#SEASON 5 WAS GONNA BE AMELIA CENTRIC

[flamingthespian]

Ugh now I’m thinking about infinity train again and getting really sad and depressed that there isn’t more of it

[diwatyara]

i can't believe @ameliapodcast is ending soon 😭 this podcast was a HUGE part of my teenage years, i discovered it when i was 13 and was the first ever podcast i listened to. im gonna miss all the characters, each season has its own charm to it that makes me love each episode. this season's finale was more focused on kozlowski and the agents but it still feels so... amelia.

the first two seasons will always have that whimsical and strange vibe that i love, those client-centric episodes just learning about different random people, and then cole and haines joining the picture. i love those two girlfailures so much.

then season 3 and 4, where their world was completely flipped and they were separated. i love how we explored more on the relationships of the characters, i loved the amelia and alvina bonding. this was also a little client centric with more professional people.

and then season 5, oh boy season 5. we finally learn more about the amelia project and we finally saw kozlowski!! i love the stories through time, i love seeing the title and year and pointing and going "OH I KNOW WHERE THIS IS GOING". my favourite is how pip and øysten said that actually, Sherlock Holmes WAS real and he's jack the ripper. also that arthur was watson. this will be fun to keep in mind while rereading the sherlock holmes books. i was kicking my feet giggling the moment they mentioned afghanistan.

anyway this wasn't really structured i just wanted to talk abt it bc i love it so much. the one podcast that got me to listen to other podcasts. and im pretty sure it's influenced a lot about me, from my love for cocoa and me mimicking arthur. i just want to thank the amelia team for everything, ill always remember this. it's helped me in long airsick flights and breaks after studying. im getting emotional and there's still a season left.

[rpsocsandcanonohmy]

Odd numbers for the Sam ask? Please?

1. Best sam-centric episode?

Answered here

3. Worst season of Sam?

Off the top of my head I wanna say season 8 because they bungled up the first half so badly with the “love story” between him and Amelia. I think season 9 edged it out though because the way they handled the Gadreel storyline is an absolute travesty. Sam was gaslighted by the person he trusted most and was violated in the worst way, yet he’s supposed to just be okay with it because Dean feels so sad he can’t even properly apologize -_-

5. Best and worst hair?

Answered here

7. Your take on blurry wife?

I hope she knows how lucky she is.

I’m also completely willing to believe she’s some kind of undercover agent who’s supposed to be keeping an eye on him

9. powers/boyking!Sam or witch!Sam?

Boyking!Sam all the way. I love a murdery boy

11. Meg!Sam, Lucifer!Sam or Gadreel!Sam?

Lucifer!Sam. There’s just something so...chilling about him. He’s the most obviously different version of Sam and I love all the dark implications that go along with the “consensual” possession

13. Sam & Mary or Sam & John?

Answered here

15. Dynamic that should have been explored more?

Answered here

17. Sam headcanon about the stanford era?

Sam kept an eye out for anything that looked like a hunt in the news so he could feel closer to Dean and John. Sometimes he even found time to do research for the case.

19. Favorite of Sam's canon love interests?

I’m gonna go with Jess here. I think she was good for him and I like to think he would’ve ended up telling her the truth anyway

21. What thing Sam antis say about him makes you most mad?

Any time the idea of Sam being selfish comes up in any context, especially when it’s a time that makes Dean look bad. No, Sam was not a bad person for wanting to escape the hunting life and have something resembling normalcy. No, Sam is not a bad person for being mad about being gaslighted by the person he trusted most. We can debate about what happened when Dean was in purgatory but based on literally every other selfless thing Sam has done over the course of the series, I imagine he only abandoned hunting under dire circumstances.

23. Scene/episode that makes you want to chew glass

I already talked about the Gadreel thing so I’m gonna say that one scene where Cas told Sam that Lucifer was “our” responsibility even though Sam had nothing to do with him being let out of the Cage.

Like. Cas. My dude. YOU said yes to Lucifer. YOU believed his lies. YOU let him walk around inside you while you watched netflix in the bunker. YOU were perfectly fine with everything. You don’t get to pretend to be traumatized and spread your blame to the one that actually had the balls to stare down the Devil, his worst tormentor, and tell him to fuck off.

25. Which villain obsessed with Sam is your favorite?

Answered here

27. Your take on Bobby's treatment of Sam?

I think his favoritism towards Dean was obvious even before he stated it. Even when he wasn’t being possessed by a demon he was often condescending to Sam and a lot of his gendered insults were directed toward him.

Of course, my biggest issue is with Dean doing nothing to stop this but yeah Bobby was a dick and it taints his character a bit for me.

29. Your thoughts on Sam and demon blood?

I wish his addiction had been addressed more in the later seasons. It seems like he just wasn’t affected by it at all after the apocalypse where it should’ve come up at least as a background detail. The fact that demon!Dean didn’t even attempt to feed Sam his blood is a crime.

[ravencromwell]

. He’d just finished a conference with the Minister of Australia and was slipping back into the bedroom to shuck his robes of office when she pinned him to the wall and unfastened them just enough to slip her hand inside and wrap it around his cock. Then she was sliding, dropping to the floor, burrowing in amongst the heavy folds of fabric and taking him into her mouth, hot and tight and all the way down, and his voice gurgled in his throat as his hand fisted in her hair. She was voracious, insistent; filling the air with the sounds of suck and slap, and the blood was rushing away from his brain and filling his mind with fog. He was pulling her hair, tearing her away from him and letting her fill her lungs, then plunging back in and she looked wet, hungry, filthy, beautiful.

So all of featherxquill's writing is profoundly gorgeous--I watched 5 seasons of what turned out to be a magnificent Brit police procedural solely on the fact I'd get to devour more of it. But her HP stuff carved out a place to permanently lodge right up there with classic lit, and I have such intense adoration for her Rufus and Amelia--I came of fandom age wanting to write Rufus and Amelia with the same skill she displayed and she's still one of the highest bars for me on those two--it's difficult to articulate properly. And of all her portraits of my two beloved Aurors, this one lodges closest to my heart. Maybe because it was my first exposure to her writing, discovered in a desperate troll for Rufus fic, this minor-character hardass who screamed of my beloved Winston Churchill and who fandom largely seemed to view somewhere between indifference and disdain. Or maybe because: look y'all. I have feelings about Rita Skeeter and every last one of 'em is down to Feather, and they started with this unholy gorgeous piece. But honestly? I think it's the juxtaposition of so many things I love. That atmosphere of the beginning of the war, when everyone knew it was grim but not how grim it'd get and the Ministry was girding for a battle that must've chilled their blood after the first go-round. The incisively sharp commentary on politics, and the way women's ambition so often! gets caught in the cogs of it, sacrificed on the altar of men's. But more than that, the way this piece says yeah, that's often what happens and I'm gonna paint the reality, but I'm also going to consciously have two people strong enough to subvert it a little, with one of the best! origins for Rita's book career in fandom. The way it's as much a portrait of Rita, seen through Rufus's eyes, as it is of Rufus himself. A Rita who has every one of her canon flaws, but is also deeper, richer, the architect of her own story. And it's, too, a portrait of a marriage: the way two such sharp-edged people need to constantly work to fit their jagged edges together, but try anyway; the way their ambitions alternate, at once clashing and complimenting, and the depthless affection that ties it all together.

And the world-building, so much exquisite invention of what a transition in power looks like in the wizarding World. So many astounding dynamics that make up this vibrant culture; the ferocious competition between the wireless and the Prophet; the rock-solid friendship between Gawain Robards and Rufus, expressed more with gestures of affection than words, as you'd expect between two such veterans--Rufus would never admit the friendship is integral to his time as Minister, but its integralness shines through, nonetheless.

Rufus's pov here is an unadulterated triumph, and I can't imagine how many hours Feather reviewed HBP, turning the terse sentences of his dialogue into a pov that replicated it, and yet said so much through inference and the moments when he let his inner facades falter. It's one of the three or four Rufus fics I've come across that feel entirely authentic in sentence construction and word choice to his canon portraiture and that also add about ten million layers. tobermoriansass, this'd be somewhere near the top of that heavily Rufus-centric HP reclist I keep promising you.

And then of course, as I highlighted, there's the smut. Sex that's as revealing as any portion of dialogue, shameless and celebratory and, to crib some words from my chosen excerpt: filthy and beautiful.

[thesummonerofaskr]

Rant under the cut

Honestly I’m getting angry at this game more and more. I want to like it. I know it’s better then most games in the genre. But they’ve gone from what made them so popular, showing kindness and respect to their fans, and have now started to hit that downfall in all gacha games. The shameless, unabashed greed. They know that there’s plenty of people willing to buy orbs searching for these characters and so they’re gonna release the banners as close to one another as possible, straining people’s wallets because god forbid you try to be a free-to-play player. And I’m not personally F2P, I can’t claim to be, but I’m also not a billionaire who can throw away four digits in cash and shrug it off. If I’m really desperate, it’s three digits at most and then I end up reminding myself that I am absolutely stupid for doing that.

First off, Gunnthra should’ve been free. For those who got her, congratulations. For those of us who didn’t get her, we’re gonna be short not only a hero, but an elemental blessing to take advantage of during seasons where there isn’t water. And now there will be seasons without water since Gunnthra is out, meaning they can alternate between water and wind and make days where Fjorm is not as useful as she was.

Second off, Christmas should’ve been done at the beginning of the month. It is absolutely unfair and improper that those of us who had been waiting for it only had two weeks to get the units we wanted when previous seasonal banners lasted for the entire month, giving us ample opportunity to get units that might never come back. Or is the idea now a Legendary Banner every month and alternating them in and out? Which by the way-

Thirdly, Legendary Banners feel like a scam. When you really think about it, 8% still isn’t that high. People waste three numbers in orbs upon them and sometimes only get two or three 5*s while expecting ten or above. It also doesn’t help that the Legendary Hero is often packed with other heroes that you don’t want. For instance, I wanted Gunnthra, but ended up with Amelia. And while Amelia is thankfully an amazing unit, she isn’t what I wanted and thus I am bitter. Still better then when I went for Fjorm and got Spring Xander. I didn’t even contemplate giving anyone a Carrot Lance+, I just sent him straight home. In hind-sight, that was probably a bad idea.

Fourth, the New Year’s banner will fall on a day that makes it three seasonal banners at once! Sure Christmas will be on its way out and so too will the Legendary Banner, but in that moment you’ll find yourself agonizing over who to get. Should I try to get these broken armored units, move for the seemingly better pull rates, or instead go for the meme and get the Prince of WHY ARE YOU BUYING CLOTHES AT THE SOUP STORE?! It’s absolutely ridiculous!

Fifth, though not as big an issue from the marketing standpoint, is that it is absolutely insulting that the Hoshidan banner got crashed by a Nohrian character. Here we were hoping that the banner would only feature Hoshidan characters and give Ryoma, Hinoka, and Takumi a chance to shine with alternates as well. But only two out of four characters were right, those being Takumi and M!Corrin, who also deserved a chance to be fair. But did we really need a third Azura? At least she’s associated heavily with Hoshido. Did we really need a third Camilla?! Did we really need a third alternate of that psychotic obsessive brother-complex wielding big tittied bimbo?! Sorry, saw red there... I actually like Camilla as a character, but it’s shit like this that will make you hate a character, hate an entire theme. IntSys has jerked off Nohr throughout the seasonal banners. Spring had Nohr units, the Bride banner had Charlotte, Nohrian Summer was a thing, the Performing Arts banner featured Azura dressed in her gown from Conquest’s cutscene and Shigure dressed in similarly dark colors, and even the Halloween banner with Sakura still forced her to share it with Jakob. Why is the one fucking Hoshidan-centric banner being forced to share with Nohr?!

All of this is combining more and more into the massive salt mine that was Ayra being on a Tempest Trial banner, Rhajat being on a Voting Gauntlet banner, the Voting Gauntlets in general, and the continuous and unashamed power creep that has been plaguing this game ever since. And I know they’re trying, they’re not completely silent on the matter, but it’s still... still irritating nonetheless.