#but from a watsonian perspective on what the Doctor means

[tardis-stowaway]

The Doctor: He [Isaac Newton] was, wasn't he? He was so hot. Oh, is that who I am now?

So what personality trait of his new regeneration is the Doctor mildly surprised by here? He doesn't sound shocked, but it seems to be enough of a difference to mention out loud. A lot of people seem to be interpreting the that as referring to being into guys. To be fair, I think that's how Donna understands it in her next line.

My understanding of the line is slightly different. Feeling attraction to men (along with other genders) is nothing new to the Doctor. Nine and Captain Jack Harkness kissed full on the lips onscreen! Look at any interactions between Ten and the Master. Consider that changing gender presentation is something that any Time Lord might do at any regeneration, so treating gender as a limiting factor in attraction wouldn't make sense for the Doctor.

No, what has changed is that Fourteen is the sort of person who will directly admit when he finds someone hot while gossiping with his BFF. Not brilliant, or fascinating, or even beautiful, but hot. That's what's new.

[lord-squiggletits]

Okay another instance of "fuck canon" that's not just Pharma-related, but Ambulon related. I keep thinking of Luna-1 where Ambulon called Pharma "Doctor DJD" and I feel like that's such a total "he would not fucking say that" moment. Obv JRO controls the characterization so what's in the comics is canon/right, I just think that it doesn't make sense for someone in Ambulon's position with his backstory to be that petty towards Pharma?

Ambulon's a Decepticon traitor, he's on the DJD's List. Moreover, he's stationed on Messatine which is the DJD's home planet and is (was?) still an active battle front until very recently.

Proof that Messatine being the DJD's territory is common knowledge: not only First Aid, who's stationed at Delphi, but also at least three Autobots on the Lost Light, know that the DJD make Messatine their home. And this is long before Pharma does his monologue to Ratchet about his t-cog blackmail with Tarn.

Proof that Delphi/the nucleon mines were in an active warzone at least until Pharma started his plague: Pharma wouldn't have had any t-cogs to harvest if there wasn't a continuous stream of soldiers/war-dead coming in to use as his supply.

So then, Ambulon knew fully well that he and all of the rest of them were right next to the DJD's home base, and as an ex-Decepticon he knows he would be on the list. Probably not very high on the list, since Ambulon was a mere MTO who got turned into a failed combiner experiment, but he IS on the list; just because the DJD only proceed through the list in order of importance, doesn't mean that Ambulon wouldn't know that they'd come for him eventually.

And this is a really fucking neat idea to play around with! We don't ever get a canon/explicit explanation for why Prowl decided to station those three medics on Delphi, especially one who's an ex-Con on an execution list. Did Ambulon have a choice? Or was he told to go there with no argument? Either way, I think Ambulon deserves some major kudos, because he must have ball (bearings) of steel to be an ex-Con in DJD territory without constantly being on the verge of a mental breakdown or panic attack. I could honestly write a whole post on the question of "why were these three stationed on Messatine" in itself, but that's for another time.

The point I'm trying to make here is basically that Ambulon of all people should've been sympathetic to the circumstances that drove Pharma to do what he did: they were ALL stationed in the DJD's territory and they knew it, they ALL knew that the DJD's playbook is horrific torturous murder, they ALL knew that Ambulon was a former Decepticon. It wouldn't take a genius for everyone at Delphi to piece together the fact that the DJD would come for Ambulon eventually if either he wasn't evacuated or Delphi as a whole wasn't evacuated. But I mean, this is wartime, right? Every soldier is risking their life, everyone could die at any moment. They can't close down Delphi or evacuate all of the personnel in an active war front battling over a mine just because a medic or three might feel unsafe. Nowhere in war is safe. If High Command let everyone abandon their posts who was afraid of being killed, nothing would ever get done because war comes with inherent risk of death that all soldiers accept by participating, as well as accepting the obligation to follow orders on threat of punishment. (Almost as if Pharma couldn't have just evacuated or run away like Ratchet suggested, but JRO clearly isn't a military expert so I'll digress/chalk it up to "wasn't plot relevant to bring up".)

We got all of like, two pages that showed Pharma and Ambulon's working relationship, and the best we have besides that is JRO's word of god that Pharma and Ambulon had 'mutual reluctant respect' for each other. It's highly unlikely that the two were best buddies regardless, but I don't think you need to be friends with someone like Pharma, while sharing the same situation as him, to be a little more sympathetic to him? Like I get that Ambulon would be offended by the idea of his boss trying to frame him for murder to cover up his own murders, but the "Doctor DJD" line always seemed weirdly callous and petty to me. "Doctor DJD" implies that Pharma was some sort of willing collaborator or servant to the DJD which clearly wasn't the case. And I find it hard to believe that Ambulon, who knows exactly what kind of people the DJD are, would have an opinion of Pharma that was just "oh he should've tried harder/been less of a coward and resisted." Hell, Ambulon's reaction to Sonic and Boom showing up at Delphi asking for refuge was to instantly take pity on them and offer them shelter immediately; if he feels protective/sympathetic towards literal random nobody Decepticon soldiers, shouldn't he have at least as much feeling (if not more) for another Autobot who he worked with and supposedly had respect for?

Assuming that Ambulon got the full details of Pharma's blackmail deal. I mean, there's no reason to assume that Ratchet would've lied to First Aid and Ambulon about what Pharma told him (unless??? conspiracy theory!!!!) , so Ambulon should've heard about the t-cog deal and how it was the only reason the DJD didn't raze Delphi to the ground so long ago. Then again, maybe Pharma's story got explained to him and First Aid via Ratchet's extremely judgemental take on events, so who knows how much of Pharma's side of the story Ambulon would've actually known.

But wouldn't it be so much more interesting if, instead of sneering at Pharma as "Doctor DJD", Ambulon had a more conflicted perspective of Pharma's face-heel turn? Would he wonder how it is that someone who he had such respect for could've been so despicable? Or, more sympathetically, would Ambulon ever wonder if Tarn threatening Delphi was his fault for being there? Would Ambulon wonder what he would've done in Pharma's position, being forced to bargain to postpone his own horrific execution? Would he be angry at Prowl or the higher-ups for stationing them all in such a dangerous post to begin with?

I mean, the answer is that Ambulon was a tertiary cast member at best, to the point that half of his appearances on the Lost Light literally are shown in retrospect after he died, so there would've been no room to explore this in the plot, and Ambulon and Pharma were way lower priority compared to other, more important protagonists. I just think it would be interesting to explore these questions in other metas and fan works.

And yes, I do think Ambulon would not fucking say that ("Doctor DJD") regardless of what canon actually says lmao.

[ssaalexblake]

The thing about complaining about 13's outfit in legend of the sea devils from a watsonian perspective is that this doctor has not Once bothered to dress appropriately for any of her adventures in other times.

I mean, sure, she put on a tux to go to a party in an era where a tux isn't weird on a woman But she still wore culottes and work boots to a formal wear party. She didn't bother to even change in Nikola Tesla's night of terror and while I'm not an expert in American fashion history I'm fairly certain her outfit included actual crimes. She didn't change in the witchfinders. Or Rosa. All she did in The Haunting of Villa Diodati was throw on a floral waistcoat with her normal outfit.

Doyleism is a whole other conversation to be having but 13's outfit, while 99% likely to be wildly inaccurate (and anachronistic) and not in keeping with the fashion of their era Or the region, is very much in character for Her.

If 13 walked out of that TARDIS dressed in a perfectly on point outfit for the times, my immediate reaction would have been to ask what on earth was wrong with here and to try and figure out the catch.

But yes. Doyleism is its own conversation here, but from a watsonian perspective, 13 being in a half assed outfit? Yeah that checks out.

[fandomrelatedshowerthoughts]

Another little Doctor Who realization post-this-season

I know I made some comparisons to "The Librarians And The Point Of Salvation" when "73 Yards" aired but there really are quite a few parallels between Ezekiel Jones and Ruby Sunday both from Watsonian and Doylist (not Doylist in terms of intentional but in terms of looking-at-story-as-story) perspectives I mean not just the aforealludedto going through a parallel timeline of personal absolute nightmare of too much loss and it being a matter of some fan debate whether they remember everything or not but the music connection, the pop-culture-referencing, the being younger than usual for their sort of role-both-in-the-Watsonian-and-Doylist-sense and basically giving off "little sibling vibes", the similar-ish personality and Chaotic Good alignment, the heritage-much-speculated-on-by-fans-of-their-show turning out to seemingly be them just having a normal family (who get met around Christmas or at least have their meeting have a Christmas association), and there still being weird things about them left unexplained by that revelation including an inability to be detected/affected by certain things you'd expect them to be and a seeming (albeit unconscious/passive) ability to twist their personal narrative in their favor in a similar manner to what happened on S2 of Loki (hey Ezekiel kinda has similar trickster-figure vibes and there was theories that the Doctor (because of the Timeless Child thing) and potentially Ruby (if all isn't as it seems with her heritage) could be god-esque figures that are basically good equivalents of what they've been fighting all season and if Ruby was one then there'd be an argument for (if it isn't Mrs. Flood who'd have that domain) her being a god of stories).

Hey, Ruby was even introduced the season that also introduced magic (and a bit of meta fourth-wall-breaking) to the world of Doctor Who and The Librarians kinda has Doctor Who implicitly exist in the same kind of weird fictional-and-real-at-once state in its universe thanks to Ezekiel referencing its existence as a show but a TARDIS in the time machine room that that one exchange between Ruby and the Doctor in "Space Babies" implies Star Trek does in the Whoniverse

TL;DR Ezekiel and Ruby seem to be very similar characters in narratives that turn in similar directions and in the event that all is not as it seems with Ruby's heritage because she seemingly got too much of her perfect happy ending (but we know she'll be back) then since you could make an argument for The Librarians and Doctor Who sharing universes perhaps if there is something "special" about Ruby after all Ezekiel could share it or at least have/be something similar

[missmarthanightingale]

i just can't help thinking that what we saw of the characters' time-streams has to be significant? but i can't decide whether it was only significant from a doylist perspective, bc it was important to the narrative, or whether it was notable in-universe that they ended up where they did.

i mean, the doctor was nominally in control of where everyone wound up, shunting them all into their own timelines to protect & hide them, but beyond that she had very limited control, & she herself kept dipping in & out of her own plot-relevant past. maybe the exposition about atropos, the connection to the division & to ruth, maybe that was built into the story, maybe someone or something was actively trying to show her that. maybe someone wanted to give her some understanding of what was going on! it might have been the mouri, giving her context in the hope that she would be better able help them, but they never indicate that they are & they're also the ones who continue to keep the rest from her - perhaps with good intentions, since i don't think they were lying about staying there any longer killing her, but perhaps bc whatever else there was to remember is something that they don't want her to know.

bc where the other characters end up is less immediately plot-relevant, & thus very interesting to me, especially vinder. his backstory was useful from a storytelling perspective, but from his perspective he's literally reliving how he lost it all. he outright asks not to be made to relive this, which really catches my eye, bc vinder asking some higher power to exercise control over what he's experiencing & then to be listened to is just not a coincidence, i refuse to believe that it was coincidence. but reminding vinder of how it all went wrong for him is also reminding him of what he learned from it - that empire is the enemy of honesty & goodness, that power is petty & cruel & self-serving, that he was punished for trying to do the right thing & that the power of empires is not something he should seek to defend. i can't imagine those themes won't be relevant to gallifrey later on, but maybe it will also be relevant to vinder specifically if he still has a role to play, which ... he did not end up on atropos by coincidence. nothing about vinder is a coincidence.

even yaz & dan, initially winding up in what should be safe pockets of their ordinary lives on earth, are being reminded of people they love & what they stand to lose. both had weirdness happening with their timelines that probably deserves a separate post - i'm especially interested in why dan specifically was "fidgety", why his timeline kept skipping & what happened with diane, since for yaz we at least have the explanation of the weeping angel - but ... idk, i just feel like where they all ended up in the time stream has to be significant from a watsonian perspective, in-universe, & if it is then something has to have directed them there.

& i mean ... we learned this episode that time itself might be sentient, right?

[vaguely-concerned]

X-men Evolution; the great 2021 rewatch liveblog

exactly what it says on the tin, about halfway through the show I had TOO MANY FEELINGS and had to start writing some of them out haha (gets quite gambit & rogue/gambit heavy in the latter half, Because of Who I Am as a Person)

- this is my childhood’s x-men, my formative experience with them, and I’m happy to report that still seems like a good thing. the little eleven year old within me gets to geek out and have a good time with the characters and the surprisingly good animation and writing, adult me gets to CACKLE at regular intervals at the fashion/technology/absolute bonkers hot garbage comic book nonsense they use to justify a storyline every now and then, it’s been a good time 

- I was like ‘ah well it is super dated it probably won’t be quite the same now’ and then rogue’s HAIR did the THING in the opening and ‘it’s all coming back to me now’ started playing in the background... the little baby queer in me swooning across time and space

- such a good beast, both his design and the writing, my heart aches for him all the time. he’s just so passionate! about being a teacher! helping young humans learn the stuff they’ll need in life! the most wonderful nerd man, just let good things happen for him

- I’m going to go ahead and assume that rogue’s ‘crush’ on scott is more of a deeply complex psychological process about desiring normalcy and intimacy and trying to figure out if she’s queer and dealing with her emerging sexuality and latching on to the first and best safely unavailable and nonthreatening older boy to project these issues onto rather than actually being a real thing, because I respect her so much as a person and I cannot bring myself to imagine she’s honestly attracted to a man who has POSTERS OF CARS on his bedroom wall. (I’ll give jean a break just because she seems to have a longer deeper history with him that might counteract some of that libido-kill, and also she’s a jock so lol)

like I am very sorry but can u imagine being a teenage girl with any interest in a boy with model cars in his bedroom when gambit’s swanning around being a much, much, much worse choice on almost every possible level but in a teen girl kryptonite kind of way? inconceivable  

(I drag scott quite a few times in this and it’s not because I don’t love him, it’s just his tragedy to be the most draggable man in the world)

to be fair by the time gambit shows up that whole Situation has mostly played itself out I suppose but still  

- toad’s design is so ineffably brilliant, I can’t quite tell you why but that ugly cute charm has really stuck with me, he’s one of the characters I remembered the best to this day just visually

- poor evan... he truly never had a chance, did he, they just saddled him with the most 90s teen bullshit they could come up with like he’s some kind of ‘what adult writers think teens like’ frankenstein’s monster ;______; it’s not your fault honey

- poor poor POOR storm, she gets one focus episode and they were like ‘we’re going to make an episode so racist -- ‘

I’m still STUNNED at how bad it was, but undeniably I laughed hysterically to the point that my neighbours were probably worried when that dude was earnestly like ‘He [stunningly breathlessly racist caricature of a ‘witch doctor’ guy] has stolen her powers, and he’s going to use them to take over Africa!!!’ fhajsdlfhsakjldfh oh really? tell me more, like how the fUCK this could be on television within my life time fasdlfhsdkjfhsad f  just... fahjksdfh

- it’s a testament to gambit’s appeal as a character that his charm can survive what they’ve done with his hair and beard choices in this one fajskfhs regrettable but true I still fuckn LOVE him and in my highly biased yet Correct opinion he should have been around much more. get you a man who manages to stay hot through sheer Vibes even with a bowl cut

- aw scott/jean is kind of sweet in this show even if it’s taking them forEVER to get there, I like it 

- it’s very nice of rogue to not mention magneto’s romantic daydreams and nostalgic memories about charles xavier after touching his face that one time... or maybe her brain did her a service and repressed it, there’s some stuff you shouldn’t have to know about your father figure   

- the danger room is the very definition of ‘why do we even have that lever’ and I wonder what the fuck prof x does to have enough money to replace everything that gets busted all the time

- I’d say that a lot of the writing holds up surprisingly well! (but some of it is also incredibly inexcusably racist in ways that beggar belief, so... not full marks here) the characters have distinct voices and their arcs are set up and delivered on solidly for the most part, and there’s a lot of love showing through in small moments that are just there to have a funny/interesting thing to say about the characters and how their powers work separately and in combination. listen, sometimes I get so thirsty for like. basic goddamn competency in storytelling, let me have this

- ugggggh why is there captain america in my x-men have I not suffered enough... very very funny when prof x goes ‘sounds like you knew rogers personally’ and logan is like ‘I did ;)’ *all the students ganging up on steve rogers* “did you fuck our teacher, captain america?!”

- fskadfhas WHY are you showing me hot young-ified magneto’s ass fksjahfskj charles is not even here to see it, what a tragic waste erik 

- ...I was sort of kidding before but uh I think logan genuinely did fuck captain america (or at least wishes very much that he did lol)

- wanda can have a little watching the world burn. as a treat for the way every single adult in her life has fucking failed her (’aren’t they treating you well here’ professor x she’s in a straightjacket)  

- poor rogue tho can you imagine finding out after your biggest crush on a girl yet that she’s your fucking MOM in disguise... I would break out in cold sweat every time I thought about a boob forever after

- well seems like they really just had all that homoerotic rivalry stuff between quicksilver and spyke in their first ep only to never do anything with that again ever?? I mean even without the gay undertone that seems like a dynamic you spent most of an episode setting up writers what the hell haha

- dslhfkasjlh GAMBIT THERE HE IS MY BOY IS ON THE SCENE THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!! I don’t even care about his awful hair situation or the fact that his eyes are wrong here (coloured contact lenses, maybe, for a watsonian explanation? though he’d probably have to get them made special, considering he needs the sclera and the iris covered up in different ways, I’ve seen some comic panels indicating he has been known to?)

(cute little detail: when he shuffles the cards the first time we see him he ends with removing the top card to show the ace of hearts beneath <3 foreshadowing baBEY he’s a... good-ish boy deep down. hey he tries okay shit gets complicated sometimes lol) 

- cracking UP at gambit perched cheerily on the edge of a crate dispensing cards in the middle of the battle... he’s like ‘eh it’s a livin’ sfsajkhf remy stop working for supervillains just because you had nothing to do on a thursday afternoon and they said they’d pay you

- I’m guessing magneto must have imposed a strict order of silence on these guys or something because I cannot imagine any other reason for him to shut up, especially once he notices rogue is a QTE (or, far more likely, they hadn’t settled on any voice actors for the new characters until next season haha. it is kind of odd that they’re all keeping up near monastic silence, though, even sabertooth lol) 

- WHAT an epic first meeting for us rogue/gambit fans here... first his shadow like there’s fireworks going off behind him lighting him up and then he gives her the fuckn king of hearts and she’s so enchanted by his dumb handsome face she doesn’t even notice it’s about to blow up in her hands and it all happens in heavily meaningful silence afjsdfjashjk no wonder this ship ingrained itself in my hindbrain  

yeah look smug while you can remy she’s gonna have you on your knees one day and you’ll be happy about it lol

- god storm is so COOL, everything just fading out of focus when she really gets going... give her more screen time, show!!

- mystique is every person... this person... that person... that bird... that cat... that wolf... I’m not even sure she’s not also me... are you sure she’s not you? 

- holy fuck I respect the hell out of the decision to just... blow up the entire status quo in a season ender, I only vaguely remembered that (actually in general I appreciate how good the continuity is -- buildings and places that get damaged in battles need to be repaired or rebuilt, it makes the consequences feel more real even when no one gets seriously hurt. where they get the money to restore scott’s car and logan’s motorbikes every time they go cablooie is still an open question tho lol is it credit card fraud, professor? is it telepathically acquired blackmail???) 

- I first watched this when I was nine or so, so it’s a real experience to go from my starry eyed intrigued ‘oh my god... they’re teenagers’ to my horrified adult perspective of ‘oh my god... they’re TEENAGERS D:’

that goes double for the brotherhood boys honestly, I’m here with tears in my eyes like ‘I’m sorry the system has failed you so badly you’re all just a bunch of dumb kids whose caretakers clearly fucked up spectacularly’  

like lance is always waiting for mystique to come back because she’s the closest thing he has to a safe parental figure, may we speak about how crushingly depressing that is 

- rogue is so ready to throw hands at literally any moment and for that I love and treasure her immensely (I think getting to see her be so surly and unreasonable and sometimes difficult and jealous, like any teenager, meant a lot to me as a kid who was not really allowed to be any of these things, this version of the character has stayed with me so deeply. she holds on so fiercely to her right to feel what she feels and be what she is even when it’s ‘ugly’ or unreasonable, which I think plays in really interestingly with how her powers involve getting invaded by other people’s thoughts and memories to the point of overwhelming her own sense of self and the fact that she clearly has a lot of self-loathing and self-consciousness and confusion about her identity as well. I love her so much)  

- oooof this is the ‘the gang experience a microaggression’ episode huh (well more like macroagressions really)

hits a bit different with adult eyes and perspective huh

- hearing jean sound almost like a child when she says ‘that’s so unfair!’ somehow has me like ;______; -- she has to be so adult and responsible all the time, and having her be reduced to the kid she still is and should get to be in front of this awful awful man she could squash like a bug with the flick of a thought... ugh I’m Big Sad (it is funny that jean seemingly plays Every Sport tho djfhaskj)

- MY BOY IS BACK!!! this time with the duster coat and his eyes the right colour, im so happy (too bad about the subdued colour scheme tho; I adore his dumb bright pink getup with my whole heart)

it’s kind of adorable that he takes the time to take the bullies aside and go ‘I know these guys can’t wreck you without getting expelled, but I think you’ll find no law set down by god or man would stop me from doing so whenever I wanted to. so piss off and leave them alone’ lol he’s looking out for them, in his own way

- in this episode: remy lebeau wrangles some kids while looking bored yet mildly amused the whole time. what the fuck does magneto have on you for you to agree to this level of babysitting duty buddy

- fun detail I noticed b/c when I get a fave I hyperfixate: he gave rogue the king of hearts before, but he ‘introduces’ himself to the brotherhood here (lol) with the jack of hearts, probably to symbolize he’s here as someone who works for magneto in this setting and not as his own man? it’s a demotion he’s given himself there, anyway, might be he’s not very pleased about his current position huh 

- I like it when rogue and kitty team up, they’re not very effective together but their squabbling is so cute and non-aggressive 

- pietro is what draco malfoy would be if I ever found malfoy interesting to watch for even one moment, every time quicksilver talks I’m like ‘what wonderfully insufferable thing is going to come out of your mouth this time you little shit :’)’

- a) why are scott and logan shirtless for this scene? I am not complaining on the logan side of things at least but why and b) I laughed so hard I almost fell off my couch when scott asked logan if he’d ever been in love and he was like ‘once. she was the most beautiful bike I ever saw’ falsdfhaskjfhsakjlfhasklhjfd THE BEST VERSION OF WOLVERINE EVER, ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES 

- mystique’s sheer dedication to being a petty bitch is kind of inspirational tbh, almost makes me want to go on a completely bonkers and extra crusade of personal revenge myself  

- oooh they’re doing some genuinely cool things with vision/lack of vision in this one (it’s the scott left on his own in the desert without glasses one btw) even visually, dang! I’m so sad this show didn’t get more seasons than it did, honestly, it deserved it

- hell yeah jean wreck her, go get your man with the suspiciously specific clothing damage normally done to female characters 

awww :’) okay yeah they’re super sweet, I love the tiny loving animation details like how he leans his head against her and her stroking his hair away from his eyes

- nooo don’t bully evan leave my t0tally r4dical sk8er boy alone :(

- I love the running joke of people fleeing in blind panic only to reveal that what they’re running from is kitty’s cheerful well meaning little face fskfaskh 

- scott and jean are already peak married after officially being together for one episode and it’s adorable, and they just stone cold threw logan under the bus, rip wolverine we hardly knew ya

fjasdlfasldfhslajdkfhsadkjlfhsdkjalfhsdakfh h jean establishing herself as the alphabitch of this relationship by throwing her man to the wolves right after dsjfhaskjfhaskjhfsakjdhfaskjhfaskdhfskjahfskdajhf get smarter or get volunteered scott 

- ...eyepatch lady is so hot ngl

oh evan went to the place hank used to go to calm down ;________; (honestly he’s kind of won a place in my heart just by being a pretty normal teenage boy haha)

- jesus fucking CHRIST can you imagine being storm having to look her sister in the eye as she tells her ‘I lost your only child, he’s *vague gesture* somewhere in the sewers we think’ this poor woman

- amanda the self admitted monster fucker you are so VALID (I love her and her family’s design so much tho!)

- it’s so cool that even in his human ‘disguise’ kurt’s fingers follow the shape of his actual hand beneath it rather than moving like a five fingered hand, it’s such a lovingly consistent little detail 

- magneto and mystique in a breathless race to see who can be the shittiest parent... tune in next week for yet another parental nadir (also some low-poly gambit appearances in this one, for those at home keeping score (me), he’s in the background looking like someone drew him with their eyes closed fakjldfhasd look how they massacred my boy)

- someone please teach the brotherhood boys about consent huh

- jean ‘soccer mom before her time’ grey and her SUV dfhakjlhds :’)

- im sobbing rogue baby girl i’m so sorryyyyyy, this voice actress is so good, my parental instincts suddenly kicked into overdrive hearing the crack in her voice :( (bb me was right tho rogue centric episodes ARE the best episodes. that tension between ‘do I identify witn this character or am I crushing on her?? both???’ now has the fun new addition of ‘oh god oh no you are a baby I want to shield you with my body from everything trying to hurt you’)

- mystique is like ‘so you see despite you telling me you never wanted to see me again I completely disrespected that and posed as a friend your age, manipulated you by offering you the mirage of direly needed emotional intimacy and belonging and added some sprinkles of homoerotic tension to it just to massively worsen your already existing grievous psychosexual trauma and identity issues... out of love’

god go jump in a black hole you fucking monster 

- there’s some very interesting and quite subtle subtext about the people she’s morphing into and what that says about her mental state/how it shows off some of her emotional baggage with the rest of the team. it’s like she’s switching between people/powers that fit the purpose as if she’s going through cycles of fight/flight (and then bursts of freeze where she’s herself, which is... so sad)

- this whole episode is hurting my heart but rogue at full power is undeniably epic  

 - ‘professor x get your goddamn act together and get this poor girl some fucking tHERAPY’ challenge

- SAFE PAPA LOGAN ;_____;

- EYYYYYY opening straight on My Lad, I cannot stop winning!!!!! 

fasdfhsad disintegrating the window with a smiley face... remy I do love you more than my heart can bear honestly, hello may we speak about the fact that his urge to be a little shit is so deep and strong it survives mind control (that little breathed out ‘hiah!’ as he vaults the fence too dsakfjsd)

hahaha and he does up the coat fhsalfdsaj 

- magneto dismissing other telepaths like ‘puh-lease, your Meaningful Looks have got nothing on my ex-husband’s’ 

- :’) rogue and kurt sibling timeees

- say what you want but this pyro guy’s got job satisfaction in being a creepy arsonist with a weird recurring horse theme (well at least twice but still weird)

- I love how beast is the kindest man to ever walk the earth but also straight up savage, this man drags people so hard their ancestors wince in their graves

- gambit taking the time to complete the guard’s game of solitaire -- this episode is giving me everything I want. u little disgrace mr lebeau

and THEN he takes the spider out in the most hilariously bonkers way my heart is so FULL

(I love that when magneto moves by he looks startled and has to quickly move his head out of the way to avoid getting kicked in the temple too that’s a fun detail)

I’m so INTO how this sequence shows off that his greatest strength isn’t even his powers (which are pretty straightforward, really, he makes go boom, longer time and bigger thing bigger boom) but that he’s clever and creative and always extremely ready to be the most harebrained-bananapants-extra-in-a-deceptively-laidback-sort-of-way person in the room (I actually have some genuinely Deep Thoughts about how his whole character does a really interesting thing with having the straightforwardly destructive nature of his powers yield to what his nature as a person is, and how using the playing cards play (heh) into it, maybe I’ll write it out some day. just the fact that he could use anything, but he deliberately chose something that adds style and playfulness and corny charm to it and that also limits the damage of the explosions compared to if he habitually used something with more mass... I find it fascinating how much he’s made a story around himself with it and how deeply it shows he does have a good heart, at the end of the day, in almost a metatextual way. he doesn’t want to destroy things or people, he’s at worst (and best lol) a thief.)

- I honestly have literally no memory of white nick fury (which seems so weird now isn’t it funny) in this series from when I was a kid, he clearly did not make an impression on me lol

- mr wolverine ‘assigned canadian at birth’ x-men 

- oh man I dig the androgynity of x-23′s outfit (even tho they had to compensate with the long hair, which... kind of doesn’t make sense in-universe but does on a design level because it’s a crucial thing that she’s a female clone of logan so yeah okay fine whatever have your arbitrary gender markers if you must haha)

ooooooh that’s actually really clever, they make her gender gradually more obvious as she unravels through the episode and her outfit changes -- first the mask coming off, and then her jacket opening to show her silhouette more clearly, that’s cool!  

- my god what really sets this show apart is how much it invests in little character and relationship moments, it’s just so fucking GOOD! it gives laura looking in on those moments such depth and weight because it’s new to her but established to us as an audience, this is how you make found family devastating people (storm growing bonsai trees is so charming too haha) 

- ooof this is honestly quite harrowing 

SHE’S SO SMALL COMPARED TO HIM I’M CRYING (at least that part of his genes translated over faslkfsjdh short king, I say this with all the love and support of a fellow short monarch)  

- tabitha seems to just be running around doing precisely whatever the fuck she wants and you know what I support her even if she is an asshole her father left her a bunch of trauma and no fucks left to give 

- still thrilled about professor x explaining the spider key fuckup to magneto after the fact like ‘magnus you dumb bitch this is why we split up’ 

- awww kitty has anime and movie posters on her wall and sleeps with a stuffed toy :’)

-          remy                           rogue

                              🤝

doing completely unnecessary parkour around the brotherhood living room seemingly just for the hell of it... I’m not saying soulmates but fucking soulmates 

- fhsadkjlfhsakjldfhsadjkfhsdajkfh just as gambit’s soul-level need to be a little shit survived his bout of mind control, rogue’s deep and urgent desire to kiss gambit full on the mouth survived hers I can’t breathe

she looks so pleased with herself too GOOD FOR YOU GIRL at least get something out of this other than more trauma 

also not only the fact that he’s smart enough to figure out what’s going on (though he’s only partially right about who’s behind it. I do so enjoy gambit/mystique deep and sincere antipathy as a constant across all universes tho lmao pure wlw/mlm hostility) but also that he keeps fending her off like he’s not trying to hurt her even though she’s in nigh on unstoppable and invulnerable terminator mode... awww 

- gambit having absolutely no patience for wolverine and sabertooth’s bullshit macho-off and consistently being this little biker trio’s one brain cell is adding years to my life with every passing moment

his voice is a little different in these scenes too, a bit softer and less like he’s trying to impress someone, it’s nice

- hank: well I barely recognize any of these (completely made up) ‘ancient egyptian hieroglyphs’ but from what I can make out -- *proceeds to infodump a perfect coherent narrative* fjdhfak  

listen this whole thing is such nonsense on so many levels, I’m just turning my brain off so I won’t have to think about it okay, the compulsion to put ancient aliens in egypt haunts us as a culture 

- I am CACKLING about gambit in the snow after having to listen to these two chucklefucks ooze testosterone at each other for hours

he started out taking it in good cheer and is now reduced to ‘dieu would both of you just jump off this fUCKING mountain please’

- ah. a little oops-a-daisy there, we seem to have unleashed the apocalypse. please stand by (they really don’t pull their punches with the season cliffhangers in this show haha)

- opening the season on gambit’s merrily grinning face is the easiest way to gain my favour. yes good this season may commence 

baby u r my

 ANGELLLLLLLL

(he’s so cute here tho haha I think it shows the design isn’t unsalvagable, just get him better hair and stubble more like logan has and you’ve basically got it) 

love his exasperated eyeroll when the dude gets spooked (by his eyes? or just the general weirdness?) too

he’s just trying to keep this crazy family of evil mutants together and unmurdered by one another until they’ve managed to avert the end of the world, bless him  

- oh NO rogue’s LIP wobbles my hhhhhheart ;____; such a good animation detail to put in

- like... I know kurt is just a sad scared teenager with a lot of shit going on and all the adults are too busy averting the end of the world to help him... but buddy maybe don’t ask your sister to wake her abuser (who forced her to kickstart the end of the world!!!!!) when she feels utterly unsafe even with her statue version around huh

- ...wanda is good and I want only good things for her. and for her dad to be disemboweled for what he did to her both the first time around and when he forced her to forget I mean what 

- magneto throwing an epic satelite-slinging tantrum b/c ‘no I am the biggest sexiest strongest mutant of the pack :(’... erik fucking get over yourself 

- yes boys absolutely go along with a plan suggested by a dude who looks at you like this 

nothing bad can come of this surely asdfkhsa

- lance’s quarter of a braincell always trying to go ‘hey wait, maybe... not do this???’ and it never helps lol

- in this episode: Logan Has A Bad Day 

...some very specific bondage positions he’s held in here, I am sure this episode awakened something in someone once upon a time lol 

- logan shielding x-23 with his body... im fine it’s okay I’m not crying don’t look at me

- afsdhlsdfjasdlk those sure are some ‘scottish’ accents flsadkjhkdsjahfsd

- scott relieved to finally be able to cede the position of ‘charles xavier’s least favourite son’ to someone else fjsaklfhsajd (poor scott it’s not your fault honey)

supremely cowardly to suggest there is an ex-wife involved rather than charles slutting his way around the british isles back in the day but okay

- kurt with a cold is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. it’s okay kid it’ll get better soon

- ...is there an implication here that professor x is naturally blond. because I am losing my entire little mind about it (i mean he at least has to carry the gene, as does this lady?)

ETA: upon doing some research into this I can indeed confirm that charles xavier does seem to be naturally blond, and after this knowledge I will never be the same 

- “listen, dracula” fskdafghasd oh scott you sweet baby angel I love you

- I know jean’s abilities are a bit ‘as strong or as weak as the plot needs right now’ at this point (so you can have the setup for what’s going to happen with them eventually and she’s basically invincible ;____;), and normally I’m cool with it but god I want her to just squash lucas like a little bug

- ewwwww please don’t ever say ‘daddy’ like that again

- ...what the fuck is even going on this episode’s a mess 

like okay the split personality thing could be something but the way it’s done... what just happened lol

- MY BOY EVAN IS BACK! with a real glowup too (...though kind of weird how he suddenly looks like a grown man)

- augh scott’s eyes are so pretty oh my god ;__________________________;

- that episode in the first season where evan makes the ‘this is my new family!!’ video is so sad now (also, again, his poor poor parents) 

- time for: life affirming road trip with gambit (involuntary) faskljdfhaskjd

stunt therapist remy lebeau 

- I mean the way he goes about it is batshit insane and it’s very much secondary to what he’s actually up to but this is the first time rogue’s sounded genuinely hopeful and confident and like herself in like a season <3 

- he is disconcertingly pleased about her nearly throwing him off the train, and may I just say I agree it’s so nice to see rogue with her old fire back 

- the first time I watched this it was of course dubbed into norwegian, so I had no idea either of these characters were southern lol (though to be fair I probably wouldn’t have had much context for what it meant exactly either, I was like ten at the time and not too interested in america) I seem to dimly remember the norwegian voice actor did a little more of a ‘french’-tinged accent for gambit all over tho haha  

- you know what respect where it’s due, pyro dude knows to live his life for the lols and one has to admire his sociopathic dedication to it

interesting that he, too, seems to have fucking hated magneto -- I wonder if the implication here is that he kept all the acolytes in line with blackmail or by keeping something/one hostage? (except sabertooth maybe he’d just have to say ‘you get to fuck shit up and fight wolverine’ and that’d be enough)

- fsdakfhsd he’s so focused on her he doesn’t notice that guy about to hit him fkafhsa 

- fuck everything else except whatever the hell these two’ve got going on

- it’s weirdly cathartic to have rogue have a conversation with someone who was not happily adopted as well, I don’t think kurt like. gets it because his parents loved him unconditionally and still do 

birds of a feather motherfucker  

- fun detail: when the x-men team are on the shore and logan is sniffing around scott is stepping in something and trying to wipe it off his boots in the background

- when he wakes up after passing out from the touch he’s smiling even though she’s standing over him looking like the rage of god outlined by the moon fsajfsa well the last time he passed out like that it was from a kiss, maybe he still has some hopes and dreams in that direction lol (also he recovers from the tumble down the hill first and is checking on her before accidentally brushing her cheek with his hand, which I thought was sweet) 

and it was in that moment he knew he fucked up *passes out*

- ‘I can explain’ can u remy. can u  

- did it ever even occur to you to just. ask her. to help you. I mean I know it didn’t but like rogue’s always one second away from throwing hands with some bully and is stupidly ride or die, if you’d given her the puppydog eyes she would have crumbled immediately (fair enough I guess this entire episode is telling us he’s not from a background where he has much experience with people just helping him without a price haha) 

- his eyes glowing when he’s angry or upset or using a lot of his power is undeniably cool as all hell. I’m just saying it would be Big Sexy if they sort of flickered with light in moments of genuine vulnerability okay  

- his coat... his coat is what makes the Silhouette tm and I could not be happier about it 

- another parent of the year contestant enters the running lol “hey remy have you ever considered that you’re more of a walking bomb factory than a person? that’s certainly how I think of you hahaha c’mon kid let’s go” 

- the running joke of jean luc getting dollar signs in his eyes seeing the other mutant powers and gambit being like ‘nO!!!!’ and pulling him along is amazing haha

- from the way he looks when he touches rogue accidentally and the way he talks to his dad I’m sort of getting the feeling this gambit might actually be a bit younger than he looks?

here too -- idk why but it’s making the ‘wait is he baby???’ alarms go off in my head haha. very early twenties at most. 

- and we’ve officially seen him with all the face cards in the heart suit folks! (yes this is the sort of thing my brain notices no I don’t know either)

- poor logan running his ass off this whole episode in a panic and then she’s like ‘nah he’s fine (in several meanings of the word ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ) please put him down’ hfaskfsda

- rogue without makeup!!! her eyes look so naked like this haha <3

- oooh here’s a really interesting thing that tickles my brain a bit in this specific part of the scene where gambit frees his dad -- the part where he’s leaning against the door frame waiting for jean luc, who’s about to suggest using the opportunity to ruin the rival gang from the inside rather than slipping away while they still can

from his expression here he knows what’s about to happen, what jean luc is about to say, and it’s clearly a ‘man who thought he’d lost all hope loses last additional bit of hope he didn’t even know he still had’ sort of situation. he KNOWS what jean luc is like, and it still hurts that he really, honestly can’t give him even this, can’t appreciate that remy’s already done all this shit for him when he extremely didn’t have to, without immediately (no really, it took him less than ten seconds to go there? jesus) demanding more.  

remy tells him “I’m just here for you” and jean luc does not understand it. remy seems to be sincere in this motivation -- rogue certainly thinks so, having experienced it second hand and found enough at least emotional merit in it to decide he was worth saving even after all his bullshit (lol a bit of a running theme maybe. I think it’s very telling that after she absorbed mystique she was like ‘what the FUCK you’re a fucking monster’, and after she absorbed gambit she went ‘you did the wrong thing for the right reasons’ after she got over the first wave of outrage) 

there’s also what he says as he stands there: “You don’t need me for that”, with the distinct implication that jean luc would only keep him around because he has a use for him and for no other reason -- and then jean luc shamelessly doubles down on that by specifying that it’s not even him he’s got a use for as such, just his powers. that’s some kicking puppies level of deliberately missing the point, it’s almost impressive in how cheerfully mean it is haha

this idea of using people is really important in this episode because remy’s doing basically exactly the same thing to rogue to begin with; it doesn’t really matter to his plan that it’s her that’s with him through this, just what her powers are. (I think it’s  p r e t t y  solidly implied that he does actually like her a lot outside of that too and maybe there is some comfort in having her around for this, but mostly he’s behind a smokescreen of lies through the whole thing sooo I doubt he’s even aware of it, honestly)     

but then it does matter that it’s her when she comes back for him, even after what he did. and unlike jean luc he understands what that means, that she did that for him, and that she didn’t have to. and instead of asking her for more, in return he gives her the thing it’s been established is what he considers the most valuable thing he has; his ‘last card’, the thing he’s credited with keeping him alive many a time, basically. it’s gone from using to mutuality, a tentative place of friendship, and at the end of the day he is a different man than his adoptive father, with a capacity for selflessness and love he lacks. which is of course some of the same stuff going on with rogue and mystique too, except rogue acted from a more fragile and unstable place and did something she regrets, or at least has a LOT of doubts about now, and she found some catharsis in helping someone make a different choice in a similar situation. man there’s some Stuff going on under the surface here haha

(by the way it’s a weirdly... meaningless yet intensely meaningful thing, the gifting of a symbol? of an idea? but he’s putting something very crucial of himself into her hands, is the subtext, and he expects her to understand, which she also does seem to do. at the beginning of the episode he’s proving that he’s seen something true about her -- “You’re such an unhappy girl”, knowing where she comes from, the way she’s mourning her lost confidence and autonomy with her abilities -- and here she’s proving she’s seen something true about him. :’) I wish this show had gone on long enough for this dynamic to progress, it’s really interesting and touching)   

- gambit dragging himself up onto dry land seeing someone approaching (to help?!): :D

gambit seeing that it’s logan and the look on his face: D: 

- rogue using her powers so confidently and fearlessly in this episode tho!!!! 

- *me crying* and then her FAMBILY comes to take her home and he says he’s looking out for her too and kurt still loves her even though they’re having a conflict thing between them and she’s finally able to use her powers without so much fear again and --

- ...did I just watch some baby lesbian love at first sight shit right now???  

- okay last two episodes let’s go

- HELL YEAH STORM (I love that she’s like ‘don’t give me a dumb order like that and I won’t have to disobey it’ too sdfjsaj) her voice has such command I’m usually very much not the ‘step on me’ type butttt

- y’know I feel like apocalypse’s main fault across all versions I’ve seen of him is that he’s like an immortal superpowered god king and he’s not even sexy. like at least make him hot if he’s going to be insufferable in every other way 

- also callout post for apocalypse: one time he made gambit into the Horseman of Death... and didn’t even make him sexy!!! you were handed remy lebeau, supreme bi disaster slut of the x men universe, and you couldn’t even make his brainwashed superpowered evil side hot?? a beautiful stubbled twunk with glowing red eyes and extremely charming :> face practically delivers himself into your hands and you do that to him???? I mean I’m sure apocalypse did some other bad stuff too but that was the worst one

(comics are so dumb y’all) 

- having to watch jean cry is emotional terrorism!! ;___; she has such older sister/mom energy, whenever she gets sad and helpless it hurts 

- oh, OH so PROFESSOR X you’ll make into a hunk and ~*strategically*~ rip his clothes to show off a nipple and a flawless pec in a way that makes me extremely uncomfortable because he’s like The Dad??? apocalypse you are rotten to the core this is unforgivable 

- so wait wanda never actually gets her real memories back. what the FuCk I hope that was a dropped storyline because they ended the show tragically prematurely rather than like. the plan

- why is spyke calling storm ‘storm’ show that’s his auntie o!! >:(

- as a society we need to acknowledge that apocalypse looks like a fucking clown

- ooooh yeah I have been thinking that this show’s greatest visual weakness so far has been not having a visual way to show telepathy/battles of the minds, but this is a pretty cool way to do it! better late than never

- I’m so happy rogue gets to end this herself, since she was forced into starting it against her will, it’s just nice and neat storytelling

- YEAH FUCKING TELL HER KURT AND ROGUE I AM SO PROUD OF YOU and she has the temerity to look pissed off oh my god

the only valid thing mystique has done in her entire life is be in love with destiny. literally everything else she gets up to is a travesty. like I know objectively she’s hot but my loathing for her stops me from even appreciating it. I do enjoy loathing her tho so please don’t change her haha

(a bit odd to have kurt’s attitude to her swing so much but I’m just going to assume he and rogue had a good long conversation after ‘cajun spice’ and that he understands what’s going on better now)

- this last part is such a cruel tease faskdfhsdaj ‘here are all the cool-ass things we had planned. sucks you never get to see it huh’ im devastated 

- magneto without his helmet and playing charmingly with children like charles is going ‘well at least I saved my marriage finally’ fsadkhfjsd (honestly tho I would be super interested in seeing how they’d redeem this magneto because he’s been a real bitch the whole time lol) 

there’s an interesting thing here where magneto looks down at wanda as the last thing he does on screen before this epilogue part (yeah I hope it fucking haunts you forever what you did to her erik you absolute piece of hot garbage) and the last thing charles does is look at jean b/c he knows what’s going to happen to her and it breaks his heart... Dramatic Parallells  

- just the hint of jean as the phoenix has me in full D:D:D: mode tho maybe I wouldn’t have survived it

- gambit in the last groupshot with his arm around rogue ;^) I mean I’m sure they’re headed for some turns and roundabouts along the way but what’s that thing she says as her wedding vow, that she’ll always find her way back? anyway that got me in my heart

- man I really wish this show had been given more seasons, we were barely even getting warmed up here :’(

[cupidsbower]

13 is the best number

So, I finally finished watching the most recent series of Doctor Who. We got interrupted by Covid, long story. 

My thoughts:

I adore 13 and hope we have her for at least 5 seasons. Her face!

Sacha Dhawan is now my favourite Master. 

When Graham pulled out that sandwich? Soulmates 4eva. I feel you so hard Graham. If I were travelling in the TARDIS, hard same.

Ryan continues to be a sweetheart, and while I wanted more development for Yaz, I liked what we got.

I like how often the team split up, and the Doctor expected them to be competent, and she was right.

I really liked the historical eps. They were the highlights for me this season.

I was wondering how they would resolve the problem of the Doctor running out of regenerations, and they upped the game in a really interesting way. Still thinking about that one. 

I think I like how the showrunners are visiting some of the less pleasant female-companion arcs on the Doctor. Seems fair. But did the Doctor really need to be in a female body for that to happen? (My answer to that question depends on whether I’m looking at it from a Doylist or Watsonian perspective? Yes and no respectively. Because I’m cynical about showrunners, even ones actively working on diversity.)

I mean, if there can be a War Doctor, I don’t see why there can’t be a Fugitive Doctor. But on the other hand... it’s just as well the Doctor is mostly ace, because otherwise everyone in the universe would either be a descendant or another Doctor by now given this season’s big reveal.

I want more Jack.

Given how iconic the cybermen are as a Who villain, they are the least interesting recurring villains. They did an okay job of updating them this season, but in the end they still weren’t that interesting... unless we do end up getting some Time Lord cybermen at some point, or the Cyberium actually gets to do something more than be a cloud.

So many TARDISes!

Hahaha. Poor Judoon are gonna lose a prison asteroid real soon.

[shkspr]

the thing about rose is. in light of how moffat treated her, and how he wrote women in general but especially human women (Normal, boring women), i think it becomes even more important for the doctor to remember her. and all the others, too. it's imperative that the show echoes the morals of its foundation, and that means recognizing the importance of unimportant people. moffat didn't always entirely fail at this, obviously, but i think he lost a lot of what rtd put into the show. and i think it's disingenuous and insulting to brush past companions under the rug as soon as a new showrunner comes along, or a new doctor. at best, it's slightly out of character writing, and at worst it's actively undoing significant character developments. and one of those significant character developments happened with rose, when she was upset that the doctor never mentioned sarah jane or anyone else who came before her, and he saw that and recognized that and he changed how he interacted with that aspect of his life. and when rose was gone, he talked about her plenty, and it was organic and natural, and then as soon as he regenerated (from a watsonian perspective, or as soon as moffat took over, from a doylist perspective) all of that was just gone. because like. the doctor that i fell in love with would have mentioned rose and martha and donna from time to time, that's all. he might have had pictures of river and susan on his desk, but there's no way that rose wouldn't have been there as well. anyway i know this isn't a coherent argument i'm just very wary of chibs being like. so intent on moving on from the show's past when the show's past is its heart and soul. and i think the majority of what went wrong with moffat's run was his unwillingness to acknowledge many of the good things that rtd's era laid out, and i'm just hoping that there can be some kind of balance between moving forward and remembering the past without dwelling on it.

[fedonciadale]

"They'll all come to see you for what you are." I like to think Jon is talking about the audience as well as the Northerners. I know a lot of people think Dany might still be seen as good because she sacrifices herself or whatever, but this quote makes me think the show will make it clear she'll at least be an antagonist, if not a villain in season 8.

Part 2, sorry forgot to add. “They’ll come to see you for what you are.” If “they” includes the audience, I think it’s fitting that she should be antagonist/villain because most of the audience still thinks she’s good and awesome and badass and justified in her war crimes/human rights’s violations. So the audience still has to “come to see [her[ for what [she] is” implying they don’t yet. I’m really rooting for that… Hope the show doesn’t hold back. 

Dear nonny, I agree. Several of the dialogues in season 7 have the Watsonian and the Doylist perspective. Imho, 'see you for what you are' is definitely one of them. I would add 'I suppose he stares at you longingly because he wants a military alliance' and 'Perhaps we should look at things from another perspective and start believing them' which I think was said by Tyrion. - I must admit that I have not yet rewatched season 7 - I just couldn't bring myself to do that! If you ask me 'see you for what you are' serves indeed two purposes: It gives a hint that Jon has already an inkling what Da€nerys is, even though he might not yet known all - and it gives the audience a hint of the greater picture of DarkDany as you said. I think that GRRM always wanted to trick his audience / readers into rooting for the villain and only realising it later. And although I have some things to say about D&D and their adaptation I think they did a good job of bringing Da€nerys POV trap to screen. The funny thing is that some of her stans are so caught up in this that they might not realise 'what she is', a Conqueror who steps on corpses to reach her goal.... I'm not even sure if this is an English expression, but you get my meaning. I think this is so cleverly done really. The doctor that Da€nerys on her journey seemingly acts as a saviour leads people to forget two things: that her goal of getting the Iron Throne for herself - remember that she was extremely uncomfortable with Tyrion asking her long time plans for afterwards aka her legacy and succession - might not be a good goal. And second her inability to think about consequences... Now, nobody can predict all the consequences, but Da€nerys is so impatient that she doesn't even try. And this is a very bad characteristic for a ruler.Some of the foreshadowing of season 7 might indeed work out nicely - although I doubt that will make me a bigger fan of season 7. (Wight Hunt, Winterhell plot, -> cringe)Thanks for the ask!

[quantumbollocks]

Some thoughts on the Doctor’s regenerations

I’ve been thinking for a while about how each regeneration has affected the Doctor’s personality in their next body. I’m going to be writing about NuWho here as I was only a kid when Classic Who got cancelled.

War to Nine: We know that canonically when a Time Lord/Lady crosses their own timeline in a way that makes different regenerations meet, they forget the events until after it has happened for the oldest version of themself. This means that War regenerates into Nine believing that he has killed all the Daleks and all the Gallifreyans and this carries over, this version of the Doctor is very serious a lot of the time and hiding a lot of pain. You can see how joyful the Doctor is at the end of The Doctor Dances when he’s able to reprogram the nanites and save everyone - “Just this once, Rose, EVERYONE LIVES!” 

Nine to Ten: The Doctor welcomes a chance to regenerate when Rose has taken the Artron energy into herself and it is a fairly peaceful regeneration, emotionally speaking. He is immediately able to carry on the conversation with Rose (after noting the new teeth) about going to a planet called Barcelona. The only thing the Doctor needs is a lovely cup of tea. He even manages to regenerate a whole new hand! This version of the Doctor is a lot more cheerful and happy then the previous regeneration, he’s starting to put the whole thing with the Daleks and Gallifreyans behind him. Interestingly, he also starts to suffer from hubris in thinking he can break the laws of time (”The waters of Mars”) and loves being this version of himself so. damn. much. that he wastes a regeneration on staying exactly the same (Watsonian perspective, I know. The Doylist explanation is that the BBC wanted people to thing that there might be a surprise regeneration.) This Doctor really, really likes being himself. When he realises what the “He will knock four times” means he is really tempted to let Donna’s grandad die rather than face regeneration, but he does the right thing in the end.

Ten to Eleven: Ten, as I mentioned, really doesn’t want to regenerate. He holds off for as long as possible and manages to make time to visit every single companion ever. When he finally does regenerate it is wild and unpredictable, the TARDIS crashes and he is confused and craving fish fingers and custard. This version of the Doctor is also wild and unpredictable, and is one of the oldest seeming for a while (despite being played by the youngest actor to portray the Doctor). Eventually he fights the battle of Trenzalore and is gifted an unknown number of regenerations (this will become important later). 

Eleven to Twelve: He is old and tired and he has been fighting for centuries. He’s glad to regenerate but is in a strange frame of mind (for instance, he hallucinates Amy Pond, “the first face that ever saw this face”. He needs a lot of sleep after this regeneration and takes a lot of time to find himself, personality wise. This version of the Doctor goes through a subjective time frame of several billion years while in the Gallifreyan device and this affects him a lot; once he has found himself and settled into his personality he doesn’t want to regenerate again. This is different to Ten’s wish to not regenerate, Ten liked who he was but Twelve is just sick of all the regenerating and feeling really damn old (compare how old Ten is to how old Twelve is, even ignoring the billions of years there is a big difference). He is so sick of it that he is wasting regenerations by grounding them out, which he can afford to do now as he has been given so many by the Time Lords (I told you it would become important...) Once he has met his much younger self, who is also scared about regenerating, he is ready to face it, Which brings us to...

Twelve to Thirteen. The Doctor gives a long and impassioned speech full of all the things he wants to remember, and finishes it with “Doctor, I let you go”. This is an interesting regeneration as the Doctor seems to take it very well, the first thing she says when she sees her reflection is “Oh, brilliant!” with a big smile. The Doctor has conquered her fear of regeneration and now she is ready to face the world. I don’t think that the problems with the TARDIS are caused by the regeneration the way that they were for Ten to Eleven, I think we will find that it is caused by an external source, some kind of sabotage. The new Doctor is likely to be curious and fun loving and exploring what it is like to be a Time Lady after so long being a Time Lord.

[ghostmartyr]

I mean, if you look at it logically, it isn’t necessarily that things are getting worse, it’s that the things that were making it manageable are slowly being eaten away and reminding me of all the horribleness. In theory, that could even be helpful. No happiness and delusional optimism getting in the way of remembering that there’s a problem not getting fixed. Or it could create space for other, new happy things. Which exist!

Or I could just make a fun game about how many days/years past the end of my tolerance zone I’ve lasted. I am so awesome. Keeping breathing like the bestest human.

I’m switching between despair and hysteria because I really don’t know what the hell I’m doing or how to make it better, and it isn’t quite 9/10 doctors agreeing on that, but it’s enough to be depressing. Or maybe they’ll respond to this latest mess with some brilliant insight that saves me and this time next week I’ll be perfectly cured and it’ll all be fine.

Look, I’ve just gotta say, here, for the record.

This is stupid.

Like, I’m not sure what I’m accomplishing here, except finding new and exciting ways to somehow lower the bar for my expectations, but if there was a point to this, I feel like it’s been lost. This is the kind of suffering someone writes for their character when it’s November and they don’t know what they’re doing but they have to meet a word count for the day, and misery fills pages.

It would not get away with this in its final, published form. “No,” the editor would say, “you want to give people a reason to turn the page, not throw themselves and the book into a dumpster fire.”

Only wait, the author goes, “You don’t understand my vision!” and crowdfunds a release and then a decade later writes another book, changes their name, and goes to a publisher again and begs for an editor to maybe take a look and hack and slash the thing before the regrets sell a million copies.

The new book does better, but the cult classic of the original never dies, and eventually the author derails into a fit of insanity because people will not let the mistakes go and they jump off a bridge or something.

Then they probably live, only with permanent damage, and wonder if this is karma and they should have just let their damn character from the first book die in peace instead of prolonging their suffering for five dozen chapters.

The part where none of that sounds fun or relevant to meaning is what I relate to most in that tangent.

Also, to the me up there who started this: No, actually, I’m pretty sure that nothing getting better + a significant increase in pain does mean things are getting worse. Not to steal your thunder or anything, I realize that the parts about nothing good sticking around are accurate, but no, things are getting worse. We’re just hoping they’re getting worse in that darkest before dawn way. Fuck.

There’s a chapter/segment/thing in How Not to Write a Novel about how a writer’s job is harder than God’s, because a writer’s plot has to make sense. ...Yes Lord I’m throwing shade at your scene blocking. Kill me off and we can have a nice long talk about it.

It’s like someone wrote a code for a story, said the hero should suffer now, then forgot to give ‘now’ a value, so it’s just stuck in the eternal now instead of a momentary now. Coincidentally, if you erase the n, you get ow, and I feel that.

And I don’t know, from a Watsonian perspective, I’m kind of lonely and sad and angry, because everything sucks, and every bright spot of light I’ve found is a train that’s about to be used as a hammer. And I would dearly love to argue that I’m being melodramatic and it couldn’t possibly all be that bad, but I actually can’t think of a single damn thing that makes me happy that hasn’t been used to brutally assault my emotional health.

Probably because I have none of that, so I am currently incapable of just being happy, but that limits the attention to the part of my life where every fucking thing is conspiring to go sideways, and I am actually allowed to find it upsetting that nothing I do in life has any positive meaning because I am a drain on society and would be better off dead.

I don’t want to be doing this every other hour. It’s getting ridiculous, and I would love to say it’s not sustainable, but facts not in evidence.

And maybe the focus on how pointless this is is the wrong way to go, because fine, I can deal with pointless, but you know what? If it’s pointless, let’s just go wild here and make it pointless in a . . . happy way! Instead of the one where I want to shoot myself! Or what, can happiness not be pointless because its very existence is conceivable as point enough for anything?

Everything is terrible and life sucks. Tomorrow will probably be worse. Yay. A keystone of mental health in some schools of thought is being able to reliably stick to a routine, so I’m obviously doing very dandy.

...FFS, this should not still be getting worse. Why the hell am I bothering if it’s just going to keep getting worse? I’m not even a person anymore. Just some shattered collection of fried emotions shivering in a corner and occasionally working up the nerve to pretend that life isn’t awful (something which is, naturally, punished swiftly because that is obviously the wrong way of going about things).

This is devoid of meaning and I want off.

[ambulonflakes]

(tags from @lord-squiggletits)

#squiggposting#pharma apologism#i'm sure the doylist reason for the writing is just that pharma was a designated villain#so since he's a villain and 'crazy' it's fine for everyone even the good guys to treat him like complete trash#i just think from a watsonian perspective taking a sympathetic approach is way more interesting and logically consistent#what i mean is like. from a meta perspective one of the best ways to show that a character is super evil and not worth saving#is when even the good guy heroes. the ones who are supposed to be kind and compassionate and wise. see him as dirt#and this is also kind of a necessity in most plots bc TF is the kind of series that just needs action villains and long-term antagonists#so not every villain is written or has a plot to be made redeemable. and pharma is one of these bc he's not important or a legacy character#so from a doylist (meta) perspective you could read the autobots' disregard of pharma as a sign of#'this guy is not meant to have your sympathy as a reader. pay no attention to him'#but from a watsonian (in universe) perspective it paints a miserable picture of pharma being utterly forsaken by the ppl he served alongsid#and like yeah i'm super autistic about pharma so of course i view him with sympathy but like#the idea of being a loyal and good person for years only to be subjected to a Torment Nexus of#being blackmailed into breaking all of the oaths you held sacred. under threat of you and all your comrades dying horrible torturous deaths#then when your comrades find out about it they focus solely on the 'harvesting organs' and not on the 'blackmail' part#and then you get literally left for dead by your comrades and best friend hating your guts#and then you get rescued by a guy who uses you as a test subject for his evil machine#this is a fucking nightmare scenario like pharma could hardly be suffering more if the author TRIED to make him suffer#and for me it's like. the evil pharma did can't be decontextualized to what drove him to that. as well as the question of like#how easily ppl can write someone off as evil and turn a blind eye to (or even find satisfaction in) their suffering bc theyre evil#and either brought it on themselves or it's just karma paying a visit#like. i feel like if pharma WERE a shitty doctor and a terrible person his whole life then the delphi situation would feel like karma#but the way it's written and the lore retroactively put in makes it feel more pharma getting thrown in a torture carousel#and THEN becoming evil. but then being treated as if he was always evil or was some sort of bad apple#bc like i'm not opposed to LOLing when a villain gets a karmic torture/death related to the wrongs they committed#but in pharma's case it feels less like karma and more like endless torture + being abandoned by ppl who should have been more loyal

I think the key component to my personal reading of post-Delphi Pharma is that he's trying to be a horrible person on purpose. Not "on purpose" in the way that people have free will to exercise their own choices, but in that Pharma's "mad doctor" persona is a performance he puts on to deliberately embrace how much everyone else hates him. Basically, if people already think you're a "bad Autobot" and a horrible doctor who just kills his patients for fun, why try to prove otherwise to people who have already made up their minds about you? Just fully embrace the fact that people see you as an asshole. Don't try to change their minds. Don't plead for their forgiveness or understanding. Just stop caring. If you're going to be remembered as a monster, you might as well be a memorable monster, and eke as much pleasure and hedonism as you can out of it before karma catches up to you and you inevitably crash and burn.

I mean, I guess you could just go the route of "Oh, Pharma was always a fucked up creepy guy and Delphi was just him taking the mask off," but I really don't like that interpretation because, for one, it feels really wrong to take a character like Pharma becoming evil under duress and going, "Oh well clearly he did the things he did because he was evil all along," as if somehow Pharma breaking under blackmail/torture/threat of horrible death was a sign of him having poor moral character. As opposed to, you know, suffering under the very real threat of horrible death for himself and everyone he cares about while being manipulated by a guy who specializes in psychological torture.

The second reason is that it just doesn't make sense to write Pharma as having been evil all along. I mean...

Occam's Razor says that the best argument is the one with the simplest explanation. Doesn't it make way more sense to take Pharma's appearances in flashbacks, his friendship with Ratchet, his stunning medical accomplishments, and the few we see of him speaking kindly/sympathetically (or in the least charitable interpretation, at least professionally) towards his patients and conclude "This guy was just a normal person, if exceptionally talented." Taking all of these flashback appearances at face value and assuming Pharma was being genuine/honest is a way simpler and more logical explanation than trying to argue that Pharma for the past 4 million years was just faking being a good doctor/person. I mean, it's possible within the realm of headcanon, but the fact is Pharma's appearances in the story are so brief that there simply wasn't room in the story for there to be some sort of secret conspiracy/hidden manipulation behind why Pharma acted the way he did in the past.

I just can't help but look at things like Pharma's friendship with Ratchet (himself a good person and usually a fine judge of character) and the fact that even post-Delphi, pretty much every single mention of Pharma comes with some mention of "He was a good doctor for most of his life" or "He was making major headways in research [before he started killing patients]" which implies that even the Autobots themselves see Pharma's villainy as a recent turn in his life compared to how for "most of his life" he "used to be" a good doctor.

And although Pharma doesn't know this, we as the readers (and even other characters like Rung) know about Aequitas technology and the fact that it actually works, so... if Pharma really was an unrepentant murderer, why couldn't he get through the forcefield too? The Aequitas forcefield doesn't require that a person be completely morally pure and free of wrongdoing or else how could Tyrest get through, just that they feel a sense of inner peace and lack feelings of guilt. Pharma has murdered and tortured people by this point, and put on quite a campy and theatrical show of how much he sees it as a fun game, so why then can he not get through?

It circles back to my headcanon at the start of this post that the "mad doctor" persona is just that-- a persona. Delphi/post-Delphi Pharma's laughing madman personality is just so far removed from every flashback we saw of him and everything we can infer based on how other people see/saw him before that, to me, the mad doctor act is (at least in large part, if not fully) a persona that Pharma puts on to put his villainy in the forefront.

To avoid an overly simplistic/ableist take, I don't think Tarn tortured Pharma into turning crazy. To me, it's more like the constant pressure of death by horrific torture, the feeling of martyrdom as Pharma kept secret that he was the only one standing between Delphi and annihilation, the physical isolation of Messatine as well as the emotional separation from Ratchet, being forced to violate his medical oaths (pretty much the only thing Pharma's entire life has been about), etc. All of that combined traumatized Pharma to the point that the only way he could avoid cracking was to just stop caring about all of it. Because at least then, even if he's still murdering patients to save Delphi from a group of sadistic freaks, Pharma doesn't have to feel guilty and sick about doing it. As opposed to the alternatives, which were probably either going off the deep end and killing himself to escape, or confessing to what he did and getting jailed for it.

In that light, Pharma becoming a mad doctor makes sense. It avoids the bad writing tropes of "oh this character who was good his entire life was actually just evil and really good at hiding it" as well as "oh he got tortured and went crazy that's why he's so random and silly and killing people, he's crazy" and instead frames Pharma's evil as something he was forced into, to the point where in order to avoid a full psychological breakdown and keep defending Delphi, he just had to stop caring about the sanctity of life or about what other people might think of him.

Then, of course, the actual Delphi episode happens, and Pharma's own lifelong best friend Ratchet basically spits in his face and sees him as nothing more than a crazy murderer who went rogue from being a good Autobot. Then Pharma gets his hands cut off and left to die on Messatine. At that point, Pharma has not only been mentally/emotionally broken into losing his feelings of compassion, he's received the message loud and clear: He is alone. Everyone hates him. Not even his own best friend likes him any more. No one even cared enough about him to check if he actually died or not. He will only ever be remembered as a doctor who went insane and killed his patients.

So in the light of 1. Having all of your redeeming qualities be squeezed out of you one by one for the sake of survival and 2. Having your reputation and all of your positive relationships be destroyed and 3. People only know/care about you as "that doctor who became evil and killed his patients" rather than the millions of years of good service that came before.

What else is there to do but internalize the fact that you'll forever be seen as a monster and a freak, and embrace it? People already see you as a murderer for that blackmail deal you did, so why not become an actual murderer and just start killing people on a whim? People already see you as an irredeemable monster who puts a stain on the Autobot name, so why beg for their forgiveness when you could just shun them back? You've already become a murderer, a traitor, and a horrible doctor, so what's a few more evil acts added to the pile? It's not like anyone will ever forgive you or love you ever again.

Why care? Why try to hold on to your principles of compassion, kindness, medical ethics, when an entire lifetime of being a good person did nothing to save you from blackmail and then abandonment? Why put yourself through the emotional agony of feeling lonely, guilty, miserable, when you could just... stop caring, and not hurt any more?

[doctorwhoprimers]

Why does doctor who have different companions? Why can’t he just be with Rose? 😣🤧

From a Doylist perspective, it's for the same reason that he regenerates. Most actors are human and their availability is limited - working regular cast changes into the premise of the show allows it to continue indefinitely, rather than being tied to the availability of its actors.It also allows the show to be divided into character arcs rather than plot arcs. For the first half of its run, the show was entirely episodic rather than arc based, but achieved its sense of continuity through the characters. Season 1 doesn't tell a unified story in terms of monsters and villains, but it does tell a unified story in terms of Susan's growth as a character, the tension between her wanderlust and need to belong somewhere, her loyalty to her grandfather and her growing up and becoming her own person. That story ends with her departure, and a new one begins. Similarly, Rose has a distinct character arc with a beginning, a middle, and an end, and once that end is reached the show moves on not just to different stories but different types of stories. This provides variety and freshness, as well as being comparatively immune from arc creep.For an example of how both of these things are so important to a show's longevity, contrast Stargate: SG-1 - another of my favorite shows. Stargate ran for 10 years, which is frankly incredible. It had to stop because of basically two things: actor availability and arc creep. That is, Richard Dean Anderson got too old to be in it, and the plot ran out of places to go. Each season's conflict was bigger and badder than the last, until there was nowhere left to escalate to. This is not a complaint about the show - the season 8 Grand Finale is stunning and satisfying and everything you could want. But the next two seasons are functionally a different show, and in many ways disappointing for that reason.Doctor Who has been running for over 50 years (and putting out new content for like 36 of them). It is not working towards a grand finale. And it has "becoming a totally different show" worked into its very structure in a way that is decently organic, and which is to many one of its chief attractors. There is no shame in liking only one or a few of those shows, but this changeability is fundamentally what it means to be Doctor Who.From a more Watsonian perspective - well, he says it himself right in the show. He's 900+ (depending on how badly you think he's lying about his age at any given moment) - she's 19. Go forward a couple of seasons and that translates to hundreds of years in Doctor time - he's Peter Capaldi and she's dead. If she stays. Immortal/ephemeral shipping is fundamentally tragic, but we can sidestep that tragedy by letting people leave and become frozen in history, as it were.This is, incidentally, the best argument I have ever heard against canon pairings involving the Doctor (that doesn't come down to "I don't happen to like it") - no Doctor ship can be endgame because Doctor Who has no endgame. And there's only so many times you can introduce a One True Love before it gets...cheap.I know this question is borne more out of frustration at the end of an era than a desire for weighty analysis, but I hope this helps at least a little. And of course, the other thing is - Doctor Who always comes around again. You may encounter someone you like as much, or more, or differently. Or you may not. In the meantime, there is fortunately lots and lots of fanfic.

[robins-den]

sweating in this taking a full day . anyway !!

I think that Sirius repressed his memories of his birth parents because of how awful their deaths were. From a doyalist perspective they're never spoken about because they aren't important to the story being told and there's not really a moment Sirius would talk about them. From a watsonian perspective, there's the repression as mentioned above and the fact that he got surprise adopted by Dorothy at the scene of his parents gruesome execution. He was pulled from one of the worst moments of his life into safety (he likely had nowhere to go; if he did, he would have said so to Dorothy, or his caretaker would have (reasonably) forbidden him from seeing the execution) as without her he would have been left with the ghosts of his family at his home, or even killed himself by Nicholas.

Perhaps he would have stopped repressing his memories if Claire didn't arrive, putting him on guard and putting his walls up, or maybe if Dorothy wasn't also dealing with her own trauma of her daughters death, she would have been able to help him more. But Dorothy dying in front of him as well to protect him, watching an eye monster come from nowhere to eat her body, and likely sitting shell shocked in a room filled with the blood and guts and smell of a dozen dead people would have forced him to repress the 'less relevant' trauma to avoid risk of mental breakage.

I am NO doctor and I haven't researched this stuff so this isn't scientific analysis, it's character analysis and guesswork.

I AGREE WITH WANTING FIONA CONTENT.... Honestly I want to know why her husband wasn't able to take Claire. For a second I thought he was the soldier who tried to shoot Nicholas (Bonus Stage, Sirius backstory) but I discarded that as a much better use of his time would be to. Take care of his daughter.

Considering Dorothy and her husband were divorced (I think it's canon, could be wrong) that means that divorce is a concept in this world (you laugh but a lot of media ignores the concept of divorce) and they could potentially have divorced. Hopefully he moved out of town or else he's still a dick for not taking Claire. Or he could have died earlier.

Honestly, I need more information on every member of the Elford line. I need Dorothy conclusion: we learn everyone's favorite foods. I need to know why Susie made the contract. If we never learn that I'll be so upset. I need to know if Fiona is single and if I can hit on her because. Ma'am. Not a pressing need but I do wonder what would happen if someone had two children; would they both get the Witch's Heart, or only the eldest?

WE DEFINITELY NEED PATRICIA CONTENT. Kind and empathetic to a fault dead mom is serviceable but I want to know more... I want to know if Noel is wearing rose tinted glasses or if she's genuinely an angel who married Nicholas for some reason. Nicholas pre-suicide is also desired but honestly he's been framed so far as the only completely unsympathetic person in the story, so I'm fine if we don't get much. By unsympathetic I mean 'no tragic backstory'; Lime is an unsympathetic villain because of how much damage she causes, but her backstory explains everything about her and she's a tragic villain. okay anyway. I will say that it's understandable how Ashe wouldn't recognize his mother's favorite singers child because that's a lot of layers of separation. I agree with everything else though, pre-suicide Noel backstory would be wonderful.

What I need most from Noel conclusion is

Unapologetically happy ending (Noel gets out of the mansion and gets to exist in the surface world and will die at a natural time, there's a romantic ending (I'm fine if it's a multiple endings thing) where Noelclaire confesses and they kiss, Claire finds out that noel was Patricia, Sirius is able to start moving past his trauma, etc etc)

Elford family lore, specifically Susie. If we never find out why Susie made the contract she's becoming a Blorbo and I WILL be insane about it.

General world-building. I have an OC and while by the time Noel conclusion is out I'll (hopefully) be done writing her stuff, just knowing more about the world they live in would be lovely.

I don't NEED it need it but Lime finally realizing that everyone's trauma is different and comparison is useless would be nice.

I probably have more to add but my stomach is eating itself alive so I'm gonna go have a snack. In summary, Sirius conclusion didn't give me as much Elford backstory as I thought it would so Noel conclusion is going to need to pull a lot of weight. Also I'm a Claire Conclusion truther. My phone was on 11-10-9-8% while I typed this up on my computer which was bad because I used it to reference your post LOL

im so curious about claire noel and sirius b ackstory ebcause i feel like theres still so many unanswered questions i ahve in my mind..

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