#but I hate this character for obvious reasons

[isaacsapphire]

I didn’t say “houses” I said “housing” which means apartment buildings, complexes, and HOA small plot water system workarounds in towns without public water and sewer as well as 3k square foot 3 acre plot setback single family residences. I’m extremely done with the constant blend of deliberate stupidity and disingenuousness around housing.

Are you in favor of gentrification? Or bulldozing bird, etc habitat, draining wetlands? Building houses in a park or a former “open space”? Destroying “Neighborhood character”? Tanking the property values of your constituents? Mandating a town to increase property taxes (forcing fixed income residents to leave their community) to build an addition to the school? Building housing that is equivalent to legacy housing of a century ago but isn’t up to modern EnergyStar, etc standards or built by enough women, ethnic minorities, veterans, and locals with free range organic materials? Building apartments over Costcos? Trailer parks? Moving in poor/non-White residents into wealthy neighborhoods, regardless of if reds or blues control the area?

Like, everyone objects to some part of this. Democrats HATE building housing, at least as much as Republicans if not more, and pretending that they don’t is just gaslighting.

The reasons nobody wants to reduce the population is because they like old people (the most reliable voters and statistically conservative), immigrants/refugees (statistically liberal voters And cheap labor/tolerate worse housing, so win-win), low income people (pretty much ditto), high income people (taxpayers, political donors), children (worst net tax recipients but The Future, parents like them, teachers union and other powerful provider interest groups depend on them existing) and I can keep at this, but almost every category of people that could be reduced have their political shooters because they benefit at least one faction by existing in the area.

The other option is to “reduce demand” by making people not want to live in an area, but that all works out to making it suck there via the local job market collapsing or allowing violence to run rampant or poisoning the public water supply or something like that that of course most people don’t like.

I initially listed out the reasons literally nobody likes each option and removed it for length because I thought it was so obvious, but I really gotta remember that PT Barnum was right.

Like, the housing crisis exists because it’s a hard problem that there’s insufficient political will to solve, and that’s almost tautological.

The easy problems are already solved; if you look at a major problem and conclude that it is easy to solve, you’re missing something.

@waystatus you want to legally compel people to have roommates? Interesting idea but both occupancy levels are currently legally restricted in most municipalities, and trying to mandate eg. Empty nesters take in borders would lead to new third amendment case law.

personally i think you should be able to afford a place to live with a part-time job

[falling-star-cygnus]

Gabias prompt for you

I’d love to read how you think Tobias would process Gabin coming down with a nasty flu or other semi-serious sickness that knocks him out of showing up to the studio for a bit

ooooh, okay okay okay -> this one was a bit harder for me, because Tobias is my favorite and i love putting him in situations, but i think i got something good for y'all <3 <3 <3

thank you SO much for the request! ao3 fic: here ↑ please leave a comment or reblog if you enjoyed!!!

SUMMARY: Gabin is late. Very, very late. And Tobias doesn't... know why. Had he gotten arrested again? Did he miss a text? Again?

No.. so where was he? Why didn't anybody ever tell him what was going on?

+=+=+

Rehearsal should’ve started five minutes ago. 

Should’ve, but wasn’t going to. Not until all his dancers were in a row. Wait- no, that’s the other saying. Ducks in a row. 

Still technically applicable though, considering how often he’d turn around and find one of them right on his heels. Like baby ducklings looking for instruction. Seriously, what is with the lack of personal bubbles here? 

All of them were stretching, all in various stages of conversation. Probably.

Tobias couldn’t hear them. 

He was sitting on his stool, perfectly set to survey the entire room, with his headphones snug over his ears- tapping a 2/4 beat into the crook of his arm. 

Rehearsals should’ve started five minutes ago… 

One two. Lula and Tristan. 

One two. Mishi and the blonde who was always smiling.

One.. a guy who always wore blue for some reason and… 

What? 

One two. Mishi and Lula

One two. Tristan and the guy who always wore blue.

One- the blonde that was always smiling. 

No two.

He stops tapping.

Immediately, his dancers snap to attention. It’d be impressive in different circumstances, how quickly they got into position. Praise-worthy even. But these weren’t different circumstances, and Gabin was missing.

That was more obvious now, as Tobias weaves between the almost perfectly poised bodies waiting for him to start the music. He would not be starting the music. 

Not until he knew where the hell Gabin was.

He promised-

Someone touches his shoulder gently- barely a rest at all. 

bad. bad badbadbad-

Tobias turns sharply on whoever the fuck-

It’s the blonde, and she takes her hand off the second Mishi starts gesturing at her. Almost as if he’d burned her and not the other way around. Their mouths are moving, so there’s probably words being exchanged. Words he should hear.

The comforting weight of his headphones around his neck does little to settle him. 

Especially when sound erupts all around, all at once, like coming out from under the peaceful depths of a lake into the cacophony of kids throwing rocks at innocent fish.

“-never do that,” Mishi is saying, in her quiet voice with her long arms in a sort of X position, “He hates that-”

…she’s gotten louder.. much louder than she was in New York.

Good for her. Seems like Paris was giving everybody character development. 

“Oh- sorry, Tobias, I didn’t- I didn’t know,” the blonde dips her head- fingers wringing together. “Gabin does that all the time-”

“Did you need something?” the choreographer cuts in, because he does not want to go down that rabbit hole in front of five other people. He just wants to know where his lead is. 

No- this was a different ballet. Gabin wasn’t the lead in this one. 

But where was he? 

“...no,” she says, and looks back towards the dawdling dancers, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, why wouldn’t I be fine? Where the hell is Gabin?”

There it is. Their reaction is instantaneous. All at once, the dancers seem to lose their tension- dolls cut from invisible thread. What was that about? That was weird. 

He can feel his frustration mounting at the thought of another thing being kept from him. And he checked his phone this time, so he knows no one messaged him.

bzzt.

“Did he get arrested again?” Tobias would prefer if they’d just tell him these things as soon as they happened. Then he could figure it out faster. Bail him out again.

Even though Gabin promised that-

The dancers immediately jump in all at once- in a myriad of “NO!”’s that layered wrongly in his ears. But it was also a relief, on some front. There was a different reason then. 

It better be a damn good one-

Tristan speaks up next, “We don’t know where he is.” stop talking. 

“But-!” Lula jumps in, surprisingly, just before Tobias can snap something he probably wouldn’t mean after he’s calmed down, “Genevieve might. She knows all about him, doesn’t she?”

They all seem to hold their breath. 

One. Two.

One. Two.

One..

Tobias puts his headphones back on and leaves.

“Is he… is he coming back?” the guy always in blue finally speaks up.

…rehearsal should’ve started ten minutes ago.

+=+=+

If people could stop ignoring Lucien when he tells them that she was busy, Geneviève would find it lovely.

Sometimes all a lady wants to do is lie on her floor, with her heels [death traps] thrown to the side and listen to her music. Was that too much to ask for?

Alas, clearly it had to be.

“Tobias, what do you mean Gabin isn’t in rehearsal?” she asks, so so so patiently as she sits up. 

So patiently, in fact, that she should get a reward for it. A little treat for all her hard work in keeping her ballet alive and functioning. Maybe she'd get a pastry on the way home..

"I mean he's not there. Where is he?" but first..

"I don't know, I'm not his keeper. Have you checked your phone?"

Of course he hadn't, and wouldn't, obviously she knew that. But- well.. maybe if she told him enough times he'd get into the habit of it. Seriously, it was always so hard to-

...get ahold of him.

Geneviève felt her entire train of thought derail at the sight of Tobias digging around in his pocket. There was no way- no way the thing that finally got him to check the damn thing was-

No.

She will not let another New Yorker steal away one of her dancers, no- ...but they were also kind of cute together.. ugh... No. Not again.

No.

"There, see? No messages, no emails, and no calls," Tobias says, even turning his screen around to show her.

...huh.

Well, that was odd.

And not just the truly massive amount of unread messages he's got either, but the fact that there's indeed not a single one from Gabin. Do they even have each other's numbers?

They had to, right?

"I'm sure it's nothing serious," Geneviève tries, when it's getting clearer to her that the lack of a clue is getting to her borrowed choreographer, "Call him."

His face does a weird- thing.

"Or text him," this man, she swears, is so helpless. It's almost endearing in a sort of.. three legged puppy way.

And Tobias does just that. He comes over to where the director is still on the ground and almost... folds into himself- if that could be said. Like a flower that closes in the sun.

....brrring... ..brriinnng.... .....bbrriiinng-

The call falls through. The office falls quiet, just for a second.

"He hung up."

"Oh, how can you possibly tell!?"

Sure, that last ring was cut off rather abrupty- but there was no way he could-

"A call always rings four times, that's 30 seconds, before it automatically goes to voicemail." Tobias shakes his head like that wasn't absolutely insane to know, "He hung up."

Well alright then.

“I didn’t even know you could hang up before answering.” she idles, because really- what else is there to say?

“Help me.”

And really, what else is there to do?

+=+=+

In the end, Tobias has to go back to rehearsal. 

He had to last time too, when there was truly nothing he could do but wait for Gabin to be processed. But unlike then, now the dancer was just at his house.

Hopefully just at his house and not- collapsed in an alley somewhere. He wouldn’t be, obviously, obviously he would be at his house resting and not-

Not trying to get here anyway.

No.

Gabin wouldn’t do that.

Right?

Genevieve had finally gotten a hold of the dancer after almost a million calls. Well- ten calls, he’d counted, but exaggeration was also a skill he was lacking in. Sure, sure he was dramatic at times- but why exaggerate an exact number? That didn’t make any sense. 

One two, three four, five…

The blonde, Tristan, the guy in blue, Mishi, Lula… 

bzzt.

Tobias has never pulled out his phone faster.

…six..

Gabin: i can feelyou freaking out from all the way over here Top Gun. yes im resting in my house. no i am not ~unconscious~ somewhere Gabin: focus on your dancers now ;) i will be back tomorrow, or at the absolute worst- friday 

It was Tuesday.

He can practically hear the dancer’s silly tone between the tildes, the same one he used when he compared that critic to god, and he can see his gestures as clear as he can visualize his ballets.

Or visualize in general when he thinks about his- … his… he doesn’t know what they are. They haven’t talked about it.

But they’re something. Something real that Tobias wants to fold up and keep somewhere in his pocket, or maybe under his skin. Maybe in his ribcage where his heart [that he’s been told doesn’t exist on so many occasions, but that he knows is there. That has to be there-] hides. 

There are only five minutes left in rehearsal. 

His dancers, the five of them present, are entering the final stage of the dance- which is still wonky and not very polished and- you know what? He’s going to change it. 

Whatever he had chosen before isn’t working anymore, or maybe it just looks wrong without Gabin there.

He's changing it. 

Tobias tells the dancers to stop.

Nothing very interesting happens after that.

+=+=+

Tobias: how do you take care of a sick person? Jack: . . . Jack: Your NY dancers have been trying to reach you for a week, and this is what you ask me? Tobias: fine, ill ask geneviève if you're not going to help me Jack: Wait no- Jack: Here's what you do...

+=+=+

"You are like a helpless baby bird!" "Thank you, Cheyenne! Now that we've cleared that up, please just tell me how to use your awful transportation system."

+=+=+

Until..

Wow, Gabin wasn't kidding about his neighborhood. At all.

Tobias keeps his headphones over his ears- but he doesn't play any music through them, just in case he misses any approaching or echoing footsteps.

Little rat paws scurry over broken glass.

It almost feels like he's back in school, actually, under judgmental leers and grasping hands and-

The shudder down his spine rattles the plastic bag hanging from his wrist- makes his fingers clench in his pocket. Just a few more blocks.

Just.. a few more.

Hopefully. Unless he was devastatingly lost again.

Thankfully, and Tobias cannot stress that enough, thankfully that doesn't seem to be the case. Gabin's house is right where Google Maps leads him.

knock, knock

...silence.

That made sense, the lack of a response, because the dancer was probably just sleeping and thus couldn't hear him. Good. That was.. good. Rest was important when-

creeeeeaak

. . .

knock knock knockkncockknock-

Let him in, let himin, lethimin-

"Adam, I swear to god, if you're here to- Tobias?" the rough door gives way to slightly damp fabric, and the choreographer pulls his hand away immediately.

Was his chest always that firm..?

Gabin's voice is hoarse, almost choked from his sickness, but his grip isn't any less firm when he pulls Tobias inside and shoves his shaking finger into his chest- setting a rock onto the table by his door, "What are you- cough doing here?"

Wheezy breaths break up the sentence at demanding intervals, before he's pulling away entirely to hack into elbow like a squeaky toy. Something twinges tight under his ribs.

"Why did you just answer your door with the rock..?"

"How- cough how did you find you find where I live?"

Alright, seems like neither of them were answering each others questions. Okay. He can work with that. Maybe.

All Tobias can really do is carefully pat between his shoulder blades, hoping that maybe it would help. Just a little.

And shit, his back was just as firm as his chest. No- no, not the time.

Focus.

"Geneviève told me," he easily admits, because he doesn't have any real reason to hide it, "...are you.. feeling okay?"

What the actual hell was he saying. Okay, in his defense, he's never... done this before. At least, he's never done it right- comforted someone else.

This was hard. Much harder than TV shows made it out to be.

Okay.

When Gabin's coughs finally subside, he looks a little startled to find himself sat on the nearest available chair looking surface.

And then almost impressively angry. For a sick man.

Shit.

"Do you have any idea how dangerous it was for you to come here by yourself?" the dancer hisses, and- what? "What if you had gotten attacked, hm? That would be on my head, Tobias!"

"You didn't show up to rehearsal-"

"Oh, of course! Rehearsal! That is what it always comes back to, isn't it?"

...my meaning is never clear..

"Stop talking, you're going to make your throat worse."

Why couldn't he ever say what he meant.

Tobias digs around in the plastic bag still on his wrist, quickly finding the bottle of water he'd grabbed and twisting it loose. Whenever he was sick, it was always impossible to get them open himself.

Gabin's fever hazy eyes dip down to the choreographer's arms as he hands it over- almost appreciative or almost reverant. Somewhere between the two.

"...you were worried.. about me?" the dancer clarifies, sounding far too deep in disbelief. Like it was some unbelievable concept.

Maybe it was, on some level.

Tobias only shrugs, "I thought you might've gotten arrested again."

"I- no. I promised you, did I not?"

Warmth, a kind new and scary and so so nice, unfurls somewhere under his battered sternum- replacing the tight clench of inadequacy with soothing pulses of- ...of..

What they were may not be clearly defined yet, but it was something. Something that had to be carefully handled. Even if it were handled by people who didn't know the first thing about 'being careful.'

"Uh- I got you some things," Tobias says, once the air becomes too heavy to bear much longer, "Here."

The choreographer hands the whole bag over to Gabin. It wasn't anything entirely special, not even close, but Jack had said these sort of things were essential. Especially if you wanted to show someone you cared.

And he did. So much.

Fever reducers, water, vitamins, tea packets.. the basics. Along with something he-

"Thank you, Tobias," Gabin says, so so softly as he pulls a bandana adorned with sunflowers from the depth of the bag. Reverently, like the cheap thing was something to be treasured.

Maybe.. to him it was. Maybe Tobias could be too, one day.

"...you're welcome, Gabin."

If the dancer wore the thing to rehearsal the next day, back in almost perfect health, well... no one had to know where he got it.

[0o-junebug-o0]

About Interstellar Song Contest: (spoilers and analysis below the cut)

I’ve seen a bunch of people really digging into this episode on Twitter and I agree, but only to an extent. The torture scene was horrible and unnecessary and Belinda should have had way more of a reaction to the Doctor’s actions than saying he scared her (and definitely should have told him he’s wonderful so soon after).

This tweet encompasses my thoughts on her response.

Also, I really hope we see him get consequences in future episodes for it (especially along the lines of how they did it in waters of mars). And I think (please be the case) that there might me some coming bc of the Doctor saying the ice in his heart was still there. I feel like including that line sets up for further discussion and exploration into the Doctors dark side and moral ambiguity and the consequences of it. It wouldn’t make sense narratively to include that line (which seems to be very obvious foreshadowing) and then go no where.

In regards to the Doctors actions, they are wrong, there’s no doubt about it. But people are portraying it as him knowingly punishing Kid for his response to the genocide of his people. But the Doctor didn’t know about Hellia, Cora only told Belinda. He had no way to know, he thought this was just a guy who wanted to kill 3 trillion people, he didn’t know what had happened to radicalize him. The Doctor is also a victim of genocide and he probably saw it as (bc of his lack of knowledge of Kids background and situation) Kid being about to commit another one (which he was). He literally said it reminded him of Gallifrey.

This is also a timing issue with the episode. Because we just had the scene of their situation being explained to Belinda. Which makes us sympathetic to them (as we should be) followed by /that/ scene. So people forget the Doctor doesn’t know.

A lot of people were also mad about the singing at the end and felt it kind of trivialized everything and while I understand that. I don’t really agree. It shows that the first step in fighting this kind of stuff is humanizing the victims because people don’t care about people they don’t see as human (or whatever they may be in doctor who).

The timing of this episode is also poor but a quick google search will show that filming began for this season in October 2023 and so the episode was most likely written before Oct 7.

There’s a very good and nuanced discussion to be had about this episode and what it both fails and succeeds at doing, and I feel like people are seeing this in a very black and white way. I’m seeing people say that the episode is spreading the message that ‘if we don’t eradicate/stop them they will do something worse’ (paraphrased) and I think that’s just not the case and while I understand where people get that impression I feel like it is a bit of a ridiculous interpretation and ignores a lot of nuance and Cora’s character. It’s totally understandable and right to fight back against the company and the perpetrators of genocide and it is understandable for the victims to want to get revenge in the same violent manner, but that just can’t be allowed. It is also an ineffective way of fighting back bc that just gives the oppressor more “reason” to oppress. They can point and say, “look what just happened, this is why we’re doing this.” By trying to get revenge in this way, Kid is becoming what he hates.

These are just my quickly thrown together thoughts. Hope this makes sense.

Free Palestine 🇵🇸

Edit:

Another thing I thought of is how it could be a commentary about how our actions and inactions lead to extremism. For example, in his letters Bin Laden said the motivation for 9/11 was the West’s support for attacking and oppressing Muslims and the US interference in the Middle East and imperialist aggressions against the ‘Muslim world’.

[artgletic]

case study of the self-identified god

[myimaginationplain]

jayvik shippers PLEASE be normal about Mel & Sky challenge, part 2, difficulty rating: (impossible)

[vice-like]

yk re-reading natsume after knowing abt matoba's cat autism makes him sound SO different in my head lol he asks abt nyanko-sensei constantly it almost feels like he's more interested in sensei than natsume

[pseudophan]

extremely important question do any buffy fans here actually like angel (the series not the character) because i swear all i see lately is people saying it sucks and they couldn't get through it and it's like you can't ALL be that wrong

[liriostigre]

💌

[tytoalbatross]

god damn i do not post often but can i talk about intentionality for a second?? one second please

i'm gonna be talking about bg3 but this really applies to any fandom space. people will, surface-level, agree that a Black character is not getting enough content compared to their white counterparts because it's. obvious . take wyll, who is several hours behind on voiced lines compared to other origins despite being one of the original five (before they added karlach and whiteified her too but that's another post). it's hard to deny cold hard facts

but then instead of engaging in content that uplifts Black characters and creators, they'll go right back to pumping out more and more content of just their white faves. on its own, it's not actively harmful, but here's what the implication is, whether they acknowledge it or not: yes wyll has less in-game content, yes his writing didn't get the attention it deserved, therefore i don't like him as much. it only perpetuates wyll's lack of content by contributing to his sidelining in fandom spaces

what i would love for fans who claim to be allies to do is to step out of the comfort zone of their initial favorites (which can, in fact, be biased!) and start pursuing content centering Black characters with intentionality. like all things, anti-racism (actively pushing back against racism rather than simply "Not Being Racist") takes practice and effort. you can't really agree with us that wyll needs more content, then in the same breath say that it's because of that that he's not interesting to you . the point was right in front of you doing a jig and you still missed it

[chiangyorange]

hey why s2 got the messiest worstest terrible awful fucked up compelling tangled dirty filthy complex nasty ass family drama ever. mianite was killed by his father using his mother's sword. how fucked up is that. hey do you know how fucked up that is. hey. hey wake up h

[musicalmoritz]

Defending Hakubo online isn’t enough, I need boxing gloves

[faceeeeee]

Your fav characters from TPOT/BFDI?

I honestly like most characters except for some but if I had to pick my top 3 it would definitely be these guys

[muchmossymess]

i think its interesting how nines mechanical tails wrap around his real tails, hiding them and creating the illusion of just one tail

[flying-cat]

I'm stealing a tweet but what are your media literacy check characters

[br1ghtestlight]

oj in season four when he meets the 500 paper alts mephone made for the auditions <3

[karaspal]

you guys ever just see a live action adaptation of your favourite superhero and go “this isn’t MY guy”? like, to a point where when other characters would refer to them by name, it would be so unnatural to you because who the fuck even are you, you’re not him!!!