#it is fucking fascinating so far

[dandy-dog]

I finally caved in and started watching a playthrough of Pathologic Classic HD and ough,,,

[thetrinitytest]

[nat-20s]

Honestly cannot stop thinking about the "well it was never that far from the surface, mate" line from Donna when 14 is surprised that he's now willing to be casual and upfront about being attracted to men bc like. Iirc season 4 is one of the few seasons with either almost no or straight up no times where we see The Doctor have a bit of a cheeky flirt with a man. I think the only real season 4 cheeky flirting is with HER and it's in the "no stakes no intentions just goofing off flirting with a close friend" kind of way. How the fuck did she clock his ass?? Did Ten and Donna have a Hot Girl Chat that the audience wasn't privy to? Is it a straightforward case of Donna having good bi to bi recognition? Does she still have enough of his memories to be like I KNOW WHAT YOU AND THE MASTER ARE? I want DETAILS I want ANSWERS

[penderbend]

i have been thinking about malevolent 46 all day theres something about it that just. fucking. works so well. it’s so perfectly eerie and frightening with such great moments of arthur and john reacting so wrong to whats happening. that specific moment in the fairy ring really just latched into my brain it was so wonderfully and whimsically terrifying. the loss of control and arthur’s reaction is so fascinating to me

[moretheta]

oh duazul... woman that you are.... mother that you are.....

[claitea]

joining you in the pla ruined my life club. also the idea that people confessing to volo about how much they liked him and they wish he wouldn’t have turned all evil on him would actually make him feel worse bc they just liked a facade? man. trying to hurt me huh. it’s like he’s allergic to genuine connection and is obsessed with making people hate him for no reason

YEAHHH ITS LIKE. what i like abt pokemas's volo is that we're getting a better look at exactly how he thinks and feels and what it is is that he literally. cannot identify when people are being positive to him anymore. he is Always on the defensive as a survival tactic so Everything must be treated as some kind of slight against him or a manipulation. because clearly something happened in the past to make him that distrustful! he literally cannot afford to trust again or whatever made him be this way could happen to him again!

what volo needs is a friend. but he wouldnt know one even if they fell from the sky, collected the plates and then beat his ass at spear pillar.

[xxplastic-cubexx]

what is your favorite thing about charles and your favorite thing about erik? separately, as in what you like most about their characters :]

a devious question this one is, my friend!!! it's hard enough for me to explain my thoughts cohesively, but having to pick ONE thing i particularly love is difficult. with characters like charles and erik, theres been so much done with their characters over the decades and so they have so many components to them that make them so interesting and fun to observe. BUT I TRY FOR YOU TODAY. under the cut i kinda ramble and the size of this text box makin me anxious

i think if i were to be simple and broad, what i enjoy most about charles is his determination to help others, even if he isn't really thanked and/or if people don't even like him. ofc, this isn't to say he hasn't done wrong- to be honest, the fact he does wrong/questionable things at times is another aspect of him i really enjoy, maybe because- broadly speaking- he's meant to be altruistic (intent vs outcome and all that). i don't know if that's super exciting to most people, but it is for me

as for erik, my reason for liking him is easier to explain tbh. To Be Simple And Broad, his progression from villain to antihero over the decades has been fun to observe (as much as i have so far anyhow) and analyze. i think to be a bit more specific, him using his rage and pain as justifications for his villainous actions is definitely what compels me the most: hurt people hurt and the sort, an idea i've always found interesting (something something vicious cycles and the like). yet now, he recognizes this wasn't really. A Just Thing To Do and is beginning to change that, which i enjoy

[pterodactylterrace]

Syrax is the mother of Danny’s dragons!

Uhh… not what cannon has told us so far, but apparently it’s Condal’s world and GRRM is just living in it.

Mind pointing out which egg is which?

I see a red with black and gold shading, gold and white, black with green highlights and lavender.

Danny’s eggs are black with scarlet ripples and whorls, deep green and bronze, and pale cream streaked with gold.

You can argue that the red and gold ones are Drogon and Viserion, but there is no bright green egg like Dani has in GOT. Drogon’s egg is also mostly black with red highlights. So is the black and green meant to be Rhaegal? Did fossilization somehow change the egg colors this drastically? Wouldn’t they turn back into the colors they were before they turned to stone? What happens to the lavender one? That one just gets stolen or broken somehow since Rhaena claims Sheepstealer at some point this season rather than hatching her own? While we are on that, why get rid of a whole ass dragon in a show about dragons?

Like, they knew exactly what Dani’s eggs looked like. If they wanted to somehow retcon that Dani’s eggs came from Syrax, the least they could have done is make them the same colors and design instead of doing their usual “close enough!” Dragon color scheming.

Also, are we even going to see the green dragons aside from when they are in battle? We have the black dragons in spades, but this season we have seen Vhagar from like two miles away. Where is Sunfyre? Why can’t we watch Dreamfyre react when Helaena’s son is murdered in front of her? Why don’t we even get to see Dreamfyre light her son’s pyre? Rhaenyra got a whole episode to grieve, and Helaena got paraded around during a funeral procession where her son’s wagon gets stuck and almost dumps his body onto the street.

We get it, Condal. Green = Bad. We are told Aegon assaulted a servant before we are introduced to him, literally ass first. We understand that you don’t want us to like him. You’re about as subtle as a cannon. Thing is… I’m really stubborn. The more you try to tell me how horrible they are and how pure and gIrLBoSs Rhaenyra is… the more I root for the Greens.

Go ahead, make them as bad as you want. At this point, it’s so far removed from cannon that we can laugh at it. It’s straight up just Rhaenyra fanfiction. I will gladly sit here and twirl my cartoon villain mustache and cheer while they do the most fucked up shit and attempt to blame it on Rhaenyra.

Here’s hoping Condal stops sucking his own dick and sticks to the book cannon for season 3 instead of making this travesty.

Like, I don’t know GRRM well enough to have an opinion on him, but as a fellow writer… what Condal is doing is just disrespectful. He was supposed to adapt the story he was given. Not make his own.

[eremin0109]

God, I can't stop thinking about that one particular moment from episode 5 where Junmo reaches his hand out to Gicheol after getting slashed on the back. It's such a natural reaction too, Junmo is not acting here. He's genuinely got caught off-guard by that attack, bleeding profusely all over—his first instinct was to reach out to the man in front of him. And Gicheol is horrified and manic and fucking livid all at the same time, pulling Junmo gently to his side with one hand while the other empties his handgun into the bastard who dared to attack his right hand man. It's such a surreal moment.

This entire scene is masterfully done, especially from Junmo's perspective. He wanted to tag along Gicheol to know about the "fishing" deal, but he couldn't have anticipated this attack. It wasn't like the last time they had to fight together between just the two of them, when Junmo had orchestrated the whole thing just to gain Gicheol's trust. There was no actual threat to his own safety then.

But that was not the case here. Junmo's thrown into this bloodbath simply by his association to Gicheol, with a very real possibility of dying there. He could've abandoned Gicheol, abandoned the entire goddamn operation because fuck it, he's got an entire life ahead of him. He's got a wife he loves so much and the prospective of having a family with her. So why should he throw all of that away for a 2-rank promotion that may or may not even come, if the corrupt police system is anything to go by??

Yet, despite everything, Junmo stays. He stays and fights for Gicheol, saves his life and almost dies doing so. Sure, he might justify it later (mostly to himself) that it was all for the mission, because Gicheol was more useful to them alive than dead.

But in the heat of the moment, Junmo couldn't have been bothered to put up that mask. He wasn't "Seungho" when he took that damn blade for Gicheol, he was very much Junmo. And a part of him would've been absolutely terrified to realise that he was willing to die for Gicheol, just as Gicheol was ready to kill for him.

[tompoose]

if you had to smite from the earth either nixon or garfield who would you eliminate. history will continue unchanged except if you smite nixon all the nixon memes disappear and if you smite garfield the orange cat goes with him

I would sacrifice anything that is dear to me to scrub this animal from all the veins of culture that it has slithered into. I was frustrated with the Garfield comic strip from the twentieth of August, 2024.

Jim Davis has given up trying to claw from the mud. He has drawn a cat looking at the reader and telling a wet joke. By making Garfield a mere static image to surround text, Davis has taken the work of his heart and lowered it to the level of the borders that surround a pop up window. My feelings on this topic eclipse and obliterate any other nuances to your question. If ever presented a shot at this king, I would take it.

[rosenfey]

🌿💀 no spoilers but emmrich romance is everything to me as someone who grew up playing in graveyards because she enjoyed the quiet and as someone who has been perhaps oddly fascinated with death ever since she was a child and someone who spent a lot of her academic time researching death rituals and imagery and someone who always cries when she thinks about how we are so different from those who came before and yet so similar and how history is the closest we can get to connecting to the dead and how reading what they left behind is the closest to magic and resurrection and most importantly how incredibly freeing it is to feel seen and understood and to realise that I might be odd and weird for my fascination with death yes but that it is okay and and and-- I need to lay down 💀🌿

[thecryptkeeper]

POSTWAR: ART BETWEEN THE PACIFIC AND THE ATLANTIC 1945–1965

once again sharing pdfs of books found online that ive needed for classes

[batsplat]

favorite motogp rivalry not involving any of the aliens ?

you know, the fact that this is so tough shows just how inescapable they've been in the sport. still, I'll give it a shot

you can go several directions here - either stick to the present, or go for stuff this century that's more in the background, or go way way back. I'm reasonably fond of that eighties early nineties period and the varied rivalries they produced between all the anglos... you know, spencer, gardner, lawson, rainey, schwantz, doohan, that lot... (admittedly some haven't massively endeared themselves to me with their post-retirement punditry, but it is ever thus with athletes.) couldn't do that justice here but a few quickfire thoughts

lawson and gardner is one of those fun ones where you have two completely different blokes competing who just fundamentally Did Not Get Each Other at all. gardner was cocky, forthright, brash, whereas lawson was far more reserved, cool-headed, cerebral... and, of course, they didn't didn't just understand each other, they also didn't like each other at all. infamously gardner was not exactly thrilled when his long time rival was signed for honda (gardner's manufacturer) and gardner had to find out by reading the papers

also they shot this safety ad together and apparently didn't speak to each other the entire time, even though they were in close proximity for hours. don't you just desperately want to recreate this with certain riders, hm

anyway, of course there's also rainey and schwantz, probably the one everyone knows... as ever, important they didn't get on and hated to lose each other

all culminated in the dramatic 1993 season, with schwantz determined that it would finally be his year... and it's a classic season, one hears (even if one is unable to judge for oneself), but a title fight with a sad twist when a collision between the two of them at misano ends rainey's career while handing schwantz his only 500cc title. in the end, it also ended schwantz's career, who retired at the end of 1994. of course dorna promised they'd never go to misano again, which they stuck to for a full fourteen years

then again, arguably the vibes were a bit too good back then between riders, like what's all this then (from schwantz)

actually, I suppose none of those were technically 'motogp' rivalries, but. same difference. there's a few in the years after... I do find the whole 1998 250cc season deeply compelling, but it also would feel like cheating because what makes the harada/capirossi thing so fun is that valentino is there acting as the third man. very much the dynamics between all three of them that are so great. plenty of spats in the years after that, but something like dovi/iannone is more just good fun than a proper 'rivalry'. you do generally need some proper development for a real rivalry, and the aliens just monopolise so much attention this century. so you do basically have to fast forward to... well, the last few years, where the most notable ones have been pecco/fabio and pecco/jorge martin

now I do like pecco/fabio conceptually - it's interesting to have this rivalry between two guys who were being moulded into being the marc challengers by their respective manufacturers and then to have had marc suddenly disappear on them. the way it suddenly thrust fabio into the spotlight, how it put all these expectations and pressures on him and essentially made him title favourite overnight... vs how pecco is the closest motogp has had to a dominant force in the post prime!marc era and is constantly uneasily grappling with that legacy. you've got all this uncertainty and insecurity and asterisks and the shadow cast by the greats (who haven't even had the decency to go away completely), the weight of those legacies... also, two kinda funny title fights, if odd ones (especially '22 lol). main problem is that their wildly contrasting fortunes whenever they were title rivals mean they've managed to avoid actually fighting each other on-track. insanely frustrating and the real asterisk for this rivalry

pecco/martin has been strong stuff, yeah. super contrasting personalities, such visibly different riding styles, and considerably more material when it comes to on-track battles than pecco/fabio (still more work to be done though). that intra-manufacturer arc has been fun to follow, this stand-off between ducati's golden boy and the challenger with the eternal underdog mindset. both have a tendency to feel like the world's against them (which is a trait many riders share, sports is such a wonderful breeding ground for victimisation complexes), both are so incredibly unreliable. both rather volatile in their own ways, both battling their own insecurities. also, it doesn't hurt that they've got a bit of shared history as teammates back in the day. would've been interesting to see them as teammates in motogp, curious how jorge reacts to this latest twist... the needle between them has been fun, especially the silly valencia stuff, though I wouldn't mind some more openly hostilities between the pair of them - and I do feel like marc's reemergence has inevitably ensured the two of them are paying less attention to each other. even martin's grand big fuck ducati thing is now more about being rejected in favour of marc than about pecco getting preferential treatment. still, they've got time, could give us plenty more to work with

which is my favourite of those? I don't know... the tricky thing about the older rivalries is that I believe very strongly in evaluating rivalries by actually watching their competitive output and there's only so much of them I can watch. I guess by process of elimination it's currently pecco/martin? for a hot second there I suppose pecco/bez looked like it could be quite interesting, but they didn't really fight for the title and remained friendly so. whatever. it'd be nice if everyone else picked up the slack some time soon

[ghostlyboysstories]

My sleep schedule is mostly nonexistent, so I usually write in depth analytical responses to people in discord about why people are fascinated about certain characters, or why people are interested in certain shows. I could be writing my novel in that time, but instead I’m a nerd who loves nerd things. Like torturing people with their own anticipation while I type out a response for thirty minutes.

[transingthoseformers]

Okay upon further thought it would've been so fucking interesting to see how MECH regarded Shockwave.

Just... Imagine them meeting Shockwave by chance, that would be such a terrifying scene for them. He'd have opinions on their projects, morality varies based on how one is writing Shockwave, but just. Imagine that. This also fits for Hazard but this post is for more than just the tfp au

Like also consider how CYLAS was on the Nemesis from s2 ep19 to s3 ep8, so a fairly significant while. CYLAS fascinates me for so many reasons and I feel like it would've been so fucking interesting if Shockwave noticed the pretty obvious Frankensteined together technoorganic (which MECH must've done well enough for CYLAS to live as long as he did with relative ease compared to all the other things that could have happened)

[ratcandy]

also whats weird is like, that mushroom gotta be like ATTACHED to his brain?? no way he doesnt have brain damage from that. also its not hard to imagine that with all his intense mushroom use, that he'd have some sort of substance use disorder. and he is, suddenly, in a DEATH CULT. actually. i dont feel like anyone talks about the last part. ?? doesnt anyone wonder how hard it would be to adjust just suddenly. being in a cult? we dont really know how his life was before but if he wasnt in a cult beforehand then id imagine all the Cult Stuff would be at least a little uncomfortable.

I guess it would depend to what extent we're leaning into the parasite actually being a cordycep. Because if we're going full throttle on that, teeechnically cordyceps don't attach to the brain at all and only control the musculature; hence why I always hc'd that there's two different mushrooms involved, with the menticide doing the brain fuckery and the cordycep doing. The everything else

But at the same time it could very well just be advanced cordycep and we can make up whatever rules we want ! But YES, regardless, there is some brain nonsense happening that would ABSOLUTELY have everlasting effects on this ant. Not to mention if the cordyceps DID have control of his muscular system, then his entire body has got to be feeling the effects of it as well.

So he's here, in a death cult, probably having to re-learn how to walk and suffering extreme withdrawal symptoms as well as memory loss.

ANd no nobody ever considers the full ramifications of the death cult because everybody is a coward and won't consider how horrifying cults actually are!!!!!! And to be a disabled old man suddenly thrust into a scary ass scenario where people are being sacrificed and brought back to life around you while you can't even remember how old you are or where you've been the past few years because time was fucked while you were Shroomed, it HAS to be HORRIFYING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But at the same time it really just works out from a cultist perspective. He's already isolated, vulnerable, and probably only halfway lucid at any given point. He'd be extremely easy to manipulate and keep dependent on the cult. After all, they're keeping him safe there, it's dangerous out there. (Not to mention him just feeling some inherent loyalty to the Lamb upon becoming sober, which certainly wouldn't do him any favors)

Like what's he going to do? Leave? Stumble out, suffering withdrawl, into the Lands of the Old Faith?? As an old man??????????

He has no CHOICE but to make peace with where he is. Despite all the questions about if his FAMILY is even STILL ALIVE. Despite having no idea what he DID while under the influence. Despite the HORRORS around every CORNER

It's FUCKED!!!!! It's AWFUL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!