#it had to be before covid

[valyrfia]

friendly reminder that you can still get covid in 2024, we're in the middle of a massive wave right now and covid is NOT "just a cold". take necessary precautions in crowded places, on buses, on train, or on planes. it's better enduring a few strange looks when wearing a mask than getting ill and/or (god forbid) lifelong complications from long covid!

oh also, if you've got symptoms–yes it's a pain to have to buy a test–but PLEASE test. we're still in the middle of a pandemic however much we all want to forget that fact and we can still do our bit to protect others!

[trek-tracks]

Do you ever think about how Kirk had a "best friend" on the ship before Bones in Gary Mitchell, a man who:

a) deviously manipulates him into heartbreak for Mitchell's benefit,

b) shames him for not being "fun" enough when he's in a position of power,

c) openly insults intelligent and powerful women,

d) treats everyone cruelly as soon as he gets power and tries to seize everything for himself,

e) finds it fascinating that he can stop a person's heart for fun, and

f) tries to murder Kirk instead of admitting that he's a danger to the universe,

and then chooses to replace him with Bones, a man who:

a) tries to save Kirk from heartbreak at every opportunity,

b) gets him to smile and relax by being genuinely interested in how he's doing and telling him that he's great and respected just as he is,

c) openly toasts intelligent and powerful women,

d) treats everyone kindly as soon as he gets power and tries to use it to help as many people as he can,

e) cries about how people suffered when medical treatments were less advanced, and

f) says, "Jim, I can't destroy life, even if it's to save my own. I can't."

because I do

[natandacat]

Theres no words that can describe the complete alienation of having severe long covid. One infection, caused directly by political decisions to remove public measures, and i cant walk. Can't stand except on really good days which are getting rarer. Sitting is a privilege i dont always have. Cognitive work is too much of a risk to consider for the moment. I live in constant fear of going back to being utterly bed ridden in the sense that i cant even feed myself, drink water, speak, move my limbs beyong my fingers and toes. For days and days without relief.

Nothing feels real. Every gain can be lost in a literal second. And on top of this, the fear of reinfection. The very real possibility of death, given how weak a single infection has made me when I was healthy and young. The even more real possibility of a worsened state, where there are no good days. That means death, too. If i am constantly in a state where I cannot move, i am going to have to resort to euthanasia because it is not a bearable existence. I can barely tolerate it when it know it will end. Last time was 14 days and I am still so traumatized by it 2 months later nothing feels real.

And on top of that, i am being told that my life doesnt matter. Covid is not a real concern. Let it fester. Even if the stairs in my building didnt lock me in, all public spaces have become lethal to me. I cant see my friends because they cant avoid exposure when theres a wave. To love me, you must live in a horrific world where no matter how many precautions you take, no matter how much they ostracize you, you might still cause my death.

Covid is a privileged issue they say. Im not even in the room for it bc i cannot be in the room. You can move your body, youre not afraid of death, you havent lost everything that makes you *you*, but im the privileged one. I cant even emote the way i used to. If i get too excited, too happy, i cant move. I talked to countless people who cant work anymore, are losing their jobs their houses their partners their immigration permits but no. Covid doesnt matter. I dont matter. Everyone cheered when i got covid bc they got to party for new years eve. I hope it was a good party. I will never agree that it was worth my life.

For the past 2 years ive had to share classrooms with students and professors who know everything about my story, who have seen how disabled i am by long covid, who ive begged to mask. They all refuse to mask. And i have to sit there and pretend its not a cosmical level farce that theyre talking about social justice and ethics and just what good people they all are. Not to mention that most of them have revealed themselves to be zionists. I have to sit next to an iof soldier and act as if its ok that she gets to sit in this classroom, except im not even sitting in the room because cases are too high and im too weak to be there physically anyway, so im on zoom. At least i get to remove my earbuds when she speaks so i dont have to think about the atrocities she has committed.

[kradogsrats]

Revisiting the Arc 2 Opening

So particularly @raayllum had done some detailed analysis and predictions based on the comparison of Viren and Callum's variant arc 2 openings, but I want to return in the post-s6 space now that we have Claudia's opening as a third point of comparison because that addition has an impact on how the original two relate to one another and what each one is saying.

The basic sequence of each opening is the same: from the initial star-map zoom (associated with destiny/time-blind vision of future events) the camera circles the principal character, placed at the celestial Sea of the Castout, as they turn to stone. Aaravos's giant hand swoops down and plucks up the statue, now contextualized by size as a pawn or other game piece, to admire from within his prison with a satisfied smile.

The most important point to understand about this sequence is that Aaravos doesn't personally turn Viren, Callum, and Claudia to stone, but is able to capture and manipulate them as pawns because of it:

This doesn't seem like much of a distinction at all, particularly because the petrification that results in Aaravos's satisfied claim on each mage is a representation of dark magic, which is... what allows Aaravos to influence/control those who resort to using it.

We get the direct link between the heart, dark magic, and Aaravos's influence/control explicitly spelled out by s6, and (as many noticed before)... go figure, in all three openings the corruption petrification begins at the heart.

Now, Callum is actually the only one who knows explicitly about the connection between dark magic and influence/control by Aaravos. Viren has sort of intuited it by the end of s5, in that we can see by portions of his dream that he's aware on at least a subconscious level that he was not in his right mind during at least the latter half of s3. This is why the distinction between the petrification being a factor allowing Aaravos's control, rather than an effect of it, is important—the conflicts and dynamics being represented are more complex than that. For example: Viren's opening, it turns out, isn't about Aaravos at all.

That's a Reach

When the primary arc 2 opening, featuring Viren, was revealed as part of the lead-up to the s4 release, there was a decent amount of speculation as to what it meant—the connection with Avizandum's death was recognized immediately, but what did that signify? Would there be further-reaching direct consequences of Viren's involvement and the archdragon-killing spell? Would Avizandum himself somehow have expanded significance? What is Viren reaching for: Aaravos, redemption, another chance at life?

Mostly, it set the tone for s4 and arc 2 in general, particularly regarding Viren's character arc, with strong mood and themes of helplessness, the past, regret and consequences, cyclic harm, and (of course) death. Not even to mention the looming presence of Aaravos and his relationship with Viren as his pawn. It was a vibe.

It wasn't until after s5 and/or s6 that the opening came into full context: Avizandum, in his final moments, turns his back on the battle with Harrow—the cycle of violence that he, himself, has contributed to perpetuating—and reaches for the child he will now be unable to protect from that violence.

Viren, as it turns out, does the exact same, as we see explicitly in s5 and continued implicitly in s6. Like Avizandum, he reaches for his children, unable to save them from the damage he has already done—all of it through dark magic.

On its own, it's an elegant implementation of the parallels TDP is so fond of to demonstrate that both sides of this long-time conflict have inflicted harm on each other and themselves in very similar ways for generations. Even at the time of s4, however, we had Callum's opening obviously derived from Viren's, and after s6 we have Claudia's, as well—both of which come with their own context that builds off of Viren's in different ways.

Lost Child

So while Viren's opening actually has very little to do with Aaravos (prior to Aaravos's actual appearance grasping him as a literal pawn), Claudia's (and Callum's, which we'll come back to in a bit) is difficult to interpret as not being related to her personal dynamic with Aaravos.

Interestingly, Claudia's opening places her at a very specific point in time, since it's visibly between two major physical changes to her body/appearance—her lower leg is missing, severed by Rayla in the Sea of the Castout at the end of s5, but she still has her long hair from before prompting Terry to cut it off for her early in s6. Even more specifically, she has the half-and-half split of black and white hair, which is already majority-white in s6e1:

This is Claudia in a moment we don't see on-screen—when, having failed to collect Aaravos's prison and not knowing that Viren has been offered and rejected the Infantis Sanguine spell, she turns to Aaravos in the dark of night and is willing to do anything to save her father.

I could do a whole thing here about the nature of Claudia's perception of Aaravos as both a paternal and divine figure, but the relevant part is that her only association between dark magic and Aaravos is a positive one—as far as she's concerned, Aaravos gave humanity dark magic as a benevolent gift, and her main reason (at least that she's willing to voice) for hesitating to give it up is that Aaravos kept his promises to her and it would be right to keep her promise to free him. In her opening, she goes from pained and defeated to looking upward with total trust and hope—looking to Aaravos the way she would have looked to Viren.

Her petrification shares the single tear with Viren and Avizandum, really cementing her place as another loop in the cycle of harm between humanity and Xadia that has dark magic at its heart. That callback to Viren's opening also puts hers in dialogue with him as much as with Aaravos, placing her in the same position as he is in a reflection of his horror and dismay that she has followed his path and example so closely.

Given that Claudia dramatically changes appearance (and, to an extent, attitude) immediately after this opening is introduced, it's possible that we'll see a different variant for s7... but given the end of s6, she actually hasn't really changed all that much. She has doubts about how to proceed with her life after Viren leaves, but as soon as Aaravos re-enters the picture, her conviction is back. She may not have done any dark magic after s6e1, but I don't think that's because she's decided to give it up.

Key Framing

Given the context of Claudia's opening, Callum's opening becomes unusual because it references Viren's without tying back to Avizandum and that cycle of harm. It's still on some level about dark magic, but Callum's relationship with dark magic isn't tied up in family and inheritance like Claudia's and Viren's are—instead it's focused entirely on fate vs. freedom, and on Aaravos specifically.

Callum's opening appears only for s4e4 ("Through the Looking Glass"), where he is possessed by Aaravos and it is established that his single use of dark magic is what allows that control, and for s5e8 ("Finnegrin's Wake") when he uses dark magic a second time. The shared opening puts those two episodes in obvious dialogue with each other, since s5e8 never makes explicit that the danger of dark magic for Callum is control by Aaravos—something he has already asked Rayla to end his life in order to avoid.

The focus in Callum's opening, both by its visual prominence and Callum's own gaze directed at it, is the Key. While Viren and Claudia's petrifications end the way Avizandum's does—with the single tear—Callum's ends with the Key in a blaze of light.

I expect we will see Callum's opening return for s7, possibly even as a primary opening, but it will almost certainly be recontextualized at some point and possibly even changed to a variant that reflects that new context. The Key is an element that will contribute to Callum's doom or salvation—or both, as a key can both lock and unlock—and its prominence in his opening reflects that and will likely be informed by how that resolution develops.

All of Us, Stardust

Speaking of alterations to the openings:

The final, altered version of the Viren opening kicks off s6, acting as a last, fun little extension of the "is Viren dead?" cliffhanger of s5. Aaravos's hand reaches down as usual, but instead of firmly grasping the petrified Viren, he very briefly hesitates before pushing it slightly, instead. The petrified Viren then crumbles and collapses into dust.

We first saw (or rather, had described to us via frantic convention attendee note-taking) this opening at the first reveal of s6e1, which was originally shown without any of the scenes revealing Viren to be alive. There are a lot of ways it could be interpreted, from a straightforward "he'd dead, Jim," to my own kind of fanciful theory from the time regarding Viren, dead or alive, having been made unusable by Aaravos as a pawn.

One way to contextualize this opening is with this old illustration from Patience, which ties in closely with the Aaravos chess/pawns motif (and was a significant part of contextualizing the arc 2 opening as "pawns"):

Now, there are a lot of things about this image that are important, not least the confirmation/reinforcement of the chain of manipulation of dark mages by Aaravos across thousands of years from Ziard to Viren, with the implication of Callum in the future. What I'd like to call attention to is that in chess, tipping over a piece is a gesture specifically used only with the king, and specifically to indicate that you are resigning the game and the opponent is victorious.

I don't think there's anywhere we've seen Aaravos truly lose, except for possibly when he was imprisoned, because his plans have levels of redundancy that mean they don't depend on any given individual—a game of chess hinges on the king, but Aaravos is essentially playing six or eight interconnected games at once, and a loss on one board only reinforces his remaining pieces on another. Losing Viren, deliberately or not, empowers his influence over Claudia... exactly as we see in the sequence of arc 2 openings. It would be difficult for them to have replicated the tipped-over/toppled king imagery with the petrified Viren without having to do some labor-intensive camera work on the existing opening pattern (e.g. do they show the ground when he falls? What even is the ground?)—so I think there's a strong likelihood that him crumbling to dust is meant to have a similar resonance.

Anyway, I'm kind of dancing around some complex theorizing and analysis of Viren's death that I go back and forth on depending on the day, but basically I do still think the important takeaway from this opening variant is that as far as Aaravos is concerned, Viren is off the board. That it's the opening for s6e1, rather than a special use for s6e8 (as Callum's variant openings are handled) is also IMO a positive sign regarding Aaravos's loss of control and direct manipulation of Viren over the course of s6. I don't think we've heard the last about Viren, and between Claudia, Soren, and Kpp'Ar there will definitely be a multifaceted interpretation of his legacy with significance in s7.

Opening the Final Season

Ultimately, given the dialogue between the three (four?) variant openings we have seen so far for arc 2, I think for s7 we can expect:

the Callum variant will appear at least once

at least one new Claudia- or Callum-based variant, OR possibly even an Aaravos variant

a new variant (possibly one of the ones from the previous point) to close out the arc for at least s7e9

That's my fevered ramblings about this 20-second repeated sequence, thanks for coming to my continuing insane TED talks on this and other ridiculous topics.

[puppyeared]

Why are ppl scared to call it what it is and say we’re still going thru covid on top of seasonal illness. Like. That’s pretty important right. I was watching the news and they were like oh yeah we have an unprecedented number of flu cases “as well as other sicknesses” without actually saying Covid. No announcement abt vaccinations or masking or anything. Also if I hear someone joking abt “war flashbacks” for mentioning covid I fucking hate u

[byemambo]

What should I do? Oh my, I'm in pain You are the only one who can heal me Please come back to me

PENTAGON - Dr. Bebe

Spooky Season K-Pop [11/31] | dir. ZANYBROS

[dollsahoy]

Made another Teen Me Would Have Loved It vest

[ocdhuacheng]

bad decisions were made and tickets were acquired (my midterm is the next morning)

I wanna watch look back in theaters so bad. When’s it coming here

[spacer-case]

doctor marco i will nevr eat apples again

[scentedluminarysoul]

It's just disappointing seeing all these "progressives" bending over backwards to wish Trump well and condemn violence

No, George Takei, I don't want to keep Trump in my heart

[dear-ao3]

beginning the arduous task of packing up my college dorm since im graduating next month and it is making me incredibly emotional for no reason

[catwouthats]

“How can this many people simply vote for Trump in the first place?”

✨Gaslighting✨

And

✨Teaching themselves apathy because they have been pushed to the brink and are only focused on their own survival and think that this guy will give it because he

gaslight themmmm✨

[olive-nothere]

It’s kind of insane (and unfortunately predictable) how western society acts when it comes to public health, specially after the pandemic. The amount of times I see people not wearing masks when they’re visibly sick or see people say they don’t want to wear masks because it’s uncomfortable to wear… you know what’s actually very uncomfortable and outdoes your feelings about wearing masks? BEING SICK.

Seriously, it should not be controversial or considered weird to wear masks when you’re sick; it should be THE BARE MINIMUM TO WEAR A MASK WHEN YOU’RE SICK, COVID OR NOT. How any of these people are able to go outside while sick and not care about other people’s health is insane to me. Despite the obvious fact that being sick affects everyone’s health, what about the people who are most vulnerable?

Wearing masks while sick should be the norm and honestly we as a collective should shame people who are sick and not wearing a mask in public.

[angelpuns]

I think looking through my art over then years is really interesting because in middle school I drew a lot of ( terrible ) fanart, drew a LOT of comics and generally just drew whatever I wanted even though it was pretty terrible.

In highschool I drew a LOT of really serious, really grungey and really naked-heavy art ( Like...I drew naked women very very often because I was a closeted trans man :/) and I also drew a lot of ocs. I was mentally not the worse but I was masking super hard and wanted to understand the kind of struggles other people went through ( I was one of those kids that liked reading really sad stories and 'longed for trauma so that my being the way I am would make sense and be justified' anyway I did have trauma just could not recognize it as such because my life was ' too normal'. Not trying to like trauma dump or whatever I've just thought about it a lot )

Then in college/after college ( during a really difficult time in my life ) I drew a LOT of men. Especially sexy/sexualized men. But my art was less serious and more story driven. Still not comics but a lot of behind the scenes lore was happening. Also drew a lot of OCS. My college art was p weak cause I just wanted to make oc art at the time and all my instructors wanted me to make symbolic pieces that 'meant something' and I was very against that. ( I also was out at this time and was unmasking a lot more - but I also was living through some mildly traumatic stuff. I don't like to call it traumatic but it might have been that. I worry the stuff I think is traumatic isn't and I'm totally blowing it out of proportion. Anyway this isn't venting just observations )

And NOW I make a LOT OF FANART AND A LOT OF COMICS AND A LOT OF WHATEVER I WANT Which is hilarious cause we've come full circle. I don't draw sexual/sexy stuff at all anymore cause I don't enjoy it and I never enjoyed it ( I drew a lot of it in college/after college cause the people around me thought I was asexual and I wanted to prove I wasn't, because I really am not. Might be aromantic tho. Anyway drawing sexy stuff vs not drawing it means nothing in relation to my sexuality ) I also am working on drawing stuff that actually does mean something even tho I hated it in college. But I'm doing it the way I want to. ( this was all because of a comment I got on a fanfic. Wherever you are commented I hope you're doing well. You made me want to create art and fics that have a deeper meaning )

I think currently I am happiest with my art I just wish I had more time for it. Like yeah skill wise I'll probably never be where I want to be - as is the nature of being an artist - but I'm having fun and enjoy sharing my art and that's what matters.

Anyway I'm gonna make a year of art summary but I am also gonna make a 25 years of art summary for my birthday cause I think the comparisons are just funny year to year. Like I'll have gaps and stuff obviously but the circle of art I've been going through is so wild

Also side note none OF THIS IS MEANT TO BE A VENT ANY MENTAL HEALTH/TRAUMA THINGS ARE JUST OBSERVATIONS I'VE MADE/SPENT TIME THINKING ABOUT OKAY SO PLEASE DONT WORRY ABOUT REASSURING ME I DO PLAN ON TALKING ABOUT ALL THIS IN THERAPY OBVIOUSLY IM MENTALLY ACTUALLY P DECENT RN THIS WAS JUST ME RAMBLING ABOUT THE VERY SILLY ART CIRCLE JOURNEY IVE BEEN ON AND ALSO SOME OF THE THINGS THAT INFLUENVED THAT JOURNEY AH

[bigmammallama5]

gonna go get the new covid booster tomorrow ya girls gonna feel like SHIT