#Or love quadrangles? LMAO

[sinfulpatata]

the one that got away

"i write the regrets of our love on burning paper and send its ashes to your new lover."

: au where lwj gets betrothed to nmj post-burning of cloud recesses for political reasons. Cue unrealized wangxian AND nielan 🤩😍

wonderful threadfic available on twitter by happyyycaat! 😍

[robot-singularity]

Okay me and a friend I'm showing the series to just got to s2e5 and fun juxtaposition I wish I had the images for

Louis, talking about Lestat taking a little drink from him and "the feelings of intimacy it awoke in him": hey Daniel, do you remember the best you ever had?

Louis and Armand both taking a little drink from Daniel in 70s San Francisco:

[ectogeo-rebubbles]

Like, how did Sloan make such a convincing hologram of Sisko in Inquisition if he hadn’t already presented the same case about Julian being a possible Dominion sleeper agent to the real Sisko? And how did Sloan manage to kidnap Julian from the station so easily? Really makes you think… 🧐

(I don’t actually think Sloansko plausibly happened but this is how I would spin things to make it happen in a fic.)

@walkingstackofbooks i need to tell you I am obsessed with Sloansko as a ship name 😂 also yes: Sloansko revolution NOW

[ckret2]

did u know you come up on google searches for ford pines

Oh yeah, I come up in like a dozen different gravity falls-related searches LMAO.

For some reason, and I don't know how, my blog is just HELLA search engine optimized completely by accident. Google loves my blog. I'm within the first 20 image results for "Bill Cipher." I'm within the first 10 image results for "human Bill Cipher," "quantum destabilizer," and "Will Cipher," and I'm three of the first five results for "Exwhylia." I'm within the first page of search results (i.e. before it starts loading more results) for "Stanford Pines," "baby Bill," "quadrangle of qonfusion," "the axolotl gravity falls"—and these are just ones I know about because I've done searches for them and gone "goddamn, there I am again."

It's baffling. But hey, free advertising.

[becauseimanicequeen]

Pride Month Watch: Light On Me

I'm currently going through my Pride Month Watch List.

Light on Me hasn't been on my radar very long, but I've heard about it from various sources recently, so I figured I would watch it this month. I don't know anything about it, but I've heard it's good. So, let's dive in!

I'm about halfway through the first episode and realized one of the actors has one of the main roles in Black Knight (a dystopian k-drama, which I enjoyed when I watched it last year).

So, the first episode is over, and I feel like Shinwoo (the guy who was against Taekyung joining the student council) is Taekyung's first love. Or, perhaps I've seen too many enemies-to-lovers stories and this trope might just be messing with my head...

I'm near the end of episode 2 and must say that Daon is really sweet. He's my favorite character at this point. I get the feeling that he might remember Taekyung for other reasons than just having a good memory. But, please don't tell me we're getting a love triangle...

I love that the moody brooder Shinwoo wears dark (black/gray) clothes every time I've seen him so far.

Namgoong is ridiculous, so I love him (obviously).

Oh, lord. The date in episode 3 is so awkward. But I love how completely honest Taekyung is, he just says what's on his mind.

I have a feeling that Daon being nice to everyone will become a bigger problem in the coming episodes.

I’ve just started episode 4, and I’ve decided that every time Shinwoo says he doesn’t like Taekyung from now on, he’s actually saying that he likes Taekyung.

This is starting to look like a love... what's the next thing after a triangle? Love square? Love quadrangle? Well, you get the point, it's a mess, lol.

I’m on episode 8 and the girl (whom I can never remember the name of, lol) is using Daon being nice to everyone against Taekyung to say that he’s not anyone special to Daon. And, at the same time, Shinwoo is stepping up his own game to get closer to Taekyung, which Daon is seeing. This is getting delicious.

I'm halfway into episode 9 and this series is starting to lose points from me. Honestly, the BL screenwriters who write female characters to be the wedge between the queer boys who like each other, just because she likes one of them too, need to develop their repertoire...

This is obviously a me-problem because I know that Korea is a very different country than where I'm from (I'm from northern Europe, btw) and their view of girls/women is very different from where I was born and raised. But I can't help but get annoyed at it.

Sohee (yes, I remember her name now) is so stereotypically written and boring at this point. Hopefully, it will change in an episode or two. Hopefully, Daon will be upfront with her that he has zero interest in her so she humbly backs off. His dilly-dallying with her isn't exactly helping either.

Anyway...

Thank every higher power Namgoong is here to be ridiculous. I love him so much. So, whatever points this series is losing because of Sohee (and Daon not telling her what's up), Namgoong makes up for it. And Shinwoo's longing stares at Taekyung. I love those too.

So, Shinwoo's way to get closer to Taekyung was to physically bump into him?

No wonder Taekyung ignored him, lmao!

Daon taking off the bracelet he got from Taekyung physically hurt me. It's understandable considering the conversation that led up to it (and that conversation in itself was annoying to watch even though it felt more than realistic). It still hurt me. And that Taekyung noticed Daon wasn't wearing the bracelet anymore hurt me too.

I'm nearing the end of the 10th episode and Taekyung feel like he has been rejected by Daon because of the bracelet, Daon's reaction when the dudes interrupted them, and Daon not being able to find the words to say anything. Then they showed that Daon has one of those tubes you store papers in (commonly used by architects and artists), where he (most likely) has a drawing of Taekyung (which Taekyung asked for in a previous episode).

Daon clearly likes Taekyung. I get the feeling that he's holding back because of what those two dudes said to him earlier. There could be something more behind it as well. The family is often a reason, but they haven't been mentioned all that much (just that they practically ignore Daon).

Namgoong just stood up to Sohee for Daon and Taekyung, and I love him even more than I did before.

I'm on episode 11 and it seems like the family might be another reason Daon holds back and that potential rumors could hurt their reputation or status. I hope this doesn't turn into one of those stories where the parents transfer him to another school just because of rumors...

This is getting really painful to watch. Painful for the characters, I mean (because I love the pain it's giving me, lol).

I'm glad that at least Taekyung has someone there for him when he's falling apart.

I hope Daon has someone to be there for him too. I'm sure the other three (Shinwoo, Namgoong, and Taekyung) will stand up for him against the idiots at school, but he seemed so lonely at home. It breaks my heart.

I love how Shinwoo took on the role of Daon's friend and then Taekyung's friend to share the different perspectives on what happened so that Taekyung could understand things from Daon's perspective but also feel like he had Shinwoo in his corner. I love friends like this.

I've got so much respect for Shinwoo after his conversation with Daon in the 12th episode. He knows that both he and Daon like Taekyung, but he doesn't take advantage of Taekyung now that he's heartbroken and vulnerable. Instead, he told Daon to stop avoiding Taekyung and to fix things with him.

I love this. It's not a competition or about who gets the boy by playing dirty tricks. It's about two long-time friends who respect each other and just want what's best for the boy they like. It's such a big contrast to the whole Sohee and Daon situation, and I fucking love it.

I love Namgoong so fucking much!

I’m at the beginning of episode 13 and I’m glad Daon got pissed at Sohee. He had every right to be considering she outed him and Taekyung to the whole school. I like the way he handled it and how he told her he never wanted to see her again. I mean, she betrayed his trust. Let’s see how long it lasts (I hope it lasts until the end of time, but that’s just me being petty as fuck when it comes to people who betray my trust, lol).

I’m glad Sohee apologized to Taekyung, as she should. That doesn’t mean I would want her as a friend, though. Taekyung is clearly not as petty as me, lol.

It’s near the end of episode 14 and Daon has practically forgiven Sohee, so that didn’t last long. But I’m glad he said they might not be able to be good friends right now.

It was a drawing of Taekyung in that tube. Too bad Daon's declaration of love comes now, though, because I feel like Taekyung is already moving on. Timing is everything.

Have I said that I love Namgoong? No? I fucking love Namgoong. He’s so sweet and funny and ridiculous that I can’t help but smile like an idiot when I see him on my screen. I love him so much.

The way I cheered for Shinwoo when he asked Taekyung at the end of episode 15 if Taekyung was going to keep him waiting… Shinwoo has waited for a long time to get closer to Taekyung.

And then the way I cheered for Daon when they showed the flashback of him kissing Taekyung’s forehead… These boys...

I have no idea how this is going to end (probably enemies to lovers since that’s so common), and I’m not really leaning more toward one rather than the other. (Normally I would be loud about poly at this point, but I don’t think these boys are ready for that.) So, let’s see what happens.

The way I laughed when Taekyung said he was thankful that Shinwoo had honest ears!

Look at these boys linking arms!

And holding hands!

I’m so happy for them!

Overall, this was a great show. I really liked the friendship between the four boys. I haven’t written anything about the teacher but I loved his role in the series. He was always so kind and gave great advice to all of them. A guiding light in the murky waters of being a young queer kid.

Obviously, my favorite character was Namgoong. He was ridiculous, funny, sweet, and an amazing friend who stood up for the people he cared about.

Seriously, I love Namgoong!

This is definitely one of the better QLs I’ve seen from Korea, and I’m happy I watched it.

[eviltiddyproductions]

Destined with You : Episode 10

that transition from past to present made me suddenly remember that Rowoon is gorgeous!

my man’s never changing her contact name from civil servant haunted house 💀

Jo Bo-ah’s eyes 😭😭😭 !!! I feel every emotion!

she’s so happy to see him ^•^

from the day this show premiered all of us knew they were going to fall for each other spell or not and yet here I am, grinning like a dumbass happy to hear it [except break up with that girl Sin-yu ENOUGH, let me enjoy this blossoming relationship minus the grey area]

that child 💀

wait for me is such a realistic thing to say except it never seems to work itself out in kdrama land 😭😭😭

as of now I guess let me just officially look away from their grey area situation so I can selfishly enjoy

look at her fingers !!!! look at how happy she is !!! her turning back every 3 seconds 🤣

break up with #that girl already! minus whatever she’s got going on with her other man, and whatever horrible thing she’s planning for my sister ; you have never looked at her with love in your eyes !!!!

lmao her side (piece man?) wore glasses and I didn’t recognise him for a second and thought she was meeting someone new 💀

lmao girl you can’t just walk away from a breakup??? stand up ???

well she just sat down…

despite everything I still have like zero empathy for her

lmao now the second male lead is here 😭 I got the flower bouquet peaceful moment for 4 seconds….

please let this be a dream sequence

oh thank god 💀🙏

everything about the office scene was awkward but the lift moment was surprisingly sweet (it was like 30 seconds of them being in proximity, my brain just accepts anything 😭)

this mother and younger coworker storyline and the two bosses coworker romance storyline are things that I support (why not!) but confuse me like sister the main plot has not started unfolding yet, can you take this stuff elsewhere 😭🙏

lmao she always has more heat for hongjo than sinyu like sister get your priorities straight 😭

naur he spat his wine 😂

wait he changed her name on his phone!!!

lmao babe you’re about to be surprised

that is an insane amount of beer bottles for one table 😭

the gloves

talk your shit sister! 💅

of course it was the second male lead lmao. just got pepper sprayed 💀

lmao second leads can never waste a single second like if you rejected the girl once, it’s over for you 😂😭 imagine your competition being someone who was engaged like he obviously didn’t think that man was going to win over him

Jang Sinyu get a grip for real bestie! she’s in an emotional and moral pickle because of you!!! 😍 she liked the other guy first and now has to wait for you but also feel all of these feelings lmao like let her chill.

my sister got into this weird love quadrangle spiritual past life mess before she could get one simple boyfriend

lmao this ‘pure’ talk might be their banter or whatever but it is totally not my vibe 💀

okay secretary Kim chair thing

and this is why you do not kiss around in your workplace

the way I do not know these office characters enough to root for them

you cannot feel any empathy for Nayeon like deadass bullied my sister into dropping out of school and now she’s scheming with someone terrifyingly creepy 😭🙏 STAAPPPP IT

not only is she conspiring to do voodoo on my sister, she’s getting her transferred as well…

get him Mr Kwon !!!

sister put up a little fight?

would it kill him to be a little honest with the one he claims to love 😍

THE HAND !!!!!

I ruined my life watching a show I cannot binge omg 😭. tell me now !!! lmao @the shot of Mr. Kwon clinging to the wall

[sssammich]

theres just something interesting about superrojas ship with the history they have with lena be it canon or fandom made and i dont doubt the fic would end in anything less than perfect if it was written by you so no rush i shall wait happily in peace im just glad ive stumbled across a well plotted fic i’ll happily accept collateral anon as my nickname btw

yeah yeah definitely!

part of the allure for me is that they really work as great foils for one another, especially when it comes to lena. but then even outside of that, they have made some questionable choices and found their ways out of it. they've both been broken, too, by their parents.

lol i've been telling some friends how i'm writing collateral is almost like how a manhwa or a kdrama would go, with a particularly odd love triangle of sorts (collateral, of course is a quadrangle).

anyway i appreciate your time and attention to it and your patience! it's one of my favorite wips so far and im always trying to fight my brain to focus on other fics i need to work on. but that one is always simmering in the background because nobody wants to get to the end of that story more than me lmao

[push-tet]

WAIT A MINUTE. I JUST REALIZED THAT HELENA IS A SHAKESPEAREAN CHARACTER

i didn't recognize her in your interpretation lmao

huh, that's what i was going for. i think i went a little🤏 overboard when i tried to abstract it too much from the original. i ended up with the exact opposite.

now comes my personal conclusions. to put it simply in the play Helena was a romantic character and her obsession with Demetrius is off the charts. Her character shows that love is sometimes blind and makes us do strange things, like giving away the whereabouts of her friend and her true lover in order to get the attention of her object of desire, which creates a love quadrangle due to Puck's incompetence. That said, Helena is willing to break gender stereotypes for the sake of love at the time of the play and has taken the initiative to get her love herself, albeit in a creepy way

Helena's conflict in my Verona is not love, but common sense. Think about it, what would you do if your best friend and friend ran away at night into the dark forest where rumor has it there is a pink-eyed monster that can grab you in the dark and drag you into its swamp? What would you do? Run with them? No, you're too weak and small to stand up for yourself, much less others. Tell Dimetrius? What would he do, go into the woods together to hurt more sims? Tell the adults what happened? THAT'S THE RIGHT THING TO DO! It was a logical decision for Helena, but Hermia saw it as a betrayal. There were no love potions. There was only the bitter realization that a seemingly strong friendship had broken down because of a misunderstanding of one another

This is where the intertwining of Helena from the play and Helena from my verona ends. i'd add some more interesting stuff, but i think there's already a lot of water in here already

[serpenteve]

LMAO court of porn and roses, i haven't read sjm but this sent me xD

i think the anon has a point tho! CW has done well with YA shows before. tvd, the 100, PLL, idk so so many ya shows that also typically followed the love triangles and various interesting cast of side characters. S and B hasn't even come close. (The 100 is a bit different maybe in the sense that it also got a fair share of adult viewers ig and it was generally less trashed on at least in the earlier seasons.)

I get that sab is a fantasy setting so might have more lore etc, but it's not a very COMPLICATED world to understand. in fact a lot of it is like this group has fire powers, this group has healing powers etc. (And they've got colour coded uniforms too!), the royal family and many citizens have no powers so they're the muggle equivalent, and the muggles are largely more dominating in this world. that's really the biggest chunk of what needs to be understood at a superficial level for the first book/season to make sense.

Additional info like the larger world can come in eventually, but things like tvd also would randomly come up with lore and audiences would just roll with it. Like ohkay now in s2 we have werewolves and also the blood of this x thing can cure vampirism and there is also some bloodline connection and hunter theory and whatnot??

Maybe it's the dumping of all the episodes in one go, but maybe it's also that sab just didn't capture non book folks as much that they'd want to make theories etc as to what's gonna happen. It just didn't create the fandom that it was supposed to. Book fans know the first one was the best one lol, and then it's the crows books that are more fun because of the heist. And non book fans didn't care all that much. And maybe this is my darklina bias but for most ya stuff you need a good romance subplot and sorry but ma*linas meadow scenes were a snoozefest for me. I couldn't care less and didn't want to sit through 10 meadow scenes. (The darklina scenes were good but those are probably done now)

You could generate enough debate or hype around character decisions and actions but the gregverse throws away all nuance in favour of making the darkling evil and where's the fun in that? So maybe have the main character face difficult choices? But it's basically alina has to do x y z to stop the evil darkling but now that she has done x y z she's gonna get punished? Was she given a choice between choosing more power vs taking more difficult paths to defeat the darkling? No she wasn't. So is there a fun love triangle where we can have folks pick a team? Nope, she has multiple love interests but one is an evil guy, the other is her childhood crush who in the show is perfect. The result is a decent ish show but not strong enough to keep pulling viewers back in.

I'm curious to see how the show fares after Season 2 because I think it will give us an idea of how many people are still invested. Are non-book fans going to tune in to another season? Will they go back and binge the first season to refresh? How will show darklina shippers deal with the darklina arc being derailed and demonized? Most of them already seem disappointed with the direction of the source material and have shied away from picking up the books as a result. Will the Mal and Alina dynamic be interesting enough to keep people rooting for them? And more deliciously, will there be a similar audience backlash if Alina loses her powers? 😈

I just don't think the source material for the original trilogy is really strong enough for non-book fans to actually enjoy. Even regular old book fans are salty about a myriad of things, let alone have much hope for how they could be adapted for the screen.

As for the love triangle, I think general audiences are getting annoyed with the overuse of the trope. Even Leigh clearly understood she played with fire by adding that Alina-Darkling-Mal-Nikolai love quadrangle because it left so much of the fandom against her canon ship that she conveniently had all the main characters of the Six of Crows franchise in safe one-to-one ships to avoid potential backlash.

[twig-tea]

Okay, Ossan's Love in a nutshell:

First there was a Japanese movie in I think 2014? I haven't been able to get my hands on it but it's apparently the same as the series, I only mention it to pile on to the ridiculousness that is this story being told AGAIN.

Then there was the first Japanese series, with the three actors who were shown during the GMMTV 2024 part 1 event film, in a love triangle. It's an office comedy in which the main character is a lovable goof who does not realize his two colleagues (one older boss, and one younger but better than him at his job coworker) are in love with him. The underlying current of the show that bothers me is that the boss' love is a joke; but also they almost get married, even though he was living with his coworker in what he didn't realize until it was too late was domestic bliss. Truly this show is crack, I have a higher tolerance for crack than some lol so I didn't mind it.

Then if I have my order right, they made a sequel series with two of the same actors but an entirely different plot: Ossan's Love: in the Sky. In this one, they work at an airport as different characters but with the same dynamic and there's more a love quadrangle. Lead guy and boss who is in love with him is the same actors as the first series. Different ending. Very strange lol I think I liked it better than the first but it was less silly and still such crack so maybe that's worse not better? Not sure. The couple I wanted to last in this series didn't, so I'm a bit biased maybe. But they took the boss' feelings more seriously this time so I liked that part.

THEN they made a film sequel to the original series, Ossan's Love: Love or Dead (lmao) back with the original three actors, in which they explored the relationship between the main guy and his coworker now that they're actually in a relationship and both aware of it. This is the one I like the best, of the lot, because it's about figuring out how to be in a relationship and communication etc rather than how to turn down your pushy boss or how to figure out what you really feel. It is still very much crack. In the Sky and Love or Dead came out really close to one another so it was even more confusing.

Then they made a remake in Hong Kong which was essentially the first series all over again; it was also fine.

And now they say they're doing a Thai remake and then another Japanese sequel?????? This is the most confusing universe.

@slayerkitty this is my best attempt to explain the "...."ness lol especially with the branded pair Earth and Mix in it, with no announcement of the third person in the triangle. It's... unnecessary, let's put it that way.

Who, exactly, wanted an Ossan's Love BL remake in 2023 from Thailand because no. No. Why? Who asked for this i just want a few words that's all. That's all. Just a few very choice words.

[jehans-flower-pot]

YOU WATCHED CXG? THOUGHTS THOUGHTS THOUGHTS

AAA YES I LOVE IT SOSOSOSO MUCH!!!

[pleuvoire]

LITERALLY NO RESPECT FOR GAY DIVORCE LOVE QUADRANGLES

[newhumantype]

this is weird but i saw your tags on an old post abt darryl and white josh from cxg "#their breakup leaves a bad fucking taste in my mouth#i could go off about cxg's lazy self-righteous and hypocritical treatment of romantic narratives#but i won't :)" and listen i would LOVE to hear

not weird at all! hope you like essay-length responses lmao.

the tl;dr is that i feel like the anti-narrative ethos driving the latter half of craxy ex-girlfriend was extremely unsuccessful and made the show kind of eat its own arm off.

"life doesn't make narrative sense" is a great message, and I do see where they were going with it and how it applies to rebecca's life. however, the problem is that, no matter how much the show switched up traditional storytelling methods, cxg began as and remained a fictional serialized television show with its own defined narrative.

take darryl and white josh's breakup. i fully believe that if people had felt as neutral about darryl x whiJo as they did about, say, heather x hector, they would've been endgame lol. but since fans shipped them and wanted them to stay together, the writers had them break up to make sure that they knew that "life doesn't make narrative sense." A really well-written and beloved romantic couple was unrealistic, but couples like heather and hector (i don't mean to pick on them because i like them fine!) and, far worse, darryl and the woman he met at the end of the show, ARE realistic specifically because they aren't fun or narratively well-developed?

the last season is even worse. they spent 17 EPISODES (some of my favorite shows barely have 17 episodes total) actively trying their hardest to entice the audience to take a "side" regarding rebecca's romantic life with the clear intention of going "psych" at the end. I can't help but feel that they must have wanted 1) people to genuinely pick a side so they could sucker punch them with their message at the end, AND/OR 2) make people feel silly for ever having picked a side previously.

that all just feels so disingenuous to me because, over the years, the show really made the connections between rebecca and each of her boyfriends seem (to varying degrees) genuine at certain times, so for them to then be like "lol isn't this whole tv show romance thing a ridiculous notion?" feels like a bit of a reductive take, you know? I really liked rebecca's boyfriends as characters, i became invested in them and their journeys. i was never invested in shipping her with any of them, but would it really be so bad if someone was? after all, they literally wrote them as genuine love interests.

plus there were just sooo many missed opportunities in that last season. I didn't particularly enjoy seeing the guys manipulated into rebecca-obsessed robots who would do anything to earn her love to serve the season arc. instead, imagine if the writers had pulled a bojack horseman and started focusing on josh and nathaniel (and other characters) moving on from her and having their own stories. what if we'd seen Josh meet/fall for his girlfriend or seen nathaniel starting out at the zoo?

Why make everything in a season be about romance when the ultimate message is that romance isn't everything? why tell us using this really silly love quadrangle plot when they could have just shown us?

and don't even get me started on greg. i want to preface this next statement with the caveat that i admittedly watched cxg years after it finished airing. by myself. and didn't discuss it with anyone. so maybe it's just me. however, from the first second greg came back in s4, i got extremely strong vibes that the writers felt he was the best romantic fit for rebecca. every scene he was in just seemed to have more weight to it, and he was the one who'd done the most to work on himself of the three guys. and there's just something so hypocritical about making such a strong point about her not picking someone only to - in my opinion - quite prominently hint at her best/most likely choice while also refusing to definitively make that choice. like if you're going to say that it was never about the individual guys but about rebecca choosing herself, don't show a preference for one of them! and if you have a preference for one because he's bettered himself/matured more than the others, be brave enough to come out and say so directly!

this comes back to the narrative thing. i believe they didn't want to take a side on her romantic life not only because they wanted to end with her choosing herself (which is a really nice message that fits well with the show overall) but also because no matter which one they picked, some fans would be happy. some group of people would have a cute, idyllic romantic story with the happy ending they'd always wanted. and that would directly go against the "life doesn't make narrative sense" ethos. because they felt that anything with a clean narrative - like a fan favorite couple being endgame - would defy this notion, they simply couldn't do it.

this is why i say they ate their own arm off. they created interesting characters and stories only to eventually unceremoniously snuff them out out or take a bizarre left turn with them rather than take them to an interesting and organic place. it really felt like the writers came to interpret "life doesn't make narrative sense" as "only the least developed and worst written narratives make sense", which made for a frustrating and ultimately unsatisfying viewing experience.

[curioussubjects]

im fine with sam coming back! sam is great, and i thought he and kara had a great thing going that could transition to a fun friendship dynamic (i actually also think lee and sam had a lot of buddy potential too lolsobs -- lee and kara need more friends). but im big ??? on whyyy did sam have to come back Like That, i mean...there was already a hook for his return without the love quadrangle of doom thing. foolishness. i suppose i can make allowances for it as a repeat of the cycle started on the daybreak flashback, but my god.

also lmao im sensing a pattern here because didn't katee also have a hand in leoben coming back for maelstrom? did these writers know of no other way to bring back men? what went on

mess

forgot to let y’all know last night i survived watching scar but only barely. why are pilots the way they are why bensmoking.jpg. very excellent kara episode though i would like to give her a hug and a blanket. highlights are her scenes with helo and the toast scene at the end. my girl!!! cares!!! so much!!! kara is love shaped yall ksdjhfklasd

bit salty about how they decided to go about framing kat and kara’s antagonism, though. kara isn’t tigh. i feel like frustrated concern would be more in line with what kat and kara’s relationship probably is rather than outright hostility. didn’t like that, especially with how if kat is starbuck’s mini-me that mark didnt hit very well at all….meh. 

alsoooo ok ok helo telling kara she’s been ~off since anders and like….WHERE. someone point me to WHERE because i didn’t hallucinate final cut, pegasus, resurrection ship, and flight of the phoenix, did i? like those episodes happened? 

lee & kara: *experience suicidal thoughts/ideation as a result of trauma from being at war for 6 months, scarcity, being refugees, oh and also surviving genocide via nuclear holocaust*

black market & scar: it’s about their love for these randos actually in addition trust me. look at this dee-related drama with this simmering guilt over an ex. no deets though. but it’s bad enough to warrant sublimation via sex worker. these are real people so real naturalism at its finest. remember sam anders? no? well take a gander at this. kara’s been totes suffering. pining away lovesick. it’s not about kara keeping her promise to rescue the resistance, no it’s about her deep love for this man she spent [checks notes] 5 days with. naturalistic sci-fi boys and girls (gn).

also scar: reilly died because he didnt conquer his fear // what about us // there is no us // [press x to doubt] // it’s the alive guys you have a problem with // starbuck didnt die despite not conquering her fear but it’s ok she has a reason to live 

speaking of: more thoughts on the quadrangle of doom under the cut.

Keep reading

[ckret2]

@horridrabbitcreature said: Ok now tell us how they breed. For educational purposes

Honestly and sincerely, I do not know how Bill's species breeds lmao.

It's a problem of aesthetics, to me. A shape in the style of Bill Cipher has a simple, clean, minimalist perimeter, with perhaps only a couple of arms and legs and (in their home dimension) an eyeball on one corner.

If you headcanon they have the traditional hole or pole anatomy like humans do, it mars their nice, simple perimeter. If you come up with some complicated way to hide the equipment—something like a cloaca—that still will probably be seen on their edge, which I don't like, and anyway I personally feel like "yeah they've got equipment (it's just perfectly hidden most of the time)" is a little goofy and the coward's way out.

You could incorporate it into their existing anatomy—make up an alien way to stuff a reproductive system into their eyeballs, for instance—but I already do SO MUCH with their eye (it's for seeing AND it's their mouth hole AND they probably hear through there) that trying to find a way to shove in a reproductive system feels like too much, so I'm not doing that.* And they don't have much visible anatomical features OUTSIDE of eyes to work with.

(* "What do you mean you're not putting their genitalia in their eyes, you just wrote a whole chapter about Bill being into weird eye stuff?" The eye stuff is Bill's fetish, not a reflection of normal shapes' sexual behavior, and all Bill's shape buddies think he's a freak for it. Glad we clarified this.)

You could invent an entirely new alien reproductive method that gets around the issue, but unless how they reproduce becomes relevant to the fic I'm writing (doubtful), that's a HUGE superfluous avenue of worldbuilding that wouldn't contribute anything but pointless complicated info.

So I don't know how they breed because right now it just doesn't matter to the story I'm telling.

Here's what I do know about their reproduction:

It requires one line and one polygon (triangle, quadrangle, pentagon, etc). (This is not without purpose; I'm all for alien reproductive methods that don't involve pairing up, but in this case for "Bill keeps accidentally paralleling the human characters' experiences" reasons it was necessary to give him a crummy mom-and-dad like Pacifica, Gideon, and Stan+Ford.) Each kind of shape (lines included) is genetically a separate sex and socially considered a separate gender.

"each shape is a separate sex" actually only goes up so far. Shapes with a ridiculously high number of sides aren't naturally occurring and are the result of selectively breeding for extra sides, and often requires mutations or inbreeding. Creating a circle is like spending several centuries selectively breeding humans for polydactyly until you have a baby with thirty fingers. By Bill's time the practice of selectively breeding for sides was scientifically discredited and effectively dead.

Similarly, "each generation your angles/sides should increase" was proven to be rubbish. It's all sex chromosomes.

I've been toying with the idea of making lines a small proportion of the population rather than 50%, to reduce how much it feels like the species is a binary "50% female (lines) and 50% male of various flavors (polygons)"; but if there's so few lines then to maintain the population there might be some kind of "a line can have multiple spouses" rule; maybe a line can legally take one spouse of each shape but NOT, say, two triangles or something; but then that's verging on "to what end am I making this so complicated? What's the point? Does it have any impact on Bill's life?" so I might just chuck that idea. (A lot of my worldbuilding is driven by "Bill's species is extinct in the wild, so justify why exploring this matters?")

Similarly, I've considered maybe making the way the species experiences romantic feelings vary between sexes—like, maybe usually only lines fall in love for some reason, or maybe if there's a town that's 10% line 10% square 10% miscellaneous and 70% triangle then newborn triangles are naturally inclined toward being ace/aro to rebalance the population numbers. Sorta inspired by like how frogs spontaneously change sexes if the pond's population is too unbalanced. The reason I'm considering this is because having Bill experience romantic feelings & falling in love at the same rate as allo humans (like, what, every few years? Constantly maybe?) is just ridiculous for a character who's a trillion years old; but if I'm gonna say "oh he only falls in love once a million years or whatever" I want a good reason that isn't just he hasn't met someone ~special~ enough; and I DON'T want the reason to be "he's ace and/or aro and could reasonably identify that way" because having Bill frigging Cipher grapple with that queer experience just does NOT excite me. Basically—as an ace/aro myself, I don't want it to be possible for ace/aro-ness to be one of the reasons Bill feels fundamentally Weird. Turns me off. So I'm toying with, maybe I could build his species in such a way that, for him, being aro-ish or ace-ish would be seen as normative & expected, rather than queer; so I could still have him only wanna date once every million years WITHOUT feeling like that's a part of his identity he needed to explore at some point. But idk futzing around with how his species experiences romance might be unnecessarily complicated when I could just, like, not point out that only dating once every million years is unusual, and most readers would just roll with it without question.

So, these are the thoughts I've had about how reproduction works in Bill's species.

Still have no idea how they fuck.

[florenzismind]

So, we know that Isabel is in next week's TCL episode, but she is also in the following week's. I don't necessarily have a problem with her, but I do have an issue with all of these ladies around Arman. What is the goal, here? I kind of gathered that Arman is a ladies' man, and Hayak even says he's given him women (maybe a business thing for the hotel...I can only hope). It almost seems like a character inconsistency. Like, is he a mobster with a good head on his shoulders and morality? Or isn't he? I know it's early in the series, but I already feel like I've been watching for two years. I have dealt with quadrangles before. It never ends well. All you get is warring fandom. I feel like there is going to be progress made between Arman and Thony within the next two weeks where they become more intricately connected, in more ways than one. But still, there are things that seem to need to be contended with.

Hi, anon! :)

I totally get where you're coming from but I'm not really worried about Isabel (or Nadia). I'll try to explain what I mean, so apologies if this gets long-winded and too elaborate lmao. (But also thank you for sending this ask because I love talking about the show!)

This meta is long, so I'll put everything under the cut in case someone's interested in my analysis of Arman and his relationships with Isabel/Nadia/Thony. <3

We know that there are two versions of Arman. I don't mean that one version of his isn't honest or real but rather that Arman had to leave his vulnerable side behind when he joined Hayak's operation. It seems like he fell in love with Isabel in his early Hayak days, where he was just considered some tool. She broke his heart (because Hayak forced her to) and he let it happen, focused on his job and making Hayak proud instead. He lost contact with his family and obviously poured his entire heart and soul into this new "family". He's incredibly loyal, which is an intricate part of Arman that is true to both versions of him (which is his best quality and his downfall at the same time *angsty chef kisses*). I don't know if Arman considers Hayak his family but I'm absolutely sure he'd still die for Hayak. We've seen week after week that Hayak doesn't see Arman as a part of his family and he will never be accepted into Hayak's family either. Arman might get more opportunities and responsibilities but that's just because he's incredibly good at his job and Hayak knows and uses that. But at the end of the day Hayak still sees Arman as a tool he can use to achieve his goals.

When it comes to the women in Arman's life, his mom, Isabel and Nadia and Thony represent different focal points (or maybe influences).

His mom obviously raised this vulnerable, loyal, incredibly attentive and (emotionally) intelligent man. He was aware of his family's struggles and wished more for his mom. I do think they had a good relationship and that definitely shaped his respect for women and his relationships with them. This is the Arman we're all drawn to (and I'm including Thony here lmao).

Then, he met Isabel and fell in love with her. She's the daughter of his boss, which, of course, made their relationship infinitely more complicated. Isabel probably got to know him in his early days, not entirely shaped by Hayak. I'm sure he did a lot to make Hayak happy because he wanted to make a good impression on the father of his love. Arman was probably softer around the edges, there was less blood on his hands and more idealism in his mind. Isabel represents the past in a way, one of the last genuine relationships he made with no direct connections to his job. But that relationship got tainted at the end because Hayak intervened to end it once and for all. No doubt, she will remind him of his more vulnerable side. But it's a double-edged sword because she will also always remind him of the fact that he will NEVER be a part of Hayak's family (and I'm sure that's her main narrative role.)

Now, there's Nadia. She's a really interesting character that isn't entirely tangible to me, yet. I think Arman likes her well enough, he obviously trusts her when it comes to business. He might even love her but I doubt he's in love with her (or ever was for that matter) and I think that applies to both of them tbh. I think they either have an open marriage or it's for business (and some pleasure on the side lmao) entirely. But the narrative makes sure to include a lot of business talks in their scenes together and I think that's important because it showcases her role in Arman's life. Her role isn't to be the romantic partner in Arman's life, she is directly tied to his "criminal life" and therefore Hayak. She represents his current life, his present in some way which is filled with work relationships that he conveniently paints as family ties even though he hasn't had a genuine relationship since Isabel broke up with him and he lost all contact with his actual family. There's a reason why Nadia specifically reminds Arman that Thony's only the help. The narrative wanted to tie Nadia to Hayak (!).

Then, there's Thony. She brings out this "old" side of Arman. The man his mother raised, the man Isabel fell in love with. She makes him vulnerable or rather he wants to be more vulnerable with (and for) her. She makes him question himself constantly because she doesn't let him get away with anything. She lashes out when she's scared and always manages to see right through him (and hurts him in the process). She's a person that values family above anything else, she's incredibly loyal to her family and I'm sure Arman is drawn to that. He aches for something like that, I think, and it's so obvious because just look at his face when Thony gives him Luca's drawing? I think Thony represents the Arman he was before he became who he is right now. But Thony isn't tied to Hayak (at least in a metaphorical sense). She's loyal to her family and cares about Arman in some way but that's about it. She represents his future: The only way Arman can actually change and grow as a person is if he rejects Hayak and chooses himself. Arman hasn't been loyal to himself and his own morals for so long and I think Thony let him realize that. And because Thony is connected to him in that way, by choosing himself, he will choose her.

I'm personally SO ready to see the episode when he will have to make a decision and choose Thony and by that automatically reject Hayak and Nadia (I could actually imagine Isabel helping Arman with Thony? It'd make sense in this narrative construct at least).

Long story, short, anon (I've been writing this for an hour now, don't mind any mistakes lmao): That's why I'm not worried about Isabel or Nadia at all. Arman's introduction, his very first scene with Thony, was without a doubt romantically coded. The writers are aware of their relationship: People like them together because we're supposed to like them together. They're written to be read romantically from the very first episode. And I'm very excited to see how their relationship will develop, however long it'll take for them to actually be canon 'in an exclusive relationship and us against the world together'- kind of way! :)