#does what I’m saying make any sense

[phan-meme-trash]

I think part of what makes heartstopper so good is because it’s written as a backstory.

Alice already had nick and Charlie as an established loving supportive couple written as background characters in tori spring’s story (solitaire)

This isn’t a story of will they won’t they or even a dramatic story of getting together. We already know they end up together. And we know they stay together happily. Instead, Heartstopper is an exploration of how this couple built their strong and beautiful relationship starting from when they met. Alice has said that the “getting together” part of relationship stories is the least interesting part in their opinion.

And I think that mentality is what makes the story so rich and meaningful. It’s the story of how a healthy long term relationship is built over time and how it grows.

I love Nick and Charlie’s story. And I hope it can model a healthy relationship to young people out there who-like I did- subconsciously learn a lot by watching tv and movies.

[bitchslapblastoids]

Was thinking about how much of a normo I come across as irl, how I’ve felt a lil odd person out at their shows bc of being a bit older (29) and looking so aggressively normal, how generally confused people in my life would be if they knew about my d&p obsession, how thoroughly i mask weirder traits and essentially codeswitch to suit the mainstream, etc.

i feel kind of fish out of water when I imagine how all the people that populate my tumblr phandom ecosystem are likely presenting to the world irl (I.e. more visibly queer, counterculture, and so on). But then I think maybe the most visible phannies are the ones with the most curated, alt, deliberate daytoday lewks/style? So maybe what I’m picturing is off base? But then I’m also basing this off of what audiences look like in audience footage, m&gs, etc.

Sooooooo i would like to know… do you guys feel like you present as someone who may be Deeply Online and obsessed with two gay nerds from the internet? Or do you hide it and fly under the radar, masking as a total normy and living a double life?

(To clarify I don’t mean you’re like out and about wearing the fringes boob sweatshirt lol I more mean vibes and overall lewk yk?)

[tinned-beef]

Allison Hargreeves is being unfairly vilified?

Allison Hargreeves as in 'SA'd Luther' Allison Hargreeves? Allison Hargreeves as in 'confirmed Viktor's worst ongoing fears and anxieties just because Viktor was grieving his friend/stepson and it annoyed her' Allison Hargreeves? Allison Hargreeves 'contributed to the deaths of two of her siblings' Allison Hargreeves? Allison Hargreeves 'nothing anyone else has lost over the course of this nightmare matters as much as what I lost so I'm gonna fuck everything up potentially irreparably' Allison Hargreeves?

That Allison Hargreeves? I mean don't get me wrong I like her but she's very much a villain right now. She's an interesting villain, a compelling villain, a better villain than Reggie since we actually know wtf her problem is and we wish things hadn't turned out this way. But a villain all the same.

i don't think allison is a villain. at best, i'd say she's an antihero. at worst, she was a catalyst for viktor's arc in season three.

i would like to start by saying that i'm not defending allison's actions. i think what she did was wrong. however, i don't think she deserves all the hate that she's gotten. she's a character that is very morally gray, and people continue to paint her in solely black or white.

what i try to convey in this... very long post is that there's a reason for what allison does in season three. the question of if she’s a villain or not can be debated, but i believe that the reasons for her actions don’t make her a villain.

a big reason why the umbrella academy is such an incredible show is that all the umbrellas are flawed and nuanced, and despite it all they love. all of the umbrellas have their faults, and allison is no different.

in season three allison has lost all hope. she thinks she will never see her child again, her husband is dead, the world is ending, and to her it seems like her siblings don't give a shit. amidst all the chaos and the whirlwind of her life, she needs something that she's used to. something she knows how to navigate.

so she turns to luther. and she gets the comfort she's looking for but it's not right.

allison and luther's relationship is something that has been a topic of many debates in this fandom. i don't really want to get into it right now, but they've always been a person of comfort to each other. allison wants to feel loved and cared for, and she thinks she can get that comfort from luther.

allison is naturally selfish. she's used to getting what she wants. she's used to having the world at her fingertips. and yet almost everything she's held close to her heart has been ripped away from her. and she's never getting it back.

in season three she falls back onto her old habits, rumoring people left and right with no consideration for others. it makes sense because it's the only way she knows how to get what she wants.

and then she rumors luther. she doesn't want to lose him either, and she thinks that he's choosing sloane over her (which is true, but she thinks he's leaving forever. she thinks she'll lose him too). but she almost instantly realizes what she's done, almost instantly tries to take it away.

as for her relationship with viktor, that's another can of worms. in season one, allison is the only one really trying to mend that relationship with viktor. but it's a rocky road. allison snaps at viktor, viktor snaps at allison. these two have had tension from the very start. eventually, that bond had to snap.

at the start of season three, viktor is the only one that really tries to help allison. he stands up for her, and comforts her after she returns from la. but by episode three allison is so consumed by her grief that she's already clashing with viktor.

and when harlan makes an appearance, it just gets worse. harlan is like a son to viktor. someone viktor can care for. and when viktor turns that care and attention away from allison and instead towards harlan, it hurts. why is viktor allowed to have his child when allison will never get to see claire again?

in season three luther tells viktor that allison has “always been good to you (viktor)”. but there comes a point where your love and gratitude towards someone can morph into bitterness and hate.

the reason i say allison is a catalyst for viktor in season three is because the writers needed someone to contest his ideas. someone that will create a struggle for viktor that he will ultimately come out of with a new lesson learned. and allison is a great contender for that position. the show needs conflict in order to have an engaging story at all, and tense relationships between the siblings can be seen throughout all three seasons. (luther and diego in season one, ben and klaus in season two)

as for the deaths of her siblings, do you really think she wanted that to happen? she doesn’t want to lose any more people, that’s the main driver of her character shift in this season.

allison turns towards reginald because she sees it as the only option left. klaus does the same thing, so why is it any different when allison does it? she didn’t know her siblings would die in the process.

allison isn’t even the only sibling that has contributed to a sibling’s (almost) death. viktor slashes her throat in season one, ben sacrifices himself to save the world, and luther willingly walks into the room to talk to reginald. how is that allison’s fault?

i think this is also why five gives his talk to viktor, not allison. he understands what allison is going through on some level, understands the despair of losing those who are close to you. understands being willing to do anything to get them back. even though he quite loudly disagrees with allison making a deal with reginald, it's because he knows she's getting tricked. reginald never had their best interests at heart.

they’ve all lost people, and they all react to that loss in different ways. in season 1, when diego finds that patch was killed, he instantly wants to go for revenge. he plans on going after hazel and cha cha but five inevitably talks him out of it.

allison doesn’t have that influence. in fact, diego suggests to instead let that grief out through anger. i don’t think it was a very good solution in the end.

and despite all that, she wants to redeem herself. she tries to tell viktor the truth, she admits that she made the plan for all of them. she kills reginald and she’s the one that pushes the button at the end of season three. there’s so much left that we don’t know. did allison know what would happen when she pressed the button? did she know what reginald’s real plan was?

but in the end, allison is the reality of a person who has lost those who are closest to her. it’s probably the best job the writers have done while showing trauma and grief. i don’t think allison is a villain, and i think that accusing her of solely caring about herself is unfair.

[angelnumber27]

violently forcing myself to have better days

[seveneyesoup]

can i just say. i’m sick of showrunner discourse. like every few months it seems like people draw their lines and dig their trenches and every time it’s the same handful of points and episodes brought up to prove that their favorite showrunner is Good And Progressive and that their least favorite is Wrong And Bigoted and like. all of those episodes exist. they’re all real episodes of doctor who, and the sooner we can look at the good and the bad in doctor who, the sooner we can get somewhere actually worth being regarding discussion of politics on the show

[compacflt]

Would you ever consider writing about a different path Ice and Mav could take, one where they choose to leave the Navy and pursue a more open relationship and civilian life? Thinking it would be easier but maybe the sacrifice to their careers brings its own challenges?

(hi, jan 2024 me here, this was an ask that I answered when it was sent in in May 2023 & didn't post because I felt I actually answered it fictionally in the "icedad" one-shot the week after [and you can obviously see how these thoughts affected the writing of other pieces like "tremors & aftershocks"], but I still mostly agree with this take [though it's a little overgeneralizing] & I think it sums up a lot of my final "meta" modern-military-theory thoughts on ice & mav & their relationship, so im posting it now before I post the compacflt masterpoast)

see,… the thing is, i just… can’t see that happening!! i have no idea how to write that!!! Maybe i really do have a lack of imagination. But i can’t see that happening for a number of reasons. So short answer, no.

Long answer (and it’s long):

1. lame reason to start out, but it, uh, it’s canon that ice ends up at O-10 and mav ends up at O-6. not saying that im beholden to canon obviously (my mav ends up at O-7 and my ice ends up alive) but I do base my characterizations of them on the implications of the political struggles of both their careers so… taking away ice’s fourth star is basically starting from square one wrt my characterization of him. which is a lot of work. i could start from the beginning with a top gun 1986 ice who knows he’s gay—that would be a fun AU (i think other people than me have definitely done that better, though—I’m a one-trick pony). So if that’s what you mean then disregard the rest of this post. but if what you mean is a divergence from my existing work (i.e. homophobic/rank-climbing ice&mav) then… yeah, can’t see that happening, for further reasons below.

2. wrt my characterization of him: it’s based on a broad historical overview of armed service officers and the expectations of their careers. in my view, high-ranking officers aren’t after power—or maybe they started their careers wanting power, but somewhere down the line, it just becomes an expectation. if you do everything right and follow all the rules, you are expected by the institution to lead, whether you want to or not. That’s just the pipeline. at some point you start losing agency. which is what I mean when I keep saying ice doesn’t have a choice in advancing his career (besides the meta fact that this is fanfiction and canon demands that he have 4 stars lol)—high ranking military officers are continually and continually groomed for bigger and better positions; and the longer they spend in the military, the harder it is to leave that lifestyle for something else. And with ice’s canonical (and characteristically INTEGRAL, as I mentioned a week or so ago) refusal to rebel against the wishes of the navy as an institution, plus this historical expectation to lead placed upon the shoulders of excelling officers, I really do think ice is destined for four stars & nothing less, even if it gives him chronic depression. It’s his highest priority not because he wants it to be, but because…it just is. that’s how the institutionalized system of advancement in the military works. it just is. it has to be.

3. I mentioned in this post that I can’t ever see a foot in the door with them talking about their relationship unless maverick dies and is resurrected, and I feel the exact same way about them & their retirement plans. There’s a lot that ice and mav don’t talk about: the biggest one is obviously Goose’s death, the foundation of their relationship; but also their love for each other obv, what they did to rooster, AND their careers, which have to end at some point. Them talking about everything is totally inevitable, it was gonna have to happen eventually before they died, and I think one foot in the door MIGHT have been them eventually talking about retirement (someone sent in a prompt asking for this exactly & i am brainstorming it furiously) but before the Navy FORCES them to retire… i think they would studiously avoid talking about it. For a couple reasons: a) what does retiring with each other mean? living in the same house until they die together? hard to do if you’re just good friends. talking about retirement is tantamount to talking about Them. and b) what are they gonna do outside the navy? Ice has a lot of options, as I mentioned in the slider one-shot—general/flag officers are SUPER sought after in leadership/intelligentsia/management positions post service, so maybe if he were offered a crazy cool civilian position somewhere in San Diego in like the 2000s he would quit the navy for it… but what about maverick? I have no idea what a non-navy mav would do. Civilian airline pilot? Hoo boy. I think he’d hate that. I could maybe see emergency helicopter pilot, lol, or race car driver (i just watched days of thunder can you tell?) but none of the above offers the institutionalized honor the navy does (that, as a reminder, he *killed people* to obtain in the first place). I suggested his test piloting expertise would make him an attractive technical advising candidate to A&D companies like Boeing, LockMart, GD, etc. so that might be one option. But it might have been kind of a touchy subject for him before he racked up the expertise he’d need for those high-level civilian positions… the navy was kinda his only option. So they wouldn’t talk about it because it might hurt his feelings.

4. The biggest reason: again… open rebellion like rocking the boat by quitting the navy to be in an open long-term gay relationship, in upper mil brass ranks, and even retired upper mil brass ranks, just… isn’t done. And REALLY wasn’t done in the 2000s, when i think the scenario in this ask is positioned. And it’s not like “oh but whatever who cares about the navy, ice and mav are in love, they deserve to be happy no matter what, they should do what they want, fuck the navy…” no. Ice and Mav care about the navy. Clearly. Canonically. By necessity. The military requires cohesion and on some level repression of individuality & personal expression to FUNCTION, even when you’re retired. Yes, maverick certainly strains against that repression (which is why you Could spin top gun as an anti-military franchise if you were desperate enough), but he rebels through his ACTIONS (stupid plane maneuvers) not through his personal IDENTITY. his personal identity (headstrong overtly masculine white male pilot, whether gay or straight who cares) is NEVER challenged throughout the franchise (i.e. no one really challenges his masculinity specifically) & his personal identity does not POSE a challenge to the navy. Both he and ice in their outward-facing personal identities really fit in quite neatly to the navy’s overarching identity & contribute to the navy’s cohesion in a way that is favorable to both their careers and the establishment. Lack of imagination or not… i can’t see a universe in which Ice and mav would actively WANT to rock the boat and wreck the navy’s cohesion and their reputations for an open relationship and definitively rebellious personal identities, with the obvious caveat being Maverick’s death recontextualizing both their priorities (yes we’re in love AND we’ve finally proven ourselves to be ultra-capable officers regardless of our sexuality so no one has a license to judge us anymore etc.).

And also, they’re not enlisted seamen. Nor are they mediocre officers who have the luxury of fading into obscurity. Things are different when you’re that high in the ranks, and when your job publicly matters more. sorry, but even post DADT (probably until about biden’s election), an open relationship would end their careers. They might not be fired, but they’d never be promoted again. Too much of a liability getting subordinates to still respect them, from the higher-ups’ perspective, especially if there are other qualified candidates who fit the navy’s core identity better. Like—sorry. This is such a jaded oversimplification. But if you rock the boat like that (i.e. break the service’s united front to be individualistic in a way that does not match the service’s overarching identity), from the perspective of your officer peers, you simply are a bad officer. Being an open individual in a job where you are required to fit in and represent your service is not your job. You are not doing your job well. Straight-up. Even if you’re retired. I met US Army 4-star gen. David Petraeus (retired obv) in February—he led the successful-ish surge in iraq and Afghanistan in the mid-2000s—and he’s STILL a laughingstock for his disastrous affair with his biographer a decade ago, even after he retired from AD service. That’s what people remember him for, not the fact that he was one of our only successful commanders in any of our Middle East campaigns.

Something like that might be one of ice and mav’s worst fears—being known for their affair/scandal instead of the institutionalized honor they’ve fought and killed for. That kind of thing just Isn’t Done. It's bad taste. You have to keep it quiet. If you’re an officer representing the service, you have to represent it well & according to the service’s preconceived identity, even in retirement. (see, for another shitty example of "not fitting in" even in retirement, Lt. gen. Mike Flynn [his whole scandal is actually kinda geopolitically relevant to my fic if you squint lol] whom everyone fucking hates)

To summarize: i hope I’m not mischaracterizing your ask when i reframe it like this—would you ever write ice and mav without the institutionalized pressure to advance in rank and conform to institutional norms?

and yes, I would (and will if you ask—it looks like this: ice & mav meet & fall in love & it’s boring and fine. end of story), but I guarantee you someone else already has. I’m all about interrogation of institutional norms here. And i think until maverick dies & comes back from the dead, there is absolutely no *REALISTIC* incentive for ice & mav to leave the navy and/or have an open relationship. Like it’s just not possible. Idk how else to say it.

[impossible-rat-babies]

sitting w lae’zel like oh baby girl you are becoming so painfully disillusioned to what you were raised in huh

[foreverppl]

Moodboard for my MC Evander for @uroboros-if

I so enjoyed playing this demo last night and have been having many Thoughts about it.

[unnerving-presence]

i realize a lot of people tend to over-characterize wesker and completely disregard some of his main personality traits. (long post that’s not rlly organized read at ur own risk lol)

i’ll often see videos/edits about him and a lot of people will say something along the lines of

“he’d instantly kill me” (read this on a thirst post LMAO)

“he’d threaten to kill me if i ever spoke to him”

“wesker would kill all of us if he found out we were simping for him”

and that always really confused me? knowing wesker’s character i feel like people would know he doesn’t kill people unless he really has to. there are few moments where he does kill and they’re mainly because he has to/has real reason behind it.

in reality, he likely wouldn’t kill you instantly, especially if you simply weren’t a threat. who cares if you simp for him? he sure doesn’t. even if you were a threat, he’d send out other people to take care of you first and if he had a confrontation with you he surely wouldn’t take you seriously (i highly doubt y’all mfs know how to fight i’m sorry 😭)

you wanna know why wesker fought chris in the first place? he thought it was amusing and didn’t even take it seriously. the whole time he just messed around, clearly not trying to kill him. he literally tells chris he has 7 minutes to fuck with him like he’s got a strict schedule. dude was not taking any of that seriously. he took a phone call because chris and sheva were so irrelevant to him. they were considered ‘threats’ but clearly not enough to him for him to really care. he has enough confidence in his own abilities to know he could take care of something if they really posed a threat to him.

it’s actually surprising how people make out wesker to be this ruthless angry killer who doesn’t put up with anything when in reality he’s just a goofy little comic book villain who has the zoomies half the time.

we have visual proof of a wesker simp trying to fuck him (excella) and him simply using them before killing them. keep in mind he put up with her for 5~ whole years.

moral of the story, no he wouldn’t threaten you or actually kill you the moment you spoke a word to him. that’s seriously out of character for him and i’m not sure why after seeing him in so many games that people will automatically assume that he’d do that. he’s capable of fighting but clearly prefers to use his charm.

[charliextea]

has it ever occurred to anyone that the black and white thinking of anti-/pro- language is a trauma response and we all probably need therapy? and like, life is not actually black and white almost ever??? because human beings are complicated? and forcing yourself to pick a side and draw a line in the sand all the time is probably really bad for our mental health collectively?

[faggylittleleatherboy]

It’s so stupid how adults will go around doing the equivalent of “blue is for boys and pink is for girls” on a global scale (both on queer and straight groups)

[simcardiac-arrested]

i don’t think we’re ever getting out of the “we’re just friends” “oh yeah those characters are such good friends (sarcasm)” “they’re not friends they’re gay” etc etc hole. we’re never getting out of that hole

[thereareeyesinsidethetrees]

last post for the night i swear

the real tragic part about the whole science fair incident is that perpetual motion is impossible to achieve

ford’s machine would have never worked, regardless of whether or not stan had interacted with it

(warning i accidentally wrote an approximately 30-tag dive into ford’s character in the tags don’t click see more if you don’t want to read that)

anyway!! good night everyone ❤️‍🩹

[ansu-gurleht]

not enough stories with portals (i’m actually particularly talking about sci-fi and wormholes) get it that a connection between two three-dimensional spaces should be itself four-dimensional, and that the portal/wormhole connection two three-dimensional spaces should be 1) a three-dimensional space, not a flat two-dimensional surface and 2) probably moving constantly, shifting in shape and size as the three-dimensional wormhole moves through four-dimensional space (or 4d wormhole moves through 3d space i can’t remember which way that goes. i’m losing the plot here so i’m ending the post)

[ftlolbit]

a parents guilt follows wherever their child goes

hi more gnaw au because charlie and henry in this au are just (collapses)

(rbs > likes but do whatever u want k thanks <3)

[tanjir0se]

I’m so fucked about Sanemi at this point I don’t even know what’s canon what’s fanon and what came to me in a series of cryptic, prophetic dreams