#i was really emotional when i wrote this
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(another unfinished post i found on the way to glasgow - that was the longest train ride in my life - I'm sorry in advance)
When Ice finally passes away, at the age of 73, in his sleep, Bradley moves Mav into their house the same day.
He gets the call in the morning, while trying to simultaneously cook Jake's breakfast and try to make their daughter put on a rain jacket. It's not Mav, but someone from the hospital. Jake doesn't know this — Bradley's face twitches only for a second and then he's back to the nagging, relaxing tone and telling their daughter it's raining and it won't stop. Jake only finds out when he comes back home from the school drop-off and Mav is already there on their couch. Jake doesn't even get the full explanation until that night, just a quick, "Ice passed away overnight."
There's only their three youngest living with them at the time — their 18-year-old daughter who attends UC San Diego, and their 15-year-old son who is still in high school, and their 7-year-old daughter — so Mav takes one of the vacant bedrooms.
The first few nights, Bradley sleeps in the same bed with him. Neither of them looks like they get much sleep. They don't really eat, either, just drink coffee and nibble on the crackers.
The kids start coming back home, and their oldest helps Jake arrange most of the things for the funeral, at least for the first few days. Mav is... numb, not really there, and Jake understands — he would, too, if he woke up one day and his husband died in his sleep next to him. Bradley is silent, mostly, the way he usually rambles to fill out the silence, the way he hums, the way he sings at any given time when there are no words spoken, it's all gone and Jake doesn't know how to fill out the silence either, how to ask, how to make it better without asking.
Bradley doesn't cry, or at least not the way he knows Mav does — he can see Mav's red eyes every morning — but there's something empty in his gaze, in the way his eyes follow Mav and in the way he melts whenever Mav is around, always close, always brushing against him. Mav spaces out a lot, doesn't talk much, doesn't—well, doesn't do much. Every time he tries to help with something, paperwork, the funeral arrangements, the hospital bills, even just sorting out the kids' school leave or Jake's own work leave, he fumbles a bit, not really able to focus on anything for long, and it's like his mind is completely scrambled. Jake doesn't know how to help him — doesn't know if they even can.
The kids, well, did not take it well, as expected. The oldest two try to be brave and help Jake with everything, keep the house going, but their youngest daughter doesn't really understand why her pops isn't back, the middle kids don't understand why now — Ice was in remission, in good health, would go hiking with them once a month, play with them in the backyard, talking about plans for the future with them, nothing that would tell them to expect their pops passing away. Mav and Ice had taken care of all of them for years, while Jake and Bradley were still deployable, and helping out as much as they could. Ice was a huge part of their lives, since the very beginning.
Bradley is certainly not doing any better but one couldn't be able to tell if they didn't know him well enough. He's always been more for packing his feelings into a tight neat box, compartmentalizing until there is too much and it all overflows in some explosive way. His focus is mostly on Mav and the kids, trusting Jake to take care of anything he can't.
Jake can't even ask him how he's doing until the night before the funeral.
Mav tells Bradley he wants to be alone that night and Bradley lands in their bedroom.
He acts normal — checks the kids are in bed, checks on Mav, prepares stuff for breakfast in the morning, has a shower. Only when he sits down in their bed, their dress blues, cleaned and pressed sitting on the hangers hooked up on their wardrobe, right in front of him—only then he freezes, a blank stare still on the uniforms.
Jake sits down next to him on the bed. "Talk to me, Bradley."
"I knew it was going to happen at some point, I just," "I just thought we would have a few more years."
Bradley sleeps curled up on his chest — he sleeps the whole night, soundlessly, and Jake is almost settled.
Almost. Mav is a couple doors down, alone.
Ice's been—had been retired many years now, but he had been high enough in the ranks that the Navy still insists on making a military funeral. Jake tried to take away as much of the flashy bullshit as possible, but there are still things leftover — the sailors with the flag, the flyover. But there's no one who wasn't close with the family at the ceremony, there's no speeches, and no one tries to hand either Mav or Bradley a flag.
The wake has an even smaller amount of people, all packed in their house — Mav hasn't been at his own house since — and thanks to Slider, mostly, and his 'the bastard wouldn't want us to mope around', it's less sad and quiet.
Mav eats two slices of cake, which is the most Jake's seen him eat since, and even laughs at some stories about Ice people are exchanging.
Ice had a good life. A big family. A big happy family that loved him.
But life goes on without him. Jake goes back to work first, then the kids have to go back to school, then Bradley has to back to work. After a couple of days alone at their house, Mav starts bringing up moving back to his own house.
He's not really doing great. He's still quiet, still spaces out more often than not, still forgets himself sometimes, still freezes whenever he tries to say something and the we he uses is one person short. He's—lifeless, for a lack of better word, and seems like he's noticing it now that Bradley isn't with him most of the waking hours.
"That is our home," Mav tells them. "I can't abandon it forever, I'd be abandoning him, too, if I—"
Jake—Jake gets it. He doesn't like it, but he gets it.
Bradley's been fielding off any suggestions of Mav moving out but he's pretty sure that soon Mav is going to pack his stuff and up and leave without asking for permission.
"If he wants to move back home, we can't exactly hold him here. against his will."
"Jake," Bradley says. "I feel like—if we let Mav go back there alone, he's going to die of a broken heart and I won't have either of them anymore."
"Sweetheart—"
"I know it's selfish," he interrupts, "but I can't lose him, too. Not now."
Jake can't make Mav stay with them — so he finds the best solution he can and instead, they all move in with Mav. Hell with it, he's going to try to get everyone to live their lives to the end. They'd done it before, Mav, Ice, Bradley, Jake and their two kids under one roof, when their oldest two were their only two kids.
The two of them and two of their youngest; two of their kids move into their house so they don't have to sell it.
Mav lives on. They try to occupy his mind by throwing their youngest at him — ask him to take her to school, pick her up from school, take her to her gymnastics class, do her homework with her, teach her how to play piano. The other kids pick up on it, too, and their high schoolers would wrap Mav into doing math workbooks with them, or ask him to drive them to their friends' house, and the kids that have moved out ask Mav to go to lunch together or call him to ask him things about car and house repairs that don't exist.
Mav gets brighter every day. Never as bright as before, but no longer so numb.
Their daughter ends up never moving out and so do they.
They all get older but Mav holds up pretty well. He does break his hip when trying to wash the windows, had a limp and terrible back ache ever since, had to stop driving because he can't see shit, had to stop piloting even sooner, and his memory is also shit, but Jake is pretty sure his cholesterol is lower than his own and he has better blood pressure than Bradley. Bradley and Mav are the ones cooking after all, Jake is the one eating all the tasty but not healthiest food, and Mav's life revolves around spoiling his cute great-grandkids and Bradley's is filled with the constant stress of managing Navy's top flying school.
For his ninetieth birthday, Mav flies a fighter jet as a passenger, the oldest person to ever do that — his youngest granddaughter is the one to take him up in the air, a junior grade lieutenant herself. They have a birthday party held at their house, Mav falls asleep in the armchair, Bradley makes fun of him and promptly falls asleep on the couch, too. Jake loves them both so much and still kind of can't believe he has this — house full of grown-up kids and grandkids of his own, his graying husband of over thirty years, his father-in-law coming to an age he wanted to see his mother at.
They're cleaning up, their two daughters who still don't have kids and didn't need to go home helping, and Mav tells them he's going to get some fresh air on their veranda. "I've got a terrible headache," is all he says.
Half an hour passes, they've packed all the clean and dirty dishes, and Bradley huffs to himself. "He fell asleep on the bench again, didn't he," and goes outside.
Bradley shouts for him in less than a minute. The ambulance is there in eight. Within the half-hour and a CT scan in the hospital, the neurologist tells them Mav is too far gone to survive the day. Within six hours, every single person from their family has come to say goodbye. When they pass the seven hours mark, Jake stands up from the plastic chair behind Bradley — he's not about to tell Bradley he should rest, but he's been holding Mav's hand since the minute they admitted Mav to the ward and hasn't eaten or drunk anything all day. He tells him he'll go grab them a coffee and bagels and gets a little nod and a smile.
Jake comes back twenty minutes later and Bradley doesn't even look up from where he's gripping Mav's hand.
"Can you get the nurse for me?"
#this isn't really about Ice's death or Mav's death#but more about getting old in a family#sorry in advance#dunno if this made sense#idk felt some way when i wrote it#my nan had a stroke around that time and as a person who works mainly with critical stroke patients it hit hard#i didn't get into detail here but stroke patient at the end of their lives are very emotional sight for relatives#icemav#hangster#angst#pete maverick mitchell#tom iceman kazansky#bradley rooster bradshaw#jake hangman seresin#tgm#charlie writes#op
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masochist gojo. gojo who's in love with pain, so much that it feels like pleasure, he can barely distinguish between the two anymore.
gojo who's so starved for touch. who's had an infinite space between himself and the whole world for so long, for so many years, every day in and day out.
gojo who's survived off glancing presses when a barista hands him a coffee, the rare hug from his students (who are mostly orphans) that he can't bring himself to decline.
gojo who craves more but can't bring himself to accept it except in fleeting moments with strangers or students.
his hands that long to be held. he wants it so bad that he teases a cursed spirit, laces his fingers with its own, right before he utterly crushes the being in battle, untouchable all over again.
gojo whose skin is hungry for someone else's. he hasn't felt the warmth of a hand in his own in so long. not since - since his youth.
gojo who sometimes wishes he could get hit. who sees the impact of curse techniques on his infinity and feels a wild, strange desire for them to go straight through and strike him.
he imagines it, vividly, being impaled by a long spear (inverted spear) that goes straight through him. how it would lance his flesh so cleanly.
being struck so hard, across the face, in the stomach, enough to knock the wind out of him.
enough to feel it with his whole body.
gojo who wants to be touched so bad he doesn't even care if it hurts anymore. infinity couldn't protect him from geto's betrayal.
gojo who keeps infinity up not because he doesn't want to get hit, but because he's terrified of what he might do when it happens.
gojo who got hard whenever geto sparred with him. he still doesn't know if it was because of geto, or because he had no infinity back then, no way to block the strikes.
he dreams of his youth. bruises littering his pale, pretty form like kisses, proof that he was human, there, that there was someone who could reach him.
dark purple things that turned pretty colors as they healed. he remembers pressing into them, relishing the hurt, feeling like he was getting hit (touched, reached, connected) all over again.
nothing ever touches him again. not like that. not like anything.
he never feels it. he never feels anything.
satoru gojo who wants, so very very badly, to feel something.
pain is a choice for him, always a choice. he alone has the privilege of deciding whether or not anything can touch him.
he could try to let more strangers touch him. one night stands, discreet arrangements. he had a pretty face and a body to match. there was no shortage of willing partners.
he lets them touch him, lets them hurt him. lets them drool over his body and use it at their leisure. they tell him he's beautiful, and he believes them.
white hair, blue eyes, sprawled out with a lean, unmarred body full of bare flesh for them to bite and scratch and bruise. he finds people who will do it, do it hard, fuck him up until he's lost entirely in the feeling of being touched, having someone against him, with him, above him.
it makes him feel like a piece of meat. it makes him feel good.
or he thinks it does, anyways.
sometimes, when he's gone particularly long without sleep, when his partner has gone particularly hard, he gets a real rush.
heart racing out of his chest. a cold sweat that overwhelms him. breaths coming in labored gasps. he can heal himself, he's physically fine, so this must all be in his head.
he acknowledges that information, distantly, like it's not happening to him. it doesn't help.
it feels like part of his body has been ripped away from him, something vital and important, and it's about to get up and run away.
always, always, it happens when his partner is no longer touching him. when he lays alone in the sheets, by his own volition, because of course these partners are not meant to be attachments.
love is not a privilege, though, not for the strongest sorcerer. it's a curse.
it's the only curse which infinity cannot protect him from.
so gojo stays untouchable. distant.
but the hunger doesn't go away. never.
he likes to imagine that suguru swallowed this one last curse before he died. something sweet and bitter, like losses at the arcade, sunny days at the beach, walking together with shoko, nanami, haibara.
but even suguru couldn't have absorbed this curse. it's in his bones, deep, longing and wanting even after he's dead and gone.
gojo is hungry. he is so, so hungry. and he has nothing to eat that will not leave him just as empty as before.
touch-starved. love-starved. pain-craving.
if someone could hurt him then it wouldn't matter that he was terrified of attachment. they could latch onto him, into his heart, under his skin. bury themselves in his chest like they belonged.
they could kill a hundred and twelve people and it wouldn't matter, because he wouldn't be able to kill them.
gojo is hungry, so hungry.
please feed him.
#jujutsu kaisen#jujutsu kaisen gojo#satoru gojo#gojo smut#gojo character study (?)#touch-starved gojo MY LOVE#i refuse to believe this gojo is not canon#light stsg but when is a gojo fic NOT hinting at stsg#gojo x geto#gojo x jogo? less unlikely than you think#okay i lied he doesn't REALLY want to fuck jogo - he's just really really pathetic#gojo is just a silly little guy but he is actually a sad clown who annoys people to avoid emotional intimacy#tw: mental health#gojo is coping and he is coping POORLY#it's building up to gojo x reader but that would be a lot for a piece i wrote in thirty minutes so it ends here (for now?)#stay tuned for masochist sukvna because let me tell you. ALL my favorite men are masochists. thats simply canon i dont make the rules#he's begging you please hurt him. please show him he can touch another human being. please remind him he's real.#tw: panic attack
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On System Collapse, Sanctuary Moon, and saving one another.
I said the other day that System Collapse might be my new favorite Murderbot book. The first time I thought that was in the middle of chapter eight, the chapter where Murderbot and its humans make a documentary to show the colonists what the Corporation Rim is like. The whole book was good, but that was the chapter that felt like it was reaching out to me the most.
The thing that struck me about it is how Murderbot saves the colonists with media. It was saved by media—Sanctuary Moon helped it rewire its neural tissue, process its trauma, find a place for itself in the world. And coming up with the idea of using media to convince the colonists is what drags it out of the depressive state it’s been in for the entire book up to that point, and lets it start to feel hopeful again. It literally tells us in its narration that the emotional reactions it has when it comes up with this idea are similar to the ones it had watching Sanctuary Moon for the first time. The thought of creating its own media, of finding a way to tell the truth and be listened to, of being able to keep people from being trapped in the corporate world it knows all too well, is just as much of a lifeline for it as Sanctuary Moon was.
Murderbot has been been feeling like a failure as a SecUnit for the entire book, and it finds its way out of that not through regaining its normal SecUnit competence but through art. Something it was never meant to experience or understand, let alone create, but something that shaped who it is. It takes the thing that saved it and turns it around to save others—and saves itself again, in the process.
And the other thing that jumped out at me, thinking about chapter eight, is that so many of us have been saved by media, too. So many of us have been saved by Murderbot, in big and small ways. I’m certainly one of them. Murderbot and the community of readers who love it gave me the space to stop and consider some things that (not unlike Murderbot) I hadn’t really been willing to examine. And now I get to figure myself out in a community full of aspec people who understand. Murderbot has given that opportunity to a lot of people.
Martha Wells has talked in interviews about how parts of Murderbot were based on herself. She says, in her introduction to the Subterranean Press edition, that media “probably saved [her] life as a kid,” including the kind of media that isn’t “cool” to be saved by. We’ve seen that in Murderbot ever since the very first line of All Systems Red. What we saw in chapter eight of System Collapse goes a step further. It makes me want to hold a mirror up—I hope Wells was aware, when she was writing it, that what Murderbot does for the colonists is something she’s done for a lot of others.
The colonists that Murderbot saves with its documentary are not real people. That scene, of course, is fiction. But it’s the kind of fiction that’s true in all the ways that matter.
I really love Murderbot. Not in a weird way. 💜
#stars has thoughts#system collapse#system collapse spoilers#murderbot#murderbot meta#the murderbot diaries#i was having so many emotions when reading chapter 8#i paused after that chapter and wrote a draft of the second and third paragraphs of this post#it's about the parallels. between murderbot and its own past self#between murderbot and Wells. between murderbot and us.#it really genuinely made me want to hold that scene up to Martha Wells and say#you know that you did this for us‚ right??#you know that you're saving people too?
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Cuddling — Day two of Inukag Fluff Week
Second one shot for @inukagfluffweek! This one is set in canon, and probably a little more on the hurt/comfort side.
Keeping an eye on Kagome was second nature for Inuyasha. After all, if there wasn’t food on her plate, she’d grow hungry and Jewel shards hunting would be interrupted. If there wasn’t a fire to keep her warm, she’d be too tired to go on. If they were caught in a downpour without shelter, she’d get sick. If she kept going when her legs hurt, the next day would be hell. So he got her food, he built the fire, he found the shelter, he carried her on his back. Not ‘cause he cared, though, well, he did care, a little bit, the normal amount, whatever that was, but for purely practical reasons.
That meant he figured out early on that something was wrong. He couldn’t pinpoint what for the life of him, though.
He’d added wood to the fire. He’d caught and cooked a rabbit. He’d carried her on his back half the day, holding her two-wheeled thing in one hand. He’d even offered his services in ridding some farmer of pesky yokai, so they’d get to sleep in a barn for once. Sure, he wasn’t Miroku, and he couldn’t secure them a place in some luxury house, but he was trying his best, ‘kay? Miroku wasn’t around anyway, and Kagome had never complained about luxuries before.
And still, when everything should have been fine, something was clearly wrong. Kagome kept looking in the distance, eyes turning glassy, mouth curving downward as she buried herself in her thought, keeping him so, so far away from her even if she was sitting right next to him.
Inuyasha had no damn clue how to fix it.
“What is it this time?” he snapped at last as she was finishing her food in silence, taking small, slow bites, and she jumped at the sound of his voice. Her wide brown eyes focused on him at last, and that simple action was grounding enough for him that he would almost have felt sorry for his outburst.
Almost.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, and the immediate frown on her face told him she was not to be messed with right now — too bad he didn’t care, at this point.
“What’s wrong with you, you mean,” he scoffed, folding his arms and shaking his head. “You’ve been sulking for days. So tell me how to fix it, or just stop doing that already!”
If he’d been self-aware enough for that, he would no doubt have realized how childish he sounded. Kagome could have, too, but instead, her face flushed.
“I’m fine!” she replied, her voice too high-pitched to be convincing. “It’s not your problem anyway, so just forget about it!”
“How is it not my problem when you’re all—” He gestured at her, frustrated. “—and it’s a pain to travel!”
“Well if it’s a pain to travel with me, why don’t you just go with someone else?” she replied, raising her voice a little more.
“Because I don’t want to travel with someone else!” he yelled back. “I just want you to tell me how to not make it hard for you!”
She went quiet then, uncharacteristically so, red spreading to her ears, and Inuyasha growled under his breath, muttering to himself. He wasn’t sure what to do with this quiet Kagome. If she needed to scream at him to feel better, well, she could get on with that, and at least then she’d be fixed or whatever, but even picking a fight wasn’t working, damn it.
“I’m sorry,” Kagome whispered at last, and Inuyasha started like he’d been stung by a bee. Uh, yeah, not good. She didn’t do that. Even when she was in the wrong, she needed her time and space to calm down, and then she’d apologize, often while bringing him an offering of ramen. She never turned down a fight with an immediate apology.
That was when the tears came.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated, sniffing.
“Wh— No— Don’t—” he pleaded, voice cracking, but she paid him no attention.
“I just— It’s been a very long year, you know? And I— I— I miss my mom,” she finally broke, waterfalls on her cheeks, quiet sobs wracking her body as she wrapped her arms around her knees.
Inuyasha froze. He reached out for her without thinking, overwhelmed by the need to make it stop, make it better, make her better, make it so she’d never ever cry again, but his fingers curled up before he could touch her, caught by some other part of his instinct.
“W-why didn’t you just say so! You can just— you can just go home then!” he scoffed, trying very hard to sound annoyed, but he couldn’t keep the worry out of his voice.
“But we’ve been on the road for days,” Kagome sniffed, “and it would take days to go back, and we haven’t found that stupid Jewel shard, and I just want her to give me a hug, and—”
“Ha, well I-I can do that too! You could have asked me!”
That made Kagome stop crying for long enough to give him a blank stare.
“Come on, Inuyasha. I’m not going to force you to hug me.”
“W-who said anything about forcing me!”
“Well you don’t look thrilled about it,” she said, doubtful, and at least she was crying a lot less now, but her eyes and nose were still read and he wasn’t going to let that slide, was he?
“J-just— just don’t move, okay?”
Clumsily, despite how careful he was being, he put both arms around her, awkwardly tugging her until he’d brought her against his chest. He was barely touching her, his arms forming a misshaped circle hovering around her. He’d hugged her before, but it had been an impulsive action, not one he’d thought about. He— had no idea how to do it intentionally.
Against his chest, Kagome giggled.
“You have to actually hug me, you know? Like that.”
She did it without hesitation, wrapping her arms around him. Closing her eyes, she rested her head against his, and this time when he froze, there were very different emotions running within him. On the top of his head, his ears were twitching, all his senses alert, taking in her breathing that was getting more even, her smell, her breath against his skin. Swallowing, he finally brought himself to close his arms around her, and she sighed contentedly.
“See?” she asked. “That’s nice, isn’t it?”
He could barely reply around the knot in his throat. She felt so soft against him, so delicate. His half-demon strength would make it so, so easy to break her in half — and she knew that. Her warmth was spreading through him, from his chest and face to the root of his hair and the tip of his toes. Everything he felt was Kagome. With great care, he ran his fingers through her hair, not wanting his claws to cut through them by accident. She shivered, tilted her head forward a little to give him better access. Mesmerized, he kept going. Her hair felt soft between his fingers, silky.
Everything about this was calming. And she’d been right. It was nice.
It caught him by surprise when she moved, entangling herself from him.
“Thanks, Inuyasha,” she said, sniffing again. “I’m feeling better. It was nice of you to— Oh!”
He pulled her back into him, this time with a tighter grip.
“You said you needed a hug, so I’m giving you one that’ll last you until I can get you back to your time,” he said gruffly. “Now just sleep, ‘kay?”
Her laugh vibrated through his chest, and he found it to be the best thing he’d ever felt.
“Okay,” she said. “Thanks, Inuyasha.”
He would have told her that he was just doing it so she’d be in the mood for shard hunting the next day, but if she’d called him out, he would never have been able to lie with a straight face, so he chose not to.
‘cause truth be told, now that he was experiencing it, he thought he’d needed that hug at least as much as her.
Don't have ideas for the upcoming themes so this will probably be my last entry for the week! Thank you all for the love on yesterday's entry, hope you've enjoyed this one as well, and I'll see you when I see you!
#inuyasha#inukag#kagome#kagome higurashi#inukagfluffweek#my writing#wrote this while thinking 'they don't have the emotional intelligence to be acting like this...'#really need to get to my rereading so I can get better at capturing them again oops#maybe this works for late manga which is when this is set anyway#let's decide that it works
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i don’t know if i’m ever gonna write the fic but i’ve been thinking abt like. the eternal stockade. the implications. lup, a lich who was trapped in a dark featureless cell for a decade completely isolated with nothing to keep her sanity but her own mind. she has to put people in the eternal stockade. how many liches does she see herself in. how many liches started out just like her. how many liches are truly too far gone. and the only liches we ever see other than her and barry are edward and lydia. they’re certainly evil, but mad? they seem pretty sane. they’re not, like, tattered echoes of souls, they’re definitely still people. even as much of a grudge as lup surely has against them, wouldn’t they remind her incredibly strongly of herself? do they deserve to be trapped just like she was? for eternity? isn’t eternity what turned john to existential despair in the first place?
#mine#taz balance#taz lup#lup#like idk i think lup’s down to kick necromancer ass but when it comes to being like. WARDENS of a PRISON. would that not be uncomfortable??#but like taking the job is the only way to avoid HER being thrown in prison??#idk the raven queen being a cool & chill goddess boss is definitely fun but when you actually think abt it#i don’t think i’d agree with her. i think if i lived in that world i’d think she were sort of evil#which like also to get into the hunger vs authority its not very explored because its not at all the point#the hunger is meant to be nihilism and despair and dissatisfaction its at its core an emotional story about joy & love#but like john starts out rebelling against laws. laws of the universe; except that it turns out a being wrote those laws (jeffandrew)#so the hunger is also sort of a force of rebelling against unjust constraints in the pursuit of freedom?#and the heroes end up preserving the status quo and saying you just have to find joy within those unjust limitations#which again. like. the point is that life is unfair and you can find joy and meaning despite it. which is true to real life.#i’m not saying the hunger was right or that despair is the only way or w/e like#yk like taz balance is not a story about society its more about. philosophy i guess#the point is that life’s really hard and you find meaning anyway and that’s preferable to despair and death#thematically for the audience we understand these are standins for ways of viewing reality#and in the real world reality is what it is. its just the world. there’s no authority that writes the laws of nature#like its not a ‘man vs authority’ story its a ‘man vs nature’ story#but IN UNIVERSE nature IS an authority. jeffandrew and the gods. regardless of how much joy you can find in an unjust world#if i lived in it i’d want to make it more just! but anyway like yeah barry & lup working for the raven queen#is kinda an extension on that idea of preserving the status quo#although i guess you could say gods are just forces of nature. theyre not PEOPLE theyre just personifications of existent natural laws#and it ties in w istus and fate as well#although fate is like a comforting guiding force rather than restricting & horrifying#^ pay no attention to any of this i don’t think it really means anything i’m just like. writing thoughts as i have them#not like a hard stance i’m taking just exploring some ideas#any ways#THERES A TAG LIMIT??
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kiryuu sibling stasis post-32 is so interesting to me. nanami tries to leave and is (temporarily but also, crucially, violently) prevented from doing so by touga and akio. after this experience she puts distance between herself and them: she leaves touga’s phone in the car, she resigns from the student council (though she dons her old uniform still), she repeatedly dismisses and undermines the authority of the rose code, of end of the world, of akio, of touga. but she’s still in ohtori, isn’t she? uncomfortable with the idea of leaving, uncertain if it’s really possible. she tried before, and it hurt her. deeply. it’s so interesting to me, nanami’s agency and how she limits her exertion of it after 32, when she realises it for what it is. contrast that with touga, who accepts this weird stalemate between them, who is, really, uninterested in having any relationship of any kind with nanami if he can’t gain something from her. he’s very passive with her after 32, compared to the passivity he’d always feigned towards her before in order to stoke reactions from her and then exploit them. i was thinking about how touga has always been able to sever his relationship with nanami, but chosen not to; first out of a sense of obligation (‘we should live to help each other’) then a realisation of how that could be exploited. i was thinking about how nanami has never realised her ability to leave, in part because it is limited by touga and the harm he does her. i was thinking about the desperation and confusion akio calls out to anthy with as she leaves. i was thinking about how different that is to the kiryuus’ strange semi-breakdown; touga doesn’t want or need nanami, and nanami might love her brother but she cannot trust him or feel safe around him, doesn’t want to see him anymore; she’s itching to leave, and just a little scared (you know, because last time she tried that her brother assaulted her), and he’s not doing anything because ignoring her means he doesn’t have to deal with the emotions of her leaving or staying. something something gendered power dynamics something something tragic siblings
#local kiryuu sibling enjoyer has thoughts about them#i wrote this like three days ago but it’s getting posted now i have to speak my truth#touga loves a bit of inaction#nanami doesn’t but what the fuck else is she gonna do?? be brave? she tried that already#and she WILL try it again and i don’t think touga will try particularly hard to stop her#i think he might try a little but in doing so he’ll just become more aware of how much he doesn’t want to do that#and is only doing it bc of a vague sense of obligation to a perspective on life that he’s already questioned a la utena#im just. i have so many feelings about them. i bet none of you were aware of that fact already#i am once again wondering: does touga love nanami? what does that mean for each of them?#and im concluding: i really don’t think he does#i think he’s felt obligation to her and turned bitter towards that emotion and her in turn#i think he has no idea how to feel about her so he ignores the problem and exploits HER feelings as he thinks he understands them#until he realises that he doesn’t and has to deal (a little bit) with the ramifications of that#touga and anthy when nanami makes them self reflect. or swagever. the 32 way. neither of them would ever admit this but it’s true#dais.txt#her tragedy her triumph
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Y’know. Anakin was a real asshole in Ahsoka’s hallucination.
Like. She mentions something about what she’ll be able to teach her padawan one day, since all she’s being taught is how to be a soldier, and Anakin’s like “teaching’s not all it’s cracked up to be”
And like. Asshole move. And Ahsoka rightfully calls him out on it. And he goes on the whole “uuuh I was joking. Lighten up.” Literally a complete jackass.
But beyond how he answered the question, it’s a valid complaint Ahsoka is bringing up! Anakin’s teaching her how to live or die. But Ahsoka wants to be taught how to be a jedi.
What happens after the war is over (order 66 never happens) and she now has to navigate a galaxy without a war? The Jedi take teaching very seriously there’s no greater honor than teaching a padawan. And she’s not being accurately taught, so she will not be able to pass anything on to the next generation.
But Anakin brushes it aside because he simply does not respect her or her wishes. Like. He never wanted a padawan, despite teaching being foundational to the Jedi. And he only took ahsoka in because he started to like her and became attached to her. He doesn’t care about jedi legacy, not really. So he brushes her comment off with a joke.
But in the rest of the vision… idk it didn’t feel like we were supposed view Anakin as entirely wrong here. He wasn’t in the right, he was definitely channeling Vader and being an ass, but he was basically the reason Ahsoka survived the fall, right? Bc he was making her choose life? When Ahsoka wins against him it’s sort of like she’s both learned his lesson and moved beyond him. And then for the rest of the season he’s only talked about in positive ways.
And like. That one line ahsoka said was really powerful in relation to the entire point of the show. What does she have to pass onto her own padawan (Sabine) if she wasn’t properly trained herself? That is, perhaps, the only valid plot question asked in the entire show. And it doesn’t get an answer. It’s never even brought up again.
#I have now learned Dave filoni wrote the entire series#so I am able to say now with absolute positivity that he’s a shit writer#I had been blaming the issues that the writers went on strike for#but no it’s just filoni being a terrible writer I guess?#I mean. none of the character issues are ever really resolved#we have no reason to believe ahsoka is ready to be a master now#we have no real understanding of WHY Sabine unlocked her force powers and shit (not how it works but whatever)#Sabine never learns her lesson about letting thrawn come back#Ahsoka doesn’t get anything really resolved with Anakin#she just acts like he was never Vader and that he was a great master#when we SEE in her vision he was not#idk it’s like every character plot point was dropped#nothing happened in the first half of the show#the dark side girl had a half rebellion but we got no emotion or background from her#it was just… a pointless show#nothing was accomplished#star wars#anti ahsoka#anti anakin skywalker
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he's so important to me
#i guess i need to watch the anime but super's manga has just been a self-indulgent fever dream for me from start to finish#100000/10 absolutely perfect so validating so extremely catered to my tastes and headcanons and analyses and humor#so fucking funny and emotional and intense and goofy and beautifully drawn#my beautiful son getting to finally fucking see his HARD won character growth fucking shine and choose love and choose to be loved!!!!!!#Goku just being Goku Vegeta being Team Dad Piccolo being Team Grandpa Bulma being a fucking superstar keeping everybody organized and fed#god i love this squad i love this series i love these dumbasses and their struggles and their triumphs and their stupid childish bonding#I love that Toriyama just spent the last several years reminding the class that DB as a whole has always been an ACTION-COMEDY about LOVE#and I'm SO sad that the z anime really never did it justice in that sense because of having to fill time with dramatic tension but god. GOD#THE MANGA HAS ALWAYS BEEN SO CLEAR ON THAT THESIS.#Just all about Restorative Justice and Community and CARING even when you wish SO MUCH that you didn't care but yoU DO GODDAMMIT!!!#SUCH a great series I'm so sad it took losing mr t for me to finally read it but my god I needed to read it now and I'm so glad he wrote it#and i'm SO glad he wrote it Exactly Like This#once again rip to a legend i'm caught up and crying it's so perfect it's SO everything I've wanted to see onscreen and embedded in canon#and canon isn't everything but it still feels gREAT to be SO 1:1 on the same page with an author re: how you interpret your blorbo yknow???#been rotating this man in my head for 25 years and Mr Toriyama just mWAH kissed me on the forehead about it#anyway enough tag rambles I'm off again aklsjla#bonus for that kenpachi shit and letting him say 'sorry dude I can't be cold and numb anymore but this is still cathartic as fuck lol' like#mr t i hope you see the HIGHEST tier of heaven for that (and obviously for like everything all of it the whole life you led)#dbtag
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hi! i've been reading some of your older fics and was wondering if there's any merit in watching buffy for the first time in the year 2024
This may not be obvious, but this is actually an extremely complicated and highly subjective question. I'll try to go on for too long.
As background: my mother loved Buffy and its spin-off Angel growing up. It was our Bible (besides the actual Bible). Not kidding, she was on the forums and fan groups and wrote fanfiction for it and everything (These days, she's really into kdramas and Asian dramas, and calls me about how the Thai seem like big fans of gay people). So I'm quite biased.
BTVS is both a product of its times and ahead of its times. It was a show about feminism and the struggle of living in this world as a woman, when very few shows were doing that. It was the first show to have a long-lasting lesbian couple, and the first show to depict a kiss between them. For better or for worse, it was one of the codifiers of broody vampire boyfriend. It was pretty unafraid to be experimental in a lot of what it did. It had incredibly complex and nuanced character work and growth that I still aspire to. Spike's arc is still matched in quality only by Avatar's Zuko. Angel's long term arc, from Buffy to his spin-off series, still makes him one of the most complex characters on TV. It had the most complex depiction of depression on TV at the time and I still think it's one of the best. I think the show had very high highs.
It also had very low lows. Some of the feminism is problematic in retrospect. The sapphic couple has a rather famous element that was severely problematic. There are, overall, some deeply atrocious arcs that I can appreciate objectively but not in practice. Xander: a whole-ass character aged awfully. On a meta level, the workplace conditions were bad (thanks, Whedon.) There are no people of color. The spoiler's sake I won't go into detail on this, but in general the good stuff was so influential and the bad stuff was just awful.
I think these days people tend to brush off the entire thing because it's Whedon. That is more than fair. But I'd also say that Whedon & Buffy is extremely similar to Brian Michael Bendis & Ultimate Spider-Man. Bendis was fantastic at writing sassy, bouncy, permanently stressed-out teens - issue was, he wrote entirely different serious adult characters the way he wrote these sassy teens. Same with Whedon: the annoyingly constant quips are perfect for Buffy, because that's who the characters are. They're awful in Marvel, because Steve Rogers is not Xander. Kinda similarly, Buffy was genuinely feminist for 90s TV - issue is, Whedon has not grown or developed his views, and now his works feel so sexist (oh my fucking god why did you treat Natasha like that). After a certain point it's egotistical: you're writing like that because you're Joss Whedon and it's how you write, not because it's what's best for the characters and story. But it was really important to me to get the character voices right, and it's freaking difficult to endlessly write dialogue that distinct, full of voice, witty, and clever.
I think BTVS & Angel TV's greatest influence on my writing is how intensely character-driven both of those shows were, and how intricate the characters were. What every character did was something they would do, if that made sense. Even the stuff I hated to watch, that made me uncomfortable, was the culmination of so much (usually). I think I also picked up the constant wit and humor lol. On a personal level, the conversations I would have with my mother where she broke down the character motivations and composition of the story was my first exposure to looking at storytelling from an analytical perspective and a framework of critical analysis, which was an approach I carried into the rest of the media I consumed and that was the primary reason I was able to become a decent writer. Thanks, Mom. Have fun with your kdramas.
TL:DR: There is merit, especially if you care about good character work. There are things about it that may make you want to drop it, which is extremely valid. Season 1 is rough but interesting, Season 2 and 5 are the best, Season 3 is pretty good, Season 4 and 7 skippable, and Season 6 is........epic highs, epic lows......
#my asks#the basic premise of Buffy is “what if the monsters and demons that plagued the psyche of a teen girl were real”#which is a very simple thing but the focus on character ended up creating such a complex story#and it highly influenced how i try to have the physical conflict mirror the emotional conflict#externalization of emotional conflict is great#i dont talk about it much but i was genuinely very proud of that story#it mattered a lot to me that I hit the character voices EXACTLY#and that i was earnest and honest in exploring the themes of buffy and what made it important#i think you can tell that it was written by somebody who loves buffy at the bottom of her heart#it very much is a “how meg would write buffy” thing#I wrote Angel as an awkward younger version of his self from ATVS S5#when we as the audience has lost all respect for him lmfao#but what really stuck with me is a major theme and line from angel:#“if nothing we do matters then all that matters is what we do”#and colliding angel's nihlism with buffy's desperation to live a meaningful life was excellent#i did what i wanted to do very precisely and that is the joy of hitting a level of writing skill where you can do that#btvs#buffy the vampire slayer
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"お前は失ってばかりじゃねえ"
"you haven't only received loss"
#who wouldve guessed more 07 ghost art....#almost done with the anime now but ep 20 ish took me OUT my heart is bursting#copying the text i wrote for ig here:#i was initially going to just use the english as a caption but it really doesnt get the emotion across properly.#spent a good fifteen minutes rephrasing thr words as accurately to the original quote as possible while maintaining the intention.#affirming that he's gained so much (cherished people and experiences) along his path despite all his heartbreaking losses.#done#YEAH I KNOW frau didnt actually do this this is just my own self indulging... makes me giddy when he gets all serious and intimate#like that expression he does. im down bad for this piece of hot garbage#going off on a tangent here but hes so fucking childish sometimes when he goes to pick teito up from his exam#this idiot took the time to arrange himself leaning leisurely against the wall and having a smoke just so he could be like oh hey#i wasnt waiting or anything im just free and rebellious and i smoke bc im cool....get real idiot#i dont have any more 07ghost art atm so lets see if the remaining eps inspire me#or the manga at the rate the anime seems to be ending :')#07 ghost#my art
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s3 episode 16 thoughts
(giggling and kicking my feet) it’s mulder and scully time <3
and it was a GOOD episode!!! i was sad, but damn was i compelled! back to the very beginning of the episode to begin the note-taking journey, with a tiny recap of where we left off beneath the “keep reading” bar…
hehehehe i am excited!! i love to spend the evening with the ultimate duo. and we have so much to cover!
so many twists and turns to walk down! krycek is back! skinner is hurt! scully is sleuthing! mulder is in hong kong! we had best begin!
YAAAS we got another “previously on the x files” <- i loathed these at first for throwing me off my typical groove, but now that i know we only bust them out on special occasions (multiple part episodes) i look forward to them
ugh scully is so pretty. “you say that every time” and it’s true every time???
we get a recap: flash bang alien, inky eyes, skinner on a hunt for answers before being interrupted, scully’s dad’s friend johansen, the rat bastard
timeskip to 1953. a man from johansen’s squad who is covered in burns is telling his story, and it is being recorded. he is being visited by those who claim to want to bring him to justice, but he says he won’t tell.
so after johansen started a mutiny and locked the rest of the sailors in the sub, those trapped on the lower levels knocked the dude with the inky eyes on the head with a wrench. so he is knocked tf out. and liquid started pouring from his eyes (BLEAUGH) and into a drain. the survivor who has all the burns and who is recounting this calls the liquid “the enemy”
a guy that looks a lot like matty healy (but much cleaner) is asking him what he means by calling liquid “the enemy”. so the interviewee says that the thing went back to where it came from.
GASP!!!!!! HE ADDRESSES THE MATTY HEALY LOOKING FELLOW AS “MR. MULDER”!!!!!! oh this is JUICY!!! and the camera pans over to another man putting in a cigarette!! GASP!!! WE KNOW WHO THAT IS!!!!
baby cig man says “you can trust all of us” (<- LIES, LYING, SAID BY A GUY WHO IS LYING)
(you can tell the actor playing baby cig man had just one line but he worked SO hard to get cig man's voice right... it made me giggle)
why does young mr mulder look kinda cute. aww. so little. almost wanna squish his cheeks.
they changed the intro again. smh! messing with my rhythm.
anyway, back to main plot. scully’s rolling up to the hospital to find skinner, where she is met by agent fuller and agent caleca, two names i do not think i have heard before. scully asks for hair and fiber from the crime scene and these two are like “we don’t have that yet” so she says “um get it?” (not really but basically) (and they claim it was some random guy that shot him… not buying it)
oh! skinner is being wheeled out! she’s off to go investigate. now if it were ME being rolled about with my shirt off after a gunshot wound and emergency surgery, i would not want people seeing that. but hey, she’s a doctor so maybe she’s chill like that. still! i’d be soooo embarrassed omg
SHE GRABS HIS HAND OMG!!!!! he opens his eyes a tiny tiny bit and tells her that he has seen the man who shot him before!!!
man, i thought just the hand grabbing was gonna be all tender, and it was! but getting a clue at who did it was a bonus too
back to the rat bastard and mulder. at least krycek seems aware that mulder can and will kick his ass and is deferential to him.
scully is looking over skinner’s chart. OH! she asked for guards. and she wants them NOW. she does not CARE about your excuses. WOO!!! she says idgaf if you two agents stand out there YOURSELVES, get GUARDS ON him!!! YAAAAS!
back to krycek and mulder cam. mulder notices that they are being followed and tells him to speed up. at gunpoint! and this mystery vehicle runs them off the road!!!!!!
noooo, their faces are all smushed in. someone pulls rat bastard out and asks where the tape is, but the fellow who attacked him gets flash banged, because again, krycek has alien flash banging powers.
but poor mulder still has his bloody heady on the dash :( he sees some odd flashing
scully gets called into the lab and this guy has some info on the dude that shot skinner. she says it will take too much time to run the hair sequence, but to do it anyway.
(also, i can’t tell if this is the same guy from the lab as before that clearly had a crush on her or if this is a different one but idk i guess it doesn’t really matter... he doesn’t seem like her type)
so the two men that krycek flash banged last night are now in treatment for radiation, and who is visiting them but cancer man!!! he is once again lighting up as they are dying. he bends down and moves a bandage, and sees the eyes of a patient meet his. but he says to HAVE THE BODIES DESTROYED OMFG HE DOES NOT GIVE A FUUUUCK THIS GUY IS EVIL!!!!
mulder at da hospital. bandage on his head. awwwwww :( it’s so sad and pathetic... he’s baby.
AND SCULLY IS THERE!!!! WITH A SMILE!!!!!! WOOHOO I WISH I COULD LIVE IN THIS MOMENT FOREVER!!! YES YES THOSE ARE MY FAVORITE CHARACTERS!!
the police found him and he mentioned “we” so she says “who’s we” and he has to say KRYCEK… she is (very gently) confused
an excellent person to have by your bedside whilst recovering.
she tells him that she is sorry for the bad news, but skinner has been shot as well. but the doctors seem to think he’ll be okay. and she has an idea on who it is that pulled the trigger!
GASP!!! she pulls out the scans on the hair. two of them, in fact. the first being from the man who shot skinner, and the second being from the man who shot melissa. and they’re a PERFECT MATCH!!!! CONSPIRACY!!! CONSPIRACY, I CRY!!!
(shrill violins, fade to black)
oh! it’s the united nations alien council. um i realize now i don’t know their actual name. but you know who i’m referring to, right? the guys. the gang. the squad. just a couple of dudes.
they’re discussing the site “WHERE THEY RECOVERED THE UFO” well! there you have it! word of god confirmation! it’s indeed a ufo that the french sailors came across in the last episode!
“it seems we have an information leak, gentlemen”, one of them announces, which makes me say, okaaaay ominous <3
and they say cig man has responded in a way no one could have predicted… omg was he behind the skinner thing…?
scully visiting skinner <3 asking how he is feeling <3 he doesn’t seem surprised about the news his shooter was the same as melissa’s, especially because those three men had warned him before about pursuing her case. he says she should be careful about saying that the case was shut down because people don’t want it to be caught but. it’s looking them right in the face.
OH! the man that shot him was one of the ones who attacked him a few months back on the stairwell! well i didn’t even catch this. some detail noticer i am. AND KRYCEK was the other one!!!! yes, and they stole the tape yes yes i’m recalling!
ohhh it’s serious. he tells her that she cannot afford anger, that if she’s angry she’ll make a mistake. “i’ll be okay”, she says (voice breaking) (<- said by a woman who is lying)
he says that if she can’t keep her head, it’s okay to step away… this feels very chekov’s gun… but she says that’s exactly what they want. OH! i love that she knows she can get to the bottom of this. i love that she believes in herself.
scully is furiously typing on her laptop. asking to devote full bureau resources to finding krycek. got her glasses on n everything. terribly beautiful whilst angry. she is saying he can explain everything that is going on, but i don’t think anyone is gonna listen to herrrr because the fbi does not give a fuck!!!
scully is now entering their office to see the giant yellow scuba suit. “it looked great on me in the store” says mulder, who needs to make a joke or people will die. perhaps he needs to make a joke even more when people really ARE dying.
so, why is it here? great question. it was covered in oil, the french guy was covered in oil, his wife was covered in oil, and it’s all diesel oil from world war two submarines. a new meaning to the term “oiled up”.
theory time with mulder: it’s a medium for an alien creature for body-jumping. he laughs when she laughs, aware of how ridiculous it sounds, but also aware of her thinly veiled fury; what else could he do? he does know how it sounds, he does know what she needs, but the truth. the truth.
so what does this thing living in the oil want with krycek? a great question.
omg guy from the lone gunmen is ice skating! and so is another one. wow a team bonding mission <3 AND THE OTHER ONE!!! FROHIKE!!!
is this something they do often... no, this must be a sleuthing mission.
frohike goes in a locker and opens something. GIVES IT TO MULDER!!! YAAAS THE TAPE!!! they say he should “call upon their services more often” YAAAS they want that sweet sweet agent time <3
but noooo! the tape is gone!!!! mulder gets mad and throws the empty case. still, a reunion with his pals <3
cig man is watching tv. sipping some sort of liquor.
(whenever i see someone drinking a beverage with ice in it on a tv show, i think of that one tiktok of a prop master explaining how they make prop ice and the many different kinds they can do. i think this looks like glass ice to me. shoutout to people who make videos about props; you make my heart very happy)
BRO... THE TAPE JUST APPEARS. KRYCEK HAS ENTERED????? but the guy who shot skinner is there too!!! and is holding krycek at gunpoint!!!!
cig man watches krycek's eyes go all inky (correction: OILY) and black. omg……
cancer man is rolling up 15 minutes late for the UN alien meeting. lmao it's funny in a way. he moved the ufo to a new location! he promises it will be absolutely inaccessible.
someone asks why he won’t bring it to nevada like the others. probs because even the normies know about nevada as the alien place. dweeb.
GASP! they want answers for what happened to skinner. cig man says for all he knows, it's just random. even though they have a drawing of the guy who did it, who is “one of his”, he’s denying it. AND THEY’RE ALL GROANING BECAUSE NO ONE BELIEVES HIM FOR A SECOND LMAOOOOOOO
(so funny to me that despite being on the super secret alien council, cig man still manages to be unprofessional and lie through his teeth to people who seem far more competent, even when secrecy effects the entire planet. something very funny about him lowkey sucking at his job)
so he needs to get the shooter out of the country NOW or else skinner can make an ID and no one can stop the arrest!
back to the agents trying to piece things together. the lone gunmen are babbling on about how to best find what was written on the case but mulder has the secret: rubbing a lil pencil over top LMAOOO. he finds a phone number!!
and who picks it up when he calls but… the un alien club!!!
it’s the well groomed man!!! mulder says krycek gave him the number. and he asks to meet with mulder. allegedly in central park? is this a trap...
so, the dude who did the shooting is named luis. the other agents are saying to scully they can’t look any further than they already have, but she says keep looking, she’s seen stranger. and the lab guy says “i believe she has” when she leaves lmaoooo GET UP. he's down bad fr. pathetic. get up.
i mean i am too but i'd like to think i'd have more dignity about it
mulder in da park. is he alone… are they gonna get him??? the well-groomed man meets him. they’re playing some mental chess with who can ask each other what. so he tells mulder there WAS a ufo at the bottom of the ocean that was shot down during ww2, and a salvage attempt had been made, but there were complications.
so it looks like they’re both looking for krycek. but the well groomed man leaves by saying “anyone can be gotten to”. very very ominous. and mulder calls scully and says check on skinner RIGHT NOW.
she gets down there and he’s NOT THERE??? apparently he was moved to a different hospital. WHO TOOK HIM?????
scully slaps her badge on the door of a ambulance on the side of the road and asks if he’s got a skinner in there. this dude says yeah and he must be freaked tf out, but she’s coming along for the ride now.
skinner wants to know what she’s doing here, and she says she just wanted him to be safe. she pulls her gun out and opens the door and WHO IS IT BUT LUIS!!! WHO FIRES AT SKINNER!
TRAFFIC GUNFIGHT CHASE!!! luis just got hit by a CAR!!! she got him!!!
and she’s SCREAMING at him. screaming like we have never heard before, are you the man that killed my sister??? he’s begging for his life. he says he can tell her where krycek is…
the police roll up, telling her to put the gun down. and she sadly holds up her badge and explains that she’s basically the police but actually better so y’all are kinda late to the situation. they take him into custody. and she’s tearing up. i do not trust that he doesn’t have a poison tooth in there.
she calls mulder, who is rummaging through his car, and tells him that he was right, someone was going to kill skinner. and it IS the man who shot her sister. and allegedly krycek is going to north dakota. mulder says please meet me in new york with two tickets to north dakota asap.
what’s in north dakota, she asks? the salvaged ufo!!!
cut to north dakota cam. agents are rolling up, and how terribly i wish i could see what happened on the flight and ride up to there. how tense the silence was, how valiant the attempts at breaking it were. UGH. someone pls write the fic someday i’m already emotional.
she’s got a vest thing on and it’s cute. i get that we have bigger things at hand but i can still appreciate a vest moment!!
they go into a silo... but the door locks behind them!!! they go 8 stories down!! that is a lot!!!!
now they’re opening a door to what looks like a nuclear waste thing. idk i don't know much about nukes. but it’s just a big empty silo. so they have to check 199 more.
except they hear a thunk in the tunnels!!!
scully finds one of the (barely alive?) burn victims that had been flash banged by krycek just as mulder announces “he’s here”, and a large group of soldiers runs in
OH! they go to start running from the soldiers and he grabs her. it was so subtle but so sweet. i’m gonna gnaw at something.
NOOO! they’re surrounded!!! and cancer man is coming up. she yells that they saw bodies in there and he says “you saw nothing” <- wow absolutely garbage fellow has sunken further than even before by adding gaslighting to his resume
so they’re getting taken into custody but cancer man is going deeper, and he tells the soldiers to take the bodies away. he goes down to the nuclear thingy, and lights up, which i feel would be a bad choice in a circumstance where things were actually nuclear, but okay.
we see something very dark and oily? and hear people throwing up. OH! it’s krycek, with the black stuff pouring from his eyes and mouth. on top of a triangular looking ufo. the oil is pouring into a spiral thingy? and it gets sucked up.
MULDER AT HIS DESK WITH HIS GLASSES ON!!!! AND A HEALING CUT ON HIS FOREHEAD!!! could a man be any more attractive? it’s debatable.
knock knock. who is it? it’s skinner!!!! limping, and not supposed to be back in the office for a few more weeks!
mulder gets up to shake his hand and help him across the room. a right gentleman, he can be. OHHH so this is why i have seen those bloopers of skinner with a cane LMAOOOO
he’s looking for scully though lmao. yeah not interested in YOU, mulder.
mulder thanks him for getting shot because he stood up to the evil. he’s saying no, no, i wasn’t doing that, at all. i don’t know what you’re talking about. but not in a humble brag way, in a denying allegations sort of way. it's interesting. my brain is still stuck on this moment.
he says that he “mistakenly” believed he could bring melissa’s murder to justice. mulder says hey, what do you mean by that? so that is why skinner needs to go see her.
she's out and about, though. she’s bringing flowers to melissa’s grave NOOOOO :((((((( she doesn’t even say anything, she just sits there.
UNTIL MULDER COMES AND BRINGS FLOWERS TOO??? and she has to brace herself to see him.
he touches her shoulder gently before he sets them down. oh my GOSH
she tells him about how someone told her the dead speak to you from beyond the grave, and that is what a conscience is. he says that’s interesting, that he’s never thought of it that way. a man who sees her suffering and doesn't know what to say to make it better.
and she thought that finding the man who killed her would bring closure but it didn’t.
he grabs her by the arm at this point, and says he needs to talk to her. tells her that they found luis dead. whoever was behind it all tried to cover it up.
“i think the dead are speaking to us, mulder. demanding justice” <-stop. stop i’ll cry. you think i won’t cry? you think, for some reason, i won’t sob? i won’t collapse into a heap? you’d be incorrect. you’d be naive and mistaken. you’d be an utter fool, even in a world of fools.
(muffled screaming of me trying to keep it together)
but funny i should type that, because we also hear some muffled screaming on camera, that of krycek trapped in the ufo?? or in the room with it, deep in the nuclear silo?
episode ends with his screams.
WHAT!!!
so much has happened. and really one thing is on my mind: who is gonna hug scully? who is gonna tell her that the anger is okay, even if it’s futile? who is gonna hold the baddest woman alive close and listen? even if all she has to say is silence?
RAAAAAAAAH i’m gonna CRY.
i feel like i could write another thinkpiece here but i also feel like i need to let this one sit for a bit.
scully holding skinner’s hand, scully waiting by mulder’s bedside, scully saving skinner’s life, scully screaming, so guttural, at the man that killed her sister. scully in glasses and scully in vests and scully in coats. furious and devastating and calculating and guilty.
i have some major questions re: krycek and cancer man and why don’t they just deal with him already??? like for real. i know the answer is gonna be that someone from higher up would just replace him, but i do think it is funny how he goes about blatantly committing all those crimes and then clocks into work the next day like nothing happened. and no one can act like anything happened because they’ll tear the fbi down if they do. we all have a coworker like that, don’t we? that sucks terribly but you can’t do anything about it because the inside supports how terrible they suck? sigh. many such cases.
krycek, if i’m supposed to feel bad for you, i don’t. starve in that ufo and see if i give a damn.
skinner denying any concept of heroism… i think he’s doing it to keep himself safe. like he said to scully, any sort of accusations are risky. i don’t think he wants anyone to get the idea that he is a hero, even if he is in reality. i also think he has a complex and a great fear of being PERCEIVED as a hero after the things he did during war, and who knows what else he did but hasn't spoken about. but interesting still that he would deny a gesture as simple as being thanked.
there are many dots in my head. i would like to think they are connecting, but honestly i’ve got matty healy dupe mr. mulder on my mind still just because it was so funny. and then also scully angst. and a deep deep desire to get into that car on the drive from the airport to north dakota, to just listen in on whatever went down. maybe i’ll have to write it if no one else does! isn’t that terrible? when no one else will write the exact thing you want to read, so you have to do it?
(i’ve actually never written fic before so that would be a major commitment. but a one shot here or there sounds interesting)
anyway. lots on my mind. it was a good episode, but kept a lot of things unsolved. which is the point, i know, but they dangle the answers in front of you!! then snatch them away!! i wanted a tiny bit more of the tea.
but i guess, on the other hand, we know what the tea is, don’t we? we know cancer man and the UN alien squad are hiding this, they’re aware that this alien creature can cause radiation, they’re aware of ufos and they’re covering them up. they might not be aware of the exact nature of the creature, but they ARE aware of it, and that it’s a weapon of mass destruction. what isn’t clear is how tf krycek got roped into this. but again i really dgaf about his loser ass.
i’m plotting. i’m pinning things on boards and tying them together with string. and then making predictions from there.
(actually, think it’s cool we see a bunch of different kinds of aliens on this show. there were the poison blood clones, standard alien 👽 fellow, and now the oil creature. fun that we get multiple perspectives and takes on what could be. perhaps scarier than just plain old little 👽, but!!! interesting for worldbuilding purposes)
back to plotting….
#it's interesting reading back (since i wrote these notes yesterday) but what stuck out to me the most were the quiet moments#the silence of their drive to the missile silo. mulder saying nothing as he dropped the flowers on the grave.#scully grasping skinner's hand and listening to his whispers. scully gently asking mulder what happened when he awoke in the hospital#there were lots of huge emotional moments like her screaming at luis and krycek dealing with the monsters he brought upon himself#but sometimes tragedy and profound themes are best told in the silence#how quiet her voice was when she said she though the dead were listening.#and the steely understated rage of telling the others that skinner needed to be guarded and begging the fbi for help#hmm. my brain is still turning these moments around in circles in my head#it was a really good episode! and i have a lot of thoughts! so many they get a bit ramble-y!#which usually means i was very invested!#let me know what you thought off each twist and turn and which moments made you the most emo! i want to know!#juni's x files liveblog#the x files#txf
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Just looked at the digital remains again and oh my god why are we not talking more about the original lyrics to backslide
If I were to backslide, tell everyone we know
Thanks for the last time they came out
...
Why did I not thank you more, saving me those other times
(Don't you dare jump in)
...
I'd rather you hurt me, than do nothing at all
I'd rather you let me down, than just gas me up
I'd rather you cuse me, than do nothing at all
...
You won't make a sound, pick someone else I won't be around
Trapped inside your smile, don't put me on trial
Don't you see you take, everything from me
#christ this is so sad#oh my god i am havimg Feelings#something about the#why did i not thank you more#saving me those other times#(dont you dare jump in)#this is breaking me#im kind of glad those lines didnt make it on to the album i dont think i would have survived it#im curious as to why though#i really really hope its because he was doing better when actually making the song than when he originally wrote it#but i dont know#im worried about him#not to be pathetically parasocially attached to a man i dont even know#but these lines just. scare me.#i hope hes doing okay#i hope hes surrounded by the people he loves#and i hope he genuinely knows how much of an impact hes had on so many peoples lives#and i hope that doesnt scare him too much#it feels like these lines are about us#i dont know i cant articulate why this is hitting me so deeply but it is#and i hope josh is doing ok too#its easy to focus more on tylers thoughts and emotions because hes the one who verbalizes them#but i worry about josh too and i hope he also knows how much of an impact hes had#i just want to hug them both so bad#and it does reassure me that in most of the songs theres still an undercurrent of hope and a desire to keep fighting#twenty one pilots#tyler joseph#josh dun#clancy#clancy digital remains
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i have more screenshots but idk if tumblr can handle it
#submission#hanamura yosuke#listen i do in fact think about this scene so much. so so so much.#i cant help but think about what saki used to tell naoki about yosuke considering how during an early meeting with naoki#hes brought up how he hated yosukr as well#but listen i think for me the main thing is how much i love when yosuke's big brotherness comes out especially when someone younger#is in a vulnerable state of mind#look at how hes trying to speak to naoki and reach out to him yosuke really does want to help here#and i have such a soft spot for the fact that its yu's slink with naoki i just love when yosuke shows up in yu's slinks#but yosuke being here was so important. and they wrote him so gently#god im down bad i know im not even coherent here im just!!! really! overwhelmed!! with! emotions!!#he wants to reach out to naoki but hes also careful to do it in a way that doesn't patronise him or talks down to naoki#yosukes not the best at speaking and being articulate and he's really just doing his best here to meet naoki where he is and aaaaaaaaa
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They sanitized being queer so much in Veilguard and for what. Your Inquisitor still needs to be binary, and god forbid if they transitioned between games. And for what, Cullen and Solas? Girl, dump him and take his gender. It won't fix you but it'll make shit funnier.
IF more than one romance actually mattered id understand it being too complicated to allow for transition, but seriously? only solas gets more than a codex entry afaik, how hard it would have been to have the m inquisitors record voice lines and have gareth david lloyd record alternate versions of like..any gendered lines which i assume there aren't many of. they should have dropped the illusion that romances had content and just done a 'did you romance solas?' toggle that any inquisitor could turn on lol
#ask#anonymous#sanitised really is the word. when ive finished the game maybe ill properly collect my thoughts on it#im just personally a fantasty homo/transphobia enjoyer. i know some people prefer escapism jn fantasy but#i think it's a good and interesting/safe way to explore feelings and dynamics surrounding being queer#and having veilguard be as surface level as it is wrt transphobia just feels like it isnt fully capturing feelings surrounding being trans#relatability isnt everything but how do you make a trans character feel real when they face none of the struggles#the average trans person faces?#ofc. may be a product of being made by middle class-ish canadians in a liberal city but i think it may be due to ea / sensitivity readers#veilguard spoilers#also im mad about the dorian romance because it feels like they dangle it in front of your face. but also no sera or josie????#theyre literally alive no matter your worldstate. they could have so easily thrown a bone to gay and lesbian players lol#bull's whole deal being butchered is another thing let's not even get into it. weekes you CHOSE to do that.#sorry these are tipsy rantings. but. i get my dissertation results back this week and wrote about negative emotion + transness#in fiction so if i get a good result maybe ill be able to write something real about dav#as it is im too scared to properly think about the topic bc im nervousdjwjdjwjej
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if u think narcissa is irredeemable what do u think abt regulus?
have i accidentally made it seem like i think regulus is a good person…. he’s my emotional support holier than thou self pitying manipulative failguy who can’t shake his superiority complex no matter how hard he tries and no matter the au..
#i do think he’s redeemable though. lol#he was a child#and he died as a child trying to defy voldemort#<- i think that says a lot about him that reg antis refuse to open their eyes to#he so fiercly believed in defying voldemort (!!!) that he went on the quest alone w/ kreacher as a seventeen year old kid and died-#in the process#failguy who fails even when he tries to do good :/#and the letter he wrote.. dear god..#he was just a boy#anyway yeah i think he’s redeemable / but that doesn’t mean people owe it to him to forgive him#he was a death eater and did horrible things#and lets say he survives the cave and tries to do good#<- i believe he could and possibly would if we take into account the letter and his betrayal#doesn’t mean everyone has to forgive him#anyway i find him the most interesting when he doesn’t really try to redeem himself#and mostly just tries to live#and even in modern aus im not really interested in ’good regulus black’#that’s my emotional support fail aristocrat turned failguy or faildyke who’s annoying and judgmental with a superiority complex he can-#never quite shake / or doesn’t even realise he has#<- why did i put all this in the tags.. my god..#anyway. my regulus black is morally gray at best#always self serving and self pitying <3#asks
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tdov was like a week ago already but I just wanna say when I came over to vacation slash help my sworn brother move flat he told me, "ever since you said you wanted to get top surgery I've been thinking about it. it's straight up number two on my bucket list"
#bakuspeech#number one is a house bc obviously. if u can own a house wouldnt u#he was very drunk at that time of the evening. I was not bc I have the constitution of a hot air balloon and any stimulant will blow me up#(relatively new development. france fucked me up big time turns out)#we held hand on his bed for like the whole evening. it was honestly very funny in hindsight but we were extremely earnest in the moment#and Im like. working on this thing as well. I dont got meds or therapy lmao Im bootstrappin here#but yeah early last year his bf offered to get me meds and I... turned it down... I think I was worried abt like. idk. something#but one year past looking back Im fully like that was a stupid move you shouldve gotten meds. youve once again fucked urself baku#but yeah with that kinda realization Ive also come to realized I've somewhat? accepted. that I'm just gonna be. like this#this in light of a number of likely chronic stuff too (hence my balloon-like constitution lmao) and#that's kinda bled into the rest of me without me really noticing#but him bringing that up fully unprompted... kinda jolted me out of it#its just. really incredibly sweet. that someone doesn't want me to settle for what I make do with#and like. preps for that work. just kinda held my hand and told me it's possible to do this actually#I didn't really express how I felt very well in that moment I think my brain is very bad and I process emotions with like a day of delay#but. well. Im thinking abt it Right Now. so yknow thats the kind of impact that had on me lol#not super sure why I wrote all this down here really. I think I just want a good n nice reminder that object permanence is real#and I exist in my friends' life even when Im going insane in a hole by myself#and with the power of friendship we can alter the universe's plan for ourselves and also kill god#that's that. anyways I eat lunch now and then pass out probably. last night was... eventful lmao#but!! very good things on the horizon hopefully. well manifestly we hold hammers and we use them#have a good day lads. let's go out and slay monsters under a highway
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