#a real doctor i have seen in person HOWEVER that is not going to stop me from bitching and moaning about it

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

the. problem. with having a gallbladder that decided to make lots of little rocks instead of doing its job of cheerfully and quietly producing bile, is that you cannot have a lot of fat and you cannot have a lot of spice and you really shouldn’t have a lot of meat, which means you get absolutely zero enjoyment from food

[e-vay]

SONIC 3 REVIEW

I wanted to wait a few weeks to give many people the chance to see Sonic 3 before I wrote a review, but of course I'll keep it under the cut for those who still haven't seen it.

DISCLAIMERS!

I acknowledge that the Sonic Cinematic Universe is a SEPARATE interpretation of the Sonic franchise so I will never dock it points for doing things different than we've seen in the games. These movies are inspired by the Sonic the Hedgehog video games, they are not direct adaptations. I have no sympathy for anyone who complains these movies get things 'wrong' about the games.

I acknowledge that the Sonic movies are family films marketed towards children, so some of the writing and plot devices are simplified or toned down for younger audiences. However, that won't stop me from pointing out some plot holes.

My review is just my opinion. I'm not saying I'm right or that you're wrong if you disagree.

I'm so damn excited to finally talk about it and I have SO MUCH to say, so buckle up!

TL;DR: I give Sonic 3 a score of 9/10, just barely shy of being an absolutely perfect movie! There were some editing choices and some plot holes that made me dock minor points. These nitpicks are small and almost insignificant compared to the whole of the film, but they stood out enough to bother me and they're why I can't give it a perfect rating.

Let's start with the positives.

CAST & CHARACTERS - 10/10

TL;DR - With a star-studded cast, it's almost impossible to say any one actor/character outshined the others. Every single person was on their A-game for this movie and gave emotional, hilarious, all-out performances.

Jim Carrey as both Ivo and Gerald Robotnik is genius! He plays both characters so differently that you could almost believe they were being played by two different people -- minus the tongue-in-cheek way the movie reminds you that they're the same person.

This iteration of Gerald is unlike any we've seen before, which kept me on my toes the entire time I was watching. He comes onto the scene fully claiming that he's a villain, but still he manages to suckerpunch you (and Ivo) with the final reveal of his ultimate plan. You would think that the same old man who was just doing a choreographed dance performance 20 minutes ago couldn't tear your heart out without even the use of words when we see him mourning the loss of his granddaughter, and then fill you with spine-chilling terror as he uses his whole chest to exclaim he's going to 'burn it all down!', but damn did Jim Carrey do that and more! This movie (and Jim Carrey alike) managed to make Gerald both the major comic relief of the movie AND simultaneously made him one of the most despicable villains in the franchise so far. His utter lack of compassion for Shadow or Ivo, using both of them as his puppets, really shows you how little this man values even those who are supposed to be closest to him. I encourage you to rewatch the movie and really appreciate the dynamic range we were given of this character in under a 2 hour window.

Ivo is back and better than ever, baby (despite what Tails says)! Though I liked the initial, unexpected take on his character in Sonic 1, it has been beyond satisfying to see the evil doctor's descent into madness, all culminating into THE Eggman we recognize from the games! Seeing him in the iconic Eggman suit was like seeing my baby in her gown for prom. I was one proud mama! Sonic 3 sends Ivo on an emotional rollercoaster and we not only get to see him the silliest he's ever been, but your heart truly breaks for him by the end of the film. Honestly, I'm still gutted over Gerald's "Ivo, you're no Maria" line! One thing I particularly loved is that repeatedly throughout this franchise, Ivo has mentioned how society has always rejected him, he's had nobody who loves him (except Stone ofc) and he's repeatedly reminded he's a failure. Yet at the end of this film, he's given the chance to live up to his real potential and Team Sonic (and Shadow (and all of Earth while we're at it)) wouldn't have stood a chance without him. With Ivo seemingly dead, this was a heartfelt, tearjerking, beautiful sendoff for Eggman in a way that doesn't feel forced and gives Jim Carrey the chance to excuse himself should he decide he no longer wants to be a part of the future movies. BUT if he does decide to come back (and it's sounding like he does) -- c'mon, y'all don't really think Shadow would have just left Eggman to die, do you? He absolutely could have teleported them both outta there at the last minute.

SHADOW. 👏👏👏 This was without a doubt, the BEST depiction of Shadow I have ever seen! Keanu Reeves and the animators put everything into this rendition of Shadow and I was moved to tears on several occasions. This movie gave us an emotional, heartbroken Shadow who doesn't mask his feelings. Even before losing Maria, we see that Shadow is someone who struggles with understanding who he is, where he comes from and what his purpose is. He's subjected to constant testing and when he's not 'in use,' he's seemingly stowed away in the dark for later. It isn't until Maria shows up and befriends him that we get to see that he's just a regular person. He's curious about music and dancing, he enjoys play and stargazing, he's self-conscious. And then the transformation he takes after being betrayed and losing his loved ones, UGH! Keanu Reeves freaking NAILS it in every single scene! One of the moments that stood out the most to me and physically gave me goosebumps was when Shadow begins to question if destroying the planet is what Maria would have wanted and Gerald convinces him to focus on the pain that was left from her death. When Shadow's charging the Eclipse Cannon and reliving the most devastating moment of his life, you can hear his rage just in the way he's breathing! Keanu Reeves doesn't even speak any words in that scene but I could feel every drop of anger and regret and hatred in his performance. But also he delivered some very funny lines too and at least to me, it didn't feel forced. I also really liked that Keanu Reeves did research for this character and actually 'created' a voice for Shadow instead of using his normal voice. (I strongly recommend watching this clip where he talks about how he came up with 'the voice'. It's fascinating and such a delight). I think a lot of people might have initially thought having him voice Shadow was cool but kind of a joke, but he took the role very seriously and I feel he made an effort to separate himself from Shadow. His voice scratched my brain in the most satisfying way lol. I wish he could permanently voice Shadow from now on, but at least I can always imagine his voice whenever I read or play any Shadow content. Also, Shadow's character model was GOR-GEOUS. He was so handsome and badass and also I love, love, LOVE the amount of contrast between him and Sonic. EVEN DOWN TO THE DETAILS IN THE TEXTILES OF THEIR GLOVES. Sonic's gloves appear to be cotton so they're soft and warm and porous -- a fabric that comforts and lets things in. Shadow's gloves are leather -- a fabric that's firm, resistant, impenetrable. SO MUCH thought and detail went into designing Shadow. AND SUPER SHADOW OH MYGOOOODDDDDDDD. He looked like an angel! I have always loved Super Shadow's platinum design in the games, but giving him the extra detail of iridescent and rose gold quills in the movie was so freaking beautiful. I truly can't fault a single thing about him in this movie. A thousand kisses to Keanu Shadow.

TEAM SONIC. That's right, I'm addressing the group here because this movie really treated each member of Team Sonic as equals and I loved it. Sonic may be the leader, but Knuckles packed this movie full of action, heart and laughs. Idris Elba and the writers found a great balance for Knuckles in that he delivered what I thought were some of the funniest lines of the film, but it didn't lessen the impact of his more serious scenes. When Knuckles is arguing with Sonic about using the Chaos Emeralds, there is so much tension and I feel like they really nailed the gravity of that fight. Knuckles ultimately chooses not to battle Sonic, but I felt that him reminding Sonic of their oath and pointing out that Sonic is breaking it was actually MORE of a punishment than a punch to the face. We also really got to see Knuckles 'THE GUARDIAN" in this movie which I greatly appreciated. We see a lot of Knuckles "the fighter" where he's quick to throw fists, but there were many moments in Sonic 3 where he got to serve as a proper protector. I cried when he caught Sonic and Tails and even after they're safe he's just holding them, the three of them a battered mess in the cornfield! AH MY HEART!

Speaking of my heart-- Tails you good boy! Tails showed so much growth between Sonic 2 and Sonic 3 and I was so proud of him! He's still cute as can be and still has moments of childlike wonder, but he played a significantly larger role in this movie and showed a lot of maturity. He's quick to come up with plans but he is also actually in the action instead of shouting from the sidelines. I also really liked that during the bleakest part of the film, it's actually Tails who is trying to console Sonic about what's happened to Tom. You know things are bad when it's the baby sibling who attempts to be the emotionally strong one and comfort the older sibling. And I love that it's Tails and Knuckles who help Ivo to steer the Eclipse Cannon away from the Earth. It would have been easy to just sideline them and have them hope that Super Sonic and Super Shadow could handle things, but that diminishes the value of Team Sonic. The movie made it very clear that their teamwork is what made them so strong and it was through all of their combined efforts that the Earth was saved in the end. Sonic and Shadow could not have done it alone, even with the combined power of the Chaos Emeralds. I feel like a broken record by saying this but it has to be said: Colleen O'Shaughnessey killed it as Tails yet again. Go queen!

This might come as a surprise to some, but the Sonic in this movie is my favorite we've seen throughout the SCU franchise so far. I have heard people criticize that Sonic was a little 'boring' or 'underwhelming' during the first 2 acts of the movie, but I actually perceived that as intentional by design. At this point in Sonic's life, he's used to the whole hero thing. He's saved the world multiple times by now so it makes sense to me that he's become complacent and doesn't really take the time to consider how potentially dangerous a threat can be (I mean think about it, he nearly gets lasered-to-death via the forcefield at G.U.N. Headquarters just because he had to be a silly goof and do a tour of London NOW of all times! Yes it's funny and in-character and I still loved that scene ((and loved that it gave Tails a shining moment to save him)), but c'mon Sonic you almost fucked up the entire plan because you just had to do your goofy thing!). So when Shadow shows up and kicks his ass not once, but MULTIPLE times--and then he nearly loses his father figure TWICE--it serves as a rude awakening. He learns that there is a price to pay for being blasé, underestimating the gravity of a situation and not sticking to a plan, and that's where he dramatically overcompensates and goes on a vengeful arc. And vengeful Sonic is FUCKING. FANTASTIC. I think we as an audience can forget how lethal Sonic can be because he's normally so playful and silly, so to see him lock in and not hold back is actually pretty terrifying (but in a great way!). Ben Schwartz was AMAZING in this portion of the movie. I find him to be one of the funniest comedians on the planet, but I couldn't believe it was the same guy during this act. He dug deep and gave such a compelling performance full of anguish and hatred that I honestly didn't realize he was capable of. But most importantly--he was able to rein it in when it mattered most and Sonic didn't lose himself before it was too late. Sonic is not a perfect character, but one of the things that makes him such a great hero is that he always manages to hold on to the light that's inside of him. I always appreciate Sonic's motivational speeches and I loved that when he's having the heart-to-heart with Shadow, the emphasis is about who you are and the good that comes from the love you have for others. It's heavy and important but was delivered in a way that was easily digestible for younger viewers without diminishing the meaning of the message. However, what I found even more moving in this scene was the moment of silence that Sonic and Shadow share on the moon. It was so poignant and I'm glad they held that moment of stillness and quiet. By the end of the movie, we do get our loveable Sonic back but he acknowledges the mistakes he made and regrets putting everyone in danger because of his reckless decisions. Each movie builds up his character more and more and I think as long as they don't backpedal, Sonic's in store for some incredible things! ALSO! Just like I said with Shadow, I freaking LOVED Sonic's character model in this one! I love that we are seeing him physically growing up and maturing instead of being forever stuck in place (no shade to the games). This character model is SO much taller and stockier than the model in Sonic 1 and is evidence that not only is he emotionally maturing, but he's physically aging up as well. It's just so cool!

I absolutely adored Alyla Browne's portrayal of Maria in this movie! She was so charming and instantly loveable the moment she was onscreen. I've noticed many people highlighting the part where she draws the bunny face on Shadow (which I love) but even the seconds before that where she mocks his scowl INSTANTLY won me over. And she even gets Shadow to smile because of it! The smile is small and only visible for a few frames, but it's there! It was clear that this girl saw more to this alien than a menacing, dangerous little space demon and wasn't gonna put up with his charade. It's no wonder the two of them became fast friends. I don't know about you, but I have been STARVED of ARK Sibling content since Shadow's very first introduction so I was obsessed with every single scene we got of the two of them actually getting to spend time together. I do love drama but so far all we've seen is the ARK tragedy and rarely any of the highlights before that event. Yes the SCU is a different universe, but this filled a hole in my heart that I've been waiting on for years. It did not disappoint!

I also want to highlight Agent Stone. Listen, I've loved Lee Majdoub since Sonic 1, but his character is at his best in this movie. Agent Stone was proper badass in Sonic 3 and proved that he's far more than just a simple henchman. It's revealed that with Ivo sulking and remaining in hiding, Stone has stepped up and is constantly monitoring what's going on in the outside world and immediately jumps into action when he notices the doctor's tech being used by someone else. Eggman wasn't even aware of it and yet Stone is out there shutting it down and bringing back reinforcements to clear Eggman's name! That super suit?? And those MOTORCYCLE TRICKS?? And him dodging a freaking ROCKET like it ain't no thing??? Hell yeah, Stone! Lee Majdoub is so funny and I love how he can be so quiet and stoic around Eggman ( "Resourceful.") but he can also be so over the top like when he's mocking the hell out of Knuckles ("Įt'Ŝ 𝕋𝒽𝒆 ⓖ𝓸Ａ𝐓 𝔪𝕀ŁҜє𝓡!... Relax.") and both just work so well! I think it's further evidence of why he makes such a good partner for Eggman because they're both capable of some intense power but they're also both such weirdos. I loved the amount of emotion and vulnerability Stone had in this movie. He's always had an allegiance to Eggman and even in Sonic 2 we saw how much he missed the doctor while he was away and how enthusiastic he was when he learned he was alive, but it went a lot deeper in this film. We got to learn that there's a much stronger affinity there and Stone legitimately cares about Robotnik and supports him through thick and thin. Personally, I ship Stobotnik, so this movie gave me plenty of delicious food! But even if you don't ship it, I think it was so significant to show the depth to Stone and Robotnik's relationship and I believe that it was Stone's affection for the doctor (romantic or platonic) that ultimately made Eggman save the world in the end. Though I'm still hoping for Jim Carrey to come back, I think they set things up so Stone could take up the EggMantle in a seamless way and I sure wouldn't be mad about it!

[Allow me to pause for a deep inhale of breath...]

Ä̷͇̰̞́Ȁ̷̭̩̰̔͐Ấ̶̝̗̠A̴͉͗A̵̳̠̚ͅA̵̫̋Ḿ̴͕Y̴̨̯̆Y̷͖͍̜̓͝Ỹ̵͍̺͑̕Y̸̜̫̆͋͋Y̶͕̫̱̾̐!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 😭💖💖💖💖💖💖😘😘😘😘😍😍😍😍😍😍🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖 My beloved! My most darling angel! My reason for waking up in the morning! SHE MADE IT! Amy is my favorite character of all time and I told y'all I was gonna throw up if she wasn't in this movie, so you'd better believe I SCREAMED when her hammer appeared in the post-credits scene! When she walked up and pulled back the hood of her cloak I was in tears and I was TREMBLING! I'm sure they're going to make changes to her once they finalize her design for Sonic 4, but this reveal was so freaking good and got me so excited for the next movie. Her character model is already so beautiful and I love that they turned the tables and have her rescuing Sonic this time! I cannot wait to see what they have in store!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Metal Sonic was cool too btw)

ACTION - 10/10

TL;DR - Highspeed fun that has you on the edge of your seat for every single minute of screen time!

This movie is NONSTOP. I wasn't bored for a single second and by the time we hit the credits I couldn't believe how much time had passed. Every fight scene was so perfectly choreographed and so RAMPED UP that it had me stunned. There's a joke early in the movie that Sonic/Tails/Knuckles' antics are capable of cataclysmic events but the movie delivers on that promise a multitude of times! From city-wide power outages to mini-black holes to volcanic eruptions, there's no shortage of chaos and action in this movie!

You guys. The first time I saw this movie, I was at a prescreening so I was among critics and people from the media instead of a group of fans. It took EVERYTHING WITHIN ME to contain my glee. I was PHYSICALLY BALLED UP, knees pulled to my chest, palms pressed to my face to try to stay quiet. My heart burst through the roof of my skull! Even when I went to go see it for a fourth time, my heart was still racing. I actually had my friend feel my pulse as proof. This movie just gets you so excited it's insane!

The fact that the movie BEGAN with Shadow's breakout... god bless it. God bless everyone who worked on it. It was so intense and heartpumping! And I loved the choice to have little-to-no music during Shadow's fight with the soldiers. It just added to the tension and didn't give you any hint of when and where Shadow was going to teleport next. This was basically a scene from a horror movie! It set the entire tone for the film and showed that Shadow was NOT to be messed with.

I seriously could describe how much I loved every action scene but I will be here forever so I won't, but I have to say-

THE ✨SUPER✨ SCENES. OH. MY. 🎶GO~~~~OD🎶!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I had high hopes and expectations we were going to see Super Shadow in this one, but never in my lifetime did I think we were going to finally see Super Sonic VERSUS Super Shadow!!! Holy hell, what a fight! We get to finally see what two god-mode characters are capable of when they're out to kill each other and aren't showing any mercy. EACH PUNCH LAUNCHING THE OPPONENT ACROSS THE FREAKING PLANET?!??!?? That editing choice in particular is one of my absolute FAVORITE things about this movie. There's a million ways this fight could have been done but showing just how fast and how strong these two are--- even causing the earth to split open and erupt just from one of them pushing off the ground--really shows just how minuscule and inferior us humans are hahaha. We wouldn't stand a freaking CHANCE. AND SONIC PUNCHES SHADOW TO THE MOON?!

ALSO THEY EACH TOOK TURNS PUNCHING THE SUPER OUT OF EACH OTHER!???!!!

I'm having to pause as I'm writing this because even though I've seen this movie four times I'm still getting so worked up just thinking about these action scenes again that I'm struggling to breathe omg

Even better than Super Sonic VERSUS Super Shadow was that final team up. That CLAP and they both turn super had me WEAK. I just about fainted right then but thank god I didn't because that entire sequence was INCREDIBLE. That little exchange of Sonic saying "Ready to recycle some tin cans?" and Shadow rolling his shoulder and saying "Try to keep up" before launching into a flurry of attacks is TATTOOED ON MY BRAIN. It will never leave my mind. It gave us SA2 and MORE. The battle was a masterpiece and it's something that words truly can't describe, you just have to witness it in all it's glory. I will never be normal about that fight scene.

One more moment I want to highlight because it shows action in nontraditional ways -- I am infatuated with the way they depicted Eggman and Shadow's last moments of saving the earth from the Eclipse Cannon. There was just something in the slow, labored movements that Jim Carrey made to show him attempting to block the explosions with shields, and the quietness of Shadow pushing the exterior of the ship with his hands and the metal is just crushing under his palms from the force. It isn't a moment of fast punches or flashing lights but it was so damn powerful and I absolutely loved it.

VISUALS - 10/10

TL;DR - Stellar effects and cinematography not only make for a delightful experience for your eyes but further immerse us into this fictional world.

WOW! I already touched on this in my above notes but seriously this movie was just beautiful. The character models were so good and felt real despite being cartoons (which goes to show you don't need them to look hyper-realistic to convince me it's a living creature). The lighting and the framing of shots were not only visually appealing but helped further the emotions of the scenes. The neon lights bouncing off Shadow in the rain as he's slowly walking down the streets of Shibuya was a WORK OF ART. Even all the moments of chaos and destruction were portrayed so well and so crisp that not only were they beautiful to look at -- I could actually tell what was going on! I watch a lot of action films and it gets so frustrating when there's so many explosions, lens flares, camera whips, etc that I can't actually make out what's happening. I never had that problem in this movie!

FAN SERVICE - 10/10

TL;DR - No, not that kind of fan service. This was a film FOR the fans!

I already said that the cinematic universe is clearly separate from the game universe. However, there were so many delightful little treats for fans of the games that felt like all the creators of this movie reached out and hugged me and said "This is for you!" BLESS! I won't list out all the Easter eggs and scene-recreations because there are too many, but man the joy I felt in sitting there and thinking "I KNOW THAT REFERENCE!" was healing to my soul. I figured "Live and Learn" was going to show up in some way because we heard the tune in the trailer, but I didn't realize how often and in how many different ways it would play throughout the movie! Starting out the movie with a memory of Maria playing "Live and Learn" on the guitar had me clutching my chest and I knew I was gonna be emotionally wrecked by this film! I loved the orchestral version of the song during the final battle which took an already badass theme and made it even more epic, but I do love that they included a snippet with the original lyrics too.

I don't know why people get so upset with these movies not being 100% like the games when it's clear that the people who work on these movies care so much about the games and want to reward us fans who love the games, too. Think about the scene where Shadow goes to push the Eclipse Cannon and he removes his inhibitor rings. That was specifically for us fans. The movie never explains what his inhibitor rings are or what they do or why he's removing them. Not knowing what the inhibitor rings are doesn't detract from the movie--but if you play the games you KNOW the significance of that moment. That was written and animated FOR YOU to enjoy. What's not to love about that???

DRAMAAAA~

Again, I know these SCU movies are marketed as family films and are more aimed for children, but I love that the movies are evolving and 'maturing' over time instead of repeating the same simple formula of some children's movies. With each Sonic movie that comes out, the themes and story are getting deeper and heavier without losing it's whimsy and fun. It's done in a way that feels like a natural progression and growth and I don't think the heavier subject matter will deter anyone who watched the previous two movies.

⭐BONUS POINTS!⭐

This is a hot take and I know many people are gonna disagree, but I was so pleased with there being LESS focus on the humans in this story (minus the Robotniks+Stone, of course). I do not care about the Wachowskis. I do not care about the Whipples. I understand why they were initially in the movies and I understand that Sonic considers the Wachowskis as his parents now, but I don't go to these movies to see the humans attending weddings or doing other sideplot shenanigans. I'm here for the aliens, damn it! So to have the humans' appearances mostly diminished to scenes that specifically related to the main plot was a huge relief to me!

THANK YOU SONIC 3.

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I could talk endlessly about this movie and even though I've written what feels like an entire essay there's still tons I'm leaving out, but to try to move this review along I'm going to move on to the negatives. Again, none of these below items were enough to ruin the movie for me and individually they aren't even worth a full point as far as a review. But ultimately these are things that I couldn't shake after watching and it's why I felt I had to dock the movie a single point in total.

EDITING WHIPLASH

I've already complimented this movie by several of the editing choices that were made, but there's one moment in particular that totally took me out of it and I'm sure you can guess what I'm going to say... Yes, it was the frequent cutting between the Super Hedgehogs and the Robotniks. Don't get me wrong -- individually these scenes were great. Ivo versus Gerald was hilarious and I did enjoy it and yes it was important to the plot -- but how DARE you interrupt my Super Sonic and Super Shadow fight with mustache wrestling! Whiplash is the best word I can use to describe how I felt in this moment. Sonic and Shadow fighting all of the robots and lasers to get to the Cannon was so dynamic and so intense and so spectacular, that when it suddenly cut away to Eggman getting spanked by a giant mech hand, I felt like I just got slapped across the face. My heart had just been racing so fast and then you cut away? Then I'm starting to calm down and just enjoy the Robotnik fight for the silliness but then it cuts BACK to the epic power of Sonic and Shadow --- and you do it AGAIN?! It just killed me!

I saw an edit somebody made where they spliced all of the super fight scenes together and removed the Robotnik fight and as you can imagine, it was infinitely better. You actually had the time to be fully enraptured by the battle and get to absorb every awesome second of it.

The Robotnik fight was still necessary (and yes, even the way they killed Gerald was hilarious to me and I still laugh even now) but they really should have edited this part of the movie better in my opinion.

PLOT HOLE -- ARE WE MISSING PART OF THE SCRIPT?

Although I think the writing for this movie was overall great, I felt there were key elements missing from the G.U.N. plot line that was meant to drive the narrative. This led me to think... was there a deleted scene and the filmmakers thought nobody would care/question it? Here are the things that I felt the movie did not clearly address:

1: Why are Team Sonic and Commander Walters close allies now? G.U.N. and Walters were previously antagonists in these films. Yes, at the end of Sonic 2 Commander Walters gives up his goal of capturing Sonic, but surrendering isn't the same as forming a partnership. Why is Team Sonic on-call for G.U.N. missions at Walters' requests all of a sudden? Then there's the scene in the Chao Garden. Why do Team Sonic and Walters meet up without anyone else from G.U.N. knowing about it? Why does Sonic trust Walters more than the rest of G.U.N.? I understand Sonic is a hero and especially in these movies he likes to see the good in people, but throughout these movies Walters ALWAYS lies. In Sonic 2, not only does Walters/G.U.N. fabricate an entire wedding as a sting operation to capture Sonic, but Walters lies when he claims that G.U.N. was formed because of Sonic's misadventures in San Francisco. In Sonic 3 we learn that G.U.N. was around for Project Shadow in the 70s. Nobody calls him out on this. Even in the Chao Garden scene, Walters is lying to Sonic about Shadow's history! He tells Sonic that Maria was killed in a terrible accident and Gerald was blamed for it. It was no accident! Soldiers showed up with guns and when Walters tried to stop them, they said "We have our orders." Sure, shooting the canister of chaos energy was not the intention and so the explosion itself was an accident, but those soldiers had every intent on taking Maria and Gerald out (if not Shadow as well). I'm sure Walters left that detail out to keep Sonic from asking further questions, but that makes him all the more of an unreliable storyteller and someone Sonic should NOT trust.

2: Why doesn't Walters trust G.U.N.? When Walters is injured in the Chao Garden attack, he gives Sonic one of the keys to the Eclipse Cannon and tells him that Sonic's the only person he trusts to keep it safe. Walters is the commander of G.U.N. -- surely he would trust a member of his team to hold onto the key, right? And if he doesn't, WHY? If you watched the Knuckles series then you know that there are indeed rogue members of G.U.N., but people watching the movie don't know that. Walters telling Sonic to keep the key safe from everyone suddenly puts Sonic on heightened alert and makes him believe he can't trust anyone, but we aren't given a reason why. Even if Walters simply had a line saying "I worry there's corruption in G.U.N." then I would have been satisfied.

3: Why is Team Sonic stealing the second key? Once the Team learns that there is a second key to the Eclipse Cannon and that the Robotniks are planning to steal it, they devise a heist to steal the second key themselves. Why? Walters didn't tell Sonic about a second key or tell him to retrieve the second key. Doesn't that mean Walters believes the safest place for the second key is where it's currently stored: at G.U.N. headquarters? Team Sonic knew Robotnik was en route, so the wisest option would have been to alert G.U.N. so they could heighten security and be on the lookout (which turns out, they already were). Again, all of this would make sense if Sonic was given an explicit reason to not trust G.U.N. and was specifically told to keep the keyS away from them, but at this point he went from trusting them to suddenly trying to take both keys from them. I loved the heist scenes and I don't want them removed, I feel they just need justification.

4: What is Director Rockwell's problem? It's clear that Rockwell is not a fan of Team Sonic (some people just can't trust aliens) but it seemed her character was going a certain direction and then just... stopped. After Walters is killed, the first thing she does is check his pocket for the key. Surely Walters would have known that Director Rockwell would have checked his pockets, especially since she was in Tokyo at the time of his death, again going back to my question of why he wouldn't trust her to retrieve the key instead of handing it over to Sonic? I was fully expecting a reveal of her being a rogue agent, especially because Team Sonic was still trying to take the second key even after the Robotniks had been thwarted. Think about it -- G.U.N. has stopped the Robotniks (and Team Sonic) from stealing the second key. That was the whole point, right? So why is Tom now trying to take the key FROM Rockwell? Isn't the key safely where it belongs and the Robotniks are supposedly in custody? So again, was there a reason Rockwell wasn't meant to be trusted, but we just don't know? I really felt like she was being set up to be a villain, but it led nowhere.

Now a lot of the elements I just addressed can be inferred and we can use context clues to guess, but I think it's the writers' job (especially in a family film) to make it clear why characters are making the choices/decisions they're making, at least by the time you reach the end of the movie. I know some stories are more ambiguous than others, but to me it felt like something was missing. I guess we'll see if there's anything hidden in deleted scenes.

FINAL THOUGHTS

As a whole, I absolutely loved this movie and I am so thankful it exists. I can't wait for Sonic 4 and I hope it receives just as much hype, love and attention that this movie did! If you read my entire review, thank you! I hope you enjoyed it, even if you didn't agree with all of it :)

[nipuni]

Hello! Time for another blog post! I think my last one was two months ago and a lot has happened since 😊

We have been attending a ton of historical recreation events so I still have many photos to share, hope you don't hate those! It's been really fun! We are exhausted and all out of social battery however so we are taking it easy this month. Another thing that's been happening a lot is that even when we are not dressed in historical clothing we keep getting stopped by strangers on the street because of our everyday outfits, it's been like that for a couple of years now so we are no longer startled or nervous about it but it's happening more and more often now and it's so nice! we always end up chatting about the events we go to and our jobs and hobbies and exchanging contacts or they ask for photos and stuff! people are really kind and excited about it and I still find it so surprising in the best way. We grew up in a very hostile city and environment and that makes you paranoid and cynical so these interactions and response has been healing really. I know their words will stick with us for years to come 😭 Sadly the unbearable heat is starting though so that means our outings for the next three months will be limited to the crack of dawn and after sunset 😞 but at least the summer brings a lot of fruit with it so we can sit at home and eat pineapples and strawberries while we wait for autumn.

My family came to visit a few months ago too and we made them watch most of Doctor Who's season one to four and some of our favourite episodes from all the other seasons lmao. And much to our delight they really enjoyed it!! They both loved Ten the most and my step dad is now in love with Martha 🥰

We have also been watching the current season and it's been so fun keeping up with fandom theories in real time and talking about it and speculating with friends in person, it's the first time we get a chance to do it since we got into the series and we are enjoying it a lot!

We also watched season one of Jessica Jones and we loved David's performance as Kilgrave!! He stole the show for real. Kilgrave is such an incredible villain, one of the best I've seen and DT does such an amazing job portraying every aspect of him. He's detestable and volatile and frighteningly powerful and has such an intimidating terrifying presence in the narrative while also being pathetic and vulnerable and ridiculous and childish and so human with all it's worrying implications. It was just so gripping and I wish he had stayed for the rest of the show honestly!! Now we have to pick our next David Tennant series to watch! 😊

Also!! Dragon Age is back!! AHHH I wanted to thank everyone that commented on my last DA pieces, it has made my month to read the comments, I didn't expect so many people to remember my art or my character after so many years and it's so touching and flattering you have no idea 😭💘 I look forward to making more and sharing them with you all, I'm truly grateful for the kindness you've shown me both back then and now I hope you know.

I feel so spoiled lately with all these franchises that I love releasing new content!! I've never been in these many fandoms at once!! I have so many ideas to draw and keep jumping back and forth between drawings from different shows and games AAAAA it's a good and welcome change honestly, keeps me busy and inspired!

Anyway that's all for now I think! I hope you are doing well and this summer/winter is kind to you all ❤️

[thr0wnawayy]

Rei-Demption: A problem and my solution (ft. Rei's trauma and Hori's bullshit)

Might as well give my shot at it.

My take on Rei's personality has always been based in suppression.

Rei's whole life has been a balancing act of doing enough to protect her family, while still staying within the lines to not get disposed of.

She's everything Enji isn't. An iron will, a golden heart and a strong sense of empathy.

So with that in mind, hopefully it she'd light on it thought process with this post

A theory I have is that Rei was aware of the hospital's corruption

These panels always felt off too me, it always made me wonder: "does she know?"

The wording is very specific.

"I told him I liked it, around the first time we met. But only once"

It always struck me as odd, We're talking about the man who looked at his eldest death and kept going, man who destroyed multiple lives for a redundant pipedream.

It's not even why would he remember such a small detail, but rather how?

Unless... the doctors are feeding him information.

Think about it, who pays for all this. Surely it's not Fuyumi, on account of this being a massive money sink.

You really expect her to pay for all that on a teachers salary?

It can't be Natsuo because Enji has likely cut him off from everything to his name.

And that's assuming Enji even bothered to save up a college fund for any of them. Plus Natsuo is a full time student of medicine.

If the doctors are watching her every move, looking for any sign of deviation from the narrative then it makes sense for her to disguise her words.

Of course there's still more

Having PTSD isn't something you can keep someone institutionalized for. Especially when Rei's is very proportionate, given what she's gone through. (No, Japan's stigma of mental health wouldn't justify this)

I mean what are Rei's triggers?: Enji and that's about it.

"But we still... haven't met face to face, I'm still too afraid"

That's a standard reaction to have to your abuser (especially when he raped you multiple times)

('Just stop' gets a whole lot darker when you consider it's context)

Not to mention she's no longer fearful of anything resembling Enji, just Enji himself. So there is no real reason to keep her there unless they are afraid she might speak out.

This whole thing makes me think she's trying to tell Natsuo and Fuyumi what's really going on, in a way.

Subtly and under the calm, complacent mask she's expected to wear, in case anyone else is listening. Anyone who could report back to him.

It might also be she doesn't trust them. Fuyumi or Natsuo could blab or say something within earshot that could set Rei back months.

And she can't have that, not with how close she is to finally breaking free. She loves her children, all of them but the trust just isn't there, how can it be when when they don't have all the pieces.

So here's my theory: The hospital staff are in Enji's pockets. Either taking bribes (as recent as Dabi's Dance) or they were given a large sum of hush money when Rei was first hospitalized, with the goal of keeping her there as long as possible and possibly molding her to either keep her mouth shut or (sickeningly) gaslight her into returning to Enji.

(Note how she was only released when they could no longer keep a lid on things, the moment Dabi frops the bomb. She's out, no struggle)

This paints a picture of grotesque corruption, sloth and apathy (the very same cocktail that created Shigaraki) even by Hori's narrative standards. Shedding light on just how deep MHA's despotic nature goes.

The anime makes this even more apparent. Rei's fake smiles make the whole thing that much more viable. She seems so dead, it's like she smothered her soul or something.

I've seen both the sub and dub of this scene. The sub is the correct translation, the same as the Manga panel above.

The Dub however, while severly off mark, adds it's own flavour of dread. Rei sound so hollow, it was jarring the first time I heard it.

It sounded like she was reading a script (in-universe). Like she'd rehearsed this in her mind a million times, staring at the same 3 white walls + the window and waiting for an opening to finally speak.

That was supposed to be Shoto, until the dorms ruined that. Suddenly Rei's lifeline is gone, reduced to letters that don't even tell half the story.

10 years, 10 fucking years reduced to lines on a page.

Can you imagine the despair, dear reader?

The frustration. The sheer vitriol coursing thorough her veins, far hotter than Touya could ever manage.

Having to do the same thing she's been doing even before she was locked away. As the the skeleton in the closet of a criminal with a license.

Wearing masks for so long you can hardly breath and in the brief moments you can take them off. You can hardly recognize yourself, how you once were.

It must be the truest form of hell.

The Rei-demption Arc

Rei's redemption arc takes the attention of our theoretical arc without overtaking it.

The arc would mostly focus on the more domestic aspects of our trio being: Midoriya, Shoto and Uraraka.

A few minor changes would occur. The dorms never happen, allowing the characters to exist outside of UA.

There is solid confirmation that Fujiya is corrupt and is keeping Rei institutionalized on illegal grounds (ie: not meeting the criteria set up to ensure her silence)

The dinner scene would still happen only it would bd framed for what it really was. A pathetic attempt at creating a moment that never existed.

There's no family with Enji.

Just a family held hostage and a tyrant. I have my own grievances with Fuyumi, but I'll leave that for the future.

The only difference besides Natsuo being properly portrayed as a victim acting well within his right, the reasons for our trio going would be for Shoto's emotional wellbeing, because he asked them to.

Uraraka could have a moment where she realizes that money is as much as good as it is bad. An actually decent shift into her change of goals.

Here Enji motivates her to "watch the watchmen". Her need for money is still a crucial part of her reasons for becoming a hero, but she also has a more front and center goal.

I'd imagine she has a moment parallel to Midoriya's during the Sports Festival.

Where (alone in front of the Dojo after the failed dinner) she rightfully calls out Enji for being a self pitying piece of shit and that "sorry" doesn't cut it.

"You've hurt them in ways you can't imagine." Would probably be the last thing she says before walking away.

She may not know the whole story but she knows it hurt them and that's enough.

Rei's ascent

Rei's biggest hurdle is accepting that she was also an abuse victim. She's furious but she's only furious on her children's behalf and what they lost.

Her unintentionally harmful actions weigh on her, be it her neglect or the night she scalded Shoto, these events have impacted her deeply.

She learns to reconcile with her past, improve her relationship with Shoto and even meets Shoto's friends at one point.

Eventually she finds closure but that's later on.

She also acts as an advisor at times, having given Shoto the idea of using Ice projectiles (as seen in the Licensing Exam)

The second half comes from the Hospitals corruption, as Rei learns that she is long overdue for release (by about 8 years) among other horrific practices. This would play out as the arc's B plot, building up to what I call "The Summit"

The Summit

Eventually Rei fights Hood.

After gathering the evidence, she escapes the hospital. Planning to go to Natsuo for protection. As she's walking across a crosswalk however, she hears what sounds like an explosion.

Eventually she hears screaming and is forced to use her quirk as a bus is suddenly sent hurdling in her general direction.

As of her body moved on its own, she envelops it in her ice. Stopping the bus and saving those behind her in the process.

Only to see Hood land on top. They lock eyes and Rei can't help but see Touya in Hoods ambition.

In response to Rei holding her ground, Hood dashes. Rei counters this by manipulating her ice to send him crashing into an empty building, impaling him on the glaciers end.

Hood is impressed by Rei's proficiency and chooses to fight her.

Rei having no experience, fights for her life. Where as Rei avoids Civilians, Hood has no care for them which forces Rei to play the role of hero.

Rei uses every weapon in her arsenal in order to stave off Hood, who only gets more relentless as the battle stretches on. The upside is Hood's regeneration struggles in the cold, which Rei is constantly producing.

Each side gets blows in, with Rei taking them surprisingly well but still being worse for wear. Hood notes this saying "as if y-you've done t-t-this before" (close, Hood very close)

Eventually Hood gets the upper hand, towering over Rei in a manner that triggers her PTSD and leaves her stunned.

One of the civilians (Horoshi Tameda) emboldened by Rei's efforts, picks up a loose chunk of pavement and chucks it at Hood's back. It hits, causing Hood to look back.

Civilians begin making loud noise, others begin picking up anything they can find and throw it at Hood. Further catching him off guard long enough for Rei to snap out of her episode and strike back.

From here the fight kicks into high gear, with Rescue heroes & paramedics arriving on the scene and a camera crew recording the fight from above. Overall I imagine the scene to be very uplifting, with the Orchestra swelling as Rei prepares a final attack.

The move rivals that of Shoto's, arguably even surpassing it. Hoof is incased in a prison of Ice, covering an entire city block worth of destroyed buildings. And the fight finishes with Rei collapsing to her knees.

From here on out things change. Rei's newfound fame leads to the hospital being forced to do their job. Because of this Rei gets out early (around the time the Internship arc would started had I not scrapped it)

As for what this could lead to I'll let you decide. I'd love to read some suggestions.

Bonuses:

Theories:

The reason they kicked Fuyumi from her job is because she covered an abuser's ass for years. While Fuyumi is a victim, it doesn't excuse her complacency in regards to Enji's treatment of Shoto before and after his "self pity" arc.

Natsuo didnt go to someone because he wouldn't likely be believed, being seen as bitter and untrustworthy (his time away from home wouldn't help with pinning evidence).

Extra:

Hood survived the fight, Rei opted to capture him as opposed to kill him. That doesn't mean he didn't get frost bite. Police found out it is very difficult to question a Nomu.

Out of all her trauma. Rei accepting she was never given a choice will be the hardest to accept.

Rei's family is not inbred, rather her parents ran away so her father wouldn't be forced into a marriage with his cousin. Only to ironically do the very same to their daughter.

Hiroshi still becomes a meme, his 'Can't you see speech' leads to him becoming a motivational speaker.

The reason Hood appeared is because Dabi lost track of him. He nearly had a heart attack when he discovered his mom was holding the Nomu off.

[maddymoreau]

Banban Analysis

I think Banban's story is the most interesting part of Garten of Banban and I'm extremely excited to see how it plays out. This discussion is essentially going to breakdown what Banban is and go through some of his behavior in the first four chapters.

Banban is the #6 experiment created by combining human genome from one of the doctors named Uthman Adam with Givanium for the upcoming Bring-A-Friend Day.

At the time Case #6 was considered a success outside one flaw. He views himself as human and as the actual Uthman Adam.

Once Case #6 and the real Uthman Adam were introduced to each other this lead to disaster.

As described (in Case Report #13 Update #3) Case #6 has a complete meltdown.

Which results in two things happening:

1. Case #7 named Banbaleena is created.

Since Dr. Weverly Mason was the only person Case #6 was willing to communicate with it's speculated her genome was used to create Banbaleena. Especially since the real Dr. Uthman and Dr. Mason are close.

While Case #6 and Banbaleena both view themself as their human genome donor only Case #6 was introduced to his.

It's unconfirmed how Case #6 perceives Banbaleena. Either as her human genome donor or something else. Regardless he recognizes something in Banbaleena resulting in their long hug.

Banbaleena helps Case #6 feel less alone however it doesn't change his disobedient and aggressive behavior.

Sidenote while this part is also speculation the parallels felt too similar to not mention:

During Chapter 3 when Case #6 has us make Nabnab a companion he say, "Nabnaleena was that solution. We had a theory that Nabnab was as aggressive as he was due to his loneliness."

While part of the reason we're creating Nabnaleena is because Nabnab is on the hunt making it too dangerous to do anything. I think since Banbaleena helped ease Case #6's loneliness that's part of the reason he has us help finish creating Nabnaleena. As a way to help Nabnab no longer feel lonely.

2. They used a newly-modified Givanium to lower Case #6's ability to self-think.

We actually witness Case #6 fall victim to his primitive instincts during one of the secret tapes in Chapter 3:

Case #6 is constantly struggling in between an internal battle Uthman Adam (who he perceives himself as) VS Banban (his violent primitive instincts).

After all it's Banban who has it's iconic quote:

Even though Case #6 has met the actual Uthman Adam he still perceives himself as the real one.

We witness this through countless dialogue. Even during the creation of Nabnaleena this is mentioned. "We had a theory that Nabnab was as aggressive as he was due to his loneliness." Referring to himself as one of the doctors despite the fact Case #6 isn't.

The saddest example being this conversation in Chapter 4.

"I feel now is a good time to introduce ourselves, which we haven't done up to this point if you can believe it. I am Uthman. I worked here before everything came crashing down, literally and figuratively."

"My coworkers and I should've spoken up sooner. Perhaps all of this should've been prevented then. But then again, my coworkers weren't really friends in those last couple of months anyway, so it would've needed some good planning."

"You ever had those friends that suddenly turn on you for no reason? To say mine turned on me would be an understatement. They suddenly stopped talking to me. They looked at me like I was some sort of monster. Sometimes I lose my temper, sure, but it seemed excessive. I was and still am confused, to say the least."

The awful way Case #6 was treated by his "friends" could also explain his behavior in Chapter 2.

"Look, i'm sorry I hit you but you gotta understand I needed something from you that I could only get if you were unconcious and I was all out of sedatives. If you'd seen me, you wouldn't have trusted me, I know it. But there was one thing I didn't lie to you about, and that's me knowing why you're here."

I find Case #6's confusion SO INTERESTING!!! You have a character who knows others view him as a monster yet he cannot understand why. Since when Case #6 looks in a mirror he sees "himself."

While Case #6 holds all of Uthman's memories before his creation.

Who is the ACTUAL Dr. Uthman?

We have these two notes.

Along with one letter between Dr. Uthman and Dr. Mason discussing the ball pit which reads, "This thing can barely support the amount of children we have enrolled in the kindergarten. We're having double that tomorrow. Something really bad is going to happen, and we need to be as far away from here as humanly possibly when it does. We've been on the bad side of the wrong people for a long time, and if we're still here when everything goes down, it will be the end of both of us. If not at the hands of angry parents, then at the hands of our superiors."

"A place like this should not exist. The stuff we've witnessed here should not exist. The casualties that will result from this catastrophe will only serve the greater good; which is shutting down this place once and for all."

"I'll have a plan ready for tomorrow. now, you just pack your things."

We don't know if this plan, Bring-A-Friend Day or something else are the result of how things have turned out.

Regardless both Dr. Uthman and Dr. Mason were unable to escape. We don't know what happened to Dr. Uthman but we do know Dr. Mason is currently with our child (from the notes they've left).

Boarding passes found in Chapter 1:

There's one MAJOR difference between the real Dr. Uthman and Case #6. Unlike the real Dr. Uthman who was prepared to abandon ship even viewing the potential disaster and casualties as something for the greater good.

Case #6 wants to help and even acknowledges, "My coworkers and I should've spoken up sooner."

While Case #6 may be hiding another ulterior motivate since he retains most memories of Uthman including knowledge of the secret down in the basement.

I think overall he's being honest with his goals mentioned in Chapter 2, "But there was one thing I didn't lie to you about, and that's me knowing why you're here. You're here for your children. I, too, am working towards saving them if you can believe it. But someone else has them. Someone far stronger than you and me both that resides deep in the abyss."

However due to the internal struggle he experiences falling into his violent primitive instincts from the newly-modified Givanium. When control is lost that alters his goals to eating our pancreas.

Case #6 is constantly having to work around himself.

For simplicity in this upcoming section I'm going to refer to regular Case #6 as Uthman and the Violent Instincts as Banban.

Chapter Two

The first Case #6 we meet is in Chapter Two is Banban.

At first tricking in the player and hitting them from behind Banban says, "Three birds with one stone!"

Note: Mr. Kabob Man the statue in Chapter 3 that imitates Banban also says the quote, "Three birds with one stone!"

"I get all of your keycards, I get the perfect specimen AND I don't have to deal with that thing down there. And it's all thanks to YOU! Oh come on, I didn't hit you THAT hard. Or maybe I did. Either way, it's best you take a nap while I prepare for our little surgery."

Despite this they also leaving us a note warning about the attack. However it reads as more of taunt to me.

While Banban mentions a surgery and using us a specimen nothing actually happens to the player.

Uthman could’ve gained controlled but I think that Banban was possibly prepping things when we woke up earlier then expected.

Since during Banbaleena's class Banban says, "Also teachers, please keep in mind that we are on the lookout for a very, very naughty student believed to be accompanied by a drone. If you catch them, call Principal Banban’s office immediately."

Very very naughty doesn’t feel like something Uthman would call the player.

When we later reunite with Case #6 there's a glass barrier between us. We can tell this is Uthman due to his behavior. He apologizes, is upfront with his goals and informs the player of a way to escape Banbaleena and Jumbo Josh.

Chapter Three

We first encounter Uthman over the speaker system.

"Glad to see you made it! I don't know how you did it, but then again you survived a giant elevator crash so I guess I shouldn't be surprised."

"Also, again, I apologize for hitting you over the head. In fact, it is for this reason that I believe we should not meet face-to-face. You see, for whatever reason I am prone to violent instincts, and I do not trust myself to not give into them again."

"I have locked myself inside of a surveillance room. That way I can help without being a danger to you."

Uthman sticks to his word helping the player throughout the chapter. It's ONLY when brought face-to-face by Stinger Flynn that Case #6's violent instincts come out. Being drawn to the smell of the player's pancreas.

"You can run away, but the smell of your pancreas will always draw me to you . . ."

Resulting in a chase scene and eventually a fight between Jumbo Josh, Banban and Stinger Flynn.

Chapter Four

When you reunite with Uthman in the infirmary he says, "When the Queen mentioned having many new visitors in one day, I knew it had to be you. Listen, whatever happened to me . . . Whatever I tried doing to you . . . Just know it wasn't actually me. I was forced to obey without much thought. I tried communicating with you from afar for a reason. Now you know the true reason why."

"Still, I want to make it up to you. The queen filled me in on the situation with the elevator. I want to help with that. I feel much more in control now. I'll come help you find the missing pieces of the elevator. I just need to rest for a little bit and I'll meet you at whatever that station is."

Which Uthman does until a fight between him and Nabnab breaks out. Which I think is really cool considering Nabnab is his opposite. Both in name and character wise.

Despite Uthman transforming into Banban during the fight he is able to restrain himself. Not attacking us for our pancreas even though we're so close.

This is the final scene we see Case #6 AND I'M SOOO INVESTED IN HIS STORY AND SEEING HOW IT PLAYS OUT!!!!

Also I like how Case #6 cares deeply for some of the other experiments. Whether it's some form of kinship or out of a sense of duty believing to be partially responsbile for creating them.

Examples of this are:

When Jumbo Josh falls for one of Sheriff Toadster's trap Case #6 comments, "Poor Josh . . . I can't imagine how confusing this has all been for him . . ." Holding no resentment despite the fact they fought in Chapter 3.

In Chapter 4 Case #6 intends to hand over the imposter statue AKA Mr. Kabob Man to someone he describe as, "very close to me." (This is speculated to be Zolphius). Even commenting, "He must've gotten very lonely, but I got him a new friend."

In Chapter 2 Case #6 indulges in Banbaleena’s behavior. During her class over the speaker he refers to himself as Principal Banban.

I find it interesting the non-human version acts more humane than the real Uthman.

[myechoecho]

When the Phone Rings, ep 7

Nothing like getting shoved off a cliff to dramatically change your relationship with your spouse. This episode was so good.

We all knew he was going to find her and stay by her side. Hee Joo realizes just how much Sa Eon has always noticed her and listened to her. She finally speaks to him and it's to tell him not to go, which stuns and overwhelms him. All he can do is stay, when really he should probably get a doctor.

(also nothing like getting shoved off what looks to be a very high cliff and have only a few scratches to show for it)

I do find it a bit ridiculous that Hee Joo hasn't figured out that Sa Eon knows she's 406 but I suspect this is a parallel to Sa Eon taking so long to connect it. They are both blinded by emotions.

I love how Sa Eon picks her up to put her back in her bed but is hesitant to let go of her. He does tell her that he knew she could talk but not that she's 406. When she tries to talk she stops her so she can rest.

But later in the episode he gently pushes her to talk. He does not want her to go back into a world of silence. However, it's also funny to that while he wants her to talk, he also doesn't quite know what to do with her talking back in real life (her saying the grapes were not washed). He only knows how to deal with sassy Hee Joo when she is 406. I do like how her talking to him is a bit stilted and awkward, which makes sense since he's basically the only person she's talked to in 20 years who can reply back.

The hair washing scene was everything. And he dried and brushed it too! It's such an intimate thing to do and I wonder why more dramas don't do this. Also LOL at Hee Joo immediately thinking he was showering when she heard the water and then being flustered by the thought of him showering.

They go back to their weird phone flirting (they WILL have kinky phone sex everything is done) but Sa Eon doesn't let her come clean. Instead he gets her to help him bring down who is behind the phone by getting a description of the man who kidnapped her.

As much as I enjoyed Sa Eon breaking through the door to "save" Hee Joo and Hee Joo hugging him and holding on to him tightly, I never in my life have seen a hospital room door that had a lock. I did adore them cuddling in the bed together.

The scene where Sa Eon reveals he knew she was 406 was so good. "tell me how to hate you. Tell me how not to love you" had me screaming. And then the kiss was also spot on. This was not a simple peck. This kiss was 3 years worth (well probably more ) of pent up feelings and emotion all tumbling out at once from both of them. A++

Random thoughts:

Sa Eon father is trash. And also incompetent. At the bare minimum he should have learned the identity of who fell off the cliff. He really does not think he can win without Sa Eon

We see a bit of Sa Eon's past with his "family". Why even have the food her son does not eat on the table if not to be deliberately cruel and force him to eat what he does like? Same with the clothes. No wonder Sa Eon is a bit messed up

Hee Joo's mom remains awful. What type of mother does not even recognize that the women in the face mask is not her daughter?

I am still curious about In A. I suspect that In A knows Sa Eon is not the bio son and who gave that information is the person behind the kidnapper. But what other secrets about Sa Eon are there that Hee Joo's mother knows?

Secretary/Assistant, is still shady and I do not trust him

[fohre]

autism and media. spoilers for criminal minds, my hero academia, and dungeon meshi.

okay so, i'm an autistic person, and i've seen portrayals of autism (both implied and explicit) and they've had.. a range of quality overall.

in explicit examples, i've seen only a few. spencer reid comes to mind first- the autistic savant with an eidetic memory and a penchant for seeming robotic. i, personally, was heavily influenced by this guy- i did (and kind of still do) enjoy criminal minds after all. however, spencer's existence as one of the first explicitly autistic characters that was seen by a wider audience. the show was insanely popular, but in the later seasons (mainly after he was sent to prison) many of his autistic traits seem to fade away. of course, he is a traumatized man who was on high alert for a WHILE, but one would expect he wouldn't lose many of his core personality traits. personally, i think these were written out since his traits weren't seen as "popular", since autistic people can offend those they love or say the wrong thing on accident and it seemed too weird.

second, my hero academia. i don't think any of these characters are explicitly autistic, but i haven't watched in a while. mainly, i see deku and tamaki as autistic (although bakugo, aizawa, and shigaraki are.... suspicious) and i believe my views on these two are mainly influenced by the rest of the fandom, so here goes. overall, i think the characterization of these two lends itself directly to their emotional or anxious nature. most media i see with one or both of them severely dumbs them down to these traits, with tamaki getting the brunt of this treatment. most don't seem to remember that both of them are strong for their age, smart, and have faith in their quirks. even if tamaki might seem pessimistic about fights, he's just that- pessimistic. he's much more inclined to believe he'll lose because if he does, he's prepared to do what he can to help whoever comes after. deku is emotional, yes, but who wouldn't be? he's a teenager who's been told over and over again that he's a failure and he'll never achieve his dream, and suddenly, he's being helped by the #1 hero to become the person that he thought was unattainable. i think horikoshi's representation of them is alright, it's just mainly the fandom that compresses them into "uwu anxious cinnamon rolls too sweet for this earth" instead of remembering they're multifaceted characters, and damaging their own interpretations of real people in the process.

in dungeon meshi, i don't know if they're explicitly autistic (however laios and falin are HEAVILY HINTED AT so.) but the representation of autism here is incredible. in the series, we see laios fuck up with shuro (and, notably, we see the fandom sweep it under the rug because laios is white) while he has real, genuinely close relationships with others (marcille is like a sister to him, and chilchuck's his best friend) so we know he is a multifaceted character. he's also tied to the tendency of autistic people to be interested in fringe interests, or alterhuman circles. he thinks (like many others) that he's weird enough to people, so he throws all caution to the wind and goes all-in on being weird. i know that when i realized i was "too weird" for others, i just stopped caring, and that's how i got into many of my favorite things- like OFF, house of leaves, etc etc. if they thought i was weird then, i don't really want to know what they think i am now, especially since i'm out here playing obscure meta rpgs or reading books that require me to flip them around.

overall, i think the representations of autistic people in media have a long way to go. there is still a critical shortage of autistic poc in media, and many representations of autism are still influenced by the savant stereotype we see with spencer reid (see: the good doctor) and there's still a variety of symptoms that haven't been shown accurately yet. i'm very proud of where we've come, though- now, i can see an incredibly accurate portrayal of myself in laios, but there's still many autistic people who haven't seen someone they can relate to on the silver screen.

[many-but-one]

What's your opinion on this [https://www.tumblr.com/ratinacoat/764250900023951360/no-one-who-says-ramcoa-isnt-real-is-saying-that?source=share] (highlighted for convenience) post? I came across it and felt a little miffed by it. Though I do see where they are coming from, I suppose. I wondered what ya'll's opinion would be... I just don't feel it's an adequate reason for programmed systems to stop using terms that makes them feel seen and comfortable. Thank you for reading this.

Well Wishes,

Pomegranate O.L.

From what I can gather, they are boiling RAMCOA down to “ritual abuse” and “trafficking” but completely disregarding the “MC” part of the acronym. I understand where they are coming from, as the acronym was unfortunately created by people who are antisemitic, but that is hardly the survivor’s faults, imho. It sounds like they are conflating the MC part of the acronym with conspiracy, when MC is not a conspiracy, even though it is unfortunately riddled with people who are conspiracy theorists.

We’ve said it before and we will say it again—MC is not really done by hyper-secret government orgs, they’re done by the church on the corner, they’re done at daycare centers, they’re done by political cults, religious cults, familial units, and trafficking rings. MC is not complicated on the surface, it’s just conditioning taken to an extreme degree. Not everyone who has MC done to them will develop a dissociative disorder, and adults who go through MC who didn’t prior have a dissociative disorder can then develop one after going through MC traumas. This is OSDD-2, in the DSM-V. MC done to children who have the tendency to dissociate and have disorganized attachments to their primary caregivers will most certainly develop DID, and if they do, it’s not terribly difficult for MC abusers/programmers to learn how to negatively or positively trigger out certain alters to do undue harm to them and manipulate them to have certain beliefs about themselves and behaviors that the part will repeat when triggered out.

Those that wrote books about RAMCOA are shitty people who abused their patients and are antisemitic, but that doesn’t mean we should discount everything they learned. Like we have said before, we don’t discount all research in the medical and psychological field just because the studies or the doctors were abusive. Van der Hart was also a POS who abused his patients, yet his book “The Haunted Self” is one of the best written works for people with dissociative disorders and is consistently recommended to dissociative patients. I don’t know why we excuse him, the Axis powers in WWII (Germany and Japan), and all other horrific human experiments done in the name of science, but suddenly draw the line at RAMCOA researchers/therapists. Yeah, they were bad. Yeah, they are antisemitic. I’m not saying we should excuse their behavior. They were right to be removed from their positions. However, what they learned cannot be completely discounted. This shit isn’t black and white.

As an aside, we made a post about how planting false memories in patients is not possible and talked about why the False Memory Foundation and their supporters pushing this narrative is a detriment to survivors everywhere, but especially those who have been through RAMCOA traumas.

In addition, there is a new acronym out there (though it’s not my personal favorite) which is OEA, which means “Organized and Extreme Abuse.” I feel like it doesn’t quite capture what is necessary under that umbrella, but it is a viable replacement term and has a very broad umbrella that covers a lot of things. What terms survivors use is not up to anyone else but the survivor, and pulling the “conspiracy theory” card is getting old as hell. I do sort of understand where OP is coming from in terms of the origins of the acronym, but survivors are not at fault for where it came from and it should be up to the survivor to choose how they want to refer to it for themselves. My therapist uses the terms OEA and RAMCOA interchangeably because they mean the same thing. If antisemitism is the main complaint, then I think it would be beneficial to consider spreading the term OEA and encourage people to use that term instead rather than being angry at people using the term that they have a problem with and saying it’s all a conspiracy theory when it’s not.

I wish people would stop policing what terms other people use and stop conflating MC with conspiracy, though I doubt that wish will come true anytime soon.

[piratefern]

okay so basically about your AU it's great but I honestly don't understand why scp 049 left scp 035 alone and what's with briefcase? *confused noise* I'm quite confused I do understand some things but some things are quite confusing to understand there backstory I will appreciate if you explains to meh clearly (*°∀°)=3

Hey :D! Thankyou for your ask :3

Basically, to understand the briefcase you’ll need a bit of context first :3

SPOILER WARNING (technically, im hopefully making them a youtube shorts series once ive finished with my main project, but we’ll see :3)

Hasel (or 049 :3) comes from 1340’s france. He had a wife and a daughter who both caught the black death. He was working as a doctor at the time, and tried everything he could to save them, but they died. His daughter’s dying wish was for him to live, which cursed him to live forever altering his form to something resembling a crow, the omen of death.

In this sense he is now a monster (or anomalous if you prefer) and now portrays more birdlike traits :D

So with this in mind, he feels incredibly guilty. He feels as though the deaths of his wife and child are entirely his fault because he couldn’t cure them.

This guilt manifests itself into a caricature of his wife, where she taunts and tortures him within his mind in a place known as the grey dimension (seen in my earlier birdsong project)

when he gets lost inside the grey dimension (more or less lost in guilt) his physical body turns to auto pilot, and will hunt down anything obstructing his path to “the cure”. This is the monstrous form we see :D

The caricature also produces a black vine, which is my au’s version of the pestilence :D He can see this everywhere, he believed it infects people, and he believes he must find the cure for it in order to redeem himself (this isn’t true, especially because this vine isn't actually real)

CONTEXT OVER

right, so Hasel meets dyo (or 035 :D) in 1601. They travel together and eventually fall in love :3 Hasel slowly becomes happier now that hes learning how to enjoy life, and continues his journey to find a “cure”, unaware that its staring him in the face, Dyo, who helps him to forgive and tackle his past, whether unintentional or not.

Eventually their story leads up into 1916, during the first world war. Battles, despite their nature, are an efficient way for Hasel to research the dead whilst avoiding killing where he can.

He had almost hurt dyo by accident after his monstrous form takes him over, and the vine was telling him that he was in the way, that dyo was stopping him from reaching the cure.

At this point something had been building up inside of him. It was a sense of dread, a feeling that something bad was going to happen.

And there it was. He looks over no-man’s land and all he can see is death. He can’t take it anymore, and that night he runs, scared of hurting his lover and scared of “failing” those from his past.

(…)

The briefcase however? Its not too important :3 Its a way for him to carry his supplies and it changes to keep up to date with the time period :3 He left it behind so dyo would know he’s gone. Dyo had also had this impending sense of dread, he felt deep down that something like this might happen, but he desperately tried his best to ignore it. So now he’s searching for hasel, the only person in his life who could never leave him, the only one who wouldn’t die.

So yeah thats it in basic terms :3 (after hasel leaves the caricature of his wife is replaced with a manifestation of dyo, masks comedy and tragedy and a mix of the two as it shows how his guilt has become more complex over time :3)

(Once he gets captured by the foundation the back of his cloak is branded with the logo)

any more questions lmk :3

I haven’t shared much on dyo since this was mainly a hasel focused question so if anyone’s curious about that then be my guest to drop an ask whenever :D He isn’t as built up but I do definitely have ideas for him :3

[doctorofmagic]

No one asked but here's some thoughts about Stephen's current and future life.

First of all (and to be completely honest), before Blood Hunt, I do think Stephen was starting to find joy in being the Sorcerer Supreme now that things were seemingly going well in his life.

Just to name a few, he befriended his general self, his marriage was rekindled, Mordo was finally locked down, Clea and Umar were starting to find a common ground (at least, they were not enemies anymore) and Donna II happened, blessing their lives. Stephen was finally thriving. He was executing his duties just fine despite the challenges of being Earth's magical defender. Conflict was obviously expected but it was far from the struggles he faced in v4, for instance. There was optimism.

The fact that he seems sad in that Pasqual's post could be about anything but if I was to predict why, I'd say it's because 1) he didn't want to pass the mantle down at this point in his life and 2) he didn't want to pass the mantle down to Victor specifically because well, it's Doom. And let's be real, Jed's interpretation of their relationship is not similar to T&T or Infamous Iron Man or even Secret Wars. Even if Victor is rarely portrayed as a villain these days (more like an antagonist), there's still a certain dread whenever he shows up in stories. So it's only natural for Stephen to be worried about what's coming next.

Personally, I think Victor will not be a bad Sorcerer Supreme. He's competent and incredibly complex. There's altruism in him, especially when it comes to protect Latverians and people in general (Doom 2099 my beloved). And let's not forget about his dramatic ego and petty personality. If anything, I'd go for a gray representation. He will not be the king of altruism (aka Stephen), but he will not be a shallow villain by desecrating the mantle (something I'm pretty sure Mordo would do. Hate that guy). That said... Oh, he's also in for a big surprise, not expecting the burden that comes with such a huge responsibility. But that's just my two cents. Could always be wrong. However, I still remember when he tried to go after Jericho and gave up as soon as the light of the Eye of Agamotto hit him, so... This idea does have canon support.

(panel merely illustrative; from an alt future/reality)

As for Stephen and Clea, what comes next for them? I know the fandom is desperate for domestic vibes and a peaceful era for them. But let's be real, it's Marvel. Also it's Stephen and Clea. For starters, Clea is still the Warlord of Manhattan, which means that area will remain under her protection, tying her to our dimension. As for Stephen... We know him, right? We know he will never stop doing what he does, Sorcerer Supreme or not. We have tons of magic characters doing their jobs. Even when magic was practically dead, he found a way to keep doing good because it's intrinsic of his personality. And let's not forget Wong and W.A.N.D. They still need someone reliable, and I hardly think they'll go for Victor when consulting all things mystical. Oh, and Strange Academy, of course.

Last but not least, every change in status quo hardly lasts more than a year or two in comic books. It happened so many times before: Salomé, Jericho, Loki, even Clea. It was only natural for Victor's turn, given how T&T is such an important book to their mythos.

As for me? I think it's not really fair for me to share my feelings assuming how much I love both Victor and Stephen. I've seen some unhappy fans (and I can't relate, sorry 🥲) and some excited ones.

The reason I'm still kinda blue is merely due to the lack of new announcements, whether it's a new Doctor Strange book or a mini featuring Victor. Also it's almost certain that Jed is done with his work, which hit me like a train. I really don't want to say goodbye to Jed just yet, and seeing his work continue with Moon Knight while going for the X-books makes me a bit bitter. There's still the possibility that he's staying, but it's all conjecture at this point. I mean, I dread that some bad writer comes next, and boi do I have a no-no list. Hopefully, SDCC will shed some light on these dark times of uncertainty.

Well, that's it. Do I ramble a lot? Was not expecting to write such a long post, sorry about that (old testament me comeback?). Just wanted to write down my thoughts since they were making a mess in my head. If anything, I'll still be around for whatever comes next. After all, my love for Stephen knows no shame 🔥

[myfandomrambles]

C-PTSD & BPD Eleventh Doctor pt. 1

(Doctor Character Study part 3c.1 [Redux]) 3c.2

[Full on AO3]

An analysis of The Doctor as having Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) along with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).

The Eleventh Doctor is often seen as goofy and not very deep or as a Doctor who is fully cruel for no real reason. He is rarely understood as a deeply traumatized character and given the same understanding as a character like Nine or Ten. However, I posit Eleven is best understood through the lens of having C-PTSD and BPD. 

11th Doctor 1: Hyperarousal, Hypervigilance, Schema, & Anxiety

The Doctor experiences global hyperarousal causing diffuse energy throughout the body dissuades him from being able to calm down and rest is very common for The Doctor. It can seem like he is even afraid to stay still, functioning best at a higher stress level.  (TV: The Eleventh Hour, TV: Victory of The Daleks, TV: The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone, TV: The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood, TV: The Lodger, TV: Night Terrors, TV: Dinosaurs On A Spaceship, TV: A Town Called Mercy, TV: The Angels Take Manhattan & Prose: Glamour Chase)

Showing up in TV: Amy’s Choice where the very idea of a calm life causes him to be frustrated and rude:

“Amy: This is busy. Okay, it's quiet, but it's really restful and healthy. Loads of people here live well into their nineties. The Doctor: Well, don't let that get you down. Amy: It's not getting me down. The Doctor: Well, I wanted to see how you were. You know me, I don't just abandon people when they leave the TARDIS. This Time Lord's for life. You don't get rid of your old pal the Doctor so easily. Amy: Hmm. You came here by mistake, didn't you? The Doctor: Yeah, bit of a mistake. But look, what a result. Look at this bench. What a nice bench. What will they think of next? So. What do you do around here to stave off the, you know Amy: Boredom. The Doctor: Self-harm.”

During TV: The Power of Three, the Doctor struggles to stay with The Ponds, having to stay active to not go stir crazy, he does eventually stay but it’s very hard for him. 

Commenting on TV: Vincent and The Doctor:

“The Doctor: Is this how time normally passes? Really slowly. In the right order. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's an unpunctual alien attack”.

This can lead to Insomnia: (TV: The Lodger, TV: The Bells of Saint John, Home Video: Bad Night, Home Video: Good Night & Comic: The Lost Dimension) 

The Doctor has an addiction to excitement, action and danger created by his hyperarousal, sensitised nervous system and schema shaped by viewing the world structured on fighting and danger. It’s something he deeply enjoys and always has but has also become something he can’t not do anymore due to it being something he has just become so habituated to. (TV: Victory of The Daleks, TV: Vincent and The Doctor, TV: Amy's Choice, TV: The Curse of The Black Spot, TV: The God Complex, TV: Dinosaurs On A Spaceship, TV: A Town Called Mercy, TV: The Rings of Akhaten, TV: The Cold War Home Video: Bad Night, Home Video: Good Night, Prose: Night of The Humans, Prose: Apollo 23, Prose: Borrowed Time, & Comic: As Time Goes By)

In Prose: Tales of Trenzalore we have the quotes:

“Theol Thought he was enjoying himself a little too much.”

River comments on how he’ll give in and stay become interested in what she is asking him to do when he learns it’s dangerous:

“The Doctor: I'm nobody's taxi service. I'm not going to be there to catch you every time you feel like jumping out of a spaceship. River: And you are so wrong. There's one survivor. There's a thing in the belly of that ship that can't ever die. Now he's listening.”

(TV: The Time Of Angels)

He also can’t let himself move past the danger he becomes aware of even when he wants to:

“The Doctor: Just go. Stop noticing. Just go. Stop noticing, just go. Stop noticing, just go. Stop it. Am I noticing? No. No, I am not. ..... I'm going. Do you hear me? Going. Not staying, going. I am through saving them. I am going away now.”

(TV: Closing Time)

Up to his final story, we can see how much he wants to get involved in dangerous situations and compulsively gets involved.

“Tasha: That message is transmitting through all of space and time. What did it make you feel? The Doctor: Feel? Tasha: Every sentient being in the universe who detected that signal felt something. Something overpowering. The Doctor: What? Tasha: Fear. Pure, unadulterated dread. ... The Doctor: Right. What's the signal? Where's it coming from? Tasha: It's a settlement. Human colony, level two. A farm, basically. The Doctor: Right. Anyone been for a look? ... The Doctor: Daleks, Cybermen, one of that lot, could break through your defences. Tasha: Perhaps. But they're afraid, remember? Nobody wants to go first. The Doctor: I do. Tasha: I was counting on it.”

(TV: Time of The Doctor)

Connected to this is his hypervigilance, a very common sign of C-PTSD. His long history of trauma would likely wire his nervous system to take in information to protect him. (TV: The Eleventh Hour, TV: The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood, TV: Vincent and The Doctor, TV: Let's Kill Hitler, TV: The God Complex, TV: Closing Time, TV: Asylum of The Daleks, TV: The Rings of Akhaten,  TV: Nightmare in Silver,  Prose: Glamour Chase, Comic: Silent Knight, & Comic: The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who) An example of this can be seen in TV: The Beast Below:

“The Doctor: Now, come on, look around you. Actually, look. ..... The Doctor: Life on a giant starship. Back to basics. Bicycles, washing lines, wind-up street lamps. But look closer. Secrets and shadows, lives led in fear. Society bent out of shape, on the brink of collapse. A police state. Excuse me. (He takes a glass of water from a table.) Man: What are you doing? (And puts it on the floor. He looks at it for a moment then returns it to the table.) The Doctor: Sorry. Checking all the water in this area. There's an escaped fish. Where was I? Amy: Why did you just do that with the water? The Doctor: Don't know. I think a lot. It's hard to keep track. Now, police state. Do you see it yet?”

In this, we can see how The Doctor is telling Amy about the police state, which he later explains he knows because no one is helping a crying child and at the same time noticing the way the water isn’t moving. He also says he “thinks a lot” which can be a reference to how he is taking in more information due to his hypervigilance. 

In Prose: Dark Horizons when discussing his experience of dying at the bottom of the ocean he references how ever-present his hypervigilance is:

The Doctor: “This is the only time I've been relaxed"

He can also be seen noticing the mood and behaviours of people around him even when he is also focusing on conversations (Comic: The Friendly Place)

We can see more of how schema is built around this violence he’s aware of, believing the world to be dangerous. Sometimes not seeing outs, like not believing the Star Whale might stay in TV: The Beast Below. Being generally ready to drop in and fall into patterns of action and fighting (TV: The Eleventh Hour, TV: The Beast Below, TV: The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone, TV: The Vampires of Venice, TV: The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood, TV: The Lodge, TV: A Christmas Carol, TV: The Impossible Astronaut/Day of The Moon, TV: Asylum of The Daleks, TV: A Town Called Mercy, TV: Nightmare in Silver, TV: The Day of The Doctor)

In Comic: The Eye of Ashaya believes the worst in Christina de Souza but is still willing to steal an artefact himself to fix his TARDIS but then realises she is trying to save the Ashayan people and has to give the artefact back. During Comic: After Life, The Doctor doesn’t always consider normal reasons for things that humans can like animals with tags that have pet owners and not violent reasons like cruelty.  

This detached schema can lead to issues like in Comic: Whodunnit where he accidentally calls his new friends a stray being honest about how they tend to come in and out of his life. However, putting up distance due to the pain the separation from his friends causes.

The Doctor shows more general anxiety throughout this run, yes The Doctor shows immense strength and can command a room he also is insecure about situations and most importantly worried for the safety of the people he is caring for. (TV: Vincent and The Doctor, TV: Time of Angels, TV: The Girl Who Waited, TV: The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People, TV: Closing Time, TV: Asylum of The Daleks, TV: Nightmare in Silver, TV: The Day of The Doctor, Prose: Borrowed Time, Comic: The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who, Comic: The Friendly Place,  Comic: Space in Dimension Relative and Time, Comic: Conversion, Comic: The Tragical History Tour. Comic: Time of the Ood.  Comic: Fool. Comic: Supremacy of the Cybermen, & Comic: Prisoners of Time)

We get a few references to his own worries and anxieties including TV: The Curse of The Black Spot:

“Amy: You only call me Amelia when you're worrying about me. The Doctor: I always worry about you.”

In Prose: Tales of Trenzalore The Doctor says:

"I've been scared for my life almost everyday"

In TV: Flesh and Stone:

“The Doctor:...Nobody panic, just me then"

The Doctor has a panic attack-like episode in TV: Asylum of The Daleks when presented with The Daleks who survived his attacks. And a panic attack in Comic: The Comfort of The Good. 

Shows panicking physical compulsive behaviours in Comic: Space Oddity trying to hide it.

“ The Doctor: I'm not panicking I'm moving quickly’ & “ The Doctor: hard to think without pacing"

This anxiety can present as obsessive thoughts and behaviours. (Prose: Tales of Trenzalore,  Comic: The Lost Dimension) For example, checking Amy’s body scan TV: Day Of The Moon &  TV: The Curse of The Black Spot. We see another topic he can be obsessive about referenced in TV: Victory of The Daleks:

“Amy: I'm still here, aren't I? You're worried about the Daleks. The Doctor: I'm always worried about the Daleks.”

We see this obsessive thinking around the Impossible girl mystery with Clara. (TV: The Rings of Akhaten, TV: Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS,  & TV: Nightmare in Silver) To the point of isolation in TV: The Bells of Saint John.

[presidentdisastraofgallifrey]

@daughterofheartshaven made me think the other day about how we never actually see Gallifrey at its height. Not so much on purpose in a we-used-to-be-a-powerful-society way as in the way the show works means he’s not there if something isn’t going on. And the stakes are always raised.

But the result is a society in decline that doesn’t know it is, as most don’t. Late Stage Gallifrey.

The first time we see it, technically, is in the War Games, but that’s a quick and dirty trial for like 10 minutes at most. In Three’s era, we see Time Lords but not Gallifrey itself. So then there’s the Deadly Assassin. The President being killed! In public! And at this point few know the Doctor and no one knows the Master.

Then there’s Invasion of Time. Gallifrey invaded! Treachery! Time Lords divided and apparently having not chosen a new President for however many decades the Doctor was gone.

Then there’s the Arc of Infinity. Their past is coming back to haunt them and that’s one thing, but no one is prepared to handle any sort of real emergency. There’s general discontent. They’re so desperate they’re willing to execute an innocent person as a first resort (when apparently they rarely even kill criminals).

And then comes the Five Doctors. Again, no one is prepared. Their best plan is to summon the Master—everyone in power has been there for a very long time. They don’t even know how to handle acknowledging their own past. No one seems eager to question the sudden disappearance of the President.

Next is the whole Trial of a Time Lord saga. I don’t know all the details because I’m still watching it but I know the reveal, and the fact that the Valyard was able to set this up this at all is not a sign of a strong society. The fact that a different person is in charge every time the Doctor visits when people live for millennia is not a sign of a strong society. Plus they’re trying him for the exact thing they’d given him implicit permission to do when they ended his exile, which is disorganized at least. Also, Presidents already have near absolute power with few checks or balances but they’re always in trouble for trying to grab more.

I’m not to Seven’s run yet but I did a quick skim on Wikipedia and it didn’t seem like he has any Gallifrey-based stories. Someone tell me if I’m wrong.

Then, every stand-alone audio on Gallifrey is either the past is coming out of our fairy tales to eat us or our political situation is a mess and the general populace is restless about it. And sometimes also we’re getting invaded and all our protections aren’t good enough anymore.

Then, there’s Gallifrey the series, in which we have five leaders in quick succession (someone was in charge while they were on the axis after Matthias left even if they weren’t specified), two of whom also named themselves dictators. They dealt with terrorists, invasions, several near-misses on intergalactic war, a (zombie) health crisis, and a civil war. Two civil wars? It was a little vague but it sounded like another one maybe happened while they were gone. Everything got so bad they had to bring back their founder, only to discover he was worse than anyone else.

And then there’s the Time War, which was the culmination of their fall (everything about Gallifrey after that in the show sucked so I’m stopping there; it should count as a new era anyway). They had been declining for what must have been centuries but was also like 1-2 generations, with chaos happening more frequently and leaders failing more dramatically. And then they were thrown into the war to end all…everything…and had to lose even the pretense of being a gentle scholarly society and become feral and harsh. And they lost the time and ability to do anything but fight and kill and die and come back to do it again.

Honestly, their new era should bear very little resemblance to their former politics, but that isn’t really my point. I just find it so delicious that we’ve only ever seen this powerful and ancient society in its declining years

[friendlycursedspaceotter]

So I've seen a couple posts on my dash that are like "after Kamala got the nomination, people are fucked, she's bad, Palestine will be destroyed, immunocompromised people will die, trans people will be completely stripped of rights, etc." Respectfully, that's kind of a weird statement to make.

Like, I admit that Kamala Harris isn't perfect. The Venn diagrams of "candidates that Tumblr leftists will support" and "candidates that will make it anywhere near the White House" are, at the moment, two circles that don't overlap. I'm not saying that there are third party people who have tried to make it into that circle. There are! It's just that, mathematically speaking, winner-takes-all races don't allow anything but the two-party system. That's pretty common knowledge.

"Kamala Harris doesn't like trans people." That is a major [citation needed]. I haven't looked into her policy much, but I honestly think that almost anything is better than Donald "This man is a bioessentialist and has explicitly said in interviews that cisgender people are the only real genders, trans and nonbinary people are delusional and also that intersex people don't exist" Trump. I mean, the bar is in the ninth circle of hell. Even if she says "human beings are allowed to exist and express themselves however they want and we shouldn't restrict that" it would be better than Trump.

As for Palestine, immunocompromised people, housing, and any other issue you can use to justify not voting for her, I don't need to emphasize how bad Trump is. We know that. If any of those issues would be your breaking point, I have some advice for you: grit your teeth, vote blue, and use the next four years lobbying national, state, and local governments for election reform, specifically ranked choice voting. I know the energy as of late is "have fun and we're going to party," but it doesn't change the fact that our choices are a party that is at least willing to reform and listen, and fascists led by an old white man with narcissistic personality disorder who has no desire to change. You're not in heaven. You're on Earth, and you have to work for what you want. If you want candidates who better represent you, work for that change. If you want to stop a genocide, work so that people can escape it and for an end to the violence. If you want queer people to live and keep living, band together and make sure that happens.

And because I'm a Whovian, I need to quote the Twelfth Doctor right here: "And what will happen after your glorious revolution?" If you decide to burn it down and kill millions, how will you make sure that this won't happen again? Because last I checked, we forgot about the Holocaust (policy-wise) pretty quickly. We have backtracked with feminism in the past thirty years. If you want a revolution, have it be a quiet one. Have it be a revolution of words and laws, not one of weapons and blood. If you want your gold stars and moral superiority to stay intact, you're not going to get it by assassinating billionaires or overthrowing the government. Those are not tactics of progress. Why? Because progress has a way of lasting. That's why we call it progress. We are moving forward.

So get on the bus, losers. We're going voting.

[starlletsblog]

Thanks to the shaman (Exhuma's Bonggil fanfiction)

pairing: Yoon Bonggil x female

warnings: angst (kinda), high school au, before the events of Exhuma

words: 2,5k

summary: You still remember how you lost the boy you loved so dearly. All thanks to the shaman.

a/n: I haven't seen a single Exhuma ff so I decided to write my own one. It's my first ff written in English ever, so forgive me for any errors. I hope you'll enjoy it ^^

___________________

When your grandfather got sick out of the blue, firstly your family thought it was due to his age. Your parents took him to the local hospital, but the doctors there couldn’t tell what was wrong. So your parents took your grandfather to a hospital in Seoul, hoping that maybe the doctors there would be able to help him.

But nothing seemed to work.

Eventually, your grandfather was sent back home – the doctors couldn’t determine what exactly was happening to him, but his state wasn’t critical so there was no point in keeping him in the hospital. However, his strange state remained.

Your grandmother, against your parents' will, decided to call for a shaman. If the modern methods could help his husband, maybe the old ways would? That’s what she fought.

And so now you were at your grandparents' house, waiting with them for the shaman who agreed to visit your grandpa. You weren’t very optimistic about that. To be honest, you never really believed in spiritual things nor in feng shui or anything like that. But neither did you judge people who believed in it.

Until that one spring during your last year of high school.

-----

You could still remember how excited you were about going to high school. You were always a very cheerful person, an optimist with natural leadership skills, never had a problem with making friends or being the first person to speak up and, on top of that, you were academically talented too.

At the very beginning of the school year, you became class president – you volunteered for the role and your new classmates didn’t oppose that after hearing that you used to be a class president in middle school as well.

Sometime later, when the first midterms were nearing, one of your classmates asked you for help with mathematics. Yoon Bonggil. He was a member of your school’s basketball team and a very skilled player. Many girls in your school, the first graders as well as some older students, were swooning over him. It wasn’t a surprise – he was tall, unbelievably handsome and treated people around him with kindness. Not to mention the amazing aura that he had while on the court. Whoever went to the games was captivated by his moves, his charisma, his bright smile after his team scored a point and his joyful expression after winning the match.

Even you.

You would lie if you said that he didn’t make your heart beat just a tiny bit faster, especially when he was leaning so close to you, eyes on your eyes level while asking you for help so cutely. How could you turn him down? You couldn’t. And maybe that was the best decision you have ever made – or so you’ve thought at that time.

Over the time when you were helping him with his studies, the two of you got closer. Your study dates moved from the school cafeteria and library to cafes and your own houses. Eventually, your study dates stopped being just about school and became real dates. You could still remember the night when he grew the courage to ask you out.

It was the last game his basketball team was playing during the first year of high school. They won of course. After the game he was appointed the new captain of the team – the previous one was about to graduate and he wanted Bonggil to be his successor. Bonggil couldn’t believe it at first. You could see the joy radiating off of him, his sparking eyes, his wonderful smile when he was running up to you. Before you had a chance to congratulate him, he scooped you up in his arms and swung you around. When he put you down his eyes were glued to yours, smile never leaving his lips. And he popped up the question and asked if you would like to go on a date with him.

You started the second year of high school officially being in a relationship with Bonggil. You two were the hot talk of the school for some time – the class president and captain of the school’s basketball team. Many students envied you and your picture-perfect relationship. And it truly was like a fairytale for you. Everything you remember about your relationship with him was just wonderful. He was the sweetest, the most caring and the most loving boyfriend a girl could dream about. He always made sure that you felt loved, that you knew that no matter what you mattered to him the most. He always put you first. Not school. Not basketball. But you.

You were his whole world. And so he was yours.

But everything changed that cursed spring in your last year of high school, just a few months before you two were supposed to graduate. And everything because of that big game his team was playing, the game that could help them to get sports scholarships for university, the game that could be their ticket to professional basketball. The game and some idiotic idea of one of his teammates.

A ritual.

One of Bonggil’s teammates suggested doing a shamanic ritual to summon good spirits for the game. And for some reason, they all agreed to that. They decided to do a summoning ritual without telling anyone about it. If you knew what they were planning, you would at least try to talk them out of it, talk him out of it – but when you got to know about it, it was way too late to undo the damage. You never got to know what exactly that ritual looked like, but you remembered clear as day what was happening afterwards.

The team played better than ever before. They won the big game and their manager got contacted by some important names in the basketball world. It all seemed like their sports careers were about to reach up to a new height. But soon after the game things started getting weird. Weirder and weirder with every passing day.

Firstly one of the members complained about having some crazily scary nightmares in which an ancient powerful demon was chasing him trying to rip his heart out of his chest and eat it. Within just a few days all of the members were suffering from nightmares – all of them exactly the same, with a demon trying to eat their hearts. Secondly, there were hallucinations. Some of the boys claimed that they were seeing the demon from their dreams follow them around the town. Some claimed they’d heard the demon’s whispers or felt the touch of his claws on their skin.

It was getting progressively worse and worse. Boys stopped attending school. Their families, worried about them, were seeking medical support, but not a single doctor was able to tell what was happening to them. That’s when information about them performing a ritual came to the daylight. It was Bonggil who mentioned it during his feverish talk.

You were sick-worried about your boyfriend’s well-being. Even before the big game, you had noticed his unusual behaviour – it seemed to you like he was trying to hide something from you, but you blamed it on stress before the game. You thought he was just trying to play it cool and act as if he wasn’t anxious about the most important game of his teenage life. So you didn’t press him to tell you what was wrong. But you should have asked.

After the game, you could tell that your boyfriend wasn’t quite acting like himself. He seemed restless at all times, always looking around as if he expected someone or something to jump at him from behind the corner. And he had that wild look in his eyes. At first, it wasn’t very noticeable or maybe you didn’t notice fast enough, because suddenly Bonggil distanced himself from you, always coming up with some excuse as to why he couldn’t meet up with you. His explanations made sense to you so you didn’t inquire. You were pretty busy yourself at that time too, after all, it was your last year of high school and you had to prepare for your final exams.

But things were getting worse. Your boyfriend was admitted to the local hospital, but after many tests run by the doctors, nothing came up. Nobody was able to say what was wrong. And the situation looked just the same for all of Bonggil’s teammates. You would visit your boyfriend at the hospital almost every day. You tried to talk to him, assure him that everything will be alright, but more often than not he wasn’t mentally there to listen to what you had to say. He was hallucinating, talking about weird things he was seeing. His eyes unfocused, frantically moving around his surroundings, skin covered in a thick layer of sweat, face pale like a wall. You couldn’t stand that sight – it was breaking your heart to see your boyfriend suffering like that.

One evening during your visit he had a moment of clarity. Through tears falling from his eyes, he told you about the summoning ritual they had performed before the game. His words were filled with fear, his voice breaking multiple times, his pupils dilated in pure terror – the sight of him back then will never leave your memories.

You shared what he told you with his family. His relatives thought about calling for a shaman to see him. They were desperate to try anything that could possibly bring their son back to health. You weren’t there to see the shaman, nor whatever means they used to help Bonggil, but it worked. Your boyfriend and all of his teammates were back to their right minds.

Thanks to the shaman.

A sense of relief washed over you when you heard that your boyfriend was finally feeling better. But sadly it was just the beginning of suffering for you.

Boys returned to school just in time to still have a chance to take final exams. You thought that everything would be alright, now that you had your boyfriend at your side again. But he acted differently than before. He wasn’t as cheerful as he used to be, he was barely talking to anyone, not even to you, his mind seemed to be elsewhere. You tried to make up explanations for his behaviour. He must have felt traumatized after all that had happened. He needs some time to recover. Maybe he's stressed about finals after skipping so many days at school?

But days were passing by and Bonggil was growing more distant. Hanging out after school used to be your everyday occurrence, but now it was barely ever happening. You used to text each other every day with “good morning” and “sweet dream” or other sweet stuff like that, but now it was all long gone. Not to mention calling each other by cute nicknames, holding hands on school corridors or eating lunch together. It suddenly appears like he was avoiding you.

You got sick of his behaviour. Sick of making excuses for him, when he barely talked to you at all. So you made up your mind about finally facing him and straight up asking what the hell was going on. But you couldn’t imagine what he was about to tell you.

The summer evening just a week before the end of high school was when your world went crumbling down. Bonggil told you that the two of you should break up. He wanted to go to Seoul after graduation and join the shaman who healed him as her apprentice. He was already set on his resolution and prepared everything needed. The last thing to do was to end his relationship with you and he would be ready to leave.

You couldn’t believe what you’ve heard. You thought that the two of you were meant to be. That your relationship had every chance to last for long long years. You thought that one day the two of you might stand in church making vows of loving each other “until the death do us part”.

And all of it was gone now.

To say you were heartbroken was an awful understatement. His was your first real love and maybe the only one. You couldn’t stop crying for days on end. Your whole world just went apart and you had no idea how to handle it. You didn’t show up at school during those few last days. You only showed up to the graduation ceremony, but even that brought unbelievable pain to your heart. Because the man you loved so dearly was there too. And that was the last time you ever saw Yoon Bonggil.

He left the basketball team. He left his family. He left the town.

He left you.

Thanks to the shaman.

-----

After everything that happened, you started hating shamans and everything connected to them. You lost your love because of all the stupid crap they were spreading. But you did your best not to think about that, not to think about him.

From what you heard Lee Hwarim, the shaman who agreed to come to check on your grandpa, was quite famous in her field with a reputation that allowed her to take a pretty fat check for her work. She was told to give her services to filthy rich people and to have a rather packed-up schedule – so it was almost impossible for an average person to even book a meeting with her. And yet, she agreed to come to your grandfather surprisingly quickly.

Which wasn’t adding up at all.

Something about her coming here doesn’t seem right and that’s why you decided to be here today. You were extremely suspicious of that shaman. Your opinion on shamans was bad in general, but even if you put your thoughts aside, this situation seemed extremely fishy. However, your grandma insisted on the shaman’s visit, so you decided to make sure that this “oh-so-amazing” shaman won’t scum her. After all, there were many scumbags in this world and your grandma was just an elderly lady seeking a way to help his sick husband.

What an irony, how this situation reminded you of your high school days. But those days were long gone and it wasn’t a time to think about that.

When you heard a car’s engine, you walked up to the window. An expensive-looking black car was parked outside the gate. You called for your grandma and walked out of the house with her to greet the awaited guest. You saw an elegant woman stepping out of the car. You were surprised to see that the shaman was a beautiful young woman like her.

What surprised you even more was the other person that stepped out of the car. At first, you only saw dark hair tied up and some tattoos peeking about from the collar of his shirt. But when he turned around and your eyes locked – you knew that face.

He was there. In front of you.

Yoon Bonggil the lover you thought you had lost forever.

Thanks to the shaman.

[pannman]

Yandere Blitzø X Trans Masc reader who works as a nurse

My apologies I know little to nothing about the medical field but I tried my best so just try to brush off any inaccuracies

Need Medical Attention After Falling For You

Yandere Blitzø x Trans Masc Nurse Reader

TW: sexual harassment, stalking, kidnapping, nonconsensual touching, toxic behavior, being drugged/chloroform

You were so exhausted already...

The day had barely begun and for some reason the entire sloth ring all collectively decided to get sick it seemed. But you tried to remind yourself why you loved this job. You loved helping people. Sure there were days like this where you wanted to tear your hair out but other days you felt such a warm feeling from the smile of a child you gave a sticker for doing a good job or the deep appreciation an elderly person gave you for being so patient with them. Not to mention the paycheck was nice and so were the benefits. The insurance basically completely covered your gender affirming care

After a quick break and thinking about these things you were in better spirits. So you went back to work to see your newest patient. And you stopped in your tracks at the sight of him

He was bleeding. Profusely. From a bullet wound in his abdomen. He was tall for an imp and in dark clothes with white scars covering half his face and up his arms and probably most of his body

You immediately panicked trying to call for backup. Why hadn't he been rushed into emergency care? He could bleed out

"Geez! Relax! It's like you never seen a bullet wound before" he said so casually. You tried to calm yourself

"Why, don't we get you to emergency care so they can remove that bullet" you tried to reason with him

"Nah, you can just take it out and patch me up I'll be fine" he replied. Was he serious? He at least had to wait for the doctor

"The doctor will be in shortly if you do not want to go to emergency care. Just hang in there" you almost wanted to go fetch the doctor yourself but you were scared to leave him alone for long with an injury like that

"I can't wait that long. You can take care of me, can't you? Or did they only teach you to look pretty and take orders at nursing school? " he said in a bit of an inappropriate tone. Was he flirting with you or insulting you? You realized that you didn't have much of a choice. So you promptly went and grabbed medical supplies before returning and seeing that he had removed some of his clothes so they wouldn't get in the way. He was wearing nothing but pants

"You shouldn't move around too much I could've removed the clothes for you" you said professionally however he did not fail to notice an opportunity in your statement. "You upset you didn't get to take my clothes off?" He suggested

Why was he flirting with you so much? This was very inappropriate. You calmed yourself and tried to focus as you offered him some pain medication but he turned it down. "I like the pain a little" God damn it he needed to stop that!

You disinfected the wound watching him wince. Then you promptly grabbed the appropriate tools and dug out the bullet. Applying pressure quickly to keep down any bleeding. You stitched him up quickly and applied bandages.

Even though you weren't exactly dying to see him again you knew it would be risky for him to try and replace the bandages himself

"You'll need to come back regularly to have the bandages replaced" you told him begging in your mind for him to not make another flirty comment or sexual innuendo

"Lucky me I get to see your handsome face again. It was real fun to come by and... play nurse with you" he got awfully close but you back away

"Make your next appointment at the desk, have a nice day" you tried very hard to give off the impression that you've been trying to give him the entire time, that you had no interest in him that way. This was a professional setting and that was the nature of you're relationship nothing more

He left not before grabbing a handful of too many lollipops out of the bowl on the counter and giving you a wink on his way out

Ever since that encounter you would see him all the time. Usually at work. He often came by because his stitches had opened back up. You told him to take it easy he clearly wasn't doing that. But sometimes you even ran into him outside of work. You must be so unlucky

You brushed it off whenever he knew a piece of information about you that you didn't remember giving him. You must've told him at some point.... Though you tried not to discuss your personal life with him. It was hard since he always chit chatted with you. And of course he flirted. Every time. Having no sense of personal boundaries

But everything changed when you were attacked on your way to work. You usually took the bus but it hadn't shown up in a while causing you a significant amount of stress. You decided to start walking. You hadn't noticed the three men stalking you before it was too late. You were knocked to the ground in an instant. They clearly wanted to mug you. You tried to stay down as they searched you but then you heard a blast of gunshots and saw them all fall

You were weak but tried to stand up before a cloth came over your mouth. You blacked out

You woke up in an abandoned warehouse tied up. You tried to struggle free but whoever tied you up knew what they were doing

"Don't panic that's just for your protection" the familiar voice said. You filled with dread before you even saw him. "Blitzø?" You asked hazily still struggling from the affects of whatever was on that cloth

"You really had me worried. But now it's all finally over." He said as he approached you. He caressed your face. "Sooner than you think, you'll come around and we can be together. But for now I'll take care of you. Like you took care of me so often" he sounded so soft which was different from what you were used to with him. He was usually obnoxiously flirting or invading your personally space while making the occasional filthy joke

You wondered how long he'd been obsessed with you. Had he been stalking you? Was that how he knew-oh god... you're thoughts became a blur upon your realization "it's ok, its ok" he interrupted your thoughts and pulled you into him

"I'm not gonna let anything happen to you" he whispered to you as he held you. "I should probably mention I have a daughter. You'll love her. But first let's spend some quality time together. Just the two of us" he nuzzled you affectionately

"You healed me in more ways than one"

[felidrae]

With the recent released episode I went back & binge watched the previous episodes. There are many things I could talk about that I want to see more of (example if Penny introduced her daughter to the rest of the crew- I feel Steve would be utterly devoted to her since he’s a clown & has a soft spot for kids as seen from that one customer interaction)

BUT I’m bias and have a fascination in examining possibly veiled relationships & going into the speculative deeper details/interpretations. So I’ll start w/ that.

The topic: Cesare & Doctor (Allen)

Cesare & Doctor seem to have a deeper relationship than how Cesare has one w/ the rest of the employees.

Firstly, from what we’ve seen Cesare seems to only see his employees as just that- employees. He has no inclination to form a bond since we haven’t seen him hang out w/ them outside of work nor use their real names (unlike Steve) but instead uses their costume titles; this is so he doesn’t get attached. Cesare is a man on the job & once the job is done he will finally rest- no need to get attached when he’s dead already.

While Cesare is full of energy, theatrics & is just all over the place in general he doesn’t really seem to take nonsense from his employees nor engage in peer discussions; when he DOES interact it’s limited & mainly snapping:

- Frances asking him to try the bad food & he immediately shuts it down by saying he doesn’t eat food. While I understand where he’s coming from as a zombie there’s no real reason to not at least try it- Not eating something thats no longer needed doesn’t mean he can’t humor her.

- Conrad asking him how old he is. He could’ve lied but instead tells him to never ask him that; then again this could’ve been a “asking someone how old they are is rude” type of thing

- Conrad asking if he’s been to a FTC before & he says “no, I’m a virgin around here” then immediately goes straight back to business “I’m sure my reputation proceeds me however”

- Conrad asking to take lens off is immediately shut down cause Zombie man needs to stay hidden

(Notably, the only time Cesare snaps at Doctor is when he tries to negotiate w/ Cesare over the costumes.)

As stated his interactions with them are mainly orders or stopping them from revealing “ brand secrets” / asking questions. Even they (Conrad & Frances) have no internal familiarity w/ him since they call him “Boss”. It’s all strictly business.

The only people we have seen him fully interact w/ that isn’t a quick remake is Steve & Doctor; Steve makes sense- he’s a long term target who’s foiled his attempted captures time & time again. They got history/beef. Doctor however is just a regular human who’s employed by him- there shouldn’t be any history between the two that would establish the amount of interaction that aren’t simply orders (then again the interactions they do have is also related to business.) as well as treat Doctor more fairly from the rest YET Casare uses a nickname for him which is something we haven’t seen him do w/ the others, dramatically worries about Doctor when he’s down, is more abrasive towards him and counts on him w/ tasks such as gathering information whilst being impressed by him; Doctor is his right hand man.

Doctor in turn does something the rest don’t do- he calls Cesare by his name. This is significant. Why script it to where Frances/Conrad only call him “Boss” but Doctor frequently uses his actual name; this is a personal/friendly undertone. Cesare seems to have no issues with this either which if you go based on Cesare’s character & view on his employees would seem unusual. The only time we see him calling Cesare “Boss” is when he’s shocked/unsure about him.

Overall Cesare displays traits that would suggest he’s slightly more fond towards Doctor (I believe he enjoyed his time with the other employees- he’s just a blockhead & wants no strings attached) & Doctor in return reciprocates. Heck, Doctor is listed as a “Morality Pet” trope though it’s downplayed in the series- so far.

Secondly, the question is why is this specific relationship different from the rest? Well, another thing that’s good to note is the parallel between the two Foodtrucks:

- both have extravagant themes to hide the identities of the employers

-both have three employees that are human

-both sell bad burgers

- both are employers who came out of the ground & aren’t human

From what we’ve seen from the latest episode Steve was in the Earth’s core unconscious until he woke up & dug himself out; causing Tim to be the first to find him. Tim is also arguably Steve’s right hand man since he wears a chef’s hat & in “Down” he is the only one from Bigtop that exclaims a sentence of shock when everything is revealed.

Now this is where the speculation(or delulu) comes into play: both Tim/Doctor are right hand men & both exclaimed in shock at the revelation; so what if like Tim, Doctor was the first to find Cesare? We don’t know exactly how the recruitment happened but Cesare is aware they are all theatre majors (interestingly he specifically mentions puppets when saying this- marionettes are puppets) so either he went out of his way to a theatre group & found them OR Doctor was his first employee who brought his friends along since the pay is nice whilst they get to perform.

If Doctor was the first to find Cesare he took enough interest to make the proposal. This could be for many reasons however given the context of the story it would make more sense if Doctor reminded him of when Cesare was alive- Cesare is a performer & it would make sense he would reminisce about it causing it to make decisions for him.

Personally I would find it fitting if like Cesare, Doctor enjoys puppets- his voice would be perfect for it. (But that is a headcannon & not speculation.)

In conclusion, the relationship between the two is noticeable different from the rest for a Zombie who was using them as a means to an end & learning more on the why would be desirable to see as well as flashbacks about how Zomburger & the relationship dynamics began; seeing how they’re all (Bigtop & Zomburger) handling the revelation that their bosses weren’t human is definitely something we will be seeing.

That’s mainly it- it’s a bit of a rant but I’d like to hear your thoughts/headcannons

Bonus photo: