#The seventh sense

[obscureoldguy]

THE SEVENTH SENSE

"I see dumb people.... an' they don't even know they're dumb.... an'- an'- THEY'RE EVERYWHERE!!!"

A terrifying new film from director M. Midday Shamalamaboombang

[gallifreyanhotfive]

RENEGADE TIME LORD WRAPPED

You have dematerialized in your TARDIS 3 times 🫥 this year, but only because you prefer traveling in the late 1900s and earlier 2000s.

You have traveled in 2 different TARDISes, you cheating whore 👎.

The Hostile Action Displacement System has kicked in 13 times ⚠️.

You successfully piloted your TARDIS to Heathrow Airport 0 times ✈️.

You have lost your memory 4 times 🧠.

You got stuck in 301 time loops ⏳️.

You have battled your on-again off-again situationship 134 times 🤼‍♂️.

You have collected 3 individuals from other worlds 👥 to travel with you.

You have accidentally destroyed 8 star systems 🌠.

You have meddled in the development of 87,912 different cultures 👋.

You have almost died 12,342,915 times 💀.

You have accidentally become a god 1 time 👑, which qualifies as a Class Two Intervention, so you really ought to be vaporized.

Your most traveled to planet was Earth 🌎.

You have regenerated 1 time this year 🔥, which is concerning because you also regenerated last year, and don't you think you're burning through your lives a bit quickly?

You have broken the Laws of Time 13,411,843 times 🚓. That's in the top 0.1% of Time Lords!

Your definition of a year has changed 8,541,823 times this year 🗓, making this Wrapped very difficult to complete.

[meamiki]

[reverse entry AU]

so glad the work week is over!

no more meetings!

what do you mean its only tuesday.

[thepixelatedbunny]

I feel like the difference between the VNAs and EDAs is that the

VNAs tried to be a continuation of the TV show ideas first and then somewhere along the way they realized that 'holy shit, we can do anything now' and basically became "what if doctor who was Adult™" (and it works...mostly). There's still a typical doctor who adventure happening but like it gets punctuated by the characters snorting coke or them experiencing the horrors™ every other book.

While it feels like the EDAs dgaf about the dw continuity (something something bottle universes). And since a good chunk of the writers have already written for the VNAs, the same wild shit happens. They don't take acid, but hey at least the eighth doctor is off to the torture labyrinth again for the 54th time. They tried to tone stuff back, but like some stuff breached containment and that's how we got Faction Paradox.

[netmors]

STAR WARS: Eleventh Fleet AU

Admiral Karyn Faro

While I was creating concept art of her appearance, the result was art a la a movie poster. I especially like how the cape and blaster turned out.

Maybe I’ll get to the rest of the characters later, if I’m in the mood.

Eternal Eclipse - Reckoning

[sincerelycetacea]

“White Noise.”

“But If you listen closely I swear, to God I swear, you can hear the ocean if you hold it up to your ear.”

Noiseless version:

All the references below! :D

[idkaguyorsomething]

¡Tags! ¡Explain!

[thebaldursmouthgazette]

“Teia or Viago should have been first talon not Lucanis”

Teia and Viago are the seventh and fifth talons respectively, Lucanis was the pre named first talon heir. Promoting the seventh or the fifth house to the first basically just because you think they’re neat would cause a fucking war among the crows. Sixth house, fourth house, third house and especially second house would be out for blood

Im not sure if house Dellamorte has any members other than Caterina, Lucanis and Illario. If Lucanis refused the position then house Dellamorte would probably cease to exist, because nobody is gonna give that to Illario, and the second talon would move up to the position of first talon (we literally don’t know who the second talon is at this point except that they’re probably house Balazar. That would not have been a satisfying conclusion). Lucanis would probably still have a target on his back to prevent him from changing his mind. Any other decision would lead to civil war among the crows at a time when they really cannot afford that.

[stagefoureddiediaz]

Sooooo this post by @lover-of-mine got my brain going brrrrrr over the Mitchell Mitchell Charlie Charlie ambulance of it all

Because there are also two Freddie’s tied up in this as well but it’s more than that - it’s the living/dying danger/no danger (technically) of it all.

Bear with me - I need to set it out for my brain because there’s something about the Mitchell’s dying and the Charlie’s putting Buck and Eddie in the line of fire (by this I mean both of them at the same time and not one or the other being in danger)

We have Charlie 1, who puts the both of them in danger (unintentionally) with the grenade in his leg. Up to this point Buck and Eddie have been at odds but this bonds them and we get the ‘we might end up real close’ line. This is essentially the foundation stone/ moment of their relationship.

Then, 7 episodes later we have Mitchell 1, who gets crushed by a car and dies. Neither Buck or Eddie are in any danger during this call. And we have the establishing of Bucks method statement - ‘you don’t find it you make it. (Which imo is the first time we see buck misunderstanding the assignment)

Then we have Charlie 2, again Buck and Eddie are both put into (again unintentional) danger when the come under gun fire. This time Eddie does get hurt but it plays into the might end up real close concept as ultimately we see the bond getting even tighter through the will.

Then guess what 7 episodes later (you can’t tell me this isn’t intentional at this point) we meet Mitchell 2, who like Mitchell 1 dies. Whilst Buck and Eddie can be seen to be in danger throughout this episode, in reality neither of them are truly in danger - killing them wont get Mitchell what he wants, so even though we are held in suspense through the episode, the reality is that they’re ‘safe’.

There is something about how a Charlie binding them ever closer together while Mitchell’s are a omen - they foreshadow events later in their respective seasons.

Mitchell 1 gets crushed by his car, foreshadowing Bucks crush injury at end of season (and the hand holding parallel is not lost on me either - Thomas holding Mitchell’s hand and Eddie being the one holding Bucks).

Mitchell 2 is Eddie’s foreshadowing - he blows out his brains to protect his heart so it can be transplanted into his son. This is foreshadowing Eddie’s mental health breakdown - he neglects brain in trying to protect his son - his heart - Mitchell’s heart is a literal one and a metaphorical one while Eddie’s is more just metaphorical.

Then there are the two Freddie’s - Freddie Costas sets of bomb that crushes buck and Freddie Vaughn is the guard who is lax with Mitchell and ends up injured at the initiation of the prison riot.

And now we have two Thomas/Tommys - both who seem to be there to direct Buck to the correct path in some way - Thomas set buck on the path of you make it and it feels to me a bit like Tommy is going to play a part in either reenforcing that concept for Buck (correcting his path) or building onto the idea of making something.

Basically we need to be on the look out for Charlie’s Mitchell’s Freddie’s

[lilithofpenandbook]

au where when a Death Eater is killed, they can actually not die, on one condition:

Their heart must be pure.

This doesn't mean they never ever did anything wrong. That's impossible if you're human. No, this means that whatever they've done, it's for a selfless reason. That whatever bad they've done for selfish reasons, they've fully regretted, repented, and set out for redemption. That in their heart of hearts, they are no true Death Eater, because true Death Eater have no compassion, or selfless love. Selfless Love is a pure thing, and if that exists in the heart, then they may survive being killed.

And there's another thing: they return to the physical state they were in before taking the Dark Mark. It's all effectively "wiped clean", as it were. Of course, the actions remain, as do the mental scars, but the physical body is now back to when it was still pure of this evil as a little nod to the purity of their heart.

During the second war, then, there are a few Death Eaters who do not die. But only the fewest:

The most famous example? Severus Snape, who is all but a mere child, barely touching adulthood. Who's small and underweight, whose body is still riddled with scars from the Good Guys. Who's so young it's frightening to think he became a death eater at this age because there's something so broken and fragile about him. How did he manage to survive through that?

And then... And then there's Bellatrix. Bellatrix Black.

Who... Who's a literal child.

[sesamenom]

Farther down the French coast, a shipwright rose among the ashes of his domain, star-forged spear in hand, swan-helm set with pearls and silver mantle woven on the looms of Melian in Doriath of old. Before him an ancient dragon landed heavy among the wood-ash and twisted steel, clad all in golden scales and wings wrought of dark Shadow. Starlight filtered through the fog of Shadow, bathing the white sand in faint light just as it had Ages ago at Lake Cuivienen.

Cirdan's first appearance in the Maglorath, featuring a demonstration of appropriate eye protection when battling a certain hypnotic dragon.

version without sunglasses

[rustedgate]

you ever have like. a nit pick. an "if i were the art director" type thing? like its not a huge deal, nothing to gripe about, its just. i wouldn't have done that and it would be Better.

anyway. mine is that they shouldn't have added those day lamps in Remake. you're telling me the mega corporation that's destroying the planet for money is willingly spending who knows how much money/energy/resources to light the under plate, a group of people they couldn't give less of a shit about?

Can you imagine if it was dark all the time, that oppressive nature of the plate being there, always. and the only light came from the people themselves, things they built? or the few areas by the edges of the plate? the very tangible metaphor of being under Shinra's boot?

Aerith's house and the church being some of the few places in OG with actual light carried heavy symbolism, her desire for freedom, her hope, how in an almost literal sense she was a light in the dark. And it's a little sad to see that stripped away.

[gallifreyanhotfive]

[snap-my-kneecaps]

Been desperately searching for any Kallus merch for weeks to absolutely no avail

There is no way that he has no official or fan made merch 😭😭

[vamprisms]

if your lesbian friends like your man you know he's a keeper

[compacflt]

I just wanted to say as someone who has stumbled across your blog and has read your Wednesday wips and posts about anything topgun related that your thought process and consideration of mav and ice, specifically their political beliefs and relationships with their own identities, is honestly so impressive and cool. You have brought such realism and life to these characters which is just so refreshing to see. idk i just wanted to express how cool and awesome i think that is

Because of the thought into these characters does it make it difficult to like them or understand them if you have differing opinions from them? for me personally i feel like if i were to ever actually have a convo with ice or mav regarding identity politics i would actually start to lose my mind (like how one feels when your dad or fun uncle talks for too long at thanksgiving dinner). If it does make them difficult to like, does that make it difficult for you to write them sometimes?

oh yeah! i think, my ice i really empathize with & really love & really could get along with, once he grows out of the sexism of his teens & twenties, but my maverick drives me crazy. someone sent in an ask a while ago that was like “WHY is cyclone simpson your one true love??” And it’s because i too would absolutely hate maverick & hate working with him lol. people who are overly cocky & un-self-aware & a bit self-centered make me CRAZY. (narrator voice: compacflt is a hypocrite as all these things also apply to compacflt.)

Politically… It’s difficult to say. no one really wants to hear the intricacies of one person’s political journey, which is why i won’t give you mine, but suffice to say—since the start of the russian invasion of Ukraine, and my semi-concerted effort to learn more about the political landscape of modern warfare, my own personal beliefs have shifted a whole bunch. definitely aided in that shift by my top gun fic project that specifically aims to understand the conservative straight-passing male mindset as it relates to military matters… there are many end goals to a project like mine, but one end product is a filter you can take away and hold up in front of your eyes and see the world through it. When writing from the eyes of a conservative straight (passing) white man, your priorities totally shift. I had to write from the perspective of someone who doesn’t care about identity politics. Because they don’t! A core tenet of conservatism is very proudly not caring about that stuff, and being very annoyed when people (usually left-of-centers) make that stuff very visible and want you to care about it! “Don’t shove it in my face,” etc., etc. Don’t force me to care about this taboo, private thing I really don’t care about. It violates my freedoms, or whatever, to be forced to care—or even bear witness to—stuff that i don’t care about. Etc. And then, to be nominally a part of that community that you really, really don’t care about, and then to be told that you have to care about it because of your publicity… people asking you to be proud of something that has had a negative connotation for much of your entire life… that’s not a transformation that happens easily.

Jesus, I could write an essay about this. I have, several times by now in responses to asks over my blog. But there is so much that I could talk about. I think… I really worry that some of my writing falls into the first of the below categories:

I really try not to romanticize conservatism in my writing—I tried to show that ice and mav’s happiness is the price they pay for their conservatism. They’re actively choosing to be unhappy—but because they prioritize their honor over everything, due to EXTERNAL PRESSURES they cannot control, and which I think are often ignored in the fandom space for one reason or another. The fact of the matter is, in 99% of IPs, characters prioritize something other than their sexualities. It’s never Maverick’s personal identity that is at stake in either Top Gun or Top Gun: Maverick, because he has built himself so impermeably masculine that there are no grounds upon which to question his personal identity. He just isn’t thinking about it. He’s thinking about how to get into Charlie’s pants, how to win the Top Gun trophy, how to uphold his promise to Goose, et cetera. If he’s fucking guys on the side, it’s because he wants to and because hes maverick and he does what he wants without thinking about it—that’s the whole point of his character, from a story-construction standpoint. That’s his archetype. He’s a renegade maverick superstar who is both thoughtlessly brilliant and thoughtlessly dangerous. He’s thoughtless. His priorities are to survive and to look cool doing it, and that’s it. He is a savant in the Naval Air Force, where honor is your lifeblood, who feels he has been dishonored by his own family name, and who willingly joined the conservative post-Vietnam Navy right when/after Ronald Reagan was elected President, and who wears cowboy boots and who disrespects women to their faces, and who is eager to get into altercations with Soviet-Chinese-DPRK-X-second-world-country-coded-but-EXPLICITLY-Soviet-manufactured-Mikoyan-Gurevich-MiG-28s(-F-5s-painted-black)… I’m sorry. In my opinion, the conservatism is baked into him as a character. I find it extremely difficult to separate him from his conservatism, because in some ways his patriotic conservatism is his raison d’etre. IMO if you take that away from him, he ceases to exist.

Same thing with Ice and his unwillingness to openly rebel or go against the grain. That is his whole reason to exist in the story at all. I know that I’m saying this in a fandom space where the whole point is to change characters & put them in different situations (fanfic) but… in kind of a perverse self aware way, as in I know I sound ridiculous and pretentious, i guess i don’t really understand an impulse to change the core tenets of a character irreparably in fanworks. We are shown that ice always goes by the books in TG. Then we are shown that he achieves the fruits of that labor (four stars) in TGM. So he is rewarded for never rebelling, whereas Maverick, who always rebels (but NEVER in a way that challenges his personal identity), has stagnated in the ranks at full-bird O-6. And that’s Ice’s character. That’s what he’s there for in the story—he’s a tool to show us the value system of rank and prestige you earn by following the rules of the Navy. Why take that away from him? That’s his priority! Canonically, that’s his priority and reason for existence! And historically the way to achieve that priority is through conservatism.

And you ask me if it’s hard to like my ice and mav. Yes, but that’s not my choice. The movie already did that for me. They are not, I’m sorry, likable people. I am not a straight white conservative male writing about straight white conservative men to validate my own beliefs—I’m a queer AFAB person of color writing about straight white conservative men because I want to understand the limits of their conservatism. What they do and do not care about, and what it takes to make them care. And from what we are shown in TG… ice and mav would not care about ME. At all. And they would not want to be forced to care about me. Ice’s casual careless dismissiveness… “the plaque for the alternates is down in the ladies’ room…” mav following Charlie into the bathroom… turning the key in the ignition and driving away while pretending not to hear her… “what?? i can’t hear you! 🙉” … they do not care. They have no desire to care.

Again. Maybe I subscribe to a very very old-school and labored and pretentious ideology when it comes to writing… I know a lot of people write just to have fun. I do not. I wish i could, but I don’t. And when you’re not writing to have fun, you don’t have to like the characters you’re writing about. They’re nothing more than tools at your disposal to get your point across more effectively. No, I don’t like them! Of course not! My ice is cruel and cowardly and careless and hypocritical and subservient and weak, and my mav is demanding and dangerous and dismissive and oblivious and so, so, so unbelievably bitter.

And that’s what my story needed, to get my point across. So, shrug. My point was my priority. I don’t care too much about the characters themselves.

Re: icemav & identity politics. Part of hopefully selling this story is the attempt at empathy for the conservative male, to bring this discussion back to the top. Why write fiction at all if you’re not going to write about people different from you, and why write about people different from you if you don’t want to understand them? So… part of trying to understand them was to understand and have empathy for this shift in priorities. Conservative guys do not want to care about labels, or sexual orientations, or, God forbid, discussion of their gender identities. I can kind of see Ice tolerating it by the end… but, there are limits. Again, it’s supposed to be private. I think he’d chafe against getting labeled gay—he wouldn’t want to be called the first gay compacflt, or SECNAV, etc. He can’t say, “i slept with like a hundred fifty women before I even MET the ONLY man ive ever slept with,” because that’s like intensely private personal information!! No one deserves that information, but people still want to call him gay, even though in his head he really is not!!!! Again—from the conservative perspective, it’s a public imposition of left-wing, overly sexualized, too-neat labels and politics onto an area of life that has typically been kept private and respectable—I don’t agree with the conservatism, but I can at least empathize with it. Pre-Maverick’s death (pre-coming to terms with it), it would’ve been shameful & embarrassing to him; but even after coming to terms with it, it’s still not something he “takes pride” in. I think he thinks of it like this—most people aren’t proud of being straight. Like, it’s weird if you are. Same thing with being proud of being white, etc. Why be excessively proud of things you have no control over? Why not take pride in your ACTIONS—for instance, his career that he has actively sacrificed so much of his pride for? I can really empathize with that thought. I don’t necessarily agree, but I get it, especially in his professional circumstances, where he has so much to be professionally proud of, and yet people keep wanting him to publicly care about this private part of him he has no control over and can’t change.

Maverick though. I think he’d be actively hostile about talking about it in public. He Does Not Care. he does not want to care. It’s all an insult. They call him the first openly gay Ace cause he’s married to another man— “okay, but, like, I’m not. Stop calling me that. Neither of us are. Oh my god we have slept with so many women. Stop calling us that.” Ok then what do you want us, the press corps, to call you? First openly bisexual Ace? “No that’s worse!! That’s a word some teenager made up and doesn’t mean anything!! I’m sixty years old stop asking me to talk about this stuff im too old.” What do you have to say to LGBT kids who want to go into the navy? “😎👍 there’s a place for you etc etc. Let’s go back to talking about all the planes I shot down.” Maverick does what he wants without thinking about it. That’s the core tenet of his character. Very conservative. Don’t ask him to care too much.

Idk. No I don’t like them. But I understand them, if that makes sense. Like their conservative anti-label logic does make emotional sense to me. So that’s part of what I took away from this project, for better or worse… probably worse: I understand why conservatives don’t like the modern over-publicity of sexuality. They don’t care and they don’t want to care. And because they are small-C conservative, my ice and mav still don’t care lol. So, yeah. It doesn’t make them hard to write, because thats why I wanted to write them in the first place.