#but they just. miss the mark every time

[strugglingyetvibing]

logging back on for the first time since dts season 6 dropped, how we feelin' f1blr?

i avoided socials like crazy because i didn't want any spoilers, but i just finished the season so i'm officially back, and i'm pretty miffed

putting an extender thingy here bc this is getting long and i don't wanna jam up your dashes too much haha

tl;dr - danica patrick sucks and the season was mid.

first of all, get danica patrick off my fucking screen. she, of all the women reporters they could have picked for this role, was the worst possible pick. give me rachel brookes! give me natalie pinkham! bernie collins (could you imagine??)! any of those fantastic women (or the others i didn't list) would be better than danica fucking patrick.

beyond that, the season was honestly kind of meh. they missed a lot of big plot points (hardly any mention of max's objectively historic run?? love him or hate him, it was something for the record books) for a lot of smaller plot points that really either could have been covered in just a chunk of an episode or were really just made up (e.g. they tried to make us think that liam and yuki weren't friends even though they literally are, and have been since before 2023). like, i get the fanfare of daniel coming back, but they also just did what f1 did and just stopped mentioning nyck ever again, which was so frustrating. it was so abrupt! i was shocked when the credits rolled.

they also just didn't mention qatar at all, which was wild. they could have used 'the shot' of lewis walking in the gravel with george's car going in the background! they could have talked about oscar winning something before lando! they could have talked about max winning the championship and how historic his run was! they could have talked about how fucking hard that race was for everyone on the grid and actually mention logan sargeant for once and show how williams and james vowles took care of him! there were a lot of missed opportunities there. as much as i don't like that race (due to the overwhelming strain it put on the drivers), it was an important one that probably should have been mentioned.

at first, i thought bringing claire williams in was a weird move, but i kind of appreciated her insight as an ex-team principle, similarly to how i appreciate bernie collins' insight during broadcasts. that was a good touch from the netflix team.

two episodes for alpine was too much. i get that there was a lot to go through for them, but they could have sped up the drama and made a super interesting single episode encapsulating both pierre and esteban's animosity (and them making it better) and otmar's departure. if put together, they could have made an engaging plot-twisty episode that would have been super fun to watch.

i also think it was really interesting how they didn't follow aston martin through their midseason fall. they propped them up in the first episode as a team poised to fight at the top, and then we never hear from them until abu dhabi. they mention that they had 'some struggles' throughout the season, but if you spend a whole episode hyping me up for a team, check in with the team at least once throughout the season. that was kind of disappointing that we didn't hear from them again until the end.

i honestly forgot that there were talks of lewis to ferrari in the middle of the season, so that episode was really interesting, especially knowing what we know now. the fact that the team told lewis to his face that he was wrong after a literal decade working together is absolutely bonkers, and i'm starting to understand more as to why he left. i just wish they had included the "hello lewis" moment at the monaco driver conference. they included another bit from the monaco conference, so i'm sad they missed that bit. would've helped with my bingo card tbh.

seeing the ferrari episode (it's like episode 8 or something) just makes me more mad that they dropped carlos. this isn't dts' fault, the episode was actually pretty good (aside from the pitting of charles against carlos, but that kind of comes with the show at this point lol), but seeing everything that carlos did for ferrari just for them to not renew his contract is insanely heartbreaking. back to back poles and a win (the only non-red bull win of the season!), as well as consistently performing incredibly well, bringing in consistent good points for himself and the team. i realize lewis is a seven-time world champion, and this isn't any sort of lewis hate (i actually love that man), but the decision to drop carlos and the manner in which ferrari did it is very infuriating. again, not dts' fault, but seeing the behind the scenes in that episode was so bittersweet.

i really didn't mean for this to get so long, jeez! i just have a lot of frustrations with the season (and honestly kind of the show as a whole, but i'll save this already long-ass rant from that lol). it's an enjoyable watch, but it's weird to think that this is the impression people who don't know f1 will get of the sport and the people inside of it when a lot of it is just plain wrong.

and again, fuck danica patrick. she should not be on that show at all, and i hope she doesn't return for season seven (i'm delusional, she probably will). she also should not be on the sky sports broadcast team, but again, i'm delusional, and she'll probably be around for much longer than jenson or i would like.

[brainicusrotticus]

technically i played my first run of iwatex more than a year and a half ago. i focused heavily on exploration, managed to cure the shimmer and stop the famine without realizing it was possible to fail at those, and became a gardener with sym and dys.

but i remembered very little when i finally came back to the game (i remembered tammy dying, the gardeners, and the helios arriving, but that’s about it), so i decided to completely wipe my data and start fresh.

my new first run was… tragic. obviously tammy and hal died because it was a first run. i mostly did exploration. i went out and explored the month that tonin died, saw the fight, didn’t have the stats to try to save him so i ran for help, and then held his hands while he died, thinking i was tammy.

i stopped exploring for a while after that, and zeroed in on xenobotany again. i’d already done a little bit, and ended up creating the native hybrid right around the time i turned 13.

…which is also when sol’s mom pulls out the “you’re not doing enough” talk (possibly just if your rebellion is on the higher side? but mine has never not been, so i don’t know). which happened to be the event that triggered right after i made the native hybrid. so i was pissed that i’d just achieved a scientific marvel as a prepubescent child, only to be told i needed to try harder.

so i chose every angry option that presented itself. i despised her after that. i feel so strongly about it that i made it a foundational event to my view of my doctor!sol.

i stopped researching xenobotany, and started focusing on engineering instead. leaned back into exploration, too. until the famine got bad. i thought working on xenobotany might help things, make more plants and solve the problem long term.

…but it didn’t. and fluorescent died. which made feelings… complicated.

i leaned fully into engineering and exploration. managed to get to the ridges before ever fully exploring the valley. made efforts to befriend tangent, too. learned that the shimmer cure might be in the valley, but it wasn’t pollen yet so i wasn’t thinking super hard on it. helped her with some other stuff, too.

eventually, a pollen season hit and i remembered the cure. i went out exploring in the valley, but misremembered where the big event for it was and ended up using most of my stress getting to the wrong spot. i had to go back, relax for mid-pollen, and then went back out in late pollen.

i did manage to get to the glade, get what i needed, and get out. went back to the colony, last missing piece for the shimmer cure in hand.

and walked right into the story event where the shimmer finally kills geranium.

…i helped cure it the very next month. i, as a player, felt so… numb and useless about it. at this point i’d failed to save tonin, flulu, and geranium. not just failed, but tried and failed. tried so very hard.

i threw myself entirely into my relationship with tang. we started dating. i focused back on engineering because i didn’t know what else to do.

i found out what tang was working on. had been working on, for years. what i’d been helping her with, unknowingly.

i could tell she felt conflicted. that this was something she felt she had to do, but something she didn’t want to do.

i told her… i supported her.

i thought it was the first step. that if i let her know that i support her (not her project, but her), then she would know, when i told her it needed to stop, that i wasn’t mad at her. she wouldn’t have to defend herself. that she could lean on the parts of her screaming that this was wrong, and i’d support her in following the path to undoing what she had almost done.

that wasn’t a choice i was given. i just couldn’t read the writing on the walls.

i hoped the chance would come up with time passing. but it didn’t.

i decided i had to tell someone else. the only person i could think of who would be against it, and who could do something about it.

i told dys.

and he just… told me it wasn’t a serious threat. that the gardeners could handle it. i wasn’t close enough with him to make him take me seriously.

he left during the next glow.

i tried exploring again, hoping i might find something out there that would let me stop this. i broke up with tang, because i realized i couldn’t talk her out of it. i’d damned us both with that one choice.

in the end, there was nothing i could do. tangent’s cure came to pass.

i just imagine all those years sol spent sitting in the helios. thinking on the course of their life.

how they chose to run and get help instead of fighting to protect tonin. and he died because of it.

how they chose to try and focus on breeding new plants for the famine instead of working the fields. and fluorescent died because of it.

how they took one wrong turn in the valley of vertigo, delaying curing the shimmer by two months. and geranium died because of it.

how they said one wrong thing, thinking it was a path to redemption. and because of that, cal, and instance died.

…a planet died.

i know how it ends in the story. emerging more than a decade later. surviving, because that’s what humanity does.

but in my heart, it ends differently. sol refuses to stay in the helios. a season after the quarantine starts, they just leave. they venture out into the plagued wilderness to try and save something. some small bit of vertumna. something that can be regrown, like it was thousands of years ago.

…but they die with the rest of it.

[rosiethedragongeek]

Okay so we all agree that thw is gorgeous, everything about it looks amazing, but one thing that bothers me is that all of the characters look too soft? They look airbrushed and their skin is too smooth and their hair looks too clean?? I feel like the first movie did such a good job, you know their skin had texture and they looked greasy and dirty and stuff, and I feel like we definitely lost that as we went along? This might've been a problem in HTTYD 2 I'm not sure, but I feel like the 3rd movie is the worst offender

i also feel like they changed their teeth as they went along (if i'm not mistaken they were like 15 in the first movie, and by that point you aren't losing anymore teeth (and vikings don't exactly have braces)), like they look straighter and smaller and stuff.

I'm not even gonna get into what they did to Valka bc that was egregious.

[arolesbianism]

I caved and made them real. Obverse me losing more and more motivation to draw as I made each of these back to back lol

[apollos-boyfriend]

low-empathy characters that don’t mask >>>>>>>>

[ridiasfangirlings]

Sarumi red string soul mates thingy except Yata sees it as a symbol of their bond and love and Saruhiko feels chained.

Imagine this as like soulmate AU where when you meet your soulmate this red string appears on both your pinky fingers. Before meeting Yata Fushimi always assumed he didn’t have a soulmate, with Niki mocking him about always being alone, and besides look at how his parents turned out so how can soulmates be a good thing. Yata meanwhile has always wanted to find his but he isn’t sure what to do when the red string appears on his finger the same day he tries to save that asshole kid in his class from bullies. Yata puts it into the back of his mind until he sees Fushimi in the bathroom and now he starts to realize that maybe his soulmate is the coolest guy after all. He feels like he can’t broach the subject with Fushimi though — Fushimi never says anything even though the string is clear on his finger and this feels like one of those words that Fushimi puts limits on, even after he’s allowed Yata to call him a friend. It’s not until they start planning to interrupt the jungle surprise party that Yata finally says it, that they can do anything together because they’re soulmates, and Fushimi pauses for just a moment before nodding and wrapping his pinky around Yata’s. 

This lasts for all of like a week before the surprise party happens and Mikoto saves them, and Fushimi feels like a useless weakling who couldn’t even save his own soulmate. And then they join Homra and Yata’s always staring at Mikoto and to Fushimi it’s like he was right all along, this must have been a mistake, because Yata’s obviously going to throw him away eventually regardless of that red string. I could see him hating the Homra tattoo even more in this AU too, because Yata keeps looking at the mark and Fushimi feels like clearly Mikoto’s mark is more important to Yata than the one he shares with Fushimi. Of course Fushimi is completely oblivious to the fact that both are important to Yata, that even though he worships Mikoto part of why the Homra mark makes him so proud is because he and Saruhiko have theirs in the same place and it’s like even more proof that they’re soulmates. Yata feels like this just makes their bond stronger and he’s so proud that Fushimi is his soulmate, unaware that the red string he values so much has started to become a chain in Fushimi’s eyes.

Then the betrayal happens and imagine Fushimi even tries to burn the string mark off his finger but it doesn’t work, that mark can’t be removed. He starts wearing gloves instead, so that he doesn’t have to see it, and when he and Yata fight Yata’s always looking at those gloves and unconsciously touching his own finger (and maybe Yata doesn’t know that the mark wouldn’t burn so he has no idea if what’s under there is red string or just a burn scar). Even with them being apart though I imagine Yata can’t bring himself to hate the red string on his finger, when he touches it he feels like maybe he can feel Fushimi’s presence too and somehow it’s still comforting — imagine post-S1, Yata depressed and sitting at Homra cradling his pinky finger and thinking at least Saruhiko is alive. And then when he goes to save Fushimi in jungle imagine he’s not sure which way to go and he touches his finger, and suddenly he can see this faint red string leading him towards where Fushimi is. Fushimi meanwhile thinks no one will save him but then he just silently touches his finger and even before he hears Yata’s voice he’s struck with this feeling that Yata is coming for him, Yata is coming to save him, and he can see that red string too as Yata bursts through the wall and rescues him.

[cleo-serotonin]

they tried to make will a replica of s1 zane except he’s worse in every aspect

[natjennie]

watching the flashback scenes in redding weddy caressing my screen while a single silent tear falls, like a mourning army wife in the 40s with a locket. which is appropriate given the subject matter.

[brucequeensteen]

character wrapped 2023 💥

tagged by @davidtennantpussytulpa ^-^ i didn't know how many to do so i copied tara and did top 10. i know the severance guys are Four Of Them but i can't separate them theyre all equally important to me

will graham (hannibal), em haywood (nope), aziraphale (good omens), mark & dylan & helly & irving (severance), hawkeye pierce (mash), martha jones (doctor who), ivan karamazov (the brothers karamazov), kim kitsuragi (disco elysium), stewy hosseini (succession), ruescott melshi (andor/rogue one)

i will tag... @fagician @britomart @libraryfag @roadwhores @majorbaby @globuspolski @hadleyfraserfaggot @tenderscience if u want to ^-^

[nhura]

🧍‍♂️............................................................................................... alright man I'm just going to say it. I'm so hsrpilled that it's making me act out and draw fanart again. look forward to it or else ヾ(￣▽￣)

^ that's a wip

[aromanticasterisms]

oh man no wonder i'm missing my little guys recently. we haven't seen kaeya in almost a year

[mastersoftheair]

Sorry but am I the only one that thought that episode…sucked? Like it was straight up bad. Horrible pacing, no wrap up of all the random characters and plot lines they’ve thrown around all season (the tuskegee airmen, Westgates spying, literally all the guys beside like the main 4). (Seriously it makes me so mad that the three redtails got all of 5 seconds of screen time, almost no lines. Literally what was the point of introducing them other than to pretend the show was iNcLuSiVe) Even at the end of BoB and the Pacific you get a much better idea of what happened to all the remaining guys. In this they’re like what happened to DeMarco or Hambone or Brady or (insert character here) we don’t know! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The concentration camp scene felt shoehorned in compared to how it was done in BoB. Unless that actually happened to Rosie (which i haven’t heard anything about) but it was just like.. ok? It all felt so rushed and emotionless to me. Maybe I’ve just fallen out of love with MoTA but it’s been downhill for me since episode 6 or so.

i already made a little (read: long) post-finale write-up here, where i talk about the use of the tuskegee airmen, l'sandra, and overall editing/pacing issues i felt the show had. but i don't agree with the notion that adding the redtails was in any way insincere or trying to halfass being "iNcLuSiVe", i just think they suffer from this show's obvious time constraints. and to summarize what i wrote in my linked post, there's a limit to what white writers/directors/producers can do when creating a story about black people. there are some stories i'd feel uncomfortable with them telling on their own, truth be told. dee rees wasn't the sole nonwhite director, but she Was the only black one. i think she did her job well given the limitations and i appreciate that they let her direct those episodes, rather than leaving it up to a team of white people trying their best to tell a black story.

the worst i can say about the finale is that it didn't feel like That strong of finale, tho i wouldn't go as far to say it "sucked" or call it "straight up bad". i liked it plenty, it's just the weakest of the hbo war finales imo.

as for the concentration camp scene, artistic license was taken with both shows. unlike what's seen in the BoB, easy company wasn't the first to arrive at kaufering, and there's 0 mention of the all-japanese american 552nd who helped them liberate it). similarly, rosie rosenthal did assist in liberating those camps, though it would've been after the events shown this episode. idk if he saw one in that up-close way seen in this episode, but he could've (i should research this when i have time). plus, it would've felt weird Not having him acknowledge them at all. "shoe-horned" is an odd term to use here imo, as both scenes more-or-less center a jewish character (BoB's liebgott and MotA's rosie). the former show has survivors the characters can help, the latter shows no one left to help. the former has all of easy company there, the latter has rosie there all alone. rosie's scene felt deeply personal in that way. at the end of the day, both scenes are communicating different things. that doesn't make one better than the other when they aren't trying to be identical. (disclaimer, i'm not jewish, so i'd be interesting hearing from the perspective of someone who wrt whether or not they felt it was "shoe-horned")

i can understand if you've disliked the show post-episode 6 (and episode 6 was a very strong episode i'm ngl). eps 7 and 8 were weaker in many ways, even to me, so i get it. everyone's entitled to their own opinion (i'd be a hypocrite saying otherwise). just understand that this blog is run by someone who overall enjoys this show despite its flaws! basically, i encourage you to take this energy and make your own posts.

[yesmissnyx]

I need a personal assistant/chat bot where every time someone asks if I'll sext with them/be their domme, it just sends them an auto response that I'm only accepting new play partners through my fansites 😜

Like don't get me wrong, I'm flattered! And it wouldn't bother me so much if tumblr's messenger system wasn't busted and would properly show me new messages, or allow me to prioritize them correctly.

But the conversations I'm invested in keep getting buried in messages that are like, "Hey, can I have free sex? I don't have my age in my bio and I did NOT read your pinned post AT ALL, by the way 🥰"

[skitskatdacat63]

2005 Bahrain Grand Prix - Fernando Alonso(my personal post-race highlights)

+ bonus Kimi(bcs I was very happy to see him)

[arolesbianism]

Sits in shambles I didn't read maybe Jorge's id correctly in the mysterious hermit logs the first god knows how many times I read them and only just now realized that it's the same id as the scientist that speaks in the agricultural notes log why must I be so bad at reading

[theflyingfeeling]

tomorrow-me's gonna hate tonight-me, part 3522

(an incoherent work-related rant in the tags, read if you will but it's boring lol)