#it could be such wonderful angst

[kingbyx]

Finally got around to watching Metal Family and had an awful thought.

What if, despite having little natural talent for the guitar, Dee somehow ended up with a violin. What if he was an incredible natural violinist. Maybe he gets one from the high school band program or something, and finds out he’s really good at it.

Dee is so happy, he’s musically talented like the rest of his familly, he’s not an outcast. He brings home his violin one day and Heavy and Victoria are soooo proud of him and Glam can’t make himself look at his son. Can’t make himself listen to him rehearse or go to his concerts. Dee thinks he’s disappointed he got into classical music instead of a more traditional heavy metal instrument like Heavy, that he can’t play the guitar, and Glam can’t bring himself to correct him.

Imagine it. I’m going insane. Is there any fics like this yet???

[ktkat99]

Jason comes back from the dead and, as he's still a bit out of it, heads to the manor.

Crawling straight up through six feet of compacted earth is hard, especially after waking up suddenly in a coffin, so after he makes it inside, he sits down to rest on the couch.

And immediately falls asleep.

Hours later, Bruce returns home to find Jason's body, covered in dirt, dug up from the grave and left on his couch.

[benevolenterrancy]

Scholarly peak is catching up on recent literature

[wandixx]

I've seen a lot of different takes on Fear Toxin/other fear causing stuff (Yellow Lanterns Ring or something)(later just called Fear Toxin cause I'm lazy) but here is another one.

Danny seems like he isn't affected by Fear Toxin because his biggest fear is that his accident changed him so much he is no longer human, he can no longer truly experience human things.

So when he gets lungful of fear Toxin, he feels normal. He was antsy before, because c'mon, it's a rogue attack but it's not worse. Or so he thought. Because the anxiety lingers. Not enough to register as abnormal just this slight hypervigilance that makes you see things about yourself and your surroundings that you'd never realize otherwise. He'd realize he doesn't blink as often. He'd realize that if he doesn't consciously focus, he sometimes seems to not touch the ground. Forgets to breathe. He can't feel his own pulse at time. He'd realize people will miss him when he's walking down the street as if he was invisible (people just don't care about everyone they pass by). When he'd look straight into his reflection, he'd look slightly to the left. Not enough to actually name anything that was wrong but just stretched enough to fall on the wrong side of the uncanny valley. If he just caught his reflection in the peripheral vision, it'd be vaguely shadowy creature with glowing green eyes and white smoke instead of hair. Overall he'd be just wrong enough to be distinctly not human.

For everyone else, he'd be just a dude. Literally couldn't find more normal dude than this dude. Will pass as absolutely normal human unless someone is specifically looking for ecto-ghost stuff. Even most magic users wouldn't clock him at the glance

Tldr: Fear Toxin makes Danny perceive himself as some sort of eldritch horror but not enough to make him believe he'd actually be affected, while from outside perspective he's Just A Dude™

[divine-draws]

Take me to the docks, there is a ship without a name there And it is sailing to the middle of the sea The water there is deeper than anything you've ever seen Jump right in and swim until you're free

[caelanglang]

you cannot save a past that you cannot remember...

but maybe you can learn and accept that it will always be a part of you… somewhere within.

close up shots :

[aroaceleovaldez]

yknow actually we don't utilize the whole "gods may appear differently to different people" worldbuilding thing enough for jokes. Like, with love gods like Aphrodite and Cupid (and presumably also Aphroditus, the Erotes, and etc) it's kind of inherent, but also like.

literally in TKC we have a whole interaction of Sadie going "Wow Anubis was so hot..." cause she saw him as some hot goth teen and Carter being confused as hell because he saw Anubis with a jackal head. In the same conversation.

Where's more scenes and jokes like that. There's a lot of opportunity here.

[egophiliac]

I have a question about the jp server pickups, since I really want knight Sebek, but I’m trying to save gems for bloom malleus + the 3rd tsum event that’s gonna show up sooner or later. Iirc, after knight Sebek, the next story update’s pickup had all of the previous story cards (ie cerberus Ortho, general Lilia, and knight Sebek). Is this true, and if it is, did it include a token system like the dorm pickups where you can just do 100 pulls and then buy the specific card you want directly? Because if that is how it works, then I can wait until then and be sure I won’t have to go to 200 for him.

we did indeed get a second chance at those three when 7-7 came out! I'm pretty sure there was not a token system -- though admittedly I don't 100% remember, sorry! 🙇 I took a quick search through some past posts/videos from people who tend to include the gacha and news stuff, but I didn't see any mention of it, so I'm inclined to think there really wasn't one. :( they were all separate pickups with their own pull counts rather than a combined one, if that info helps at all.

speaking as a strict f2p who hoards keys/gems like the lovechild of a dragon and a magpie, given the choice between saving for a story card and a birthday card, I'd go for story -- it does require a lot of patience, but there are way more opportunities to get past birthday cards, both from the anniversary events and the rerun pickups! tsums is a bit harder to say anything on because Eng doesn't follow the same event schedule, but it's a longish event and those pickups let you have a free 10-roll, so I think they're also a bit easier to save up for.

(ALSO speaking of free rolls, starting with the fifth round of birthdays -- the kutsurogi my room ones -- the birthday boy/union jacket/bloom cards have had a separate pickup that you can get two free 10-pulls at by doing missions! I got a bloom Jade from it a couple weeks ago. :D meanwhile general Lilia is the only story card I've ever managed to pull, so...I'm probably kinda biased. whoops.)

[swedenis-h]

You look perfect, you look different.

( @keylimeart )

[crustyfloor]

All those bubbles around Mizi.., fragile and impermanent just like that smile on her face, and that innocence she once had.

Bubbles are easily able to disappear, become broken and then nothing at the flick of a finger. It takes little to break such a flimsy thing. Naivety is just as destructible.

And leaves that person with nothing but their misery.

(I’m DEAD)

[dootznbootz]

Do y'all ever think about how it's possible that Zeus' first verse in Thunder Bringer is about Penelope and his second is about Odysseus?

She's a "Damsel in Distress" (She's cool af, she just needs some help and misses her idiot), the suitors are prideful and hope to do what Zeus is singing about to her. Pressuring her to choose. Her "true nature" is revealed when her trickery with the shroud is found out .

The 2nd Verse about how Zeus is also the God of Justice and punishing them for the crew's crime of slaying the cattle. Odysseus saves himself to see Penelope again, meaning his crew/people will die. They died for touching Helios' cattle. Odysseus also saves himself AND Helps Penelope by killing all the suitors for their crime of flirting with/bothering Penelope and making her cry, while also bullying and eventually planning to kill his son. Many of Ithaca's men are killed for their pride too. Thinking that they're worthy of Penelope when Nobody is. Flirt with the Wife, you get the knife.

Penelope and Odysseus DO take each others' suffering away when they reunite as well. 🥹

[nachosncheezies]

In defense of late-canon x files (including the revivals)

I was thinking about this poll after I commented on it, and I kinda want to be brave and say more.

Short answer to the poll's question before I go any further: If you're a new fan and a sensitive sort who thinks you'll struggle with your blorbos Really Going Through It and you really need a happy ending, I suggest you stop at the end of season 8. Do not pass go, do not look at spoilers. Disregard this post entirely, close the internet, and go look at something that makes you happy. (Also fuck every part of society that characterizes sensitivity as inherently weak and bad and some kind of personal failing, you are valid.)

That said, "quality" as a concept is entirely subjective, and the question of whether or not there's a decline in quality for any story is wholly subjective, too. In the case of x files? I'm not convinced there is a decline. I am going to be upfront that I haven't yet watched past season 8, though I am almost completely spoiled on events after that - and the reason I haven't watched yet is not because of how I know events are going to unfold, but simply because I don't want it to end!!! Ohh, the tension between "I CAN'T WAIT!!!" and "Nooo don't be over D:"

When I first came to txf fandom on tumblr and gradually became spoiled about what happens in late canon though, I was often left uncomfortable and tbh kinda queasy about it. As I said in my comment on the poll, the hate for especially the revival and IWTB, or to a lesser extent even seasons 8 & 9, is very well documented. But! There are other takes to be found here on tumblr if you figure out where to look, and my feelings have changed!

The thing is, I have yet to find myself in any fandom where there isn't a vocal subset of fans who dislike the story after a certain point. I am not joking when I say that no one hates the things they love as passionately as sci-fi and fantasy fans. In my experience, it often hinges on the extent to which a viewer has strong notions on where they would like the characters to end up. In particular with series where shipping is a dominant component for the bulk of a fandom, I have almost universally found that there comes some turning point in the story where "let them be happy you cowards" is the dominant view, and things that compromise the attainment of a degree of romantic stability and/or domesticity are, to many fans, annoying at best and despicable at worst. But! As one tagset on the linked poll said:

and I think for any fandom, that last tag especially is so so so important. (I think that's harder for people watching a weekly series live, bc you have so much time to analyze and speculate and dream before the next breadcrumb drops, but I digress.)

So why am I saying this and how do I apply it to x files? Well, I eventually found that there are also a subset of fans who find redeeming things right up to the very end and actually quite like the whole thing! The things that I had seen people rage and ventpost so much about honestly never quite sounded to me as "out of character" or "untrue to the story" etc as those same ventposts made them sound. And I've discovered I'm not the only one who felt that way. Do I love that the spooky squad had to go through all of those things? No, those poor guys D: Life is hard and they have been through so much trauma. But do those events and their choices make sense to me in light of everything that came before? Yes! And I honestly can't wait to see them fight to overcome those things, breaking, healing, always learning, always growing, always getting better.

So if you're wondering "where does it go wrong"... well, I'm a completionist, as many people who've answered that post are, but also my personal opinion is that I don't think it does go wrong. If you're new and interested in exploring why I've gone from "vaguely queasy" to "excited" about the whole thing, or want to maybe balance out the impressions you're getting about the later seasons before deciding whether or not you want to see the whole thing, I'll put a few blog names in the comments.

Final admission: even once I started feeling a little more confident in the possibility that "actually ok maybe I'm not crazy, maybe this all kind of is in character and does make sense", there was one big plot point that I was NOT looking forward to and I thought I would never be comfortable about. In hindsight, I think my discomfort came from the negative responses being SO seemingly universal that I hadn't stopped to let myself truly consider other possible interpretations on that point. (I mean my initial instinct when I first read about it was, why are we mad about this?? CSM is literally the most unreliable narrator in history???? it's obviously fake news?????? this must be either a fever dream someone's having or it's a misdirection ploy against whatever shadowy forces might still be lurking?????????????? but for whatever reason I guess I had halfway written that off.) Happily, just last month there's a new post-s11 novel out, and although reviews for the book as a whole are mixed, it seems to have laid the groundwork for resolving that plot issue in a way I think most fans would be broadly happy with. If you're interested in being spoiled about that and seeing how, I recommend searching #perihelion on @agent-troi who liveblogged reading it with receipts, scroll back chronological-style to the first post on the subject and see how it unfolded. (And never forget that Dana Katherine Scully is the queen of denial as a coping mechanism lol)

Everyone's mileage will vary. Each person can feel however they want! But for anyone new, I wanted you to know that the very many ventposts you might be seeing are not all there is to this show or its fandom. Some of us love it despite - or even because of - all the things that went "wrong". I think we just don't talk about it as much.

[cirilee]

damn pops, you live like this??😔😩

[bellaxgiornata]

After watching the first few episodes of Daredevil again last night and seeing some of Matt's childhood once more, I had an idea for some emotional hurt/comfort for Matty to write for FFTD. Not sure how we’re all still feeling about that series, but I had "The Rooftop" written and planned to go next, but now I think I might slip in "The Stress of It All" before that.

We’re definitely circling Second Angst Arc now, friends.

[bignostalgias]

[pushing500]

Look, she's paralysed and won't really get in the way of Mechi's work around the colony. Mechi gets a psylink neuroformer, and Angst gets to spend nineteen days facing a bleak white wall in the corner of the laboratory. Win-win!

A distress signal? How curious. Archotechnology is always tempting...

Mechi went to investigate with Chief of Security Ratchet and Deputy Rocket, only to discover the place was crawling with gross flesh. They left with zero archotechnology and a renewed disgust for all things biological.

Finally, everyone meet Hummel, the newest wild man on the map. He looks like the world's most irate, washed-up foxboy. I love him.

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