#clearly i had Opinions

[kindaeccentric]

'vampires are bad at art', factoid just statistical error. most vampires are quite decent at their crafts. Marius De Romanus who paints like all his works were made by AI is an outlier and should not have been counted

[anti-marauders]

Its funny remembering that in a way Mulciber and Avery are more respectful than The Marauders.

Cause The Marauders bully Lily's ex best friend Severus, despite James being in love with Lily and them claiming to be the good guys. Like bro if you want the girl befriend her best friend, damn.

And Mulciber and Avery, who are friends or acquaintances with Severus which is said by Lily, apparently don't do shit to Lily cause when she tries to get Severus to see how bad they are she only brings up the shit Mulciber did to Mary, someone Severus doesn't even know. Avery & Mulciber are clearly blood purists so they would obviously talk shit and I really think they'd talk shit about Lily wether they were friends with Severus or not cause she's a muggleborn and a gryffindor.

Yet Severus still hangs out with them and has no other issues with them especially cause he'd throw a fit if they talked shit about Lily. And if he did they'd clearly hex him cause they won't take shit from a half blood. Like wether they left Lily alone in an effort to keep Severus on their side to recruit him or not, they seemed smarter then the marauders. Cause while they didn't try to befriend her obviously, they knew if they wanted Severus on their side they didn't target the one person he truly cares about.

Now wether Mulciber and Avery were really close to Severus or not they still didn't target Lily or say shit cause I feel like they would considering how much James goes after her so they'd hear a lot about her. I feel like they'd attack her out of annoyance or berate her incase they thought she believed she was all that but apparently not cause Lily doesn't bring anything up and I know damn well she would have. Severus probably would have left them if they did.

[noirandchocolate]

The Yiga Clan isn’t a cult in my honest opinion.

They’re more like a crime syndicate.

If a crime syndicate was also an oppressed minority group subjected to a genocide in the distant past and continued marginalization in the present as they’re forced to lurk at the edges of and mostly outside society to eke out a living through theft and violence while the “good” members of the same minority who accepted the harsh terms of cultural genocide at the hands of the very people they served get to stand next to every other race that reviles them and call them “evil” and “traitors” because they seek justice against the divine-right monarchy that betrayed them first and have forsworn the goddess who never once deigned to help them.

They're not monsters to be mowed down, they're people. People who engage in genuine and understandable strife against authority figures who uphold systems of inequality.

...

Anyway, that's what I think.

(Edit: For even more of me rambling, see the notes.)

[greyedian]

MAN I'm seriously so sad about season 2. Bc I wish act 2 had the same emotional impact on me as it appears to have on so many others. But rn I'm just somewhere between unable to care and actively annoyed by some of those writing decisions. Seriously the more I think about it the less I like it.

[yanderemeganekko]

"Thistle is 15" "Thistle is 1000 years old" "Thistle is a child" "Thistle was 40/60/80/100 at the point where he" shut up shut up shut up elves don't mature the exact same as humans do and he has no confirmed canon human age plus people can be immature at literally any age especially after being forced to shoulder insane responsibilities from a young age just let people do what they want. We're not doing this to the Dungeon Meshi fandom ffs.

[royalarchivist]

If you can, please take a minute to go show Baghera some love.

[givehimthemedicine]

free miracle cure for some of the takes & winning poll options that've been on my dash lately. get well soon

[softenedsunbeams]

i think even if i wanted to get back into the rain world fandom the sheer amount of people who've already blocked me would push me back out anyways

[jupiter--dream]

Something something romance languages being sorta similar

(And yes that might be based in something that happened to me, you may not speak another language but at some point you can tell if they're insulting you lol)

(btw both merde and mierda mean shit, as in "SHIT!!" ofc)

[shigarakins]

i remember when the bodysnatching happened and how hardly anyone else in the fandom (or what i saw of the fandom) seemed to find it as horrifying as i did. then the same thing happened again with the mind invasion. and yes the fact that the mind invasion happened at all and not even the story gave much of a fuck about the fact that it did is still one of biggest gripes with the finale

[navree]

i request monetary compensation from all the bitches in season 4 who were whining at jon about how immoral it was for him to ask people questions when apparently he could have been making people run to death or otherwise kill them after forcing statements (without even having to ask a question). y'all got the nicest version of what the archivist could be and you were assholes about it for no reason, shame shame i know your name

[apartfromgod]

forever wary of the people who love jeff.. like. did y'all just choose to ignore the "we only have one child." line ?? which he said AFTER. he admitted to shauna that he read her journals. that was literally just cruel. idc if he's so 'baby boy omg he played a song abt hating the cops outside the police station he's so sillyyy.' he knew what saying that meant. man's an asshole.

[billpottsismygf]

73 Yards

I have slightly mixed feelings on this one, but what it did well it did brilliantly. The episode was beautifully shot with a fantastically creepy atmosphere throughout. The Welsh landscape, the close shots, the out of focus semper distans, the mystery of what was being said. Millie Gibson's performance throughout was stellar and this is the most invested I've felt in her character so far. I did miss Ncuti's presence somewhat, but it says a lot that she was able to carry the episode on her own and I do love when the format gets shaken up occasionally and we get a Doctor-lite episode.

I loved Kate's brief appearance and the way it sold the fact that this was a very serious situation. You think UNIT might be able to help here, but Ruby is once again left alone. The themes of abandonment in this one were incredibly potent and really tie into the themes of the series. Unsurprisingly, one of the most effective and upsetting parts of the episode was Ruby's mum also being affected by the mysterious woman. Her anguished screams for her mum were really quite harrowing, as was that awful comment about her birth mother not wanting her.

It also got far darker than I would expect in a Doctor Who episode. The far-right politician and the threat of nuclear war was plenty, but what was done to Marti was absolutely chilling, as was Ruby's apology for not doing anything. It gets away with it because it's all through implication, but that almost makes it more hard hitting. You don't always need to see the monster in action to know what it's doing. It also reminds me of my much younger self not picking up on the Master beating Lucy Saxon until I was a teenager.

The way time began to speed along was actually quite shocking to begin with - I actually gasped when we saw the 25th birthday cards - and it kept bringing to mind various other episodes where companions have been abandoned either in the real world or another timeline/reality, especially things like The Girl Who Waited, Turn Left, Forest of the Dead, The Lie of the Land, World Enough and Time etc. That things get undone at the end was again a little reminiscent of a few of them, but this is also where we come to my criticisms of the episode, because - while I loved the experience of watching it - the ending feels tacked on in a way that is very unsatisfying.

There were a number of things that just never get explained. For a minor example, why did the Doctor disappear? Disturbing the fairy circle released Mad Jack (I'll come onto him) and also made the Doctor disappear? And also made the TARDIS lock in a way that couldn't be opened with Ruby's key? I'm not as bothered by this as the below, but it feels messy and like an attempt to do a Turn Left without an actual reason for the Doctor to be gone.

A bigger gripe is Ruby being the following lady. That on its own would have been fine, but that combined with other elements just frustrates me. Mainly, if the following lady was Ruby, what is it she says to get people to run away? I don't mind things being left to the imagination - for instance, I quite like that we don't get an explanation for why she has to be 73 yards away; I can infer that that's got something to do with the fairy circle - but it appears that whatever she says specifically makes people think there's something horrifying about Ruby.

What could Old Ruby possibly say to that end and why would she? And why would the same thing make a Prime Minister resign? If we had never found out who she was, I would have been perfectly happy to infer that she was a force of some kind that drives people mad, but it's Ruby! Knowing who she is but not what she does or how or why she does it is the worst way round. I want to know neither or both, or possibly the latter but not the former, but this way round just frustrates me.

On that note, the friend I was watching with pointed out that, as she was dying, elderly Ruby had very short hair and suddenly has long hair when she becomes the semper distans lady. A small detail, perhaps, but one that further muddles the conclusion. Why did her hair change? Where did the coat come from? It's a different actress as well and, even at that distance, you can kind of tell. Did Old Ruby just end up embodying an existing spirit to do with the fairy circle? If so, I would have liked that to be a lot clearer. If not, why does she look so different?

Okay, so, Mad Jack. Who or what is Mad Jack? Is he a spirit of some kind that possesses Roger ap Gwilliam? Was he always Roger ap Gwilliam? Does Roger ap Gwilliam exist without him? If Roger ap Gwilliam does not exist without Mad Jack, how come the Doctor still mentions him? If Roger ap Gwilliam does exist without Mad Jack, what is changed by the Doctor stepping on the fairy circle?

In the version of the timeline we end up on (where the Doctor doesn't step in the fairy circle but Roger ap Gwilliam is still mentioned by him as a dangerous Prime Minister), here are a few possibilities and why they don't work for me:

Does he still become Prime Minister and get taken down another way? Perhaps, but it's not like Turn Left where we know the problems would have been stopped by the Doctor (who's not here). Without Ruby's infiltration and semper distans lady, what stops him? And why was that not able to stop him in the timeline we witnessed?

Is he less dangerous? The second time around of the opening conversation we don't get the line about the brink of nuclear war, though only because Ruby interrupts him to point out the woman, but maybe we can infer that this time he's a dangerous Prime Minister but not that dangerous? That seems quite weak and unclear, though, and seems to disregard the horror of the Marti stuff.

Does the timeline only change after the Doctor's comments about him being a dangerous Prime Minister? He does say that before stepping (or not stepping) in the fairy circle both times. I might be happy to assume that Roger ap Gwilliam never comes to power after that diverging moment has passed, except that things have already changed before the Doctor mentions him because Ruby says she's been to Wales three times. Maybe they've changed a bit but not enough until the moment she stops him from stepping on it, but that is not at all clear.

If it's any of these (or none of them), that's really confusing! It's just so messy and unclear. It would have been a simple fix, too! Keep everything the same and just add in a line as they're walking away at the end along the lines of "thank goodness he never got into power; people never found him that convincing". That would have clarified a) things have changed since a few seconds ago b) that Mad Jack is what allowed him to get to power and c) in this timeline, that won't happen and Ruby won't need to stop him.

Despite all my complaints, I did really love watching this episode. It's just so carelessly wrapped up, as if they didn't think about the implications of the otherwise very well told story. I'll be interested to rewatch it and see if my complaints bother me more or less on second viewing. I really want to love this episode because there were so many fantastic elements, but it just makes all the inconsistencies and loose threads and muddled logic particularly frustrating because they were only another draft or two away from being solved.

Misc small things

No theme tune! I feel robbed! Maybe it was meant to be part of the vibe that we're not in the usual timeline, but come on. It could easily have been slotted in when she left the TARDIS the first time or before she got to the pub!

Other episodes I thought of: Extremis with warning other versions of yourself; The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood with waving at future versions of yourself that disappear when things change; Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS with weird timelines and future selves and things being undone; Last Christmas with the companion becoming elderly; Turn Left for the vibes of "there's something on your back"; Under the Lake/Before the Flood with a silent message, since it looked like the woman was trying to sign things to Ruby; and The Sound of Drums/Last of the Timelords with the triple whammy of the companion having to 1) set off on their own to 2) take down a prime minister and 3) have time reverse.

It's also got a good old bootsrap paradox in it, which doesn't bother me in the way of the above complaints, but for the sake of completionism: How was Ruby warned about the future when that future hasn't happened? Would have loved Twelve to briefly pop his head in and explain it for us.

It's interesting that the snow stopped throughout this version of her life. It also seemed to snow while she was on her way to the pub.

Kate's comment about how "this timeline might be suspended along your event" was interesting and I wonder if it connects with the snow stopping.

For the first time I actually recognised Susan Twist when she appeared, but I'm not sure I would have done without Ruby realising she recognised her. I liked that! It felt very Boom Town and recognising Bad Wolf coming up again.

There was a little cameo from Mrs Flood.

[candy-pants]

my babysitter's a vampire + villains (insp) as in characters with naturally evil tendencies and actions, not just creatures/people made evil by mistake (usually benny's) or created by someone for a specific purpose

[utilitycaster]

I just want to say, that I agree with almost all of your Critical Role takes and you have 1000% better and more nuanced takes than all of Twitter and I greatly appreciate it! The takes over there regarding Liliana and the gods are just wild and you bring some much needed sanity to the content I see

Thanks! I hope you don't mind because I've been thinking about this re: the Twitter takes but the thing about Twitter and Liliana specifically that I've seen is that there's this really bizarre fetishization of like, the fact that she is a (white) southerner (this also weirdly happened for Birdie though to a much lesser extent, and the person who spearheaded that wasn't even American so I have to assume this is a specific corner of Twitter Culture At Large). And like, here's the thing. It's true that fantasy tends to be very British in its accents, and it's also true that accents in a fantasy world are used to convey the same things we'd assume in our world - RP British for educated, southern American for rural, Cockney for rougher types, etc.

It's also true that laying the exact socioeconomic parallels from our world onto, say, Liliana and Orym (who reads to me as non-regional but I, like Liam, am from the Northeast originally) is a recipe for disaster. Or rather, it's not, but it is going to reaffirm your own biases, some of which are dangerous to reaffirm.

There was a popular post on Tumblr a while back, probably not long after Trump was elected, of someone talking about how they were convincing a relative with the confederate flag towards socialism by appealing to the idea of "isn't in unfair how uneven wealth distribution is and how a small group has so much control" and a number of people were rightfully like "uh, maybe you should focus on the racism" or "hey OP ask your relative who they think that small group in control is because I'm getting a really bad feeling they're going to say it's The Jews." And I feel that a lot of the empathy for Liliana from those spaces feels like that OP. Or in other words: I get that you see your relatives in Liliana. Unfortunately, I cannot help but see me and mine in Orym.

You see someone trapped by circumstance and desperation in a dangerous ideology. I see the fact that I haven't gone to a synagogue in easily 6-7 years without there being a security guard present and usually, the doors locked with someone looking through the window to let you in, and then in the sanctuary there's been an installation so that you can quickly bar all the doors in case an alarm goes off or you hear shots in the lobby.

I think there's a great case for seeing yourself in Imogen, who is in a painful struggle with the fact that her mother does love her very much but is in dangerously deep and has done a number of incredibly terrible and harmful things. That latter point is important, incidentally; I get that cult members sometimes rise through the ranks but all but the leader are being manipulated. But the fact remains that a brainwashed person can still commit atrocities, and in this story, they have, many times over. It's especially true because like...sure, plenty of people are like "I lost my relative to a cult and I just want them back and I couldn't harm them," but also, as we've seen, this cult can and will harm Imogen! Plenty of people are also like "yeah I gotta cut them off, it hurts but unfortunately my horribly bigoted and violent relative, while a victim of brainwashing, is a threat to me too." It's not even the full picture of the Temult side of things, let alone the picture that includes the Vanguard's victims.

I also think the Southern gatekeeping is unhinged because it's like. guys there's QAnon members and other cults across the country; the Confederate flag example above was actually notable in that OP wasn't even Southern so you couldn't even write the flag off as deeply misguided heritage but rather was explicitly being used as a hate symbol. It's awfully presumptive to assume all southerners have the same experience (especially since the Temults are portrayed, physically and in accents, as white southerners, not that the experiences of white southerners aren't also incredibly varied). It's awfully presumptive to assume that people find Liliana threatening because they have no personal experience with people like her; often, it's because they have all too real experience with people like her, and it says something even worse about you if you can say "but you guys, I see me and my family in Liliana" when people are telling you that they see them and their families in Orym. I would not, personally, publicly admit that one's empathy extends to the people who remind you of your family but runs out before it reaches their victims. Nor would I publicly admit that I assume everyone who disagrees with me clearly has never had personal experience with this topic.

I should also note that, as I've noted a number of times before, that these are fictional characters and not real people. Twitter seems to be really fucking bad at grasping that. Like, yes, this is the other thing; I do not think that OP should kill their Confederate flag-toting relative, whereas if Imogen did so to Liliana I'd be like "hell yeah." The former is a real person who I do hope gets deprogrammed, just, you know, maybe adjust those priorities; the latter is a fictional character in a story.

[coquelicoq]

good morning can i show you guys the christmas card my little sister wrote me in french (she does not know any french)

joyeux Noël, j'espère que vous comprenez ce que je dis compte tenu de la fiabilité de Google Translate. Jespère qu'à l'avenir nous voir plus de deux fois par an. Je ne sais pas vraiment quoi dire d'autre, alors joyeux Noël et j'espère que papa t'a offert. Profitez également des autres choses que je mets sur la carte au lieu de vous ècrire un essai complet.

and then she wrote me a little crossword and a "connect the language to its way of saying 'merry christmas'" game 😭