#and tbh that's fair enough

[likeafairytale]

"Being a prince means being trapped. That's why I always wanted to escape." - Aeron to Malachai

Malachai said nothing at first, still looking at the book he had in hands, pretending he didn't really hear him. He was reflecting on Aeron's words. For sure, it was probably the first deep thing he ever said to him, which was quite... disturbing. Usually, Kai was the one saying deep and meaningful things, when the fae was more shallow to say the least. So yes, the mermale needed a little moment to process the words of his brother-in-law. To be honest, he did not know how they came to this discussion. Maybe it was because he was reading a book about travelling and maps, or maybe because lately, Malachai was struggling with the fact that he was a prince and his life was already written since before his birth, either way, Aeron's was sitting in the opposite of him, eyes lost in the emptiness of the room. Finally, the meremale sighed and closed his book, bringing the fae's attention to him.

❝The difference between us, is that I cannot escape. I never could.❞ Malachai started, and he didn't notice how sad and a bit annoy his voice was right now. ❝Not because I'm the firstborn, or because I'm the favourite, but because I'm the only one. As much as my father tries to pretend, I know he'll rather die than letting one of my sister in charge of the Kingdom. They remind him too much of mother, and the idea of a man who isn't his own flesh leading our kingdom is killing him. So if ever you thought because you're Calypso's husband he'll give you the throne, you're mistaken. I'm pretty sure if I die tomorrow, and he has to choose, he'll give it to Naia's husband instead of you, because at least he is from the sea.❞ This time, he did notice how angry he sound while talking, but couldn't help it. Somehow, Aeron's pushed where it hurt, and as often, he rolled his eyes when he saw the fae's smug smile.

❝Wanna me to kill you to see if it's true?❞ Aeron said back, and Malachai had to refrain himself to punch him in the face, which happened a lot lately. ❝Anyway, we always have the choice. You have a brother, he could choose him instead.❞

This time, Malachai let a bitter laugh go off his throat before going back to his book. There were nothing funny about Aeron's words, but the fact that he thought it was so simple, –or maybe he just tried to have right in a discussion he couldn't like often– was laughable for Kai. After a moment, he raised his red eyes and could see he was unbothered by his amusement, which, once again, annoyed him somehow.

❝I love Nathaniel, and I've always seen him like a true brother, but father will never put him in charge. He is not his biological son, and he is a siren. I'm sure Nate knows it deep down. I'm the only option he truly has.❞

To be honest, deep down, Malachai was all right with the idea of not letting this burden on his young brother shoulders. Nathaniel was a poet, not a soldier, not that there were something wrong with that. Kai always enjoyed his brother's way to see the world, it was fascinating and so different of the way he sees it, it felt like a fresh air. But Triton didn't have the same point of view as his first son, and like he said it, the High King of the Seas was still old-fashioned, no matter what he tried to say, and not only, in his mind Nathaniel wasn't built to be a King, but he wasn't from the right lineage.

❝So no, Aeron, we don't all have the luxury to randomly take a ship and travel around the world because we're bored with our responsibilities. Compare to you, I was never free a second of my life.❞

Once again, the bitterness was back. He had some resentment toward the fae, and it was probably because of jealousy. Malachai didn't realize how much as he wanted to be free until he started to come to the Fae's kingdom, and he knew deep down, Yasmeen had something to do with it... Before he could think about this thought further, his attention was caught by Aeron who shrugged, and for once he was glad, because he wasn't sure he wanted to follow this thought right now.

❝Calypso said you were often away, an-❞

❝My sister sees what I want her to see.❞ Malachai cut short, surprising Aeron, who frowned. This time it was the meremale who shrugged and sighed, as if his words were obvious. They were, though, and he knew that the fae couldn't deny them. He loved his youngest sister, but the girl had the wrong habit to romanticize things in her mind; something he blamed himself for, maybe if he didn't protect her this much, she would have been cleverer. He went back to his book, before saying in a sigh: ❝I was away because I had to train, or control the ability to shape-shift as I see fit. Not because I wanted to. Calypso's eyes can be deceptive sometimes.❞

❝Yeah, but she does have pretty eyes tho.❞ This time, Malachai sighed and closed his book, which amused Aeron, who had his smug smile back. ❝Oh, come on, you have pretty eyes too!❞

❝You're insufferable.❞

❝I take it as a compliment.❞

❝It wasn't.❞ Aeron laughed and that was enough for Malachai who rolled his eyes and stood up, throwing the book he had through the table. ❝Now excuse me, but I'd rather leave before you start to talk more, and it makes me want to punch you.❞

❝Once again, I take it as a compliment.❞

[tezzbot]

I really like the headcanon that a very select amount of people are allowed to actually call Tails 'Miles' and Shadow is on that list, it's very cute to me ^_^

[nachosncheezies]

In defense of late-canon x files (including the revivals)

I was thinking about this poll after I commented on it, and I kinda want to be brave and say more.

Short answer to the poll's question before I go any further: If you're a new fan and a sensitive sort who thinks you'll struggle with your blorbos Really Going Through It and you really need a happy ending, I suggest you stop at the end of season 8. Do not pass go, do not look at spoilers. Disregard this post entirely, close the internet, and go look at something that makes you happy. (Also fuck every part of society that characterizes sensitivity as inherently weak and bad and some kind of personal failing, you are valid.)

That said, "quality" as a concept is entirely subjective, and the question of whether or not there's a decline in quality for any story is wholly subjective, too. In the case of x files? I'm not convinced there is a decline. I am going to be upfront that I haven't yet watched past season 8, though I am almost completely spoiled on events after that - and the reason I haven't watched yet is not because of how I know events are going to unfold, but simply because I don't want it to end!!! Ohh, the tension between "I CAN'T WAIT!!!" and "Nooo don't be over D:"

When I first came to txf fandom on tumblr and gradually became spoiled about what happens in late canon though, I was often left uncomfortable and tbh kinda queasy about it. As I said in my comment on the poll, the hate for especially the revival and IWTB, or to a lesser extent even seasons 8 & 9, is very well documented. But! There are other takes to be found here on tumblr if you figure out where to look, and my feelings have changed!

The thing is, I have yet to find myself in any fandom where there isn't a vocal subset of fans who dislike the story after a certain point. I am not joking when I say that no one hates the things they love as passionately as sci-fi and fantasy fans. In my experience, it often hinges on the extent to which a viewer has strong notions on where they would like the characters to end up. In particular with series where shipping is a dominant component for the bulk of a fandom, I have almost universally found that there comes some turning point in the story where "let them be happy you cowards" is the dominant view, and things that compromise the attainment of a degree of romantic stability and/or domesticity are, to many fans, annoying at best and despicable at worst. But! As one tagset on the linked poll said:

and I think for any fandom, that last tag especially is so so so important. (I think that's harder for people watching a weekly series live, bc you have so much time to analyze and speculate and dream before the next breadcrumb drops, but I digress.)

So why am I saying this and how do I apply it to x files? Well, I eventually found that there are also a subset of fans who find redeeming things right up to the very end and actually quite like the whole thing! The things that I had seen people rage and ventpost so much about honestly never quite sounded to me as "out of character" or "untrue to the story" etc as those same ventposts made them sound. And I've discovered I'm not the only one who felt that way. Do I love that the spooky squad had to go through all of those things? No, those poor guys D: Life is hard and they have been through so much trauma. But do those events and their choices make sense to me in light of everything that came before? Yes! And I honestly can't wait to see them fight to overcome those things, breaking, healing, always learning, always growing, always getting better.

So if you're wondering "where does it go wrong"... well, I'm a completionist, as many people who've answered that post are, but also my personal opinion is that I don't think it does go wrong. If you're new and interested in exploring why I've gone from "vaguely queasy" to "excited" about the whole thing, or want to maybe balance out the impressions you're getting about the later seasons before deciding whether or not you want to see the whole thing, I'll put a few blog names in the comments.

Final admission: even once I started feeling a little more confident in the possibility that "actually ok maybe I'm not crazy, maybe this all kind of is in character and does make sense", there was one big plot point that I was NOT looking forward to and I thought I would never be comfortable about. In hindsight, I think my discomfort came from the negative responses being SO seemingly universal that I hadn't stopped to let myself truly consider other possible interpretations on that point. (I mean my initial instinct when I first read about it was, why are we mad about this?? CSM is literally the most unreliable narrator in history???? it's obviously fake news?????? this must be either a fever dream someone's having or it's a misdirection ploy against whatever shadowy forces might still be lurking?????????????? but for whatever reason I guess I had halfway written that off.) Happily, just last month there's a new post-s11 novel out, and although reviews for the book as a whole are mixed, it seems to have laid the groundwork for resolving that plot issue in a way I think most fans would be broadly happy with. If you're interested in being spoiled about that and seeing how, I recommend searching #perihelion on @agent-troi who liveblogged reading it with receipts, scroll back chronological-style to the first post on the subject and see how it unfolded. (And never forget that Dana Katherine Scully is the queen of denial as a coping mechanism lol)

Everyone's mileage will vary. Each person can feel however they want! But for anyone new, I wanted you to know that the very many ventposts you might be seeing are not all there is to this show or its fandom. Some of us love it despite - or even because of - all the things that went "wrong". I think we just don't talk about it as much.

[dapg-otmebytheballs]

There are SIX SONGS in the season finale?? Let's goooo

[kindalikerackham]

okayyyyy fine (I say to the maybe 3 people interested) I'll talk about Dr. Tanaka, and the show's (Bones 2005) response to them

[disclaimer: my perspective is someone late 20s, white, & nonbinary, as well as biased to see the good in this show. I may not have the same perspective on these examples as someone else]

[also I wrote this for fun! so it's not like an airtight argument or anything]

so.. I wasn't surprised by the team's reaction to a person who doesn't conform to gendered standards (obsession with figuring out if they were really a man or a woman, culminating in a hug just to feel their chest), for 2 main reasons:

I. Bones is a show about awkward (usually contextually privileged) people with good hearts, and it expresses this core sentiment over and over again using microaggressions:

The little person from the State Department (Alex Radziwill) is called a midget, and Bones ignorantly accosts him about how he approaches his job. It's done in the context of Booth and Bones reacting weirdly to him. By her saying ignorant things that force Booth to confront his own weirdness, they eventually reach an equilibrium with Radziwill, where they treat him like a normal contentious coworker. It's really uncomfortable, and Radziwill has to sit through them getting over themselves.

The He in The She. Do I even have to mention more than the episode title? It takes forever for the cast to wrap their heads around Pastor Patricia Stephenson, a woman whose bones suggest a male, but whose anatomy suggests a female!! Oh no! Booth struggles with using her correct pronouns, and many characters flip flops between, often settling on the masculine pronouns. And yet, the show itself gives credence to how Patricia lived the last parts of her life. It finds the beauty and honesty in how she lived, and we get to see that honored. But not necessarily through the characters, especially the main squint squad.

Arastoo Vaziri. This poor man is just a Muslim who works in the lab. Bones expresses disdain for him being visibly religious. Hodgins straight up discriminates against him, tells him to his face that he doesn't like Vaziri because he's Muslim. Vaziri has to actively attempt to bond with Hodgins to overcome this bias. Cam barely steps in here, and ultimately Vaziri has to suffer the ignorance of those around him. He has to push back about his people being associated with bombs, because white people are terrorists too! He brings out a list!

And these are just main plot points. There are definitely other examples of how these characters awkwardly microaggress their peers and civilians.

II. The interpersonal logic of Bones is predicated on gendered relationships

I cannot count the amount of times a character on Bones said "It's a woman thing," or "It's a guy thing," or "Alpha-male." The more socially adept a character is (Booth, Angela, Cam, Hodgins), the more they lean on these constructs for explaining personal relationships and the more they use gendered constructs for what's permissible in their relationships. Brennan, Zach, and other squints are often actively taught what's okay to do based on gendered rules. "She's a woman," Angela says to Zach, who doesn't understand why a girl isn't calling him back. "It's a guy thing," Angela says to Brennan, confused about something Booth is doing. "It's a guy-hug," Booth says, manipulating Bones into accepting comfort by explaining a gendered rule that he's making up.

In an environment so saturated with these rules, the characters have no idea what to do with the interpersonal reactions they have to Dr. Tanaka (as Clark has established, the characters are constantly using their interpersonal lens at work). So, this mystery makes Dr. Tanaka into a site of intrigue. I'd say both Hodgins and Angela interpret this intrigue as attraction, based both on their desire for/interpretation of Dr. Tanaka as a woman or a man, respectively. The surprise/rethinking that occurs after feeling up Dr. Tanaka's chest is consistent with this mystery/intrigue/psychosexual anxiety of not knowing a gender. (To digress a bit, it's reactions in this vein that created the Trans Panic Defense for murdering trans people).

I'm also unsurprised at Sweets. From his defense of Dr. Tanaka presenting as they want to him standing alongside the hug onlookers out of curiosity, he's the part of the show that's looking forward. He's the planted seed for this episode: that people who don't want to share their gender, it's not your business, even if it's hard to resist the part of you that thinks that.

And honestly, I think that's kind of the core to it.

Bones is a show about privileged professional folks who are often ignorant, but it attempts to plant seeds in their moderate liberal audience about cultures and subcultures. It planted the seed that Radziwill (a little person) was just a coworker using his own advantages, and it's important to treat him like you would another coworker. It planted the seed that Patricia (a trans woman) was right to transition and live her fullest life. It planted the seed that Arastoo (a Muslim) is just a coworker, one who has his own religious life, and Hodgins was the one acting irrationally.

Finally, it planted the seed that Dr. Tanaka is just living their life, and the awkward must-know-their-gender drive didn't really mean anything in the end, except for the team feeling weird about it.

[kyouka-supremacy]

Hey (^-^)/

I have a question: What did Atsushi mean in this panel when he said "the fact that you're the one standing in front of me"? I don't get it.

And why Akutagawa's face seem conflicted by hearing that?

I'm not entirely sure - that line is fairly ambiguous - but I can share my own interpretation! Here, Atsushi is trying to explain Akutagawa that the reason why Dazai has not acknowledged him yet is not, as Akutagawa is convinced of, because he isn't strong enough, and that his being powerful is actually of no interest to Dazai. Atsushi suggests that there's something else Dazai is waiting for Akutagawa to grow better at before acknowledging him, and Akutagawa will only be able to see what it is by keeping himself from killing (likely, what Atsushi is thinking Akutagawa lacks is moral virtue to some extent, compassion and humanity. I feel like that's also consistent with how Dazai sees Akutagawa in Beast, and what believes is wrong with him: “It’s human nature to lash out with violence. But if hurting others is your natural instinct… then you are nothing more than a mindless beast” (Dazai, Beast novel, page 18) ).

Akutagawa so far has believed that everything he could do to be seen by Dazai, was proving his own strength; and that his current situation of not being yet recognized was due to his own limits on that front. With that last line, I think Atsushi is telling him: “The reason you are where you are now [both in terms of his path towards being acknowledged by Dazai and overall current status as conjunction of events that led him to be where he is] has nothing to do with your strength or lack thereof. You're here in front of me [in your current situation that led you to this place in this moment] because there's something you've yet to realize [that would be, once again, that strength is not what Dazai seeks in him but rather for Akutagawa to accomplish a moral step up]”.

Additionally, I think Atsushi might also imply: “The reason you're here in front of me, the reason Dazai decided you had to be here, is so that you could see something you still can't grasp”, since both sskk and the bsd author seem to be fairly assured that everything sskk themselves do is because Dazai wanted them to, in some sort of weird determinism (“Why were you so eager to put Akutagawa-kun against that tiger lad? [...] How long have you been aiming for this scenario?” “From the time I met Atsushi-kun.” (Hirotsu, Dazai, chapter 37); “Why do you think Dazai-san put us together?” (Atsushi, chapter 51); “Dazai-san didn't abandon me after all. This was all a trial. A guidepost, lined with wailing.” (Akutagawa, chapter 85); and even more examples could be made; everything sskk do, seems like it's because Dazai wanted them to at some point.)

The reason why Akutagawa looks so conflicted, then, is probably out of bewilderment for Atsushi's words, for the revelation that proving his strength - that is everything Akutagawa has tried to do since meeting him - is actually not the way to make Dazai acknowledge him.

Here's an alternative fantranslation to the official English translation + the raws of that page for further insight :)

[hybbat]

I'm actually so glad Grian had the self control to make Jimmy take a different mentor. If he'd been Jimmy's mentor his runs absolutely would have become just another bit instead of actually trying, and he probably would have died early level 1 being screamed at for all three runs.

[puppyeared]

Weird looking dog

[lu-polls]

[Poll suggested by: Anonymous]

[leftneb]

I need to see F1 drivers play trackmania (specifically TM2020 with a steering wheel) so bad you don't understand... the countless potential comedy factors of guys who Drive Cars for a living being put in a situation where they initially THINK they know what's going on but internally are completely lost on what the hell a plastic or wood or god forbid ice road is and how the everloving fuck you're supposed to drive a car on it.

I need to see them in complete denial because "HOW do you expect me to drive this shit I can't even keep grip on a rainy day" and I need to see Max Verstappen in complete agony and denial about any unusual racing line or "unrealistic" game mechanic (while secretly finding them quite exciting) and I need to see George Russell full focus dead set on figuring out the easiest turn known to man while Yuki's already rage quit an hour ago. I need to see Lando Norris with sparkles in his eyes at the first sight of a loop-de-loop and I need to hear Oscar Piastri show more emotion flying out of a sausage block turn than he does winning a race. I need to see C2 pretend to take it seriously while they have a collective 0 clues as to wtf is happening.

And I need Wirtual or Jnic or some other TM streamer to explain all the horrendously complicated ways to gain time (I genuenly cannot overstate how intricate the strategies in this silly little car game are) while the drivers sit there in complete disbelief. Before they actually start getting the hang of it, if anyone has a chance at it it's the people whose native languages list includes Car. Above all I need to see them enjoying cars existing beyond the confines of real physics. oh and I need to see them all still competitive to the bone about it in a cup or tournament setting unrelated to how much they're enjoying the game. also I need Nico Rosberg to commentate it, send post

[mo-ondial]

*jersey shores your miku*

[jadeluz-writes]

Y'know what, maybe I'll just pretend Fairy Tail ends at the Edolas Arc so it's a win for everyone. Lisanna comes back alive, there's no Zeref to worry about, Loke and Lucy are hinted with the "Is he your boyfriend?", Juvia and Gray don't end up together, not much of the Mystic/Jellal & Erza bs, and so forth.

That means you'd get about 95 episodes without having to worry about fanservice or forced pairings with just a tiny bit of filler in the middle. It's before it gets all "what the fuck is happening/why are we wasting so much time" segment and arcs.

A perfect ending in the rain while most of the characters concerns are finally resolved. It would be an intense, but well-executed ending instead of what we actually got.

[spurgie-cousin]

the friend who made that cute ofrenda is one of the few people who i can yap about fundie shit with, but she wasn't familiar with the Bates. so I gave her a rundown and her first question was honestly something I've thought about before lol:

[crimson-catalyst]

SECOND artfight attacka for @queijac of their Howl!!!! i had two ideas and i am not the kind of guy to deny himself inspiration LMAO

not gonna lie probably my favorite piece this season he just came out SO good

[sundial-bee-scribbles]

i dont usually post random snippets like this but everyone PLS listen to chii she is adorable 🥺🐟

[desperatecheesecubes]

Really feel like the author of this was upset with Robin (2021)