#im sure it does happen obviously

[orangechickenpillow]

Okay but I love the little tongue clicks that Astarion does I don't think I've ever heard a voice actor consistently do something like that it's soooo good

[oceanwithouthermoon]

no but actually why do people blame kokomi for the existence of the kokomins and the men who are creepy about her? when CANONICALLY, people are more than capable of not being attracted to her for various reasons like being in love with someone else or simply not seeing her that way regardless of sexuality or other factors, why then do people say "oh her power is SO strong that even grown married men and her own brother fall for her"? its not because her "power" is so strong. it has nothing to do with her. its because those men are dickheads, and its baffling that people want to shift the blame onto her.

[gale-dekarios]

im not saying all of my posts are bangers, but its hard not to notice that posts i make about other companions easily break 100 notes no sweat, with the upper limit breaching 1k, to outliers of well over 4k, but whenever it's about wyll, it's crickets. i dunno, youre allowed to interact with anything you want to, and this isnt a call to reblog from me, specifically, this is the same for a lot of wyll orientated posts ive seen, but its just odd. and by odd i mean racist.

[britneyshakespeare]

you know something i don't like about modern culture (and i wonder to what extent the prevalence of dating apps has to do with it) is that you're, seemingly, not supposed to ask people you just meet in real life on a date anymore? you're supposed to ask them to see you individually to hang out, and you're not supposed to call it anything...? people act like declaring intent is impolite or something.

this absolutely sucks if you're a woman on the receiving end of this kind of thing all the time, from men you don't wanna see privately that way. i've felt so much guilt about it in my life. whether i say no or yes. i know i'm giving that man hope that it's a date, that i wanna go on a date with him if i agree to see him for coffee or whatever. but if i don't wanna go on this undeclared date, i have to reject the very concept of spending time with him at all, which feels SOOO much meaner and more personal, doesn't it? it feels like that to me. and if i do go, and i don't wanna go on another one (because i never enjoyed the it-pretty-much-being-a-date element of the time), it feels like i'm crushing his hopes after puffing them up just a little bit.

and it's like. "date" is not a dirty word. we have so many expectations nowadays around things. women used to sit around and wait for a man to propose to them, and it would be basically the only decision they could make in their life. not even really the choice to marry, but to whom they get married. and obviously marriage was very serious.

as courtship continued to develop into modern dating and boyfriend/girlfriend culture, it sort of decentralized the importance or marriage and valued getting to know someone you like romantically, with the implicit assumption that you're doing it with the attempt to better choose the 'right one' by spending quality time with them. decent enough. although even the words boyfriend and girlfriend are much more serious than they used to be. they did not always imply a serious commitment like they do today, especially if you're... basically, just not a kid anymore.

people have a certain amount of expectation of what anyone over 18 should do or want to do with a "partner"—like, if this were the 1940s, i would've had several "boyfriends" in my adult life, but i never called them that, and the modern sense of that word would not be accurate. if i went on a date or two and flirted with them, that'd be enough to say "yeah i went out with a boyfriend." i'm mostly indifferent to this change of vocabulary, but the point is i have no word to describe any of those guys that i just gave a chance, never felt much for, and didn't wanna keep seeing. not bad things; it's just experience.

and if we aren't bold enough to call things dates for the sake of the atmosphere not losing the low-stakes nature... it's like, no, it doesn't do that. it's just two people spending time with the elephant in the room. perhaps that makes it feel more relaxed if both people really are doing it with the same intent, let's-just-see-if-we-get-along, figuring out if you like someone you don't really know very well yet. testing it. but like. that can be a date. that's what a lot of dates are. when you meet the person on a dating app and just grab coffee without setting higher expectations, you wouldn't hesitate to call it a date. if it's that person from your college class, that's ruder or more presumptuous, somehow?

a date doesn't have to be a candlelit dinner with the violinist standing by. a date doesn't have to be high romance. a date doesn't have to end with a kiss or lead to a commitment, if things go decently. a date certainly doesn't have to result in two people having sex. a date can be nonchalant and friendly and just trying to discover if you have any chemistry with this person who piqued your interest. why is that NOT the initial expectation anymore? why is "date" a dirty word? why?

[lycankeyy]

@ me telling my brain that it needed to split hanzou from me so I could stop relating to them so much that was a BIT /JOKE

[oldtestleper]

big spoilers for new info as of tonight's episode but eye am soooooooo curious about the extent to which galicaea is still opposed to cassandra in some way. obviously in her high elven form she was trying to get kristen as a follower rather than have her continue to investigate the nightmare king and find cassandra, like she was NOT trying to put her thumb on the scale in that way. and from the sound of it she and sol basically respectively absorbed/dissolved the domains that once belonged to cassandra and ankarna through numerous calculated efforts of their clerics and evangelists, with sol and helio acquiring exclusive association with the sun and summer, and galicaea acquiring exclusive worship of the wood elves and becoming a goddess defined by certainty and eternity, driving away doubt. so is galicaea still playing the game even after being "restored" by wolfsong, trying to keep rage and doubt out of the world that is so well set up for her. was she ever really restored or was it doomed to be a cosmetic overhaul after the high elves got behind it again. like how christian fundamentalists dress like hipsters and open really trendy and successful coffee shops

[vamptastic]

romancing astarion has thus far made me exponentially less attracted to him. can we go back to you serving face in the background and contributing the occasional quip while i go do my hero things? i can't listen to the pickup lines i cant. they're bad they're not good they're bad. and i don't know if hes doing this on purpose as some kind of sick and twisted test of faith or he thinks he is a master casanova. also if astarion can't lift a backpack full of plate armor he sure as hell cannot lift up my entire PC. sorry.

[quietwingsinthesky]

hey wait why was eleven able to heal river’s wrist? accepting that she’s time lord enough to take in regeneration energy (because i’m assuming he can’t do this for just anyone,) wasn’t the whole point of the s7 finale that he was out of it? no more regenerations? before getting a boost from deus ex gallifrey or something. so where did the river healing energy come from.

[natjennie]

i dont quite know how to phrase this but im curious if yall know what I mean. ive been thinking the past couple days that i dont know if I've ever really felt like a person. like, it never really feels like im doing anything, things are just happening to me. do you know what i mean? like I'm never fully "out of body" seeing myself from the outside, but i do kinda feel like I float like two inches removed from myself at all times. like sometimes it doesnt feel like my body has me controlling it, it's just doing what it wants and im up here in the head part like, separate. idk if any of this makes any sense at all but yeah it just kind of lowkey always feels like im watching a first person youtube video instead of like, actively doing things.

[twochildreninamoteldemo]

Will admit I'm not a huge fan of busty asian beauties being on the spn kinktober prompt list, I thought we as a fandom had collectively agreed that deans obsession with it was...well racist. I'm totally kink tomato but fetishization of race is one grey area that I have never ever seen done respectfully lol

[galacticlamps]

actually ascension needs its own post since that's the one with the most details to speculate over and im starved for soho talk so i will talk to myself if need be

First the cover again, because I kinda can't get over it:

my only thing is that I had been hoping we might get Lizbeth on a cover again since she's never been on one of the boxsets before, despite being the 2nd person credited on all 4 of them (even if that's just alphabetical, still, she's the only one of the four main characters who never makes the cover)

But letting that go...

I know we already kinda knew the brief for this one but damn I didn't expect it to go quite this hard. Maybe that's just because the Parasite & Ashenden covers were (comparatively) similarish to each other and I was so pleased with Unbegotten's, and then got so used to it as the placeholder for Ascension while they kept postponing it, I wasn't expecting anything this colorful or detailed or with what I can't help but register as Fun New Outfits even though these are still like, pretty damn basic as far as costumes go. Still, it's a different vibe from everyone in suits and trenchcoats on every cover, technically. (Oh the woes of being an audio fan such that two characters owning sweaters actually does qualify as new information)

On top of just being visually delightful though, I know we knew religion was gonna be a fairly big part of this one, but I didn't actually expect to get quite this much of it - though I'm glad of it for a number of reasons. The BF twitter already made the ineffable joke so I don't have to, but also yeah I did very much spend all of season 2 episode 4 of good omens half convinced Samuel Barnett & Dervla Kirwan were about to pop up around any given corner (if you will go around being gay supernatural and horrible at your messy bureaucratic jobs in midcentury soho then I'm sorry, this is where my brain's gonna go) - so, fuel to that fire. But in terms of actual important things, at least one of my Soho wishes looks to be being granted because we have a Rev Edward Folgate on the cast list, which must mean we're finally meeting Norton's father, even if his mother & brother don't appear (which they could, technically, I've definitely seen BF not list all the doublings on their cast tabs before). Religion, domesticity, and the nuclear family are all things that absolutely fascinate me when it comes to Norton's character, so getting any amount of story involving his father & his church is something I've been actively hoping for for a long time now.

(I will say I'm a tiny bit bummed Saffron Coomber isn't on the cast list to play Mia again, but I kinda figured she wasn't going to be since Greg Austin's Armitage, who's making his first recurring appearance after originating in Unbegotten, was listed ever since the boxset was announced - presumably if she was also returning, that would've been handled in the same way. But since Unbegotten ended with Lizbeth and Mia going on a date, I still held out hope. Who knows though, maybe things did go well for them and Lizbeth just has a better work/life balance than Norton so she can date someone without them getting dragged into every scifi plot. I know that's not a very common accomplishment for any Torchwood agent, but a gal can hope)

At this point I know I'm completely in the realm of speculation & even wishful thinking, but I'm really really hoping we get some more clues as to Norton's overall timeline in this one, and I have a feeling that even if there's nothing as direct as dates given, the events of a plot like this one are going to heavily influence my personal interpretation of it.

To say that life & death are major themes for the soho crew feels wildly reductive, but even by Torchwood's standards and taking into account its origins as a piece of media with Jack Harkness & his newfound immortality at the heart of it, the living/dead status of this bunch has always been fantastically up in the air to me. Obviously Ghost Mission introduced Norton as kind of a ghost before revealing more obvious ghostly characters later on to which the title might have been referring, but his being from the past did beg the question of his survival into Torchwood's present era all the same, which Outbreak later alludes to much more directly, and his habit of showing up via hologram in multiple stories only further obfuscates any certainty we might have about where & when he definitely can be said to be alive and well. Then you've got Lizbeth and Gideon both being effectively 'brought back to life' via paradoxes that prevented them ever having died in the first place. Again, they are very very far from being the only Torcwhood characters this happens to (for a sprawling EU, it's really rather impressive how often & in how many different ways Torchwood as a whole manages to circle back to being about like. chaotic undead queers at the end of every day. though I suppose that consistency is part of why I keep falling in love with its different iterations again and again). That's without even getting into the question of Norton's dubious fate in God Among Us - and I say dubious because I know some people take that to be his ultimate death, but I personally think that reading something as vague as that as having any kind of finality rather goes against the spirit of this whole world/series, not just because I want him to live. (There are obviously other ways to make him survive/reappear, but I don't see this as a River Song scenario where we can safely assume one of his earlier-released adventures had to happen at the end of his personal timeline). But wherever God Among Us falls for him, he does very much meet God in it - or at least, a god, since the sentinel in Unbegotten is also described as a god of sorts, and even if he doesn't ultimately have the status of the god Jacqueline King is playing there, Unbegotten is still full to bursting with ghosts/undead/came back wrong/echo characters to continue underscoring that life/afterlife theme.

So all things considered, even allowing for the fact that we know Norton's twin hobbies are lying about himself and abusing time travel to suit his own ends/ever-shifting alliances, I find it difficult to believe we could get through a whole 6-part boxset about religion & death without something providing some kind of compelling evidence about where this adventure fits in among his other run-ins with apocalypses and gods and ghosts and dead-but-still-here characters/creatures, so I'm very much looking forward to any further exploration on that front.

And lastly, and least intellectually, I really want to know what the hell 20th-century Torchwood's obsession with Reginalds is. Reading through the cast list, I had to do two separate doubletakes over the character 'Sir Reginald Peebles' - firstly, because I had Reginald Rigsby on the brain, this being Soho (and the other Troughton brother being so active on BF's releases for this same month) - and secondly, because reading this in conjunction with the announcement for the July monthly adventure in which the new main Torchwood guy of the 20s is apparently called Sir Reginald Dellafield, there was a brief moment where I took that monthly release to be a tie-in with Ascension. I don't expect it to be, but damn. was it really so popular a name?

anyways, catch me thinking about those stained glass windows for the next couple months I guess (and knowing Torchwood Soho, for a long long time after it comes out as well lol)

[cdroloisms]

dreambur hate sex goes hard

i mean they don't hate each other tbf but i saw the words c!dreambur and sex so sure i'll support the agenda

[my-thirteenth-reason]

I JUST BUMPED INTO HIM WHILE I WAS BEGRUDGINGLY MAKING MY WAY TO THE MALL WHAT THE SHITTTTTTTT. DAY HAS BEEN MADE MOOD HAS BEEN LIFTED SMILE HAS BEEN SMILEN I AM NO LONGER EXHAUSTED I AM SKIPPING TO THE MALL HAPPILY

[eldritchmochi]

listen i have a LOT of really pretty smut books but i think the one i got in the mail this week takes the cake

[the chromatic fantasy by H.A.]

beautiful spot foil on the front cover plus guilded pages??? hell yes. hes a weighty boy for his size and *feels* incredibly luxurious in ways book nerds are sure to appreciate plus the art is absolutely gorgeous

very soft, sketchy style evocative of like 60s and 70s animation. every bit ive peeped at so far has been gorgeous but not super tightly cleaned like a lot of modern comics, so it feels really organic and raw, even at a glance. vvv refreshing

i preordered on a whim back in like, march when the announcement from @silversprocket crossed my feed and i have Zero regerts. i cannot wait to dive in and actually read it

[pankomako]

still going wild over this. in case anyone was wondering

[scolek]

the thing was i had literally like 10 minutes of chuang left when i went to go check on the situation. so i had to watch attention post discovery.