#but also i did start on S10 and

[psalmsofpsychosis]

by gods, for all that i fucking hated the second half of season 9 and had been hating Fiona's characterization since season 5 basically, her leaving doesn't get easier even if you watch the scenes 50 fucking times

[birddcandle]

hermit portraits of Joe, Jevin, and Joel

[clumsycapitolunicorn]

.

[fortes-fortuna-iogurtum]

man I really would love to see an (explicitly) religious companion on Doctor Who. esp one who's written in such a way as makes their faith relevant to the storylines and challenges and tests it but ultimately remains respectful and keeps the theme of it relevant within the specific science fiction setting that Doctor Who occupies. I personally just think that would be great.

[flugame-mp3]

SEASON NINE FINALE WAS WILD. I HAVE MANY MANY THOUGHTS. WHAT JUST HAPPENED. A FUCKING ROLLER COASTER FOR SURE

[fceriestcrdst]

my autistic ass avoided watching the x-files because i knew it would consume me....

& now here i am fully consumed even though I've only watched the first few handful of episodes of s1 (i'm regaining spoons needed for media consumption), but let me tell you w h a t!!!!!!!!!!!!! i was so excited i started crying because it combines unbridled pining, a skeptic & her believer husband partner, true crime, weird mythology, aliens (which i already knew abt obvi), unlikely besties who are prepared to square up at all times (re; scully being cold towards the agents mocking mulder & mulder being ready to fight g o d whenever anything happens to scully).

i just love the show a lot & i expected this but goddamn!!!!!! it's wormed into my spin category & now my alien spin is returning along with my 'unexplained happenings spin!!!!! i'm being consumed i tell you!!!!

[notscarsafe]

OKAY SO what with the TWO new Hermits implied by the updated banner I will say that, though the Skizz truthers have me convinced, I now have room to do my own crazy red string monologue and throw my hat in for my choice

1) Mythical J. Sausage (the J is silent) is a multitalented S-tier builder that absolutely deserves to be shoulder to shoulder with the Hermits. The man does buildings, interiors, terraforming, custom trees, and he does them SO WELL.

2) The production values!!! Beautiful replay mod sequences with shifting camera perspectives, shaders, music that sets the tone for each segment that's different from series to series. He already has more than a million followers on YouTube and for good reason!!

3) He has been SO consistent lately. He started a hardcore world about three months ago (about the time you might expect the Hermits to finalize their s10 choices maybe...???) and already has 15 episodes and hasn't gotten involved in any other big content. (He did just start playing a little of the BCG server but from what I understand that's super casual /copium copium copium).

4) That hardcore world is conveniently about to reach a good "pause" point. He started his world on a cherry blossom biome island that he's filled with a medieval village and starter farms, he's said it's almost full and what's left is the castle. I'm guessing the new season will start the first week of February, so if Sausage puts out a video this week building out that Castle and finishing that island it will be MIGHTY CONVENIENT TIMING.

5) This man can GRIND. His Hardcore world hasn't even been going half a year and he's built... So much??? Magnificent! And when he was on the Hermitcraft server he did the Razorcrest for scar AND the player head baby yoda/stormtrooper merch AND the noteblock themesong AND still built in the xmas village and other "diamond of peace" and so many other shenanigans. Did the man even sleep? He can grind with the best of them.

6) He can do redstone, too! Maybe not unique designs, I honestly don't know, but he builds farms for build materials no problem.

7) The DRAMA this man loves his improv and his backstory and trauma lore! For every series he does! Can you imagine if he gets to interact with Ren for an extended period of time, what that would do to them, to us?? Give Martyn a run for his money!!

8) Which brings me to my next point, which is that Sausage is already One of The Gang, because he's been in series with so many of the Hermits already! Empires and the crossover, obviously, but also Pirates with Cleo and Origins with Scar, and he's even done MCC! Joel is the only other player with the same depth of different series but there are other people truthing him already.

9) The EPIC BROMANCE with Pearl. My god the devotion of this man to his sunflower goddess bestie. I would try to do ot justice but y'all have seen floweroflaurelins work, you already know.

10) He's already a PG streamer but with HILARIOUSLY PG-13 tendencies. Imagine him and Cleo cracking each other up at an HHH stream, *grips your shoulders* IMAGINE IT.

11) Sausage comes with his own mascot in the form of interdimensional dog extraordinaire Bubbles, but he's also just an animal lover on general. Mans drinks his "I love Jellie" juice and had her in his world even before the sad news of her loss.

12) Diversity win! No one should be hired just for their gender, race, sexuality etc etc unless it's truly necessary to the job, but we were all happy when more women got added to the server in s8 and I know a lot of people would be happy to see some ethnic diversity added, too.

... That bulletin board had a lot more pins in it than I thought it did but anyway MYTHICALSAUSAGE TRUTHERS/ALL OTHER TRUTHERS RISE UP SPEAK YOUR TRUTH! we'll only get to wildly speculate for a few weeks so we might as well make it everyone else's problem ENJOY IT TO THE FULLEST!!

[chiisana-sukima]

nine people i want to get to know better

Thank you for the tag, @slutsons-blog! Starting a new post because I'm autistic and therefore mostly only care about the "Current Obsession" question, and want to ramble excessively as usual in that one.

Last song: Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Red Rescue Team: Pokemon Square because I'm currently playing Pokemon Mystery Dungeon with my daughter. Otherwise I honestly couldn't tell you. Whatever was on in my car.

Fave color: Purple

Currently watching: Star Trek Discovery

Last movie: Knives Out

Sweet/spicy/savory: Sweet, tart, salty

Relationship: married x 27 years

Last thing I googled: the word "dependent", for spelling assistance. which is a good thing because I spelled it "dependant".

Current Obsession: it's been spn since 2016. Truly we are the Hotel California of media franchises. I did recently play Disco Elysium twice in a row in quick succession, and I follow the DE tag. I can't recommend the game highly enough.... but I can feel my Special Interest-level obsession with it fading already. Spn has never faded even a tiny bit and I wonder if it ever will.

@slutsons-blog I feel after reading that you're watching spn for the first time, that I did you a bit of a disservice with my Sam takes to you before in that I mostly talked about Sam's evolution as a character as the show goes on and very little about him from the first five seasons.

Gotta be honest and tell you that although I liked both brothers all along, I was a Dean girl until the end of s6/beginning of s7, when the balance of who gets whumped the most started shifting and my subconscious suddenly decided to switch allegiances. It's not that I liked Dean any less; my id just loves a sopping wet pathetic kitten of a man who has been sexually abused, and Sam got suddenly way more kitteny and pathetic after the Cage. So I don't actually have a ton of takes on "what to love about Sam in the early seasons". I do love early seasons Sam too--she is my beautiful baby princess--but my early seasons takes are a lot more inchoate.

I count myself lucky about my id's sudden defection though, because I think we have limited control of who our blorbos are, and having Dean as a blorbo is a tough row to hoe as the later seasons go along. You know how you noticed that in s6, Dean suddenly gets a lot more assholey without apparent reason? Unfortunately he never gets better again, and in fact keeps getting worse and worse as the years go by, until by the last seasons he is openly far more abusive to their joint child(-in-an-adult body) than John was to him and Sam. It's a realistic picture of what can happen when trauma keeps piling up on people, but it's also honestly pretty distressing, especially if he's your blorbo.

If one is in it for the ship, there's some good destiel content in the later seasons, but if you're in it for Dean, you're left either 1) dealing with the fact he's got extremely significant interpersonal problems that he never gets much of anywhere on solving and that negatively impact his chosen family in profound ways, or 2) pretending he's the same character he was in s1 and Sam is the same Sam from s1, only more boring, and Dean is just trying to put up with him because he was brainwashed by John (or ig 3- something in the middle between those two. But that seldom seems to happen in practice for whatever reason). These two versions of the show are poorly compatible, and that's how the Sam girls and the Dean girls end up in isolated silos. A few people manage to live in both, but not many.

Anyway, I feel like without the context of how Sam and Dean change in the mid to late seasons, the two fics I recc'd as Sam character studies are going to seem insanely Dean-critical, so if you haven't read them yet, you might want to wait until s10. In the meantime, the general recs are fun reads and hopefully do a good job of showcasing both characters earlier on.

Tagging (but I would be a huge hypocrite if I didn't specify there's no pressure to respond, since I almost always fail at responding to tag games myself): @adihildilid @aliusfrater @quietwingsinthesky @sammygender @ardentpoop

@peanutbutterandbananasandwichs @schizosamwincester @normalbrothershow @jellybracelet.

[keen-eye]

Do you have any Wincest headcanons?

would you call these headcanons? idk, but the only wincest that i'm interested in and believe would fit into canon would be this (long post):

it wouldn't be a normal relationship like they're just regular boyfriends. they are brothers first and foremost with a toxic, power imbalanced relationship and have spent their entire lives in each other's pockets

it would be one-sided with dean being as obsessive and possessive over sam as he is in the show (expanded on below). ultimately dean’s main desire has always been to own sam, mind, body, and soul, so to me it works whether he’s physically attracted to sam or not

they wouldn't have sex often and it wouldn't be just for the sake of it (unless dean really needed it). it would be about control and during times of intense drama. and also sam’s libido went way down as the seasons went on. on that, i can't imagine dean ever being okay with being a sub or a bottom with sam. how they are with women would have no bearing on how they'd be with each other. dean is the poster boy of toxic masculinity, he would consider bottoming with a man, especially sam, to be the most emasculating thing ever. and i don't think sam would ask him to

a concept i find interesting is heaven’s manipulation of their lives and sam & dean being soulmates. i would attribute some of it to them crossing that line but i don’t want to discredit sam & dean just Being Like That and how john raised them

i don't think they'd have any physical relationship before s3 (which i'll expand on), not as kids, not as teens. but i do think dean would have always had strong, passionate, and volatile emotions about anything sam related. i like the headcanon that dean knew mary was pregnant before she did and that he was obsessed with sam from then on. i think it would be plausible for dean not to realize that he wanted sam in that way until after sam left for stanford. then that adds another layer onto dean stalking sam at stanford and him waiting nervously outside sam's dorm in the pilot after they hadn't talked for two years. i do think dean is a creep (pos) and felt entitled to sam for most of their lives but i don't think he'd try to coerce/force sam into anything (at least not until after s3)

a point in the show that i think a physical relationship could begin would be in s3 right before dean is about to go to hell for possibly eternity and sam finds out somehow that dean has felt that way about him for a long time. maybe a situation similar to when veritas the goddess of truth forced dean to admit that he thought about killing soulless sam in his sleep. or maybe dean admits to sam or sam picked up on it and has known for a while. even though sam does not reciprocate those types of feelings or attraction he still loves dean and wants to give dean this one thing that he wants before he dies to repay him for sacrificing his life for sam

it would lead well into s4, the turning point in their relationship where they've come out on the other side of it as different people and tension is very high between them. and it would add another layer to it especially with dean's mistrust and jealousy of ruby. i don't think they'd have sex at all during that season, and if they did it'd be only once and dubcon, not gentle like in s3. and then starting in s5 when sam feels extremely guilty and is desperate for redemption/forgiveness and approval from dean more than ever i can imagine sam attempting to use sex to reconnect with him again just to be denied because dean is still mad at him. but dean would eventually give in because he never stopped craving control over sam and so he uses it as a way to assert dominance like in s4, just with non-sexual tactics in the show. and then so on

as for another season where it could begin, maybe season 11 or really anytime after that (unfortunately that means demon dean is never involved but if it did happen in s10 then he would just straight up tell sam). they either slowly or all at once put the pieces together about exactly how weird they've always been about each other, about all of their jealousy of each other's friends/partners, how other people have described their relationship to them. this doesn't mean it has to be sexual, as it isn't in the show (well, depending on how you choose to look at it). but if it is, it's still mostly one-sided in the sense that dean has always seen sam as an extension of himself and sam no longer fights as hard against it because it's been beaten out of him by the later seasons by things external to and within his and dean's relationship (sam absolutely has stockholm syndrome). but i don't think sam would ever stop flipping back and forth between acceptance of their unique situation and guilt/disgust. i don't think dean would care as much. this is also when they're deeply entrenched in domesticity and already basically acting as a husband and wife. then adding jack into the mix makes that even more overt

chuck would have known, obviously. i can see him acting understanding when he was just chuck and then taunting them with it when he was an antagonist. lucifer would have known if it happened before the cage and maybe if they started in s11, great torture material. gadreel wouldn't care. but castiel would have known for a while and he'd be understanding. i can also get with cas being in love with dean but dean is solely focused on sam, as he is. it wouldn't be wincestiel because although i support sastiel shippers i like the special friendship that they have more

lastly, hot take, i can't imagine them calling each other "baby" or any other pet name. "sammy" fills that role already, and i don't like "de". also the impala is already "baby" (unless you want to get into sampala...)

sorry if you wanted cute headcanons or like actual scenarios lol. i'm probably not the right person to ask about fluff or anything more specific than this, i'm more interested in their existing dynamic that blurs that boundary. also sorry if you're really against canon dean's abusiveness towards sam you probably won't like this one bit

[omagpies]

No way! Another person who has spent way too much time on apex! Who's your main? I'm guessing BH but I don't want to assume. How did you feel about the BH/Fuse engagement? Do you have any heirlooms? Sorry, not very many people play apex on here.

Also, do you have any apex art? If not that's totally cool but I would love to see it!

you have activated my trap card!! many drawings ahead

my main is indeed bloodhound. i also whip out fuse, mirage, and to a lesser degree octane, but mostly i'm a one trick bloodhound. they were what got me into the game in the first place back in season 7 when i heard their 'i'm afraid of heights :(' voicelines (a cool hunter nonbinary character voiced by none other than allegra clark? sign me tf up), and even though i am Very Bad At Shooting and don't actually like battle royale-type games apex stayed my brainrot for over two years. the brainrot is definitely over now and these days i play it as a social thing, but that's how i acquired 2k+ hours lmao

also they released a magpiehound recolor called 'frosthaven' that i gleefully snatched up and have been wearing it ever since (ft the magpie holospray and the magpie mural on their latest map. i think they are catering to me specifically)

i am. truly Not Good. i am here just to clown and gossip and make poor life choices. my impulse control is too non existent for someone whose best skill is shooting a perfect outline around the enemy and not a bullet within

i had SO MUCH bloodhound art over on twitter good god. out of the following two drawings, the first one was bought out by allegra to sell as signed prints, and the second one was reposted onto apex's IG account, and in general this was the one time i genuinely had a blast on twitter interacting with all the devs and vas before everything went downhill both in respawn and on twitter lol. also i have to say, s10 and the whole White Raven thing fed me so. so so. SO well. the existential angst was incredible.

i participated in a couple of zines/projects as well! i have many thoughts about their canonical(!) respawn system and the resulting unimportance of death. adds to the existentialism and to bloodhound's religious themes

overall it was a very, very prolific period for me, and there are many pieces i'm still very happy with to this day

(^ the second to last one is a reference to the fusehound confession scene, and the last one is related to one of my fics, wooden bones (forest deity!bh au))

shipping!!! miragehound was my initial and most prominent ship, and i will never forgive respawn for not expanding on their backstory (their mothers worked together COME ON. they might have met as children! COME ON!!!!! i have a whole series exactly about the What Could Have Been)

their backstory with boone also fascinated me for a very long time, and my friends and i spent many a yap session dissing the dude until we stopped and thought, hey, what if he really was Just Some Guy who made mistakes, what if he wasn't evil, and that's what pulled me right back into the brainrot when i was already starting to slowly recover from it. boone now has a very elaborate backstory and lore and i hope to god respawn never puts him in the games the way we did because a) they don't GET him and b) i don't trust the fandom with him lmao. i'm super down to blabber about him though just say the word. he's everything to me, my big, sad, hairy man

we also invented in-game stuff for him. he had abilities and skins etc etc (the top row of skins is his titan pilot backstory + talos era + 'default' in-game skin)

this diptych still lives rent-free in my head, i think i really won with this one

where miragehound and boonehound flourished, mirageboonehound wasn't far behind! i wrote how it came to be and all. also Рorn. so much Рorn. seriously.

also this was the first time i redrew the twelfth night as my otp. the second one was mouthwashing

fusehound was an absolute delight to watch blossom, especially since we know it wasn't planned and just Kind Of Happened. i felt that lmao. characters be like that. i'm a bit sadge they shelved the whole talos plotline in favor of romance but at this point i gave up on expecting good lore from apex, especially after they fired herr frozenfroh. i didn't draw fusehound nearly as much, BUT i do have one fic that was basically a dream i had lol

honorable mention goes to revhound!! this is the ship that went really hard with artists and writers. deeply painful, deeply compelling, absolutely incredible. mindblowing angst and just as mindblowing рorn, together or separately. best shit. the one ship i didn't write for because compared to the fandom's behemoths i never felt like i'd be able to contribute anything meaningful lol, i just got to sit back and enjoy

bonus: as one of my friends eloquently put it, bh and their bhitches :)

i was going to put in more pictures but hit the 30 images limit!!! my twitter is now abandoned but if you scroll down just a little you can see all the stuff that didn't make it into this post.

apex and bloodhound also REALLY, REALLY got me writing. i came into the fandom already relatively warmed up after a 170k fire emblem fic, but i ended up writing 200k+ for miragehound, mirageboonehound, and fusehound combined. i was unstoppable. it was insane. i've linked some already but you can peep them all here. bloodhound's pov was especially fun to write for, purple prose my beloved

also you asked me about heirlooms! i'm a lucky motherfucker who managed to get one set of shards from the 500th box and another from just the random 0.4% chance. so i have bloodhound's and fuse's as they are my most played characters :)

[yaboiyaoihaisel]

Artober day 2, I pulled these lovely green and blue markers and didn't know what to do with them until a friend pointed out that they are the exact colors of Gem's outfit, so... here's Gem lol. (More ramblies below the cut)

I was genuinely so tempted to cheat and use a third sharpie to color her hair orange but I resisted! Day two is too early to be breaking my own rules lmao. In the past for Artober, I've always started with a solid rule set, then I break the rules bc "oh it's just for fun I can add another color" and then it spirals out of control and I'm burnt out by day 10. So, I'm sticking steadfast to my two sharpies rule until it is genuinely no fun, but like I said. Day two is too early, and I did have fun with this drawing! I actually loved the sketch so much I took a picture of it, so maybe after Artober is done I can revisit this and render it digitally. No promises lol

Anyway, I made her a moose NOT JUST BECAUSE SHE'S CANADIAN but also bc moose fits her vibe better. Moose are pretty chill... until they're not. Which fits our dear Gemini Slay very nicely I think lol. Plus it also fits her s10 base theme bc moose are excellent swimmers! Look it up, it's wild how deep they can dive

Oh also its a small detail but I put friendship bracelets on her as a reference to her latest vlog. You better believe one of them is the pickle bracelet lmaooo (in my mind. In reality it is circles lol)

[mochiwrites]

Hi Mochi,

How did Pearland Gem and also Scott and Jimmy meet in bodyguard au ?

YIPPEE HI MAR BELOVED :D

okay so. so. scott and jimmy met when they were in high school. I'm thinking it was one of those scenarios where some kids were picking on jimmy and scott just happened to be around and recognized him as that one guy he's always staring at whenever they've got gym and is extremely offended on jimmy's behalf that anyone would bully him. so he gets involved to defend him <3

though unfortunately, jim had to run to class before he could ask for scott's name, or scott could ask for his, stammering out a hasty string of thank you's before running off

but it's okay!! because the following day scott happens to see him at lunch sitting with grian and pearl and goes over to introduce himself. they become fast friends (and jimmy's sisters clock scott's crush almost Immediately, it's really funny). I love the high school sweethearts vibe for scott and jimmy sm,,,, however jimmy is oblivious to scott's flirting for years. I don't think they got together until their freshman year of college

as for gem and pearl !!!! they met pearl's sophomore year of college in a pottery class. gem was a freshman and the two of them just happened to be sitting next to one another. it was one of those cases where it wasn't until like. the last month of the semester where gem and pearl started talking, mostly because of gem couldn't help but tease pearl over what she was making (think like. the portal hub in the s10 shopping district) and they talked for the rest of class and got along really well hehe

[zmediaoutlet]

hello love <3 happy wincest wednesday!! do you have a favourite canon wincest dynamic shift? there are many times in the show where something happens that dramatically changes the relationship they have/how they look at it, and i'm wondering which one you find the most compelling. it doesn't have to literally be one moment-- eg. mine is the transition from s9 -> s10 where sam watches dean die and then dives HARD into curing the MOC after s9, where he's so deliciously withholding.

happy wincest wednesday!! we're back from the wincest wars! <333

goddamn, that's such a good answer I wish I could immediately steal it, haha -- especially with how mostly-unspoken it is. I'd also pull in there the thing that starts to happen in late s9, probably around the AAAA episode, where Sam starts to really notice what he said has done to Dean's mindset and is getting quietly worried, but can't actually -- say anything. Delish :pinchy fingers emoji:

There's a couple of faaantastic dynamic shifts -- after John dies and they have their rebel/loyalist flip; the thing that rots through s4 where pity and fear almost ruin everything; the thing in s3 where Sam really realizes what's about to slip through his fingers and starts to get wild. Season 6! Season 8! so much!!!

but for my heart-home I think I should pick s11, and very specifically this thing that happens in the kind of middle of that season where Dean seems to actually fully accept Sam's protectiveness, and it finally feels like the most equal version of the partnership. Sam did a horrific thing to save Dean's morality -- not even his life, which is kind of a cheap product, but to get back the Dean he recognized and loved -- and he says he'd do it again (with a little sop to 'and that has to change' -- lol, lmao. good luck with that, darling). Meanwhile Dean, who has indeed been a horrible shitbag for a while there, and still obv is in his Dean era of 'I'm the worst person who's ever lived' -- buuut Sam saved him, and brought him back from the brink, and proved maybe that there was something worth saving, as a result. Sam's got pretty good taste, after all. Dean's got another black mark on his soul with Amara's obsession looming over him, and Sam's got a fearful Lucifer-based worry crawling up his back, but -- something about the dynamic settles, and heals something that had been broken since that s9 moment you reference. Shit, it balances something that had been spinning a little wrong since s5, s2, since they were kids, probably. It becomes clear that this is a truly, thoroughly equal partnership, and that's something that... really hadn't been fully clear, all this time.

The specific moment I keep thinking of is the bit at the end of Love Hurts where Dean feels able to admit that his 'deepest desire' was Amara, and Sam accepts it completely without judgment, and then assures Dean that he'll do whatever he needs to do to help if Dean can't manage. Dean accepts it, even if he's embarrassed. That's just -- different. For so many years the Winchesters have been on this rocking see-saw, one of them in the dirt and one of them heroic and saving his brother. It used to be a joke. "Another season of Supernatural? Which one of them is gonna betray the other/die this year?" s11 represents a total break with that past into: they are a team. One of them can be weak and the other will understand and shore them up on the crippled side until they're whole again, and it's--fine. No shame and no worry that the partnership will be broken or weakened as a result. It's the fullest representation of the marriage that was gestured at in s8 -- tested, almost broken, repaired, now an alloy much stronger than steel.

There is a reason s11 is my favorite.

[jaysarenice]

So I will DEFINITELY be doing the Smalletho superhero au fic (with my spin on it) so here’s some of the info that’s pretty relevant and some reasons for certain decisions! Enjoy!

- To start, I wanna mention that Grian, Jimmy, Joel, and Gem are family. Grian, Jimmy and Joel are biological brothers, and Gem is their adopted sister. Their last name is Solidarity, and their middle names are more related to the person. I just really like the family in Wild Life, and in the fics that I read recently, I interpreted their dynamic as one of siblings, and I am taking some decently big inspo from these fics. I imagine their family to be like the characters from The Outsiders. Idk why, just do. Also, I’m going to refer to these characters as the Gang, because they are their own little family villain gang, but also so I don’t have to type their names a ton lol

- As alluded to, the Gang are villains. Joel is the main leader, but the others are still pretty involved. Joel led them to being villains after Lizzie’s disappearance (will touch on later), blaming it on heroes.

- As you can maybe guess by that then, Etho is a hero. Other heroes include (at this point in my developing): Scott, Scar, BDubs, BigB

- Other villains are: Pearl, Ren, Martyn, Impulse dabbles in villainy sometimes

- Skizz, Tango, Cleo, Mumbo, and Lizzie are civilians

- Now to get to Lizzie. I wanted her to have the same “haunting the narrative” stuff she does in Hermitcraft s10, but I also wanted to play around with her Empires s1 lore a bit. So she’s an axolotl/fairy model that disappeared about 2 years ago (at the start of the story). She was Joel’s girlfriend, and dreamed of being a strong hero. However, she didn’t have much power on her own, especially out of water. So she immediately signed up when the S.P.I.P.A. (will talk about next) proposed giving civilians artificial superpowers. Lizzie was ecstatic; she would be able to hang out with all her friends and save people, like she had always dreamed. Things didn’t go the way anyone planned. She began losing her memories, and eventually she was just.. gone. Joel blamed her disappearance on the S.P.I.P.A., and chose to forever fight against them, starting the Gang and quickly becoming one of the top villains in the world. He really misses Lizzie.

- Now for the S.P.I.P.A.! The acronym means “Super Powered Individual Protection Association.” They’re basically the big organization most heroes in the city are under. Joel hates them with every fiber of his being. The whole Lizzie thing was actually an accident, but did anyone care to talk to the madman burning down their trucks and their outposts? Absolutely not. Mumbo works with them quite a bit, but he’s pretty unaware of their inner workings.

Now time for the even more fun stuff! The characters themselves!!

This section will include powers, species, and alter egos. At the end will also be some relationships pre-existing at the start of the story as well as some of the extra abilities of characters. Also please note, this is only characters I’ve developed! Please feel free to give suggestions for characters!

Joel - Phoenix/demon, fire powers but also faster healing and soft precognition, alter ego is Wildfire

Grian - Parrot/demon, star powers but also syncognition and soft mind control, alter ego is the Watcher

Jimmy - Canary/demon, water and electricity powers, alter ego is the Bandit (<- place holder name, need some more ideas!)

Gem - Jackalope centaur, sculk control, alter ego is the Wilt

Etho - Arctic fox, ice powers and soft metal control, alter ego is Hoarfrost

Scott - Unicorn, light flower power (like light magic and flower magic combined), alter ego name is still in progress

Martyn - Bat/small bit of demon, plant control and super hearing as well as artificial mind reading, alter ego is the Liege

Ren - Were-hound, soft shapeshifting and blood magic, alter ego is His Majesty

Scar - Cat, powers undecided, alter ego is Hawkeye/HotGuy

Pearl - Wolf/moth, necromancy and shadow/moon powers, alter ego is Actias Luna (<- placeholder for now, need something more moon or death related)

Now time for pre-existing relationships!! Hooray!

Scott + Jimmy - dated for a while but split after Scott joined S.P.I.P.A. Still sometimes hang out but it’s pretty awkward (also Joel wants him nowhere near Scott)

Grian + Scar - dating (who would have guessed). Grian does a little less villain work because he doesn’t want anyone to catch him with Scar because Scar is terrible at forgetting that they’re supposed to be enemies

Tango + Jimmy - Jimmy has a side job where he’s coworkers with Tango and he’s been trying to get closer with him. Aka Jimmy has a big fat crush on his coworker

Pearl + Gem - Gem and Jimmy are in similar situations with Pearl and Tango. Gem’s got a big fat crush on the most elusive villain (actually maybe person) in the city. Gem and Pearl collab on gadgets and gizmos often and also help each other with supplies

Martyn + Jimmy - Brotherly bond. Martyn helps Jimmy and Jimmy entertains Martyn. Martyn is disliked by the other Gang members, but Jimmy is sure he’s a great guy

Martyn + Ren - Married. For about 3 years. They met in high school theater and went to college together and ended up some pretty good villains. Probably the only villains in the city who are open about their relationship (they always show up together and have matching names). Outside of villainy the two are popular actors in dramas

Lizzie + Joel - Dating up until Lizzie’s disappearance. While Lizzie was doing the S.P.I.P.A. stuff, Joel was working hard to get her a ring. He keeps the ring he finally was able to get on the day of her disappearance in one of his vest pockets. He never goes anywhere without it.

Mumbo + Grian - Very close friends. Mumbo usually doesn’t question the villain stuff Grian keeps from him, so that’s why he’s allowed to stay around.

Character Extra Abilities:

Grouped by if they share some cus I’ve been writing this for a while and I’m lazy so

Jimmy, Scar: Understand animals

Joel: Walking heater, emotions affect intensity of wings and tail

Etho: Walking A/C, emotions affect body by turning some parts to ice (can be melted, it’s usually caused by high stress)

Jimmy: Emotions affect weather (inspired by @/insomnya777’s fic)

Grian: Emotions can turn parts of his body on fire (purple fire)

And that’s it! (For now….)

This is all the stuff I can remember thinking about so :3 hope you enjoyed will probably start writing the story after my therapy appointment today :D will update on that of course. Thank you for reading all this! I hope you enjoyed! <3

[roxannepolice]

Interpreting the drums/the Master's a cat - Schrodinger's cat in fact/I still have administrative stuff to do and hate it/also still fear my supervisors won't greenlight the thesis/also a pill just came up my nose wtf????

The Master's drumbeat seems to be one of those things the fandom either loves or hates, with main criticisms being of the "it messes up the canon" kind and/or viewing them as either a "woobification" of the Master or generally "taking away" from their villainy. Now, I clearly fall more into the first group, but I also think that even when the idea is embraced, the interpretation is sometimes wanting. That is not to say there is only one correct interpretation - in what follows it'll be clear they're above all a metaphor and those are ambiguous - but, as the title suggests, between still being a nervous wreck and POSSIBLE NEAR DRY DROWNING WTF I LITERALLY THOUGHT I WAS DYING FOR A MOMENT, here cometh another rant.

When it comes to the canon/lore issues, well, I keep saying I accept the writers playing fast and loose when it comes to a text as huge as DW. It's just straight up impossible to either demand of the audience to know the whole lore or of the writers to stiffly hold onto it. All I ask is the writer establishing just which parts of the universe are to be kept in mind, and which aren't in the current context. Buuut, if we really want to go the purist way, I'd say the loophole lies in subjective vs. objective timeflow, ie. the Master did have the drums all along during classic who, they were just never brought up, but no it's not the case the Doctor was just too insensitive in not hearing them, because the Master was a node between the timeline where the drums were already physically implanted in their head and the timeline where that hasn't happened yet. Basically, the Master's the cat in the box and the drums both are and aren't there until observed during the time war, while the Doctor is an animal rights activist that can only watch and complain but doesn't know the determined state of the cat either.

This cat turned out Alive, Dead and Bloody Furious, as Pratchett would put it, all the same time

And if you still really need to reconcile the subject never being brought up in classic who, there's my nuwho Masters = the Master + the War Chief hybrid theory, which I'm frankly appalled isn't getting due recognition it's pure crack tbc.

Also to clarify, I am not saying RTD is just this absolute genius who even brought the world's favourite thought experiment into his slash, I am always operating in the work's intent paradigm, ie not trying to figure out what the author had in mind, only what the text ended up saying, intentionally or not. Again, personally, I just don't care about canonicity and enjoy a bit of overconcluted reconciling like a riddle. But I'm bringing this up here because it neatly ties into a more major issue I have with RTD's writing of the Master: equating psychopathy with insanity and psychosis, which I think is most of the idea that the drums were somehow intended as an excuse for their villainy comes from. And yes, they're certainly framed as the reason behind it, but I don't agree they're framed as an excuse. And the problem lies in the general conflation of the word "psychopath" with "insane", which the text does nothing to correct.

This conflation resulted in an interpretation of the Master's villainy stemming from psychotic irrationality, and that appears to be what the Doctor wants to believe, I suppose this kinda sorta fits into this sort of Socratic idea of evil having root in some cognitive error which the character often follows but fortunately only rarely is it treated as gospel that only started in s10 thank you very much. But of course, and this becomes more apparent once it is revealed the drums are not in fact a hallucination, the problem with the Master isn't that they are irrational - it's that they're too rational. Which would not work as a case of limited culpability in court. It's not a cognitive problem with understanding the consequences of one's actions (which is what the instanity plea boils down to), it's just not caring for them. But it is something that's still colloquially referred to as insanity.

Basically, I don't think the drums are the cause of the Master's villainy, nor do I think they're a metaphor of psychotic problems. I think they are above all a metaphor, a symptom and a side effect of "seeing all of time and space", which not so much fried the neurons on a kid as implanted a perspective that's just fucking unliveable with. It's a more cosmic scale of how Lucy became desensitised to other people's suffering after seeing the end of everything. It's an unquenchable drive that got its shape from outside (hence Rassilon implanting it), and you hate how it never ever fucking lets you just be satisfied because the goals do not come from within, but at the same time, you know you would never be what you are without it. It's a sort of You killed me - you taught me how to read! aspect of general formation of an individual through outside influence, except in the worst sense of uncaring and malevolent grooming.

Basically, you can hate your trauma, but you can't deny it shaped you as you are, and you hate that it's been done to you, but also enjoy the final product.

From this perspective, I think the "to have the priviledge of seeing all of time and space - that's ownership enough" is not only an admission of the power relations point the Master's been making since Frontier in space, but also a sort of appreciation of perceiving things one by one, as opposed to taking it all in at once. A genuine offer of help with the drums in a stop chasing the goal because it's either already there or non existent which is. obv another case of pot calling the kettle. And I'll never stop being obsessed with the choice of words when the Doctor tells the Master You could be beautiful. Because that adjective is just so perfect. It's not of the realm of ethics, beauty isn't good or evil. It's not an invitation to "cure" or cahnge the Master into the idealised child - it's an expression of belief in what he can be with what's already there. Not hidden under piles of lore, just waiting for the right context.

[ladykakata]

I just saw your post about ian’s disorder and how it distorts his reality and makes him question why mickey remains in his life and you really hit the nail on the head. people rarely talk about gallavich’s relationship battles from ian’s perspective unless it’s to criticise him and I think a lot of people find it difficult to relate to his issues ig? but mood disorders go hand in hand with anxiety, identity and confidence issues. but I also think its a writing issue because so little of ian’s experiences with his illness comes from his own perspective. so it makes sense the audience tends to sympathise more with mickey because we don’t get to see ian’s personal struggle or his reasoning for certain behaviors and s10 is one of the rare examples where he got to explain his issues and the audience still couldn’t understand. sorry this is ranty lol but I’m just happy to see more meta that defends some of ian’s actions 😊

Thank you <3 It makes me sad to see so many comments practically demonise Ian, and while Ian DOES do questionable things, he's no more or less blameless than Mickey.

A comment on my post mentioned that Ian fought for Mickey just as much as Mickey fought for Ian ... in the early seasons. Remember, Mickey literally beat Ian up in frustration over the situation with Svetlana and the forced marriage. Does him attacking Ian get him off the hook for what he did? No. Does it justify it? No. It's context, not justification, which can be two entirely different things. Ian refused to let Mickey go, he loved Mickey and was visibly heartbroken at the idea his man was slipping away, even if Mickey was trying to cover up his own upset by acting aggressively. Stans might paint Ian as in the wrong again, saying he should have been supportive of Mickey going through the forced marriage and understanding it's not as 'easy' as Ian makes it sound for Mickey to just deny his father. But bearing in mind, their relationship was still very young, Ian knows Terry is a disgusting and violent man, but the sense of doom and horror is not the same unless you've grown up with it and lived it like Mickey.

Ian fought for Mickey. And Mickey fought for Ian during his bipolar struggles. Keeping score is NOT wise in relationships, so I wouldn't call this keeping score, more them trading places in who is asking the other to stay or saying they love the other during dark times.

Another point is that this was all before Ian's bipolar condition really started to manifest, so Mickey must have been even more confused that the man who was distraught over him entering a meaningless marriage was suddenly pulling away and questioning his devotion. Emotional permanence is difficult in a lot of conditions, again I am not bipolar myself but DO have pretty erratic emotional issues that mean I can go from feeling adored to feeling like the scum of the Earth everyone hates, and there's the persistent background hum of feeling unwanted that's lifelong. Ian gets a triple-hit in that he's a middle child (younger than Fiona and Lip, older than Carl, Debbie and Liam), he's inherited Monica's bipolar disorder and his chronically unstable home life tends to lead to the idea of feeling wanted by his parents and forgotten by most. I wouldn't be surprised if he felt like his mother just rejected him/abandoned him considering how often she is gone, Frank has literally attacked him unprovoked and it was only when he grew in height and gained some confidence he really started to push back, and he is neither the baby of the family nor the parent figures that Fiona and Lip were forced to be. The people he tends to form relationships with tended to lean towards lust with no real chance at a stable, happy relationship (Kash, a married man with children, and Ned, who is the same albeit Jimmy is an adult) before Caleb and Trevor, which wouldn't surprise me if he again subconsciously thought he was disposable.

I guess I'm picking up on the side effects of Ian's neurodivergence, and it pairs with a comment remarking on how people are supportive of mental health disorders until their effects affect them, then suddenly everything is unacceptable. Again, some of Ian's actions are not justified - I'm once again referring to him baiting Mickey into a physical fight by calling him slurs - but he himself explains why he did it. Mickey looked past it, and I do wonder if he's realising that yeah ... Ian, the man HE knew and who was proudly gay with very little tolerance for homophobia, suddenly turning around and calling him slurs was incredibly out of character and likely another moment of Ian's brain lashing out.

Ian did negative things to Mickey, and he should apologise. Just as Mickey has done things to Ian and should apologise. One is not better than the other. Mickey's reasons for doing things can lie with his upbringing, PTSD and circumstances, Ian's reasons can lie with bipolar disorder, his upbringing and circumstances. But they are still well-intentioned for each other, and I think they do help bring out the best in each other.