#and like so weirdly written

[mickmilkovitchi]

doing a intense satc rewatch + the movies + the reboot and god how did they ruined my girls and god I miss Samantha so fucking much

[lightnersdream]

i've been thinking about exactly why people portraying one of the other crew members successfully killing Jimmy as a "for what you did to Anya" kind of thing rubs me the wrong way a bit and it's because like..... this is just another form of taking agency away from Anya, in a way. it's kind of framing her as some meek, shivery woman-thing who's entirely at the mercy of the men around her, either to hurt her or save her.

(i understand these are mostly for wish fulfillment on the audience's behalf because everyone would like to see Jimmy pay for his crimes. whether or not this is the intention of the person writing it isn't really relevant, characterization happens with or without intent. i feel like it misses the point by portraying it as an 'ideal ending'.)

because... Anya is a capable person. she takes things into her own hands when she can. it was partially(?) her idea to get into the cargo,

(before he interrupts her.. remember when she interrupted Curly in the dead pixel segment?)

it was her idea to get the code scanner from the cockpit,

it was her idea to get the medication from behind the foam.

(the chance to do these things herself is not given to her.)

she'd been keeping Curly alive for months in a critical state somehow, her psych evaluations at the start are only so useless because Jimmy refuses to take it/her seriously and Curly is obviously biased when he puts it into his own hands. he's known him a long time, like he said. "I'll just put good for that one."

there's not a lot of material to work with because of how the game is framed, but it's there. we are working with two very biased perspectives and neither one lends Anya what she deserves

there's significant changes in how she speaks post- and pre- crash, and depending on who she happens to be talking to. i recommend re-reading her dialogue, because the difference is drastic

she acts the way she does around Jimmy because he has tangibly done horrible things to her, is actively hostile, and physically could not escape him by any means. she can't take away Curly's agency herself, in my eyes. you have to remember that Especially in the post-crash segments of the game, it's entirely from Jimmy's POV, and he obviously does not (and has never) thought very highly of her or treated her with a shred of respect

i've seen a general idea that she can't bear to hurt other people for any reason, but that doesn't really track to me. this is the real point of the post by the way

it seems based on the parts where she says she struggles to give Curly medication. "It just hurts him so much, I can't stand the noise." "It makes me nauseous."

it's not really the same thing as, say, hurting someone in self defense

this sounds like she did want the gun itself. this never felt worded like someone who would refuse to, at very least, threaten Jimmy with a gun, with violence. if she had been given the agency to make that decision on her own. she wasn't though

she still tries to reclaim some of it even as she's denied it

by the end she's still trying to keep that gun out of his hands

i think some people overly soften her, for similar reasons the game itself is trying to comment on. she's not a tender victim who couldn't cause pain to another out of the softness of her soul, she's a person who's had every last bit of agency ripped from her repeatedly until she couldn't take it anymore. that's the point. that's why framing her that way, "needing" someone to save her, is odd to me

she didn't need Curly to save her, she needed him to take responsibility

she didn't want to escalate things, but she's not an idiot. self defense was absolutely on her mind

but who knows im just saying shit *smiles serenely*

[walkingstackofbooks]

"Are you happier? Now that the war is over?"

It had been meant as a serious question, but from the look on Kira's face, she hadn't caught onto that. "What sort of question is that, 'am I happier'?" she asked, laughing a little as she spoke. "Of course I am! Who isn't?"

Shrugging, Julian forced himself to smile back at her. "No, of course," he agreed. "Silly question."

His smile clearly hadn't been convincing: Kira's own smile had faded as she looked at him more closely, her eyebrows creasing into a frown.

"Have I done something to make you think I'm not?" she asked sharply. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"No-- no, nothing like that," Julian said hurriedly. "I mean, obviously Odo's gone now, and Keiko and the Chief, and Worf, and... and the Captain... But that-- That's different, isn't it, I guess. You can be sad and happy at the same time, right?"

He cringed, knowing that he hadn't quite managed to make sense there: years of practice had made him very good at recognising Kira's 'baffled' expression.

"All these years," said Kira, slowly shaking here head, "and I still don't understand you, sometimes. Of course I miss Odo, and the others -- and while we're at it, of course I'm still angry and-- and upset about the things that happened during the war..." She made a face, banging her fist lightly against the table. "Damn you, you know I'm no good with feelings, that's... there's a lot more there, besides," she added. "And I'm sure as hell not going into that right now...

"But if you're asking whether I'd rather be here, now, living without the threat of the Dominion or the Cardassians, knowing my friends are alive and safe -- and if they're not, at least being able to mourn them in peace, not having to make decisions that could get us all killed if it goes even slightly wrong... or if I'd rather be back there, in the war -- well. It's no contest, is it?"

"In theory, no, of course--"

"In theory?" Kira asked incredulously. "Julian, are you saying you were happier in the war?"

"No!" he exclaimed: that hadn't been what he'd meant at all. "The war was-- it was... Well, you couldn't be happy during the war, could you? Everything was too awful, it was impossible."

"A lot of the time, yeah," Kira said softly. "And that's gonna stick with us for a long time -- but they're only memories, now. We made it."

"We did," Julian said quietly, his eyes fixed on the table. "I just... I thought I'd be happier, I guess. Now that it's all over."

Kira reached forward, brushing her hand over his. "That's what this is all about?" she asked. "You aren't happy?"

"I never said I'm not," Julian objected hotly, looking back up at her -- but a sigh slipped out of him as he realised he didn't actually have an argument, and he shook his head, slumping back into his chair. Kira watched him, not saying anything.

"No, you're right," he admitted, pulling his arms across himself, almost too tight. "I know I'm supposed to be-- I know, after everything, it's so stupid... But, Nerys, I don't-- I don't think I am?"

Stopping to swallow the lump that had risen in his throat, he noticed he eyes had grown wet, which for some reason made him chuckle. "Isn't that silly?" he asked, leaning forward again. "We won the war, but I'm still not happy."

"No, Julian," Kira replied slowly. "I don't think that's silly at all. It's just... It's just very, very sad." She took a breath, reaching out to hold both his hands this time. "I'm sorry," she continued. "I didn't know."

"It's not your fault," he said, squeezing her hands tightly. "For a while, I just thought everyone else was pretending, too, so I just went along with it... And then I started to realise that no, you were all actually at least a little bit okay, and so I had to keep pretending, because happiness is so fragile and I didn't, you know, want to make anyone else feel bad just because I..."

He trailed off, shrugging a little. "I don't know, Nerys. I guess I just wanted to check that it wasn't just me, but it is just me, and now I've told you, and I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you feel bad--"

"Julian, no," Kira interrupted. "Thank you for sharing this with me -- I'm glad you told me, okay?"

Ears growing hot, Julian ducked his head, not quite sure to do with the wave of emotion spilling over him. Now that he'd told her some of it, he kind of wanted to let everything out. Distractedly, he started tracing patterns on her hands, pushing into them with increasing intensity.

"It's just-- I'm just..." He stumbled over his words, struggling to give voice to the one thought that he'd been trying to ignore for months. "What if this is it for me? What if I'm like this forever? It's been years, Nerys--"

To his horror, his voice cracked, and he covered his mouth, trying to hold back the sobs that were threatening to burst out. Hoping that no-one else had noticed, he looked around the replimat; thankfully the other diners seemed more interested in their own conversations than in him and Kira.

"Would you like to go somewhere less public?" Kira asked. Not quite trusting himself to speak, he nodded, and together they left the replimat.

As they walked down the promenade and up to the habitat ring, Kira steered clear of their previous conversation, chatting about the station, her week, her latest grievance with Quark, and Julian was grateful for the respite. But as soon as they were sat down in her quarters, she turned to him with a most serious expression.

"It isn't right, you feeling like that, you know," she said. "I don't have the answers, I don't know how it gets better -- but we both know someone who would. You haven't tried telling Ezri any of this, have you?"

Julian's stomach tightened: Ezri was the last person he wanted to have this particular conversation with. "Oh, yes, because that would go so well," he retorted sarcastically. "Hi Ezri, I love you, but you don't make me happy. Don't worry, it's not you, I'm just unhappy most of the time. Most of the time? Yeah, it gets better when I'm around you, because then I just kind of feel... nothing. What an improvement!"

"Julian..." whispered Kira, but it was all coming out now and Julian couldn't make it stop. He rose from the sofa, starting to pace as he spoke.

"Did you ever make me happy? Maybe, sweetheart, but I'm not even certain of that. I might have been so desperate for anything even resembling happiness that I just deluded myself into thinking I was in love... Do I even love you? Who the fuck knows, Ezri. Is love even real, or did it die in the war along with every-fucking-thing else?"

His voice had risen louder than he'd intended, condemning him with every word it pushed forcefully into the air. He'd made Kira cry, he thought, but he couldn't quite be sure, his vision being clouded by his own mess of tears.

"How could I possibly tell her that?" he asked, sitting back down heavily, his voice dropping to a hollow whisper. "Kira, how the hell do I tell her that?"

"Come here," she said in way of a response, pulling him against her and holding him tightly, so that he could feel her lips move against his hair as she answered him. "I don't know," she was saying, "but you have to, Julian. I can be there with you if you want but, Prophets, Julian, you have to. How could you not?"

How could he not?

Julian closed his eyes and let himself fall apart against his friend, not even bothering to try to answer her. It was terrifying, after all this time, to finally allow someone to see how broken he really was, but he was far, far too tired to keep it in any longer.

[platoapproved]

for @dancinbutterfly who requested this, but also any non tvc book readers who may be curious... here's some excerpts from the scene in the vampire armand where a bunch of guys are bidding for which one of them gets to fuck amadeo and marius encourages it / treats it as a game / commands amadeo to kiss one of them while he kills him. imho this is a part of the text the show writers likely drew inspiration from for the idea of marius 'donating' amadeo.

for reference, these are all taken from chapter 5! so @dancinbutterfly you can direct your friend who doesn't believe this was in the text there.

how do i even begin to content warn for this, it's so fucking BAD. i guess the usual tva warnings for grooming & csa, sexual assault, pedophilia, kind of incest?, slavery, just... marius bein' marius y'know. (IT'S REALLY BAD. like i do just want to emphasize for anyone who has not read tva it's quite explicit and upsetting plz be aware):

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[plusultraetc]

I ended up having way too many unfinished fics to choose from for Shinsou's birthday, none of which were ao3-ready, so have this extra long snippet of my beloved ice cream shop au that I've spent way too much time on for a fic that might never actually get posted 😭

(the context here is that Shinsou & Kaminari are trying to get erasermic together, but Kaminari didn't know he was trying to set his teacher up with the music store guy bc he's only heard about him from Shinsou)

[parachutingkitten]

You ever get sad about how much better jaya could have been.

Like, it's the flagship ship of the show, and it had so much potential, and they wasted pretty much all of it. And now the defining ship of the show is just kinda... okay at best.

[mothzan]

BSD fashion au

They had cooped themselves up in Chuuya's living room, trading ideas, looking at magazines Mori had given them, looking for different styles they could try, bickering over dresses, suits, or whatever else caught the other's attention just for the sake of annoying each other.

Time stretched on until morning, the living room having been turned into a battle field with papers, pens, and magazines scattered everywhere.

They seemed to have calmed down halfway through, sitting together in front of the couch.

Doodling rather than actually trying to get a design down on paper while drinking their coffee

(That dazai made Chuuya get, complaining about how bad a host he was being.)

Arguing without any actual heat behind their words

Just in their own little world, behaving like the teenagers they were.

[regrettablemeasure]

I love online nerds' weird obsession with fiction vs reality bc both me and my partner have had ppl call us not gay enough bc one or both of us make f/m and m/m pairings more often than f/f

like. you should be thanking me. no one has gay and het ships as good as lesbians. its a secret sauce. you write men better when you have no irl interest in them and they're just barbie dolls

[hellwurld]

every day i think about how great of a character eloise bridgerton could've been. like she has her fantastic moments and i did love her and theo, but truly i think so much of her feminism falls flat, and it's a shame because she is so spirited and dedicated, but she's written in such like . a shallow ? way despite that if that makes sense

[randomalistic]

Becoming an adult means realizing helluva/hazbin are Kind of bad

AND you are still allowed to Enjoy Things that are Sorta Bad ❤️ you just acknowledge the flaws along with the strengths

[13eyond13]

What headcannons do you have on B during his career (for a lack of a better word) as a serial killer? To me, he's like one of the funniest characters but also the most pathetic in the most poetic try-hard way. Why do you think he's such a try-hard? He's coping but what is he coping from?

OMG B!!! Haven't thought about my favourite stupid son B enough lately, so thank you for this ask....

So he's a try-hard because he is probably VERY INSECURE, to be blunt. He probably has very little sense of self-worth or a concrete sense of identity outside of trying to one-up L, and he takes that to the extreme in a highly comical way. He's also no doubt traumatized from his insane childhood as a shinigami hybrid who watched many people (including both his parents) die while knowing they were going to die / was also raised very weirdly and abusively/experimentally at Wammy's and made to feel like he was only worth something if he could be as smart and talented as the legendary L. In his mind he decided that creating his own destiny would be better and rebelled against that expectation by being like, "why be the next L when instead I could DEFEAT L by creating a brilliant crime that he can't possibly solve?"

ANYWAY there's a reason he is the most creepypasta villain / emo boi / dark academia darling of the fandom, and that highly melodramatic backstory is a huge part of it - which I DO love dearly in its own mid 2000s way, even though I also sometimes sigh at it because of the extra villainous cartoony edge it adds to L's backstory, and don't always want to take it very seriously as part of L's characterization in the manga plot...

So on my most recent re-read of the LABB novel, I feel I was a bit struck by just how... Not Good B's impression of L actually is? And this was kind of hilarious to me to think about. I feel like when I was younger and really into shipping LxB I read it just as "clearly B has a massive crush on L and is doing his best to imitate him perfectly because he hero worships him and sincerely wants to be him so bad!" HOWEVER this time around I remember thinking something along the lines of "wow, this feels almost like B just googled how to cosplay L and then lazily threw something together 5 minutes before crawling under the bed", hahaha. So he either just kinda sucks at imitating L (and maybe so, but he also managed to trick the families of the victims into letting him investigate the crime scenes, so he's probably not THAT bad at acting when he wants to be?) or maybe he's intentionally trying to make a mockery of L. It is ALSO FASCINATING from a psychological POV to imagine he's just being a troll about it all and trying to make fun of L with how he behaves! Like! Was he intentionally mocking L with his impression of him to somebody who would never even get the stupid joke in the first place? If that's the case, it's excruciatingly cringy to me that nobody even gets his joke the entire time, hahaha.... poor Naomi suffered more than Jesus at some points during that investigation, I swear...

B trying to do a scathing impression of L to somebody who has never even met him before:

ANYWAYS. I think that whatever the case, he PROBABLY hoped/expected L himself was going to show up to the crime scene to confront him, at any rate. And so therefore he probably initially dressed up as L not to genuinely pass to anybody as L, but maybe expecting to do some ominous dark mirror/ arch-nemesis big reveal shit to L?? Perhaps once he realized that Naomi was the only one coming / was working for L he just changed gears a bit and decided he'd just lead her through the clues as best he could while trying out this cosplay of the guy that he wants to offend most, but this is in my mind pretty much how it must have gone.

One of my fave headcanons about him is that he re-read that crossword puzzle he made / that the police threw out without solving SO MANY times while he was sweating off his makeup under the bed, as well... that's why he had to show it to Naomi as soon as he got out... he was like "I PUT A LOT OF WORK INTO THIS DAMMIT, and SOMEBODY is going to appreciate it" hahahaha. Ohhh, B....

[momentomori24]

Someone on twitter said it best: The title should actually be "How NOT to show support for SA victims that don't fit your desired demographic."

"His character is reinforcing negative gay stereotypes" and it's a hypersexual gay man who died in the 30s struggling with addiction and drug abuse to get through his life of exploitation, repression, trafficking and ipv doused with fake glitter and glam so no one can see beneath the cracked surface of his tortured soul.

"I don't think I've ever come across a character so poorly represented yet so greatly praised by the general audience" Because Angel isn't "representation", but an actual character with his own unique struggles and issues and responses that thousands of people (inclusing myself) can deeply relate to and if not "relate" then sympathise with. He isn't "SA rep". He isn't "Gay rep". He's Angel Dust. He's a person, and a broken one at that. If you don't relate to him the way so, so many others do, then maybe it's not for you. I already hate you 💀

[thranduel]

i don’t understand why people hate gale.

“he’s annoying” or “he talks too much” or “he’s too clingy and got offended when i was in a relationship” (which was a BUG, it takes two seconds to do some research before jumping to conclusions) are the most stupid reasons to actually hate a character.

he’s the one that has the warmest personality when you first meet him as well, so i just don’t get it?? i’m not saying you’re not allowed to dislike him, and this doesn’t apply to everyone, but SOMETIMES it feels like people just hop on a “hate bandwagon” because i see so many comments (especially on tiktok… where most of the people only started playing because it’s “trendy” now) about him that are the exact same as each other and it’s like people have lost the ability to think for themselves and form their own opinions after actually playing the game properly and learning about the characters.

so many people even go on about how it’s a turn off that he “doesn’t shut up about his ex”… like maybe actually continue playing the story to understand why it’s a significant conversation to have and why it’s a huge part of his character arc, and stop being weirdly bitter/jealous/annoyed when the man is also a VICTIM that has been manipulated and abused in a relationship with a massive power imbalance.

[capn-twitchery]

this is 1000% personal preference but i am so Dubious about firmament bc 99% of the time i Hate timeline fuckery, multiverse fuckery, time travel fuckery....i am SO picky with it

the whole "the gullet is a from a narrative that wasn't supposed to happen and you cause a time paradox by messing with it" is so Wholly unappealing to me ;;

i hope it's just that the starved Within the gullet are being kept with the belief that london was destroyed, and there are no actual time or paradox shenanigans, just people being fed wrong info for reasons we don't know yet. but considering the general consensus for the plot i am Wary

[stardustdiiving]

They’re going to confirm my idea of Arlecchino cycles of abuse story and I am going to go absolutely bonkers

[siren-of-agony]

Any real bored bitches wanna help me w analysing a poem that I'm trying to write a paper on currently?

I'm pretty sure I understood it at one point but my brain is mush and now I'm not sure about anything and I should finish by friday :D

Most important is the last line of each stanza, since I wanna concentrate on how it overall relates and expresses the theme of the poem, and how the slight changes from stanza to stanza changes the impact and meaning

I'll take anything, from overall thoughts to things you spot in single verses or even words