#accepted: miranda

[gonkaccino]

Season 4 hope/prediction: Deb's show is solid, zero issues, runs flawlessly with great ratings, but her personal life is completely eroding. We start with her discovering Marcus is leaving, and it culminates in DJ going into labor right before a taping. Deb chooses the show. When it's over, and she finally flies to Vegas, it's too late -- Aiden's not letting her in because he loves his wife too much to let DJ get into a shouting match with her mom right after giving birth, and instead takes the brunt of Deb's wrath, with her making excuses and talking about how they used her money for IVF, and anyway, DJ's fine, so who cares if she wasn't there? Kathy's in the room with DJ and the baby (DJ's the closest she has to a daughter, after all) and Deb leaves too furious to think about how badly she's hurt her family.

She heads back to her Vegas mansion -- empty, obviously, Josefina and the dogs would be in LA -- and pops open a bottle of wine. Alone. Completely alone. Can't call Marty, she has no friends, the closest she's got would be Kiki and wouldn't that be embarrassing, calling your poker dealer to talk about your feelings --

and then Ava's there. She got the news about DJ's labor, she got the story from Aiden (who was distraught, by the way, man's too much of a sweetheart for Vance drama), a spare key from Damian (happy to pawn that off on her, though if it isn't returned promptly he's taking legal action) and has arrived just in time to see the Deborah Vance having a breakdown the likes of which no one thought physically possible. Crying gives you wrinkles, you know. But Ava has to be here. She's the physical embodiment of a lesson Deb never truly learned: you don't have to like someone to love them.

In my imaginary fantasy land that I am concocting this would then subsequently lead into them fucking nasty but I understand that this may be a step too far for the surprisingly large number of very normal people who watch this show and would forgive JPL for not taking it that far. However I do believe they should fuck about it and let Ava take the reigns in their relationship while they see how many of Deb's bridges they can un-burn.

[pricstlys]

this song is mirandy coded. it's an anthem

[imogenkol]

KINCADE PACK 🐺 (original works) — “The name goes back centuries, and all Miranda cares about is making sure it lasts for many more”

[template by @tommyarashikage]

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[knownoshamc]

one thing I love about Black Sails, is how it never pushed a morality/point of view as the correct one. It showed how the characters interpreted actions/decisions, how other characters view them (narrations! monsters in the stories they tell their children!), how they faced the consequences, just or unjust... and it was up to us to decide where we stand. Flint as James McGraw did nothing wrong and lost the love of his life in the most horrible way, just because of greed and homophobia. Does that justify his anger, all the blood he has spilled? What other option did he have? Does the end justify the means? What if the end is just taken from him, leaving him, for once again, without a choice? Was Silver right to stop a war that he thought they'd lose and would be pointless? The show doesn't tell us FLINT is the bad guy. No SILVER. Max is. No, Eleanor, etc. There is no main bad guy, just those that represent constitutions (lords/navy etc). and honestly, more shows should do that

[shortycreates]

RETURN OF THE MAC

No one will get that reference because I’m an old slag. 

Here look at my mother.

This is a follow-up on the series I released back in 2021 which is weird as it feels so long ago now but whatevs. I based this on catholic/orthodox styles that you can kind of see in the game and wanted to do some cool tings with it. 

I love you Alcina Dimitrescu, thank you for getting me back into drawing for myself again. Once again wish Capcom would do something more with you (I didn’t like the DLC guys, sorry woah... controversial.) 

She’s an icon, she’s a legend and she is the moment. 

[imtheindiekid]

Did I just make a playlist to satisfy my fantasies of Gwen and her characters?

Yes. I totally did.

Am I making it public and accepting song requests?

Bring your filthy and thirsty songs then and be happy with me.

[sailingfireshipz]

I honestly don't think we'll get Stella's backstory fleshed out & it's crazy to say, but I think I've finally come to peace with it. I think it'll be a subtle reveal in a conversation with Carver. I don't think it'll be a multi episode arc or storyline because when have they ever given Stella a multi episode arc or storyline that in some way didn't involve Kelly? (Seriously, I'm blanking here)

Trying not to be pessimistic but it just seems like even after all these years Stella/Miranda still doesn't get the high level of storylines her predecessor got as the LT of Truck 81 & it just makes me sad.

Idk, maybe I'm being dramatic & we'll actually get something meaningful, but it's like I can't even trust them to handle her PTSD arc with care, let alone her trauma filled backstory.

[majoresca]

How do you imagine King Roland I, would be like as a grandfather?

[ciderjacks]

thinking about how Dulcie essentially got suspended for being a lesbian again. It’s a reoccurring theme almost, that she’s “allowed” to be a member of society, but if she steps out of line or says the wrong thing or stands her ground, she gets that permission to be an equal stripped from her. She’s allowed to be a detective, but the second she calls out Hastings for being violent and corrupt and also literally violating the fucking law, he tells her she’s “probably working alongside the women” and that her being gay makes her inherently untrustworthy to work on this case, Because she’s probably too caught up in her alleged attraction to these women that she can’t judge properly. (Yet he said that straight men would be better fit…)

She gets on the nerves of the old money people in deadloch, and it’s immediately ”your kind is ruining this place”. It’s “you dykes have no respect”, it’s “I don’t like you, you lesbian”.

(No spoilers since it’s a whole plot point but you also see this really clearly with Skye)

she’s expected to keep her head down and behave, both at her job and in her wider community. She’s expected to deal with constant little aggressions, constant lack of respect, constant abuse and ostracizing, and never stand up for herself.

And that’s not even mentioning how blatantly misogynist and corrupt Hastings and really the whole system is, the way he uses the case as an excuse to attack a marginalized group, the way he uses his power as a cop to violently raid and detain, the unnecessary destruction he causes and the way he treats Eddie and Dulcie (especially Dulcie, who he regularly screams at, forces into silence, and discriminates against)

This also intersects with the B-plot, with how Margaret makes a big show of accepting and supporting Miranda as an aboriginal woman, but really just wants to make her as close to white as she can. She targets Miranda bc she feels like she can Assimilate her, and when Miranda decides to embrace her heritage and her real family, that supposed support and acceptance is immediately burned away.

The messaging and themes of this show are so insanely well done wow

[mrfoox]

Mmm.... Should take more selfies..... Mmmmmmmmhmm

[jennycalendar]

the real question is like. which member of your ship makes the dad jokes and which member threatens to actually kill them

[rxttenfish]

monster prom reanimated except its just all of the ROs + color squad holding miranda up like one of those pictures of anacondas

[theartthatleavesthemark]

do you think that at the end of 2x10 when they were destroying charlestown and silver was screaming in the hold getting his leg cut off james (who had no idea that was happening) thought the screaming was inside his own head?

[crysdrawsthings]

Miranda

[royalreef]

@infernalpursuit inquired: is there anything from your muse's canon you can't stand? be it something involving your muse or their source material?

(( I hate the stupid Miranda-gets-arranged-to-marry-Damien-and-or-Dahlia plotline, I hate it so much, sincerely just wanting this fucking series to be normal about Miranda even ONCE, no one wanted this, you could have played up a ship between Miranda and Damien or Miranda and Dahlia in a thousand different ways and you picked having their parents forcibly arrange them to get married while Miranda protests. All of that complaining and bitching and being so dramatic hating on Miranda for having such a strict idea that she has to be arranged and married to someone and you crumple and do the exact same thing while Miranda wants absolutely anything other than that. You make me feel ashamed to still be into this damn series.

[anghraine]

The best friend and I played a bunch of Mass Effect 3 over the last few weeks! The things I remember most clearly are Thessia, Leviathan, Sanctuary, Horizon, the Citadel DLC, and the initial return to [redacted].

Long ramble about all of it:

My best friend had me choose the companions for the run to the temple on Thessia, and naturally I chose our beloved Liara and problematic fave Javik. I wasn't glad to see it fall (quite the contrary), but it seemed a bit apropos that the asari leadership's various choices wrt the war came back to bite them. Still, it was really sad, esp since it's the only time we really saw it and Liara was really upset.

...all the more because we brought Javik and he kept interrupting her explanations to be like "all your religious beliefs are gifts we gave to your people's ancestors before they figured out writing." It was a lot for her, but I did feel a touch of annoyance at what seemed a bit of an unspoken assumption that this might happen to other people's homes, but not hers. Very asari, to be sure. And I like it as a subtle aspect of her character—not a criticism of the game there, just a sidenote, I guess.

Kai Leng showing up was just ... /sigh. I don't really get what his deal is beyond being Cerberus and hating Shepard a lot for some unknown reason. Eventually we do see the past!Illusive Man comparing him to Shepard (in a positive way!), so maybe it's something to do with that, idk. He feels pretty underwritten to me compared to the rest of the major cast, who are generally super vivid (I mean, I love background characters like Westmoreland!). So I'm just irritated when he shows up and disrupts interesting things.

The Leviathan DLC was a really good horror episode taken in its own right, but as part of the wider game, I'm not sure. I kind of ... didn't want to know more about the Reapers? The sequence was fantastic (especially down in the bottom of the sea!), yet the less mysterious the Reapers get, the less engaged I am by them. Whatever the hell is going on with Cerberus and the Illusive Man is a lot more compelling to me at this point.

Speaking of whom, Sanctuary was just what the fuck?! from beginning to end. I've always been suspicious of the whispers about it, but I didn't guess that they were transforming refugees into husks to experiment on, you know? Damn. Miranda was not exaggerating about her father's callousness even a little.

Speaking of Miranda, she is probably at the top of my problematic ME characters list, and ... look. Okay. I know the mechanics of the game suggest she's straight. To me she has the most intense bi energy of just about any human in the game. I love (female) Shepard/Liara, a lot, but I just feel like there's a ton of UST between our Shepard and Miranda, all the more by the end of the Citadel DLC. I'll just leave that there.

After that, it was extremely cathartic to wreck the Cerberus base on Horizon with EDI. No gods no masters <3

And then we got to finally kill Kai Leng for good. Asshole. Blahblah, more villain monologues from the younger-looking Illusive Man (/suspicion). I suspect he's in cahoots with Harbinger or something and thinks he's actually the one in control.

Then there was the Citadel DLC, which I've heard a lot of great things about. Early on, I wasn't actually sure I'd like it as much as other people do—self-referential humor and stakes-lowering banter are not to my taste in general, and there were several times in the earlier parts that it didn't quite work for me (not because it was bad, but I just don't like that kind of thing by and large). I did laugh at the "I should go" jokes, though!

We did it with Wrex-Liara and then Garrus-Liara, which felt very apropos to the storyline, since the whole deal with the clone is that she has all of Shepard's technical skills but overlooks the importance of Shepard as team player and friend. And Wrex, Garrus, and Liara specifically go way back with Shepard.

When the clone was going on her villain rants about how she has everything Shepard did, she can do everything Shepard can, I was like "but she can't do everything Liara and Garrus can ... oh. This is about the power of friendship!" And it was, in a really charming way.

I did think Brooks was suspect as hell the whole time, so that was validating.

The clone's obsession with being The Real Shepard and having the grand mystique and galactic stature and all of that did highlight something interesting to me. I'd read an argument that ME1 is actually the best ME game, and one of the reasons in that argument is that ME1 Shepard is ... cool, but not nearly the superstar legend she becomes later on.

And Shepard's super special awesome greatness is hammered in a lot through ME2&3. I'm not sure that's actually worse than being scrappier, in terms of some artistic merit kind of thing, but the DLC is so reliant on Shepard's mystique that it got me thinking again about how easily this could become really annoying.

Like, I've loved many special or chosen male characters, but the idea of male badass Shepard seems just incredibly tedious to me. I'm not sure I could buy into this except with the pretty specific scenario we have of a lesbian Shepard who came up through a hard childhood on the streets of Earth.

Anyway, I absolutely adored the end of the clone arc (Garrus and Liara pulling the real Shepard up ;_;) and then the entire rest of the DLC, except the pull-up thing with James (very tiresome mechanically and he's my least fave of the ME3 squad). Miranda and Jack semi-reconciling was really adorable and I loved all the bizarre inter-character dynamics at the party. Also, Traynor winning against an asari named Polgara made me cackle. And my absolute most hated from ME2, Zaeed, was kind of delightful. Zaeed vs The Claw was just ... jafdkk;jadfjk;a

And Glyph's little bowtie! Incredible all around.

Oh, and the little date with Liara was super sweet. I loved that it stopped where it did, just that image of them embracing. It's great.

It was nice to see them seriously together even later, of course. And we got back to Earth! I was incredibly tired at that point, so my main thought was that the imagery of the united galactic fleet was essentially what The Rise of Skywalker tried and failed to do, but it was fantastic here, especially after everything we've done to get (almost) everyone together. (We did basically tell the salarians to go fuck themselves wrt the genophage.)

London looks suitably dreadful and we'd just gone around and talked to Anderson and then essentially everyone. Pretty much everyone continually brought up how awesome Shepard is, again, which reinforced my sense that this could be really annoying but is very nice for lesbian Shepard, and in any case, it feels like it's going somewhere now. We'll see where exactly that is!