#i know i personally have more fun with star wars when it's fucking weird

[stairset]

I also generally disagree with the idea some people seem to have that All Star Wars Should Be Like Andor Now cause like. I do like that Andor was different from the more traditional Star Wars feel cause that shows how varied this franchise can be. You can fit many types of stories with different tones into the Star Wars universe and that’s a big part of what makes it so great. So when people are like “every Star Wars thing should be like Andor” I just hear “they should take away the variety and make everything the same now” which would make the universe way less interesting. What works for one series doesn’t necessarily work for another, even if they’re part of the same franchise.

[eganeyes]

you're my favourite blog and I NEED more of your demarco/macon headcanons [normal][im normal]..........maybe nsfw too if you've got them

hi!!! that is soooo very sweet of you to say considering the only vibes i bring to this fandom is deranged overfilled tags and unneeded breakdowns over callum turners face 😭🫰❤️

this is my previous demacon hcs post and the is this a modern au? a post war au? a no pow au? i literally cannot tell you because i do not know is still in effect here very sorry :')

apologies for like taking A While because i really squeezed out my creative juices for this SO:

‘he fell first’ benny vs ‘he fell harder’ macon yeah

i see benny as being free with his feelings, with his affections, there isn't a single person who doesn't get a bit of his heart with them when they leave. his parents' are designers, artists, and they teach him that to create is to love and when he creates bonds he pours love and never feels left with wanting. the minute macon opens his mouth, perfectly civil in taking down people down a notch with his intelligence and an extra brand of fuck you in his voice? he's instantly enamored.

macon, far more closed off—cautious to the point of near callousness, perfectly polite and tiring of talking to new people because more often than not he's being looked down upon and invisible, he doesn't think much of these 100th boys—until bennys there with an easy grin and easier hands, at the end of the day macons left admiring at bennys unflinching steadiness and unconditional kindness.

now for more silliness:

for some strange reason (he was forced.) benny confides about his crush to bucky. which is kind of weird because he's usually closer to buck—except one random day bucky sees benny—steady handed, light fingered benny demarco—grip at meatballs fur a tad too tightly and then stumbles on thin fucking air. he follows benny's unchanging gaze to: one richard macon. from that point on benny's fucked on a biblical proportion.

why he continues to seek out love advice from someone who doesn’t even have his shit together enough to notice his best friend is as in love with him as he is and also a known manwhore (because the conversation went sideways within two sentences) he does not know. it goes a bit like this:

okay, yes, i have a crush on macon.

……oh wow did you sleep with him? was it nice?

why would you ask me that?

you’re right im sorry i just tried to act cooly supportive and that came out. i have had sex before dw.

I’m not worried bucky but thank you.

but was it?

i didn’t have sex with him jesus.

oh wow you’re really bad at this

….please self reflect.

but the talk actually genuinely calmed him down 😭 bucky purposefully winding the conversation up down and sideways so benny could focus on the fact that crushes are supposed to be fun and electric and not the end of the world, benny laughing a bit and confiding more on what he thinks of macon—god i spent last weekend with him to his kid sister's science convention. i met his entire family, what the fuck. he's so soft with his little sister, he knows three languages, he's won every science competition he's ever entered, he's watched casablanca 3 times, he knows every star in the sky and their lores—

the two start out a mini mindmapping plan out for seducing macon, but like completely shit at keeping it a secret so the entire base finds out within 24hrs. benny kind of wants to die from this but when kidd actually starts vetoing buckys plans that benny couldn't for the life of him say no to, he's thankful

do not steal a b-17 to write your confessions on the sky with smoke what the fuck is wrong with you

......blakely's advice is actually not half bad, go on get some photos taken and printed

the entire shit i wrote out on the previous hcs list is a product of this full on 100th written plan out btw, but buckys ideas are very summarily buried never to be thought of again, except for this one thing

benny ties a ribbon around meatballs neck. attached to the ribbon is a letter. inside the letter is a request for a date. a date where meatball chaperones.

macon writes back, ribbon and meatball and all.

(meatball gets used as a conversation starter so fucking often macon thinks benny birthed the dog himself ffs)

god i am so fond of the idea of benny coming by the tuskegee base (again, please pretend their bases are like half a day away) and taking the effort to meet all of macons friends, charming every inch of the base, shooting the shit with alex and daniels again (daniels being initially a staunch demacon anti bc he's overprotective is a whole other thing aaa), making nice with his superiors that they are literally gunning for macon to court the guy back

the drawing that alex did of the two in the officers club is kept carefully pressed between the pages of macon's journal. he commissions another drawing of them for benny's birthday, pressed dried flowers himself around the watercolor sketch, and wrote winding letters in the back, of wanting a future outside of planes and skies he didn't think he'd ever want with someone else. he frames it and ships it to benny, who's in chicago at the moment and is geared for a roadtrip to birmingham, alabama the day after his birthday. times it perfectly so when its the day of his birthday, benny reads it, and whatever his answer is it'll be known in two-three days time: if he does arrive at macon's doorstep with a ring he hid on the side of the wooden frame—a little puzzle that only benny could solve.

now for something a bit more nsfw but like only a few bc i embarrassed myself writing this without the cover of anonymity

do i believe that they're switches? yes.

do i believe that their sex scene mainly revolves around benny face down ass up moaning like a whore while macon drives into him with the sole intent of making benny see galaxies? also yes.

do i believe that richard wakes him up via trailing fingers up from bennys ass, spanning the width of his marked up back, and scratching at bennys hair that when benny finally wakes up its to a gasp and to ground down his hips on the bed? ....yes.

do i also believe that benny spent an inordinate amount of time just worshipping richards cock with his mouth, pushing him back down by the chest when richard tries to rise and pull him off? grinning and humming when richards spluttering and panting and keening, legs hooked around his back like a vice and hands gripping at his hair? very much yes.

will richard bring forth physics talk to the bed? .....yeah.

also: macons a grunter, bennys a moaner 🤗

i am soo sorry for this btw but also thank you for letting me yap about demacon my beloveds <33333

[thegeminisage]

it is time for. NOT a tng update. but a ds9 update!!! wednesday* we watched "emissary" and actually i'm not clear on if we watched both parts or just one since my website is wonky but either way whatever we watched FUCKING RULED. i'm dispensing w the normal bullet points so i can ramble as much as i want

*it was last night actually but it took me all day to type this up so i'm scheduling it to go up later. it got looooong lol

the first most striking thing i noticed about ds9, or at least the first half of what we watched, is that it FEELS like a video game. someone tell me if this is insane. you're playing as sisko. you get flashbacks of his backstory, you get thrown into this starbase that's in shambles and it's Your Job to fix it up. you go around meeting all the secondary characters who will be in charge of this or that gameplay aspect or upgrade system or shop: kira, o'brien, quark, odo, jadzia, julian, etc. the FOLEY in this was insane. all the noise in the back CONSTANTLY suggested a lively and whole universe outside of our direct line of focus - it felt so alive in the way not even the enterprise in tos did. i could picture myself in the opening gameplay/cutscene like slowly walking my character through what will become a hub area that i gradually upgrade over time while kira or o'brien narrates the list of problems. you're starting at the bottom rung and expected to fail, but you can FEEL the potential even in just one brief walk through the promenade. IS THIS INSANE? it feels like an insane thing to say. someone PLEASE write in if you have ever had similar feelings. if they haven't made a ds9 game yet, they should.

i also notice that not only is the quality of the ds9 episodes worse than that of tng and tos - no one has remastered them into 1080p, apparently - but the lighting is very different, as well. it felt WEIRD to see picard and the enterprise D shot this way. but it also lends, perhaps unintentionally, perhaps not, a really gritty atmosphere to what is normally a very clean universe. i guess since we mostly see it from the inside of starships, it would feel like a sterile place to us, but you know how everyone always compliments star wars on how lived-in it feels? the buttons are wearing, sand is stuck in their fancy thingamajigs, etc? this was how ds9 felt to me.

okay. the characters. let's fucking get into it. what's so fun about ds9 in general is that in all other trek shows i have picked out my specialest little guy in 5 seconds flat. tos was spock EASILY. tng i knew it was data before i started. i already know seven's gonna be my favorite voyager character, but i have NO IDEA!!! who my precious little baby in ds9 will be. what a fun surprise for everyone involved. if anybody wants to place bets go ahead.

like, i thought tng had a pretty solid lineup (hence my eternal frustration with its wasted potential) but they're not anywhere as eclectic as ds9's core cast. iirc, sisko and o'brien are the ONLY humans who for once are outnumbered by trek's cool aliens. i'm saving sisko for last because that was the part of ds9 that touched me most profoundly, but for o'brien - it was a little sad to see him leave the enterprise, because picard was right, it WON'T feel the same without him, but i'm really excited to see why everybody says he suffers more than jesus and to find out if the eyepatch is a permanent thing or if it's just mirrorverse fuckery. either way, i win. like, o'brien is cool, and i always miss him when i don't see him in tng, and i'll continue to miss him in tng from here on out, but he could never shine in that show. it's too stiff and too reluctant to put its characters through any real development. it's a shame they can't ALL move to ds9, tbh.

the next person we met was kira, who was WONDERFUL. it took me a minute to warm up to her, not because there was anything wrong with her, but because i figured at first glance she was ds9's version of ro laren, the obligatory bajoran cast member to connect us with the bajoran/cardassian plot - which would of course be good because ro is awesome, but it's not necessarily anything new and i already love ro. BUT I WAS WRONG! kira's personality is very distinct from ro's; really the only thing they have in common is not liking cardassians which lmao Yeah. my favorite thing about kira is that she smiles when she's upset or angry. that's Such an acting choic, to have her grinning at the cardassians when she's almost certain they're about to blow her whole space station to smithereens. all love light and respect to ro laren my beloved, but i think i actually like kira BETTER.

odo: WHAT is that thing he can do oh my god...is this a changeling?? i got that result in a star trek quiz once. i really loved when he snuck aboard the enemy ship posing as a bag to hold gambling winnings. i was like oh they showed us the bag to show us it will get stolen soon BUT NO it was odo!!!!!!! such a fun surprise. the exposition on his backstory was a little slapdash but i enjoyed it all the same, i cannot wait to learn more

i was most nervous to meet quark because i hate hate HATE the ferengi in tng, but he was actually so entertaining! like, you're never gonna be able to entirely remove the antisemetic undertones from the ferengi as a whole, but he was smart, practical, and endearingly longsuffering. i love his wryness and deadpan humor. i have a feeling he is gonna be so much fun to torture lovingly.

meeting julian bashir felt like meeting a famous person. for the longest time all i knew about ds9 was that cardassian guy wanted to FUCK that gay little doctor, so it was a little hilarious that in his first scene he was asking a woman* out on a date. sir do you not know you're gay?? even funnier was the fact that out of everybody in the pilot he had the least lines. we barely know him, but we finally met him. relatedly, i can't to wait to meet more cardassians, especially The cardassian. so far, they're still all gay.

*jadzia!!! gnc/trans queen! the trill stuff is SO interesting and watching that worm slither in and out of people during those flashbacks was so wonderful but also made me wince. i love that she used to be an old man and the jokes about it are actually really funny without feeling transphobic or anything SO FAR. who knows if that changes. i feel like we haven't gotten much yet from her either but i cannot wait.

SISKO. damn. where do i even...first of all, he should be allowed to bite kick kill picard. i say this as someone who experienced a genuine THRILL of pleasure upon seeing picard's borged self again. i loved that whole thing, i'm obsessed with the borg. that it comes back in this small way in ds9, and has such a HUGE impact on the storyline, was so so so fucking good. i always say tng tells and not shows, but even after just knowing sisko for a few moments i felt keenly how much it devastated to find his wife like that and THAT WAS JUST FROM THE FIRST SCENE. and it only gets better! he's a great dad. he's FUNNY. he is not above manual labor. he wants to tear picard limb from limb. and he exists HERE.

the wormhole alien sequence was. so good. it was SO GOOD. explaining linear time to aliens. the aliens using his memories to talk to him. HE EXISTS HERE. back and back and BACK to finding his wife in the rubble because HE EXISTS HERE. he CHOOSES to exist here. he existed there when he applied for a transfer to earth. he existed there when he confronted picard. he never left the ship because HE NEVER LEFT THE SHIP. they dragged him out but they COULDN'T DRAG HIM OUT. he exists here because he won't leave her to exist here alone because damn it we can't just leave her here. that was the most insane series of events i ever watched. like, because at first you DO think it's the aliens taking him back there BUT IT'S HIM. HE IS DOING IT TO HIMSELF. when the penny dropped i got literal chill bumps and when the aliens said "it's not linear" and he, openly weeping, replied "it's NOT linear," i genuinely, truly, shed a tear along with him. TNG COULD NEVER. none of those miserable fucks EVER cry!!! sisko did it in the god damn pilot!!!!!!!

and like, the fact that he can choose to stay at the space station at the end, to shake picard's hand, to exist SOMEWHERE ELSE. AAAAAUGHGHGHG

i really loved the final confrontation, too. kira is so so so so good, again, i LOVE that she smiles when she's angry, when she's sad, and it's not a fake smile, it's genuine and honest emotion, and she's genuinely and honestly going to start eating the cardassians for sport if they don't leave her alone. it was very scrappy, them pretending to be bigger and badder than they actually were because they had no other choice. you get the feeling everybody on the station and indeed the station itself is barely holding together, and what little togetherness is present comes from sheer spite.

anyway, absolutely 10/10. i was so worried ds9 wouldn't be good but it not only met my most furtive hopes it surpassed them with flying colors. it's gonna be REAL hard to go back to tng after this.

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesdaypost year in review

this year brought to you by viewers like you. thank you! i still do not know how to thank everyone for their incredible generosity during the Late July/Early August Moving Catastrophe Badtimes and im still feelin some kinda way about it. thank you.

took eight weeks completely off, more than any other year so far

overnight traveled for work for the first time

moved cross country with Mack to face dangers untold and hardships unnumbered

bought an actual for-real couch and not a futon

got Phil

(unrelated to Phil) i got spayed after almost ten years of begging and pleading various medical professionals, (also unrelated) got covid and RSV back to back

listening

fallow weeks: 8. i almost always have a tuesdaysong bc i am almost always listening to something. all of the tuesdaysongs are here:

particular favorites were Peel Me A Grape (Anita O’Day), top spotify song of the year Yeah Yeah Yeah (Blood Orchid), Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Wolf remixed by Sextile, Father Finlee (Spence Hood), A Minha Menina (Os Mutantes).

the very last tuesdaysong of the year is Sugar Rum Cherry by Duke Ellington, one of the few christmas songs i tolerate.

special shoutout to the austin underscore walker universe of podcasts, bc i mainlined A More Civilized Age (clone wars/star wars rewatch) while packing, and devoured P/alisade (the newest scifi season of F/riends at the Table) this month.

-

reading

fallow weeks: 11. pleased that i am killing the invisible rules in my head and including more articles instead of feeling guilty about Not Reading A Real Book!!! every week when i sit down to write the tuesdaypost. read a fuckton earlier this year bc i was procrastinating moving prep, have not read much since i moved.

article sources:

inoreader (the best free RSS feed/app imo)

The Markup (gold standard usage of data to show how various technologies are being used to harm the public good: you may have heard of the recent American bills to equalize internet service and fix organ donation grift. that was them)

Web 3 Is Going Just Great (crypto disasters)

404 Media (technology reporting, internet culture, also break a lot of data/legal/privacy scandals)

Remap (formerly Vice's video games division Waypoint, more active on podcasts and twitch but do have great personal essays about gaming longreads)

Retraction Watch (an important academic service but platformed a particularly virulent transphobe and let the comments devolve into a free for all. yes im still mad about this)

Krebs on Security (~once a month extremely long and thoughtful infosec writeups)

Data Colada (cover academic data whoopsies, currently being sued for their journalism)

the two authors i spent the most time with this year were Alexis Hall (romance novels and novellas) and Raymond Chandler's noir detective novels. i read 90% of Raymond Chandler's work in march and went insane about yet another sad bisexual man. Philip Marlowe the cat is named after his pet detective, the human Philip Marlowe.

march was kind of a banger for this category bc in one of what i consider the best tuesdayposts this year, i tried to break down why i fucking hated Frank Miller's Sin City comics so much.

other comics, but ones i loved: Spy X Family, Berserk, weird noir DC miniseries The Human Target.

-

watching

fallow weeks: 10

notable stuff i watched for the first time (according to letterboxd) that will stick in my head for a bit. some (The Night of the Hunter) i am so glad i watched once but do not feel the need to revist. some (Slipstream) fascinate me with how good they could have been. some (Twilight. all of them) were fun bc of the people i watched them with. the two i went particularly deranged over are The Big Sleep and Day of Anger. still feel very normal about them.

very heavy on crime and courtroom films this year!

television: very excited for s2 of Blue Eye Samurai, Interview With The Vampire, Spy X Family.

i should loop back and finish Black Lagoon, Adventure Time (completely forgot i rewatched most of that this spring), and The Big O. that last one is throwing me a little bc (since i last checked) there is no freely available version with subtitles (i cannot find subtitles Period) and i'll be damned if i have to import a dvd. i can find the dub with subtitles but! i want to hear spike spiegel as mecha-batman :(

sort of lukewarm eh-i'll-get-around-to-it about s/tar wars shows. i have not watched a/hsoka At All or wrapped up the animated Resistance show. i'll pay attention when ando/r is airing again.

-

playing

fallow weeks: 10. way fewer than i would have guessed!

the trouble with this category is that it is exceptionally hard to find new good games (either ones i already own or ones that are free). it is almost completely prohibitively exhausting to trawl through the free category on steam. there's simply a lot of cruft out there. a very good thing (but also incredibly timeconsuming thing) i started this year was throwing games into various folders so the eight bajillion libraries i have are less overwhelming. i can safely ignore 80% of my epic games library, for example. the itch.io library is a whole separate weekend project i think.

got back into genshin for good or for ill, which took up most of the back half of the year.

go play ABZU. i am no longer asking.

i would like to go back and finish the RPG Gamedec, un-softblock myself in the RPG Weird West, and finish the visual novel Dead Man's Rest. i think i stalled out in Call of Juarez: Gunslinger bc there was a mexican standoff that my reflexes are simply not fast enough for/too much to pay attention to. i am excited to pick up that spooky fishing simulator DREDGE when i have fun money again.

completely forgot i spent most of jan/feb/march being annoyed at fallou/t 4 but having some fun in Far Harbor, also forgot i spent an entire month playing through Wolfenstein: The New Order but i am not compelled to play through it again. it was fun! but like many games after one playthrough my time with it is done!

-

making

fallow weeks: 17 (unsurprising, pretty low energy year as a whole as i recovered from covid rounds 1 and 2 and the frankly insane stress of moving).

wrote exactly one fic: some matters at the heart of cowboy western snap shirts: why they are so and some of the implications of their being so, i would like to write more next year but i don't really have the brainpower. i hope this changes soon.

the baby blanket i started last year is still not done but the baby is still under a year so i have a very narrow window of time.

dyed some couch covers im still very pleased with

wrote an extremely long but very well received gallery wall guide

recipes: 12. sort of shocked by this? i am becoming an incrementally better cook and slowly finding recipes i both like and can successfully execute. found the fortitude to caramelize onions, for example. quick pickled red onions, for another thing. big year for protein or greens on top of beans and rice. faves included: cuban-style pork shoulder, hellofresh peruvian chicken, red lentil soup, white bean/kale/rice bowls

i would like to be less terrified about cooking fish. i would like to eat more fish.

and of course, the biggest project of all, acquired Phil. here is my very favorite photo ive ever taken of a cat

[bazaarwords]

in spite of war [4/? | griddlehark | post-canon]

i hope u guys are enjoying! i've had a lot of fun writing, even if it is a little stream of consciousness-y :)

first | prev

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We didn’t talk after that. Not for a few days.

This, I think, really illustrates my point about getting kicked when I’m down. About eating those exploding toenail knives.

In retrospect, I can’t really call what we did in the kitchen talking. More like a bouquet of aborted sentences.

It took forever to get from planet to planet—so many of the steles had been busted in the war. We were just kind of looking for a needle in the endless haystack of deep space. 

I will admit this about myself: I’m not a patient person. Even before the death and the resurrection and all of the bullshit that came after—I mean, you know. I tried to get off the Ninth a billion times. Some of those attempts, loathe as I am to admit it, were like hours apart.

There wasn’t a whole lot to do on the ship, and I didn’t want to escape into a subzero vacuum, thank you very much. I ran laps in the hallways with Paul, I did push-ups and star jumps and squats and started deadlifting (which, haha. I’m dead.)

I did other stuff, too, like eating and sleeping and moving a mirror into my room. Again—don’t knock it.

The fourth day after the kitchen, I found an apple at the foot of my bed.

It had been ninety-six hours since my last apple, and I really do fucking love apples, so I ate the thing and didn’t think much about it. I was going a little stir-crazy.

I figured, afterwards in the hallway, dangling from the water pipe that was the scene of my two-hundredth (my fiftieth) pull-up of the day, that the apple could have been poisonous or laced with radiation or something worse. That if someone wanted to off me again, it would have been that easy.

But I felt fine. Sweaty, yeah, from the pull-ups. Fine otherwise. I was dead already, so what did it matter?

Then, a voice in the hall: “Ready for our 10k?”

“Where did you find the apple?”

I dropped to the floor and turned in the subsequent silence. It was still a weird moment of cognitive dissonance, seeing Palamades' expressions on Camilla’s face. Or rather—a freaky mixture of the two.

“Last I checked, we were out of fresh fruit,” Paul said, one eyebrow arched. “Where did you find it?”

“On my bed.”

“I’m not in the business of bad omens.”

“I thought that was a hat on a bed.”

“Okay. I’m not in the business of fruit on beds.” The eyebrow lowered. “I’d ask someone else.”

And I knew. I don’t know why I was pussyfooting around it. Maybe the night in the kitchen kept replaying in my head, maybe I didn’t know what I’d even do.

The ten kilometers didn’t change anything. Paul’s easy and infrequent conversation didn’t either.

I slinked back to my room and found a note on my bed.

It said, really stupidly: You’re wanted in Archives.

I think you’d tried to make it seem like Paul had written it. Because, I don’t know, Paul was the only person who’d be caught dead in Archives.

But you could have killed me another twenty times and I would have known that handwriting. I would have recognized the way the flimsy had indented, like you were trying to squeeze the last bit of ink out of a pen that—really, and you knew this—never ran out.

I didn’t consciously run my thumb over the words. Well, the word.

(Wanted.)

next

[crowhoonter]

The Acolyte finished and it seemed like everyone hated it so much that they simply needed to continue watching. And you know what? It was actually pretty decent all things considered. The characters ranged from a bit generic to interesting, the choreography was fantastic, the costuming was fun, and the story was fairly interesting.

Sure, it had its stumbling moments, episode 3 in particular was baffling in more than a few aspects, but do you really want to look at that and say it was worse than the Boba Fett show? Seasons 2 and 3 of Mandalorian? Fucking Ahsoka? Do you really want to look at this and tell me its worse than any of the prequel movies?

I don't get it. The Acolyte brought out the worst in this fandom, and for what? To get angry at something that had weird dialogue, like all of Star Wars? To be upset that it delivered a new, actually interesting story unlike everything else (besides Andor) that they have made? What is there to be so upset about? No one actually gives a shit about Ki Ad Mundi so it certainly can't be him and all of that "its too early for him to be there" business. Does a black woman being the lead really bother you cunts that much?

Its just really gross seeing the insane personal attacks that people have been throwing out, often at the actors and writers. It was disgusting when everyone did it to the actors and writers of the sequels, and its disgusting now. If you don't like it then just move on with your life Jesus Christ.

[andmaybegayer]

Last Monday of the Week 2024-07-15

I've been trying to be more thorough in putting down my thoughts about things in here because increasingly I don't do it anywhere else. Sure picked a week though because I went on a completionist streak for some reason.

Listening: Courtesy of making some muffins, Wet Leg by Wet Leg, who you probably know from their hit Chaise Longue.

it's a good album, very much dreamy alt-indie voice. At its best produces some sounds that are more fun to listen to than the lyrics suggest, good command of phonemes.

Also, a late rec off IRC by proxy from @amiscellany with Literary Mind, a new single from SPRINTS. Big fuzzy guitar on a retro rock soundtrack about being in lesbians with a girl.

I haven't gone through the rest of their music but I will be checking it out.

Watching: Finished Scavenger's Reign which was on the Canmom Animation Night last weekend, I only caught the front end because we started late. Really gorgeous show, if you want carefully considered realistic spec bio this is not for you but if you love That Moebius Shit then it's ideal.

I then rewatched the back half with Animation Night last night! Love to talk to my friends about beans.

The main selling point is that it's beautiful but there is also some very fun body horror and good amount of character. Azi and Levi probably have the most interesting relationship, with Azi being genuinely quite normal and polite with her little robot who is suddenly becoming a person. The very long sweeping views and extended scenes of things just happening occasionally breaking out into bloody messes keeps you alert, you can't get too comfortable assuming some part of the world is safe for the visitors.

There's space catholics? What's up with the space catholics.

Oh yeah, here's the original short that started the show, which was fun to see at Animation Night

Also finally got through the last three episodes of The Mandalorian, which. I really like quite a lot of The Mandalorian. I like it when Star Wars explores its backwaters and odd corners. They keep putting the skywalkers in it. I feel like this might be a way to get us to empathize with the residents of the Star Wars universe, who presumable also groan and roll their eyes any time a Skywalker shows up on the holonet.

The pitch for Book of Boba Fett at the end of the show is great. They killed my guy Bib Fortuna! He didn't do anything to anyone, except for the hundreds of murders! I love this weird power couple of Shang and Fett.

Reading: Finished The Traitor Baru Cormorant and picked up Monster. I am a tragedy lover and so this is great. Baru is in a race to kill the monster she's been digested by and unfortunately she's losing.

I like a fucked up secret political cadre. It's probably the least realistic part of the series but I also wouldn't be surprised to find out that it's also a trap. I mean it kind of is! Explicitly it's a trap for the most powerful people in the Masquerade, finding unusually talented people and binding them up with secrets in service of the Empire.

Playing: Beat Indika which is interesting but could probably mostly have been an arthouse film. I like the styling! It is very Arthouse Film, the weird framing, the somewhat stilted dialogue, you can even see it in the camera work, both in game and in cutscenes. The camera goes on an angle if you look the wrong way, which is very intenional, and there's lots of really beautifully framed cutscene moments like the watermill in the factory.

Is Indika good? I'm not sure. I think if you highly value your money it might annoy you. It's doing some fun things with the interactive medium in a very different way from something like, say, What Remains of a Edith Finch. It's doing movie shit. I forgot that video games could push my GPU that hard though.

Started the Dark Souls NG+, currently just beat the Moolight Butterfly. I would really like to build a dex fighter to try out rapiers, maybe Ricards Rapier, but you really need to have the upgrades to make it put out enough damage to stand up to the increased NG+ HP pools.

Making: Helping a friend put together some furniture, but little else. Fiddled with some music stuff to make new ringtones for my new phone, not that I ever hear those, but I like to know that I have them there.

Tools and Equipment: It's central hot water maintenance week so I don't have piped hot water at home. Reviving the great tradition of the washbasin shows you that you can actually get pretty clean pretty easily with like two liters of warm water and some soap, the hard part is really just long hair, which was also hard for people to manage in the 16th century.

[anxietyfrappuccino]

being christian or christian ajacent is so weird like,,, i don't believe the same things other christians believe.

i think reincarnation is legit despite hating the idea of being reincarnated. i don't think one lifetime is enough to find god.

i don't think fighting over land to establish a country is necessary. god gave us a whole fucking planet but you want this specific piece of it so much you're willing to kill to obtain it? fuck that just be nice and love thy neighbor. fuck borders honestly.

the bible was written from the perspective of men, it's flawed. it's full of war and racism and misogynistic metaphors. we, humans, have matured over time, but the people who think the bible is perfect are like the people who believe the united states constitution is perfect. it's not, and we shouldn't be acting like the human perspective can't experience growth. we grow individually. we grow collectively. people stagger that progress when they keep sticking to old harmful way of existing.

who is to say that after jesus ascended back to heaven, the men who eventually wrote the bible didn't change the story? we all know they've been altering it since it since it was published!!! it is impossible to write that much word and not give bias.

god/jesus said in the future his people would go to war. this seems to be some sort of justification for countries to create war. all i know to say is that going to war does not equate to starting a war. things are not worth going to war for. people are worth going to war for, to protect them, but it's never okay to instigate war.

being a medium is not witchcraft. it's a gift. crystals are not witchcraft. they're pretty rocks that may or may not hold a bit of magic and grace in them. either way, it's not harming anyone to have a comfort item or something harmless to believe in. astrology is not "new age" or witchcraft. it's been around for centuries in every part of the world. it's reading stars for fucksake. let people have a fun way of understanding themselves.

love is love and love also really fucking loses is human and it's more perfect than the bible will ever be. it's authentic, and it's natural. realizing i'm queer made me a better person. it opened me up to caring more about people and understanding people. i can't thank god enough for my orientations.

you can't just give up anxiety or trauma to god. you can't just pray it away and forget about it. that shit alters your brain. you have to work through it in order to heal, and i believe god wants to help his children work through their hurt, not attempt to throw it away like a dirty dinner plate into the trash. you've got to wash your damn dishes. it's takes time, and it's harder for some people than others. AND MENTAL ILLNESS IS NOT DEMONIC. sorry, had to say it louder for the people in the back.

there may be other things i'm not aligned with, but this is what i can remember rn

[alligatorjesie]

Hey that's alright you can block me as much as you like but it wont change anything man. You said some shit things so I'm going to say some shit things to you.

You know what that's fine we can just repost that whole comment so people can see what a shitass you are @blessyouhawkeye

Hey real quick you do realize that reylo is just a really vanilla ass enemies-to-lovers ship if you have a problem with it well good luck man this shit is literally everywhere in media.

Almost like it's a popular trope. Have you never watched a rom com? Woof. I got some news for you brosph.

but you know what since we're on the tangent of 'weird people' in fandoms let's talk about that for a moment.

You wanna know what's weird? There's a lot of finnreys in the reblogs acting positively feral about their ship not being canon

(which idk I watched TRoS that was pretty open ended if your still mad about reylo by the end of that movie that shits on you)

and upset they don't have book deals like the reylos but IDK man maybe the reason finnreys ain't got book deals is because they spend all their time online bitching about how their ship got shafted instead of writing that fucking fanfiction.

You know when the reylos got shafted with the shit show that was EP9 instead of spending the next 3 years complaining they just trucked along in their own fucking sandbox completing their own fucking projects for their own fucking friends.

Fuck Disney we'll make our own reylo with blackjack and hookers and sex scenes.

You mean to tell us you've had more problems with reylos who were just excited to see the story concepts they predicted from The Force Awakens coming true in The Last Jedi and making positive content to reflect that joy compared to the actual nazis on YouTube who flood the platforms with 3 hour long hate videos over how Bree Larson is somehow personally responsible for their dicks falling off?

You remember that one time ethan van sciver said he wanted to kill Chinese people? He's a really popular star wars/comic book YouTuber and he's way more problematic than anyone I've ever met in the reylo fandom.

And guess what he also hates reylo what a shock!

You wanna talk about some unhinged weird behavior allow me to direct you at a rabid finnrey who has told me graphically to kill myself at least 5 times now for the sin of enjoying the wrong part of star wars according to them.

That shits fucking unhinged

Here's some of those death threats these are 100% real by the way:

Obviously Death Threat Warning some of these are quite gnarly.

This user still has an active account.

I've reported them several times but I sometimes feel like the only thing that will get you banned on this hellsite is being trans I swear to fucking god.

This user has spent over 7 years shit posting hate directly into the reylo fandom's tag instead of doing literally anything else to make their own fandom more enjoyable for themselves.

That's weird shit.

What has been hellish is being in this fandom for over 9 years and dealing with the amount of uncalled for vitriol at this very fucking plain flavor baby's first enemies-to-lovers ship.

I only started keeping track of the death threats back in September 2022

It's not even been a full 2 years and I'm nearing 1000.

This is the header for my Tumblr. This is a real number by the way I have every death threat I've gotten since starting this documented on my computer.

It's actually 955 because thepettycunt here just sent me a new death threat so now I gotta update the banner.

fun!

One day I'll make a master post.

Today is not that day.

But let's be very honest here the real number of death threats I've personally gotten are well into multiple thousands across multiple platforms over 9 years.

Just for enjoying reylo.

And I'm a furry and have been since the 90s. I'm use to being told to kill myself from strangers on the internet so color me confused when I join this really basic bitch of a fandom ship only to find the hate towards it somehow fucking worse.

That's some fucking weird unhinged shit.

I know you made this shit post just to be a shit poster so don't take this too personally I'm sure at this point you already think I'm unhinged and rightfully so

maybe I am

but after the 100th death threat I just stopped giving a fuck so you'll just have to forgive me but it's real buck ass wild to be called 'weird' when I've never sent death threats to people over fictional ships and none of my reylo friends have done that shit either but I am almost 99% sure if you look though the history of any single person who reblogged this post bitching about reylo you'll find they have a history of doing that shit.

You can pick any one. Odds are they have anti reylo posts going years back and at worst some of them have straight up told people in this fandom to kill themselves.

I can look through YOUR history OP and see You're a huge pile of shit towards reylos!

Go on pick one out at random and have a go. It's a fun horrible way to spend a afternoon.

And before anyone brings it up because people who hate reylo always do;

'what about that one time reylos harassed John Boye-'

a group of women telling John Boyega the things he's saying are sexist towards his female coworker who had already been harassed off social media a few years prior and asking him to do better isn't the harassment you think it is.

You can find that 'reaction' video John made to the reylos on google and watch it yourself. No one is being racist but they are all asking him to stop making sex jokes on his female coworkers behalf and expressing disappointment in him. In fact he even had to reused quite a few of the quotes because I think about halfway through making the video he realized he just didn't have that much material and the things people were saying were pretty fucking mild.

And I'm not sorry. Asking a adult man to hold himself accountable for the shit he says is not on the same level as the far fucking worse shit the over arching star wars fandom has done well before reylo was even a twinkle in anyone's eye

Lastly one more thing and I'm done I swear and I'm going to apologize in advance because I'm gonna sound really spicy and I guess I kinda am but not in a mean way more in a really fucking confused way

but what the fuck do you mean jenny nicholsons reylo videos are unhinged?

They're the fucking same as the rest of her videos.

Is there something less unhinged about a nearly 4 hour long video about a failed fantasy RPG theme park over a 1 hour long video about how star wars episode 9 was absolute dogshit?

Jenny makes cringe videos about cringe shit. That's her brand.

She's voiced her enjoyment of reylo very early on... I think back in The Force Awakens days? So why are you surprised she would talk about the subject at length in detail? She bought a stuffed porg larger than herself and documented collecting it on video for her channel.

Yeah man she probably likes reylo.

Most people who like TLJ do.

What... what the fuck do you mean her reylo videos specific are unhinged?

I'm sorry but if known racist and sexist YouTuber doomcock can spend 6 hours complaining about TLJ because Rey don't make his dick hard like Luke Skywalker does and he's going to make his refusal to reflect on that issue our fucking problem I don't think Jenny is unhinged for complaining about the inarguably bad movie that was the rise of skywalker for less time than the movie's total runtime.

I'm not even mad I'm just really confused by your statement.

[ezrisdax-archive]

Top 5 Stargate eps, comfort movies, and Canadian foods

stargate eps

Episode 200- ha bet you thought I'd say the time loop episode first but no, even this episode won out ahead. the in jokes, the jokes at other sci fis, the whole set up, the love of it all, when I have really bad days it is my comfort episode out of all comfort episodes honestly, I can't even begin to count how many times I've watched it and every time I cry when quote Issac Asimov at the end, I am a weak person lexi you know this

Window of Opportunity - okay yeah time loop was next, let's be real I am completely predictable but this was the time loop episode that really showed me how fun they could be. like I already loved the concept cause of TNGs one but this one? it's so funny, I've had people who don't even watch stargate watch that one with no context of the characters and still find it funny. and the ending is heart wrenching, what more do you want from a time loop (pst, lexi watch it with me again, now I miss it)

Abyss - I admit I loved Ba'al as a bad guy, he was so much fun for me and the episode introducing him was so weird with Jack haunted by memories not his (what do you mean I'm obsessed with that because of star trek and ezri-) and eternally whenever I chuck a shoe too far accidentally while taking them off I just think of "I just threw my shoe through you" when Jack is talking to Daniel, like c'mon that was so funny

The Fifth Race - I loooooove the introduction of the Asgard so much, not to mention Jack getting the language in his head. once again sometimes my brain just goes "there is nothing cruvus with me!" for no reason because of that episode.

Fragile Balance - I'm just a sucker for a good cloning episode okay, and Jack and the Asgard just don't miss for me! I'm a weak person lexi!!!!!

comfort movies

Star Trek: The Voyage Home - yes it's the one with the whales and time travel, two things I love specifically because of this movie probably. no lie this movie did have me really into whale conservation as a kid though, something that's stuck with me well into later years. but like it's got everything, Spock being sassy to McCoy, McCoy and Scotty off on their own adventure, chase scenes in a hospital with Chekov on the cart like it's fucking looney tunes, time travel, whales, the crew being the crew together! mcfucking love this movie

Star Wars: Return of the Jedi - be honest, you knew I'd have this here because we've talked so many times and I've said it's my fave but like...I watched this movie every day for a year as a kid. I made my dad buy back up tapes because I wore it out on VHS. to this day I still have five copies. I want you to know I don't just love this one because Wedge appears the most here. Though that doesn't hurt. It's just about the conclusion of it for me, it does something for me where it gives me hope.

Canadian Bacon - this movie isn't gonna be known to like...anyone. but me and my best friend as a kid watched this movie like every week while we were up at my cottage and it's another movie I can quote by heart. the premise is the americans decide to fake a war on canada to boost the economy though canada doesn't know and this group infiltrate canada and I'm in tears laughing every time at the line "Aboot? it's about! about! we have ways of making you pronounce the letter 'o'" also Alan Alda is there.

Robin Hood Men in Tights - this was a movie I used to watch constantly with my siblings, we loved Mel Brooks movies but this one was the top tier for us for comedy sake and occasionally in the sibling chat we'll still send in jokes about it

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse: I know you didn't love it and me having a spider related thing on here is weird but I just shut my eyes during those points and watch the rest in peace. like this movie was just magical to me, the way it handled the multi-verse and Miles' story and the art and music, it's so good and I have no words to really describe how good it is for me, I just love it.

canadian foods lmao that's so specific but is this because I'm sending you stuff soon?

All Dressed Chips, I cannot believe americans don't have this, you guys love your weird flavours on everything else and you don't have this??? it's like the everything bagel of chips, what is wrong with you guys

Ketchup Chips, I know I know that sounds like it tastes bad but no it doesn't and if you think that get taste

Beaver Tails - tragically the place that used to make them near my place closed down ages ago but I got to have a good one when I was visiting @trillscienceofficer in Alberta this year and that pastry is so good

Smarties - once again not your kind of smarties but chocolate which is NOT like m&ms we use better chocolate

Caramilk bars - while looking things up when I messaged you I found out you guys don't have those and hey??? what the fuck???

[blackgirlsuperherorants]

Tbh I'm Black and I thought people shipping Namor and Shuri were just a bunch of cidhet White reylos. And from what I'm seeing it is the same for a lot of us. It's time to accept that Black people are going to be divided in this matter, and that's okay we don't all think the same. But we aren't getting anywhere assuming the haters are just white by default

I used to live on tumblr more but now I live on TikTok more and I've seen nothing but Black women discussing this ship and I didn't even know there was controversy around it until I got literally attacked lol. It's also weird to assume someone is white, period. I usually only assume someone is white when they're, like, on Twitter saying some outrageous Far Right political shit but preface it with "As a Black man,". (Or I assume they're a bot.)

Like, it's out of left field, to me. Idk how other Black women are taking it, but it's crazy, like literally delusional and insane, to me, to assume that I would make this blog years and years and years ago and just elect to be one of the most underrepresented and disrespected demographics of comics fans and superhero movie fans for fun so that I could... disagree with the fans of a movie that wasn't even in the realm of existing, yet. Like, I'm a white Reylo (I don't even like Reylo, or Star Wars fans at all tbh). I played the long game, pretending to like Iris West and Misty Knight and Valkyrie and defending Anna Diop and all of that... just so I could sneak my white ass in to ship Shuri with a character y'all find distasteful? I remember a few years back when people were shipping Shuri with Bucky and a lot of people objected, but I don't remember this level of vitriol and I don't recall anyone just trying to strip long-standing blogs of their identity over it. Marvel fans have always had disagreements and shipping has always been one of the biggest ones, but I've never, in my life, felt so attacked over an opinion that I don't even hold that strongly. Like I said, I don't care about the ship that much. I only said it was fun. I don't see how shipping 2 fictional people, even lightly, even in passing, is antiblack. Antiblackness is such a bigger thing than "you shipped characters I don't like".

Usually, we're fighting the opposite, which is nobody shipping the Black characters at all, or not liking any ships with Black characters, or treating the Black characters in the ship like the psychologist for the non-Black characters in the ship. I ain't never seen no shit like this. I didn't know y'all didn't like antagonist/protagonist ships that hard. I didn't come on here to convince anyone of anything, I just came here because it's usually a fun place to geek out about these movies and things. But, no, it's not fun. Y'all are on here making huge judgements of people over shipping... like Ryan Coogler wrote it that way. Talk to him, if it bothers you that much.

But to question my entire identity, my family, my political leanings, my loyalty to my community? It's sick. Like, I can't even defend myself. If I start saying, like, I was literally getting tear gassed at BLM protests in 2020, I sound ridiculous. If I say ACAB, I sound like I'm trying too hard to convince y'all I'm Black. If I talk about actual Black American issues I care about, like the school to prison pipeline, I sound like I'm just bringing up talking points. But you guys get to decide I hate myself and other Black women because of Shuri and Namor, a fictional African princess and a fish man who were written into a screenplay. Like, what fucking sense does that make?

Like, none of this is real, but I am a real person behind this account. Y'all are making me physically ill over this.

[blood-injections]

hiiiii wpuld llove to hear some funghoul thoughts if you gotany

I always have fun ghoul thoughts :)

His identity or like my headcanons for it kind of fluctuate because i tend to project on him a lot of the time lol, and right now my thing for him is its kinda inhuman, not literally, but he feels detached from being a person, his pronouns have always been he/it, and he says he/hims his favorite, but whenever someone uses it/its and he hears it he gets a crazy flush of euphoia. It doesn't happen often, though, just with his friends, and they only use it/its half the time cause, yknow, and its never opened up about just how it makes it feel, he could ask them to only say it and they would. But the rest of the zones? Eh. Even killjoys are weird about it/its a lot. And he still likes he as well

But yeah, he feels inhuman a lot of the time, and he likes that, he likes his identity being something Other, something scary, hes not sure if its something animal he feels like or something unknown, he just knows he'd rather lunge and bite in battle instead of shooting a gun, get blood and skin under his nails, it feels more natural, and he likes when people look at him like hes a monster and he should get to have sharp teeth and claws.

He loves stories!!! Stories and cultures!! Hearing and learning, and oral storytelling is such a big thing in the zones, with there being few books left and with most zoneborn not knowing how to read, like him, not zoneborn but raised on the streets in battery city, he can read some, but not well, and it just makes his head hurt. But ghoul grew up around androids and ritalin rats and the latter never had much on their minds but addiction, but the droids, well they had nothing to do but dream. And they told him stories, so many stories, stories of the future when the city would be free and they wouldn't have to rust in the streets, thrown aside by society, nothing more than products. They told it stories filled with hope, stories of Destroya, of the grafiiti bible, stories of a future where no one would have to work or starve or hurt.

Then he got to the zones and heard different kinds of stories, old ones, not of the future but of the past. It met Jet first, and theyd sit around a fire and shed tell him all about the desert, not about her own past, something it could guess was still a wound too fresh to face, much like his, when he first escaped. But she tells him of the zones, of the Phoenix Witch, how she takes masks or guns or keepsakes and leads your soul to your next life when you die, and how she commonly watches over the desert in the form of a raven, and hes fucking enraptured. And then jet takes it to visit dr d, a friend of a friend, and he gets to hear stories of the wars that he was never taught of in the city, and he gets to hear of the world before, because it has so many questions and dr d is more than willing to answer them, he loves Talking, telling stories, sharing what life used to be like.

And later, from Cherri, he learns older stories yet, myths and legends passed down from forgotten times, of giant birds that brought rain and thunder, to a myth of fire and a technicolor raven, stories of spirits and heroes and the desert itself. Everyone has stories to tell and it loves to hear them and pass them on, to Kobra, who especially loves the sort or stories he got from Cherri, of legends from an old people who were one with the land; and when the girl comes along and they take her in, he retells all the stories hes heard to her. Her favorites are of the world before the wars, things Ghoul never saw but learned of through dr d and older joys, of bustling citys not like bat city at all, of concerts with thousands of people in the stands, not just a small pit of joys, stories of people flying to the stars and landing on the moon, and of waterparks and airplanes, or high schools and ice cream trucks. By then he has stories of it's own, too, and she loves to hear those too, stories of bad firefights and hearty laughs, memories from the fab four before they had her, of poison doing something stupid or kobra getting sprayed by a skunk or that time jet woke up to find a mouse has nested in her hair in her sleep, the girl giggles the most at those stories.

He'd write novels if he could, if he the time and supplies and skill. Or he'd at least copy some of the stories hes heard back to paper, for when theres no one left that remembers them to tell them by voice alone.

[thegeminisage]

STAR TREK UPDATE TIME. on time for once. last night we did ds9's "homefront" and "paradise lost." im sticking them together since they're essentially a two-parter:

main issue w these episodes is the Message...which is that paranoia bad. and i do agree with that. i think we're talking like more red scare than anything but every time someone said "we can't let fear rule our lives" all i heard was my mom explaining to me why we absolutely needed to start going back out to restaurants in summer of 2020.

it also sort of clashes w sisko's "the problem is earth" speech. like, the idea that because things are SO perfect on earth the people there don't know how to deal with adversity because they've never had to. so the first half of this storyline painted them as bumbling idiots for not realizing the threat was real and yes some lifestyle changes had to be made but the second half of this episode was like sisko you're an IDIOT for falling for this trap you let your own paranoia do the work for you! and i guess that's the "twist" but it also feels like they're trying to have it both ways

some of what ds9 does pretty well is deconstruct the idea of starfleet and the federation as a utopia...these episodes seemed to scoff at that notion, like, of COURSE utopia is real, and you guys with you "war" and you "real problems" almost ruined it!!

like, sorry, but odo's right. there literally is still at least one changeling on earth. are we doing fuck all about that or what. no you can't blood test everybody and jump at shadows but ???

b plot: i like grandpa jope, but he scared me. he showed up and he was sick and i had to pause the episode to make sure he didn't die. i would have stopped dead in the middle

he reminds me of my own mom, who also doesn't <3 take care of herself. but you can see so much of sisko in him and it's easy to understand where sisko got so much of his personality

i wish we had gotten to meet sisko's sister! seemed weird that if you can beam to anywhere instantly she wouldn't come for a visit when he is on earth so rarely :(

ALSO HI NOG. i love that he became a regular here just because he knew the owner's grandson and now this guy has to prepare bugs for him even though this isn't that kind of joint.

i guessed as soon as they were mentioned that the red squad were changelings and they turned out not to be but they WERE up to no good so i get Points.

also oooooh when that other changeling was mean to odo. oooh that was so evil and fun

HI. ALSO. ODO LETTING HIMSELF BE EXPERIMENTED ON...HE GOT SHOT 13 TIMES

i'm glad he was able to call it quits when HE wanted AND that they said thank you. you can't just do that to him that's his trauma!!!!!

i loved getting to see him transform into so much stuff...i feel like it's been forever. seagull odo my beloved <3

TONIGHT: voy's "prototype" and "alliances."

[starsarefire824]

This is going to be random, but I wanted to say something.

For some time shipping hasn't been fun for me, and it's even worse since I enjoy crack-ships and other uncommon couples. When I started watching Stranger Things I liked the idea of Madwheeler, and I also started reading your fanfiction The Pact before even having a Tumblr account.

Today I found out about you, and when I saw that you're a writer for more famous ships like Byler but also made an amazing Madwheeler piece, it really made me smile. It's just somehow refreshing seeing someone having fun with different character dynamics and stuff.

It made me think "Damn, that's a person I can admire.". It made me somehow believe I can have fun with this again. So thank you. I hope you keep writing and sharing your ideas out there. Be weel!

Hey there @abajurapagado!! You have no idea how much this means to me!! 🥹 That I could help you in any way have a better time in the fandom and enjoy it! That's amazing.

That, after all, is what fandom is for first and foremost: Enjoyment.

That being said, I have always been a person who has written for and been a fan of smaller ships, non-canon ships, unpopular ships even in very small fandoms. I just tend to gravitate towards what interests me. In the past I've been a part of the Turn fandom (I liked a gay pairing-townhull- that was very much non-canon), Star Wars (reylo, gingerrose), OFMD (izzy x lucius), The Morning Show (stella x cory). Most of those are all very much non-canon 😂.

And this is the first fandom where I've seen many people be so staunchly devoted to "canon". It's something I haven't come across in my other fandom travels.

But, in the end, it doesn't matter what the pairing is, if it makes you happy and you find the dynamic interesting than I say engage with it! Even if it makes others side eye you or not be happy with it. It doesn't matter. I'm very much a ship and let ship type of person. And in my Star Wars and Shadow and Bone days, have been in support of some very unliked pairings, but I've tried to never to let it stop me from having a good time. I'm here for the dynamics and drama and I tend to lean towards certain dynamics because of that!

Byler is the first pairing I've ever been a fan of, besides Reylo, that is "mainstream" or has a big following. Actually, as a past Reylo, I see a lot of the same thing happening with Byler....people saying that the followers are delusional, where if you watched the SW films...know how that all ended up 🙃

But also, my other biggest SW ship, gingerrose, is a random ship that was built around 3 pieces of dialogue and a finger bite deleted scene lmao....and they've ended up being a dynamic I actually like a lot better and read about more than I ever did Reylo. I think that you can ship multiple things in the same fandom and it's okay if one of them is a little different, unpopular, or people think it's weird. There is no reason for people to be offended by what other people ship. That is such a strange concept to me.

Madwheeler, to me, is interesting. I am VERY much aware it's a "crackship" or whatever. I do not expect anything from canon. That's not the point. It actually is freeing to have something be completely for fun, and I don't have those emotional ties like I do byler or I did with reylo, where I really wanted it to happen it canon. I think the actors have good chemistry, I think they are for sure very paralleled to one another, and I think that it's a ship that has a lot to unpack. I don't give a flying fuck if it's not canon or out of nowhere or if some people think it's "ick". Doesn't bother me. I am interested in the drama, I like to headcanon them both as bisexual which is fun, and I live for the tension of "hating" someone and having sexual tension. It's good shit, and it's SO EASY to do with their dynamic. It practically writes itself.

I love Byler for different reasons: the best friends to lovers trope, the sweetness of it, the angst, the coming of age. Will is my favorite character and I just love his story.

Both pairings offer SO MANY things, but they also are very different. And it allows me as a writer to explore different tropes, different facets of these fictional character's personalities, and as there is always a little bit of myself in my writing, explore some different emotions etc.

And I personally believe that exploring new dynamics in addition to my main one, has kept me more active in the ST fandom and byler community. It's kept me feeling creative, and keeps it fun as we're waiting for season 5 crumbs and filming to start etc! Fanfiction is very much meant for exploring things that don't happen in canon and exploring character dynamics that speak to you personally. Imo, it's the entire point of it. So anywho, I'm glad you're enjoying The Pact, and I am so happy that my tiny self has stoked the fire a little bit for your Stranger Things love. I hope you have tons of fun from here are on out!! ♡♡♡♡♡

[almea]

I've got random 2.2 thoughts because I had such a good time with it.

I'm so glad I didn't try to power through the rest of the story before going to sleep last night because the boss fight was so hype that I don't know if I would have been able to fall asleep after it. I will never get over slamming the Express into the boss, and Stelle looks SO PRETTY in the animation when you use it. I loved Robin and the rest of the crew having a line the first five times you activate it. Himeko's line fucking took me out. Hoyo… truly knows what my weaknesses are.

I heard you still have the Express's help in the Echo of War version of the fight but you don't get the animation of Stelle and Clockie summoning it and that's just. A crime. I'm pretty sure they still show Dan Heng in the Echo of War Phantylia fight, so why don't we get Stelle and Clockie? Like, I guess??? It could be weird if you're using Destruction or Preservation Stelle in the fight and then it's the Harmony version in the animation, but it would be the same situation as using 4 star Dan Heng against Phantylia. I'm just so sad I'll never get to see it again in the game.

I loved the whole part where Stelle's trapped in the Order's dream because I was just like. What is happening? This is feels so abrupt and I'm so disoriented and, bitch, I know the boss has two more phases and there were cutscenes in the trailer that still haven't happened yet. And then as soon as Topaz was like "Everyone has agreed to work together to help Penacony" I was like. Yeah. No. This is 100% a dream lmao.

I think it's incredibly sweet that Stelle's dream was a world where everyone would work together and be happy though.

Also, I don't know if this was just an audio glitch, but when I went back to the train, the music was reset to the default song, so I was like. Um???

When Black Swan said the card she gave Stelle was an empty light cone, there was a moment where I thought she would use it make a light cone using Stelle's memories and I was so disappointed that didn't happen. I really want a light cone with Stelle in it one day...

Harmony Stelle's animations are so good, I'm in love with her. There's so much personality and sass to them!! I'm surprised Stelle and Caelus's ultimate animations are almost exactly the same except for one part because their other ultimate animations look very different from each other while conveying the same thing. It's probably my bias speaking, but I feel like, aside from that really cool knee slide only Caelus has, the rest of the dance looks like it was animated a little more with Stelle in mind than Caelus.

I love Harmony Stelle so much that I'm going to start building break DPSs for her. And Ruan Mei lmao. I've been sitting on Ruan Mei for ages as I farmed relics for other characters. I was already planning to build Xueyi eventually because I used a trial version in one of the combat events and she was very fun and now I have another reason to do it.

I'm thrilled that Stelle got to talk and say cool shit in the cutscenes. I love her and she's so precious and I love that she gets to be cool!!! I always want Stelle to talk more.

Dan Heng's interactions with Boothill are so funny. He's just like. I don't want this man to ever speak for the rest of his life, I will murder him if he claims to be a Nameless again.

I was like. This close to crying when Dan Heng said his companions are once-in-a-lifetime treasures. My fucking heart, man.

All the Nameless stuff makes me so emotional and I'm not even entirely sure why. There's something about the way they present it that always has me dead on the ground. Like, the fact that the Astral Express has been around for so, so, so much longer than the current crew and they will continue to visit worlds that were visited and loved by their predecessors. The way the Nameless who left the Express still held it so close to their hearts. I love the reverence they have for the past Nameless. Stelle kneeling in front Mikhail after she received his hat was so beautiful.

I cried over Misha getting his memories back, and how only the other trailblazers were able to see him. The 2.0 explanation that only honest people with childlike innocence could see Clockie was very funny and I had thought it was a Stellaron thing since Stelle being able to see weird things related to Stellarons is an established thing, but the fact it's actually that you need to share the same spirit of trailblazing that Mikhail had is so uggggghhhhh.

Acheron finding Tiernan and helping him find peace and move on was soooo sweet. Now that we very concretely know the final fates of two of the three Nameless that stayed on Penacony, I'm curious whether we'll eventually get a more concrete ending for Razalina since I think her fate was still a little ambiguous.

I fucking LOVE bookends, so Acheron repeating what she told Stelle during their first meeting being one of the last things that happened in 2.2 and asking her the same questions she asked at the beginning... Those were personal attacks on me.

I'm still not 100% clear on the meaning behind Acheron's red text. I know it's related to red being the colour of existence (I think that's what she said) but I don't know what it's supposed to mean in the context of the red text. My first thought was that the red text is her breaking through the Order's dream's influence, but I don't remember if that fits with all her red text. And her red text appears when she's talking to Tiernan too, and I don't think that was part of a dream.

So I really don't know. Maybe her red text isn't that deep and everyone freaked out when they saw it for no reason lmao.

I have no idea what Sparkle was up to. I thought her buttons would do something during the last boss fight, but no? That doesn't seem to be it? I guess the Charmony Festival technically didn't start yet, so it's might be setup for something in 2.3. Either that or it's more of her red herring imagery.

[the-cat-and-the-birdie]

I vibe with hyperfixating w/ characters. To varying degrees I’ve fixated on: Armin from AOT for a while, 1D had a DEATH GRIP on me for a few years, (SEVEAL book characters through my teen years)I had an Alucard from castlevania fixation for maybe 3 ish years (‘ending’ only recently) and now Hobes lives in my head rent free ngl.

I get the “being sad cuz you can’t meet them” part, I’ve felt it. I try to not daydream TOO much cuz otherwise it takes over my life and I’m doing a considerable effort to live OUT of my own head, but BOI do I LOVE just daydreaming about my blorbos of choice.

I don’t speak too much about it (mostly the daydreaming) cuz to an extent it feels like a “me thing” (like something I don’t wanna share with anyone cuz it’s special to me), but if given the chance I DO info dump on my fixations.

I don’t think it’s cringe, not at all. These things are stuff that helps us process the world and our experiences with it. I believe everyone has sensitive weird shit that they don’t talk about, but if there’s something Ive learned is that we hardly ever have completely unique experiences. Most people just hide their oddness. Fandom being a prime example of how much our blorbos can mean to us. I think it’s okay and normal. (Until it goes overboard and people send idk violent messages to others because they headcanon something differently idk, the unreasonable stuff imo)

Can’t believe our of everything people would dare to make JOY and INTEREST the things with negative connotations. Being mean should be cringe, being a bully should be embarrassing. But unashamedly enjoying stuff?? That’s wonderful.

Anyone too embarrassed of their own vulnerability that they deal with it by making others feel bad about their interests are the most immature out if all of us.

Joy is everything that’s good with the world.

Even just seeing the letter 1D makes me wanna scream (in a good way!!) cause it takes me back to high school lol 1D was a bit older than me so my grade had Mindless Behaviour (does anyone remember them, where they even popular) but I remember the days where 1D was like the definition of summer songs

And I can totally understand the 'me thing'. Like I never really spoke about it but I felt like I knew my daydreams were more substantial or vivid than the 'average person' so to say.

Or when I spoke about characters to other people, I understood that neurotypicals likes characters, but they often didn't see them as fully formed 'persons' in the way I do - as to say, they didn't speculate or see emotional backstory, connections, or their behavior the way I did.

I never really shared any of my daydreams because like - I can't even get into it that's like asking someone to explain Star Wars to someone who doesn't even know space travel exists.

I grew up in a time on the internet where self-inserts and OC were seen as cringe, and someone would be very quick to call out 'Mary-Sue's (or flawless OCs) whenever they could.

It's not like that now - but in juxtaposition to canon x canon shipping, that bias is still there I feel like. Like it, as a work of fandom art has less 'value' that art or fics of canon only characters

It kinda bums me out still.

I think OC and daydreams and self-indulgent inserts are all the best part of fandom because it's the purest way of fans connecting with content on a personal level.

I'm happy that I see more people pushing back on that lately. Like after years of seeing people viciously hate furries when most of them seem like very nice, fun people, it's refreshing for people to be like 'nah, actually this thing is cool. and im gonna spend of time and/or money on this thing cause i makes me happy;

like you remember when the new Star Wars movie trailers came out and that dude reacted to it and he was moved to tears and people made fun of him??

yeah fuck everyone else that dude knows whats up.

Like yes, openly cry to your faves. Fantasize deep meaningful daydreams that help you process your feelings. Draw your OC with them, or learn every single thing their is to know about them.

That's why I wanted to talk about this. Because I've never heard it spoken about before. Maladaptive daydreaming, yes - and that can be harmful. But I hardly ever hear people talk about the basic mundane experience of it - or even how it can enrich our lives and help us emotionally develop of neurodivergent people.

When I think of it that way, it's something that makes me happy. I don't think I'll ever be able to describe it fully, and that's the point. Our stories are private to us, not because theyre embarrassing, but because they're so us that to even describe it would like describing a new world top to bottom

I love it. It's what makes humans humans.