#did the star thing make sense

[jellinuy]

watching oikawa play volleyball was like stargazing. you already knew the stars were pretty, but when he managed to land a jump serve, or set a perfectly-arched ball to his wing spiker, it was akin to a comet shooting through the sky — fleeting and momentary, but no less gorgeous.

of course, tooru hits every ball and makes every set with you, his biggest cheerleader, in mind. he gives you that “this is for you” look before his hand connects mid-air with the ball and makes a deafening impact with the other team’s court. even amidst his loudest fangirls, he’s learned to break most of his old habits, including soaking up the undivided attention like a sponge, his eyes now trained on you and you alone as you send him a subtle smile, his brown eyes twinkling under the gym lights with pride that you, above anyone else, watched him play like he was a constellation, out-of-reach and captivating and shining that much brighter just because you saw him amidst the starry sky of other players.

tooru knew he was great, and he’d never doubt that for a second, but it was when you reaffirmed he was great — “you were amazing out there!” was all it took — that a bit of his narcissism chipped away, a slightly softer layer spilling out in the form of a barrage of appreciative kisses to your cheeks and an energetic cackle at your complaints that he was sweaty and he scooped you into a hug, his heart full and content with where he was.

[hollis-art]

cant even use 👽 in the future. because of woke

[victorian-nymph]

In honour of May 4th, I have a delivery of more questionable tweets

[beneathsilverstars]

you know what fuck you [loopifies your figure drawings]

original normal drawings under the cut lol.. for the art-heads

[meamiki]

5% of a color headcanon.... two versions since b&w emphasizes the dagger more i think but i still like the warm tones ASFSADA

i am not biased towards rainbow daggers whatsoever i promise (lie)

((also friend is streaming now and im there too!! bit more info linked here, its rated mature tho))

[laughhardrunfastbekindsblog]

You know the one point above all others that leaves me convinced Bad Batch season 3 underwent some massive rewrites?

The time skip in episode 1.

Now, the time skip could have worked fine if there had been any attempt later in the season to meaningfully follow up on the vital conversations that apparently took place during said time skip. But that's not what happened.

And I have too much confidence in the writers' vision/abilities to believe they originally intended to use the time skip the way it ended up being used: to completely gloss over the aftermath of Tech's fall to the point that the audience is left wondering - maybe Tech's family/friends have already processed it and moved on? Or maybe they haven't?? Who knows! Let's leave it super vague all season long and have the audience interpret it as they will! Pick your preferred grieving method and tell yourself that's what all these characters did during the time lapse, or if that doesn't work for you then just "something something stoic soldiers."

To give a clear example of what the writers are capable of: Mayday has the distinction of being recognized as THE tipping point to Crosshair finally turning on the Empire and later is given a satisfying, if heartwrenching, callback scene that decisively provides closure for his loss. Remember, Mayday is a character in ONE episode. Just ONE. In the grand scheme of the show, he probably qualifies as a tertiary character. Crosshair knows him for, what, 2 days at most? And yet Mayday is still definitively recognized as a key influential figure in Crosshair's life.

I love Mayday. He deserves all the recognition and more. I bring all this up simply to compare to how the show handles Tech's death, especially for Crosshair.

Tech is Crosshair's brother, was raised with him from birth and lived and worked with him day in and day out for over a decade, and for years they were in life-and-death situations together. Unlike with Mayday, Crosshair wasn't there when Tech died - died on a mission he had pushed for to save Crosshair from consequences of his own choices. Not only was Crosshair not there for Tech in his final moments, but the last time he saw Tech, Crosshair was arguing with him along with the rest of his brothers. Vitally important as Mayday is to Crosshair, Tech is even more so (or should be). Given all this, I'm supposed to believe the writers' grand plan all along was to skip over the critical moment where Crosshair finds out about Tech, spend the rest of the season ignoring all other opportunities to address it, and throw in one line during the finale ("Clone Force 99 died with Tech") that somehow manages to simultaneously deprive us of any semblance of catharsis for Crosshair AND completely miss the point of why Tech had sacrificed himself in the first place??

Nope. I don't believe it. There were forced rewrites on a time crunch. I REFUSE to believe the writers responsible for the near-perfection that is Bad Batch seasons 1-2 would, on their own, so thoroughly botch something as crucial to the show as Crosshair dealing with Tech's (supposed) death. There had to have been some kind of outside interference.

(I am clinging to the theory that the rewrites were part of a bigger plan to save some plot points for continuation in another project; but the point still stands that there had to have been significant rewrites in the first place.)

And since there would have been little to no reason to take out scenes with proper closure for Tech's fall during the rewrites if the original intention was indeed for Tech to be dead, I conclude yet again that Tech isn't actually dead.

I will say this for the time skip: it is what first pushed me into writing Bad Batch fanfiction. So there's that.

[happywitchesofnewdi]

It only took 8 billion chapters for Switch to show up in Saga but it was worth it 😭💕

[homehauntsyou]

hate interacting with the widespread fandom about 05x16 for obvious reasons but it is such a key episode to me like. sam sees a memory of dean and his mother. he could be jealous of their relationship, instead he acknowledges the familial pressure dean has experienced since he was a toddler. dean sees a memory of sam leaving for college (and also being disowned!! and by proximity, by dean too!!!). he tells sam that this was the worst night of his life, he does not acknowledge the struggle sam must have also been experiencing. it’s so crucial to me in the way that they consider their relationship to each other where sam is willing to accept/recognize dean’s struggles and try to help him, but dean isn’t, because he views that as proof that he “failed.”

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Asunder

slow-paced high fantasy

a woman who has a contract with an eldritch entity allowing her to see the dead & survives by taking various jobs

when a job searching for stranded smugglers in a cave goes wrong, she ends up with the soul of a dying stranger bound to her shadow

along with a scholar and her old childhood friend, they travel to his home country to find a way to unbind him and save them both

dark fantasy world with gods, demonic entities, arcane magic, and semi-sentient beasts used as transport

[gosteon]

TWO! OF! THEM!

[qu4kerider]

“You've changed.”

ARCANE S02E03 & STAR WARS: EPISODE III - REVENGE OF THE SITH

[jq37]

What is it that the Rat Grinders actually want exactly? Or at least, what does Kipperlilly want since she's the one we know the most about.

At the top of the season it seemed like she wanted to Be The Best at school and Be Recognized in a very Tracy Flick/Sara Berry kind of way and was just going to crazy lengths to get there because this is a world where you help a dragon kidnap girls so you can be Prom Queen and life goes on. But now we know that the Rat Grinders are a part of Porter's larger plan and one of the major steps of that plan is completely abolishing Aguefort as an institution.

It's clear what Porter gets out of this. He gets to be a god and he gets to continue his imperialistic family legacy. And I would maybe get what Kipperlilly would get out of this is she were the Cleric/Paladin of the plan. She'd get to be the new god's champion, like she was gushing to Lucy. That's maybe worth something to an achievement hunting, Type A individual.

But she's not gonna get to be the best student at Aguefort if Aguefort doesn't exist anymore. Hell, Elmville won't really exist anymore. Is Porter planning on opening a new Adventuring School in Rage Elmville and she gets to be the god Principal's pet? Does she think he's gonna make things "fair" for her somehow? How? Retroactively killing her parents? Does she want to use the powers she cheesed from the easy XP he drip fed her to be a renown adventurer? Kinda hard to pull that off when everyone knows you were part of the plan that doomed the town. Maybe she thought they were going to get away with it without being implicated? Does she literally not want anything other than a chance to kill the Bad Kids? Or even pettier, to just to be stronger than Riz? Is that worth it to her? To damn the whole town just so she can say that she beat Riz once? Did she want something concrete at one point but at this point she's just lost in the sauce and doing whatever the next task is without knowing what she'd even do with a victory if she got it? Did she already get what she wanted in the free XP and now she's just paying her end of the bargain?

I'm just very unsure about what her version of a happy ending is here.

[o0anapher0o]

Okay, I know I’m late to the party and this has probably been discussed to death, but I have thoughts and they need out.

I’ve been a Star Trek fan all my life so I’m very familiar with writers on a show going “You know what would be a cool idea? A surprise reveal that retroactively changes everything. Plot holes? What do you mean plot holes? It’s called texture.” But even with that background the Iris is Carlos’ secret wife plot was one of the dumbest, least well thought out reveals I have ever seen and that includes Spock getting a surprise secret sibling twice.

It’s just created this weird Discworld-logic phenomenon where Carlos in season 4 has been married to Iris for nearly ten years, but they definitely weren’t married last season (or at least in 1&2). And here’s the thing that bugs me so much: I understand why they wrote it and it works for the characters, it just makes absolutely no sense within the established canon of the show. Like, do I believe Carlos is the type who would get hetero married to his best friend to placate his parents and then not tell his boyfriend about it until he absolutely had to? I love Carlos, but yes, 100% he would do that. Unfortunately we have absolutely no indication that he so much as met Iris before 4x01. The way Carlos story had been told before it makes no sense narratively or emotionally.

In season one Carlos is introduced explicitly as Michelle’s friend and it’s heavily implied they only met through the investigation of her sister’s disappearance. While that is never explicitly stated and I’m willing to suspend my disbelieve here, the fact is that Carlos is involved in and contributes significantly to the investigation, an investigation he wouldn’t get anywhere near if he was Iris’ husband, in fact he would likely be a main suspect (from a police perspective the situation is that a (white) woman, married to her (latino) husband disappeared after a fight with her boyfriend. Once she was presumed dead the most likely scenario is that either the boyfriend or the husband did it).

But even if we neglect realism in proceedings (which, fair in a show that has a fucking volcano in the middle of Austin), Carlos being best friends and married to Iris would have had a different emotional impact. For one thing his relationship with Michelle would be different. As we see him, Carlos is a friend to Michelle, supporting her in her loss, but there is no indication that they share that loss. And if Iris had been Carlos best friend you cannot tell me Michelle wouldn’t have thrown that in his face everytime he tried to get her to accept that Iris might be dead. Michelle is not one to refrain from a little guilt tripping if it gets her what she wants. But she is also an empathetic person, who would have told her friend when they found Iris alive. (Technically the hospital would have probably called him that they had his wife but) there should have at least been an attempt to contact him when she does find her. As it is we don’t even see Carlos find out about Iris being alive and Michelle literally tells Owen before she even considers telling Carlos (literally she doesn’t even look at him when he comes to the firehouse to pick up TK).

And it continues in season two. If Carlos was married to Iris (and his parents canonically know about it, which is of course the point) then his relationship with his parents in season 2 doesn’t make any sense.

Carlos is estranged from his parents because he believes they don’t accept him being gay and them not having talked about it since he came out to them means they’re still hoping it was just a phase and he would change his mind. The thing is if Carlos came out as gay to his parents at 17 and then married a woman 2-3 years later that hope/opinion would be entirely justified because to them that would have been exactly what happened. Even if they know the marriage is basically over, he still married a woman after he told them he never would so he must have changed his mind, right? How are they supposed to know the marriage was the error and not the coming out, especially if they never talked about it. There is a huge difference between ‘I don’t want to rub their noses in [something they might not like me for]’ and ‘they think I’m not actually gay because I went so far as to marry a woman to make them happy’. One is not advertising your queerness were you think it’s not welcomed the other is deliberately stepping back in the closet. In the latter case it makes no sense for Carlos parents to accept his sexuality and relationship with TK without at least asking about Iris and confusion at meeting Carlos ‘friend from work’ would have been justified.

Tl:dr Carlos being best friends with and married to Iris doesn’t make sense with anything established in seasons 1 and 2. It doesn’t work for his relationships with the people who would have known about it and it doesn’t work from a purely practical this-is-how-the-world-works standpoint either. Carlos in the early seasons did not know Iris and had no relationship with her beyond her being his friend’s missing sister.

[mikesbasementbeets]

are you arguing that bi mike believers, unlabeled mike believers, and those who are undecided are homophobic?

no. i’m not arguing that any person or sets of people are homophobic. i do think that there are certain avenues of thought that come up often in arguments against a definitive gay mike reading which stem from homophobic biases that, given the benefit of the doubt, the people arguing them may not realize are homophobic or even realize that they hold those biases.

believing that mike is bi or being undecided about it doesn’t mean you’re homophobic. obviously. however, plainly acknowledging that mike canonically does not exhibit attraction to women and then insisting that he could still be attracted to women in spite of that, to me, indicates a (possibly subconscious) bias against men who are not attracted to women. if your instinct when confronted with a character who presents a categorical lack of opposite-gender attraction, concurrent with active displays of same-gender attraction, is to round up every possible alternative explanation, all equally hypothetical and unsupported by canon, to avoid coming to the logical conclusion of that specific narrative dichotomy (homosexuality), then all i’m asking is that you examine what biases you might be holding onto that lead you to that reaction.

[short-wooloo]

I've seen a few posts about how mandos hate child endangerment...

Guys

That's fanon

There is no indication that mandalorians hate endangering children anymore than any other group, culture, individual or responsible/sensible parent

If anything the opposite might be true, in both canon and legends it seems that mandalorians (the warriors anyways) consider a certain amount of endangerment to be acceptable-if not tacitly encouraged-in child rearing

[spark-circuit]

Aha pulling out the Everhood-type shit on these poor Silvermane guards