident in his ability to recite his history in a pretty, poignant, neat little narrative that will resolve all the guilt and yearning and emptiness inside of him. that if he can just tell a compelling, satisfying story, maybe it will actually be that, and not the life he lived through, with all the pitfalls of his own failures lurking inside.

and then season 1 ends with him once again being forced to confront that the story he wants to imagine and the life he actually lived aren't the same thing. the boundaries around his narrative are shredded and he's left exposed, and subsequently able to face his past for the first time since that original interview. and you think, you think, "well this is it. they've crossed the event horizon. there's no use hiding the truth anymore, not after it's come flooding out into the open like this"

and then season 2 opens. not only is it back to the original, practiced distance, we now have armand literally enforcing that distance. a man sitting at the table who's interjections must be disregarded, an intentional interruption to the flow of the story. he doesn't exist to aid or add detail, he exists to distract louis when he gets too deep in the story. the only time we do get louis allowing any deep truth to come out is when armand leaves the room.

it's like. louis wants a story that's true, and the truth is what he's convinced will leave him satisfied. armand wants a story that will satisfy louis, to the extent louis will accept it's true.

[seaweedstarshine]

“That’s a bold choice, Dalek Supreme, coming to a wedding planet dressed in white! Unless you’re here to get hitched… should I be flattered?”

“We are here to exterminate you.”

“Oh, that’s probably for the best. Not sure River would be up for a marriage à trois… not with a Dalek, at any rate.”

—Eleventh Doctor Chronicles: Victory of the Doctor

[rolandkaros]

not pitting sincaraz against each other just pointing out an objective truth that jannik was not a dominate player/potential grand slam winner last season (age 21/22) and carlos will finish this season semi-dominant and with two more grand slams (+ an olympic medal) (age 20/21). you can see how quickly a player's career can turn around within one season. so any talk about carlos being washed/playing badly sounds silly to me i can't lie. yes carlos wasn't as successful this year as last year. yes carlos wasn't as successful this year as jannik. last year jannik's highlights were throwing up in a trash can and beating djoko in davis cup (exaggerating.) so i really feel like carlos's struggles this season are slightly overinflated. we talk about "he has time he has time" let's be clear not only does he have time in his career (he is literally 21) he also has time on his closest current rival (age-wise, carlos's 2024 season is jannik's 2022 season). it will be two years before carlos is even the same age as jannik is now. so like. lets be chill here u know.

[rememberdamonn]

Well written characters have a core conflict that consists of a goal that the character wants/needs to achieve, and an obstacle that gets in the way of that goal. For Damon, that core conflict is Love vs. Fear. His goal is love - to be loved, to have love. The obstacle that gets in the way of that goal is his own fear - fear of being abandoned/betrayed/rejected, fear of not being enough, fear of letting people down, fear of losing his loved ones... in short, fear of losing love. Every majorly bad decision that Damon makes, he makes either in reaction to or in anticipation of that fear being realized. When he kills Jeremy in S2, and Aaron in S5? He does it because he’s just been abandoned and rejected by Elena/Katherine. When he hides the cure from Elena in S6? He does it because he’s afraid that if she becomes human he’ll lose her. When he feeds Elena his blood in S2? He does it because he’s afraid he’ll lose her in the sacrifice. These seeds are planted throughout the entire show. In 4x15 when Damon sires Elena to turn off her humanity (another thing he does out of fear), Stefan tells him that it was a mistake because despite Elena losing her brother, she still has Damon. Damon’s reply? “I’m not enough.”

There's a conversation that Stefan and Damon have in 7x22 that lays it all out neatly:

Stefan: You really think I did the right thing by taking Caroline against her will?

Damon: One hundred percent.

Stefan: You said that's how you know you love someone. And for a second there, I actually believed you. I thought that my love for Caroline was so strong that I would do anything to protect it. But then I realized, that's not love, Damon. That's fear. That night that you put yourself down, it wasn't because you love Elena. It was because you were afraid if you didn't, you would do something terrible, and you would lose her forever. And that fear was so powerful that it overrode any love that you felt for me, or Bonnie, or anybody else. I refuse to be ruled by fear. I refuse to be you.

In 7x10 when Damon is forced to face the truth while in the Phoenix Stone, he tells his mother, “Give me a chance to let you love me.” This is representative of Damon’s entire journey throughout the show. Damon doesn’t let people love him because he’s scared that they won’t. That’s why he tells Elena in 3x19 that he doesn’t want to have to live up to anyone’s expectations, and he tells Bonnie the same thing in 8x10 when he reads her his letter. Damon’s self sabotage and his insistence on pushing everyone away is a product of the fear of what will happen if he lets people love him - but by giving into that fear, he ensures that he’ll never get what he wants most.

In order for Damon to have a successful, satisfying ending, he has to 1) overcome his fears. He does this in 8x16 when he attempts to self-sacrifice for the right reasons, in direct contrast to his self sacrifice in 7x22 for the wrong reasons - a sacrifice he makes out of fear:

“There is a girl waiting outside for you, and if you go in there with me and get all screwed up, you're gonna have problems with her, and you're gonna blame me.” - Damon to Stefan, 7x22 (S7 is written to be a tragedy but that’s another post)

And 2) he gets the chance to let himself be loved. That’s why Delena has to be endgame. Damon finally getting a chance to let himself be loved is central to his character in a way that makes any other ending a tragedy for him.

So what about Stefan? Stefan’s goal is Choice. The same way that Damon has lost in love, Stefan has repeatedly had his choices taken from him. Katherine takes Stefan’s choice away when she compels him, bloodlust takes Stefan’s choice away when he becomes a ripper, Klaus takes Stefan’s choice away when he enslaves him. This is why Stefan is so protective of Elena’s ability to choose, and it’s also why narratively, Stefan’s worst crime is taking Damon’s choice away when he forced him to become a vampire. Morally, it’s far from the worst thing Stefan has done, but thematically it’s the misdeed that matters the most. That’s why it’s brought up again and again.

The obstacle that’s getting in the way of Stefan’s Choice is Vampirism. Whether it’s his own or someone else’s, Stefan can’t choose the life he wants to have or the person he wants to be without vampirism getting in the way. For Stefan to have a successful, satisfying ending, he has to 1) reconcile his relationship with vampirism. He does this by escaping his vampirism when he’s cured. And 2) he has to have the opportunity to choose. That’s why human Stefan is immediately on vervain, and that’s why he maintains the ability to choose to sacrifice himself even after Damon attempts to compel him in 8x16. Is it the best way to have Stefan accomplish his goal? Personally, I don’t think so. I would’ve preferred to see him accept his vampirism rather than escape it, and I would’ve preferred for him not to die. But in a finale where one brother makes a choice to sacrifice himself and the other brother gets the girl, it’s clear which has to be which for their arcs to resolve in a thematically satisfying way.

[imminent-danger-came]

Part of me, deep deep down, wonders if we still may have a scene of MK on his knees versus his friends a la 4x07

[mazojo]

Colin in his men era

[feelingtheaster99]

I finally finished the end of the last season of Teen Wolf this week, and I almost wish I didn’t because I think the Season 6A plot would’ve been a better ending

[onewordshy]

Wish I could bottle the feeling this gives me

[incognitomoustache]

Man, that one episode of Enterprise could have been really cute if it was all about Archer loving his dog and less about him being horny for T'Pol