#a lot of my comparisons are me shooting the shit with people lol

[marley-manson]

WHAT IS IT about due south that makes my brain whirr like a loud laptop fan as soon as I think about any second of it

Those tags led me to thinking about Ray in the first non-pilot episode, Free Willie, being held at gunpoint while Fraser walks away because he refuses to give up the bonds a bank robber wants, telling her that he can’t forsake his duty to uphold the law so she and Ray are shit out of luck. “[A bond is] an instrument of trust between two people indicating a promise that must be honored. Much like a promise I made to uphold the law. So you see, the problem is now that I have the bonds in my hands I'm honor bound not to give them to you.” So Ray thinks he’s going to die but happily robber gets so pissed off at Fraser she tries to shoot him instead, giving Ray the chance to grab the gun. So ofc once the problem is solved Fraser proceeds to explain that it was a purposeful ruse, he wanted to enrage her, and he’d never actually let Ray die just to protect money.

Which is a perfect contrast to Vault, the early season 2 episode in which that same bank robber returns to rob another bank, inviting the overt comparison between these two episodes. In this sequel episode Fraser drags Ray into the bank vault and seals it from the inside to protect it, virtually ensuring their inevitable deaths when they either run out of air, or the thieves bust it open and shoot them. He genuinely argues that it’s their duty to protect the money with their lives. “Ray, would please just listen to me? This isn't about the loss of millions of dollars from some bank! This is about the average ordinary citizen who has placed their trust in an institution. We're here to guard that trust.” Ray, conversely, tells him the money is insured, they were off-duty anyway, it’s not worth dying for, and he’s fucked up.

The difference of course being that in between these episodes Fraser lost his shit and tried to run away with a (different) bank robber so now he’s doubling down hard on his devotion to duty and is maybe arguably passively suicidal and willing to drag Ray down with him.

But like it’s so good as a compare contrast - Ray doesn’t intrinsically trust Fraser to save him in episode one despite having already ended up in the hospital for him once, and it turns out he’s actually kind of right not to! Fraser may have been playing up his devotion to duty over his loyalty to his friends in the first episode, but as a way of establishing a very central theme that gets explored a lot more in some darker ways, it’s excellent.

Like, the pilot and ep 1 really hit this one two punch of Ray devoting himself to Fraser at the expense of everything else important to him including himself, while letting the audience question Fraser’s priorities in return. In Free Willie there’s also a sequence where Fraser gambles Ray’s job on the case without Ray’s input, leading to a scene where Ray fully believes he’s about to be fired. It works out ofc, but it really underscores the ambiguous question of Fraser’s priorities.

And in Vault Ray brings up the number of times Fraser has risked their lives without consulting him as a point of contention, and the overarching theme of the episode is feeling undervalued (Ray’s sister has a whole monologue about it too lol). But Ray is resigned to Fraser risking his life without asking: when Fraser comes up with a risky plan Ray wearily tells him to just do it without explaining first. Their conflict is resolved when Ray tells Fraser to value himself more and stand up for himself, rather than when Fraser, say, prioritizes Ray over duty. 

Basically Free Willie and Vault together are a perfect examination of Ray and Fraser’s unbalanced relationship.

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 7/18/2023

idk man i just work here

listening

not another rockstar, maisie peters. spotify

this is a little poppier than i generally prefer-- the first knee-jerk comparison i can make for the vocals is taylor swift, esp in the first verse? luckily for everyone, i was white-knuckling it down the katy freeway (26 lanes. never again) and did not have the extra concentration necessary to skip it on whatever autogenerated dance playlist spotify spat out for me. as a fellow woman with a Type, i must tip my hat to ms peters.

Hmm, funny I could pick 'em in a line up, line up Pretty certain I could do it with my eyes shut, eyes shut A little self-obsessive and I sign up, sign up Where's the pen? Where's the line?

@pasta-pardner has made a gorgeously lush electronic/indie pop cowboy playlist. my very favorite song (so far, still have it on loop) is Horsie by Twilight Circus Dub Sound System. it sounds like the opening theme to Samurai Champloo. it ripples and grooves. it lives somewhere between rock and reggae. the whole album is incredible music to hang out to.

-

reading

retractionwatch (my beloved) linked out to datacolada.org in a recent article and my ears perked up. data colada gets REAL deep into the investigative reporting of specific papers, including some fascinating excel sleuthing. they use CalcChain!!! i thought i was the only one who used CalcChain!!!

CalcChain tells Excel in which order to carry out the calculations in the spreadsheet. It tells Excel something like "First solve the formula in cell A1, then the one in A2, then B1, etc." CalcChain is short for 'calculation chain'.

one of my worst traits as a person is that i looooooooove an academic trainwreck. i love watching academia eat itself. i love watching people get caught for sloppy shit like "excel file sorted REAL weird, pointing to tampering with individual data points"

-

watching

new jennings motor sport!!! the oil change is. hough. impressively disgusting. oil does some funky shit when it's been sitting for ??? decades

-

playing

ive been playing genshi/n impact like it's my job. having a lot of thoughts about crunch, and content, and player expectations vs shareholder expectations and Line Go Up and if AAA free-to-play video games are at all ethical to play for anyone ever, but hey! look at this snarky catgirl!

also lol. lmao. this is a game for children. we are all aware of the restrictions and limitations placed upon games for children in the chinese and american markets so yeah the answer is going to be yes, every time

-

making

lately i have been going to my best friend's house after work (what an unimaginable sentence a month ago) and hanging out and watching whatever toddler shows are on tv while we shoot the shit and i knit. there's another half-repeat on the baby blanket for the baby who has just turned four months old, but it's in the car and the night is dark and full of mosquitoes.

i literally cannot do any life shit, even most doctor's appointments, until i have a real physical stable address so all i am really doing is knitting and playing genshi/n and opening and closing my email like the fridge. i have one security deposit back from the old mass apt plus one more paycheck (but, crucially, not the nearly $2k from the roach apt and we are rapidly approaching lawsuit time) so the cat and i are a little bit more stable/able to put down a security deposit on something else the minute it comes along. this would not have been possible without the incredible generosity of readers like you during that very bad first week here. thank you. i want to do some sort of thank you...stream? liveblog? series of posts about something? but i'm not sure what yet. stay tuned. tell me your thoughts. what would you like to see?

[kickassfu]

"you will never be zuko no other show will ever have a zuko" (these people have not seen king richard in galavant 🤧)

hahahaha this is a really funny/great ask to randomly get (probably not random, but it was to me lol)

that's an interesting comparison and i can see where you're coming from, but fundamentally i do think their character arcs are different and that's why people don't compare them (and also because they might also not know that character honestly lol)

but zuko is a teenager who has been abused, he was never the actual villain. he was cast out of his family and home, disfigured by his own father. he never meant to harm anyone (besides the avatar ig). but also he was def a lil shit, 'cause again, teenager lol

richard is an adult and a king, and yes there eventually are worse villains than him, but at the start he was the villain, even if he was incompetent. he wasn't "misunderstood", he literally didn't care about the people around him. he is at his heart a comedic character though. which isn't to say he was completely evil even at the start, 'cause he wasn't exactly.

they are both characters that start on the wrong side and grow from it and change, helping the heros with their journey. i will 100% give you that. and i love the comparison honestly, idk why i'm taking a fun comment and trying to dissect it but...here i am doing it. I'm sorry?

i just think it's hard to relate the two characters because zuko's storyline is very serious and somber (even though avatar can be very funny and lighthearted, and zuko can be a goof and also a comedic character with his mistakes and shit). While Richard's storyline is more comedic (even if he has his serious and somber moments), like we're meant to think he's an idiot and find him funny and of course he becomes a "good" guy when someone worse comes along.

*sigh*

just drag me outside and shoot me. my bad. i made this annoying. y'all ignore my rambling and enjoy the brilliance of the message i got. seriously. love it a lot.

[cowboybuckleys]

When I say impossible to compare, honestly I meant quality wise. Mainly the sets. There is no such thing as ‘outside’ on Days, the square, you can tell always, is an indoor set. The cheesy music that plays when something bad is happening. The endless flashbacks. I also to have a way bigger issue with acting in US soaps, but that may just be me. This is all just surface level stuff tho, I also think some characters are more 1D 1/2

2/2 and cartoony on US soaps but that kinda goes w suspending disbelief so I won’t get into that, it’s not my main point. I don’t mean flashbacks and such are bad, it’s just a major difference. UK soaps are definitely intended to be more realistic and not just sl-wise, but the fact that they don’t add any artificiality (bg music, flashbacks, sets, repeating the ends of scenes after ad breaks etc). That’s why for me, comparing them in many ways is hard.

3/3 (Just read your tags and wanted to add that yes eastenders is awful but they still don’t do any of the artificial stuff) (also also acting isn’t perfect on UK soaps AT ALL don’t get me wrong it’s just more characters for me on US ones are portrayed by people of dubious ability.)

And I agree, I do. Quality wise they’re never going to be similar because the US networks don’t give a toss about soap operas at least not anymore. There’s a reason why there’s only one soap per network now (with the exception of CBS). During the end of Guiding Light, when they were constantly doing real life outdoor scenes, they were honest to god the most awful to watch because even then the quality was shit and it distracted from the scenes at hand. i think ATWT did it a fair bit of it towards the end too and it will always bug me how awful it all looked. So I think i’m okay with Days being fake outdoors because I’ve seen other shows do it, and do it badly, and I don’t want that for a show I genuinely love XD

US soaps are meant to be cheesy tho, to be overly soapy, the music is supposed to add suspense and direction to a scene (though I admit they’ve lacked on that front in the last decade, it was better in the 90s and early 2000s), and to lack a level of quality that other shows have because it’s an afternoon soap. I gather that it’s taken a lot more seriously in the UK, but here?? it’s definitely not, it’s just a silly little show in the afternoon. 80% of the general audience don’t even keep up with it on a regular basis like a fandom does, so they add the flashbacks and the replays for the ones who aren’t tuning in on the regular. It’s annoying as hell god it really fucking is, but there is a reason for it. That’s why I don’t compare surface level stuff, it seems pointless to when they’re so vastly different (like apples and oranges, same genre, different quality and taste). But I still do compare storylines and characters, because it makes way more sense to do so imo. 

Also, as a note on the acting thing.. A lot of the young stars have said it’s like acting bootcamp cos they’re doing 4 times more pages a day than a normal tv show would and for a lot of them it’s their very first experience in acting on a set. I give a little bit of leeway to some of them for that (Kirsten Storms bugged the pants off me her first few months on the job as Belle but overtime she became one of my favorite actresses, she improved and learned). But I also think a lot of the overacting is down to the show being overdramatic/cheesy so that’s how the actors play it to further push the dramatics. My gran actually used to call it daytime vaudeville lol. That’s just the nature of US soaps. Has been since my gran watched it, since I’ve watched it, and probably will be for the future generations if US soaps survive through the next few years.

god that got longer than i meant it to XD but thank you so much for clarifying. i do think we agree more than we disagree here lol US soaps are trash tv 100%. but it’s great trash tv when you learn to deal with the cheese/overdramatics of it all (btw my way of doing this is by making fun of it on a regular basis lol)

[bthump]

I wanted to touch on the whole gutsca thing with someone (I know zero people in this fandom so you're my lucky pick!). Am I alone in feeling like their first time together came out of no where? My meta with Guts is that he was not at all comfortable with sex at that time of his life (this instance being his first time [outside of the rape he experienced as a child]). His choice of words too, "here I go", translated to me like someone only doing what they felt was expected of them rather than something he was yearning for. He clearly wasn't even ready given how rough he was and how he regressed and attacked her. This moment seemed very forced and almost rang to me like Kentaro's declaration of "no homo though". I would be curious to know how Kentaro felt about homosexuality (bisexuality, etc) and if he ever addressed the ever blatant gay tension and romantic-non-platonic-love blossoming between Guts and Griffith pre-eclipse. I do get the sense that this may be a case of severe queer baiting or perhaps a PSA against gay love altogether ("falling for a man will literally destroy you and send you and everyone you love to hell" type of message); but I'm a very jaded person so I hope to be proven wrong. Sigh, my point being Gutsca seems pretty dang forced and empty of true development. I buy them more as besties than anything romantic. Especially since both he and Casca are actually in love with Griffith (what a fucking triangle!). Does anyone in fandom have any opinions on the sad possibility of this whole beautiful and ultimately tragic love between Griffith and Guts actually being a fucked up anti-gay PSA? Are there any interviews with Kentaro shooting this theory down so I can stop being sad and bitter about it? What are your thoughts?

Thanks for sending this, I'm definitely down to talk about it! I hope you connect with more people in the fandom but don’t worry about sending random asks even if you do lol.

Anyway you’re definitely not alone. I have a lot of thoughts on Guts and Casca's hook up, and they're all pretty much "it feels really forced and not particularly romantic but I think you can argue that that's deliberate" lol. For instance I discuss in a lot of detail here how various aspects of the scene indicate that Guts and Casca having sex is shown to be a case of both of them rebounding from Griffith and sort of giving to each other what they were unable or failed to give to him.

And I talk a lot about how Judeau essentially orchestrates it all and what that suggests about Guts and Casca's relationship here.

And lol sorry for all the links but also this post is about how their relationship feels one-sided to an extent and is used to illuminate a lot of Guts' flaws, using Judeau as a comparison point.

Oh shit and also one more lol, here's a comparison between the sex scene and Griffith's with Charlotte that suggests that both start as ways for the dudes to repress their feelings.

(Don't feel obligated to read all those posts if you don't want, you should get the gist of what I'm saying w/ those descriptions.)

But yeah basically I do think that Guts and Casca getting together felt forced and awkward. At best it might be intended to be seen that way, as two friends hooking up awkwardly in an emotionally intense moment but probably doomed to failure because neither of them are ready for a relationship with the other, or particularly interested in one deep down, once they finished "licking wounds." At worst it’s just bad writing lol. But again like I think there are good arguments for the former.

I also totally agree that their relationship has a strong vibe of doing what's expected. Like for real, at least to me both Guts and Casca read so easily as gay and repressed lol. Casca talks about her feelings for Griffith in terms of “he was a boy she was a girl can I make it any more obvious”

and I can’t help but see it as Casca like, wow I have strong feelings towards Griffith, he’s a man and I’m a woman, so clearly these feelings must be romantic, there’s no other option. Then when she has sex with Guts she keeps contextualizing it essentially as repayment for Guts saving her, like she owes him. “I too want a wound I can say you gave me.” “Not just being given to... maybe I can give something as well.” Which just doesn’t make her desire for him look all that genuine lol.

And then you have Guts. The way he tells Casca that from the start only her touch was okay with him after he has sex with her, referencing the scene when he wakes up with her on top of him and starts to panic before realizing she’s a woman, is soooo suggestive of repression to me. Like, first off because it’s incorrect, he was also okay with Griffith going in for a face-grab after winning a duel Guts had been projecting his rape trauma all over, which seems like a pretty conspicuous omission. And secondly because the reason he was okay with Casca’s touch specifically is solely because she’s a woman, not because she’s special or because they have a magic romantic connection - it’s because she’s not a man. To me that just screams that Guts was open to sex with Casca because she’s the only woman he knows, and he’s afraid of the idea of physical intimacy with men, regardless of what he might actually want deep down.

So yeah that’s basically how I feel about Guts and Casca’s relationship, strong agree with you.

When it comes to Miura’s intent, I can tell you that Miura was asked about the subtext in an interview once, back in 2000, and he responded with something along the lines of ‘two men can have passionate feelings for each other without it being romantic.’ The interview is here, but this is a paraphrase the translator mentioned in the comments.

Other than that I’ve never seen him address it directly, but on the flipside he has cited several textually gay stories as inspiration (off the top of my head: Kaze to Ki no Uta, Devilman, Guin Saga, mangaka Moto Hagio in general), and he has straightforwardly said that the (magical intersex) central character of his other work, Duranki, was intended to have romances with both male and female love interests. Also people tell me there are strong griffguts vibes with the main, presumably canon or intended-to-be-canon ship there. So there’s that lol.

As for the no homo aspect and the potential homophobia in the griffguts subtext... I can’t deny I’ve also considered the idea that it’s a deliberate anti-gay PSA (though I haven’t seen anyone else address the idea as far as I remember, and I’ve only briefly mentioned it offhandedly). Like, Guts and Griffith’s relationship turns bad because they’re both too invested in each other, maybe the barely-subtextual desire is meant to look like a sinister twisting of pure platonic feelings that ruins everything, if Griffith hadn’t loved him the Eclipse never would have happened, etc.

But honestly I don’t think that reading holds up compared to a much more positive reading of their feelings, in which it’s their failure to understand them and act on them, thanks largely to formative childhood trauma and self-hatred, that leads to tragedy.

I don’t know what Miura intended, and there certainly are aspects of the story that are homophobic regardless of his intent, even if my best-faith reading is entirely correct, like the only textual gay attraction being pedophiles and over the top heretic orgies lol, or yk, Guts and Griffith both assaulting the same woman while looking at/thinking about the other in a very sexually charged way.

But the reading of their relationship where it’s positive and good for both of them, even including sexual desire, and only gets fucked up because they both incorrectly think their feelings are unrequited is legitimately so weirdly strong, much stronger than a reading where the sexual nature of their feelings is what fucks everything up, so I’m pretty happy just rolling with that take.

And as much as Casca can be seen and may very well be intended as a no homo, it’s also very easy for me to read her relationships with both as less of a hopeful opportunity for positive heterosexual romance and more of a “here’s how repressing your feelings thru attempts at heterosexuality fucks you up” PSA lol. Griffith and Charlotte too, for that matter. It’s definitely a stretch to think that’s intended, but whether it’s intended or not it’s an easy sell for me and I’m fine with not really worrying too much about possible authorial intent there.

Finally, I also want to link this post that goes pretty thoroughly into why I interpret griffguts as very positive rather than as a cautionary tale or predatory gay lust etc

And also have this shorter post about Femto on the same subject too, why not

Oh and maybe this thing where I split hairs about Guts’ lust for Griffith and desire for revenge to make a point that the homoeroticism isn’t necessarily being equated with violence by the narrative lol

[yuzukult]

i’m bad too 06 (m) || kdy & reader

title: i’m bad too - drabble series pairing: kim doyoung x reader genre: angst, fluff, smut, goodboy!doyoung, nerdy!dy (basically he’s a dork) & badgirl!reader, hitman!au, oc-isn’t-a-hitman-but-she-could-be!au, there’s just a lot of unspoken things happening here lol word count: 1.7k warnings: blowjob/handjob (lucky doyoung), sexual usage of ‘oppa’ lol don’t judge a/n: still tryna learn the correct jargon for warnings but this is a drabble so.... very minimal stuff here lmfao

please let me know if anyone wants to be tagged! taglist: @wownajaemin​​​ @crescent-iak​​​ @ncttboo​​​​ @byunbaekby​ ​​← previous chapter || next chapter →

Doyoung makes you watch an obscene amount of superhero movies. For clarification: Marvel-Cinematic-Universe-kind-of-movies. However, you barely complain. If it means more time with him, you’d even watch Sesame Street just to be in his arms. 

He doesn’t like to watch those movies where there’s a way deeper message hidden behind the plot. He lives for the action, sprinkle of comedy, and occasional love interest. But not a ton. Too much romance might set unrealistic expectations, according to him. 

Albeit you sort of think he still has a vastly different depiction of love in comparison to you.

For one, in this alternate universe where there’s villains and superheroes, you, without a doubt, are a villain. You’ve tried explaining to him that you fit the stereotype—the whole leather attire plus motorcycle really takes the cake, but he doesn’t even know what you’re up to half the time. In fact, almost every single event you’ve performed a task, you’d show up at his front doorstep, hands remaining dirty from a mission for the Boss, and he’d welcome you with open arms with no idea. 

Doyoung doesn’t even have an ounce of a clue what you do.

He’s such a nice guy. Girls practically eat that shit up when they meet him, often overlooking the fact that he holds so many great boyfriend qualities. When you’re sore from “work,” (he questions what you do all the time but you just shrug nonchalantly) he’d always slip off your socks, massage the soles of your feet and finish off the rest of your body with no resistance. He doesn’t expect anything in return—not even sex. Doyoung just gives and gives, nearly never taking.

On one side, you’re glad that most women don’t recognize how perfect of a significant other he is. It gives you time to figure yourself out; how do you become good enough for Kim Doyoung? You’ve already dropped smoking. You’ve been putting more effort in your studies, granted he is your tutor. And you’ve spent the majority of your free time with him. If you ever needed to review material, you’d do it with him, just to show how much you’re trying. 

Even if there isn’t a label for the two of you.

You’re friends—but you’re definitely more than just friends. You fuck, but you’re not just fuck buddies either. You’re exclusive but you’re not straightforwardly dating. Doyoung doesn’t hide the fact that he wants you to officially be his girlfriend, although he never forces the idea upon you. He’s content with the circumstances he’s under even though he hopes to have you be his and his only. Nonetheless, it’s under your terms and he never forgets to remind you that. 

Honestly, you thought that you might be okay with this. That is, until a pretty gal with shiny black hair, toned body, and gentle voice named Joy came into the picture.

Joy is a given nickname. Her actual birth name is Park Sooyoung, a name as beautiful as the beholder, but people had gotten into the habit of calling her Joy, since… well, she’s such a joy to be around. She’s part of the school’s cheerleading squad, called the ‘Red Velvet Queens,’ plus extremely involved with other extracurriculars, including the competitive tennis team that Doyoung is on. There’s a lot of bitches on the squad, especially with the encounters you’ve had with them, but Joy isn’t one of them. She’s an angel. She’s the woman version of Doyoung. 

Doyoung likes to wait outside in the parking lot, right in the unspoken designated spot where you leave your bike. You’ve offered him a ride to school since he often stands idly, except he politely declines, and you speculate that it’s from fear. He remains cute in your eyes despite being a bit of a wuss.

Today, however, he’s not alone. It’s a daily routine that the view of Doyoung leaves you breathless, heart pumping like you’ve gone running, but today is different. Your blood is boiling, smoke whistling out your ears like a kettle on a stove from the heat that lingers around your neck region. Joy stands beside him, the widest grin smacked across her cheeks, lips stained as red as her cheerleading uniform. You wobble on your bike into the parking spot, shutting off the engine before kicking out the stand, pulling the helmet off your head while obnoxiously chewing on a piece of gum in your mouth. 

Joy’s gaze meets yours.

She’s sweet, and none of this is her fault. But you kind of hate her presence right now, just because she’s got all of Doyoung’s attention. 

Spitting out the gum on the asphalt, you shuffle through your pockets for a toothpick. This stupid toothpick that you’re stuck with because you quit smoking cigarettes for that charming boy. Popping the wooden stick in your mouth, you rake your fingers through your greasy hair, slinging the backpack over your shoulders before walking past Doyoung. 

“Sorry, Joy, I’ll catch up with you later,” You hear faintly before his heavy footsteps are rushed, catching up with yours. “Hey-Hey! Where are you going? We’re supposed to meet here. Why didn’t you wait for me?”

You shrug. He’s not happy with that response.

Hand grasping on your shoulder, he halts you in your steps to turn you to face him. As much as you hate to admit it, but you feel this green-eyed monster gnawing on your insides and you’re not a fan of it. “What’s wrong? What did I do? Talk to me.”

“Nothing. I’m busy. You still wanna tutor me later or are you busy making plans with Joy?” You snarl, munching on the pick. Doyoung’s eyes lighten up; he knows the problem now. “Are you jealous?”

“That word isn’t in my dictionary.” It’s a blunt reply, and your unfazed stare is there to support it. “Why would I be jealous of a nice girl like Joy who wants to get with a good boy like you?”

Doyoung likes you, no matter how hard you try to push him away. Your dilemma before was that you always thought a guy like him, so generous, so kind, could never love someone with a charred heart like yours. And yet, here you are, evidently jealous of a girl practically his equal when he’s done nothing but proven to you that you’re the only one he sees.

You want more, and the longer you continue to deny and swallow these feelings, you’re even more desperate to be held by him. In the midst of a tutoring session, you’ve managed to unbutton his cute sky blue dress shirt, unzip his trousers and suddenly his dick is in your mouth.

“We’re supposed to review l-limits,” He stutters over a moan, fingers reaching to comb back your hair. “S-So I told her I couldn’t hang out with her today.”

“Mm,” You hum against the tip, tongue gliding down his shaft. “I heard you the first time.” His thighs tighten when your mouth envelopes down his dick to the base with his head thrown back in the chair of your bedroom. He’s glad that he noticed you take initiative to lock the door today since you often don’t, and the possibility of one of the staff members entering in while sucking on him is kinky but he’s still scared of your brother. 

Doyoung lets out a soft gasp when your tongue swipes over his slit where a pearly bead of precum sits. “S-Shouldn’t we— oh fuck—be reviewing materi—ohh?” He sighs; your hands are everywhere; it’s hard for him to focus on anything when you’re gazing up at him through your pretty long lashes with tinged pink cheeks from his cock hitting the back of your throat. He melts under your touch when you graze over his thighs, claiming the territory that he’s succumbed to you willingly. You kiss the head of his cock and he bucks into it. “We’re reviewing a different kind of material. Have you ever been sucked off by a girl before?”

He shakes his head ‘no’, looking down at you with hooded eyes. With his arousal still in your grip, it twitches, yearning for your attention. You hate to admit it, but you’ve obviously tainted his ‘good boy’ persona with him in your bedroom like this, but Doyoung doesn’t think that. Disheveled hair, mouth gaped open, and sweaty forehead is a view of him you engrain in your memory. 

Doyoung is a good boy, but he has a body of a bad boy. There’s no way that tennis is the reason behind those washboard abs, toned thighs, and built arms. He’s not as muscular in comparison to Johnny, nor his friend Lucas, but Doyoung is gorgeous like this, perfect in your eyes. 

That’s why when you moan around his girth and he sputters, you think he’s got a halo over his head. He’s so pretty, so gorgeous, and you want to see him in all types of forms. Your hand wraps at the base of his dick, mouth wrapping around the red and angry tip, it’s glistening with your saliva as you start pumping him at a pace that leaves his jaw slack, groans bouncing off your bedroom walls. 

“Baby,” He calls out the term of endearment raspily, heart racing and abs tightening. A familiar feeling stirs in his stomach, and he knows he’s about to combust. “I’m about to cum, I need a tissue, I—”

“Cum in my mouth, oppa,” You whisper, quickening your movements but calling him “oppa” is what snaps within him, ropes of cum shooting down your throat along with a string of curses and a breathy moan escapes from his lovely lips. 

“So,” Doyoung begins, fiddling with his fingers anxiously across the lunch table from you. “You called me ‘oppa’ the other day. That was uh… new. You’ve never called me that before.”

Tying your hair up in a bun with a bobby pin between your teeth, his cheeks flush pink at the thought of you giving him a blowjob in your bedroom the other day, his fingers streaking through those luscious locks, and him cuming in your mouth. Popping out the pin, you slide in to push back a short piece of hair. “Yeah, well, there was a reason for it. You know why.”

Doyoung blinks blankly, utterly confused. “I… don’t. W-Why’d you call me oppa?”

“So you wouldn’t get nervous and just let me swallow.”

[asterocky]

Hi, I actually had some more questions, lol. Thank you for answering the last one about Eunwoo and his relationship with the boys.

What happened to Moonbin, he took some time off and it seems like people don’t think it was a shoulder injury, but rather that he needed some time off for his mental health?

I was also wondering what happened to their last management or team? I saw Eunwoo speaking out again about how they were treated? What did their last team do or not do? I don’t remember his exact words but it was something to do with their company.

hello there again!! ^^ it was my pleasure, feel free to shoot any other questions you might have. sorry i'm a bit late with this answer, i was thinking through what to say.

regarding moonbin's hiatus.

i believe that fantagio never said anything concrete - they just said moonbin went to a check up and the doctors advised him to rest and get treatment. so no particular health concern was mentioned, so i can't give you a concrete answer. the mental health narrative might have come from some vlives moonbin did, since he was very vulnerable and obviously not in a good place mentally before blue flame era (like this one or the general conversations they had during their gateway era win vlive). i wish i could give you a more concrete answer, but unfortunately i was not too active since i work full time, so there might have been something concrete said by moonbin about his mental health after blue flame era once he came back. since the fantagio issues happened, astro developed a habit of going to aroha whenever something is bothering them. hopefully someone else can give a more concrete answer.

fantagio issues.

there's a lot to discuss here. i will try to shorten the entire situation the best to my ability but i did follow the subject closely and if you want to read into it more, feel free to go into eliot's fantagio update tag (i suggest starting from this post if you want to get into details). meanwhile i roughly summarized the situation below.

so fantagio music is a subsidiary of fantagio entertainment. and fantagio entertainment a few years back was owned by this chinese corporation jc group (they were the majority shareholders, which means that they had the majority vote during shareholder meetings). one day allegations came out in news portals that:

the board of fantagio dismissed the co-ceo and founder of fantagio na byeongjun. wei jie, who was the ceo of jc group, was instated as the new ceo;

the corporation credit cards were taken away from the staffs, so most of the activities fantagio's actors and idols had were funded out of the pocket of the staffs and idols. rumors circulated that astro and weki meki ended up paying for their fans' meals during isac out of pocket, too;

jc group was pooling the money fantagio made to an unrelated hong kong company also owned by the group;

fantagio organized a crisis meeting and settled with 9 demands for jc group, which included reinstatement of the former ceo amongst other things, as most worried that since jc group is pooling whatever fantagio makes into a hong kong company, that jc group will start selling their artists for profit.

(this is why moonbin always says he's the oldest standing fantagio member, idols and staffs included - the ceo was not reinstated and many staff, including astro's manager, left the company)

so staffs were fired and replaced by jc group (they have nothing to de with entertainment btw) staff. it should be noted that wei jie became ceo of fantagio entertainment, but not fantagio music. at the time, fantagio music's ceo was woo youngseung, so aside from the company card limitations, the artists weren't affected that much. however, all hell broke loose when jc group fired woo youngseun and wei jie (i believe) became the ceo. that was the exact moment fantagio music started operating illegally, as based on south koren laws, the ceo of an operating entertainment company has to have a certain entertainment license and ceratin experience. the new ceo was not registered in the korean entertainment management association, which was also a problem. at this point there was no choice but to stop all idols' and actors' activities because everyone that was under contract with fantagio entertainment, which did not have the required licence, would also be considered to be operating illegally. basically everyone under fantagio was forced into a hiatus because of all of the shit jc group caused because of their incompetence.

then the korean entertainment management association reached out to an illegally operating fantagio and gave them 45 days to appoint a new ceo with the relative registration and experience or fantagio will be removed from the association entirely. with all that happening, actors started going through court to terminate their contracts with fantagio. in general there were many uncertainties with the artists under the company, some news portals going so far as to say that "fantagio has no future".

for a while, fantagio (jc group) threatened their actors who went against them (terminating contracts) with court and ignored any korean entertainment association complaints and lied to press that they WERE operating legally. however, many contradicting articles came our and entertainment associations publicly announced that memebers of the associations (which is basically most of the korean entertainment industry) are banning fantagio and basically no one within the association will be working with them.

but then karma came to bite in the ass and the main vilan wei jie who was the ceo was arrested for illegal funding activities (which probably includes the before-mentioned cash pool in an unrelated hong kong company situation). also, the former kbs ceo was appointed as a new fantagio music ceo. a bit later the second main vilan of this story - jc group - sold their ownership of fantagio back to this other shareholder l&a holdings (i believe, don't quote me on this)! which was highly celebrated because fantagio became it's own company again. later fantagio did have a dispute with l&a holdings, but it was nothing too major.

as of today the company is fairly stable and doing well, the largest sources of income being ong seongwoo, astro and cha eunwoo. recently, there has been a dismissal of the management once more and a new management for fantagio music was instated. everyone had war flashbacks for a moment got scared. but it turns out the new management seems eager to put their people out there, as right after the announcement of the new management, astro announced their astro x aroha festival, comeback and all members finally had their own schedules to attend to. and right now all of astro seem to be working on something as the management cleared their schedules, also we got astro zone - to put it simply, we had not seen so much activity from astro for a while so this new management brings hope. also, fantagio was said to be getting more funding and expanding more into acting industries (i think they released more shares, too, which usually means expansion of the company), the financials of fantagio for 2020 have been the best in comparison to the last three years. so as of right now, we can be happy it's in the past and look forward to what fantagio can bring in the future.

also, it's worth mentioning that astro stayed really strong throughout the period and whenever we expressed worry about them, they always tried to calm us down and say that everything is okay and they're doing well. however, once the whole thing was over astro came out with always you, lyrics of which express just how NOT OKAY astro were throughout the fantagio issues and how hard it was behind closed doors, the song dedicated to the fandom. they were very emotional and open about what happened, a lot of fans left throughout the period (as they were on hiatus for a year basically) and astro ended up thanking the ones that stayed with them. there's also this video from astro star light where each member shares a little bit about what went through their minds, from uncertanties, fright and feeling thrown out.

[haleigh-sloth]

Hello,

I just found your page and after reading some of your mha posts had a couple things I wanted to ask if that's ok.

1. Since you feel Hawks is not justified because he could have chosen options other than killing Twice, do you think he would have been had he genuinely been made to choose between killing him and saving others? I.e. do you think it's just this killing in particular that was not justified and thus murder, or do you think heroes killing can never be justified, even if in self-defense or defense of others? If we take the "Heroes save people" maxim to its limits, it might be reasonable to argue for a deontological approach to ethics rather than a utilitarian one, so that killing one to save others is not justified because you actively break your code (as opposed to risking not being able to save others, which would be considered a lesser moral wrong under this mindset).

2. This might very well be a stupid question, but if we consider that heroes shouldn't treat others as an it and put them down for the "sake of society", do you feel this ought to extend to AFO too? I really don't mean to use this as a gotcha moment or anything like it, but I feel like if MHA is trying to move away from a punitive justice system in favour of a rehabilitative/restorative one, we ought to consider where people like AFO fall into this system as well. AFO is seemingly entirely unlike any of the other villains in the show, but if we judge that he deserves a different fate for this it also feels like playing into the "Some people just can't be saved" notion that's been perpetuated by hero society. It is of course entirely possible, if not likely, that he'll fall in battle, or that Shigaraki himself will kill him eventually, but I feel like that skirts the issue rather than answer it. As someone who does not seem to show any remorse, desire or even ability to be saved, and in fact feels rather inhuman, what should a reformed society even do with him? Even if we could convincingly argue him to be fundamentally different and thus deserving of punishment, it is much easier for us readers who have more information to make this call, rather than in-universe characters whose judgement will inevitably be based on something less than the full truth. So even if AFO's case in particular was easily answered, it would set a precedent for cases that may appear similar, but in truth be less clear cut. Basically, I believe you feel the villain league deserves another chance because they were victims of their circumstances, and thus not necessarily beyond salvation, because they never knew normality to begin with, but what about those who were not victims, those who by their nature have insurmountable trouble fitting into a peaceful society? Perhaps it's just my mistaken assumption that such people exist and I'm reading AFO wrong, or perhaps it's the opposite and I'm giving people like AFO undue consideration, or perhaps my assumption that AFO ought to be treated as a person rather than a carocature, a symbol, is flawed to begin with, but I just really don't think a manga that wants to argue that villains are people too should go "but here's THIS vile piece of shit, let's kill him!". Am I making sense here?

3. On another note, what do you think of Endeavor's recent speech and general recent development? I've seen some people who were upset by his "Would it fix everything if we showed you our tears" line, but rather than him being dismissive or callous I just see it as him awkwardly saying that he doesn't think anything other than actions can help him atone for what he did. He's still got a lot to work through, but him recognizing that he's got something to atone for and freely talking about what he did to his family is, as I find, certainly a huge step in the right direction.

WHOO hey! Sorry for taking a while to respond. You gave me some really well thought-out questions and I wanted to return the favor with well thought-out answers. Also I was heckin busy yesterday when you sent this. So, here we go:

To answer this question about Hawks, I first need to clarify what it means to be a hero in the eyes of the story that is BNHA:

This honestly doesn’t even make a dent in the amount of panels in BNHA that reiterate time and time again that heroes SAVE people, but I don’t feel like I should have to spend too much time looking for them, these I used above should suffice. The one with baby Midoriya and baby Tenko doesn’t even have any words in the panel, and it’s still powerful enough to get the message across. And make me cry.

Almost every story has its own “heroes” in it. And every story’s definition of a hero is different. In Marvel and DC superhero comics and movies, the heroes usually end up killing the villains, yes? I can’t say I’m familiar with these stories because they aren’t interesting to me in the slightest, but from the ones I HAVE seen, the final boss at the end dies. But all of the heroes get to keep their title of “hero”. That’s not really the standard we have in BNHA.

“Do you think it's just this killing in particular that was not justified and thus murder, or do you think heroes killing can never be justified, even if in self-defense or defense of others?”

So this is a fair point and I feel that the best way to answer this is by asking what you consider self defense? Say Hawks is at home mad chillin and not prepared for a fight in the slightest, and somebody breaks into his house and starts trying to hurt/kill him. He’s unprepared and at this point just trying to keep himself alive. If he ends up killing the guy, is he wrong? In my opinion, no. In real life this happens to people, and they aren’t considered murderers, as they shouldn’t be. To me, self defense is a situation where:

It’s either you or me. It’s one or the other.

I think it’s fair to say what happened with Hawks and Twice was absolutely NOT self defense. I’m not going to go into detail about how deciding to kill Twice was absolutely 100% premeditated, because there’s a wonderful post by someone else that already explains that in great detail here. But I’ll end this thought by saying that Hawks was not committing an act of self defense.

Nothing about this says “self-defense” to me.

“If we take the "Heroes save people" maxim to its limits, it might be reasonable to argue for a deontological approach to ethics rather than a utilitarian one, so that killing one to save others is not justified because you actively break your code (as opposed to risking not being able to save others, which would be considered a lesser moral wrong under this mindset).”

To make it simple for some people to understand these terms:

“Utilitarianism is an ethical theory that determines right from wrong by focusing on OUTCOMES.“ In a nutshell, utilitarian ethics means you make a decision based on how it will affect everything else.

“In moral philosophy, deontological ethics or deontology is the normative ethical theory that the morality of an action should be based on whether that action itself is right or wrong under a series of rules, rather than based on the consequences of the action.” In a nutshell, deontological ethics means you make a decision based on whether it follows rules or not.

So this is a complicated question, and my answer to this is....both? Throughout BNHA we’ve had this dilemma over and over again:

Break the rules and save the day? Or follow the rules and possibly suffer the consequences? Well, BNHA just says “Yes” lol. Do both. Break the rules and save the day. Make a decision based on the consequences of said decision, but also try to follow the rules as best as you can. Even in reality, people do this to get through life. You really can’t live life under a strict utilitarian approach or a strict deontological approach. If Midoriya hadn’t persisted against his classmates and the law to go save Bakugo, he WOULD have gotten kidnapped AGAIN. They were actively trying to take him with them. If Midoriya didn’t break the rules to save Kota, Kota would have straight up DIED. Muscular was actively trying to kill Kota, not to mention Kota had zero ways of defending himself. But here’s where I don’t think this is a fair comparison:

Hawks claims his killing of Twice was to save others. I don’t completely disagree with this logic, if the situation was more dire and dangerous for Hawks. The league was taking peoples’ lives. Somebody had to do something. The problem is that Twice was RUNNING AWAY when Hawks killed him. Twice wasn’t fighting Hawks back, he wasn’t endangering Hawks himself. Hawks stabbed him in the back. AND Hawks had Dabi to worry about, who was actively trying to attack Hawks. But Hawks chose to murder Twice instead of fending off Dabi. And if you refer back to the post I linked above about how it was a premeditated decision to kill Twice, you’ll see that Hawks had the capability of knocking Twice unconscious. He should have done this from the get go. And honestly? There are other heroes who could have captured Twice. There SHOULD have been other heroes to capture Twice. If Hawks was the only hope for the heroes in that war then jeez, the heroes suck at their jobs.

So TLDR for this question: Hawks’s circumstances were not drastic enough for him to be justified in killing Twice. As I said above, self-defense is one thing, where yes I could understand how if a life is lost while defending oneself is probably inevitable in some cases. But this wasn’t self defense. Twice was running away. Hawks should also be able to rely on his hero comrades to help him out.

Instead Hawks chose to be law-enforcement, judge, and executioner all in one moment.

I hope this answers your question? I tried my best. If I misunderstood or missed a talking point, feel free to shoot me a message or another ask.

Next question:

Believe me. I have thought about this! What about AFO? He’s human too isn’t he? You have a point. Should the restorative justice system extend to AFO? I would say yes. If I’m going to stick to my guns that the villains deserve restorative justice and not punitive justice, I should be fair and say it should extend to all villains.

The problem is not in the idea of exploring saving AFO, it’s just that there simply isn’t enough time to explore this in the story. If Horikoshi had said “I’m not going anywhere guys! We’re in this for the long haul!” I’d say it’s possible to explore that route. We don’t know anything about AFO except from what we’ve seen on screen, and what we’ve been told by All Might and the other OFA holders. Which still isn’t much to go on. You’re not giving AFO undue consideration. It’s definitely a deserved consideration. There are people in the story (and the real world) who may not be victimized in any way and end up being villains. Do they deserve a chance? I’d say yes. It’s in my nature as a social worker irl to give people the benefit of the doubt and give them a chance to learn. You’re right that in the end, the league being saved and the characters not considering what could have led AFO to villainy is just “skirting around the problem.” And honestly, that’s probably what we’re going to get. I wouldn’t be surprised for the thought to pass in Midoriya’s head. After saving somebody like Shigaraki, who everybody in the story (and many readers) considered to be “too far gone”, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Midoriya entertained the thought for a brief moment. “What could have saved AFO from himself?” So honestly I don’t have an answer to this question that qualifies both sides. I can’t say that AFO is “too far gone” without undermining that fact that I never believed Shigaraki was “too far gone”, simply because we don’t get to decide what “too far gone” is.  All I can say is that in the eyes of the story, there are far too many differences between AFO’s circumstances and Shigaraki’s circumstances to compare the two, and say they deserve the same type of sympathy from us readers.

Truly I have no sympathy for AFO, because the story doesn’t ask for it. The story wants sympathy for Shigaraki, Toga, Touya, Spinner, and even a tiiiiiny bit for Overhaul. It asks for NONE for AFO.

Another post I’ll link here that isn’t by me but by another awesome meta blogger (@hamliet​) is this.

In a nutshell it says:

It’s not that AFO can’t be saved, it’s that he won’t. That’s the best answer I can give to that question honestly.

As for the third question:

That press conference was just...eh. I mean yeah, Endeavor not denying the allegations was good. Not that he really could anyway. It sucks for the rest of his family though. But at the same time Touya deserved his revenge, even though it was at the expense of his siblings and mother. It sucks, it’s a double edged sword because somebody is hurting no matter what was gonna happen. Endeavor was an asshole to that lady but I don’t really care too much. I’m really torn on what I think is going on inside Enji’s head because the Todofam is either extremely dense, or Horikoshi is writing their dialogue extremely vague on purpose to keep reader’s on the edge of their seats regarding what they want to do about Touya. I really don’t know. I’m not thrilled with the way the Todofam plot is being written right now, even though I’m 100% sure Touya is going to get his happy ending. But right now anything to do with the Todofam that isn’t Shoto and Touya just bothers me. I don’t think Enji really understands yet what he has to do for Touya. Yes he recognizes that he has to atone, but he’s not recognizing HOW he has to atone. Right now he’s still stuck in that “I have to be a hero to absolve my crimes against my family” headspace and I don’t think he’s going to get out of that headspace until he comes face to face with his son and realizes that he can’t just fight villains and go home to a happy family that he terrorized for 20 years. He’s going to have to let his family go, let them decide when to let him back in, if they ever do (I think they will just because of the way the story is being written.) As a reader, Enji is just a character that I cannot vibe with, no matter what happens. I definitely appreciate his role in the story. His role is vital to Touya’s saving and redemption. Touya is in my top 3 favorite characters from this series and I’m emotionally invested. So while I appreciated Enji’s role in the story, I don’t like his character or anything to do with him, at least until it comes time to help save his son. Also the trio of Hawks, Best Jeanist, and Enji just gives me major back the blue vibes and I just can’t read their chapters and be in a good mood lol.

Thank you for the ask! I hope I answered everything! This was fun to answer!

[dammarchy211]

1. do u mind if ppl make ur art their icons? Just curious!!

2. I love your cryptid kidz take!! Im curious if youre planning on including any other fandoms, and the age differences between the kids (I HOPE THIS DOESNT COME OFF IN A WEIRD WAY i was wondering bc dibs so tall in comparison to the other kids)?? Im so curious about ur thoughts on their individual dynamics with one another!! Or what the gals think of each other :3!! or if tak will show up..

SORRY FOR THE BIG BLOCK OD QUESTIONS I LOVE STUFF LIKE THIS IT MAKES ME SO HAPPY... Ur art style is really cool so it really caught my attention!!

(I had a big paragraph written and tumblr crashed while I was writing it :,,-) )

It’s ok I love questions!!!

1. No I don’t mind! Just credit me in ur bio or smth

2. I probably won’t be including any other fandoms as to not clutter it, as well as the fact I was kind going off a formula of nerd kid + his sister. No particular reason, just for a pattern ig?

The age differences between the kids r Raz- 10, Jude- like 12 (I say like as he doesn’t actually have a canon age lol), Dib- 12 like in the iz movie, and Dipper- 13. I made Dib taller to add variety to their designs when put next to each other and also because all of the kids in iz are basically the same height I thought I’d say fuck it and have some fun with it lol

(For simplicity, Ford will refer to Ford pines, and Cruller will refer to Ford Cruller lol)

As for dynamics, Jude and Dib would get along Rlly well, just kinda as an instant click type thing since they have so many similarities. They’re all definitely friends but I feel like Dipper and Jude would but heads the most. Dipper tends to be really cautious, and while Jude does exercise caution, it’s usually for more ‘nonsensical’ reasons. Jude has a more reckless idea of problem solving (ie wanting to just shoot the cultists and burn down their hideout in act 1) and that wouldn’t really sit well with Dipper lmao. Dipper also would try to like, assert himself as letter with all of his planning shit but it probably wouldn’t work that well. Jude and Dib are also the most unhinged out of the 4 so Dipper and Raz are like 🤨 a lot. Raz would get along with all of them very well, however there’d definitely be at least a little bit of “you’re like 10 how come you get to be able to do all of this cool stuff???” And the other 3 would ask him a bunch of questions constantly because “omg you’re really psychic???? Lemme take notes.” Dammek would try to lead them around or “supervise” them as like the “cool older teen friend” but he has even less common sense then the 4 of them and the worst advice— Dammek high school bullies Zim. Gaz, Frazie, and Joey would kinda just be like “ew it’s my nerd brother and his nerd friends.” But still hang out with them, Mabel on the other hand just regular hangs out with them bc she doesn’t want Dipper to go on adventures without her! The girls would get along pretty good as well, however I feel like Joey would be Kinda cold to Mabel bc she has a tendency to be a little mean to people when they’re more social or optimistic than her, but she would get over it eventually and they can talk about animals or sparkly stickers or something jfhdjdjd. Xefros is a little upset that Raz is psychic because telekinesis used to be his thing and now there’s a kid that’s like 4/5 years younger than him and better at it 😔 the 4 boys would probably follow Roxy, Ford, Sasha, and Cruller around a lot because they wanna! Do science stuff n go on adventures and missions! Stan would also try to have fun with the kids but in a Stan sorta way. Sasha would so get into an Argument w/ Prof. Membrane they would hate eachother— Any of the alien enjoyers would be SO STOKED about Dammek, Xefros, and Zim (even tho zim keeps insisting that he is, In fact, not an alien). Tbh Dammek n Xef probably already know what Irkens are and Zim probably already knows what trolls are (and would probably freak out if he found out the condensce/Betty Crocker was on earth lol) Raz and Zim also get “huh u guys sound similar” a lot (I wonder why D-: /s).

OK THATS ENOUGH RAMBLING!! I just have so many thoughts for this flghdkgfisheudd

[bean-pronounced-bawn]

I'm glad you said it first, I honestly do think my upset about not being fat and it being hard to gain is on par with my classic gender dysphoria (including the frustration about voice exercises not working). Getting bigger ties into me feeling more physically masculine so at this point I do see it as an extension of my overall dysphoria. I don't talk about it because I'm worried other trans people would react badly to the comparison somehow but it's just the truth

Exactly this! Before I knew I was trans (i.e. when I was a child) I would always act exaggeratedly masculine when I was around boys so they would see me as one of them instead of as a girl. One of the major ways I'd do that was to try to make myself "bigger" - like stand up taller, spread out, displays of strength, etc etc (I was v athletic until I was like 16, and I didn't really realize I wanted to be fat myself until around then, so my definition of "big" at the time was more around muscle than fat). When I finally accepted that I just wasn't a masculine person, my definition of appearing manly shifted more to fat than muscle (which, there's probably some shit to unpack there, but we're not gonna get into that rn), and I realized that I wasn't just attracted to fat men, I wanted to be one. (Also I grew up to have a very shit relationship with exercise thanks to my coaches when I was a competitive athlete, so that kinda pushed me away from "big as muscular" and towards "big as fat," and I'm sure there's stuff to unpack there, but again we're not getting into it.) When thinking of the changes T would bring that I was excited about, one of the main ones was weight gain, though at the time I hadn't quite put together that muscle wasn't really my main interest.

As for discussing it, I definitely feel the anxiety. The combination of transphobia, fatphobia, and the stigma around feedism/gaining makes it hard to talk about. For me, weight comes up in conversation every so often because I have several friends who have gained weight due to mental illness, medication, and the pandemic, and they've been generally unhappy with their bodies lately. (Aside the conversation there is to be had with them about fatphobia and body positivity, as they all are generally anti-fatphobia and body positive despite their gripes with their own bodies,) I've been able to casually bring up that weight gain isn't necessarily a bad thing, as it isn't representative of their health and can help create new relationships with their bodies. And as an example, I'll use myself - "I've gained a fair amount of weight in the last few years and I've found that I actually feel more comfortable with myself at a higher weight, like I feel more confident and masculine and generally more relaxed." So far it hasn't exactly converted any of my friends (not that that's the goal lol), but it has gotten them to think about why being at a higher weight makes them uncomfortable and what about it specifically they don't like, and in at least one of my friends it has gotten them to practice appreciating their body as it is now (especially cause that friend gained weight cause of medication... Like girl you're finally not in pain and throwing up 24/7 and you're gonna complain that your ass is phat? Priorities man, priorities)

But yeah, sorry that this was such a long answer, i apparently have a lot to say on the topic lol. I'd love to discuss it more; if y'all have anything you'd like to add, shoot me another anon or something!

[vaguely-concerned]

I like to imagine that TF has one of those contagious laugh (his real one, I imagine he has plenty of others, including one that’s he counts as a ‘real laugh’ but Graves knows it’s just his ‘mask-laugh’ if u know what I’m saying) Like the one where you just start wheezing, can’t breathe, and your whole face turns red? And the people around you just start chuckling and laughing even if they have no idea what’s going on. That one.

Graves is also probably the only (living) person who’s heard it, and it makes his day whenever TF laughs like that even if it’s at him because A. Husband happy and B. He can’t help but losing his shit too over it because it’s so contagious.

Absolutely 100%, you are correct, anon, I heartily concur! :D I think in general one of TF's most endearing qualities is his ability to (or almost inability not to) find humour and delight in small things -- he's sort of got a brain set up for amusement, even in dark times. And often when in company I think you're also right that he does that mostly internally and you only see it around the edges, but when he actually lets it shine through honestly it's so inviting, I think that's where a lot of his charm comes in.

As for Graves' side of that... please have a snippet from my TF POV WIP, because I'm having trouble putting it into non-fiction words haha. (Context: it's when they're pretty young but they've been partners for about five years, and TF is patching Graves up after a bar fight. Graves is a) pretty drunk and b) somehow still not aware that he's in love, TF is but he's like not happy about it what do you mean I have to have feelings lol)

“There,” I mutter to myself as I trail my finger along the edge of the bandage, hooking it under just a little to test the give. “This okay? Not too tight? Try flexing your arm a bit. Well, the gun show is nice too, but I was mostly thinkin’ about if it was slipping or anythin’ like that,” I add on a laugh, as he wiggles his eyebrows and flexes his — in all fairness very impressive — biceps at me like a strongman showing off to the crowd.

“Feels fine,” he states.

“Looks fine too,” I agree, and then, at the woozy grin he shoots me at that, laugh helplessly again and manage: “I was talking about the bandage, you — gods, just — just stop that before you start bleedin’ all over the place again, you dumbass!”

“I can do the other one too, Doc, if you need the comparison,” he offers gallantly, demonstrating. Having to lean my elbow against the table to stay upright through the giggles I reach out and try to gently pull his arm down before he causes himself a mischief or accidentally topples everything on the table somehow, though I’m finding it extremely hard to actually be discouraging in the face of that glimmer in his eyes that comes out so rarely, and never unless it’s just the two of us — that small moment of unselfconscious silliness seemingly for no other reason than to make me laugh.

A glint of what, if you didn’t know any better or in anyone else, you’d almost call innocence. Like the sun peeking through turbulent clouds briefly, and feeling all the sweeter for it.

I trail my hand from his forearm and down to his shoulder as I thankfully manage to get him to let his arm sink and stop the bandage-threatening flexing (with only a slight sting of regret, despite what evil tongues might have you believe of me and my character). He grins, seemingly satisfied, and lets me rest my hand on his chest to steady myself while I catch my breath.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re damn right, T.F., no more freebies. If you wanna see the full show you better pay up first,” he announces, affecting the air of a carnival barker and rubbing his fingers together in the universal sign for ‘money money money, my friends’. That sets me right off again so much that I’m forced to gently collapse against him until my forehead rests against his shoulder, though I’ve still got enough presence of mind left to not lean too much of my weight against his poor battered torso.

“Considering that you’ve already got your shirt off I’m afraid to ask what the ‘full show’ entails,” I gasp out against his chest. He smells like blood and sweat and smoke and spilled brandy right now, and my body doesn’t seem to mind it, which should tell you all you need to know about the wisdom of bodies.

Graves gives a rumbling self-satisfied chuckle and pats me companionably on the back. “You couldn’t handle the full show, buster.”

“If you say somethin’ about being too much man for one set of eyes to handle I’m out of here,” I threaten ineffectually, flopping bonelessly against him.

“Like I said, I ain’t sayin’ nothin’ without the sweet tinkle of some silver krakens between my hands, Tobias.”

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

Humans are Space Orcs, “Proper Profanity.”

WARNING: Obviously this contains a lot of profanity, lol duh :) 

Hopefully it’s at least entertaining

Dr Krill was cleaning the infirmary.. He didn’t mind cleaning, it left his mind time to wander, to think more about the humans. Today he was thinking about linguistics and the complicated way in which humans spoke to each other. It was actually quite beautiful once you stopped being annoyed with it.

He had recently compiled a list of human idioms he found rather delightful. He especially liked ‘when I am ice skating in hell’ not only did it require knowledge of human theology, but also of human sports. Plus it was a great way to tell people no.

Made him want to wriggle a little inside when he thought about it.

Now that he had gotten the use of idioms. He was starting to think about the use of human exclamations. There were so many, he hardly knew where to start.

He was so distracted with his musings that he ended up knocking over a stack of bedpans. They fell to the floor with a clatter before spinning across the open ground.

He looked down and decided that this was the perfect opportunity to try out some of his new exclamations. He wasn’t entirely sure how they worked, but you didn’t get anywhere without trying, “Shit hat!”

He stared at the bedpans trying to determine what he was feeling at the moment.

He didn’t have long for his pondering as Dr. Katie poked her head out of her office. Behind her large square glasses she looked more than a little confused. Another head peered around the corner, and he was surprised to find the captain staring at him with a bemused expression. The door to the far end of the room slid open and a group of marines peered inside.

Hmm, perhaps he had done something wrong.

“Did you just say, shit hat?” Dr Katie wondered glancing between him and the captain.

“That’s what I heard.” he said stepping out from inside.

“Did I do something wrong?” krill wondered in bemusement.

The marines laughed, “What were you even trying to do/”

“I was trying to use an angry exclamation.” The doctor explained 

The captain walked over to sit on the edge of one of the beds staring at Krill with a critical eye, “Well, it was a good effort, but not exactly right.”

“What do you mean.”

The marines walked in to sit with them as did doctor Katie.

The captain shook his head, “Well Krill, you see cursing is a very delicate art, you can’t just throw them together like that. For instance what you were trying to say was likely either ust shit, or ass hat. You can’t just throw them together. Shit would have worked, but in this instance ass hat wouldn’t have.” 

“I do not understand.”

The captain cracked his knuckles, “I will demonstrate, let us first begin with the word ass

Ass/arse = your pretty much just calling them a donkey at this point

Ass hat = refers to a person who is usually stupid or annoying 

Ass wipe = a general insult for someone you don’t like 

Dumbass = an idiot

Asshole = someone who is mean or rude 

Smartass = can be a term of endearment, but otherwise it might be used as a term for someone who is sarcastic or a know it all 

Fatass = someone who eats a lot or is also fat 

Ass face = another general insult, but this is specifically an insult and a comparison on their face to someone’s butt.

So what you were doing doesn't exactly work because you  use ass hat is an insult for a person and not an exclamation.” 

He looked around at the others to make sure they agreed with him before continuing, “our next word is damn.

Damn = can be used as an exclamation of anger in general.

Daaaaaaaaammmnnn = is for general awe, like if I saw someone do something really cool.

Damnit = another exclamation of anger generally a bit higher than just damn 

God Damn it = is just a little higher than the previous two, but implies that you want the creator himself to come down and damn the thing that you are cursing.

As a general side note, you can use damn for inanimate objects.

Damn you = is similar but usually directed towards a person. The equivalent of telling someone to go to hell or flipping them the bird. 

Damn it all = We ramp it up a bit here. You just don’t want to damn the object, but you want to damn everything.

Damn it all to hell = see previous but more specific 

Hot Damn! = this is another good exclamation. You just saw something really cool or someone who is really hot, or something that you really want.

I don’t give a damn = is the fancy way of saying I don’t care.

Are you following me so far?”

Krill nodded eagerly doing his best to remember all of this on such short notice.

“Good, now we get onto another one which I am slightly less familiar but I will try

Bitch = used to mean a female dog, but now sort of means someone who is a coward or pathetic in some way.

Bitching = to complain 

Bitch ass = not entirely sure, but if i say to get your bitch ass over here, I don’t have respect for you, though it is often used as a term of endearment between women 

Bitchboy = calling someones masculinity into question

“Ok now we get to my favorite word shit, so beautifully versatile, but it means that you have to be careful because each one has a different connotation.

The noun Shit = literally means excrement but can be used as an exclamation of displeasure. It can also replace stuff or things. Like where’s my shit

To shit = a verb means to take a dump

The adjective shitty = means something really sucks

See, a little more versatile than before, now.

Shitter = a toilet or the location where the verb takes place

A shit = is exactly what it sounds like.

To take a shit = is the same as the verb 

I don’t give a shit = I don't care kind of like I don’t give a damn

I won't take this shit = means I am not going to put up with you 

Bullshit = information, generally a lie or something that is conflated or untrue 

Batshit = is a modifier to someone who is insane, it generally means they are really crazy

Shitthole = a place that is really horrible or dirty 

Shitstain = general insult for a person you hate

Shithead = see above

Shitfaced = really drunk

The shit = something or someone that is really good

Hot shit= same as the shit

You think you’re hot shit? = generally a challenge to someone who needs to get off their high horse.

A piece of shit = means you suck or your a lowlife 

Shitload = a lot of 

To lose your shit = to go crazy or get really mad

To be on someone’s shit list = means they don’t like you

My shit = it's mine my stuff my property

Your shit = your problems and I don’t want them 

Add an animal in the front  like chicken or horse to denote a situation or information that you don’t like. This is horse shit for example.

Shit hits the fan = things get real 

Shoot the shit = to talk with someone on a social level 

He knows his shit = means he’s smart on a certain topic 

You don’t know shit = you don’t know anything

To give someone shit = you .”mess with them or to give them a hard time

Dipshit = an idiot

I am honestly cutting back on the amount of uses in this situation because if we continued this, it might go on too long.

Kril leaned in a little, “how fascinating. I had no idea one word could be so diverse.”

The human leaned in, “Than you are going to love this next one 

Fuck = sort of an upper escalation of shit. I don't know if the noun means anything really but the verb technically means to do it.

Fuck that = I am not going to do that there is no way in hell 

Fuck you = I hate you go die 

Fuck it = might as well just do this thing regardless of the consequences 

Fuck me = an exclamation of annoyance. Kind of like how could my life get any worse. Generally used when things aren't going your way. Of course you could use it in it’s literal translation as a command form or a question.

Fuck it all = another exclamation kind of like damn it all 

Fuck this shit = generally a screw this thing or activity specifically 

Fuck this = see above but less intense 

Fuckery = like what kind of fuckery is this. A question used to ask about some sort of unsavory activity.

Fuck off = telling someone to leave or go away angrily.

Fucnking hell = just an exclamation

Fucking shit = also just an exclamation

Generally you can put fucking in front of any other curse word noun and you got yourself a good insult hell, damn et. etc 

Fuckwit = an idiot

Fuckface = general insult like shithead 

I dont give a fuck = i dont care

I dont give a flying fuck = i really don’t care

Thats fucked = that is screwed up 

Hes fucked = hes screwed as in a situation specifically

Lets get fucked up = lets go get drunk or high

Lets fuck him up = lets beat him up 

Well…. Fuck = an exclamation of distress 

A fuck ton = larger than a shitload 

If you get fucked over = you’ve been used or betrayed 

And the classic a motherfucker = sort of just a general term for someone, but I  want to say it definitely implies someone is having sex with their mom

Fucktard = an idiot. 

Krill looked on in fascination and delight, “Holy shit!”

The captain blinked and then grinned, “There you go, now you're getting it. Totally forgot about that one.” He patted Krill on the back, “Now go forth, be free in your newfound knowledge and the glorious art that is cursing properly. Make sure not to use it too much though or in certain types of company because it will either cause you problems or lose it’s power. Like for instance, don’t curse around my mother or she will kill me for teaching you. Don’t curse around superior officers unless they curse first, and even then try to avoid doing it too much. Got it.”

Krill nodded.

He was so excited to apply this new rule of human language

[maskeraith]

big eldar scrolls on line post about what i thought about it

may have some spoilers for the morrowind storyline and sidequests idk also I am inevitably gonna compare it to ffxiv a lot as it’s the only other mmorpg I’ve played good luck

Writing this after finishing writing the rest wow this got too long there is a tldr though haha

so the first thing I will say is that eso’s overworld exploration and sidequesting blows ffxiv away completely, there is so much to do and fun to be had in eso simply by exploring around! the enemies feel cool to fight, there are delves and solo dungeons to just stumble across with quests in there, skill points just lying around if you look hard enough, gathering spots that you can just gather from without having to be a specific profession or something, WORLD bosses that you need a group to battle just OUT there it’s really cool! Ffxiv does have some really beautiful environments but in terms of actual stuff to do, there’s literally just fates and they’re pretty shit to be honest, and i guess the sightseeing log??

and sidequests! all my time in the game was spent in the morrowind area (vvardenfall I think? my eso lore is zero watch out) and every sidequest I did had a really engaging storyline. They do mostly amount to fetch quests and slay monster quests in terms of gameplay with some puzzle moments sometimes, but the storylines were captivating enough to justify most of what you had to do. compared to ffxiv which is BLOATED with boring fetch quests with uninteresting storylines eso has it figured out. the characters you meet and their dialogue is great and sometimes you can even make choices which affect the final outcome of the quest which is always fun (your character having the personality of a brick aside). I actually think I enjoyed certain sidequests more than the main story of morrowind they’re that involved

Also there are world events but I didn’t really get into them, there was like a huge tornado which spawned some enemies that give you massive exp, but my horsey was too slow and I only got there at the tail end because they’re great for farming so every player in the world goes there and kills them instantly they seem cool though

in terms of lore, I’m not someone who is super interested in the lore of the elder scrolls universe but I found myself learning a whole lot of very crazy stuff from the friends I was playing with who DO know all about it, and I will say that if the lore of the elder scrolls universe interests you in any way you’ll love this game! so I learned that there are Eras in this universe, and eso takes place in the second era I believe. The other main series games all take place in the third or fourth I think, so eso is able to like set the groundwork for those games and explain the history behind stuff going on in all the main games, which I think is a really good idea, perfect for fans of the lore and stuff. Like I remember the funny talking dog from skyrim and he’s like the primary antagonist of the morrowind main story like woah

The combat is where I think the game started to fall off for me, again with the ffxiv comparison but it just wasn’t reaching levels nearly as interesting as the combat in that game for me.

Firstly, there’s no tab targetting (unless there’s a setting in the menu somewhere i missed?) you actually aim all your attacks, single target, aoe, whatever. for me this made it harder to be able to gain a situational awareness, and I have to keep my camera aimed at the boss and I’m not able to move it around to see if there was anything else going on. I do see how aiming your attacks could actually make the game more appealing to some people, though, as it does give a sense that you are more actively participating in the battle and not just standing there pressing buttons, but for me this sort of thing doesn’t make any difference

The second thing was the amount of abilities you have at any one time - you have 10 abilities and 2 ultimates slotted at any one time. Five and one ult are active at a time, and you have to swap weapons (it’s as easy as the press of a button) to switch to your second bar with the other 5 and 1 ult. This does make the game a lot more accessible I think, but it also means the stuff you get to do is just gonna be a lot more straightforward and spammy compared to the interesting and involved rotations you get in ffxiv. as a tank, I set myself up to put three dots and a debuff on the enemy and then spam my one damaging attack, until I had to reapply the stuff again, and that was basically it. I had some tank cooldowns too like a shield, heal, a grab and so on. I did look up the Most Complicated Rotation to see how hard it could get, which seemed to be stamina nightblade, and even that has “Ability x11″ or something in its rotation

Simple rotations would be fine for me if the bosses themselves were more difficult or complicated to compensate, but honestly nothing was any more difficult or involved than ffxiv. On youtube I’ve watched like 5 dungeons and a trial on the hardest Veteran difficulty, and the dungeons don’t look like anything more than what you would get in other mmos. The trials looks like really great content honestly, but there’s no party finder for them as far as I know so you have to manually gather 11 other people which is never something I enjoy trying to do in multiplayer games lol

i also didn’t super appreciate that the game wanted to like hide a bunch of info from me by default? like a few hours in I complained that it was impossible to know when my dots and self buffs ran out because all I had was like little particle effects on the enemy/myself to go off, and my friends were like “oh yeah you need to turn on these tooltips in the options” like huh?? I need to know this stuff come on

There is some really cool stuff in the combat though! Every player has like a basic bash attack, which can interrupt certain attacks, and then a basic heavy attack, which can knock down staggered enemies (they get staggered if you interrupt them) so there is more to do than just your abilities.

One thing I will mention though, is that I think a huge part of the combat is resource management - you spend stamina/mana on your abilities and if you’re not careful it’s easy to run out. As a tank, blocking takes up stamina, and sometimes I would not manage it correctly and run out and be unable to use my anything for a bit. You get it back by doing heavy attacks (contrary to every game ever) and other like passives unique to whatever build you might have going on. A lot of the game’s difficulty in harder content might come from this, but I didn’t get that deep into any of that sort of thing

I think the way you pick your abilities is really cool - you level up a whole bunch of different skill trees at a time, and you can slot any ability from any tree at any time (other than weapon skills specifically, you must be weilding that weapon) into your 10 slots. Your class has three unique trees, then there’s like a tree for every weapon type, for mage and fighter’s guild, this weird guild called the undaunted, werewolf and vampire, probably more I forgot about. All of them have 5 skills that you unlock as you level that tree, and all of those skills can be morphed into one of two “strong” versions of that skill once you level that specific skill. So there is a huge amount of player choice in how you build your character! I remember getting loads of advice from my friends but also just thinking to myself “but this skill though...” (i am so sorry). There are loads of passives too but they’re kind of lame and you just sort of put your excess skill points in them to make yourself passively stronger. I am sure there are Optimal builds, but playing casually you can literally just do anything

I do think levelling them can sometimes be a pain though because like, if you want the fifth ability in Skill Tree 1 but you don’t really use any of the first four, well actually you do have to start using a bunch of those skills you don’t want because you gain more exp for that skill tree the more of its skills you use, sort of a minor thing I guess

Finally I will talk about how I really do not like the execution of the loot system... So you get armour sets in this game and if you wear 5 of them you get a very significant passive, like whenever you crit you summon a big ghoul to shoot acid, or all of your aoe abilities also taunt. I think this is a super cool idea in theory, and it allows for even further personal customisation of the kind of character you want to play. However..

So the max level is 50, but the real max level is like 180 or something because at 50, you continue to level up but each level just gives you a point to put into these big huge bonus passive skill trees which continue to increase your stats up to the 180th point or something like that. In eso, though, you can go anywhere and do anything and all the enemies are scaled to you. But, it’s actually that you are scaled to the enemies - while below level 50, you get an invisible buff that makes you as strong as a level 50 character. This means that every level you gain, you actually get slightly weaker, if you’re not updating your armour.

Armour drops at whatever level you are, up to the cap of 180 where you are the strongest you can be. So ultimately what this means is every piece of armour you get up until you reach the level cap will quickly become obsolete. Every time I collected 5 pieces of a set and got a cool passive, all I could think was “this will be fun for about 4 levels” because I knew I’d need to swap it all out for stronger stuff. Essentially I felt locked out of seriously farming for the gear sets I wanted until I reached Max Max level, which made everything I collected seem pretty pointless to me.

Also, always being as strong as a level 50 character did kind of make it feel like I wasn’t really levelling up at all? It’s why I broke my rule of “I will get to level 50 before stopping” because I actually was level 50 all along, I got all the abilities from my skill trees that I wanted and ran a bunch of dungeons with them and I was in the 30s, but there were no other skills I could really see myself swapping out so I was essentially “max level”, as far as I was concerned.

so yeah tl;dr these are my two main opinions:

This game is an awesome time running around and exploring the environment, doing quests and running dungeons! If you’re a fan of the elder scrolls world and lore it is absolutely a must play!

Customising your character’s skills and armour sets is a lot of fun, but I do think it comes at the expense of not having a really finely tuned, coherant combat style, it feels a lot like I’m Just Hitting All The Buttons.

The end lol

[masterthespianduchovny]

Gillian’s comparison

"Why is it that now, in retrospect, people can start that conversation by saying, 'I assume that is not true,' when they didn't at the time?" she muses. 1."David and I are closer now than we have ever been. 2. Look, when you are working with somebody for such an intense period of time, of course you don't want to see them outside work. I didn't want to see the girl who was doing my hair every day, either. 3. There are inherent complications in such forced marriages. In other countries the men get to beat the women; thankfully, that doesn't fly in America. 4. It was an important time for both of us. So we worked a lot of things out together in a psychological and metaphysical way."

Let’s break down this infamous quote anons LOOOOOVVEEEEE using to take shots at David.

1. Gillian is explaining that people are assuming that people who never called into question David and her tense relationship never did at the time. The bold part ARE HER OWN WORDS explaining that they are much CLOSER than they’ve ever been. She didn’t say “we’re close now.” Or at the very least, “we’ve mended bridges.” NOPE! Gillian flat out said that she and David are closer, which means, as I said, they had a tense relationship, but was close in a sense. I’m allegedly putting words in Gillian’s mouth or making up shit, BUT when you use her own words, she says the things people accuse me of saying. lol. She is flat out contradicting their claims.

2. As I mentioned in my post, “David and Gillian: The Uphill Battle”, they worked under extreme conditions. Lo and Behold, Gillian says when they worked together it was “an intense period of time.” That she (also) didn’t want to see David outside of work let alone anyone else. AGAIN, these are Gillians words. There is no way to misconstrue what she is saying UNLESS you don’t want to believe her. She didn��t paint a picture that it was just David, she’s saying the environment overall was intense and even a position such as hairstylist was still someone she didn't want to see when she clocked out. But, somehow, antis will make this about David being the worst and I somehow misunderstand Gillian.

3. This is where we have to break do a break down. Gillian said, “there are INHERENT COMPLICATIONS.”

Let’s define Inherent: belonging by nature or habit.

Gillian was explaining that when you’re forced to work with someone, as in signing a contract to be tied to a show with them for years, naturally, complications are apart of that relationship. In this context, that is what inherent means. This is important because it leads to her abusive marriage comparison, which is built off of her calling her working relationship with David, “a forced marriage.”

Usually in forced marriages or, stereotypically viewed in the west, there is a huge power differential in favor of the man. Leading up to this point, Gillian laid groundwork explaining that they were in a way better place than before and how intense work was, so you didn’t want to see anyone afterwards. Without explicitly saying it, she paints a picture of friction and discord because of the load they had to carry.

When she says her remarks about other countries, she’s not making a comparison to DD being an abusive partner, she’s saying, “if we were truly in a forced marriage, David would've had the OPTION to beat me”, which built off of her references to how bad things were. But, since America isn’t like that, if they’d truly been in a forced marriage, David didn’t have the option at all. She went down a crazy rabbit hole of an explanation as to how difficult their relationship was at times, but she never said or implied that David was abusive. So either people have poor comprehension skills, which I don’t believe, or people love to misconstrue her words because it paints David in the worst possible light. I think some honestly did get tripped up, but Gillian didn’t compare David to an abusive partner.

Why even speak highly of David or, at least, where their relationship was in the moment, if she was then going to compare him to an abusive partner? Yes, she clearly didn’t know she was going for that line of thought, but again, why say they're “closer” than they’ve ever been. Again, closer means they were close in some capacity while the show was on. 

4. She goes on to say that since this was both an important time for them, they found other ways to work through this. She doesn’t make another reference to forced marriage or abusive husbands. Or imply any skewed power dynamics. She frames it as to equal partners trying to overcome an obstacle.

Because this is the quote antis LOVE to reference, if David was an abusive partner to Gillian, why does she continue to work and associate with him.

----

This interview happened in ‘05, three years before IWTB came out, which means she went to work with DD two years later to film it. It was ten years before she began shooting for Season 10 and twelve years before she shot with him for Season 11. In the meantime, she also did a handful of cons with David and, I believe, at one point she only agreed to do a con if David did it.

Last year she roped David into helping her raise money for a NF charity she’s passionate about. She also promoted his music and showed people where to find it. Then, after swearing off the X-Files, she did zoom calls with David about the X-Files. Gillian has even gone to a play that David was in and he went to her plays as well. People will claim some of these actions are PR (funny how they believe in PR-esque relationships now), despite some of these things not being connected to the X Files at all and neither having any reason to do it other than them wanting to.

Was GA promoting DD’s music for “The Crown”??? I’m sure antis will find a “plausible” explanation. 

For all of the antis proclamations that they aren’t friends, Gillian hates him, and she doesn’t talk to/associate with David, 15 years of evidence and her own words prove otherwise. :)

How dare I say they're friends because they behave like friends AND, well, they called themselves friends. No, I’m wrong and the antis who deny their literal quotes confirming that I’m saying is right. 

(I expect more anon hate, despite solidly making my case. lol)

@baronessblixen

[jngles]

Thoughts You Definitely All Asked For on ‘The Mandalorian’ Season 2 Finale!!

These are in chronological order for the show.

One of my biggest fears about them reintroducing Boba Fett was that by removing some of his mystery, they would make him less cool. Thank god that has not been the case. He’s still an aloof and nasty piece of work but with dimensions added.

We all know the Empire is most often a metaphor for America right? At least when it’s not being Nazi Germany? The Imperial pilot talking about destroying an entire planet (of peaceful weaponless civilians no less) to stop terrorism hits a little too close to home of the nuclear bombs the US has dropped and the endless destruction of the Middle East in the “war against terror.” And of course we frame all our wars in similar language like “our troops died to keep our country safe,” which hasn’t really been true since WWII.

I do think it’s worth noting that this is the first time SW has had someone acknowledge the human losses of the Death Star blasts. Usually it’s framed as a loss in construction time, strategical advantage, and power. The Empire proved time and time again that the lives of its soldiers were utterly expendable, which always made me question why people remained loyal outside of fear. Through this pilot’s phrasing, you can see the propaganda Imperial superiors used to twist the truth to their followers, always blaming those deaths on Rebel aggression instead of prideful Imperial neglect (I.e. not abandoning ship when there was still time) or even direct Imperial aggression like Operation Cinder where they fired on thousands of their own (discussed in S2E7.)

You can’t tell me Din wasn’t into it when Cara shot that asshole pilot. That cold faced revenge shot? 100% Mandalorian style, and also very very hot.

I appreciate that it was a pretty equal match between Boba and Koska Reeves. So much of Boba’s advantage comes from his suit, but since she also has one, it’s a battle of wits on how to use it, and they even out. This both maintains his legendary badassery and also that of highly trained Mandalorian warriors, and hopefully avoids asshole chauvinist SW fans on the internet complaining abujt “pandering to feminism” (fuck off @ all of them, especially since Mercedes Vernado who plays Reeves is a WWE champ and could kick all of your asses.)

Din point blank asked how many Death Troopers there are and Dr. Pershing never answered, and that annoys me.

Why is no one suspicious why Dr. Pershing is being so helpful and revealing so much information? He totally did not have to tell them about the Dark Troopers or any of the specifics of locations on the ship. He’s still with the empire post-fall, implying he’s a loyalist, so... wtf on his part (since no tricks come of it), and “be smarter” on the part of everyone else. Unless he’s been captive as a clone engineer all this time. But couldn’t he have made his escape back in Season 1 when Din killed everyone at that lab to get the kid back?

Bo Katan really could’ve just told them how the retrieval of the dark saber needs to work in the flight before the mission instead of being vague about “he belongs to me.”

Boba Fett’s usage of “Princess” and “don’t worry about me” are a good throwback to Han Solo and the culture they both grew up in. You can never quite tell if it’s based in misogyny or resentment for upper classes, but both of them seem to use it as a shield for begrudging respect they hold for a woman they think is brave but following a fool’s errand (the Rebellion and retaking Mandalore).

The Comms Officer (Katy O’Brian) assisting Moff Gideon will forever and always look like Ilana Glazer to me, and then I get swept up imagining what would happen if the Broad City cast accidentally got transported to Star Wars.

The launch tube sequence has some amazing cinematography.

The second I saw Boba was cut off from the pack, I really thought they were going to kill him again and make his return bittersweet. Glad they didn’t.

God this team of Bo Katan, Koska Reeves, Fennec Shand, and Cara Dune is SO BADASS. I’m just obsessed with all these characters and their various motivations to get shit done. I honestly didn’t even think about the fact it’s all women until my re-watch, showing that the writers made it feel natural, the way women deserve to have their representation done. You can bet I am SO EXCITED for my future daughter and the wealth of possibilities she’s going to have of characters to play pretend as, action figures she can relate to, Halloween costumes to wear, etc. It’s so validating that we’ve gone from only Princess Leia as a female main character to all these women + Rey, Jyn Erso, Ahsoka, etc. etc.

Can’t wait for the trap remix of the Dark Trooper activation noises. (And the transition from that to the minimalist flute theme is perfect.)

The spy movie version of the main theme music is sick.

The Dark Trooper droid faces have a lot of similarity to Darth Vader’s mask. That callback is especially apparent when the one is literally lit from the inside with fire. He was already a martyr/legend to the Imperial remnants, Kylo Ren didn’t start the trend of ignoring his redemption.

Cara’s “excuse me” right before shooting up Stormtroopers is hilarious. Literally “can’t talk rn, doing hot girl shit and murdering space Nazis.”

Finally an Imperial ship got some frickin security cameras. Truly- the amount of times people just wander down hallways they’re not supposed to be in with no one being able to find them throughout the course of Star Wars is ridiculous when you think about the degree of surveillance our real life society carries out. I also love that this means The Mandalorian characters have also seen The Mandalorian.

The storytelling does such a service to Pedro Pascal and his already heroic efforts to portray emotion through a helmet. For example: Din easily could’ve killed the one stormtrooper outside Grogu’s cell much more efficiently, but instead, to show his absolute rage, they wrote in Din choking him out with a spear.

Moff Gideon would have been the BIGGEST pain in the ass in philosophy class. “Assume I know everything” my ass. I want to hear about his backstory (he would’ve been “coming of age” at the time of the Clone Wars) mostly just to hear about him getting bullied at school.

Smart move honestly, to try to tempt Din with the Mandalorian throne, given the Mandalorian power struggles of the past. Proud of our boy for keeping his priorities straight.

So has the blood from Grogu been transferred out of the ship and back to the remnant empire already, or do they have to find a new “donor” to help with building Snoke and Palpatine’s clones? Will they continue to go after him with Luke?

Lmao Din being so annoyed by Bo Katan being stringent about the tradition of winning the Dark Saber through combat is HILARIOUS, coming from a man who up until like a day ago hadn’t shown his face to a living being in decades.

The dark troopers can punch in blast doors but NOT Din’s helmet?? That’s a wild testament to beskar. Somehow that’s the comparison that sticks out to me, more even than its resistance to lightsabers.

This show works because of the cynicism of so many characters adding contrast to the moments of heart. Cara Dune is not a “fan” the way Rey was (for the record I love Rey, don’t come at her, it’s just different). Cara doesn’t see an X-Wing and go OMG THE REBELLION I LOVE THEM. She’s been through too much to believe in the magic saviourism of the “good guys,” and is instead thinking strategically when she, the one Rebel present, brushes off the usefulness of “one X-Wing.” The only positive things she seems to feel in battle situations are moments of relief and brief satisfaction in hurting the empire, with a dark knowledge that it will never make up for the hurt they did to her.

How do you keep a cloak hood on while fighting? Both from a technical standpoint (my hats fall off without me even having to move- is he expending force energy just to keep it on and look cool lol?) and also because idk, maybe it’s just me, but peripheral vision is helpful when surrounded by killer robots on a thin bridge above oblivion. I know his first lesson was to “see” through the force, but every resource helps, right?

Now that she has the ship, I wonder if Bo Katan can reprogram any salvageable Dark Troopers to help with retaking Mandalore?

There is nothing like seeing Luke’s fighting style, with its efficient choppiness and twinge of darkness. I always wonder how much is natural and how much is influenced by his first fights with Vader (that Skywalker diva flair). I love how they’ve advanced his technique but also kept him extremely “grey” here- like to straight up COMBUST a Dark Trooper takes some violent energy lol.

How tf is Moff Gideon alive after threatening Grogu’s life twice directly? That’s a wild testament to Din’s regard for Cara.

I love how seeing Luke slice through a bunch of murder droids like butter probably was a huge point in his favor for Din actually letting Grogu go with him. Like he will only send his child to boarding preschool if he knows the teacher will be a certified killing machine.

Oh my god they finally brought in some OG Star Wars theme music for Luke to take his hood off to 😭 It felt weird seeing him fight to different music, so the emotional payoff is huge when his themes come back for the face reveal.

Whoever added the digital young Mark Hamill face NAILED those classic shining Luke eyes and the earnest eyebrow lift.

Whoever shines the glass of Baby Yoda’s lil puppet eyeballs each day deserves a raise. The light caught in those babies is devastating.

Din is shaking as he takes off his helmet. This is the most enormous show of love he could give him, and possibly the last he’ll be able to for a long time. He only just got Grogu back and is desperate for a moment of real connection before letting him go once again.

This is the first time anyone has touched Din’s face since... likely his parents as a child.

Whoever wrote this scene clearly actually has kids. Anyone who’s ever had to leave a young child even just to go out for a bit or to drop them off somewhere knows that heartbreak of seeing them look in your eyes and hold on to your leg, trying to keep you with them. Especially when they can sense your mutual separation anxiety. The one thing that starts to make them feel better is something fun like a new toy or friend who can be their guide in the new environment, and R2’s friendly introduction is exactly that (since digital Luke isn’t being particularly emotive or child friendly... I hope that’s just because he’s reaching into Grogu’s mind while also keeping an eye on the multiple people with guns trained on him, not because he’s going to be totally unfeeling raising this kid.)

I love that Grogu and R2 are immediately buddies in contrast to Episode 5 when R2 was like “fuck this guy” @ Yoda stealing food and hitting him with a walking stick lol. I would imagine Luke must be reminded of that first introduction too and entertained by this display of playfulness in a *positive* light between R2 and mini-Yoda.

I need to know if Luke and Ahsoka have met- it is KILLING ME.

Does this mean Grogu will get killed by Kylo Ren when he fucks up Luke’s academy??? I will reincarnate Ben just to kill him again if that’s the case.

How does Luke not even fully SMILE at Grogu?? An adorable little baby version of his beloved master Yoda, and you’re telling me he doesn’t have the same heart stopping gasp we all did when we first saw him?? Maybe he did when they first connected through the force. He has a bit of bemusement on his face, and also wonder in his eyes, but I want a grin of recognition and welcome, dammit.

I really wish Luke had somehow acknowledged Cara Dune. Everyone else seems to see the tear drop Rebel sign and know it means Alderaan. He could’ve been like yo I have a badass warrior sister from your planet that you should meet. Or just “thank you for your service.” (I know this actually wouldn’t have been cinematically good but my heart wants it.)

Luke didn’t tell Din his name?? Or ask for any details about the kid and his care?? I could literally never let my kid go with someone, regardless of how worthy, and not be like, “Excuse me sir who are you and where tf are you taking my tiny beloved green goblin in case I need to find him? Here is my contact info. He likes to eat frogs and eggs, and he can have macarons as a treat. He’s 50 years old and his favorite toy is still a ball. Bedtime is 8pm and he’s allergic to dairy.”

Another reason I wish Luke had identified himself would be to see the mishmash of reactions that would ensue. Cara would be like DAMN IT’S THAT GUY WHO BLEW UP THE DEATH STAR AND KILLED THE EMPEROR, ACT COOL (and she would indeed act cool). Fennec would be like ugh it’s that guy who helped kill my best paying client Jabba the Hutt and then fucked over my boss Boba, I helped save the kid for THIS? And I would LOVE to know how Bo Katan feels about him, assuming she’s heard of him, and especially if she knows he’s Anakin Skywalker’s son. That confusion is probably the reason WHY the writers didn’t have him reveal himself- they didn’t want to break the emotion of the scene.

Let‘s all be real I’m just being needy about wanting things from Luke because of what he meant to me as a kid and my resulting innate need to have more canon of him, whatever it is, whenever I can get it. Especially in this form that’s so similar to ROTJ, a movie I watched on endless repeat. Even getting this was incredible though. Who else could we trust this lil heart-stealing green bean with so fully? Yet who would be so arrogant as to try to train a baby yodling (see: Ahsoka’s wise refusal)?

R2 is reckless as hell lmao. Not that we don’t already know that, but for him to just head on in, effectively abandoning Luke’s ship (how can they know if there are more troopers or not who might blow it up?) and also putting himself in the path of the ridiculously deadly Dark Troopers is NUTS. I’m usually on his side but he absolutely deserves a scolding by C3PO for this one.

I wonder if Grogu has any memories of R2 or vice versa since they did occupy the Jedi Temple at the same time. Can Grogu understand droids? They could swap stories about mutual acquaintances.

Does Din pretty much have to go with Bo Katan now since a) he’s shown his face and may not be able to go back to the Watch, and b) because he has the darksaber and has to figure out how to get it back to her without dying?

How in the hell did Bib Fortuna (whose chins age was not kind to) go from being butler to being boss? Were all the henchmen just like, “Fuck yeah, no Hutt parents no rules, let’s do what we want!!” And then they’ve spent the last ten years living off of whatever money they could salvage from Jabba’s non-banked wealth? Why has no one challenged them for that prime real estate and loot? I would love to hear that story.

Fennec Shand says “respect sex workers” so you better fuckin’ do it.

Idk dude Bib Fortuna really was a good butler, and he seemed pretty willing to comply with whoever’s in power. Did he screw Boba over in his attempt to return from the dead and earn that killing shot somehow? Or was this to make sure there was no one left who would have a claim to loyalty? Or maybe Boba just really wanted to sit in that chair.

Does “The Book of Boba Fett” mean we’re not on Din Djarin’s story anymore? Or is it a new show? I would much prefer the latter. I want to see Din help retake Mandalore or at least get a hug.

[whetstonefires]

Do you think the DC fandom maybe, Infantilizes Tim a little too much? Like for a rich kid character who's main trauma for a long time was a getting left home alone too much there's an oddly amount of meta abt how much how much his parents hurt him~ compared to, y'know the two poor characters who grew up with physically abusive dad's+druggie mom's, or the two that were raised assassin cult's, etc

…well, yeah, I do kind of think that? His whole schtick for so long was being too old for his age in ways that didn’t sacrifice his jokey, relatable teenager energies. It’s weird how little of that we see anymore, sometimes.

And then DC broke him and discarded him and he’s sort of awkwardly hanging around getting reimagined as more woobie with every fan generation. It is weird!

But tbh I do get it. And I think the reason his parents’ failure of him and his vulnerability get played up so much, and Jason and Steph’s sufferings (while used a lot for things like motivation and context) not dwelt on quite so much in the same lugubrious style, are kind of the same reason.

Which is that canon didn’t commit to it. Jason and Steph’s experiences with bad parenting were foregrounded and retconned more dramatically awful several times. (There’s some definite classism in how that was approached imo, and I’m never budging on being mad about DC retconning out Catherine being sick and then ignoring her forever in all Jason characterization because a drug death invalidates a person ig, great message during the opioid crisis guys.)

They engaged and coped with it–Steph (and Cass, our #1 canon batfam parental abuse victim) pretty directly, Jason a little less so because of the dubious and fluctuating canon status of most of the content more specific than ‘poverty, homelessness, theft, parental drugs and crime in there somewhere,’ so most of his parent issues have been focused on Bruce. He sure has dug into them tho. 😂 Rarely well or productively, thanks DC, but it’s explicitly part of his character, is my point.

Whereas upper-middle-class Tim was always treated by the narrative as fortunate and unharmed by his experiences with his parents. Even though they were clearly behaving badly in several ways, and Tim showed signs of being harmed by it.

Tim outside of immediate moments of frustration always was of the opinion he was Fine, and Very Fortunate Actually.

Therefore a huge chunk of the numerous everyone who’s got parent-related mental and emotional harm, but has struggled to have that validated and hasn’t responded with a lot of anger toward the parent, identifies with Tim. The only one who’s never really lashed out at his parents for fucking up with him. The one who still needs it explored, because canon ultimately didn’t.

[editing post to put in a readmore because lol it’s long, post otherwise unchanged]

(Dick obviously didn’t ever have any Issues with the Graysons, but he Angry Teenagered at Bruce so hard it changed Bruce’s characterization permanently, rip.)

The things Jason, Steph, and Cass have been through are dramatic, obvious, and fit stereotypes because that’s what they’re based on.

That’s important content to have, but because it’s right out there in your face even people who identify with it quite a lot are less likely to feel the need to work all the way through it again in fanworks. That part’s there. It’s text.

(Well actually Jason having been physically abused kind of wasn’t? I think? It was mostly assumed on the basis of stereotyping and Jason’s not caring about the man much even as he felt possessive of information about his death, which is valid. I don’t actually know what’s up with Willis now, Lobdell did some weird shit that lacked emotional resonance or staying power because he’s Lobdell and has no soul.

Cass’ wandering years are also ludicrously underdeveloped. But very very few comics fans or writers can personally relate to being amazing child warriors with no grasp of language living feral under bridges. That part of her life is consistently represented in terms of absences, in terms of its deviation from the norm and the deficits of normality it left her with, which is typical but unfortunate.) 

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The interesting things to do with these characters are often informed by the bad stuff in their childhoods, but there’s relatively rarely that much more to say about the fact that those things were bad. They know they’re bad. They’ve had a lot of on-panel rage about it, as discussed above. Steph and Cass both beat the shit out of their dads.

Jason is, in fandom especially, a sort of Platonic ideal of a kid who’s mad about his bad childhood and really bad at figuring out where to point that rage.

(Damian is a whole other kettle of fish, because he’s been lumbered by so many detailed retcons coming so fast no two people can seem to construct compatible models of what his early childhood was like, and even more because he’s still ‘a child’ enough that he’s necessarily in a different stage of processing than someone who’s officially only a few years older than him at this point, but still functionally 8 and also 20 years older, and whose parents are no longer in the picture to continue screwing up.

Also there’s no question that if he brings up an abusive thing the League did, he will be validated by his current environment about his realization that it was in fact bad. There’s a lot of fic on that theme! But it doesn’t have the same tone precisely because it is usually understood that that support will be there if he wants it. Realizing that his previous context contained things that were wrong keeps being made the focus of his arc.)

The badness of Tim’s childhood, on the other hand, was mainly in subtext. Even when we were clearly meant to understand Jack was fucking up, like when he canceled plans with Tim at the last minute to go on a date with Tim’s stepmother, or that infamous time he came to apologize for not being a great parent and got mad Tim was distracted by a crisis on TV so he flew into a rage and took the TV and smashed it and was like ‘that’ll teach you,’ it wasn’t leaned into.

The story didn’t treat Jack as a minor villain to be overcome but like a sort of environmental hazard of childhood, like homework, to be endured and coped with. Tim said things like ‘it’s fine’ and ‘at least he left the computer.’

(And like. It’s not about having a TV and computer in his room. It’s about not letting a child have boundaries, pointedly not respecting a child’s possessions, creating an emotionally insecure environment, punishing minor infractions in proportion to their momentary impact on your own ego, physically lashing out at a proxy for the child…)

Rather like Tom King later didn’t understand about the punching from Bruce, whoever did that story (probably Dixon? I don’t care enough to check) did not understand how serious a case of bad parenting that scene was. That is most definitely textbook abusive behavior. (It’s a hell of a lot more common abusive behavior than being a lame supervillain or shooting you when you screw up, and a lot more specific than ‘was a thug, might have hit me, dead now.’)

And Tim was never allowed to be mad at his parents about it. It was fine. He needed to be ignored so he had the freedom to be Robin. He deserved his dad being mad at him because he was keeping secrets. He complained too much, although objectively he did not.

The universe punished him for ‘complaining,’ more than once. We cut straight from him shunting aside his disappointment that his postcard from his parents was just to say they weren’t coming home yet after all with ‘if it will stop all the fights they’ve been having lately it’s more than fine’ to them getting kidnapped.

He agreed not to come on the rescue mission. His mom never made it home, and his dad was in a coma for a while. And then ultimately Jack died as a result of Tim’s decision to be Robin, immediately after finally deciding to accept it.

So Tim walks around feeling a huge burden of responsibility for his parents’ deaths, and completely unable to process any hurt they did him as real or valid, especially in comparison with the far more blatant awfulness other people have been through, and canon is clearly never going to address it. Or even acknowledge it properly.

Let me repeat that because it’s kind of my main point:

People are fixated on getting Tim’s emotional abuse validated because that’s an incredibly important step in recovering from emotional abuse, and it’s one canon consistently denied him.

How ‘bad’ things are ‘in comparison to’ problems other people have is a bad and unhealthy way to engage with trauma. Okay? That’s just a really harmful framework to apply to pain.

It’s also a way that both Tim and people with experiences similar to Tim’s are encouraged to engage with their own experiences, compounding the existing problems.

So. Not a form of relatable DC was ever actually aiming for when they tried so hard (and pretty effectively) to make him a relatable character as Robin, but an enduring one for a lot of fans.

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So Tim’s childhood is a natural target for fanworks in a different way than the traumas that have been made explicit and taken seriously by the text. And then a lot of that got compounded by the way the introduction of Damian as Robin was handled, and the lack of resolution that got. And his current status as not quite having a place in the family anymore.

So between the level of projection encouraged by that context and how relatively difficult to access Tim’s Robin run has become ten years after the fact, this has led to a lot of fanworks on these themes that are based mostly on other fanworks, and stray further and further from the original content.

So at this point there’s an entire wing of Tim’s fandom wherein this side of him has expanded enormously, and he primarily exists to suffer, frequently in ways that 1) escalate to a point that is inarguably ‘valid’ and hard to dismiss and 2) set him up to rebound from it in whatever way the writer finds emotionally satisfying or useful–being ultimately cared for and reassured by people who value him (the most infantilizing option but like, popular for obvious reasons), or unveiling his brilliant scheme that was causing him to pretend to be passive in the face of mistreatment, or turning around and using his genius ninja skills to wrest power back from his abusers, or just laying down some sick burns about being treated fairly.

But not that many of the last one, because that’s mostly done with other batfam members.

Tim’s become a vehicle for a lot of vicarious coping that Steph and Jason just aren’t appropriate for, because they get angry and they get even. And those are stories that exist already, so there’s less scope for telling your own.

And because Jason’s reaction pattern is ultimately so masculine (i’ll make them all sorry! with my guns! blam blam!) while Tim’s is pretty gender-neutral, the demographics of fanfic mean that the bulk of the people using Tim vicariously in this manner are female-aligned, which has over time feminized this archetype of him a lot. Sometimes in ways I find really uncomfortable, like there’s a lot of forced pregnancy stuff which activates my panic buttons. x.x

But, ultimately, it’s fandom. People are going to do what they’re going to do, DC in their perpetual fail has hung Tim out to dry in narrative terms, and I’d rather the people who are using Tim for victimization narratives over the people who can’t dismiss or discredit him fast enough now that his position has been filled. 🤷‍♀️ What we gonna do? Fave’s in an awkward spot. DC hates us. This is the life in this comic book pit. XD

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Also if you’re the same anon who left me a callout about op of that weird Steph post in my inbox, or if you aren’t @ that person, 1) I refuse to get involved so I’m not answering that ask 2) those aren’t even particularly dramatic fandom crimes? That’s pretty normal? That’s just…Caring Too Much About Ships And Disagreeing With Me.

Do I also feel those opinions are kinda bad? Yeah. But I disagree with everyone about something. Chill.