#it's not even like I don't have people who maybe if I brought it up they would say yes or if they brought it up I would say yes

[johanna-swann]

I actually have sooo many issues with 911 lately that haven't even got much to do with any ships.

Like. They wrote out almost all of the side characters. Chris is gone, Linda and Sue are gone, Athena's kids are gone (even though Harry just moved in with her and Bobby again? Seriously, where is Harry?), Ravi is gone, Carla is gone. I know the GA maybe don't care that much, casual viewers might not even have noticed that this many characters have just vanished from the show, but in my opinion this is one of the things that give a show running as long as 911 life. Having a big cast is a good thing. Otherwise things are going to get very monotonous very soon.

Actually, that's my second point. They keep repeating storylines! Every season Hen and Karen have to fight a custody battle over one of their kids.

Every season Eddie ends up realising he has a lot of repressed trauma and issues which keep him from leading a healthy happy and free life.

Every season Bathena realise that they have communication issues and they fight about it, but then something traumatic happens and they forgive each other without ever really talking things out.

Every season we are reminded that Maddie's most prominent character trait is "traumatised", the writers just alternatingly bring up Doug again and sometimes the ppd arc.

Every season we see Buck being somewhat restless, looking and searching for something that will bring him true happiness and cycling through love interests that never stick around and each time when you think "oh, there it is, he's getting somewhere now" the writers go "BEEEP! WRONG!" and we start all over again. [This is not just about recent events aka Tommy, the break-up and Buck potentially going back to his 1.0 ways, this also happened in season 6 when he had his "it doesn't matter what other people see in me, I'm enough" revelation only to suddenly be like "omg, Natalia just sees me".]

And Chimney- he had his moment last season with the wedding episode, Kenneth Choi really ate that episode up, but his most prominent character trait is "Maddie's supportive husband". There's really not that much going on with him otherwise.

Another point I briefly touched upon above is consistency. Like Harry moving back in with Athena and Bobby and then just vanishing. Or Gerrard being more like a slightly unfriendly grandpa than an actual antagonist in season 8 when he was still spouting slurs in season 7.

And the timeline! We talked about this before ("last March", Mara's fostering to adoption timeline, Tommy tranferring to harbour "5 years ago"), but the newest "Tommy was actually Abby's Tommy" twist just adds to that. Tommy was with Abby for over 2 years. They were engaged. This was at a time when he was still at the 118. Tommy dated Abby presumably because he was in denial or maybe because he was hiding. In either case, wouldn't his team at least have heard about his fiancée, Abby the dispatcher? Wouldn't that have rung a bell when Buck eventually brought her around only a year or two later? Tommy did talk about his private life at least a little at work, even under Gerrard. It just doesn't make sense. (Not to mention this seems wildly out of character for Tommy who around the same time also said about himself "being single is easier".)

Then there's the pacing. This was a huge issue in season 7. They jumped from one personal soap opera drama to the next without taking any breathers, had almost no procedural in their drama the whole season, still somehow decided to spend one third of the entire season just on the opening disaster and also squeezed in a "Bobby begins for the third time now" episode. But okay, it was a shortened season, there were strikes, they switched networks, they were under a lot of pressure - I'll cut them some slack. At least they set up a bunch of interesting stuff for the following season.

But we're in season 8 now. The renewal was announced very early, they had a lot of time to plan this time. Also they have almost double the episodes they had last season, there's really no need to rush any of the major plots. I am done cutting them slack.

They wanna do a 3 part opening disaster again? Okay fine, you have the time now. I feel like they could've easily done it in 2 episodes (especially 8x02 felt a little "eh"), but okay. Better than the breakneck speed you were going at befo- Oh, what's that? 8x04 flying in with a steel chair. You resolved 70% percent of the plots you set up last season in one single episode with no build up, no emotional pay off and no lasting consequences? And you also squeezed in multiple unrelated calls at the same time? Damn, okay then. Good-bye potentially interesting storylines. Fuck me for being invested I guess. I thought there would at least maybe be some follow up in 8x05, but no.

Now that Halloween episode wasn't bad, it was actually the best episode of this season imo, but instead of following up on previously established conflicts and developments they just hit us with new Wilson family trauma and conflict that was also immediately fixed again. And now 8x06 has speedrun and dumped another storyline that had potential to go to deeper and interesting places. Not gonna talk too much about that though because this post is about the show as a whole, not ships.

And I am not yet convinced that there will be much more to come on the only thing that's left from last season: Eddie's deep dive into his trauma and repression. It's totally possible at this point that being told "you deserve nice things" by a random stranger actually solved all of his problems, it would be very in tone with 911's new style.

What are they even gonna do with the rest of this season? Revisiting the Hotshots set sounds fun, but ultimately inconsequential. You know what's great about a regular old procedural drama with ~20 episodes per season that comes on weekly? You have time. You can let the viewers sit with their emotions and thoughts for a week and keep them engaged by stretching things out a little.

But why should I bother getting emotionally invested in problems the characters are gonna solve within the same episode anyway? Or rather, even if I wanted to, how am I supposed to care if you don't give me the time to develop any feelings about anything that's happening? "Henren lost in court and are now completely forbidden from seeing Mara at all!" Damn, that must be so har- "JUST KIDDING! Ortiz is exposed and everything is perfect again now." Oh. Okay then, I guess.

Bottom line: The characters are all stuck in their own hamster wheels, they keep cutting side characters that could bring a breeze of fresh air (I'm honestly surprised they even kept Josh until now), they rush through all the storylines a such a ridiculous speed that I don't even have time to feel any sort of way about it, they don't even try to keep a consistency or sensible timeline going and they seem to strongly prioritise random funny bits that'll entertain the very casual viewers right now in this moment (tiger call, Billy Boils, Bee-nado, the 'Stache tm, "wait, it's the same Abby?", Gerrard being a fangirl at heart) instead of playing the long game and catering to people who actually pay a little attention to the show.

[On that last remark: I'm not talking about hardcore fans who analyse every single frame here, I mean casual fans who've watched the show on and off again for a while and who may not be involved in fandom but genuinely care about the show.]

I mean. What am I even still doing here? The show is treading water and I end up disappointed more often than not. I'm still holding out a little hope that they actually will do something interesting with Eddie and his sea-monkeys, but I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't.

[angelltheninth]

Arcane Characters Make Food for You

Pairing: Jinx, Vi, Caitlyn, Maddie, Ekko, Vander, Silco, Sevika, Viktor, Jayce, Mel x Fem!Reader

Tags: fluff, established relationship, domestic fluff, kissing, making food, teasing

Ko-Fi | Rules | Fandoms and Characters

A/N: I already wrote this on my old blog but now is a good time to re-write it.

Jinx knows how to cook pretty well, surprisingly enough. Or maybe not so surprisingly given how she's always the one making things and experimenting. However that also means she might make some really weird meals.

It's something you'll have to deal with if you're with her and might have to develop a strong stomach. She already has it because she grew up in Zaun and ate a lot of different things. For you she wouldn't recommend some of them yet and she will try her best to make something that you'll like. And she won't get too offended if you don't eat her cooking right away.

"I made ya some breakfast, ta-da! It's a little sticky but don't worry, eat your fill and I'll clean up the mess later. Don't look at it like that, it might not look pretty but I promise ya it's so good. I could eat this every day. I hope I'll get to eat it together it with ya every day, sugar."

Vi doesn't know how to cook because she never had the opportunity to learn. The first few dishes are bad, like really bad, almost burn the toast and eggs type of bad but Vi she isn't the kind of person to give up. She'll keep trying until she gets it right.

There have been times where she did burn things and she won't let you eat it since it's not right. She wants you to have the best of the best, even if she didn't. Might get a little distracted when you're in the kitchen with her so she prefers to cook by herself even if you're there with her. Regardless of how many times she gets it wrong she at least wants to learn to cook your favorite.

"Yes, this is burned toast but this time it's not my fault, it's yours. Well you're the one who walked in here looking all cute and distracted me. One kiss is all it takes if it's from you, sweet stuff. Sit down and let me do this right and if you do you'll get something sweeter than this."

Caitlyn knows how to cook really well. She did grow up with people doing the cooking for her however she was curious and wanted to learn how to do it on her own. She's a very hand-on learner, now she can use some of her skills to make you happy.

She gets up really early anyways so she might as well make breakfast for the both of you. The first time she brings you breakfast in bed she thinks your reaction is cute, the way you stare at her, eyes wide and drooling over the food. For her it's not odd to have breakfast in bed. And if you stick with her you'll get used to her pampering you. Be sure to tell her how the food tastes.

"Good morning, darling, I brought you something. See, I didn't just brag about my cooking skills, this is me showing you I can cook. Showing off? Suppose I am a little bit, it's not my fault you didn't really think I would bring you breakfast in bed."

Maddie can cook some dishes but she can cook them well. Her skills aren't anything impressive but they don't need to be because she can get take out too. But she is more than happy to share what ever she makes with you.

She falls back on take out more often than she would like to admit. However not when she invites you over to her place, then she will put her best foot forward. A lot of that is because she wants to impress you hard, but it also gets her to work on her skills either way she wins. She keeps looking at you very intently while you take that first bite. Thankfully she doesn't seem to do a bad job if your smile is anything to go by.

"I'm not weird for watching you eat, it's called being smitten, gorgeous. Anything you do is interesting to me, you know that by now. This isn't empty flattery. I already got you to eat my cooking, I don't need to butter you up at this point."

Ekko isn't the best cook out there, he will be completely honest with you. While he does know the basic things you can't really expect anything fancy. If anything he focuses more on the dish being filling than tasty.

The thing about him cooking for the two of you is that he can only do it on his free time, which isn't a lot. Therefore he wants to make it a bonding activity. A cute date of sorts, mostly in the late evening when the rest of work is done. Sometimes he will try to surprise you but its hard when his living space isn't that big and everyone knows everything in the Firelights. The gesture counts.

"There wasn't much time so it's pretty simple, but at least it's your favorite, Firefly. No, I actually finished the new project, I had extra time to kill. Please, don't thank me! It seemed only right for me to make you something after you cheered me up this morning."

Vander knows how to cook really, really well. He kids to raise, and he was on his own for a very long time, he had to become a good cook. Plus he makes awesome drinks, being a good cook was a bonus skill for him.

He's always the first one to wake up and start the day in the Last Drop and he always makes breakfast for everyone. Not just breakfast but every meal, his kids need to eat a lot, there's always a little left over for later. Even if he feels a little sleepy himself he at least wants to put something on the table. It's the dad instincts in him. And husband instincts, hopefully.

"Don't ya even think about sneaking up on me right now, darlin'. I've got a pan full of sizzling hot oil in my hand, I don't want it all over us. Hugs are fine, I always love ya being close to me, but keep your hands to yourself. We both know ya get handsy in the morning."

Silco didn't know how to cook before he adopted Jinx, since then he's had to learn. It wasn't easy but now he does know a lot and he can impress the woman he's dating. Now when you stay over you can expect good for for your date, and good food when you wake up.

When the dating gets more serious he lets you help him cook, but until then he pretty much does it on his own. Jinx will go nowhere near the kitchen alone, not after that one explosion. He does have a list of recipes that he makes the most. And a few that he made up. Sometimes ingredients are hard to come by so he needs to improvise.

"Pass me the flour would you, love? This time I will follow the recipe, yes, the last time there was a bit too much sugar in there. I know you liked it but it's not the healthiest thing now is it? Fine, call me a worried dad, I know you think it's attractive."

Sevika isn't able too cook that well, she never was, she always liked others cooking for her though. However when you tease her about it she takes it as a challenge. And you know damn well that she doesn't back down from a challenge.

Curses a lot when she messes up, though you can bet that she's not gonna let food be the thing that beats her. When you walk into the kitchen it's a mess which will take a while to clean up. But at least she managed to make the dish this time and it's quite good. For her hard work you give her a very passionate kiss and that just makes her wanna work harder. That's the best reward she can ask for.

"One kiss for at that work, doll? I think I earned myself a little more than that, maybe you on the table instead of all this food. Yeah, I know it's gonna get cold, you're right. Can't let all this hard work go to waste, but when we're done we have to work all that food off."

Viktor doesn't have as much time to cook as he could if he worked a bit less. Not that his skills are award worthy but he can make a few things, at least in his opinion. Give his cooking a chance.

When he was a student in the academy he had to learn how to make quick meals and that is where most of his strength is. Just very simple dishes but he knows how to make them well. There are times when he himself forgets to eat so he makes sure he gets a good meal when he can. If you're part of that that's even better. Having you eat his cooking makes cooking more fun.

"If you think cooking this is so easy then you make it will you, beautiful? Ah so now you like it, I see how it is. I'm just kidding, I love making food for you when I can. But if you want to make it yourself please let me do a taste test first. I promise to be brutally honest, just like you are with me."

Jayce has absolutely no skills in the kitchen unless you need him to fix or build things in there. He knows this too and will admit it right away. Trust him he is much better in science than in cooking food.

That being said he will join you in the kitchen when you cook. He takes an interest in it because the way you cook makes his mouth water. When he learns about what your favorite food is he wants to lean how to cook it. However he does this in secret because he wants to surprise you. Sure enough he's able to get the biggest smile out of you when he presents you with your favorite meal.

"I learned it secretly, all for you, babe. Well I am quite good with my hands and I enjoy working, that was just another excuse to learn. Of course I don't have an ulterior motive for it! But if I did... and if it was kissing... would you kiss me for doing a good job?"

Mel is actually an amazing cook and knows a ton of recipes. Including your favorites of course. Do you really think she'd invite you over and offer you nothing to eat?

It's been a long time since she had to cook for anyone but herself but she's not bad at it at all. She has high standards when it comes to good food specifically because she holds herself to high standards. It doesn't matter how simple or complicated the meal is. When she invites you over and offers to make you food you better believe you're eating good that night. Not strictly food either.

"Beloved, slow down a little, the food isn't going anywhere and neither am I. We have all night. Every time I make food I do so because I want to enjoy a good meal, and you should too. And please be careful, I don't want you to choke, on the food that is."

[meta-squash]

I think two of the most important things about Jack Harkness, two things that inform almost everything he does and the choices he makes, are this: that he is a soldier NOT a leader, and that his entire life since childhood has been awash in survivor's guilt (and his whole existence after becoming immortal is an even more extreme version of survivor's guilt).

Jack is not a natural leader. He can think on the fly and he's good at getting people to listen to him, but he's not good at control, or at being objective. He's a natural second in command, he's a soldier. He was brought up to do what other people told him to, and to improvise if he had to (Time Agency, etc). But I really don't think he wants to be the leader of Torchwood. Unfortunately, everything about him means that he has to be. He knows from experience that others having control over him is dangerous, others knowing about his immortality while he's a subordinate to them is dangerous, and he also knows that his own immortality gives him an advantage as a leader. But I don't think he's good at leading. He tries to be. But he's fumbling along, in a time period he's not native to and a planet he's not native to and an unfathomable lifespan, and as charming as he is I think he's often not good with people. He's detached where he should be personal and emotional where he should be detached (or at least more level-headed). He's often too extreme or not harsh enough when it comes to things like discipline or dealing with the problems/traumas/mistakes of his employees or even civilians. He can't handle his employees seeing him uncertain/vulnerable and it makes for huge problems over and over again.

But all of this does make sense because I think in the back of Jack's mind there's always this wheel spinning, these gears turning and turning and calculating the impact and trauma each of his actions or decisions or the events around him are going to have on his own emotions for far longer than normal humans tend to consider. Because the catalyst for any part of the life we see him leading is survivor's guilt. He lost his father and his brother on the same day, joined the military and lost his best friend, joined the Time Agency and lost his memories (and maybe thinks he did something terrible). Then he died, and when Rose brought him back, he was all alone on the satellite with nothing but the corpses of the people who had fought beside him and zero explanation as to why he survived, and he had lost Rose and the Doctor besides. And then all his life on earth since, he has lost coworkers and lovers and civilians he tried and failed to save and probably also aliens he tried and failed to save. And I think by the time he becomes reluctant leader of Torchwood, every action is, whether conscious or subconscious, taken with the intent of minimizing that kind of trauma and the impact of loss.

Except that I think that the survivor's guilt has another layer to it, which is that feeling of needing to sacrifice or absolve himself in some way. No one else is willing to make the difficult decisions, no one else will move forward with the painful and unpleasant actions, even if there's no other way, even though they will someday perish and no longer see the ripples of their actions. But Jack - who cannot die, who must live with the guilt or the pain or the trauma of those actions and decisions for the rest of his very very very long life - is the one who realizes that he must take on those painful responsibilities and must do certain things even though they're terrible, because it ends up being the sacrifice of one over the whole world. And every single time, he's guilty about it, and that makes him want even more to sacrifice his own hurt for the grief and loss of others.

So it's this strange cycle of wanting to protect himself from hurt and from loss and from the survivor's guilt, but being driven by guilt towards painful and/or self-sacrificing actions. Which then makes him fear being seen as vulnerable or uncertain, and he struggles to do things on a smaller scale or in a more level-headed way, because he's not supposed to be leading like this, it's not something that comes naturally, and if he makes emotional connections by being a leader, he'll end up trapped in survivor's guilt yet again each time one of his employees or friends or lovers dies.

It's just a terrible cycle and he's trapped in it for the rest of his existence. Although if he really is the Face Of Boe, then I imagine at some point he eventually finds peace with it all or something, but I think so long as he has a human-form he's stuck with this cycle of leadership and loss and sacrifice and mistakes.

I think it's really important that Jack is not good at his job as a leader. He makes a ton of mistakes, he fucks up so much and his employees or even civilians end up collateral damage, whether physically or just emotionally. He wants to be a good leader, I think, and he's trying, but he's fallible, and he's a stranger in literally every sense, and I think a really big part of his character is that he constantly is forced to live in this bizarre dichotomy where he has to be both very distant and cold and detached, and also very emotional and intense and personal. And any other person would collapse under the stress of repeating that over and over and over again for decades, but he has to figure out how to navigate this weight as an infinite existence that can't ever collapse or let it burn him up and kill him.

[zhuoyichenpretty]

Ep 22-23 Commentary

Ha...I was inexplicably nervous for eps 22-23 and it looks like I was right to be (-: What a rollercoaster. Spoilers below!

I've just come out of ep 23 and uh????? holy shit????? ZYC????

Ok ok but to backtrack, let's do my comments semi-chronologically:

Ep 22:

A carry-over from ep 21 that I have to mention—heck yeah PSJ give WZY hell. She doesn't have all that many lines but she sure knows how to make them count. Also seeing PSJ and WX get screen time just the two of them makes my brain go "yay <3"

Back to ep 22, loved the fake-out sundial ayeee that was a nice Chekhov's gun that also brings the real sundial back into relevance for later. Also me eating up the PSJ and ZYC crumb of an interaction has brought to my attention how starved I am of their screen time together.

This whole ep was a great lament towards the feared inevitable. Every sad downcast look from ZYC, every complicated glance WX gives him. A wonderful, terrible crossroads for these characters. I love that for ZYC especially, it's such an incredible mess of emotion coming to a head. Bad enough that he's come to care about the demon who killed his family and ruined his life, bad enough that he's sworn a blood oath he regrets and tied himself to punishing someone he no longer finds culpable, bad enough that ZYZ's life or death depends solely on his choice and ZYZ is constantly practically begging for death when ZYC wants him to live. How much immensely worse it makes the whole situation that WX is literally ZYZ's soulmate. And obviously the whole team has only grown more and more attached to ZYZ, too. ZYC's personal turmoil aside, how heavy must that responsibility and guilt be? For the finishing blow that only he can deliver to also deeply threaten every other person he cares about? Everyone understands in the abstract what must happen and why, but just like seeing ZYZ lose control firsthand, the gulf between understanding and experiencing is so unimaginably wide. If he kills ZYZ, can there really be no resentment from his friends? From WX?

Also it seems ZYC only wears cloaks so that he can give them to other people lmao

Ah fuck, the farewell drinks. I didn't even factor in how ZYC might not survive the encounter (''': The drama truly was like hm can we possibly give ZYC a worse day than that night his whole fam died? Maybe give him a bunch of new family members and also the blade and the fate and the sole responsibility to potentially irrevocably scar said family members with? And he might die in the process too? (-: haha maybe? (((-:

Oh. Oh. Addendum. I forgot this til I saw it mentioned in another post—ZYC recounting his oath as he watched WX smile when they discussed reviving the tree...I could feel him weighing those words against his own life, against ZYZ's life, against WX's happiness. One way out of this impossible situation is indeed to doom himself. I'm in pieces.

Damn if WX isn't dedicated heart and soul, going into the sundial like that. I'm sad no one could keep her company for those 300 years but also I guess that's kind of an impossible ask (and maybe not survivable for the other non-goddess mortals? I'm admittedly very unclear on sundial time loophole logistics). It would have been nice to see someone offer though, even just to be turned down.

Ooh I like the soul needle fake-out, given this show's penchant for retroactive "actually we had a plan all along" moments. A good subversion of the narrative's own style.

Also I saved this for the end because it doesn't really fit the linearity of my comments but what the fuuuuuuuck oh my god I absolutely flipped out at this scene:

I am at once rabidly intrigued and at the same time not sure if I'll be satisfied with whatever payoff will come for this so I don't want to overindulge in theorizing and setting my own expectations too high. Maybe this is just a fevered hallucination, maybe it means nothing (I hope it means something). But damn!!! What a gorgeous man crazy scene.

In conclusion, ep 22 had some good stuff for me. Plot development and reflection and tension enough that I may have been satisfied with just that one episode. But they gave us two, so onward to ep 23 comments!

Ep 23:

I like how many solid reasons the team has to suspect ZYC being possessed. Even though I withheld judgment during my watch given how quickly the show usually confirms that kind of stuff with a possession mark, just simply casting that doubt made the whole build up that much more intense.

ZYC slowly walking down the corridor with the whole grounds lit a somber and haunting gold—*chef's kiss*

ZYC's monologue to a catatonic ZYZ is so important to me. The closest we'll get to his internal monologue about this whole situation. The kinds of things said when we think there's no conscious listener.

Okay so, having finished this episode and looking back, Li Lun's hands coming up from behind ZYC was not to denote possession (at least in this episode), potentially is a visual from ZYZ's POV, and seems related to the above screencap. I am so, so curious. Once again, I'm stopping myself from further speculation because I want to be surprised but ahhhhhhhhh

PSJ shooting at Ao Yin is so gorgeous. Her action scenes seriously never disappoint—the creativity of her fight choreos!! Also very cool that the whole team is getting to take part in the action, not just the two male leads.

Bai Jiu possession was not on my bingo card but I sure do love that we literally saw the possession take place and I still didn't connect the dots. Good shitttt. Also oh no ): ZYC was telling the truth about the soul needle, he was just tricked ):

Seriously from the Ao Yin case to getting PSJ released to reviving the Divine Wood to getting tricked by possessed!Bai Jiu to making pear soup to fighting ZYZ to fighting Li Lun—when will ZYC get a single goddamn vacation day holy shit.

Also when will WX tear up that contract so ZYZ can stop having a mild heart attack every time he wants to kiss her ): &I love that they saved the 300-year montage for this moment. While their ship doesn't give me brainrot personally, who could be unmoved by that incredible and undisclosed sacrifice? That's soulmatism.

Okay, I'd seen clips of them filming the ZYC and Li Lun fight but damn I did not expect it'd be happening right now!! Right after already taking damage from ZYZ? And my god is Li Lun brutal. The two actors did such an impressive job on this entire fight, what with Li Lun's ease and ZYC's suffering. I really appreciated the extensive hand-to-hand combat after Li Lun literally obliterated ZYC's sword. (Also though, given the origin of that sword, I kept hoping for a flashback to ZYC's brother once it broke, but alas, no dice.) Anyway, the show does not play around about ZYC whump it seems. I was very very shook by that throat punch; that shit legitimately looked like it hurt.

Honestly, I had a hard time with the extended ZYZ and Li Lun conversation at the very end because oh my god someone please heal ZYC lmao. But of course, that's the end of the episode~~

Y'all...check on your local ZYC stans because I was not okay after all that (': I need a heaping dose of comfort after all that hurt, but as always I'm cautious of hoping for much from canon itself. So yeah! Ep 23 was solid, but I would probably be in better shape if today's release just ended on ep 22 ((':

Time to go wait for the cast's Hi6 episode to drop so I can heal my battered heart ;-;

[allwormdiet]

Sentinel 9.6

Well.

At least we're not as fucked as Brockton Bay.

"Ugh, how dare crime be prevented so I can't beat the shit out of the people doing the crimes for my own catharsis" - sentiments of the utterly normal

This glimpse into the inner workings of these two has not endeared me to them any further, tbh. I think the time in which they can actually turn these impressions around is starting to dwindle.

So. Here's Sophia's worldview laid plain, and it's about what I expected. Might makes right, violence and desperation and greed are the true nature of humanity, everyone can be divided between sheep and wolves and she refuses to be a sheep.

Mostly I think I'm just curious as to what, exactly, shaped her to be this way. Like obviously whatever caused her to trigger is a factor, but I don't know if any parahuman has had a complete overhaul of their personality brought about by their power coming online; I suspect that she'd followed some version of this mentality before the worst day of her life (so far) proved her right.

I can't imagine Piggot would be thrilled that Shadow Stalker thinks so highly of her, or at least the why of it.

This is cool, though. Give Wildbow credit, he can make just about any sensation of using a power sound rad as hell.

*sighs* Fucking Nazis

At least Sophia is sensible about what to do with them

Another neat fight scene, this one is a bit quicker than the Travelers tussle so I kinda like it more. That and it involves beating the shit out of Nazis.

Ruh roh Raggy

hiimdaisy_adachi_murder.mp3

Oh yeah, why eliminate the villain who you know is a particular threat to you, specifically, when you can try to torment her first?

This isn't even me saying that Sophia should try to murder Skitter, bc obviously I prefer the latter to the former, but taking the whole thing of seeing her secret identity into consideration, the response to crossing paths should be "take her down fast and hard," not "put her back against the wall and make her panic"

It's gonna fucking break her brain when she realizes Taylor is Skitter, huh?

There's something really funny about how basically every outsider POV we've gotten on Skitter involves hating her ass. Truly cursed to be unpopular.

I like the logical weaknesses of Sophia's power so far. Things getting into her shadow form, like bugs, fuck with her ability to remanifest because she has to "shove" them out of where she's going to solidify. The electricity I'm less clear on, maybe just some quirk of what she's "made" of in her altered state, but it's a good way to explain why she can't just leap through buildings willy nilly. The thing with the gas/vapor absorption that gets mentioned in a second also makes sense and is pretty neat.

Hey Sophia do you maybe regret playing with your food a little bit

Also still cool to see Skitter's powers from the outside POV

God that's so cool

...Y'know, if these two could get over their bullshit for like, a minute, they could probably have some very cathartic hate-makeouts. More blood than normal for kissing but less blood than normal for their usual interactions.

Lol

Lmao

Nuts that what threw her off in this moment was looking for a secondary murder weapon to cover up her power's tell.

Also: get fucked Sophia.

And you fell for it hook line and sinker, because you're a petty tunnel-visioned sadist.

Got the whole crew doing the group pose, love to see it

Also: hi Aisha, glad you get to join the team, sorry you had a trigger event, hope the future scenes with you are less uncomfortable than your first one

Skitter is so fucking good at playing up the villain role, she really should be proud of the work she puts into it.

Not entirely sure why they're kidnapping Shadow Stalker, but I'm sure it's going to be another photo album moment for the Undersiders and their rise to prominence.

Concluding Thoughts

Y'know, a lot of trouble could've been avoided if Sophia just ignored that impulse to play with her prey. I'm not gonna be like "oh why can't she just rein in the violence" because every parahuman we've met so far is either a participant or facilitator of violence, but the cruelty is what's gotten her in trouble here. Not only did she only get baited into this trap because she refused to make an earlier attempt at the killing blow, not only did she take the bait of hunting down a lone villain while a PRT convoy was under attack by fucking Nazis, but the hostility might have been avoided if she hadn't gotten her kicks from tormenting and assaulting Taylor. If Sophia was just Emma's friend who hung back and watched as she tormented Taylor, things might've differently all the way back in the medical tent, but alas, she was a willing and gleeful participant.

Little concerned about what the fuck they're going to do to her, but there's nothing to do but wait and see.

Also, cautiously glad that Imp has arrived, she seems fun from what I've picked up via osmosis, again fingers crossed that her continued presence in this story doesn't involve nearly as much wincing as Tangle 6.3 because holy shit.

[davrinassan]

what is your onion of the taash questline if you are comfortable sharing?

ok so ive found out i actually havent finished the ENTIRE questline. just the main part of it, i think ? i finished up to taash's mother dying .

so... i

i rate it poorly. i need like more time.. to digest it . i also.. have a very hard time with this because while i am nonbinary i am just a white british person . i dont have a mixed heritage or culture . i am just white british and not even a cool british like gaelic i am English ...... as plain boring white bread as u can get.

so commentin on the heritage vs culture choice u are given is hard for me beyond that it makes me feel uncomfortable to have to pick for someone. that is not my place. it feels very wrong of me to have this power over someone . when i first was given a choice i said embrace being multicultural. cuz like that feels.. obvious. its beautiful to come from multiple cultures and being pieces of them . thats so cool and awesome to me. and then being forced to pick was so not cool and very not awesome.

in terms of the nonbinary stuff ... the more it got mentioned and brought up the more i disliked it. i don't know how much people will agree with me here so bare with me. it felt very on the nose, unnatural, even the word nonbinary didnt seem like it fit. i feel like they were lazy. i feel like they should have made a new word , maybe even a new concept , to work within the dragon age setting. that maybe was specific to rivaini culture that taash heard from another lord of fortune and it felt right . idk. they could have integrated it better to the world of thedas. i felt.. pandered to . i felt like they were saying hey look, hey. hey thats you right. doesnt this make u feel seen and happy . please ignore the weird racism and focus on this

i could have loved taash i think. but i don't. i barely like taash. i feel like taash is a scapegoat. a mouthpiece. that sometimes taash says and does things that don't feel natural to the character cuz taash isnt talking, bioware is. this gets even worse when you take into account lord of fortune things like selling back cultural artifacts to the people they belong to and bioware going "dw its ethical and ok! trust us!" but they have taash say it and it feels wrong, off and weird. like.. out of character? idk it's strange.

taash is a strange character. i dont think bioware actually respected them as much ... i think they used bioware to push this weird anti qunari narrative and to pander to queer people while being weird and racist and idk. idkdidkdikdksoldfgjzsdlff

i need someone who isnt white and who is smarter than me and better at articulating than me to write a think piece on this. while i am the right person for the nonbinary stuff. theres pieces here i am not the right person for. and i dont wanna speak over anyone. or be the voice for anyone when i shouldnt be. but i will say ...

if i can see how gross this shit comes across , how on earth are the people of colour who are actually effected by this bullshit feeling? they shouldnt be exposed to this bullshit . bioware should do better. hire some diverse writers man . get ur shit checked and looked over by poc before u push it out. ur game shouldnt be hurting minorities . they deserve better than this shit STILL happening . ive got too many friends and mutuals pained over taashs story and angry about it. that aint right. it just aint right man

and yeah like i said i havent 100% finished it, it seems, but i dont see the majority of this changing or any of it . i am uhh "burnt" as it were, i do not think bioware can fix this feeling inside of me

this got rambly i hope it makes sense

[wirewitchviolet]

That thing about 'the arc of history bending towards justice...'

I'm pretty sure I've gone on about this before, and I'm pretty sure I'm preaching to the choir, but I just had a well-intentioned acquaintance try to give an inspirational speech about American trans people's fears right now, and his heart was in the right place, but all his facts were wrong, in some really important ways. I feel like the perspective he has is the same one as... basically every decent person who isn't like, intimately familiar with WPATH, so please spread this around, and please if you only read one rambling history lesson from a trans person about the current state of things, make it this one.

So here's the big problem. Trans people get brought up in the mainstream media a LOT these days, but the framing is totally wrong. The impression people get is that there is presently a big push for new trans rights, where we want proper government recognition, and trans women in particular want to be able to use public women's restrooms, and play on girls-only sports teams, and a dozen other things. That is a lie you are being fed. These are all rights we ALREADY HAD, for decades. Possibly centuries depending what we're talking about specifically and where we're talking, even. The big issue right now is that a bunch of bigots just woke up one day about 10 years ago and decided that nothing else they were angling for was getting them anywhere with the general public, so hey let's make a boogieman out of this minority of a minority nobody knows the first thing about and act like all the horrors they're inflicting are just them enforcing some totally fictional status quo.

Speaking personally, I can say that The Trans Agenda in like 2014 was something like: 1- I'm gonna make a nice big pot of chili. 2- I'm gonna maybe replay some old video games from the '90s I haven't taken down off the shelf in a while. And OK maybe 3- It'd be cool if it weren't just the medical professionals who specifically specialize in trans stuff had enough of an education to know that when there's a difference in how a drug is going to effect men vs. women, it's for reasons directly tied to the levels of various hormones, or would at least trust their trans patients to know what we're talking about and not give us the wrong doses of things and maybe kill us as a result. And also like, treat us for regular things like broken arms (real example) without weirdly panicking about some prescription we're on they don't recognize.

There was absolutely not a point where some trans woman started petitioning the government or whatever to let her pee in a toilet with a little placard of a stick figure in a dress in front. We've just been doing that the whole time. Nobody's ever had a problem with that. You didn't know we were in there? OK. If I'm like at a restaurant and have to use the bathroom, I don't know how many of the other women in there have like, type O blood. I also don't care, and I think everyone would agree it was weird if I suddenly did care, and demand they post a guard out front asking to see driver's licenses. Just completely out of the blue some nutcases from the UK started foaming at the mouth and writing weird tabloid articles about their completely unfounded fears that... I don't even know. Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs might put on a wig and follow them into the bathroom, dose them with chloroform, and drag them to some basement dungeon through some series of secret passages or something.

This was based on literally nothing at all, to be clear. Like, people pushing for this went and did serious research for anything even anecdotal to back them up on this, and didn't actually find anything. Then they started walking into public restrooms with cameras throwing doors open on people and going "see? See? Some creep could totally do this if we don't ban trans people from using bathrooms!" And... somehow this got traction? I figure it's because coincidentally there was this whole other thing going where people were looking at how every building had equal numbers of men's and women's rooms and saying "you know, like, 90% of people who come in here are the same gender and we end up with really long lines, what if we just took the signs down and told everyone to just use whichever?" which... when it's happening at the same time Chicken Little is ranting and raving about the boogieman wearing a cheap wig, wires got crossed? And suddenly we've got waves of legislation passing all over about who's allowed to use what bathrooms with weird standards that'd involve like DNA tests to actually enforce properly. Absurd stuff.

Meanwhile, your average trans activist at the time was just like... sitting there eating a sandwich and going "huh, they're making a TV series based on Fargo? That's an odd thing to happen out of the blue. And yeah we started going "hey, what the hell?" when this stuff started passing because like... yeah that's what you do when you see an article in the local newspaper that says you can't go to the bathroom at work or whatever without swabbing your cheek and waiting for lab results for 3 weeks first or whatever.

Same deal with sports. Major sports organizations like the Olympics have been weirdly paranoid about men pretending to be women since 1950. And there have been, to the best of my ability to research... zero men who have actually done this. And while the weird standards used for this have been used to kick a good number of women out over the years, none of those women have been trans, for what that's worth. Really, the whole gender testing thing has only ever been used for horrifying stuff like forcing women to strip in front of random creeps, or let them do "invasive internal exams" and of course so many incidents where some woman who isn't white wins at something and people move the goalposts to in some way to get her specifically banned. You may be thinking, "wait didn't I just see a whole bunch of news coverage about someone getting banned after some gender testing thing? She was trans right?" No. You're thinking of Caster Semenya. She's a woman. A cis woman. F on her birth certificate, born with standard issue female genitals, has periods, all that. People are just being weird racists there and crossing the streams with random transphobia. That and just... half-reading stories and making stuff up.

To the best of my knowledge, the total count of trans athletes who have competed in the Olympics would actually be... three nonbinary people, who so far as I can tell all competed against people with the same gender they had on their birth certificates, nothing done medically, so, nobody should have any problem there. Caitlyn Jenner, who didn't come out as a woman until like... 40 years after competing, on the men's team, and Laurel Hubbard, the first and only trans woman to compete at the Olympics as a woman, who placed... dead last, flubbing all three of her lifts.

If we just look at sports in general, OK, there WAS one big famous where a trans woman wanted to compete in a major sporting event, was banned from it, took the organizers to court over it, and the eventual ruling was there was no reason at all she shouldn't be allowed to play against other women. Renée Richards. And this was all the way back in 1976. Nearly 50 years ago now.

And of course in more recent years, again, after a bunch of random bigots just completely out of the blue started losing their minds about trans people with no prompting and started lobbying for new laws banning us from all kinds of things nobody had had a problem with us doing forever, there was Mack Beggs, a trans guy, who was forced, by one of those aforementioned baffling reactionary new laws, to compete on his high school's girl's wrestling team. He didn't want to be there, they didn't want him to be there, but the law said hey, F on your birth certificate, we're classifying you as a girl despite how clearly wrong that is. And then there's been a bunch of other weird cases like that like one state banning trans girls from playing any sports with other girls which only affected one single girl in the entire state, who was playing lacrosse on a team that wouldn't have even existed if she hadn't personally organized it.

But the point here is, trans people aren't asking for anything here. We're just standing here, and people are flipping out and banning us from doing all these things without any prompting. And hell, I THINK this one got shot down in higher courts, but when Florida got the brain worms on this and started passing all the anti-trans legislation they could think of, they actually included a ban on us just standing there! The wording was something like (and I apologize that I can't find it, search engines are useless now), "if a child can potentially see someone who was assigned male at birth who is wearing women's clothes, it's considered sexual assault."

It's important to understand what's actually going on here, both because what's going on here is just plain terrifying, but also because there is this huge segment of the population who has this weird idea that people's rights only ever get better, there's just some weird arbitrary ratcheting where you have to take a number and get in line. Like, "hey, used to be only white men could vote, then eventually the Progress bar filled enough that we let white women start voting too. Then we had to wait for it to fill up again, hey, we're ending this whole segregation of black people thing. Gotta give it another 30 years or so to fill up, now hey, gay people can get married! Don't be impatient trans folks, you just need to stay in line and wait for it to fill again for your turn!"

That's not how anything has ever actually worked. It would frankly be absolutely insane if it actually did, but like, this is an idea people get in their heads because history textbooks really like to gloss over all the stuff that makes the country look pretty bad and promote this whole "stuff is just always getting better!" vibe. But no, sometimes, things just straight up get worse for people. Ten years ago I could go to the damn bathroom, I could have social media accounts, I could access all the medications I need to live, I could safely set foot in any given state in the country... at least if I kept some witnesses around at all times to verify I was not in fact hitting on my would-be murderer in any of the black states on this map.

The problem is NOT that with Trump in power, the pause button is getting hit on trans people climbing towards some state of finally getting to be regular people. We were (largely) already there, and there's been a huge push over the past decade to strip that away from us. And Trump plus the rest of the Republican party in general have made very specific promises to make that way worse real real soon, including several things that will straight up kill a ton of us.

Like, when I'm talking about losing access to necessary medical treatments, I'm not talking about "THE SURGERY" and magic pills that give you boobs or beards. A lot of trans people are trans because there's weird medical stuff that in addition to messing with what does and doesn't grow mess with things like whether your blood flows properly and whether various organs do what they should. Just one of those many things the average person doesn't know, because everything written about us is from deranged bigots making crap up.

[longagoitwastuesday]

Kusakabe, dear, you're too beautiful to be saying that kind of stuff

[iniziare]

Consider Yelan's facial expression to be my own in reaction to opinions shared on both X and Tumblr, and I guess I'm in the minority of the 'loud ones', but I'm pretty excited for Natlan since that trailer, actually. The previous teasers left me a little 'eh', but this definitely got my hopes back up, and I'm back in the right spirits for it (and ready to catch some Pokémon.)

Now I wouldn't be me if I didn't touch on the salt that I've seen scattered across the dash, so here I go. Listen, I read people's objections and I see what you're all aiming at, but in that light want to note that it's often incredibly easy to point fingers (arguably too much so) at others while being, quite honestly, hopefully rather aware that many of our own countries, cultures, and its populations across the board (and no, I'm not excluding anyone here) would likely be just as easily guilty as MHY is with these things. And no, I'm not blindly defending them, but I also won't point fingers at only one without pointing them everywhere else as well, including those you might think would 'never do such things', because I'm absolutely certain that they would. /continues on in the tags.

[tanicus-caesareth]

guarana drama, damage control

[wolpatinga]

[wasabikitcat]

Has anyone in this Olympics women's boxing argument ever stopped and thought about whether it would make any sense for women to be more susceptible to being injured in boxing than men? Like sure, it's a fairly common assumption that men are physically stronger than women, and therefore a man would have an advantage at boxing because he can punch harder... But how would that make you more resilient to being punched in the nose? Like I would think the assumed advantage would be that women can't hit as hard and therefore would require more effort to take someone down, but what everyone is arguing over is a woman having her nose broken from a punch to the face, when a man's nose would be just as broken from the same punch. Women don't have like, daintier and weaker facial bones or something. Being punched in the face "by a man" when you're a woman is literally no different than being punched in the face by the same person as a man. If we are to assume that men (note: the person being debated about here isn't a man or even a trans woman, she is cisgender, but I digress) are so Herculean that their punches are just too dangerous for women, then men's boxing should be banned outright because it's just too dangerous for men to be punching each other with that strength when a punch to the face is exactly the same for a man as it is to a woman.

[tardis--dreams]

Some of those doctors make hating oat milk their entire personality. I hate them. Cannot pretend to find them funny or like i give a shit. Fucking pretentious assholes

[medicinemane]

Mike johnson has so god damn much blood on his hands, obviously Ukrainian blood, but also plenty of American blood

Refusing to renew something that helps vets exposed to atomic blast and Americans who were downwind of the fall out... it's just sick. I can't fucking stand mike johnson, he's one of the worst scum to ever be in congress, and that's fucking saying something

"Johnson refused to allow House members to vote on bipartisan legislation to renew and improve the program"

Fucking quivering little pimple seems to have a real MO for just wringing his hands while insisting it's not his fault, he just can't do the one fucking part of his job of putting shit up to a vote... oh boo hoo, so sad, he'll just have to unilaterally let funding expire on things instead of literally just putting it up to our elected representatives to see if they want to vote yay or nay

Single handedly make the choices but it's not his fault when they work out how they do

Murderer

[alicethebard]

.

[kuromi-hoemie]

i just finished iron blooded orphans and need to lay down for a bit