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thedemonsurfer · 2 months ago

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Back on my bullshit with trying to guess character motives feat. Dark Sun

Sooo Dark Sun (or 'Just Sun') finally rolled up to talk to Sun in todays SAMS ep, and naturally I'm putting him on the high-speed cycle in my head trying to parse what his motives are. What does he GET out of this?

Because he was leaning on Sun really hard to kill Nexus-- specifically, he wants Sun to see Nexus as a representative of the worst kind of person Moon can be, and to recognize that as a threat that needs to be killed.

But-- why?

Roll back a bit: Dark Sun has been involved in every step of Nexus' fall from grace.

He did something to New Moon at their very first meeting.

He provided Eclipse with the means to bring back Solar, and then prevented him from acting until Dark Sun wanted him to.

He dropped Ruin off on New Moon's doorstep when Moon was at a point where he could have accepted Solar's death, causing Moon to double down on his efforts.

He plucked New Moon out of space and pulled the chip containing Old Moon out of his head and left it for Monty to find.

He's provided Nexus with a new base of operations and enables his monkeying around with dark energon dark star energy, despite the damage it's doing to Nex.

Dark Sun needs Nexus to make himself into a threat. Because that's what he does, he sets up the dominoes and pulls the strings, but he doesn't outright tell others what to do (unless it's bossing Ruin around, but Ruin is his bitch so he doesn't count.)

And today, he was leaning real hard on Sun to see Nexus as a threat. to see all Moons as a threat (though, curiously, not mentioning Old Moon).

So what is he getting out of this? Why does he also need Sun to see Nexus as a threat that needs to be stopped? Why does he want Sun to 'understand' that he has to kill his brother?

Dial back the motives. The most compelling and strongest motives are Simple and Selfish: Eclipse didn't actually want power, he wanted Moon to pay attention to him. Ruin did want to prevent a total catastrophe, but he also wanted revenge on the Creators for destroying his life and world.

(As an aside, this is why I feel that Bloodmoon didn't make a good antagonist, and why Ruin's initial appearance was kind of boring. 'I'm here just to fuck shit up' isn't a very compelling motive.)

What do we know about Dark Sun?

He lied about having killed his Moon and actually kept him to torture-- or he DID kill his own Moon, and the one Ruin met was a substitute

He never gets his hands dirty, he gets others to act for him

He's obsessed with Sun

He fucking hates Moon

Dark Sun tells Sun that 98% of dimensions lose their Sun, and Moon is often the one that kills them. But it's not exactly that straightforward, is it?

Atlas points out that Dark Sun is counting dimensions where Sun was reset as him being 'dead'. Dimensions where Eclipse has a hand in Sun's death could be considered Moon's fault, since Eclipse is a byproduct of the killcode. Ruin's situation resulted in the ego death of both his Sun and Moon, on his Moon's suggestion. Ruin also wiped out 5000 dimensions and I think that's gonna skew some of the numbers.

And... how many dimensions have we seen a dead Sun in the show? Two, I think? The one where they never split up and Moon consumed Sun after the killcode took full control, and Solar's. And in Solar's, that Moon went mad trying to bring his Sun back.

Almost every instance we've seen, Sun and Moon coexist just fine once they're in separate bodies.

And I think that's what Dark Sun wants. I think he's trying to justify killing his own Moon before they ever got a chance to get along.

Moons MUST be evil and unable to change, they MUST be cruel. It's impossible for a Sun to get along with a Moon for any length of time, and that Sun is in the right when he has to kill his Moon.

And he's going to use Sun and Nexus to prove how right he is.

#tsams #sams #the sun and moon show #and like i could be completely wrong also but ITS JUST A THEORY #etc etc

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darkficsyouneveraskedfor · 1 year ago

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Carpe Noctem 8

Warnings: dark elements, noncon, age gap, gaslighting, manipulation, other dark elements. Proceed with caution. (short!reader)

Note:Please let me know what you think as it helps me a lot with ideas and I love interacting with you all.

Part of The Club AU

You leave the motel under a cloud of reluctance and relief. You have little to your name but your wallet, phone, and a few snacks. Hesitation keeps you stagnant behind the wheel, hovering over the address saved on your maps. This is it, hit start and accept your fate.

You put your phone on the passenger's seat as the automated voice directs you. You shift into gear and pull out. Disbelief fades to indifference. You don't have the energy to feel.

You follow along, in autopilot, until the GPS announces your destination on the right. You slow down and look up at the large house. Of course. He's rich. Dirty rich.

You pull down the long lot and stop to the right side of the double garage door. You don't get out immediately, you lean back and close your eyes. You try to sort through your thoughts. It's not that big of a deal. Sleep here, go to work, find anywhere else to be during the day.

There's a rumble on the seat beside you and you snatch up your phone. You drag your thumb across the screen to answer, too late to change your mind. It's him. Of course it's him.

"Don't say a word, sweetheart," Lloyd looks down his nose at the lens, "I just need you to see this."

He switches cameras and you squint as he points it at a familiar wooden door. No. The brass numbers confirm his location; your home. Former home.

His hand knocks on the door as he shifts the phone in his hand.

"Lloyd! Stop. No, don't–"

"Fair warning, sunshine, I got you on mute, so if you're tryna change my mind, it won't work." He knocks again, pounding on the door.

As the door opens, Lloyd's fist flies from the edge and snaps Johnny's jaw. You watch the other man stagger and grip his cheek, only for a moment, before swinging back at his attacker. The picture skews as Lloyd dodges and his foot hits Johnny’s chest and sends him onto his ass.

"Think that's about even," Lloyd clucks as he enters your apartment and steps over Johnny.

He leads with the lens, giving you a glimpse of the front room as he inspects it. He finds his way into the bedroom and hums. He goes to the dresser, opening a drawer then shutting it as all he finds are Johnny's briefs. He slides out the next one and picks out a few neatly folded panties.

"You keep a nice place, sweetie pie," he remarks. "Boring…" he comments as he examines a pair of your cotton panties.

You want to cry. You want to just wilt away to nothing. Why is he doing this?

The camera blurs in a smear of colours suddenly and Lloyd grunts. You hear Johnny and a struggle. Banging, clattering, and clamoring. You hear them locked in contention, helpless as you're stuck staring at a wall.

Another growl and an unsettling thump. The phone lifts and Lloyd snorts as you get a glimpse of him, his nose slightly bloody. He puts the phone down and you hear the drawer snap shut.

"See ya soon, baby cakes," he says, slightly breathless, "make yourself cozy… don't miss me too much."

He taps the screen and the call ends. You gape at your phone and whimper as you slump forward. Shit. You're totally fucked and you have a feeling Lloyd knows exactly that.

You lock your phone and sigh. Well, no going back now.

You get out of the car and look around. It's a nice neigbourhood, a bit far from work but not terrible. God, you're really going to do this.

'High five, fuck, go on our way.'

His words reverberate. Does he really want that? From you? Surely you could just pay rent.

You head up the walk and pull up the passcode. You punch it into the keypad on the door and it beeps, a green light granting you access.

Inside, the entry is airy and bright. You pause to take it all in. You check your phone again. Maybe you should go to the apartment and make sure they're not killing each other. Or maybe you should let them. You might avoid a lot of trouble if you just stop trying so hard.

There's a table against the curved rail of the staircase. You near as you give a curious look to the basket on top. White with a bright pink ribbon snaked around the handle. Inside, you find various boxes, taking the first to cringe at the small bullet vibe through the plastic window of the packaging.

The rest of the contents are similar; bottles of lube, stimulating salve, toys, clamps, and even a few panties without much fabric. Jesus. You leave the array of erotic aids but take the small envelope from in front of it. He knew. He knows you have no other option and he's entirely prepared.

Inside the card, ignoring the exterior image of a dildo and butt plug beneath a pun, you find script typed in Arial. 'Welcome to the sex shack. Make yourself at home. Yours is the room with the tie on the handle. Leave it on for when I get there.'

Gross. Not just him, you. There can be no doubt that his intent is just as shallow and sick as he is as a person. But you, you're not going to walk out and sleep in your car. Just like with Johnny, you will roll over and take it.

#lloyd hansen #dark lloyd hansen #dark!lloyd hansen #lloyd hansen x reader #The gray man #Au #Drabble #Series #carpe noctem

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sergeifyodorov · 1 year ago

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POLL RESULTS JUST DROPPED!!

My hockeyblr experiences are largely catered to my own personal tastes -- mostly Leafs, a little Penguins and Stars, one or two who post about Stevie Y and Sergei Fedorov. These are obviously not the only teams out there.

This study was designed to survey as much of hockeyblr as it possibly could, gathering data on which teams people like and to what degrees. There were five questions and a free space -- my attempt to ask people to rank the teams they enjoyed in three levels, from religiously followed to casually affectionate, and an additional couple of questions on love for players versus team. I received over 500 responses. Here are the results.

Yeah, yeah, you all want to know: The most popular team is the Penguins, by a long shot, then the Leafs.

Because my sample size (n = 523) is actually fairly small compared to the number of NHL teams there are, I find definitive rankings tend to be difficult. It’s also worth noting that, as a mainly Leafs blog, my numbers are definitely going to be skewed a little in favour of the Leafs.

Your Guys

These are the teams closest to your heart: the ship you go down with, metaphorically or, depending on how married your old men are, literally. For me, I picked just the Leafs.

The average respondent had 1.9 teams in this category. The most popular, by far, was the Pittsburgh Penguins. Below is a table of teams, arranged roughly into tiers by the number of respondents. Each team has the number of respondents in brackets next to their three-letter code.

I allowed people to pick as many teams as they would like; the average person picked 1.9 teams, but here’s a distribution of how many teams they picked:

4 people picked 0 “your guys” teams, and 2 people picked seven, nine, or ten each teams. Just about half of people had one main team.

I then wondered: what teams were people most likely to only follow? That is, if you hold [x] team in the closest part of your heart, are you more or less likely to also hold any other teams? Almost exactly 25% of picks were solo; I wondered if there was any correlation at all.

Only a little bit! Of the samples large enough to actually consider (so: nothing in that cluster at the bottom left, who all received fewer than 10 picks total, and a few of whom -- CGY, CHI, NSH -- received zero solo pickers), the most devoted fans chose the Sharks, the Bruins, and the Leafs. The fans who liked the most other teams chose the Avs, the Kraken, the Canucks, Panthers, Sens, and Ducks.

Probably a next step would be to look for correlations: if people are a fan of one team, are they more likely to be fans of another? THAT BEING SAID that’s a lot of regressions. Maybe keep an eye on that for the future, but I don’t know!!

Objects of Enjoyment, and Generally Nice

These two were successive tiers meant to distinguish teams that people like from the ones in the category above. I admit I probably could have phrased the questions better; I received several comments saying that they’d watch any hockey when they wanted to put a game on. The dynamics between Your Guys versus Objects of Enjoyment versus Generally Nice would best be described as devoted fan of versus casual fan of versus favourable opinion towards.

As I said a few paragraphs back, people picked 1.9 “devoted fan” teams on average. Again on average, they picked 4.7 “casual fan” teams and 6.5 “favourable opinion” teams. Not all ratios are equal, though! Some teams had significantly more casual than devoted fans, and others still were much more liked generally than average.

I gave each team’s “devoted” count an index number of 1 and measured their casual and favourable count as a ratio against the index number. The teams assembled themselves into a few groups.

No Commitment

Arizona and Anaheim have decided to be soulbonded (Excel refuses to let them have different-coloured dots) and it took me three hundred million years to attempt to (and unsuccessfully) fix, so let’s ignore that. These teams all have a fairly high slope of interest -- a range of casual interest at about five times the pace of fervent interest, and good opinion at about ten times fervent interest. The Calgary Flames are an outlier on the entire graph, not just here.

Casual Interest

I gave up on trying to colour teams according to their real colours shortly after the Anaheim/Arizona debacle. Please employ the legend. Nashville is included on all five graphs for reference. These teams all have a casual interest factor of about 3, and a favourable opinion factor of around 5; the same ratio as the casual fans of the teams in the first category to their fervent fans.

Saturated Market

These teams have a much lower ratio of hardcore:casual:favourable fans, at about 1:2:3.

We Get It, Those Are Your Guys

Pittsburgh and Toronto; these teams have an almost equal ratio of all three categories.

...Whatever This Is

Every other category is defined by its ratios; this category is defined by its shape. While all teams have their rate of hardcore fandom set as 1, the other two tend to increase in a roughly linear form, without too much significant difference between the first interval and the second interval.

These teams, though (again, Nashville is for scale) don’t do that: they have a set increase between hardcore and casual, and a significantly smaller increase (or, in a couple cases, a decrease) between casual and favourable. This suggests perhaps some kind of divisiveness; if you’re not already in there, do you really want to get in further? Either that, or it’s something closer to what the Leafs and Penguins have: that is, a devotion. Like you’re in or you’re out.

Taking these values together

Because the casual:hardcore ratios are measured as indexes and not absolute values, they say nothing about the actual popularity of the team in question -- Calgary is one of the least popular, which is why I assume it’s so weirdly high up; small sample sizes lead to higher error values!

But we do have the absolute values, so we can measure them against each other.

If we consider the “In or Out” to be a category of its own while the other four are along more of a continuum, then we can absolutely see a correlation here -- larger fandoms tend to have more involved fanbases.

Players or Teams?

I also asked participants if their guys tended to be players or teams -- and if those they liked at a more casual level tended to be players or teams.

The results are… not particularly surprising.

On a hardcore level, people tended to prefer teams, although the variability was pretty slight. On a casual level, individual players were much more popular.

I also wondered if people who chose more teams in the hardcore fan question tended to do that because they prefer players.

On average, people who picked players on their hardcore level chose 2.1 teams. People who picked teams chose 1.7 teams. That’s definitely a difference!

Fun Shtuff

I got way more write-in responses on the hardcore player/team question than on the casual question, including this:

Three separate people answered “Minnesota Wild” for their guys and chose no other teams on any level. Hell yes. (One person also did this for the Kings.)

It took about 300 responses before the first Flames fan (at the hardcore level.)

On all three levels, the Seattle Kraken are really popular -- they’re in the top five in each.

What's Next?

If I were to update this survey, I would probably include a question about where all of you are from -- some people (like me) follow their hometown team, while some people most certainly don't (shoutout to the one person from Edmonton who dislikes the Oilers) and others still don't have a hometown team (shoutout to my brasilian + european + etc mutuals and everyone else!!)

Feel free to shoot me an ask if you want me to do anything else with this data -- examine a specific team, give actual casual fan/etc counts and total aggregate rankings, anything else!

#mwah #also im going camping this weekend :thumbsup: THE DOCTOR IS OUT OF OFFICE

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azure-firecracker · 3 months ago

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My One Big Problem with Season 2

I touched on this in my Season 2 Review, but I wanted to take the opportunity to go more in-depth with it. As I said, I absolutely adored Season 2, but I took issue with the way it handled Scully and Mulder saving each other. As I’ve always said, mutual rescuing is my absolute favorite trope so long as it’s balanced. For all the things Season 2 did well, it absolutely fell short in terms of feeling balanced in that regard, and I (along with seemingly many others) ended the season frustrated, feeling as though Scully was always being snatched up and Mulder was always rushing to save her. I wanted to explore the ways in which Season 2 creates that impression (it’s not as simple as you might think!) and talk about what I think they could have done differently to avoid leaving this damsel-in-distress impression on so many viewers.

By the Numbers

For the purposes of this analysis, here are the times in Season 2 where Scully rescues Mulder (some of these are a bit ambiguous, so if you don’t count them, that’s totally valid):

Little Green Men

Red Museum

Excelsis Dei (this barely counts)

Aubrey

End Game

Anasazi

And here are the times where Mulder rescues Scully:

Duane Barry/Ascension/One Breath (technically he fails, but this arc is so instrumental to Scully’s damsel-in-distress vibe throughout the season that I had to include it).

Irresistible

End Game

Our Town

Now, if your viewing experience was anything like mine, these numbers will surprise you. I would have 100% guessed that Mulder’s numbers (as in, the number of times he saved Scully) would be higher. So clearly something is at play here besides just “number of times saved.” Let’s dig a little deeper, shall we?

Here is Mulder’s total time spent in peril throughout the season. This was a bit hard to quantify, as most of his times in danger are slow descents into trouble rather than abrupt transitions, so the moments when he goes from “not in danger” to “in danger” are a bit ambiguous. Take these numbers with a grain of salt.

Little Green Men (From the time he finds the body until Scully wakes him up): 08:40

Red Museum: 00:15 (!!!)

Excelsis Dei: 03:14

Aubrey (Including the time after Scully arrives before BJ drops the razor): 01:13

End Game (From the time the Alien Bounty Hunter starts beating him up until Scully begins her voiceover): 04:00

Anasazi (From the moment his dad is shot until he wakes up in New Mexico): 08:39

Total: 26:01

Average time per episode (out of all episodes in peril): 04:20

Here is Scully’s total time in peril. This was much easier to quanitfy. Since Duane Barry’s scene was more or less repeated in Ascension, I didn’t count it. I didn’t include One Breath in this calculation, but I wouldn’t fault you if you did.

Ascension: 45:10 (The whole episode!)

Irresistible: 06:37

End Game: 08:41

Our Town: 04:21

Total: 1:04:49 - A 149% increase from Mulder’s time!

Average time per episode in peril: 16:12 - A 274% increase from Mulder’s time!

I am aware that Ascension skews this last statistic, so if we exclude that entirely, Scully’s average time in peril per episode is 06:33 - still a 51% increase from Mulder’s time.

If we assume that every episode is 45 minutes long, this means that:

For every episode featuring Mulder in peril, he spends on average 9.6% of that episode actively in danger.

For every episode featuring Scully in peril, she spends on average 36% of that episode actively in danger (14.5% if you exclude Ascension entirely).

So despite technically being saved fewer times, Scully spends a lot more time actively in peril than Mulder does throughout the season, both in total and per episode featuring her needing rescuing, by a pretty significant margin. This is one of the major factors in my next point.

Central to the Episode

Let’s explore how relevant Scully and Mulder’s damsel-in-distress moments are to the episodes they feature in, as well as how that might impact our viewer perception of these moments, and the impressions they leave in our memory.

For Mulder:

Little Green Men: This is an episode about Mulder’s desperate search for the truth against all obstacles, and how Scully will continue to follow him even after they’ve been separated. While the Puerto Rican government is a looming threat, I wouldn’t consider this a “Mulder in danger” episode.

Red Museum: This episode features a VERY brief moment of Mulder in danger. You could remove the moment and the episode would change very little.

Excelsis Dei: Same as Red Museum.

Aubrey: Same as Red Museum and Excelsis Dei.

End Game: Given that Scully has to go searching for Mulder, this is probably the closest thing we get to a direct role reversal for them. I would call this a “Mulder in danger” episode, but I do have other issues with it which I’ll get into later.

Anasazi: Also a “Mulder in danger” episode, but I would argue that it’s just as much about the alien lore, the plot, and the mystery as it is about Mulder being in peril/needing saving.

Now for Scully:

Duane Barry/Ascension/One Breath: This is an entire arc about her being in danger. Her being in danger is the story.

Irresistible: This is an episode about Scully’s trauma and the emotional walls she builds up as a result. Her being taken is instrumental to the episode’s arc as well as her character development. It is the center of the episode.

End Game: You could rewrite this episode without her being kidnapped, but her kidnapping propels much of the episode’s plot. Many of the episode’s emotional threads are tied to her kidnapping and the resulting hostage exchange. It would be difficult to rewrite this episode without her kidnapping.

Our Town: You could rewrite this episode without Scully being taken, but her kidnapping is absolutely central to the episode’s climax rather than tangential.

So, in general, when Mulder is in peril, it is tangential to the episode’s plot (there are two exceptions: we’ll get there). When Scully is in peril, it is the episode’s plot. This creates a much stronger impression in the viewer’s mind, and makes us much more likely to remember these episodes and these damsel-in-distress moments for Scully rather than Mulder.

But this isn’t the only reason why these moments resonate so much more when they happen to our favorite medical doctor/FBI agent/badass. Which leads me to my next point…

Agency and Bodily Autonomy

Both Mulder and Scully’s moments in peril tend to follow trends, but these trends are often opposites of each other. You’ll see what I mean.

Here is what (generally) happens when Mulder is in danger:

He makes the choice to seek out the episode’s villain wherever they’re currently hiding out (Red Museum, Aubrey, End Game)

He either tells someone where he’s going (Red Museum, Aubrey) or he doesn’t (Little Green Men, End Game) Either way, it’s his choice.

He willingly enters a fight with the episode’s villain and is overpowered either very briefly (Red Museum, Aubrey) or maybe for a bit longer (End Game).

Even when overpowered, he usually maintains some level of bodily autonomy. The only exceptions are Little Green Men and End Game while he’s unconscious, but he maintains bodily autonomy up until that point.

The only significant exception to this formula is Anasazi.

Here is what (generally) happens when Scully is in danger:

She begins somewhere completely ordinary (her apartment, her car, a motel room, a civilian’s house).

She is forcibly taken from this ordinary place by the episode’s villain and moved somewhere else against her will. She doesn’t know where she is, and couldn’t tell someone where she’s going even if she wanted to.

Here are some images of Scully throughout season 2:

Wow, you think, she must be having a rough day. Wrong! These are from 4 separate episodes. Notice how her bodily autonomy is taken away in all 4 of these photos. Her hands are also bound in 3 of these, you just can’t see it.

So, to recap, Mulder usually has free choice when he seeks out danger, while Scully rarely does. Of course her work is dangerous, but the moments when she is in the most danger are never due to her own choices. And Mulder always maintains his bodily autonomy even when in peril, while Scully doesn’t. This creates the impression that she is in more danger, more in need of rescuing, more powerless, and less able to handle herself.

Not to be the loud feminist in the room (just kidding-always be the loud feminist in the room!), but when your female character is always the one having her choice and bodily autonomy taken away, you have a problem. And I didn’t even touch on what it’s implied she went through while she was abducted.

On the topic of trends…

Variety vs. Repetition

So despite the trends in Mulder’s damsel-in-distress moments that I just listed, there are also several differences. Let’s explore what technically happens to him in each instance.

Little Green Men: Encounters aliens in Puerto Rico and passes out while the military is coming to kill him.

Red Museum: Locked in the meat processing plant as it’s about to be set on fire.

Excelsis Dei: Locked in the bathroom filling with water.

Aubrey: BJ knocks him over and holds a razor to his throat.

End Game: Gets beaten up by the Alien Bounty Hunter, encounters an alien retrovirus, is left on the ice to freeze, and nearly dies from exposure to said retrovirus.

Anasazi: Starts acting irrationally due to drugged water and becomes a murder suspect. Is very nearly implicated in said murder, and it’s strongly implied that he would have died had he been convicted.

Now, there are patterns in here (as discussed above), but for the most part, these are different enough that they didn’t feel repetitive while I was watching. In fact, Red Museum, Excelsis Dei, and Aubrey are consecutive episodes, and I didn’t realize Mulder had been in danger 3 times in a row until I went back and reviewed the episode list.

Scully, on the other hand:

Duane Barry/Ascension/One Breath: Kidnapped by Duane Barry/aliens or maybe the government.

Irresistible: Kidnapped by Donnie Pfaster.

End Game: Kidnapped by the Alien Bounty Hunter.

Our Town: Kidnapped by Chaco and the cannibalistic cult.

*sigh* This would be laughable if it didn’t play so hard into the female character damsel-in-distress trope. Part of the reason it feels like Scully is in danger so much is because every time she is in danger it’s exactly the same (refer to the photos above again for more proof if you need it).

Another irritating thing about this is that Scully’s kidnappings get less necessary as they go along. So not only do viewers become sick of seeing the same thing over and over again, they also get annoyed because it didn’t need to happen and yet they’re seeing it again. At least, I did. To be clear on this:

Duane Barry/Ascension/One Breath: Necessary for offscreen reasons which trumps all else. We support maternity leave on this blog! I also read that Gillian Anderson went back to work very quickly, so even though I missed Scully during this arc, I wouldn’t have minded if had been longer solely for that reason.

Irresistible: A very important follow-up to Scully’s abduction. Was (in my opinion) crucial to Scully’s character arc. Maybe she didn’t need to get kidnapped, but the episode is much stronger because of it.

End Game: The point where I started to get annoyed. Central to the episode? Yes. Necessary from a writing standpoint? No.

Our Town: Now, they could have done another Irresistible-esque parallel here, but they didn’t. So I was left feeling like you could exchange Scully and Mulder’s roles and very little would change.

Suffice to say, I was very annoyed by the end of Our Town.

So, to recap what we have thus far:

Scully spends more time, overall and per episode, in danger than Mulder does.

When Scully is in danger, it is more central to the episode’s plot than when Mulder is in danger, making her moments in peril more memorable to the audience.

When Scully is in danger, she loses her agency and bodily autonomy, making her seem weaker in comparison to Mulder than she actually is.

Scully’s damsel-in-distress moments all follow the same pattern, making their repetition more noticeable than when Mulder is in danger multiple times.

There are, however, two exceptions to these rules. Let’s get into them.

End Game and Anasazi

As I said a while back, these are the season’s only two “Mulder in danger” episodes (in my opinion. You could make a case for Little Green Men, too).

To recap:

The Colony/End Game two-parter begins with Mulder dying in the hospital, and we spend the rest of the story figuring out how he got there. Scully has to use every resource in her arsenal to track him down (despite him actively trying to ditch her). She then rushes to Alaska, realizes he’s been exposed to the retrovirus, and basically brings him back from the dead all on her own.

Anasazi features an obviously unwell Mulder descending into madness, and we as viewers are right there with Scully as she tries to figure out what’s happening to him. She figures out that his water is being poisoned, shoots him to stop him from killing Krycek (which would have led to a murder conviction and probably death), and drives him to New Mexico, risking her career and probably her life.

Now, I don’t want to downplay the awesomeness of these moments, because they’re undoubtedly badass and fantastic! But there is a through line between them that gave me pause.

I’m sure many of us remember what Mulder says to Scully in Anasazi. But in case we’ve forgotten, here it is:

Thank you for taking care of me.

And that’s the commonality. In both of her biggest instances of saving Mulder, Scully fills the role of the caretaker in at least some capacity. When Mulder saves her, he usually has to chase after some bad guys with a gun in a more traditionally heroic style.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love Doctor Scully just as much as the next person, and I’m not even saying that one form of rescuing is inherently better than the other.

But when your male character is always being the traditionally heroic one and your female character is always caretaking in their most significant instances of saving one another…

Again, not to be the loud feminist in the room *waves in proud loud feminist*, but there’s some gender stereotypes at play there that I’m not the biggest fan of.

Don’t misunderstand me. I think that Scully, both as a character and as a female character specifically, is much stronger than these flaws. But that doesn’t mean I won’t point them out.

But Phoebe, What Should They Have Done Differently?

So glad you asked! Now, I’m not going to pretend I’m aware of all the network restrictions, budget stuff, external factors etc. that they were dealing with, but here’s a few ideas off the top of my head.

Now, I’m going to start this section by saying this: I am aware that Scully being repeatedly taken away was a major theme of this season. I don’t think that theme needs to disappear, but I think there are better ways of incorporating it than having her get kidnapped the same way four times.

I read this excellent post by @bakedbakermom about how every episode of S2 after Scully’s abduction is about her abduction in some way. I agree, and I think the show could have developed those parallels more overtly if they wanted to keep the theme of “there is this constant threat of Scully being taken away and what does it mean for our pair?” Here are some ways they could have done that:

More conversations like the one in Firewalker: Mulder wanting to protect Scully from everything, Scully insisting on going back anyway. There’s lots of good conflict there that could have led to some very tense episodes while still keeping the theme alive without Scully actually getting kidnapped.

Any one of the episodes could have been interspersed with abduction flashbacks or something of the like, further highlighting the parallels.

I am of the belief that Mulder needs to heal from the abduction trauma just as much as Scully, but in a very different way. You could have an episode where he sees another person he has to protect, there’s some sort of parallel and Scully knows why he cares so much. She tries to pull him back but all he remembers is her crying for help over the answering machine and he gets in too deep. That would have been such a good episode😫

And if you’re hell bent on putting Scully in danger, here are some new ways to do that:

Maybe she gets infected with a parasite thingy and she has to figure out how to cure herself and it brings up both her worst fears of being powerless and needing help and Mulder’s fears of not being able to help her.

Let her step into Mulder’s shoes! Maybe she meets someone whose trauma parallels her own and she gets too invested in helping them and she knows the risks but runs into danger anyway. Our girl can still have agency, even if she needs saving!

Maybe she chases some bad guys into the woods and gets knocked out or something and Mulder just kind of has to watch over her until help comes and it’s a good way to have her in danger plus Mulder angst without kidnapping her again.

And this doesn’t fit into the theme but for fuck’s sake, you can have the theme of Scully being taken and still let Mulder get kidnapped or be a traditional damsel-in-distress! It won’t ruin the theming! In fact, I think it would strengthen it. It would be an awesome Scully moment, and I think it would be an interesting character study, because Mulder is always so worried about Scully that he never stops to think about himself. Who knows how a brush with death like that would affect him? Or how having to rush after him while the clock is ticking would affect Scully? All would provide interesting perspectives on the season’s theme! (Plus, Anasazi confirmed to me that Mulder is such a good damsel-in-distress. It’s the puppy energy).

(Shameless self-promo time. I did write a fic switching Scully and Mulder’s roles in Our Town for this exact purpose. You can read it here on Ao3).

Like I said, I’m not saying the season needed to do all of these things, or even any of them. These are just some ideas, off the top of my head, of how they could have mixed it up a little. If you have more ideas, please share them with me! I’d love to hear!

Conclusion

So, I don’t hate the number of times Scully needs saving this season, but I do take issue with how it’s done. A little more variety, some more switching up Mulder and Scully’s roles, and closer attention to the gender stereotypes they were touching on, all would have made all the difference.

Like I said, I loved Season 2. So many things about it were wonderful, and like Scully, I think the season is stronger than its flaws. This was an in-depth analysis on where the season faltered (in my opinion) and what I might have done differently. It is not hate towards any of the X-Files writers, actors, crew, etc.

Now that I’ve gotten my thoughts out there, I would love to continue discussing this with all of you, so if you disagree with me and want to talk it out (respectfully!), or if you just have something to add, or if you just think I’m really smart and want to tell me (lol), feel free to leave a comment or reblog with your own addictions! I love nothing more than talking with y’all.

This is probably the longest meta I’ll do for a while, but I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts on the show once I enter Season 3. I’ll see you then:)

#the x files #txf #x files #txf meta #x files meta #txf s2 #txf season 2 #x files spoilers #dana scully #fox mulder #msr #david duchovny #gillian anderson #azure txf reviews

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neonscandal · 6 months ago

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Random ask, do you love Satosugu because somehow their dynamic remind you of BakuDeku?

Okay so this has been sitting in my inbox for a few days because, at first when I read it, I was like "I don't really see the resemblance".

But here's the thing, I've been thinking about some of the interesting points I think MHA and JJK have in common lately.. was I sure these two ships really didn't remind me of one another, too?

SHORT ANSWER

I do not love SatoSugu for the same reasons I love BakuDeku.

LONG ANSWER

I REALLY HAD TO THINK ABOUT THIS because the recipes are very similar if you really think about it. Deeply entrenched histories with one another, the relation they have to one another being an impetus to be stronger/better, worldview that seems to be heavily hinged on one another (debatably)... but the fact remains: you can have all the same ingredients and prepare a totally different dish.

What I appreciate about BakuDeku is that they are at odds but not in the ways that one would assume at face value. Like, people oversimplify Midoriya as being this incredibly sensitive, goodie-two shoes and Bakugo to be an antagonistic bully. But Midoriya breaks hella rules where Bakugo's aggression hides the fact that he is, in fact, an emotional rule follower! What a nerd. In a lot of ways, they embody facets of one another even when it isn't readily apparent. Both strong and both protective of one another which manifests in different ways. But ultimately, in spite of their differences, they are both earnestly aligned in their desire to embody what they respect and value about All Might and being the number one hero. There's a stronger sense of justice at play in universe that makes the story a bit more cut and dry. No amount of time has really shaken their understanding of one another. They are still locked in and the best insight into one another outside of themselves (if that makes sense).

SatoSugu exists in a morally gray area which enables them to have more character nuance than simply being aligned with "good" or "bad". While they are also at odds in different ways, I'm more inclined to appreciate the circumstances that brought them together. It's a bit skewed from Gojo's perspective but, ultimately, they are unified in how isolating their strength and responsibilities are. There's no ensemble staff to lessen the sting of that and, subsequently, there's this elevated miracle of finding understanding in one another's company. This is more inferred from Gojo's perspective, but you also never get the satisfaction of Geto's point of view. I think what I like most about their story is how incomplete it is. There's no reconciliation, no clearing the air of all the things they never voiced to one another.. and isn't that just how it goes? Especially unrequited. It's sad and unsatisfying because their relation to one another is ultimately their undoing. What made them well suited to one another is also what drives the wedge between them and Geto was doomed from the beginning. The story has seemingly run its course with both of them and there's still so many loose ends.

Even in writing all of this, there are a lot of undeniable similarities between them. Truthfully, we don't know how either stories will end so there may be more compelling likenesses revealed with time. The line I'm drawing in the sand is not so much what makes them similar but what I find the most compelling about them so maybe that doesn't interpret your question correctly but that nuance obscured all of the similarities for days for me haha so I appreciate you asking because it definitely made me think!

#neon asks #anon asks #bakudeku #mha #bnha #jjk #satosugu #jujutsu kaisen #my hero academia #boku no hero academia

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gamebird · 2 months ago

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TMBD Ship Manifest: Actual Shipping Numbers

In July 2022, some folks were discussing what was being shipped and not being shipped, so I looked at the AO3 numbers, made some notes, and made some posts. In July of 2023, I repeated that with a bit more detail. I had intended to do the same in July of this year, but many things conspired against that in my life. Here I am doing it now. The passage of extra months skews the data a bit, but the numbers are (to me) still interesting to look at. I am a huge fan of actual data rather than 'what I've seen lately' or 'what has provoked the most conversation'. Here's when I did it last year: https://www.tumblr.com/gamebird/723952750824734720/the-ship-manifest-actual-murderbot-shipping?source=share

This time around, I put the information in a spreadsheet so hopefully I can be more consistent in future and maybe draw better year-to-year comparisons. Past data collection methods and various unwritten assumptions affect the information. Year-to-year isn't perfectly comparable.

The big, top-line numbers for 9/26/24 are that 67% of fics have at least one ship tagged (54% & + 13% slash = 67% of total fics). Another way of looking at it is that 87% of the TMBD fics are non-slash, 13% slash.

There are currently 666 MBART fics (combining slash and &) which is 35% of ship-fics, 285 MBG (combining slash and &) which is 15% of ship-fics, and 266 Mensahbot fics (still combining) which is 14% of ship-fics. The other 36% of ship-fics is divided.

We continue to be a predominantly English fandom for AO3 works (98%) and to have what to me seems like a high number of podfics (yay!) at 292 - more than 10% of the works out there.

74% of the stories are marked Gen. Only 4% are rated explicit. I did a ship breakdown for 'Explicit' but the dataset is small enough that it doesn't mean much aside from MBART is 36% of the explicit fics, 'no pair listed' and MBG are each 14%. The percent of Explicit fic that was rape/non-con has dropped sharply (from 42% in 2023 to 28% now), especially given that all the old fic are still there.

In the spreadsheet I had a column for & or slash so I could filter to one or the other and try to decide what to do with it. Looking at only the slash fics (as I have in previous years), there are 361 of them on 9/26/24: 31% are MBG, 27% MBART, 14% Arada/Overse, 4% Mensahbot, and they trail off from there, 24% of the total split between 9 ships and one 'other' category ('Other', which is 6% of that 24%, are tagged slash fics from other fandoms).

We have 76 f/f fics vs 48 m/m ones. And there's no easy way to count non-binary, third-gender, other-gender, agender, or trans fics, but I know there are a lot of them. 'Other' in the gender-type category is a solid 517 (18%) of fics, with Multi being 47 fics (2%), just one fic off what there is for m/m. So that's a big difference from the fandoms I've been involved with in the past.

#the murderbot diaries

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al-luviec · 4 months ago

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Also here are the gen 1 + gen 2 contestants sorted by their average placements. (The lower the number, the better). Since some contestants were only in one season, their results are a bit more skewed...

And then I went through and calculated every contestants total team wins (first image) and their total individual wins. RR is not included for Noah and Owen. Here, the greater average number, the better.

Some fun facts;

- All of Zoey's individual challenge wins were in a row, one of which was because Mal dragged Alejandro out of first so she could win. Alejandro would have an average of 1.5 otherwise.

- Mike is the only finalist (gen 1 or gen 2) that didn't win a single individual challenge in any seasons he was in.

- The Toxic Rats is the team with the largest losing streak of six. Team Victory is a close second with five loses in a row.

- It's almost 7 am as I write this.

#alek insanity #total drama #if you care about numbers and random stuff here you go. i spent a while on this so i figured i might as well post it.

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blackbird-brewster · 1 year ago

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CM Fanfiction on AO3

I'm a bit of a stats nerd, and I've been wanting to put this together for ages. The following are some statistics regarding Criminal Minds fanfiction of AO3. Do with this what you will, but if ever someone tries to tell me this fandom isn't misogynistic -- I will just point to this post.

I spent an abhorrent amount of time putting this together, hope it's interesting to other people. Please don't send me hate mail for my opinions.

Base Statistics

Total Fics Tagged Criminal Minds: 34,561

These stats were compiled by me on 20/06/23 via AO3's filtering system.

Note: These were taken at face value, meaning these numbers may not be exact. In order to get exact statistics, I'd have to stringently filter out things like mislabelled fics, spam, fics with multiple categories (to find pure slash, femslash fics), etc.

Tumblr will destroy the resolution of the graphs, just click to see full res :)

Fanfic statistics gathered from AO3, episode totals gathered from IMDB.

CM Fanfiction by Category

Most Popular Tag: Fluff (21.7%)

Fics Counted in This Statistic: *indeterminate due to crossover (multiple tags per each fic)

I honestly expected angst/whump/hurt/comfort to be first on this. I guess if you add up all the variations of those type of fics, they'd be top tag.

Obviously this one isn't ever going to be perfect, because tons of people either don't tag their fics, or they don't use the prescribed tags above. Still, I thought this was worth adding to the post.

For more stats please see my, [Tara Lewis Fic Stats Post]

#criminal minds #spencer reid #aaron hotchner #derek morgan #emily prenitss #jennifer jareau #penelope garcia #luke alvez #tara lewis #criminal minds fandom #criminal minds fanfiction #cm fanfiction #cm reference #master post #ao3 stats #cm commentary #cm meta

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iamnmbr3 · 4 months ago

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okkkk, i got tempted, too

10, 17, 32, 33, 35

For drarry! I know they're FIVE questions!! So if you get bothered, answer whichever you want!

10. Best moment on screen (or in the book)

How could you make me choose? I'll go with the Manor sequence though in book 7. (And as a bonus, in the movies I like the extended dialogue in the Room of Requirement where Harry brings up the fact that Draco totally recognized him and didn't say anything.)

17. Quotes, songs, poems, etc. that I associate with them

Mikky Ekko's song Who Are You, Really? No idea why really. Just has the right vibes I guess. But sometimes I listen to it for inspiration when I'm working on my drarry fics.

32. Something guaranteed to make them smile/laugh

Each other. After the war, after they get together, they both get just a little bit softer - at least when they're together. They still snark at each other constantly - but now there's no hostility to it. It's playful banter. And they enjoy it so much. And enjoy each other so much. They're constantly bickering back and forth in an easy, comfortable manner and teasing smiles and laughs out of each other.

33. Something guaranteed to make them cry

The death of a loved one.

35. Their idea of a perfect day

There's two answers. First of all, there are the days where everything is safe and nothing happens and they can just be, together and at peace in a way neither of them ever really imagined after everything they went through. Where they are surrounded by friends and no one is trying to murder them and somehow, miraculously they have each other and all the old enmity is gone. That's what they would think of as their perfect day. And they love those days.

But here's the deeper truth - when they have too many days in a row like that, they get a tiny bit bored. They are inquisitive, active people with a penchant for getting into shenanigans for all they both strenuously deny this and claim the shenanigans simply find them. This would be true anyway, and especially after all they lived through a life with no excitement at all would just seem a bit too dull. Plus, after all the dangers they've faced their sense of what constitutes a risky situation is a bit skewed. What has other people saying 'Merlin why didn't you call for backup?! Yes it worked out this time but you couldn't have known that' is just a fun bit of excitement to them.

They're not daredevils by any means, but really, compared to what they've accomplished and survived, getting themselves temporarily pretend captured so they can bust an anti werewolf extremist group trying to tamper with the wolfsbane supply or rounding up an errant herd of escaped hippogriffs is not that big of a deal. Especially when they two of them are doing it together. Because they're both quite skilled alone and they compliment each other perfectly. And if sometimes they have a bit too much fun doing it and love watching each other being competent, well, that's nobody's business really.

(Also an answer here about Draco that touches on drarry.)

Send me a character/ship from any fandom and a number.

#asks #drarry #Harry Potter #Draco Malfoy #ask game #hpdm #dmhp #harco #h/d #harry x draco

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haveyoureadthisscifibook · 6 months ago

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Are there stats for publication date? What's the predominant decade for submissions and how do the Sci-fi and fantasy blogs compare? Is there a period that a higher percentage of poll responders seem to have read? It looks like there's more submission of YA/children in fantasy and those have been more likely to get 50+% read. Is there just less sci-fi being written targeted towards younger readers?

hello! great questions. putting this under a read more because it’s a lot of numbers.

publication date

there are some marked differences between the two blogs on this point, although also some overall similarities.

most of the differences are I think pretty straightforwardly explicable by the fact that science fiction as a cohesive genre and marketing category is simply older than fantasy, having more or less fully coalesced by the 1920s, whereas fantasy wasn’t really established until the late ’60s. obviously there’s also older stuff that’s now considered to belong to each genre (Verne, Wells, Lovecraft, Plunkett/Dunsany, ...), but people who habitually read Fantasy and people who habitually read Science Fiction are, I think, most likely to have read books that were conceived, written, published, and marketed specifically as part of those genres, meaning that the fantasy submissions and results skew more recent than the sci-fi ones. the sci-fi results are also a bit more evenly distributed (though still skewed towards post-2010), reflecting, I think, the cultural prominence of certain classics — of which there are also simply more, because, again, older as a marketing category.

for starters, the mean publication dates of submissions:

fantasy: ~2002

sci-fi: ~1996

I haven’t been keeping stats by decade for submissions, but I can give you stats by decade for the results. for the fantasy polls:

1830s: 1 book (0.2% of the total)

1880s: 1 book (0.2% of the total)

1890s: 2 books (0.3%)

1900s: 2 books (0.3%)

1910s: 3 books (0.5%)

1920s: 2 books (0.3%)

1930s: 5 books (0.8%)

1940s: 4 books (0.6%)

1950s: 9 books (1.4%)

1960s: 8 books (1.3%)

1970s: 31 books (5.0%)

1980s: 59 books (9.5%)

1990s: 70 books (11.2%)

2000s: 146 books (23.4%)

2010s: 194 books (31.1%)

2020s: 86 books (13.8%)

you can really see the beginning of the fantasy genre as such here in the dramatic jump from the 1960s to the ’70s, and you can also see the age of tumblr users in the jump from the 1990s to the 2000s. the average yes percentages for the decades where there are enough books to give a meaningful average are a bell curve from 13.4% yes for the ’70s, peaking at 21.1% yes in the ’90s, and falling back down to 10.5% yes for the 2020s.

the medians also dramatically peak in the ’90s: median 7.6% yes for the ’70s, 6.2% yes for the ’80s, 14.8% yes for the ’90s, 11.8% yes for the 2000s, 6.1% yes for the 2010s, and 5.6% yes for the 2020s.

for the sci-fi polls:

1810s: 1 book (0.2% of the total)

1860s: 3 books (0.6%)

1880s: 2 books (0.4%)

1890s: 3 books (0.6%)

1900s: 2 books (0.4%)

1910s: 1 book (0.2%)

1920s: 1 book (0.2%)

1930s: 7 books (1.5%)

1940s: 7 books (1.5%)

1950s: 19 books (4.0%)

1960s: 31 books (6.5%)

1970s: 39 books (8.2%)

1980s: 54 books (11.4%)

1990s: 63 books (13.3%)

2000s: 49 books (10.3%)

2010s: 123 (25.9%)

2020s: 70 (14.7%)

I suspect the jump from the ’40s to the ’50s and ’60s reflects the relatively rapid post-WWII shift away from magazines as the primary venue for sci-fi publishing (which therefore leaned towards short fiction and away from novels) to pulp books (expanding the market for novels, and so for books eligible for this blog). I have no idea what’s going on with the 2000s.

the averages for the sci-fi polls are quite even across the decades with enough results to give meaningful averages, and, significantly, the decade with the highest mean yes is actually the ’60s (16.8%), followed by the ’50s (13.3%), and then ironically the 2000s (12.6%). the lowest is the ’70s, at only 8.9% mean yes. the medians are all over the place, but the highest is the ’60s (10.3%), followed by the ’80s (7.6%) and the 2000s again (6.6%). the lowest is the ’70s again (3.3%), followed by the 2020s (4.0%).

(it’s also worth noting again that children’s books are skewing the fantasy poll results higher overall than the sci-fi ones.)

age demographic

is there just less sci-fi being written targeted at younger readers? I don’t have numbers, so I can only answer this anecdotally: I think so. first off, I think there’s maybe less sci-fi being written period at this point, but even looking back, I’m thinking about my own reading as a child (and looking at my library spreadsheet) —

fantasy: The Hobbit; Narnia; most of Diana Wynne Jones’s books; Garth Nix’s Seventh Tower and Abhorsen series; Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising sequence; Tamora Pierce’s Song of the Lioness, The Immortals, Protector of the Small, Circle of Magic, and The Circle Opens; Diane Duane’s Young Wizards series; Unicorns of Balinor; Harry Potter; Wizard’s Hall; the Chronicles of Prydain; Earthsea; The Gammage Cup; Redwall; Wayside School; Magic Tree House; His Dark Materials; Tales of the Nine Charms; the Warriors cat books; Eva Ibboston’s books; Children of the Red King; Meredith Ann Pierce’s Firebringer trilogy; the Bartimaeus Trilogy; the Enchanted Forest Chronicles; Edward Eager’s Tales of Magic; The Paper Bag Princess; ...

sci-fi: the ’90s Star Trek children’s books; Young Jedi Knights; Junior Jedi Knights; Animorphs; Bruce Coville’s My Teacher Is an Alien books; Space Brat; Alistair and the Alien Invasion; Commander Toad; the first two Harper Hall Pern books; Jedi Apprentice; the silly Jedi Prince books; the Tripods books; Monica Hughes’s Isis books; uh...

and granted, I loved the children’s sci-fi series — if you’d asked me in ca. 2000 I probably would have been more enthusiastic about Animorphs than any of the fantasy series I’d read at that point except maybe Circle of Magic. nonetheless, while this is very unscientific, you can see the disproportion.

it also becomes something of a self-fulfilling prophecy from a publishing perspective: there’s been one wild blockbuster sci-fi series for young readers in my lifetime (The Hunger Game), vs. three(-ish) for fantasy (Harry Potter, Twilight, and to a lesser extent Percy Jackson and the Olympians). fantasy for young readers looks safer for publishers —> more of it gets published —> more people read it —> more people decide eventually to write it.

#not a poll #statistics

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whentherewerebicycles · 9 months ago

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oof guys some days I feel very competent at my job and some days I feel a little in over my head. today it’s definitely the latter… I think it was just a lot of being in meetings with high-ranking admins who have been here for 10+ years and thus have LOTS of knowledge of context & lots of strong opinions about these big institution-wide issues. I don’t think I ever embarrass myself in these types of meetings (mostly because I try not to talk too much and instead focus on asking questions… maybe that’s embarrassing in its own way but feels better than accidentally saying something stupid/ignorant). but they always make me feel very conscious of how new I am both to the institution and to this type of role!! however I am trying to remind myself that these people didn’t start out knowing everything about our university system or about how to think at this level… they have accumulated that understanding over many years of being involved in lots of different initiatives at different levels. I can learn these skills and the fact that I don’t have them quite yet doesn’t mean I’m ill-suited to the job or doomed to be less effective than my longer-tenured coworkers. but it does means I need to do some thinking about what those skills are and how to build them over time.

(also a lot of these meetings were about using data to inform institutional recommendations and I feel VERY insecure about my ability to draw conclusions from quantitative data. I don’t have the training and I’m not totally sure how to get it at this stage. then I start getting in my own head about being stupid with numbers, which makes it harder to see the ways that I could still contribute usefully to these discussions even if I can’t be much help with number-crunching. I could also think about how to develop these skills but honestly I just find it all SO BORING it’s hard to motivate myself to even want to pay attention. not something you are really allowed to feel at this level though!!)

I think the other problem is that I’m feeling a little bit checked out because of the pregnancy. it’s partly just that I feel pretty tired and physically worn out all the time… so it’s often easier to focus on the concrete small tasks on my plate than to do the big picture conceptual thinking I was doing at the start of this position. it’s also partly that I’m three months away from being out for six months, which makes me feel less motivated to tackle big stuff… it’s easier to wrap up loose ends than to launch new projects that will have to be put on the shelf for a long time. and then idk I feel like I’m allocating a huge chunk of my intellectual and emotional resources to preparing for parenthood, I guess? like the background hum in my brain these days is all about trying to get ready for this huge self-shattering life transition. not that you can ever be ready but I feel like so much of my energy is focused on my personal life right now when in the past it’s been much more skewed towards work. that seems normal under the circumstances! but it’s hard to figure out how to rebalance, or if I even need to rebalance at this point. like is it ok to be consumed by impending parenthood and to not feel quite as invested in or interested in my career for a stretch?? is that ok or do I need to work more actively to correct it?

#let us also not forget: off my meds 🫠 and still feeling it

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mejomonster · 2 years ago

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Checked out Desire Catcher ep 1:

Thrilled the lead actors aren't as young as I expected

The main Luo guy looks so familiar to me, what have I seen him in before....

The other guy looks familiar too, but I think he looks like Khaotung from gmmtv and that's why

Luo Fei.... Luo fei.... Luo fei? You mean like Luo wenzhou and fei du????!!! I am aware the fei in fei du is费, and this one is fei 飞. But. Hear me out. Is this an original script? Maybe the script writer ships zhoudu. I can imagine, even if its not true. ToT

The setup, if at any point it turns magical/sci fi etc, reminds me of death note: being able to kill remotely and investigating that and all. And I do love some magic in an otherwise mundane reality story

Right now it's like that movie where ppl hear a trigger word then kill, except here they die

For some reason I heard some ppl saying this was gonna be bromance vibes? Well, I'll find out. I do think though that it will likely lend itself to such option (like Under the Skin perhaps? I haven't seen Under the Skin yet though)

I WILL say that... while there's the whole danmei not airing situation, and completely made shows not airing that were bl novel adaptations... mango TV is just the kind of bitch to drop an original script bl through the cracks. First, because they've written original script bl before (wasn't Killer and Healer an original script first before novelization?). Second, because it seems original scripts With bromance undertones is getting a much easier time airing right now: one example being League of Nobleman, another being Pledge of Allegiance. So any original script with Any level of gay stuff I imagine is having an easier time airing rn (also in mango tvs case right now? They're not high Press releases. There's a LOT of eyes on say Sha Po Langs drama than on this random one).

I like the vibe of this show. It's leaning darker/more realistic, feels like the kind of novels I read. Like Justice in the Dark, it has a dead animal early on and a murder scene early on. Not sure how many cdramas skew that direction in scary (or dark idk?) But this one clearly is going that route. Which I personally like (again giving me Under the Skin vibes).

ZHAO YUNLANS DAD IS IN THIS PLAYING A SHADY BITCH (GO FIGURE)

the old professor man almost... looks like he could also be Shen Weis old professor mentor from Guardian, but I don't remember that face as well... so this old professor guy could be from a number of dramas I've seen

Not to compare to Justice in the Dark cause I imagine it's totally unintentional, so it's just funny to me. But I Did Notice we have a Captain Luo, a girl cop whos on his team with That Haircut, and a guy cop who's a little less put together than Luo who talks to That Girl and you... you gotta admit visually they look a lot like Lang Qiao and Xiao Haiyang in casting and just character roles (initially) in the story. If I saw someone filling Tao Rans role I'd be really !!!. But no Tao ran like guy yet. However, our consultant? Ohoho... he's a criminal psychology consultant is he (like Fei Du), his professor helped get him in with the cops (like fei du you say?), he's a bit of a little shit (!!!fei du?!!), he's got slightly longer hair (was that a character design choice or just how the actor looked, either way very Fei Du). And I find it all just a Touch funny. ToT (also I miss Justice in the Dark). It's not Actually like Luo wenzhou/fei du though, as these two don't seem yo know each other and therefore Luo hasn't raised him for like 7 years. The dynamic is therefore Way Different.

I almost get a touch of Guardian or Torchwood vibes and I'm not even quite sure why, cause this first episode was Not campy at all or comedic. It's fairly like Beyond Evil type, murder mystery procedural and a bit heavy. But mm just like... design choices I think. Not the writing, not the directing or sound, just like the sets. The sets look way less bizarre than guardian don't get me wrong. But something about certain choices In them. The touch of bright colors at the first murder scene. The odd pink light. The glowing globe on the desk. The room of papers on the wall and a big crane light. The weird dining table on the roof with a big outer building sign in neon across the street. The focus on the Nokia phones, the Lolipop. Just like... lots of small detail decisions but they strike me as Not quite usual, enough to make it not seem like The Bad Kids (and those kind of realistic shows) in set design. Maybe... a bit like Tomb of the Sea? How tots was mostly realistic looking but there'd be a fucking stuffed animal in a kidnapping living room. Little details you notice enough to oddly remember.

All that said? I Like the set designs a LOT. It feels like Watching a murder mystery novel. It's similar to Justice in the Dark in NAILING the right atmosphere, a good coloring gradient for realism but also Slightly distorted/unknown, in sets that look done enough to feel lived in and like actual places, and with the kind of unique small details a Real place might have (like a fake office might just have office stuff, but THIS Xue guys office has some unique knick knacks so it feels more like an actual place thay could exist, etc).

I'll probably give it more eps. It was my kinda thing. Didn't absolutely capture me in ep 1 but honestly I saw just enough familiar faces that I was partly playing guessing games of where they were from in my mind and so it'll probably take me a few eps to settle and just click or not with it

I loved it's opening and ending though and... usually if I like those 90% chance I like the shows

#desire catcher #lb #i like its vibe

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v171 · 10 months ago

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My year in books, 2023

2023 was a pretty good year as far as reading went. Was my lowest reading year for the past three years with the goal of finishing 40 books, and ending up finishing 45 (finished 50 last year), but that's okay. This happened to be a very good video gaming year, so reading took the backseat a bit. Watch me nerd out about my book stats below!

I like crunching some basic metrics around my reading each year, mixing some stuff from Goodreads, TheStoryGraph, and some of my own calculations. Let's start with the basics.

God The Priory of the Orange Tree was the first book I read last year, and it feels like forever ago. I really did try to get to the prequel this year, but it fell through the cracks!

Otessa Moshfegh has quickly become one of my favorite authors. I can't wait to read her entire backlog of works. And of course I stan Ann Leckie, I'll always read whatever she puts out. Was so thankful to get to read an advance copy of a short story collection she has coming out.

Man I read a lot of sci fi this year. Usually sci fi and fantasy are a bit more balanced, but I read some really good sci fi this year, so I was stuck on it. Notably, I didn't read any nonfiction, romance, or thrillers the whole year. I usually get a couple of those in.

My book ratings look pretty good for 2023, lots of 4 stars and few 2s and 3s. Standard disclaimer, I usually stop reading books that I really don't like, so I generally don't have many one-star reviews because I just stop reading them and I don't rate books that I don't finish.

This is interesting, because in previous years, I didn't really read any ebooks ever. What changed this year was that I got on Netgalley, a site where you can read advance copies of books to provide feedback to publishers before the books release, and they generally provide an ebook for you to read. Extra surprising that I read more that way than audiobooks, which have been on a slow decline given the fact that I don't do a ton of activities that can be paired with listening to a book these days.

I read at least one science fiction book for six months out of the year. Actually pretty surprised to see so much Historical Fiction on here as well as I don't really like that genre.

Damn, I sound like a broken record, but this makes it clear how much I really enjoyed science fiction 13 of the 16 sci fi books I read got a 4 or 5 star. Surprising to see that contemporary fiction got mainly middling ratings, that's generally my second favorite genre. I know I read a lot of fantasy, but I don't actually tend to love a lot of it lol. But this looks like a successful fantasy year as far as ratings go.

Man, 100-200 page books had it rough this year. This is interesting to me, I think the 300-400 range is my ideal, and while it had a similar number of 4/5 star ratings as the 400-500 range, it obviously had some duds in there too. But I'm surprised to see how much I seemed to enjoy the really long books, usually I start to get pretty bored at the 450 page mark.

This is one of my favorite graphs because it shows the months where I rush to finish short books so I can keep up with my reading goal of the year. July seems to be particularly egregious with reading 5 books but not even reading 1000 pages total. I always start the year with the long books...

This is a new metric for me, I decided to compare my rating of books with their average rating on goodreads to see how much I generally agreed/disagreed with the average. This was honestly probably not the best year to do this as I mentioned before, I read a lot of ARCs (advanced reader copies) meaning they have few to no ratings, so my ratings of them skewed the average quite a bit, throwing this whole thing into question (I didn't record number of ratings so I couldn't put in error bars, and I'm lazy and don't know stats that much). Anyway, in this graph, the size of the bubble indicates the number of books I read at that rating during the year, so you can see the 1 star bubble is small because I didn't read a ton of books I rated 1 star. This is such an interesting pattern though, my 1 star books aren't the lowest average, but they're pretty low, but my 5 star books are definitely the best. But the 2-4 star books are a bit all over the place. I'm interested to see how this will map over time when I throw in some of the previous years in

Anyway, that's all I have. I'm going to bump up my goal back to 50 this year, hopefully I can tackle it. I'm hoping to get involved in some book clubs as well, so I hope that'll keep me honest. I don't think people actually care about these posts, but keep an eye out for some more bookish posts soon as I dive into some of the notable reads of last year. To end, here's all of the books I read in 2023

#books #my year in books #reading

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card-queen · 2 months ago

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Writer Interview game

Tagged by @dithorba over here!

When did you start writing? - I can't really remember a time when I wasn't reading, writing or drawing. I remember a bit step for me was writing out the introduction for my Inazuma Eleven fan team. I had fun putting together the team's origin and making sure everyone got a spot. But I as for writing in earnest and wanting to/believing I could make something of it, that was only in the last few years after lots and lots of reading & studying.

Are there different themes or genres you enjoy reading than what you write? - I love spy fiction and horror that plays mind games. I like stories about messed up people that figure things out in the end. Most of all, I think, I like the heroes that persevere through it all and despite everything, the best part of them is still in tact.

Is there a writer you want to emulate or get compared to often? - I don't think so. I don't think anyone compares my writing or style to anyone else and I don't want to be like anyone else. I really just want to be me the whole way through.

Can you tell me a bit about your writing space? - Noise-cancelling headphones and access to my playlists of hand-picked tracked, mainly from video games, that put me in the zone to write that kind of scene. I've got folders for scenes of wonder, anguish, tension, action, battles, etc. It helps me be in the moment and they're usually from games that captured that moment so well, so it helps!

What’s your most effective way to muster up a muse? - Reading/watching bad things. Even video essays on things I don't like. Something about being really annoyed when you're reading something that goes off a cliff or seeing the faults of a project being laid out really gets my mind going. The worst feeling something can give me is apathy.

Are there any recurring themes in your writing? Do they surprise you? - Let's see... I kinda noticed a pattern of messed up siblings who are vehemently opposed but totally in-sync, to the confusion of everyone else. There is often a theme of twisted love, where it skews into obsession, overprotection or other stuff that is no longer love. Different (plausible) perspectives to events that shape peoples' views. It's all a bit vague but I'm sure some big-brain out there could spot a whole bunch of thematic similarities in what I do!

What is your reason for writing? - Because no one else is doing what I want to see!!! I want MY brand of fantasy, MY style of mystery and I'm not getting it anywhere else so I might as well!

What do you feel is your greatest strength as a writer? - My reliance on analysis. That sounds weird but hear me out! I am not smart, not by a long shot and I am not an analytical person at all!

BUT... I have learned to take things apart and understand the inner workings of them. A character who experiences X would behave in Y way and so to get more oomph out of their scenes, we sprinkle in some Z or pair them up with A. Because I break things down to such a ridiculous degree, I can better write their dialogue, understand motivations, plot out twists and schemes, and time it all just right!

I am also... terminally obsessed with making timelines for my events. Be it year-by-year or hour-by-hour. I will NOT be caught unawares by time paradoxes!!!

How do you feel about your own writing? - Some days, I feel good and some days I feel bad. Whenever I feel bad, I end up reading what I've written and then I feel good again! I cater to my own wants as a reader, which makes me doubt if there's widespread appeal at times but... I'm not making it with widespread appeal in mind. That kind of thinking makes paint-by-numbers, safe, approved by committee stuff that I don't care for. I'm carving my own path that does interest me, and maybe it interests some others too. By make no mistake: I like my writing because I am my own #1 fan.

Time to find some victims... Tagging @noisette-tornade, @vellatra, @reneethegreatandpowerful, @albicantknight, @merwetketet aaand anyone else that sees this and writes. Honestly, if you see this and don't join in, I will hunt you for sport. Be brave!

#writeblr #ask game #writer interview

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