#completion consistancy i am thinking for with this

[exploring-the-cosmos]

Okay, but imagine this: Eddie feelings realization brought about through another lookalike/doppelganger storyline. I know this sounds out-there, but considering the whole Shannon/Kim storyline was an actual thing that existed in the show— and we know how much the writers love doing parallels and they've been doing some very fanfiction-esque stoylines with 8b— I don't think this is completely outside the realm of possibility so stay with me on this completely ridiculous stream of thought for a bit.

Now I was not and am still not really a fan of the whole Shannon/Kim doppelganger storyline but I think if they did it again in a very specific way with a Buck doppelganger it would be so interesting. With the Shannon/Kim doppelganger, the importance of it is for Eddie to finally get closure for himself. To say the things he never got a chance to say to her so he could move on from that relationship. I think a Buck doppelganger can also be used as a way for Eddie to say all the things he couldn't say to Buck before he left. Only, this doesn't serve the purpose of Eddie finding closure and moving on, but as a catalyst for him realizing the full extent of his feelings.

In the present day, Eddie finds himself back in his hometown— a place he tried so hard to run away from— to be there for his son. He built an entire life for himself back in LA and now he's gonna have to start all over again. So he puts himself out there, attempting to meet new people and make new friends. In the process, he ends up meeting a man who looks and sounds a little too much like his best friend. And he knows it's a bad idea; he has had to live with the reality of just how bad an idea this is for months following what happened with Kim. But he misses his best friend so bad. Sure, they talk and do video calls to stay in touch, but it's not the same. He's not there with him in El Paso being a consistent presence in his life, and he feels so lonely without that presence. So he befriends this Buck doppelganger. They hit it off and start to spend more and more time together, and eventually, either Eddie decides to come clean or Buck's doppelganger finds out about his resemblance to Eddie's best friend, prompting Eddie to explain the whole situation and apologize for lying.

Maybe at this point, his Buck had already gone through his 8x11 storyline. He's already been confronted with the idea that his feelings for Eddie aren't platonic, and he's doing everything to push that train of thought aside. He can't entertain the idea that he is in love with his straight best friend, as he likes to say. He needs to distance himself from whatever feelings might be there. Which also includes distancing himself from Eddie. He doesn't answer his calls as much, doesn't make an effort to reach out, finds other distractions so he has an excuse for why he wasn't available to talk, etc. And it's driving Eddie crazy. He's never felt so disconnected from Buck, and it's starting to have an effect on his ability to function at this point.

So when Eddie tells him all this and Buck's doppelganger asks him what he would say to him right now if he could, Eddie throws all caution to the wind.

He says all the things he's been wanting to say, even the things he didn't know he wanted to say. He tells him how sorry he is for leaving. That he knows how deep Buck's abandonment issues run and how painful it is to have another person in his life leave him. How much he would give to have been able to stay and spare him that hurt. Hell, the thought of asking Buck to leave with him had even crossed his mind more than once, but how could he ever ask that of him? Los Angeles was his home. The 118 were his family. He built a stable foundation for himself that he'd never had throughout most of his life. Eddie wasn't going to be the one to take a wrecking ball to that stable foundation. As much as Eddie would like to be, he isn't worthy of that kind of consideration. Who would throw their entire life away to be with him? He would never ask him to make that choice. Just as he knows Buck was never asking Eddie to make a choice between him and Chris. But Eddie felt like that was what he was doing at the time— making a choice between what he wanted and what was best for his son. A choice had to be made whether he liked it or not, and he would always choose his son. But, if pressed on it, he would have to admit that if the choice were between Buck and anyone else? Buck would win every single time. He would say that he missed him and he wanted him to be a constant in his life again, in both their lives again. That the distance being put between them, both literal and figurative, was killing him.

And as he's listening to this— to his newfound friend pouring his heart out to him like he's his best friend— Buck's doppelganger makes the realization that everyone else in their lives has, waits for Eddie to finish what he has to say, and says to him:

"Wow. You must really love him."

And that is the moment. Eddie hears those words, processes them, thinks about everything he just said, everything they had been through together, and realizes.

Oh.

That's what this thing between them has been. That's what all this heartache and loneliness and panic he's been experiencing in the last few weeks has been about.

"Yeah, I do."

And this realization does not just magically fix everything. It's a starting point. He still has to work through what happened with Chris, and this revelation may be a central point to helping him get there. Because it forces him to examine everything about his life up to this point. His relationship with Buck, his relationship with his family, his relationship with Shannon, his relationships with women and his sexuality in general, and his relationship with religion. And once he does all of that, he can make the decision to choose something different, for himself and for Chris. They can reconcile. They can move back to LA, back to their found family with the 118 and Buck. He can love his best friend and choose to make him a part of their family.

I also like the idea of doing a parallel between Shannon and Buck as love interests for Eddie because I do think their relationships share similarities despite all of their differences.

Despite the fact that I do absolutely think Eddie loved Shannon, I do not think he was ever really in love with her. He had a genuine care and love for her, yes, but so much of that care and love was tied up in her relationship to him as the mother of his child, not just as his wife. Her relationship with Eddie will always be a part of who he is, undoubtedly. She was a friend to him, someone he loved, the first person he was ever intimate with, his wife, and the mother of his son. She played so many important roles in his life, and she can be all of those things and still not be the love of his life, nor even someone he necessarily loved in a romantic sense at all. Because they were still just kids when they got together and had Chris. They were still trying to figure out who they were and what they wanted to do with their lives when they got pregnant and rushed into marriage and parenthood. All the decisions that followed that were messy and difficult and their relationship shifted completely overnight. Would they have ever gotten married if they didn't have Christopher? My guess is probably not, but we'll never know for sure. When Kim says to Eddie "I guess she was the love of your life," he doesn't say, "she was," he says, "I think she was." He knows he loved her, but he is unsure if she was ever "the one". In hindsight, I think he looks back on their relationship with rose-colored glasses a lot of the time. He talks about how they were together as if the glimpses we saw of them constantly fighting and leaving each other and avoiding big conversations never happened or weren't as prevalent. They did love each other, but they did not love each other in the ways that either one of them deserved.

Compare that with Eddie's relationship with Buck, and I would argue he has played all of these same roles in Eddie's life that Shannon did, but in a much more harmonious and stable way. He's also the only other character to take on all of these roles in Eddie's life to the extent that he does. They are best friends, they love each other, Buck has become a parental figure of sorts for Chris and would legally be his guardian if anything happened to Eddie, and he has a closeness with Eddie and has done things for him/with him that romantic partners often do. Despite their rocky beginning, they became fast and inseparable friends. They've had each other's backs through nearly every single trial and tribulation that they've faced for the past 7 years. Buck seamlessly fit into both Eddie and Chris' lives as well, all three of them spending so much quality time together. They have been mistaken for a couple before. Buck heard that Eddie was struggling with childcare for Chris and provided a solution without needing to be asked. He helped Eddie find a solution to accommodate Chris' disability when he wanted to try skateboarding. He fought like hell to try to keep Chris safe when the tsunami hit. Whenever they've had major accidents/NDE's in the line of work, they are always each other's primary concern. Eddie made the decision on his own to change his will to make Buck Christopher's legal guardian if anything happened to him, and he is unwavering in his conviction that he would be the only other person besides himself that would fight like hell to make sure Chris has everything he wants and needs. Which could mean nothing, but as a single dad, Eddie's main concern when it comes to dating and marriage has to be how it will affect his son; what kind of parent would the other person be to him? Buck was there for Chris when Eddie got shot. He was the first person Chris ran to when he was angry with Eddie. He was there for both of them when Eddie went through his breakdown. He was there for Eddie when Chris decided to leave. He offered to help Eddie find a new place to live in El Paso. He was present for nearly every showing of his place to find a subletter— this one is actually ridiculous, like there's no way those folks didn't think they were together. And the big one, he chose to give up his apartment to sublease Eddie's house so that Eddie could leave without worrying about expenses. The entire episode we see him struggle with and unintentionally sabotage Eddie's move. The last thing he wants is for another person to leave him, but he willingly and happily put what Eddie and Chris needed over what he wanted in the end. It is one of the most selfless and loving things he could do and he did it.

One of the key similarities that I've noticed between Eddie's relationships with Shannon and Buck is what they get into their most heated arguments about. In both of these relationships, the big fights that each pair has centers around the other person leaving and how that effects them and Chris. Yes, Buck ready has pre-established abandonment issues, but Eddie's issues with other people leaving really only come up in the context of his romantic partners and how them leaving will affect his son. For Eddie and Shannon, it was Eddie running away from his responsibilities as a husband and father twice by enlisting in the army and Shannon doing the same once he came back into their lives. When she attempts to re-enter their lives, the main point of contention is whether or not she'll even stay if Eddie allows her back in. Ultimately, she does decide to leave once she's back in their lives, if only temporarily, to find out who she is as a person independent of her role as a wife and mother when she realizes she's not ready, and I don't blame her for that. But then she dies and that loss is permanent. Eddie doesn't get closure until he meets Kim and gets to say how he feels. How hurt he is that Shannon left seemingly without any consideration for him. She left a note for their son, but left nothing for him and that is devastating. His first major fight with Buck is over the lawsuit. All three of them are forced into a situation where they cannot be in contact because of Buck's decisions, and their confrontation over it is one of the few times we see Eddie so visibly upset. It's not exactly a "leaving" situation per se, but the outcome is similar. Eddie cannot contact his best friend for help, with his own personal issues and with what's going on with Chris. They both miss him; it feels like he left them and Buck made the choice to put them in that position when he didn't have to. The second time they have a big fight, it's over Eddie leaving. More specifically, over Eddie's perceived lack of care about Buck's feelings on the matter. And I say perceived because he obviously does care, it does matter to him that he's leaving his best friend behind. But he can't fully acknowledge to what extent he does and he won't allow himself to because his feelings come secondary to what he thinks he needs to do as a father. I feel I should also note that despite Buck's abandonment issues, it is so telling how he acts in response to Eddie leaving vs how the rest of the 118 act. They all consider Eddie family just as much as Buck, but the degree to which he's crashing out over it would suggest to me that there's more to their relationship than they realize. The proposed scenario with the Buck doppelganger is meant to be the moment where he finally allows himself to be fully, completely honest with himself about what he feels, what he wouldn't say. And in the aftermath, he has to reckon with what that means for him, for Chris, and his relationship with Buck.

Another things of note when it comes to Eddie's relationships: Every time we see Eddie in a relationship with a woman, we often see him run away from it or sabotage the relationship when things start to get more serious. They never work out because there is always something wrong on his end. By contrast, Buck and Eddie are both actively struggling with Eddie leaving. Neither one of them wants him to leave and that is apparent with the shift we see in their behavior. Idk maybe we'll get a gay Eddie storyline. To me it seems like the most logical endpoint for his character. I mean, the guy literally said that he feels like he needs to "perform" when he's out on dates with women... Plus, Tommy did essentially imply that he clocked him in the most recent episode and if there's anyone I'm gonna trust to know he isn't straight, it's the openly gay man who also repressed his feelings for men for decades and almost married a woman.

Tldr; all this to say, Shannon was Eddie's first love and Buck will be his last.

Do I think any of this is actually gonna happen in the show? No, I highly doubt it. But it was a fun little thought experiment about how I think this scenario would play out. I know this is ridiculously long, so if you read to the end, thank you!

[catmask]

does anyone have like an anti aesthetic. like something you look at and can recognize as a complete fashion/interior design/artistic movement and understand it but it makes you shudder seeing it. i am not talking like “its morally bad” “its poorly structured” like just sheerly devoid of joy for you actually invites a repulse response.

[seukorei]

You should draw the loml Chuuya please 🫶

sorry ely i know u asked this like 6 months ago however every chuuya i doodle someone ends up as a fully rendered piece on accident somehow so you can just take ur pick 😔

[charles-leclerc-official]

Ferrari seem like they are planning to restructure their engineering team. Source.

The restructuring of the engineering department at Ferrari taking things in a more modernized direction copying a system similar to Mclaren is probably the best direction the team can take. No single head technical officer, instead a team of 3-4 engineers who can have an open collaborative environment.

We have been wanting to see the team modernize in their approach and it seems that they have been thinking similar things. Something has to change. And with all the talk around Newey that wasn't really going to be a change. That was going to be bringing in an engineer to the same team structure (I already talked about why I don't think Newey would work at Ferrari and why it made sense they didn't try harder for him)

Centering your entire technical team around one man and his ideas is great, and it works when it works, but it can leave a team vulnerable if that man is wrong (humans tend to be wrong from time to time) or leaves. Look at how quickly Red Bull has been collapsing after only losing a few key personnel. They built their success as a team around his aerodynamics, and look how quickly it crumbles when he leaves or gets ignored(and thus is one of the reasons he left)

People really panned Ferrari saying they "fumbled Newey" and that he was the only way they'd be able to bring the team back. When I strongly disagree. We need a complete team, not one person. And we also need new ideas, and a structure that will serve the team long term. Newey is one man who would eventually retire and where would that leave Ferrari? Back at square one.

Having a multi headed team will allow for more ideas and cross examination to happen and likely create a much stronger engineering team and structure for the long term of the team.

If this is the direction Ferrari are taking things then I am feeling more optimistic because I have been wanting to see a change like this for a while.

[itspileofgoodthings]

I don’t even fully know why but “what do I do when I miss you so much?” / “Just wait, and pray desperately” was a knife to my heart in the best way.

[blueskittlesart]

i am not autistic but i do believe in their beliefs

[maraschinotopped]

ive been staring at the naqtube channel page just doing analysis thoughts in my head for like 15 minutes and ive just been hit with the realization that Damn this is not normal. normal people dont do this. either the mental illness or the mild sickness is doing something to me right now.

[lesbiansanemi]

Currently trying not to vomit over the fact that I essentially just lost almost a thousand dollars brb

[sasukeless]

2 If you’re still doing the controversial ask game

hi

2) was sasuke right?

ahh this billion dollar question isn’t it. i feel like this is the top 1 most discussed thing on this app for years, i have read every side of it.

to give #my opinion, im gonna go with yes. but its far more complicated, like most things are with naruto lol. i believe sasuke is right because he sees there’s a flaw in the existing system around him and to finally do something about it the only way to do that it’s to get ride of the system from the root.

now, as much as i agree with sasuke there i don’t agree with the way he tries to do that revolution. i dont mean this in a “oh violence wont be fixed with more violence” bs. i mean this because where sasuke’s goals are born for and how they affect his plans.

when sasuke finishes listening to the kages and it’s coming up with his thoughts, he immediately is bombarded by memories of itachi (itachi only, not his clan) and itachi’s words to him. when he states he will not let the village be destroyed he does it by adding “itachi’s will”. when sasuke is dying in the war arc his only thoughts again are that he doesn’t want to waste what itachi wanted to die. this shows us very clearly that sasuke’s revolution is very influenced by itachi’ wants. a little different, sure but still the same. which makes sense why his goal at vote2 is destroy the last person he loves and bear the hatred of everyone so the villages can have peace between them as long as they focus all on him. and this is quite what itachi did, just on a bigger scale. naruto = uchiha clan. the villages = konoha. sasuke = itachi.

^this is where many people complain that kishimoto had to turn sasuke ooc to make him evil and i can see what they mean but personally i dont view it as such when i look at what sasuke’s arc has always been. i have seen also that they dislike that post reveal sasuke’s character seems to be focus on itachi more than in his clan like in part 1 which i also disagree. itachi has been sasuke’s main influence in his character since day one. even in part 1, sasuke’s hate towards itachi isn’t just because he killed his clan, kishimoto focuses alot in showing itachi and sasuke having a loving relationship. kishimoto is very specific that sasuke’s biggest grief at the end of the day is not the massacre alone but the fact it was itachi who committed it. this is essentially what sets sasuke aside of other characters that lost their family/clans/parents etc. its not only what he lost but by who’s hands he lost it. so his focus has always been in itachi. so i dont think it was only part 2 that sasuke became more driven by itachi than anything else… anyways going back to the topic because im going off the rails (sorry).

sasuke has always had itachi first imo. and sasuke has always been defined by love too so ofc he’s gonna forgive the person he loves even if he doesn’t deserve it, ofc he’s gonna try to achieve that peace his brother “sacrificed” his life for (even if thru different means that he wanted you to). but while i understand and love sasuke’s character, i still think these are all very personal reasons for his revolution plans and thus why it fails.

his revolution plans are also self destructive but he doesn’t care because he still views it as his ultimate duty (again why he was so distraught when he was about to die without doing anything). he wants to become the bearer of all evil, and pain and hatred and wants to be all alone, even tho that is something that has caused alot of his pain in the past, he even talks about possible immortality and its just, well sad. you can tell hes about to sell his own doom because he thinks thats what he has to do to fix everything. he is ready to become a martyr. and forgive me but i view as that as a very tragic

so while i will always view him as being in the right, because when you put him in comparasion to most characters that doesnt realize whats wrong w the shinobi world, he will always come as one of the few that actually isn’t blind (even if its framed as bad for pointing that the system needs to be destroyed), i still dont think his plans are the right ones

[oathkeeper-of-tarth]

Also I quit my job of what would in about a month or two have been 10 years, and perhaps now I will get to actually be a human being again.

[gleppy]

i wish people misunderstanding and misinterpreting my words wasnt as bad of a stress trigger for me as it is but holy fuck there are few things that make me fly off the rails more lmao

[sn0wbat]

← part 1 🦇

fun fact, they are almost the same age frida was when rune went to sleep. funny how time works

[kaurwreck]

every so often, I think about cataloging select sections of my personal library. there are several reasons: a magpie's sense of satisfaction for my most curated collections, for reference when I'm in bookstores, to better keep track of the titles that i've found but havent purchased, to motivate myself to read more consistently, for friends' gift giving reference, to keep better track of my PDF-only titles, etc. etc.

(for more context, researching and finding titles i'm interested in reading is its own hobby for me, almost severable from reading. I go to used and specialized bookstores irl, I have short lists of my favorite university presses and monograph series that I routinely browse, I frequently run key word search strings through my preferred online marketplaces (which include Amazon, Bookshop.org, and eBay, but also select second hand and antiquarian booksellers' online storefronts), etc. it's like, involved. but I get such a high from sifting for and finding gems. I'm like this about other things I collect too; but books hit like nothing else. they're just so much more surprising, challenging, and (thus) rewarding to curate because of the narrowness of my subject matter interests and the seas of titles that exist—as compared to, like, scale figures or tarot cards.)

I've tried to use goodreads and storygraph for similar purposes before, but I hate the UIs, I don't care for their social focus, and their algorithmic features are unwelcome clutter. so, I'm thinking about creating a spreadsheet or web page. I'd likely limit my cataloging to my modern Japanese lit fiction & nonfiction titles and my China nonfiction titles.

I have so many projects i want to get around to, so I have no idea if I'll ever actually get to this one in particular. but I need to get out of my unemployment rut, and this is the least demanding of those projects. so, maybe! if I do, I'll share it here, too.

[somedudewithantlers]

ya girl Steve is not doing all that great in college work life

[beeg-bark]

*thinks about making a sona specifically just for kink*

[quilleth]

The Devil for the DATV ask game? :D

Thanks for asking!! (List of questions here if anyone is curious or wants to send others :3)

The Devil: What type of demon is most likely to target Rook? Why?

this one is good, so I had to think about it for a bit! I think Lilya would be most likely to attract a despair demon, or one of the ones related to them (like the remorse or regret ones that come up in the side quests in Minrathous in da4).

Explaining the why means getting a little handwavey with the story the game actually gives us for a MW mage!Rook and also sort of about how it seems to present the MW in general (or maybe I’ve just been too lost in the sauce of mage rights or mage fights for too long that it made me go huh that doesn’t sound right).

The game tells us MW Rook was found in the Necropolis as an infant on the background’s title card. However, a mage MW Rook tells Emmrich they ran around around the city for a while before their magic kicked in, and then they were found by the Mortalitasi and presumably, given the course of that conversation, raised by them? There’s contradictions to the stories they give us, and also to what we know from previous installments about how the Orlesian Chantry--which, unique funerary practices aside, Nevarra still follows-- works. Nevarra has two mage Circles including the one in Cumberland where the College is, and the one in Perendale that has a whole side quest in Inquisition about how the mages were afraid to leave it because they were afraid of how the people in the city would treat them given the whole mage-templar war.

So for Lilya, personally, I think if she did run around some in the city before her magic developed, she was too young to remember it. Then a guardian or parent brought her to the Necropolis, perhaps when she started showing magic and out of concern for her wellbeing, where she was found by the spirits, like the game describes. I think she probably stayed with the Mortalitasi for a while before her magic really kicked in and couldn't be overlooked, and then she was sent to the nearest Circle, like any other mage in a country that follows the Orlesian Chantry would've been before the Circles are abolished during Inquisition. I imagine the Mourn Watch make an arrangement for her to go through her Harrowing and join them back in the Necropolis when she's old enough.

And then the Banner Wars happens and they send her away. Again.

So Lilya has a fear of abandonment from having it happen multiple times, especially at a young age, and a very desperate longing to have a place and a family of sorts where she belongs. She, of course, buries this under several heavy layers of snarkiness, sarcasm, bad puns, and a gigantic “fawn” response in situations where other people might have fight or flight.

I think given that, and I think it was a despair demon pulling the strings in the fade quest in origins, by putting people in either remembered situations, or in idealistic situations based on what the demon thinks the companions would want (though maybe that was sloth. I don’t feel like checking it at the moment though xD), it could easily pull on the insecurities and self-criticism she has; creating a little idealistic alternate version of events where slowly, the companions express disappointment and eventually leave, until it’s just her.