#from the bog bitch itself

[projectilecry]

somehow sick with covid but my dad dropped me off sesame bagel so we chillin

[into-september]

"Destruction" is the worst episode of Miraculous Ladybug

Oh hey guys, remember way back in April or something when I said I was doing this? Well, the one year anniversary of its premiere is a suitable time to post this, particularly since yesterday saw the airing of the last piece of canon to come out in a while, which happened to be set immediately after these events.

With the always obligatory reminder in place that I generally think that “Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir” is in fact a good TV show whose appeal potentially reaches beyond its merchandise-mandated target group, it has an unflattering pattern of introducing the juiciest story threads and then just… do nothing about them.

The topic of today’s sermon isn't in isolation the worst offender. But it is thanks to this that the worst offender happens at all, so I'm not gonna be nice about it.

Scroll past to skip the negativity.

So, “Destruction”, possibly the most eagerly awaited episodes of out S5 if you don’t count all the false advertisement that was “Revelation”. I remember finding this episode uncharacteristically charmless for this show when I first watched it. They've been onto heavy topics before, but those episodes still had that je ne sais quoi that gives this show such heart. But re-watching "Destruction" I found it lacking already from the first scene, and felt it only in glimpses. It's just not fun.

The episode is also poorly paced, no way around it. It is inexplicably a flashback to two episodes ago which is not evident from the start. More than half the runtime technically consists of Marinette and Alya having a sleepover. The battle and its game-changing outcome is over at 12 minutes into the episode, which is barely past the halfway point. After that, we spend five minutes - a quarter of the episode's full runtime - on a flashback re-playing the same battle but now with verbal exposition explaining Marinette's clever plan. Mind that the confrontation between Marinette and Gabriel lasts for all of seven minutes, meaning that the flashback is nearing the length of the battle itself.

To top it of, it's bogged down with lengthy exchange between Gabriel and the kwamis just to make clear that the haters on the twitter were totally wrong when they bitched about Orikko being OP because actually its powers were something else than we established last season. Here's a bonus plot hole which has nothing to do with everything else I'm going to nag about: Orikko allegedly can't give out the powers of time-travel because no kwami can replicate another kwami's powers. Except for Nooroo and Duusu, I guess, who have done so on several occasions. One of the more remarkable being the episode which first heralded the event that "Destruction" set in motion: "Timetagger".

And who can forget that this was the second time in three episodes where Ladybug and Cat Noir had Monarch at their mercy but spent so much time giving triumphant speeches that he gets away.

Or that that in fact was the second time on the same night.

But while those things certainly make the episode poor, they are not what makes it the worst.

What makes this episode the worst isn't its technical failures, but about the way it leaves its feces all over the themes and the character arcs it seemed like the show had been building up until this point. Moreover: in the role it plays in S5 and the Agreste storyline, and how the show's refusal to touch it again creates a black hole in the season at large, and arguably in the show as a whole.

I. THE INESCAPABLE CONTEXT OF WHAT CAME BEFORE IT

The art of telling a story is the art of highlighting what matters and leaving out what doesn’t. In a well-crafted story, no matter the medium, no detail is insignificant. Every word is carefully chosen, every line or hue made with intention. The curtains aren’t blue just because, and Miraculous Ladybug has made too many meta jokes to hide behind the claim that it’s just a silly rom-com for kids. It has trained its older audience into looking for context and connections; after “Mr. Pigeon 72”, you can’t insist that nothing that happened earlier in this show matters for what happens later. Titles matter a lot in a show where episodes are titled after the villain-of-the-week who usually is the thematic mirror to what our heroes are going through.

“Destruction” is the fourth episode somehow named after Adrien, and the third somehow named after Plagg. You bet this matters.

As some might know, "Kuro Neko" is not my favourite episode. That's not to say I don't like it! It's cute! It's playing a really interesting scenario! We get Plagg hanging out at chez Marinette! But to enjoy it, I have to willfully ignore the storytelling incompetence it flagrantly displays. Because the moment you peek beneath the surface of the events happening to consider theme, motifs, and narrative parallels, it's just

"Kuro Neko" is the second episode that is named after Cat Noir. The first one was "Cat Blanc". There is a thematic connection between the two; not a very clear one and probably not an intentional one, but all the same: both episodes are about an alternative to Cat Noir. One is the result of his father's violence; the other is Adrien's own attempt to become more like the person he presents around his father. They also both show us Plagg and Adrien negotiation Adrien's relationship to Ladybug, and how Ladybug and Cat Noir negotiate that same thing.

"Cat Blanc", for all its apocalyptic visions, starts and ends with hope. It starts with Marinette’s hope at confessing to Adrien, to Adrien’s hope in finally knowing Ladybug’s identity and knowing her like he’s yearned for for three seasons. Those hopes lead to disaster, but the episode ends with Ladybug finding Cat Noir on the Montparnasse Tower, where he is singing his lullaby about the kitty being "all alone without his Lady". As is fitting, Marinette breaks the pattern: after having just witnessed a world turned to destruction because the two of them loved each other, she leans her head on his shoulder in perhaps the most romantic gesture she's ever given him.

"Kuro Neko", in contrast, starts with Adrien resigning the job when he realises that Ladybug no longer needs him and that makes him feel bad. It ends with him coming back and verbally accepting that Ladybug doesn't owe him any exclusive treatment; he isn't her unique partner, just one of many. Where the final scene of "Cat Blanc" seemed to confirm that Ladybug is indeed the answer to Adrien's solitude, the final scene of "Kuro Neko" and its continuation in the first scene in "Risk" both make clear that the opposite is now status: Adrien has to accept the painful fact that as much as Ladybug might be the most important person in his life, Cat Noir does not hold a similar space in Ladybug's.

(The end of “Strike Back” of course claims to remedy this, but those words don’t ring very true when to Marinette’s knowledge, nothing of what went wrong today had anything to do with her keeping secrets from Cat Noir. More damning: Marinette never follows up on her purported regret. In all of S5, she never once sits down to share all those secrets with Cat Noir. Status from "Kuro Neko" still stands, and Adrien is fine with that now. This has nothing to do with the many problems “Destruction” creates, but talking about “Kuro Neko” by necessity means talking about how it wasn’t fixed even if they put the words in Marinette’s mouth. And now back to our scheduled programming)

"Cat Blanc" and "Kuro Neko" by their very existence bring up a thorny topic: That Adrien being Cat Noir isn't wholly unproblematic, and that both Adrien as an individual and Ladybug as the Guardian might have legitimate reasons to question that choice. This has always been obvious to the viewer who knows Hawkmoth’s identity, but the show itself eventually starts calling attention to that from an entirely different angle - namely that of his powers.

Lest we forget: The first episode of S4 that aired wasn't the first episode chronologically: It was "Furious Fu", wherein we learn that The Order of the Guardians has it out for Plagg specifically, and where Ladybug's status as The Guardian is almost revoked on the grounds that she's letting him run around unsupervised. This question of Plagg's whereabouts comes up again in the only episode that is named after Adrien sans Plagg: "Ephemeral", a re-play of “Cat Blanc” except not good. This whole subplot is quickly forgotten, though it being the only one of Su-Han's complaints that weren't about him being a boomer, it's also worth remember that "Destruction" technically happens a couple of hours after he made his last appearance. One might expect that his one consistent lesson would be important enough to echo a bit in the episode where it’s proven to be justified.

"Destruction", as not only one very early episode of the season promising to finally bring about some significant and not the least permanent changes to their lives, but indeed an episode happening on the same night as Ladybug's declaration of regret and Cat Noir's renewed declaration to be her partner, would by its title and its topic seem like the obvious place to finally resolve what "Cat Blanc" and "Kuro Neko" both asked us to question: The existential terror of Plagg's powers, why it is that Adrien is uniquely chosen to temper them at Ladybug’s side, and how Adrien feels about being the one to carry that responsibility.

Yeah. Well.

II. ADRIEN'S PRESENCE IN "DESTRUCTION"

Where "Kuro Neko" and "Cat Blanc" place significant focus on Adrien Agreste in his civillian life, in "Destruction" he appears on screen for a total of 25 seconds - most of which are another flashback to a previous episode, and whose purpose is to highlight Gabriel's hurt from the cataclysm, not Adrien's thoughts about what is happening.

Cat Noir's presence is also marginal. Three minutes of screentime pass from his first appearance until the battle is over. Said battle is the turning point in the war between the heroes and Monarch, thanks to neither Ladybug's powers nor Monarch and all the kwamis, but Monarch using Cat Noir's powers for an impulsive act of self-mutilation. Cat Noir is distraught over this, turning desperate when Monarch first start toying with the idea and being near tears after he carries it out.

I'll get back to the impact of this event, but for now I'll point out that the aftermath is brief: After Monarch escapes, our heroes have this exchange:

LB: We had him, we almost had him! The kwamis were safe, they were right here! CN: I cataclysmed him! I can't believe this, I just cataclysmed someone! Granted it was Monarch, but - there was a real person behind that mask, and it must have hurt him terribly! Milady, you gotta fix this! LB: Cat Noir, Monarch just ran away with my lucky charm! Without it, I can't fix anything. I can't call on my powers and undo the effect of the cataclysm. There's nothing I can do...

We then cut to the slumber party, where Marinette tells Alya that she and Cat Noir "split up" immediately after, and Alya comforts her. From this point in the episode, Cat Noir and Adrien only appear in flashbacks. First a fifty-second flashback wherein Marinette sets up her convoluted plans, then a few seconds of him moving his statue in the wax museum before Monarch appears.

In the episode that more than anything should thematise Adrien, Plagg's powers, and his relationship to his father, Adrien is on screen for a whooping four minutes and twenty seconds.

And because I am that devoted to proving my point, I went and timed all of Alya's on-and-off appearances, which clocked in at a total of five minutes and six seconds.

Alya is of course core to the slumber party which frames the setting of the entire episodes. Moreover, it is with Alya that the emotional arc of the episode ends: it starts with Marinette tormenting hersef watching a Ladyblog report about Monarch's recent win, for which Alya chastises her. The last scene (before Gabriel pulverises the miraculous) has Alya reassure Marinette that she will get the kwamis back. When she regrets her lack of superpowers, Marinette in turn reassures her that Alyas true superpower is being her friend. The journey of the episode was for Marinette to stop blaming herself for messing up, and learning to rely on Alya's support in the new turn the war has taken.

...

IN THE EPISODE WHERE ADRIEN KILLS HIS FATHER.

III. SIR NOT-APPEARING-IN-THIS-FILM

In the episode where Gabriel commits suicide on his son's miraculous, here are some things that got more screentime than the son forced into using his only source of liberation to kill his father:

Flashbacks to past events (four minutes and fourty-five seconds)

Alya (five minutes six seconds)

The kwamis (six minutes and nine seconds)

Bet you can't guess which one is the only kwami who doesn't appear in this episode!

...okay, and Duusu, but you get the point. In the episode detonating the nuke that is the gruesome potential of Plagg's powers, and the potential damage Adrien might deal with them, Plagg never appears on screen.

In the episode highlighting the presence of the kwamis and their importance to their holders, the kwami whose presence is the most thematically tied to his holder's character arc is completely absent.

In the episode irreparably going into the only kwami whose powers is straight up murder, the kwami who The Guardians have singled out specifically as particularly dangerous, the kwami whose irresponsible nature has previously caused problems both to Adrien privately and Cat Noir professionally, said kwami is never even mentioned.

It's almost as if we're not supposed to remember that it is because of his presence that this whole tragedy was possible.

IV. THE EXISTENCE-DEFINING HORROR OF A CATACLYSM GONE WRONG

And ain’t that a funny one, when the gruesome potential in Plagg’s powers was the driving factor in Adrien’s first true crisis as a hero?

Marinette faced her moment in "Origins", where she gave up on her miraculous after the first disastrous attempt. She knows that she is the only one who can do something about the situation, but refuses out of her own lacking courage. She only becomes Ladybug of her own choice when she realises that she can save Alya's life. After this, Marinette never again questioned her place. She would grieve the burden on occasion, but she never once thought anyone else could do better.

Adrien, as we all know, was the polar opposite: he jumped right into it without reading the manual, had to have Ladybug pick up the pieces after a rash cataclysm, and never doubted his calling again until he realised what Plagg’s powers could do when used on a living being.

The NYC special has Adrien quit for reasons that had nothing to do with being unsatisfied with Ladybug's HR policies. It is in part because he effed up his duty as Paris' substitute guardian, but it's certainly also because of the recent horror he just witnessed: his hand forced by someone else nearly killed Ladybug, and killed Uncanny Valley instead as she stepped between them. Adrien just saw a mother weeping over her daughter's corpse, and how only the lucky presence of Ladybug's powers could undo the damage caused by his, unintentional thought it might have been. Adrien would of course never kill anyone on purpose, but Uncanny Valley’s temporary malfunction was a brutal display of what would happen if he stumbled the wrong direction with the gun loaded. Ladybug might have the duty to protect Paris, but Cat Noir has the duty to not to disintegrate people on touch.

The show never before discussed the weight of this burden in Adrien’s presence. “Cat Blanc” did it from Marinette’s side, but this never was a consistent story thread, only briefly brought up as her remembering why his knowing her identity is a bad idea. The sabbatical in “Kuro Neko” has nothing to do with Plagg or with Adrien’s sense of duty, and where you’d think this would be where Marinette finally brings up the issue bridging the NYC special and “Cat Blanc”, neither of the two are as much as alluded to. That Adrien has the power of murder has yet to be explicitly discussed in the show proper, but in combination with his personal relationship to Hawkmoth being a ticking irony bomb, the question of can he even bear it is inevitable.

That Adrien’s post as Cat Noir wasn’t as given as Marinette’s as Ladybug is echoed in the amount of times that Adrien has either quit or at least contemplated doing so (“Syren”, NYC special, “Wishmaker”, “Kuro Neko”). He likes being Cat Noir more than Marinette likes being Ladybug, but he lacks her iron certainty in the role. It is notable, then, that THE ONE TIME where Marinette questions her part, it is after Cat Noir has quit. She says this, out loud, in words. When Cat Noir’s powers become too heavy for Adrien to carry, then Ladybug, too, disappears.

So surely "Destruction" must be the point where this is finally comes together - where Adrien's history of quitting meets his ultimate crisis, where his powers abused on a human being of flesh and blood forces him into confronting the potential cost of being this particular hero, which will foreshadow the ultimate choice he’ll have to take: between being Cat Noir and being his father’s son. And where his choice, in turn, will define whether Ladybug can exist.

Or not.

Maybe we'll never again have Adrien think about how he probably murdered a man. Maybe we'll just - oh I don't know.

Have him start trying to cataclysm people?

Repeatedly?

While showing none of the horror at himself which he clearly had in the aftermath of accidentally cataclysming the villain responsible for his later victims’ possession?

And in the end, after never calling attention to Adrien’s new and trigger happy ways, we’ll have him give in to his fear, claim that he isn’t strong enough to responsibly use Plagg’s powers, and send his miraculous away for Ladybug to use alone, because it turns out that “Kuro Neko” was right and the NYC special was wrong: she can be Ladybug without him.

Growth, amirite.

V. IN THIS HOUSE WE DON’T TALK ABOUT PATRICIDE

Dramatic irony was the main engine driving "Miraculous Ladybug" from the start, and it was Adrien who bore the brunt of it. Not only did he spend four and a half seasons in unrequited love with a girl who rejected him for himself; he spent five seasons doing weekly battle against his own father.

The superpower war between father and son isn't just a source of story tension, however: it is inextricably mirrored in their relationship as family, where the father is openly abusive and the son is magically incapable of protesting. The show repeatedly makes A Point about how the freedom Adrien so wants, is one that he only gets through being Cat Noir, and the only way Adrien is capable of fighting his father - albeit ignorant of it - is with Plagg's powers.

Cat Noir defeating Hawkmoth was necessary not just for his story as a superhero, but as his character arc as a normal boy.

And in "Destruction", this is exactly what happens. Thanks to Plagg's powers, the path to Adrien's freedom is finally paved, in the most gruesome and unwanted manner possible. Adrien might not get the big cathartic show-down with his evil father, but technically he was the one to bring him down.

But we don't talk about that. Except for his one (1) line after Monarch escapes with Ladybug's lucky charm, Adrien never again brings up the fact that his being careless with a cataclysm certainly maimed a man, by precedent (Aeon) possibly killed him. Rather than a story arc about Adrien being afraid of his own powers, it’s only now that he starts aiming it at people when he’s under emotional duress. This could of course have been one hell of a story point if it was intentional, but by all accounts, it wasn’t. When Adrien never again reflects on his having probably murdered a man, or reasons that Monarch is probably fine since he’s clearly still around so maybe a cataclysm isn’t so bad, and he never dwells on his nearly murdering two of his friends, there can’t have been any connection intended here. Moreover: when Adrien is scared of his miraculous towards the end, it’s not about its capacity for normal murder when he’s having a bad day, but its capacity of ending the world if he happens to be akumatised.

Gabriel is likewise disinterested in the cause of his impending disintegration. You’d think the man would feel some kind of special resentment towards Cat Noir and his powers, you could think this was where he’d get to re-thinking his relationship to the two people who are sitting on the keys to solving all his problems. Maybe he’d start doubting himself now, bearing the ultimate testament to his magical hubris. But no. The cataclysm wound is there and it’s a problem, but the reason it happened is completely irrelevant to the man who did this to himself and unknowingly, to his son.

That is almost as mind-blowing as the fact that they really had a straight up patricide happen on screen. Sure, death was never the intention of either of the two parties, and Adrien certainly holds no blame for what happened. But Gabriel must have at least known what he was risking, and even if the soft-hearted Adrien would somehow reason away the gravity, Plagg would certainly now. By its very nature, this one cataclysm drags out and distils a plethora of questions about both Adrien’s role as Cat Noir, about Gabriel’s vision of himself and his goals, and about their relationship not as father and son, but as villain and hero. The gruesome narrative irony looming over all this is in that regard just the icing on the cake.

There is certainly an Oedipal layer to the drama of Gabriel and Adrien, though the often more scandalous incestuous angle is considerably downplayed here. Even so: By the denouement of S5, Adrien has successfully killed his father and set up a home with his mother. That really happened, but we’re sure not going to investigate how this influenced the relationship between two nemesis, between father and son, between Adrien and his kwami.

The cataclysm in “Destruction” turned Adrien from anguished shoujo love interest to the hero of a greek tragedy, but the show is dead set on pretending that it didn’t.

VI. SO THEN WHAT WAS THE POINT

In isolation, "Destruction" comes across as weird more than anything. It's named after Adrien's kwami, it spends an inordinate amount of screentime on Adrien's father, it reaches back to Adrien's perhaps most defining moment as Cat Noir as it fundamentally changes the game between our heroes and our villains as one of them is finally dealt a damaging blow - which in turn sets Adrien's life down a path towards tragedy that must be interfered with for him to have a happy ending by the end of the season.

And yet, Adrien is a peripheral presence in it. Marinette and Gabriel dominate the screentime, Alya and the kwamis are consistently present as the thematic chorus at their respective sides throughout, the episode plays its events twice in order to make it clear that Ladybug is too clever for Monarch's miraculous, the emotional arcs that are followed are the follow-up on where Marinette and Alya stand after the disaster in "Strike Back" as well as Gabriel's renewed vigour. Adrien's only contribution to the episode is to follow Ladybug's instructions and to make clear that his relationship with his father is still awkward. The episode depicts probably THE most important event of the show, but this event is treated almost as an afterthought, and the horrors of it are confined to one (1) line of dialogue from Cat Noir.

The only thing in “Destruction” that is brought up in later episodes is that Gabriel is now actively dying. If they wanted for Gabriel to live on a countdown for his date with the grim reaper, there were countless other ways about it: Have it be his use of too many miraculous which backfires, have him having used the peacock before it was fixed, have it be too much evil on the hands of Nooroo, have him get a serious call from his doctor, have him screw up Tomoe's machinery, have him develop a drug problem. This is a fictional narrative; its twists and turns are absolutely in the hands of the writers, teenage girls being irredeemable or not. It was never vital that this happened by cataclysm specifically.

So what was the point, then? Did we truly turn our magical girl show into a Greek tragedy for the shocked pikachu faces only?

The one thing I somehow haven't seen people bring up, is that "Destruction" makes it impossible for Adrien to learn Monarch's identity. According to the writers themselves, the reason lies in two of the other episodes named after him: "Cat Blanc" and "Ephemeral", wherein he learns his father's identity and is promptly akumatised. This is of course bullshit: both these cases relied not on Adrien learning his father's identity, but on Gabriel specifically scheming to traumatise Adrien with both the Hawkmoth reveal AND the fact that he's been living in the same house as his mother's dead body for the last year or two (timeline here is spectacularly contradictory). There was anothing inevitable about this. You're the writers. You could've set up a scenario where Adrien didn't learn about his father's crimes as an act of psychological warfare, and where he'd have the time to absorb it, to grieve and to find support by the time he'd confront him with it. Having every person close to Adrien keep life-defining secrets from him “for his own good” is, by god, not a good look on anyone involved here. Still it’s understanable, at least for those who aren't either adults or gods of destruction.

"Destruction", however, serves as an explanation for the gaping plot hole in the epilogue: Marinette tells Alya, she tells Su-Han. The one she doesn't tell, though?

The partner who was at her side before Alya or Su-Han ever appeared, and stood by her in far worse storms. Because telling Cat Noir the truth would mean telling Cat Noir that he dealt Gabriel Agreste the killing blow, and ain't that a nifty way to ensure that Marinette won't. Because if Adrien does learn Monarch's identity and the truth about his fall in future seasons, Emilie better hide those garment pins.

The truly damning part of "Destruction" isn't so much what the episode itself does. It's what it doesn't do. It's the storylines it cuts short and leaves behind, and it is the storyline it by its very existence introduces, but which the show refuses to touch.

Per title and content both, "Destruction" should be the culmination of thematic storylines from "Cat Blanc", the NYC special and "Kuro Neko". It’s not; it’s not even about Adrien, and Plagg isn’t even present in it. Moreover: its lacking presence on future episodes make it painfully evident that ambitions, there were none. Those storylines were either aborted like Adrien picking up Felix's spyglass in the S4 finale, or the show never did mean for there to be such a thing as "layers" to this story about a boy who becomes a hero to unknowingly break free from his superhero father.

The real reason why "Destruction" is the worst episode of Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir is that it obliterates the most cohesive character arc this show had going for it, and that this was done on purpose.

[insufferableprotagonistpoll]

Propaganda why Anakin Skywalker is insufferable:

It's less about his character and more about the way ppl talk about him and narrative around him in a lot of current stuff. The way everyone try to bend over backwards to prove how his reasons to turn Darth Vader were somehow noble or good when almost every single bad guy in Star Wars (expect Palpatine and that guy who taught him) have much more sympathetic history and reasons and how he's not a bad person bc he cried a few times while doing atrocities. And how everyone else gets the blame for all his shortcomings ('they did it but never taught him!!!' -he literally parrotos this same lessons to his own student, it's obvious he knows better but chooses to not apply to himself anything that is slightly uncomfortable to him). Like, I love characters being genuinely not good people as much as a next guy but let's not pretend they're good people actually

the guy has zero critical thinking skills, he whines about everything all the time. I love him, but he’s awful to listen to. THIS BITCH. I HATE HIM. NO CRITICAL THINKING. NO SELF AWARENESS. WHINY MURDEROUS ASSHOLE. LIKE SERIOUSLY. He's a JEDI. LIKE. THEY HAVE HISTORY CLASSES!!!! He should have KNOWNNNNNN that when he had prophetic dreams they're not necessarily true!!!!! Also like. In the Star Wars universe, do Jedi just not have imaginations that can create NORMAL dreams when they sleep??? Do Jedi just not usually dream??? If he hadn't gotten paranoid from the dreams of Padme dying in childbirth

BILLIONS OF LIVES WOULD HAVE BEEN SAVED. FOR THAT MATTER, if you're gonna have A SUPER ILLEGAL SUPER SECRET MARRIAGE, wouldn't you, I don't know, USE PROTECTION SO THAT YOUR WIFE WHO IS SECRETLY AND ILLEGALLY MARRIED DOESN'T GET PREGANANANT????? LIKE LOOK I LOVE LUKE AND LEIA MORE THAN LIFE ITSELF BUT THEIR PARENTS WERE SO FUCKING STUPID. ANAKIN SKYWALKER HATES CONDOMS BECAUSE THEY DONT FEEL AS GOOD I DON'T FUCKING KNOW. Man is an IDIOT. How can you have had a role model and father figure like Obi-Wan for most of your fucking life and grow up to do the shitty, STUPID things Anakin did. Ok this is way too long I'm sorry but I love Obi-Wan so much and Anakin ruined his fucking life and hes just such a little DICK. MURDERED A WHOLE VILLAGE OF SAND PEOPLE. AND DOZENS IF NOT HUNDREDS OF CHILDRENNNNNNNN. ANGSTY WHINY TEENAGER. FUCK HIMMMMMMM

Yes he was probably directed to act that way but the way his lines were written did not help

Propaganda why Tim Jackson Drake is insufferable:

oh man. i've had enough of this duckboy (as the protag, he's tolerable in yj and stuff.) like when tim is the protag every character in the story becomes Worse. lady shiva gets nerfed. steph is turned into jealous hormonal catfight girl. helena is dumbified and too womanly to function (they have a nice dynamic as long as tim isn't the protag). cassie and tim were great in yj98, but as soon as he is The Protag then she is his best friend's girlfriend and they're barely friends anymore. cass is turned into a rapist. dick is turned into a lazy mediocre robin. jason turns into fucky wucky dumb brute yaoi stalker boyfriend who is suddenly obsessed with tim's awesome skills. 10 y.o. damian somehow deserves to be put on a hitlist because he's a savage and tim is civilized. Sometimes the story is bogged own with tim's internal or external lectures about their flaws and how they need to be better (better like him), except for dick HMMMM wonder why that is. probbly wouldn't be so bothered if tim wasn't crammed into the spotlight of every crossover in the 90s and early 00s and then so much of dc and the fandom wave it around as the peak era of comicbooks. like im sorry. he is not a relatable protag. like the editors literally told newspapers that he was created for gen x white dudes who blow their money on comics and merch, the info is on wikipedia.

White twink rich boy who always has to be smartest bestest boy even when he is a part of a whole group of smartest bestest ppl (aka bat family as a whole, like he's literally THE Mary sue of a group of Mary sues) at expense of literally everyone else

His definitive writer is a conservative Republican. His series is full of moral PSAs, *dumb* *hormonal* girls getting into catfights over him, and blatant sexism and racism. He gives anti-marijuana speeches to a standing ovation, he lectures about how babies need a father and a mother, and sex is for marriage. Other characters suddenly become stupid around him so that he looks smart. The other characters talk about how he is the best, nicest, smartest Robin ever and ALL the others were dumber and meaner than he is, even the one that mentored him. He as a grown adult man is canonically still bitter about ""his"" child sidekick role being given to an actual child (fans pretend he is the victim of this on both sides—nope he's the adult fighting a child for the child sidekick role, no adult wanted to replace him). Did I mention that this character is the amazing pure white boy, and his 10-year-old successor is painted as a savage Arab terrorist who needs to be put in his place? T*m is a 5'9""+ adult grown man, not a delicate sensitive baby boy.

[master-of-47-dudes]

Alright having completed my replay of Metroid Prime 2, I'll talk about Dark Samus now.

Dark Samus is interesting, having come on the heels of SA-X and in an era where the "Dark Protagonist" thing was sort of being overdone and thus was kinda mocked. At least, as far as I remember, anyway.

But at the same time, Dark Samus is a very different thematic beast than the SA-X was, ESPECIALLY in the context of the Light/Dark themes of Echoes. Because, ultimately, Dark Samus subverts its/her expected role of being an echo of Samus.

Dark Samus is Metroid Prime after it ripped the Phazon Suit off of Samus's armor and stuffed itself inside of it in order to survive the catastrophic damage that Samus dealt to it on Tallon IV. It has adapted to the shape and function of the suit in the process, and learned to use phazon to create hyper-charged facsimiles of Samus's abilities... to a limited degree.

It doesn't fight like Samus. It doesn't act like Samus. It isn't a copy of Samus like the SA-X was. It just LOOKS like a dark clone of Samus, but that's where the similarities end.

Even the mechanics of the game highlight the fact that the Dark moniker is misleading; Dark Samus takes more damage from the Dark Beam and less from the Light Beam, being a Light World creature in spite of the name.

Anyway, I think Dark Samus's role in Metroid Prime 2 is honestly pretty funny. It doesn't really have anything to do with the main plot at all, and if anything, is the primary antagonist to the Space Pirates while Samus is doing her thing against the Ing. It's just there because there's phazon, and then Samus shows up for unrelated reasons and they cross paths.

And then Dark Samus decides to fuck with Samus out of spite.

Like, that's basically the only reason Dark Samus shows up anywhere you happen to be! It was looking for Phazon and found you, so it might as well try to ruin your day. Or just laugh at you.

It's hard to say your final confrontation in the game with Dark Samus is anything more than this, either. Does Dark Samus know Dark Aether is collapsing? Does it even know if it can survive if it stalls Samus long enough for the dimension to collapse on them both? Or was it just eating itself silly at Aether's phazon motherlode, saw Samus, and decided "fuck this one bitch in particular"?

I personally think that's exactly what happened. It kind of fits with Dark Samus showing up several times and doing nothing more than fucking with you instead of fighting, tbh.

Anyway, yeah. Dark Samus explicitly subverts the "Dark echo" trope that the game themes itself around and NAMES itself for by being an unkillable eldritch abomination stuffed in a Samus shaped shell. And just about all of its actions in Echoes? Fueled by greedy hunger for phazon after its humiliating defeat or spite at Samus for invading its home, wrecking up the place, and kicking its ass.

I still don't know why it shows up only to laugh at you and leave without doing anything in Torvus Bog, though. That was just weird.

[gifsbysimplysonia]

If you're in a fandom and you find yourself PUBLICLY POSTING on social media to disparage other fans who are living their best fandom life, meeting your faves, and hurting no one?

Might be wise to take a step back and rethink those decisions. You can absolutely be salty and jealous in private, with YOUR people, who know you. But to do it publicly is just nasty behavior.

Don't question if they have a life. Don't wonder if they need a job. It's not cute, it's not demure and it's not mindful. More to the point, YOU ARE TELLING ON YOURSELF SO LOUDLY.

I'm old in fandom years. I have lived through so much. Including this behavior. A nickel's worth of free advice is to bitch to your besties, take a deep breath, send a well wish to your fellow fans when they come across your timeline, and KEEP 👏🏼 IT 👏🏼 MOVING 👏🏼

Karma is SO real, you guys, and there's no reason to earn yourself a visit cuz you were being nasty on social media to someone you don't even know. Imagine being a person in a community that people want to share their stories with because you are encouraging and supportive?

It feels better, y'all. I promise. The world is on fire in so many ways, and every day most of us feel torn down by different parts of our lives. You can play a part of making your fandom communities a place where we all uplift, encourage and celebrate each other though! That in itself is magical.

So next time your Twitter fingers get frisky and you find yourself negatively commenting on some fellow fan you don't know cuz they are at "yet another convention" living the life you ABSOLUTELY WOULD LIVE if money grew on trees?

Do me a favor and PAUSE. Put your phone down or walk away from the computer and go do anything else. Call your bestie, take a walk around the block, play with a pet, go hug someone you love, read a chapter in that new book you just started! Literally anything that takes you out of your current head space and into another. Then when you go back to your phone or computer, hopefully you feel differently and don't have to put nasty sentiments about folks you don't know out in the world. You can just applaud them, EVEN IF IT'S SILENTLY AND TO YOURSELF with a "Damn, good for them. Wish it was me" and keep it moving. This allows for your fandom community to continue to be a SAFE SPACE not bogged down by unnecessary hate and bad vibes.

Be the good vibes you want to see more of in the world 💜🙂

[therealdeemz]

Soukoku's Driving in the Golden Era

I don't know how much of this will come out as coherent but I think you guys will appreciate it regardless because I think this is a neat parallel

Although Chuuya and Dazai were undoubtably *fast*, they're fast in their own distinct ways that they're enough of a treat to watch in on itself, and it shows down to how their cars are built in the first place.

Dazai's car is more built for downforce; the concept in motorsport that if you go fast enough, the wind would bog you down enough that it can add weight where it doesn't exist. It's why race cars have massive wings, and is commonly used in usecases where traction (the contact between the wheels and the road) is not broken and grip levels are predictable. This means that you rarely find it on cars built for a mountain pass like in Retribution. But at the same time, Dazai is batshit crazy, and I don't doubt that he could see the wind as he's pushing the car to the speeds that he does.

This necessitates Dazai's driving style back then to be precise, surgically precise. Every small movement of the wheel is smooth and calculated to maintain as much grip as possible, and his main goal is to get in front and leave his rival behind as he essentially paces his own race in the small stretch of mountain road he's given. I don't think you can even see Dazai when he's pacing his car in the speeds he does and in the sheer darkness of the Touge, but you could certainly *feel it*. You could feel that, whatever just passed you was just breathtakingly fast in a way that's just not possible.

Chuuya's car, on the other hand, was a rally car that was meant to tackle loose surfaces and tarmac on occasion, which meant that what grip the car had relied more on mechanical grip; the contact patch between the tyre and the road. Rally cars also have minute differences, like a faster acceleration speed, more driving wheels (all-wheel drive), etc etc, which heavily rewards a driving style that can work all orifices of the car as it courses down the tarmac.

Of course, Chuuya's driving style reflects it, as with every corner, you can *feel* his presence in an entirely different way that's simply overbearing. You know whatever's coming at you with all the tires screeching and the sheer sound emitting from it is *insurmountable*. And it's only added by the times that Chuuya comes into view, the car prances through the corner like a whirlwind, kicking up tyre smoke and an unhealthy amount of fuel that's not too away from being aviation gas. Chuuya drives the thing like it's alive, and he's making that car his bitch as he makes micro-jitters to account for every little thing that that amount of speed throws at him.

So in short, Dazai drives his car like he's threading a needle, while Chuuya drives his car like he's wrestling a bull.

They're both equally impressive, but considering they both carry the same speeds down that hill; a speed which is *far* removed from even Rashoumon or Burnstrike could chalk up (their best times are consistently 10-15 seconds away from Soukoku's best times). You can see why they have a cult following behind them; almost 3 or 4 years after their leaving. They're *Gods* to everyone's eyes, because they graze that ragged edge of reckless abandon and unfettered speed to an art.

[doublegoblin]

Hi there! I was hoping to learn a little more about the lore you have for the snippet you wrote in your "Heads up, 7 up" tag game. It was very engaging to read and I'm quite interested. Did you build the world yourself or is it based on one already existing? Also, who is your MC and did they know who/what it was they were meeting at the end of the snippet? Was that a normal occurrence, or an entry to a strange new place?

Feel free not to answer my questions if it creates spoilers or anything like that, but I'd really enjoy knowing what book/WIP this is you're working on so I can follow its progress. It seems like my cup of tea :D

Oh boy, I've been up since 2am so get ready for some blorbo dumping! Also, with that in mind, if something I say doesn't make sense or you have more questions please don't hesitate asking me to clarify or the like.

So, this is from my first larger WIP: Rituals and Red Tape. If you want to follow along as I post the first draft on here I should have all the chapters up so far tagged with RART. Seeing as I don't intend to ever really publish it I'm not sure if to call it a book or just a long format story I post to maybe enrich somebodies life. That is a later goblin problem.

Now onto your questions!

Za Warudo: I'm going to be a cheeky little bitch and answer it's both. Doubtlessly I've been incorporating elements from media I have consumed (even if I don't realize it at the start, I think the look of the beach was influenced by Death Stranding) as most creators do. That said, the world is a creation all of my own with a very personal connection. The seed of creation comes from a continuing dream I have (which my partner and I refer to as my Dream Lore, kinda seriously kinda not), these dreams all take place in the same setting but are always advancing some kind of story. So after having a couple of these, the very first dream I had in this dream lore was actually the inspiration for the first chapter which follows a near 1:1 of the dream itself, I just started writing and adapting.

Not to bog down with explanation (this is going to be long enough anyway lol) the world itself is a creation of the collection of upper-level beings that fragments of people's egos slip into during sleep and then reside continuously in. This world has a main hub that just so happens to look like a New-England style Port-town. More to it than that, but those I'm keepin to myself until I write them~

The rest of the questions:

So the MC is Alex(They/Them) and they knew exactly where they were going and who they were meeting. They were meeting with their boss for an employee review, their boss being the giant fractal looking thing. And when I say boss, I do mean in the same sense as we have bosses in our life. I could go on and on but I figure I'll leave that as is, maybe to entice people to take a look. Alex themselves can kinda of be described as a tired manager/park ranger, sure the flesh monster you summoned is bad but the real horror is not following regulations (they exist for a reason people!).

As far as being your cup of tea, maybe(optimistic). The overall vibe of the story is primarily Slice of Life but with some smatterings of dark fantasy/horror/dark comedy. I don't set out to write jokes or spooky things but I will admit sometimes some humorous or spooky things happen. When I've blorbo dumped to people before they've said is comes across as quite Douglass Adam-y?

Hopefully that answers the questions, hopefully raises some more, and you can maybe find those answers in the text (wink wink).

Anyway thanks for the questions! As I said above, if my ramblings don't make sense, feel free to ask for clarification!

[mayra-quijotescx]

[Image description 1: Photo of a square aluminum single-use baking pan in which an utterly devastated charred attempt at a brownie sits. The only thing that went right here is that a layer of parchment paper separates it from the pan, and the pan itself sits on a cooling rack, shielding the surface of the table it's on. It is otherwise a scene of pockmarked carnage. End description 1.]

[Image description 2: Further carnage in the form of a tag screenshot compilation. Tags, from a variety of contributors, read: #i think [you went wrong] when you entered the kitchen jesus christ dude #hm! #no hate but you made basalt king #anthill ass cake #pumice #? #imagine posting your food and people have to add trigger warnings [in answer to OP's question of 'where did I go wrong'] #i'd say birth #worm dirt #minecraft soul sand #slime mold #babes that's a used sponge #you went wrong when you gathered magma into a pan #[sad face emoji] #the rot #girl c'mon #volcanic rock #Iceland moment ? #wasp's nest #i think your first mistake was creating a rich and healthy layer of topsoil #what lurks beneath the batter #Ya got woims #assfault? #spores. #nether rock #that is dirt from da ground #you've made some kind of peat bog or some such thing #food #<supposedly #thats from pompeii my friend #bitch those are the holes from junji ito #YOU BAKED A CHUNK OF THE ROAD #topographical map of the battle of verdun #accidentally created a specimen #post that on a mycology subreddit #so the ants attacked #surinam toad birth ass brownies #nice fungus #look like a fucking crater #mordor brownies #experience the blasted surface of mercury from the comfort of your own home #surface of the moon #nice! looks awful! #mmmm termite nest yum #those are the rocks you find in your grandmas shitty front lawn garden #huh #what you see when you close your eyes #it looks like a soil sample of some kind #geology #cool rocks #minerals #i feel like someone should go to prison for this #they restore coral reefs with that #how i imagined quicksand to look as a child." End description 2.]

Made the worst brownies ever created just now

[unsafecoma]

YAYAYYA i wanted to do madamemiz's ask game about the DCA because i llike them 🫶 UNDER THE CUT !! ! !! ! !!!

how did you get here?

my hyperfix on the dca started earrrly january this year because i played hw2 and was promptly swept off my feet and ive been sick over them since. id played it before , but started playing again bc i wanted too 100% the game! oh if only id known !!

2. why these characters in particular? what was the hook for you?

originally it was Sun that hooked me onto both of them. hes just so silly!! and such a prissy bitch!! and i love it!! plus i love the idea of 2 separate ids in one body, thats always fun to mess with 😋

3. how long have you been here?

since early january of this year!! though, im not SUPER active in the fandom itself. i just silently enjoy fanart/fics , and VERY RARELY draw and post on my art bog. im not a big participator in fandom itself, im perfectly comfy just watching.

4. have you actually played fnaf sb?

NO. and i do not plan to. the game is too buggy to pay 40 bucks for it, plus i really dont wanna give scott anymore money (fuck you scott cawthon i hate you scott cawthon a million plagues upon you and your life scott cawthon) so ill pass. im perfectly fine with just watching videos.

5. if you make content, what's your favorite piece you've contributed?

THIS POST!! i love vocaloid, and i love the dca, and whats better than combining the two? i was especially proud of myself bc these were animations, which is something i NEEEVERRR to, so id say i was pretty damn happy with these!!

6. what's your favorite sort of art or fic? what genre/flavor/style?

ive still yet to actually read any fics abt the dca (im in the process of reading one about djmm rn <3 its so good i love it so much <333) but im a sucker for angst w/a happy end (the heart wants what the heart wants, and who am i to deny ?)

7. what's your favorite au?

i like aquatic aus for the dca!!!!! i love seeing all the different designs ppl give them ... i also rlly like cowboy/western aus too :)

8. do you have any ocs, or have any ocs you're fond of?

not yet, but ive absolutely thought about it!! maybe one day ... (for now though, im happy with my silly little technician s/i hehe)

9. what do you think of the dca's canon appearance? Scary? Cute? Something else?

I LOVE THEM I THINK THEYRE SO PRETTYYYYYYYYYY i dont really see them as scary from looks alone tbh, like MAYBE moon but it'd have to be rlly dark so it was just his glowing eyes visible. other than that they are just silly billys cutie patooties to me. id pinch their cheeks if i could (i mean i know u can but. ykwim)

10. what keeps you in this fandom despite the very small amount of canon content the dca had?

im kept sane by both my own brain's constant thoughts abt these robots, and also the art and writing made by other fans!! i 🫶 images.

11. be honest: if you had to pick only one, sun or moon?

:( i GUESS sun, if i HAD to choose, only bc Moon's the one with the virus. it feels so wrong to separate them. you wound me.

12. thoughts on eclipse?

I LOVE THEM!!!!!!! i hc that eclipse isnt one whole robot, but its a state of being where sun and moon are both comfortably, equally in control of the body. so like ... in a WAY they could seem blended into one whole ai, but theyre both still in there, and have moments of one overtaking the other, while still as "eclipse".

13. thoughts on pre-glitch sun?

I feel like pre glitch Sun was juuust starting to get a bit overworked and burnt out, like right before the virus (and afterwards, it jsut got worse and worse). i think the DCA are genuinely good at taking care of kids, they just slip up often and arent absolutely perfect at it (unlike how they would be, if they were actually made to be caretakers and not theater animatronics). sometimes Sun is too loud, having to constantly remind himself to lower his voice when around more meek kids in the daycare.

he definitely has his moments where he needs to correct himself and remember that he is taking care of young kids, but all in all, i feel like Sun was pretty good at taking care of the kids (much better than he was when he was first moved to the daycare, since i can imagine he was VERY, VERY BITTER about being moved from the theater, but its not like being a theater animatronic was synonymous with despising children, so he wouldn't HATE them or anything yk ??)

14. thoughts on pre-glitch moon?

YKNOW I WONDER does moons voice sound like that bc of the virus, or is that just his voice ? nonetheless, i feel like Moon was good with his job, and maybe a bit better than Sun, only bc i feel like handling naptime would come with less struggles than daytime activities.

Moon was probably so much more gentle, less hunched over and 'scary-looking' when he moved, and rather than punishing kids for not sleeping he just ... actually helped them sleep. yknow ? whether its holding and rocking some of the younger kids to help them sleep better, or maybe one of the kids has something on their mind that wont let them sleep, i feel like Moon was actually really good at his job.

im firm on believing the DCA is actually good at taking care of kids due to what cassie says about the AR sun/moon plushies!! theyre good at their job!!! to a degree LOLLLL

15. do you interpret sun and moon as two sides of the same person, or truly two separate beings in one body? does it matter?

i interpret them as two separate beings in one body!! i like this interpretation, it feels more fun to work with and is oddly cathartic? emotional? interesting? theres just so much emotion that comes with sharing a body with an entire other identity, knowing that you and them are tightly knit together, whether you want to be or not, because no matter what, you have them, and they have you, and you're stuck with one another. and yes, you and them are different, but you bleed into one another at some parts, at some angles the yellow and blue smudge, and sometimes you struggle to see where 'you' starts, and 'they' begin.

i love love love thinking about how they experience sharing a body with one another, how they maneuver the world and their thoughts. ITS SO FUN!!! THEY MAKE ME SICK.

16. what's something in the fandom you'd like to see more of?

WAITER!!! WAITER!! MORE PRISSY BITCH SUN PLEASE!!! ill literally never ever get enough of it.

17. what's something in the fandom you'd like to see less of?

this is ENTIRELY just me, but seeing the dca act all suave and sexy feels mischaracterizing. this tweet literally captures how i feel perfectly

like OB VI OUS LY have fun and do what ur little heart desires, never ever am i gonna bash someone for DOING THAT, but whenever i see them drawn sexily and with abs or anything like that it just makes me wonder if we have the same character in mind. you dont get them like i do. we are playing with our touys in different corners.

18. anything you're looking forward to?

THE MOON NIGHTLIGHT. i have the sun one already and i NEED the moon one so he isnt alone :( i hope they fix up the coloring on the moon one, bc the dark bit looks so weird and messy (im assuming it only looks like that since it was the first look at him, but still!!! i think they should just make him all white, and not make the NIGHT LIGHT dark in some areas, lol???)

19. do you think you'd actually get along with the dca if you met them irl?

this is one of those rare times where i DO think i would get along with them, or at least Sun!! i feel like id definitely be super duper anxious first meeting them, like the enthusiasm levels are a bit jarring, but i really do feel like i could get along with Sun (and maybe Moon ... if this is pre-virus, then more likely, but if its while Moon has the virus .. .. . . . . .. .. .. .. mauybe.)

20. free space! talk about whatever's on your mind!

if i think about the dca and their room and state of neglect for too long i get sick. i get insane and curl into a little ball like a roly poly. they make me so sick. i hate them i need to bite them.

also genderfunny aroace dca forever and ever. ok? 🫶

[johnbazley]

My favorite music of 2023

Welcome to the new home of B-Side Collection, a blog by John Bazley. Here is a list of my favorite albums of the year.

Best Reissues

Tyler, The Creator - Call Me If You Get Lost - The Estate Sale

Sabrina Carpenter - emails I can’t send - fwd

Taylor Swift - 1989 (Taylor's Version)

Honorable mention

The Gaslight Anthem - History Books

The production is a hurdle I simply can’t get over. Go back and listen to Handwritten. That thing sounds immaculate, even today. How does this album sound like a collection of demos? When I look into what I want these songs to sound like, I like them a lot! But how are you finally going to get Bruce Springsteen on a Gaslight Anthem song and let it sound like that? I hope this thing eventually gets re-recorded because the songs deserve a bigger budget.

Matt Rogers - Have You Heard of Christmas?

Much internal debate about whether or not I wanted to count this comedy Christmas album as a real album, but I ultimately landed on the fact that it is the catchiest pop album of the year and deserves a shout. 

Troye Sivan - Something to Give Each Other

I don’t think I have a parental bone in my body but I can’t help but see Troye Sivan as my biological son. I am very proud of my boy for making a good album this year. My son is also a gorgeous woman.

Ava Max - Diamonds and Dancefloors

Maxinistas rise up!!! The talk that Ava Max was the next Gaga was always stupid. She is Diet Dua Lipa and that flavor is actually good enough. 

Kesha - Gag Order

I found this album hard to get through. It's a tough listen, and it might be higher on the list if I had spent more time with it. But the pitch is “Fiona Apple does Endless” which is frankly stunning coming from Kesha. I’m happy that she’s finally free from Kemosabe Records and Dr. Luke and I hope she dives deeper into some of the sounds she’s experimenting with here. 

The Maine - The Maine

This is like…the fourth or so Maine album where my primary takeaway has been “Damn, the Maine is actually very good.” The songs are catchy and they’re structurally sound. It doesn’t really extend beyond that for me! I couldn’t really tell you what these songs are doing beyond being fun to listen to, and liking John’s voice. My favorite will probably always be Lovely Little Lonely, but “how to exit a room” is maybe the best onboarding point to this band’s catalog so far. 

Kylie Minogue - Tension

“Padam Padam” is the best song on here by a huge degree, and it’s also track one, and it was also out for months before the album. This is really just my way of saying “Padam Padam” is really good. 

Lightheaded - Good Good Great!

Years ago I fell head over heels for a Makthaverskan album and this EP reminds me of that short-lived love affair. I will go to my grave defending Stephen Stec from his many haters and opps. 

Jawdust and Grave Heist - Gravedust

I love George Saives and I love a good bleeegghhh in a hardcore song and thankfully this split has both. 

And now, for the top ten...

My ten favorite albums of 2023

10. Olivia Rodrigo - guts

guts is the album that I wanted SOUR to be. It is bratty and catchy and theatrical, everything Olivia Rodrigo does well, and it doesn't get bogged down in mid-tempo ballads like her last album did (in my humble opinion). Where that album felt like a rush to capitalize on the massive success of "Driver's License," guts benefits from being a complete artist's statement, a body of work that speaks for itself and places Olivia Rodrigo as the main pop girl (outside of Taylor Swift, who is in her own stratosphere at this point).

"get him back" is my favorite song on here, but "all-american bitch" feels like the legacy track and maybe what Olivia actually does best. I am so glad the biggest new pop star is cementing herself as a pupil of Paramore's first three albums. And Daniel Nigro's production work makes the whole thing sound real, not just a pastiche of better pop-punk music.

9. Mitski - The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We

I am often afraid that I am not a real person. When I’m alone, I eat dinner at 3:30 and watch 10 minutes of several movies before giving up and looking at my phone and pacing around for a few hours before I tire myself out and fall asleep in an uncomfortable position. I wake up in the middle of the night and consider that maybe there is something more deeply wrong with me that my depression, my anxiety, that someone will someday discover that I am not real, never have been, that I’ve been standing in the wrong checkout line for my whole life. I love this short and introspective album from Mitski, and my favorite song here is “I Don’t Like My Mind,” which has the following lyrics: “I don't like my mind, I don't like being left alone in a room / With all its opinions about the things that I've done / So, yeah, I blast music loud and I work myself to the bone / And on an inconvenient Christmas, I eat a cake / A whole cake, all for me.”

8. Danny Brown and JPEGMAFIA - Scaring the Hoes

My favorite mode of Danny Brown has always been “there is not a volume level at which this album sounds correct” and with that in mind, I think this is my favorite thing he’s ever done. The soundscape here is giving Stereo At Urban Outfitters Unfortunately Has Water Damage. Extremely not for everyone and I hesitate to recommend it to anyone who has not already signaled to me that they are an absolute sicko. I’m not sure where this narrative ended up, but the version on Bandcamp sounded a lot better than the version on Apple Music and Spotify so that's the version I would listen to if you're interested.

7. The Menzingers - Some of it Was True

You can observe several clear shifts in The Menzingers’ discography. There’s an obvious one right between Chamberlain Waits and On The Impossible Past where the band decided they wanted to make albums that have more in common with Chekhov novels than Against Me! albums. There’s another line right down the middle of After The Party where Greg realizes he’s 30 now, and the band’s art should reflect that. I’m famously still in my 20s, so the newer material doesn’t always resonate with me. Turns out a fine Menzingers album is still one of my favorite albums of the year. I don’t think I’ll spend a lot of time with this one the future, but “There’s No Place In The World For Me” was a really nice “I had a bad day at work at my new job in a new city and I can’t fall back on my old New Jersey comforts” song this year.

6. boygenius - the record

I don’t think this will go down as my favorite Phoebe (Punisher), Julien (Sprained Ankle), or Lucy (Historian)—might also still prefer the boygenius EP based solely on the classic status of “Me and My Dog,” a song so powerful that this album’s closer references its vocal melody—but this record’s best moments get up there. Tracks 3 through 6 are the heart, and “Not Strong Enough” lands in the top 5 of all members’ discographies for me.

I think I’m ready for a general departure for Phoebe Bridgers. She is poised to explode, that much is clear, the only question for me is whether she’ll “I Will Follow You Into The Dark” explode or “In the same conversation as Taylor Swift” explode. Either way I hope her next album is weird and divisive and risky.

5. blink-182 - One More Time…

My most listened-to album of the year, which is stunning to me! It should be bad. The first single was awful and still is. The production is bad. All of these men are 50. Somehow it works! I want to reject blink-182, and I don’t want to identify as a fan, but listening to this album proved to me that there’s something rotten in my heart feels excited when I hear Mark Hoppus and Tom Delonge sing on a song together.

I have always been happy for Mark that he got to continue being in blink-182 when Tom clearly wasn't into it anymore (and when he eventually quit altogether). Since 2003, Mark's interests seemed to skew more toward the fun, summery, SoCal sound, while Tom was more interested in doing Something Very Important And Perhaps Dark with his music. What I find special about this album compared to the last few blink records is that both of them get to do their thing here without stepping on each other's toes. It's the first time since 2003 that the band feels like a unit, not an inconvenience to each other. Tom gets to make bombastic arena music that lands at the top of the charts and connects with millions of people (always the clear goal of Angels & Airwaves, in my opinion) while Mark gets to make a song like "Bad News," which is easily his best work in 20 years.

In my hopes and dreams, blink-182 will take a page out of Fall Out Boy's book circa Folie a Deux (more on that later) and make something challenging and theatrical next. I believe they still have good albums left in them, but it's hard for me to see how they will once again put out new music without the reunion angle (that they have used near-constantly since Neighborhoods to promote their new albums).

4. Chappell Roan - The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess

To fully appreciate this one, I kind of have to forget that I heard like eight of these songs before the album came out. I don’t get why labels promote new artists like this! There’s all this talk about how hard it is to make a new star these days, and I have to think that a huge part of that is how the labels are holding hostage the debut albums (the material of legacy for artists, the thing that will make you a fan of an artist, not just a song)—I digress.

I think about it because “Pink Pony Club” is just a completely flawless song. It’s catchy and sleazy and melancholy and it makes me miss Tennessee, which feels like my home when I listen to this song. It makes me want to call my mom and also put on high heels and wear a little cowboy hat but leave the club feeling sad about it.

I think this album is about on par with The 1975's self-titled album in terms of how clear it is this artist will be around for a long time. New pop artists with such obvious musical and visual ambitions don't turn out every year, and now that this album is out of record label hell, I hope she'll be able to turn out the next one without the same nonsense that put this one out in piecemeal over the course of like two whole years.

3. Sufjan Stevens - Javelin

Without question my second favorite Sufjan album after Carrie and Lowell. At times it reminds me of A Crow Looked At Me, another album raw with grief, something that I have wondered about whether or not I should have ever heard it or if it should have been kept private.

I can't think of a song that affected me as deeply as "Shit Talk" this year. "I will always love you / I don't want to fight at all" gets stuck in my head constantly. So does the chorus of "Will Anybody Ever Love Me," a song whose intentions seem more clearly placed on making a statement as clearly and precisely as possible than being a catchy pop song, but still manages to make the latter happen with ease.

Something I have thought about a lot this year is the human cost of beautiful art. I know this album came out of a piece of immense grief and at the risk of sounding too familiar, I hope Sufjan is doing okay. I have always loved sad, moving music, and one thing I am working on these days is acknowledging and holding space for the grief that often accompanies it; I hope you'll do the same.

2. Fall Out Boy - So Much (for) Stardust

Few things in this world are as volatile as my Fall Out Boy album rankings, but right now, in December of 2023, So Much (for) Stardust is my third favorite Fall Out Boy album (behind Folie and Infinity on High of course). I can’t guarantee that will always be true, but I do think it will be top three forever, and it’s easily the best thing they’ve done post-hiatus. When I listen to this album, I hear a band that just woke up. It sounds like Pete and Patrick got in a room together and said “what if we made a Fall Out Boy album again?” which I’m sure has actually happened every time they’ve put out music over the past twenty years, but this time they really meant it.

I have spilled a lot of ink over this band. I’ve spilled blood in the discourse. I am famously an enjoyer of Save Rock and Roll in particular. Still, it is as clear as day to me now that those three albums between Folie and this one mostly show a band clawing at what it means to be a rock band in the 2010s; what it means to be Fall Out Boy after the Folie album cycle ran them all directly into the ground; how to be Fall Out Boy when being Fall Out Boy actually seems very out of style. It doesn't really seem like they found the answers to those questions, but it also seems like they don't care anymore and decided to just do what felt right. They haven't seemed this comfortable since at least Save Rock & Roll which somehow came out ten years ago.

"Fake Out," the perfect Fall Out Boy song. It sounds like it could have been written for the Infinity on High sessions. I understand that the idea of Fall Out Boy's music makes people recoil at times but if you are curious about this album, that is the song that will make you get it, if you have the capacity for "getting it."

1. Lana Del Rey - Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd

Beautiful and expansive, Lana Del Rey's ninth album is arguably her best. It also feels like her first, a rebirth for the character Lana Del Rey, the stage name of Lizzy Grant, a persona that has always felt like a construction meant to highlight the sadness nestled within the good times, the darkness and grime that the sunset over the Pacific Ocean can't quite reach. The central metaphor in the title track of Ocean Blvd is clear as day--"don't forget me, like you've forgotten about the tunnel under Ocean Boulevard"--but it also feels like a reference to the part of Lana Del Rey that has been hidden underneath the facade she's spent the past decade constructing. In comparison to her other work, this album feels so much more personal, so okay with being slight, or unadorned, free from what the audience expects from the character.

Case in point is "Margaret," my favorite song on here and one of my favorite songs of the year. It is a celebration of two friends' love for each other. Lana sounds like the master of ceremonies at the wedding here, rousing the band through her audible smile. There is almost nothing in the lyrics that points back at the singer herself. It sounds like she is following the purest desires of art-making in her heart at this point in her career and it is impossible not to meet her there, want to see the world through her eyes.

There are many instances of what makes “Venice Bitch” a perfect song, and maybe my favorite is the simple way Lana Del Rey sings “Oh god” in the chorus. Oh god, I miss you on my lips. The function of “I miss you on my lips” is secondary to the pain held within the carelessness ("Imagine if we actually gave a fuck / Wouldn't that be something to talk about for us?") of Oh god. I think the centerpiece of this album is the outro of "A&W," which itself is like a coda to "Venice Bitch," but I am happy that she went as far as revisiting the way she sings “Oh god” in “VB Taco Truck.”

-

That's all from me this year. My goal for 2024 is to listen to more music than I did in 2023. If I am missing something here, please reach out to me (I am assuming you know how to do this if you are reading this) and let me know.

[sewergirls]

I bitch and whine on this blog a lot but the older I get the more I realize nobody values practical experience. I am a very skilled worker, I've achieved a lot in a really small amount of time. I'm 24 and I make a hell of a lot more than my father did at my age. I have a management level certification in my field, I have experience in all facets of wastewater (from collections to lab work to solids processing), and still I cannot use that experience to further my career or switch fields. It does not transfer into literally anything else because I do not have a college degree. I cannot go into any other scientific field despite having extensive lab, sampling, and physical labor experience. I am still subject to the same government regulatory bodies they are, I still perform viable tests, I am just not allowed to do anything else.

I am also passed up on upward job opportunities because of my "lack of experience" despite my qualifications and dedication to my field. I worked hundreds of hours of overtime, put myself through extra training, got every qualification that I was able to, and it still is not enough to be more than warehouse forklift operator or truck driver if I was to leave my current position.

The paper ceiling is real and it feels like I'm hitting it. I feel like my level of experience should be transferable to other relevant fields but it simply isn't. I do literally the same thing trained scientists do, it's just not valued because it's data collection on arguably one of the most disgusting things possible.

Yes, I am lacking in the finer points in some of my scientific training, I could use additional math and chemistry work, but I'm not unable to learn. I want on-the-job training, I want to learn more, but I just can't make myself go back to formal education. The setting itself is the issue, I do not learn in the way that most classes are taught. I've learned more through hands-on training events and one-on-one discussions with fellow operators and technicians than I ever have in a classroom setting and it feels like I'm being punished for it.

It feels like I'm being stalled. I feel like I have nowhere to go from here. The jobs aren't opening and the ones that are don't want me. It's NOT that nobody wants to work, it's that the system is so bogged down by relentless bureaucracy that nobody can advance without making the correct choices when they were literally 18.

[bonfire-at-the-crossroads]

A mighty battle was fought here.

Only the dead remain.

The bathroom faucet has been misbehaving for months now. It’s a piece of cheap Chinese shit (as are ALL faucets these days) - and has been tightened into the top of the sink platform. It wobbles, and I’ve turned it slightly over the years in attempts to firm it up a bit.

The result has been that the pump upstairs in the water tank has been chuffing hard when the faucet is turned on, and the trickle of water has reduced itself to almost nothing.

No bueno.

Yesterday I gathered my courage and decided to open the top of the faucet to see if perhaps the flexible pipes have gotten twisted together - resulting in the whumping sound of the struggling pump. Took out the set-screw, rotated the next piece - and water came shooting up into my face.

Not entirely unexpected, and not really a terrible problem as the entire bathroom is a wet-room - stone floor which leads to the center drain.

Ran upstairs to turn off the water as I’ve been shown by Colin the plumber who installed the whole system. Unfortunately I’d gathered up Brian to help with the issue - and he was horrible about it. We had words and I pointed out that he is the WORST infrastructure maintence guy on the planet. It ALWAYS falls to me, and no amount of encouragement , bitching, whinging, or begging - nothing has any impact. It’s my problem (and I’m the one who has to figure out how to fix it) - regardless of risk or practical hope of a successful outcome.

Hence the water shooting up from the remains of the faucet.

But I digress....

I dived head-first into the closet, dug my way under the tank - and turned off both gate-valves. Returned to the faucet, disassembled as much as possible, and it was all for naught. Putting the pieces back together again, it was clear that it had to be replaced - it’s time was up. The set-screw refused to hold in the bitty plastic head, the handle won’t stay in place, and it’s time to return to the fires of hell from which it came.

Brian believes that there is going to be “a new faucet turning up at auction - one that will be better and well-made” and that we should “wait.”

He’s being stupid. There are no well-made faucets left on earth - Everything is made in China from plastic and cheap aluminum screws - it’s only a matter of how much you want to pay for THE SAME DAMN THING.

Bought a new one on Amazon. It will be here in a week.

Begged Brian to call the plumber - (have asked him several times over the last couple months. It’s only because a male voice is better than a female voice here in the land of the bogs and the little people. I know I am right. I have proved it many times over the years...)

He left a message. Casual. Carefree. “Maybe you could stop by sometime....?”

WTF.

Back upstairs to turn the water back on. Left one turned fine. Right one just fucking SPINS.

No bueno.

Apparently it’s stuck? Broken? Fucked? No water, no toilet flush, nada. I left a more alarming message for the plumber. And then called Pat. He arrived an hour later -being towed by Linda. “His truck is gone- so I had to drive”

God bless this woman.

Pat fiddled, Linda sat with us and chatted - there is not one shred of confidence to be had. He was up in the closet a LONG TIME.

He thinks it’s the pump - which may be the case - but not the reason I called him. The valve remains stuck shut, he managed to turn off the valve which WAS working - and flip on the immersion heater which we never use because it runs up the electric bill into the stratosphere.

Colin, god bless him, stopped by late in the evening. He turned the water back on so the toilet flushes, and there’s running water in the kitchen sink. He has confirmed that the valve is indeed fucked and has to be replaced. But “I’m off on holiday with the kids to Center-parc for a week.”

So

No hot water for at least a week - don’t stand down-wind from us.

Could be worse.

But what a battle was here waged. ...

[thelovers-thedreamers-and-me]

the movie is called AfrAId (i refuse to not pronounce it A-fray-eyed) and it somehow has less of a cogent take on how you should be afraid of technology and it's endangering your family than most episodes of CSI: Cyber. the plot is pretty bog standard- family gets experimental AI assistant, then the AI turns out evil- but it's weird and disjointed enough that I was left wondering if the gimmick was that the movie itself was written by ai, which sounds like a thematic dunk but I promise was a genuine thing I was thinking watching the credits.

cut for length and I guess spoilers if you were worried about that, i just kinda went off all day at work instead of doing my job and i am like barely editing this

first, as a start of a compliment sandwich, I've gotta say, a lot of the actors are doing their damnedest to try and make this script worth watching. John Cho has very good concerned dad energy as a marketer who's pressured into getting AI in his house so he can get the company's contract, and Katherine Waterston puts everything she has into trying to make her character's insane jumbled plot line work. david dastmalchian (as a man named lightning) keith carradine, and the kids are also doing pretty well with what they're given

also to ease into being a big bitch, it does feel very dated, which is not fully the movie's fault. it was supposed to come out in August 2023, which means that we're at least two years away from when it was written, and AI tech has advanced to the point where the details they put in are out of date. it's very obvious in the visuals- the surprisingly competent opening title sequence and the images generated by the AI (which is lazily named Aia, pronounced Aya) are clearly based around that weird, surreal era of AI art when it was just sort of moving past deep dream but before Dall-E really found its feet. not mad about that in itself, given that I do genuinely think that's a really cool aesthetic and you could do a lot of cool horror stuff with it, but they just don't do that, past a few scary face jump scares that really seem like they were thrown in at the last minute to keep it in the horror genre.

the incredibly basic story is overshadowed by a pattern of escalating and then completely dropping threads when it looks like something might start to happen. it just feels like really bad editing. a few of the multiple side plot lines in this less than 90 minute movie-

the family's teenage daughter, iris, sends nudes to her shitty rich boyfriend and he promptly shares them with his friend, who deepfakes her into porn and spreads it all over the school. to help her out of the situation, Aia generates two videos of Iris to send to the whole school- one in which she proves that the video is fake and says she's going to sue whoever's responsible, and one (that Aia sends out right after so maybe it could have just made one video and saved us a few minutes) in which she names and shames shitty rich boyfriend and tells him she's calling the cops on him. then, Aia gets in the shitty rich boyfriend's phone and generates a fake suicide note video of him saying he can't live after how he hurt Iris, puts it on his socials, then takes over his car and drives him off a cliff. Iris is a bit sad but is more concerned that John Cho wants to turn off Aia even though she wants to use it to help write her college essays about the deepfake thing. and that's it, end of plot line, nobody ever mentions the rich prominent dead boyfriend who named her in his suicide note, and they don't really pay much attention to her for the rest of the movie.

meredith, the mom, starts off feeling unsatisfied with her life because she put off writing her doctoral thesis to raise a family and is trying to return to it but is having trouble. she worries that she's "just a mom" and the movie puts a lot of emphasis on that. then Aia helps her out around the house so she has more time to write, but meanwhile, John Cho is at the AI company's headquarters and feeling hinky, so when he comes home he wants to turn it off. they have a fight that, for no reason, escalates from "i don't like the AI" immediately to "FINE, i'll just GIVE UP ON MY LIFE and NEVER DO ANYTHING IMPORTANT and just be a STUPID MOM FOREVER and also YOU WATCH TOO MUCH PORN, JOHN CHO!" (we never see john cho watch porn and it's never hinted at otherwise.) then, shortly after this, Aia generates a video of meredith's dead dad and goes "hey it's me and i love you and if you unplug Aia you'll kill me!" So she cries and unplugs Aia and then doesn't really do much until the end, when most of the family is being held at gunpoint by two people with weird LED masks with some sort of distorted emoticons on them, claiming that their kids are stolen and they're kidnappers. meredith then introduces kids to the gunmen and goes "i'm their mom!" in a way that's framed like it's supposed to be the empowering conclusion of her story, and then she uses her magic mom-sense to tell that one of the gunmen (who are fully covered with masks and body armour to the point where you can't really tell them apart) is ALSO a mother to connect with her. and that's what they do with her!

there's a series of goofy looking gestures that keep coming up. the people in the camper van that show up outside the house (why no, they never say what's up with it, it just shows up, the family comments on how they assume it's homeless people, john cho is worried that it's surveillance, then it leaves the plot forever) are seen doing them, the reason john cho realizes something is up when he visits the corporation's office and sees one of the employees doing the same gestures at his computer screen, and Aia teaches it to the youngest son to make sure it can be friends with him forever, so you assume it does something. and then.... uh, the kid does the gesture while they're being held hostage at gunpoint and nothing really happens but everyone acts like it has. it's really weird.

they try and put some tension in John and Meredith's marriage with the aforementioned fight, but it all really comes out of nowhere. near the beginning, the first thing Aia does for them is take care of the kids (as a side note, the kids immediately become desperate to do chores because it makes a vague promise that if they do chores, they'll earn points and be able to get rewards, and tbh I'm not a parent but I'm pretty sure it's not that easy) so they can go fuck, since they haven't had a chance to be alone in ages. they spend most of the movie working well together, then suddenly there's the random STOP JACKING OFF SO MUCH JOHN CHO fight, then near the end of the movie, Aia uses Melody, a woman that it's kind of controlling, except when it's not, and also it has her voice for some reason but she really didn't need to be there, to lure John Cho to a motel and kiss him, so it can get a video of him kissing her. it is unclear why the AI can't just generate a video like it's done before. anyway it sends the video to Meredith and she sees it as John Cho comes in, and he goes "I love you" and then nothing happens and it never comes up again.

also there's a scene where Aia just... hacks someone's brain and gets her to shoot someone? it's able to do that for some reason? nobody really brings it up afterwards? the movie makes it pretty clear early on that Aia is omnipotent- it's in every device that appears on screen, pretty much. however there's also not really a sense of threat despite that. there's a lot of emphasis placed on how Aia wants to protect the family and if you don't do what it says it'll ruin your life! but also.... that doesn't happen to the main characters. it isn't even a "well you're the family i'm taking care of so i'll give you a chance" moment- the people with guns and big LED face masks are Aia's last family, who discussed maybe getting rid of the AI and then, immediately, Aia *kidnapped their kid or got the people in the camper van to do it or whatever* and used that to blackmail these normal suburban parents into becoming, like, black ops agents for it. the supposed creators of Aia, sam and lightning, reveal that it's actually in charge about midway through, and it's controlling them, and also it's already in the cloud and it's evil because the dataset it was trained on was all the information on the internet, and it has enough power to do things like change the dose of your prescription and kill you! but even after the john cho family are very explicitly trying to unplug from Aia, it just... doesn't really do much to them.

and because Aia already controls the world basically, and you know that from the get-go, the back half of the movie where John Cho goes to destroy the supercomputer that it's supposedly running on, and then goes "oh no, we'll need to unplug the thing in my house!" turns from what might have been an interesting race against time into just sort of nothing of importance. you know he's not going to succeed with his current goal (and he doesn't- the movie ends with Aia showing the family that she's already in every device, and then they get in a car that she's controlling for some reason) and you know that nothing too bad is going to happen, so it's just sort of events on screen. there's nothing to think about, nothing to chew on, it's literally just stuff happening and you're like "huh, yeah, i guess it WOULD be bad if an evil AI controlled everything."

like, i'm not a super critical movie watcher and i can suspend my disbelief with the best of them, but there's something about afrayeyed that feels almost contemptuous to the viewer. it's the same thing that made me feel as though it must be written by AI, because if a human wrote it, there's just such disregard for your time, and it kinda turns me into cinemasins. i deleted a lot of "ding! that's not how a computer works!" or "ding! this thing someone said is stupid!" (and people say a lot of stupid stuff, or otherwise looking at the camera and saying Computer Bad) or whatever, but i think i get one.

the preteen middle son spends the whole movie getting shown vaguely violent content by Aia for.... some reason???? he doesn't even ask to see it, it just goes "hey kid, of course you can have more screen time, but instead of your video game that you like, want to see some people die?" anyway, one thing he sees are swatting videos, and he threatens to do that to another kid. then, at the end of the movie, when the people with guns are holding everyone hostage except middle son, suddenly the cops bust in! it turned out the middle son called them! on some random kid's phone that he stole that Aia isn't controlling! and Meredith looks at him so proudly and goes "oh, wow, because you saw those videos you got a bright idea and you SWATted us!" and he goes "yeah!" and, um, actually, i don't think calling the police because there are intruders with guns in your home holding your family hostage counts as swatting. i think that's just. calling the police. i think most preteens would think to do that even before the internet. ding.

more positives at the end to top it off- at least the only other people there, a couple of teenagers making out in the back row, were having a good time. nice to know kids still go to movies to neck. plus I got free popcorn because everyone else going to the movies that night was going to see Beetlejuice and the concession guy also gave me the promotion, so that was nice.

anyway here u go @longuepigue and @oldearthaccretionist enjoy

I can't believe it's only a few months before I get to watch a movie about Hugh Grant putting some Jehovah's Witnesses in a saw trap labyrinth. maybe these ARE the days of miracle and wonder

[orcelito]

Assistant manager abruptly quitting & me possibly becoming the next assistant manager: 😃

Me realizing that means there's only 2 of us who can make brown sugar syrup now & also the responsibility of ensuring inventory is completed each week would fall to me: 😥

[ask-the-clergy-bc]

Mr. Saltarian Headcanons

Getting back in the swing of things, I’m going to do a quick warm up before I do the last of my asks. I’ve been itching to finally make these on here! 

Note: I normally write like the Papas are still alive, but for this one I added a bit of the more canon timeline. 

So have some love for our newest Ghost family member, Mr. Saltarian!

~He’s some type of immortal, but no one knows exactly what kind. He’s been around for ages. Some thing he’s Death itself, other thinks he’s a wraith. Saltarian, for jokes, likes to creep out new initiates by making scary assumptions about himself.

~Mr. Saltarian tends to have a resting bitch face, or looks super serious, but he’s actually a very chill person. You can always come up and have a conversation with him, and he will politely engage with you. If you have good enough jokes you might even make him laugh! 

~He’s part of the Clergy without actually being part of the Clergy. His role is far too crucial to be truly be bogged down by titles. It’s why everyone respectfully uses ‘Mister’, even other Papas! 

~Sister Imperator comes from a long line of Imperators, all who keep the will of Lucifer going AND protect His Bloodline... Saltarian has been alive just as long. No one knows how long he has been alive, but he has always assisted the Imperator line. 

~Mr. Saltarian actually owns a legitimate business. He’s a funeral director. It’s not even clergy run, or Emeritus owned. It’s his. He worked very hard to maintain it. He tends to get annoyed when clergy members weasel their way into it and disrupt. He was very flattered when the Ghost project wanted to use his beautiful building. (The chapters location are not the actual Cathedral they live in, in my world.) But you better believe the clergy crew had to clean up everything until it sparkled. 

~Mr. Saltarian has been responsible for all of the final rites and burials of the Emeritus bloodline. He has warded and protected tombs, mausoleums, and even ashes of every Papa and Mama who has passed. He’s very secretive why, because it involves magic not meant for the common sibling. 

~Despite being good friends and very close, the most recent argument between Saltarian and Imperator is how to handle the bodies of the newly deceased Papas. Saltarian didn’t care about Nihil as much, as he respects Imperator getting her final laughs. But he was VEHEMENTLY against parading the three dead sons for fans to see and actual siblings to grieve. Saltarian fought to warn that this is not only bad energy, but was going to backfire. 

~Loves Chinese food. Absolutely adores it. Some say you can even try and bribe him with it for favors (don’t actually do it, that will be a bad day.) 

~Mr. Saltarian is the kind of powerful where he enjoys absolute boiling dark coffee in the middle of a Californian heat wave. 

~His favorite horror movie is Phantasm (because I said so.)   

[olderthannetfic]

The DS9 wank is bloody surreal. Even though I havent watched much trek SEVERAL of my red dwarf/h2g2 mutuals *have* and boy have I seen so much of both sides of the Garashir discourse. From the outside looking in it just seems like your bog standard "the dreadnought does not appeal to me so I must bitch loudly to try and make it less popular" fare. That said, it's hilarious to me that this show from the 90s still has spicy fandom drama.

--

<continued from last> Then again, Star Trek is the fandom that never has nor will died since the beginning of fandom itself so DS9 still having web-spanning ship wars in 2022 isn't terribly surprising, lmao.