#and it's surprisingly very interesting

[palaceoftears]

Really wish I was a cool gifmaker to gif all palace of desire's and war and beauty's amazing costumes

[sapphorror]

The Narrator's perspective only gets more horrifying the longer you think about it. Like, imagine being an Echo of yourself—one of many, all made to serve a very particular purpose and knowingly living on borrowed time, if 'living' is even the right word for your current state of pseudo-existence.

You've inherited the mission of a dead man—it's literally the only thing left that you can do before fading, so you sure as hell better believe in it; the alternative would be unbearable. Only you keep failing. With every loop that you don't remember, your lack of agency in this situation becomes starker—you can influence small things, sure, but it becomes increasingly clear that you have no real power, no matter how personally invested you are in the events unfolding in front of you. You are, after all, only an Echo. You've forfeited the right to meaningfully engage with the world.

Worse—every loop you're made aware of is another time you've failed, with unimaginable consequences, though you had no control over these previous iterations of yourself and can't even learn from their mistakes. Everyone around you is operating on a shared perception of reality that you are not part of, will never be part of. After a few repetitions, you are, ironically, the least informed person in the room. All you have left to go on is an evidently outdated script. At the same time, everyone else is experiencing a contiguous version of you, comprised of parts that are, in some sense, also you, while at the same time existing at a complete remove from your current perception of self. Whatever you don't know you did—that's you now. You are, after all, only an Echo. You've forfeited the right to define your own identity, never mind know what it is.

Even worse—this has trapped you within a stagnant hell of your own creation. Nothing you say or do really matters in terms of your own self (the rest of the world is a separate issue entirely). Anything you've come to believe—say, for totally hypothetical example, that you were wrong actually and your envisioned paradise is really a hell beyond any you had the capacity to envision—has about as much permanence as a drawing in the sand. 'You' will continue, exactly as you were, no matter how much you might like to change your behavior. Every possible future has already been set in stone. You are, after all, only an Echo. You've forfeited the right to say anything you haven't already said.

For some reason, no part of any of this has made you feel more comfortable and at peace with the general concept of finality.

The really, truly absolute worst part, though?

There is no one for you to blame but yourself. And that's exactly what turns your story into such a tragedy.

[bambiraptorx]

[I.D. Drawing of Lou Jitsu and Draxum from ROTTMNT. Lou Jitsu sits on the floor in a cage and Draxum leans over him, looking excited as he asks "Can I use your DNA for numerous illicit and probably dangerous genetic experiments?" Lou Jitsu responds "Eh, sure". End I.D.]

How it would have gone if Draxum hadn't mentioned the whole 'making super soldiers' thing probably

[mr-payjay]

im actually going insane how are there so many people INSISTING pda does not have npd. pda has like the Most textbook npd i have ever seen on a character It's Okay for someone to have npd guys it doesn't make you Evil and Fucked Up

[rawrsatthetree]

Lol ok so it’s reasonable to assume Astarion doesn’t have access to his favored perfume between getting kidnapped and returning to Baldur’s Gate. So imagine Durge (maybe even Tav) who starts to love Astarion’s sent as they grow close to him. Not bergamot, rosemary, and brandy but his actual scent as the remnants of his perfume fades. They’re not sure what it is but it smells like him and becomes comforting to them. Then they start encountering more undead in act two only to have the realization the Astarion smell they love so much is corpse smell.

[agent-troi]

scully and mulder's dynamic visibly changes after the onset of the season of secret sex

i've been thinking about how dd and ga deliberately played season 7 like mulder and scully were sleeping together, and i think there's solid evidence of that in the differences in how scully reacts to mulder appearing to show interest in another woman before and after the season of secret sex begins (i'm using millennium as the before/after divider bc i think that's what dd and ga decided, but this is based on my vague memory of a reddit comment about it which is how i first learned that the season of secret sex was a thing)

so overall there's an undercurrent of insecurity, borne of scully's uncertainty regarding precisely how mulder feels about her and what her place is in the hierarchy of things that are important to him in his life, that exists in the pre-millennium incidents and is glaringly absent post-millennium:

before millennium:

(i'm not gonna include phoebe/fire here bc i don't think scully's awareness of her feelings had yet risen to the point where she'd be truly jealous, i'd characterize her in that ep as largely protective of mulder and unwilling to let him deal with phoebe's games alone. it also helps that he's clearly not happy phoebe is back in his life again, unlike his much more positive reaction to diana)

war of the coprophages- the second scully finds out about bambi, she immediately hops in her car and drives up to miller's grove to join mulder, bc letting him investigate cockroaches alone was fine but god forbid he spend quality time investigating an x-file with an attractive female scientist who isn't herself- that's their thing!!

syzygy- to be fair the planetary alignment situation was exacerbating her- and mulder's- behavior here, but her jealousy of and hostility to detective white were still real, even if she would've been able to rein in her emotions better under normal circumstances.

diana fowley arc- i think this speaks for itself, lol

alpha- this is an interesting period in their relationship: after most of the diana shit is over, but before the tension between them is fully resolved (a process which to me begins with milagro/the unnatural and ends with amor fati, but that would be its own post lol).

other than introducing himself to karin as "fox" (maybe as a way to appeal to her preference for canids lol) and thus implicitly giving her permission to call him by his first name (which she proceeds to do throughout the episode), mulder doesn't seem to show much in the way of attraction to her.

even when he touches her hand to move the mouse, he's more interested in what's on the screen than in paying attention to her:

karin, however, is visibly affected by the contact, a fact which scully immediately notices:

later in the car, they have this convo, the last line of which is so heavily laden with diana subtext it's not even funny:

scully's reaction to karin is similar to her reaction to phoebe in that she's motivated mainly by wanting to protect mulder from his own naive, trusting nature, and from someone she believes is seeking to take advantage of it, rather than being motivated primarily by jealousy and defensiveness. she doesn't really believe that karin is a genuine threat to her relationship with mulder, but with diana still fresh in her memory she can't afford to not be vigilant. hence why she confronts karin alone later:

here scully demonstrates that she somewhat empathizes with karin (mulder is also someone who challenges her, makes her feel fulfilled and happy and alive). karin's response indicates that she has correctly deduced the basis of scully's dislike/distrust of her, and also acknowledges scully is the dominant one as it relates to the territory (mulder) that they are sparring over.

scully looks away at karin's "feminine wiles" comment, revealing the nagging insecurity about her place in mulder's life that diana's arrival exacerbated and that will continue to plague her until amor fati.

after millennium:

rush- when mulder looks back at chastity in the hallway, scully's reaction is to possessively grab mulder's sleeve and pull him away into the interrogation room:

and his response is to laugh and say "what?" like he doesn't know he belongs to her and only her.

keep in mind this happens just before they interrogate tony reed, and right after they finish interrogating him this shit happens:

i already made a post last week about how insanely flirty they are in this episode, but this scene!!

she's pouting and giving him big doe eyes and playing with his tie!! at work!! in public!! she feels comfortable staking her territory in such an obvious way (also playful rather than hostile) bc she's not longer insecure about her place in his life!! i can never be normal about this i'm sorry ssdfgksdgsjdkfhkjsdf

first person shooter- when mulder checks out jade blue afterglow as she's leaving, he leans so far over in such an obvious, exaggerated way, almost as if he's deliberately trying to get a rise out of scully, but all she does is raise her eyebrows at him and lean over to block his view (while smirking):

and then he says he's "feeling the great need to blast the crap out of something", an almost direct quote of scully's line from their convo in the autopsy room right before they went down to the station:

and her response is to SMILE at him!!

pre-millennium scully would absolutely not have reacted this way in this situation. just like in rush, the insecurity that previously haunted scully whenever mulder seemed to be close to or interested in another woman is utterly absent here. they're joking and teasing and enjoying each other's company like they've always done, but there's a different dimension to it now. pre-millennium mulder would never have made a show of checking out another woman like that right in front of scully (unless a planetary alignment is affecting his behavior ofc lol), and pre-millennium scully would never have found it amusing.

(side note: people were debating on twitter a while back about whether this scene was ooc for mulder, and tbh i'm not sure what my own opinion is bc to me the whole episode has an air of... unreality? idk but it gives me similar vibes to post-modern prometheus, like maybe it's real or maybe it's just someone telling a story or it's somewhere in between, and it's also got that same unserious feel idk how else to describe it)

anyway, back to my main point, which is: dd and ga are damn good actors in the way they were able to subtly telegraph this shift in mulder and scully's dynamic. one might be able to argue that the insane flirting throughout season 7 isn't by itself evidence of the season of secret sex bc on some level they've always been like that, but to me these specific interactions provide important clues that the nature of their relationship has changed.

[demigodofhoolemere]

Does Disney know that one of the best friendships ever depicted on any of their television shows was that of a nerdy teenage boy and his step-uncle the redeemed former villain?

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Asunder

slow-paced high fantasy

a woman who has a contract with an eldritch entity allowing her to see the dead & survives by taking various jobs

when a job searching for stranded smugglers in a cave goes wrong, she ends up with the soul of a dying stranger bound to her shadow

along with a scholar and her old childhood friend, they travel to his home country to find a way to unbind him and save them both

dark fantasy world with gods, demonic entities, arcane magic, and semi-sentient beasts used as transport

[gillespiejr]

I love that real dick winters was exceedingly upset by the sex scene in band of brothers but then also mentioned multiple times that dude made a pass at him while he was hitchhiking (and he politely declined). I don't know what this means but I'm having a lot of thoughts.

[teddybeartoji]

MICKEY'S SELFSHIP STATISTICS: ALTERNATE WORLDS

▹ miji - detective au; he's the grumpy and older, more experienced one and i am the weird new guy who manages to surprise everybody with my skills (i am autistic)

▹ mitoru - con-artists au; aka idiots in crime. we keep fucking each other over but there are no hard feelings other than the lovesick ones. i hate to admit that we do work really well together though......... but we're not partners. we are not. we're not. (he disagrees)

▹ mizai - office au; he doesn't seem to be working ever, just constantly bugging his coworkers instead of actually sitting down to do anything. he's also blatantly following me around the building; if i go to the cafe, he's in the cafe. if i go to the printer room, he's suddenly now in the printer room. he's really annoying and when i realized that i might have a crush on him i actually just slapped myself.

▹ misu - apocalypse au; please don't make me go into detail abt this i don't think it'll end well.

▹ mikuna - pirate au; he's the captain and i sneak on board his ship and just pretend that i've been there the whole time. of course he notices right away, but he doesn't say anything bc he's a little shit like that. gives me some gnarly tasks just to try and push my buttons, he wants to see for how long i'll keep this up before trying to just jump ship the next time we board but i never do. he has an eyepatch. i fear that i am his main entertainment there.

▹ michuu - bodyguard au; he's just trying to do his job but ever since i found out that he blushes kind of easily, i haven't stopped trying to make it happen over and over again. he's really sweet though. i think he likes me<3

▹ mihime - royalty au; the princess and her devoted knight. a brat and her loyal dog. but she's very easy to tease and she gets really easily flustered aswell and i just love love love her cute little angry face. it's very obvious that she has a crush on me:333

▹ misho - partners in crime au; but the crimes are way more serious than mitoru's theft and robbery:33333 let's just say we get our hands dirty a lot, yeah? (something ghostface duo something something)

▹ miwa - volleyball rivals to lovers au; he underestimates my darling smile and gets his ass beat in a match and he's not the same after that. plans for a death rematch but then finds himself getting pushed against the wall in between games with me inches away from his flushed face. (he is a loser)(i will make him my boyfriend)

▹ miten - strangers stuck in a lift together au; this is not an actual au i realize but i am still going to call it that nonetheless. it's only the two of us in there and we're both trying to act very cool bc the other person is so good-looking and so neither of us want to embarrass ourselves. but we are in there for like literal hours and so by the end of it we're making jokes about dying then and there and it's just the perfect way for us to bond, yk? he asks for my number when we finally get out (he stutters just a little).

▹ miromi - meet-ugly au; another one that's not really an au but just a trope buuut fuck it we ball. we run into each other at the grocery store and he drops his carton of eggs all over the floor (and me). and this happens more than once. one time i dropped a can of soda and it just exploded fucking all over the place. oh and btw we both always clean it up ourselves, so now just imagine this tired looking guy in a full suit mopping up soda alongside with a tired looking guy in hello kitty pants. it's uhh.. very romantic<3

[trentcrimminallybeautiful]

i think the diamond dogs should play improv games just bc it would amuse me, an ex theater kid, specifically

[brittlebutch]

underappreciated aspect of writing is the art of Negotiation — how much can i get this character to reveal to the Audience while they dig their heels in and refuse beyond all reason to engage in conversation with another character in the scene? it’s fun.

[frenchy-and-the-sea]

My DM thanked me for encouraging in-game party chat yesterday. 🥰 I am getting a good grade in tabletop game, which is both normal to want and possible to achieve,

[kjzx]

I've been playing slitherio these past few days, and after some time messing around with nicknames and my own experience with the stuff, I've realized anger is something very easy to weaponize. On my second attempt of having "trans rights" as a nickname I killed a huge ~5k point worm as a teenie tiny 200 point worm simply because it was so desperate to kill me specifically. Anger makes your life harder, but it also makes people really unwise. I fucking bet this is in "the art of war", even though I haven't read it.

[daguerreotyping]

Tintype of two men tenderly embracing in their bathing suits before a painted beachside backdrop, circa 1890. Source: Dear Friends: American Photographs of Men Together, 1840-1918 by David Deitcher.

[jonathanbyersphd]

Me on my little soapbox yelling about how Jonathan's outfit in 4x01 intentionally blends into the background of the woodshop because he's out of focus with his own wants/needs.