#jesus there's a lot of them

[scooterscoob]

it’s like there’s an audience.

[owlishhhhh]

Back on my meme quoting spree

[rystiel]

idk what we’re all calling the concept of fiddlestan working together but i’m calling my version the portal partners AU 🙏🏼

[naamahdarling]

Accidentally ate a sugar free pudding cup. Took IBS meds immediately but fear it may not be enough to prevent whatever is about to happen.

Anything with alcohol sugars, artificial sweeteners, and added "prebiotic" fiber should be in plain bright orange packaging with huge warnings. That shit is fucking diabolical.

[starlightshore]

The double trouble aus so cute lol the scrimblos are so incredibly terrible at it

The disgusted face loop panels are giving me winning hats flashbacks and its so unnerving

its not their fault they're so fucked up and creepy and also fucked up </3

[iivari-ii]

Haven’t actively listened to JCS for a while but got the urge to make some new silly memes so🤲🤲

[khattikeri]

always fucks me up how every major male SVSSS character barring liu qingge (dead for all of PIDW) and shen yuan (literal transmigrator) have some variation of airplane bro's personality, insecurity, and shitty coping mechanisms. like.

shen jiu!qingqiu lashing out, letting people assume terrible shit about him because it's easier than trying to clarify his intentions only for his actions and words to be misinterpreted anyway?

yue qingyuan being politely vacant, aimless and self-deprecative, believing himself a failure who deserves to be hated?

og!shang qinghua being a cannon fodder "cowardly traitor", cut off from protection and money and killed by his former liege?

mobei-jun having deeper set issues with trust and loyalty, especially from family members and personal servants?

tianlang-jun's naivete and emotional attachment leading indirectly to his being sealed under a mountain miserable and alone for years?

zhuzhi-lang's excessive degree of loyalty to people who show him sincere kindness, since most people find him ugly and unapproachable?

PIDW!luo binghe's emotional apathy and detachment after all he suffered; him being rewritten into an overpowered, intelligent, revenge-driven, manipulative man so good in bed he can force anyone to join his harem?

SVSSS!luo binghe being similar to the above, but otherwise being clingy, deeply insecure, clumsy and inefficient in bed and in love?

SVSSS!luo binghe being desperate to maintain emotional connections and terrified of the perception that he's being abandoned by someone he loves and looks up to?

SVSSS!luo binghe being willing to go to concerning extremes to find out WHY that person changed their mind and chose to hurt him, abandon him, and what he can do to fix things?

SVSSS!luo binghe's most bitter anguish being the thought that they despise him and are throwing him away for unchangeable aspects of who he is, for being himself?

PIDW was originally a romanceless web novel driven by its unique fantasy setting and lore. it was stripped down of those elements to make way for cliche heterosexual porn tropes until it became an inconsistent male power fantasy harem novel that fickle readers-- whose money pay airplane's bills now that his parents both remarried and started new families, cutting off basically all money and contact with him-- would keep reading.

everything about PIDW (and SVSSS) reflects part of airplane. not only the characters' personalities and experiences, but the original story as a whole, considering how much of it (of himself) airplane ended up sacrificing and shuttering away to present a different image that would be more easily accepted.

[oh--joy]

here we go again

[sp1resong]

remember my name - mitski

[mr-nauseam]

Im always saying why adaptations give the brothers fucked relationship to Holmes when Watson is RIGHT THERE!

[mel-loly]

-Merry Christmas!💗✨

the tags (↓) are more important!!!

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

Are you still doing the fic ask thing? SGG, please ❤️

This is definitely not coming out in the fic because it’s stopping before we catch up to canon, but Nobara and Yuuji know something happened but not what.

It takes them fucking forever before they get enough details to piece together the fact that something happened, because Megumi keeps secrets aggressively. They don’t know he has a sister for most of their relationship. It takes even longer for them to find out that Gojo’s his fucking dad (Megumi insists he’s not his dad. They know he’s lying). Yuuji actually tried to introduce him to Nanami at one point and he was like “yea we’ve met” if there was a nearby ocean Yuuji would have hurled himself into it out of embarrassment that’s his fucking other dad.

Everyone but Megumi actually knows that he is Yuuta’s boy. I’ve done extensive asks about how Yuuji is violently jealous about this.

I think that Nobara and Yuuji slowly catch onto the fact that something major happened before they showed up that no one will talk about. Megumi still has the scars from the bite. Sometimes, Yuuji hears him having nightmares next door, and Megumi will never tell him what he dreamt.

I think someone from the Zenin clan approaches him on a mission. It’s seemingly minor. It’s a random overlap between a mission with someone from the clan and the mission the trio is on. He mentions to Yuuji and Nobara that he’s Megumi’s cousin and how they all wish they saw more of him. He tells Megumi that everyone was so happy that he was able to spend Christmas with them. They all would love to bring him home again.

Megumi doesn’t say a fucking word, and he goes right to his room when they get to campus, and no one thinks anything of it until Nobara mentions it to Maki and everyone immediately loses their entire shit.

Like. It’s bad. Nanami comes to campus. Gojo returns from a high priority mission immediately and disappears into Megumi’s room for a while. When he comes out, he goes into Yaga’s office and screams at him for an hour about something they can’t make out, then doesn’t go back on missions for a week. He insists that he’s just making sure they get enough of their sensei, but it fools no one, and the higher ups start losing their shit because Gojo is refusing his missions. All of the second years start acting really weird, and Yuuji and Nobara both separately catch Maki on the phone with Yuuta arguing with him about flying home early. He wants to, and she insists that Megumi’s going to be pissed if he does.

Megumi asks them not to ask, and they don’t. I think Megumi’s got a deep humiliation around the Zenin and what they did to him that he never really gets over. He hates that all the second years know what happened. He just desperately wants it to not be the thing that people think about when they look at him.

[sholmeser]

ary scheffer / justus knetch / snake & ocelot

[masterblooky]

I feel like everyone is underestimating how connected to everything is this season. Lizzie, Jimmy, and Mumbo’s death was connected to like five other things.

Gem opening the portal is like the root of half the incidents on the server

Everything that’s happened feels like a large cosmic coincidence. Everything is so closely intertwined. It’s brilliant. Everyone and no one is to blame for anything.

for example if everyone went to Lizzie’s birthday, she would have never gone invisible horse riding to cheer herself up and even if she did she would have the health to withstand Jimmy’s attack. But on the other hand, if Joel hadn’t been the only one to come, she wouldn’t have gone to the end to help him out.

so who’s to blame? Gem? Joel? Everyone else? Lizzie herself?

And then returning to everything being a coincidence, (mentioned this in my other post but) Martyn going red in the end and Lizzie, the first red, dying in the end. Lizzie watching Martyn fall off and then Lizzie falling off later on.

Gem bringing (almost) everyone to the End. Lizzie failing to bring anyone to the End. The two of them being the substitutes last season.

Whenever Scar is given a chance to be on a team with Grian on it he has a task preventing him from doing so

Everything has been a coincidence or a result of falling back on careless habits.

So when there’s no more room for coincidence. No more habits to fall on. Gem, who’s new and has no old habits to fall on, who has a Reputation for bloodshed, can be used to start the chaos all over again and begin the self perpetuated cycle all again.

[daincrediblegg]

I need all the lore about Lamb and Standish too. When did they become so dependent on each other? Did they ever get drunk together back in the day? Did they ever sleep together? We know he cares about her a lot and feels guilty AND protective over her since Partner, but does he actually love her and is he in denial about this? I have so many questions

OK OK OK SO. I just finished the first book (woohoo) and. I am honestly so thrilled to say that what little lore we got from the first book at least aligned a lot with some of the stuff that I had come to my own conclusions about from having watched the show... way too many times now. And I have to say- real credit to Saskia and Gary and Will Smith for putting it together in the show the way they did because man. I feel like they give us so many subtextual clues and they really capitalize on each and every one of them that it makes doing my job as a film scholar just super fun.

Anways- on the Standish and Lamb situation? I have lots of thoughts. Most of which I wrote down last night in a complete stupor because this is what keeps me up at night thinking about this character dynamic. So buckle up. We're gonna ramble our way through my own thoughts and ideas about all this.

Like to start, to me it seems that they really never had much contact at all back in the day, and that makes sense: considering Jackson's mostly in Berlin playing Moscow rules in the field while Standish is at home holding the fort for Charles, there's not a lot of overlap with each other physically but they did know each other as much as they needed to know at the time: Standish was Partner's drunk PA, and Lamb was the Joe of All Joes (can I make it any more obvious?). What little contact they may have ever had was certainly mostly through Charles, and the show gives us some insight to that giving us that little flashback that Catherine has where she seemingly meets Lamb for the first time after "Berlin's blown" (which could mean either the wall came down as Lamb says to Catherine in his half-confession, or that he's referring to the incident that he describes to Katinsky in season 2, and of these two options, my money is on the latter). That looks like a woman being very confused meeting someone she's never really seen before in her life to me (or perhaps has seen while drunk at one time, but doesn't much remember).

I mean most of the rest I feel like I can glean from the incidents themselves. Both of them getting relegated to Slough House after Charles' death seems natural- Catherine with her near miss of a treason charge and Lamb with the fact that he literally assassinated First Fucking Desk of MI5. And it's easy to see how the co-dependency came from there. Catherine as an alcoholic going through AA specifically, seems to revolve around structure to keep herself in check- the way she talks about Charles Partner in Season 2 helps with this. The fact that he payed for her treatment and in return- probably partially because of this need for structure- she latched onto her job as a way to compensate so that she doesn't end up in the same dark place again. So, then being Lamb's secretary, it's still the same kind of structure that she needs, even though this time it doesn't feel as rosy as it might have done with Partner.

- And this is a point that I think about a lot. She does view her whole relationship with Partner with rose colored glasses, even though if you listen to what she's actually saying in those flashbacks from season 1, she's done his laundry, is planning his outfits, put out his flowers- she was doing nothing more than some kind of glorified paid house wife kind of shit for him (and in FACT! I was fooled my first go around season 1 like I genuinely thought that she was deadass his WIFE or something. I think that misconception on my part says a LOT). And Lamb in parallel to that is a great come down from that mountaintop-that she sees herself and Partner as this idylic Q and Money Penny type of thing that she's romanticized in her head for the last 20 years- an illusion that Lamb on every level shatters and is - at least to his credit- honest about. As much as he inconveniences her and as much as he's his raw unfiltered self around her (which- he certainly is more of that around Standish than anyone else he knows. River gets a lot of brutal honesty from Jackson, but none to do with emotional sincerity- like the way Lamb tells Standish the half-truth of Partner's death, and why he *chose* slough house), as much as he's a bully he's still doesn't give her any illusion of what their relationship is or isn't, and no one would see that as a mark of respect on account of him being an "utter bastard", but is all of that really worse than Charles pretending to be her best friend and all the while planning to have her take the fall for him behind her back? (Personally? It's a different kind of bad but Charles is definitely the worst). And it's extra funny situationally because then all of the things she says about how Partner treated her is much more close to the mark to what Lamb did for her, and things that weren't superficial either. "I know that unlike you, he respected me" ("christ, Standish was right", always updates her on what he knows when appropriate and always has her sit in on debriefs when it's safe), "he showed me friendship"(he always pours out a drink for her that he ends up drinking himself, always when things are going to come down on her deals with it *himself* rather than relegate it to the fuck-ups, always has her up to date on things -unless it means blowing cover), "and he believed in me" (he gave HER the gun and let her delegate the hijacking of the MI5 car from Duffy and Webb, let HER do the cool agent stuff, also lets her do some of the investigative work- especially in season 2 when he doesn't interrupt her at ALL when she keeps up with the camera trail on- but also knows her limits, especially in the house of hell where he stuffs her in a closet knowing she can't be of more use because *he* knew he could kill Hobbs, but "now I won't shoot you dead, Mr. Webb,"), "and he kept me on, when anyone else would have thrown me to the wolves."(which is exactly what he did when Partner died, and all the information came out that Partner was going to peg it on her. It wouldn't surprise me if he took the hit for that too in some way. If him getting her treason charge dropped might also be part of why he ended up in Slough House - which if the op was sanctioned initially by David Cartwright might hold some weight. Maybe that was David cleaning up and covering arse like Taverner would do. Maybe Catherine *was* supposed to take the fall, but Jackson refused to let that happen? But that's just a theory. A Slough House Theory).

But the bigger question in this is of course: why? Why on god's green earth does Jackson Lamb give a shit, and why is he so dependent on Standish?

The solution to this feels multi-pronged. First: I think that he has a bit of a chip on his shoulder about innocent people getting caught in the cross-fire of the things that MI-5 get up to, and Catherine fits that bill better than anybody he knows. In season 2 when he talks about the women agents whose deaths he was directly responsible for, he describes it as something he "wishes [he] could unsee"- which for Lamb is saying a lot, considering that to most things (heads on tables, faces blown off with shotguns) he doesn't bat an eye, and even says he's seen worse. What happened to those women and the fact that what he said made that happen I think affected him more deeply than he lets on in that scene, because even though Charles Partner didn't know who they were at all outside of a codename, Jackson did, and probably knew them very well. And Charles as their shadowy overlord who was just moving them like pieces on a chessboard never had to pay the emotional price for that, nor did David Cartwright. But Lamb did. Because as much as he denies it to keep people looking the other way, Lamb does have a heart, and it's hard to earn but it's not impossible.

And he always does take the emotional fall for things! He says in season 4 that he "had a heart until he worked for [David Cartwright]" whom he also said "gave [him] a job once". The way those lines conflict in tone but also reveal a lot about how he views his own fall from grace says so much. David Cartwright got him into this business, but under his direction he hardened for it (something that I think connects him to River more than that boy will ever understand. Also is what makes Lamb a better mentor than Peepaw Cartwright, but that's another story) not to mention that for all intents and purposes, Lamb and Partner were actually good friends, and that this betrayal and the fact that he had to do it himself (even though maybe his feelings were mixed on the matter- that maybe he even loved Partner too in a similar way that Standish did at one point in time, but the lives lost from his betrayal weighed on Lamb more- and as we all know, from Catherine's own mouth, he'll do anything to get even for his Joes).

Which brings me to my second point: Jackson Lamb wants to be the hero just as much as his protege River Cartwright does, but the reality of their whole line of work is that there are very few instances in which anyone gets to be, but Catherine is one of the rare exceptions where he did, and all told, it doesn't feel good. Because there's a couple things at play here right? On the one hand yeah- he did save her from being thrown to the wolves after Partner died and framed her for his crimes! Yes he kept her from facing a treason charge, yes he covers her arse time and time again. But she still is the person who had to find the body. And as we know with Lamb, he knows how bad it is to have found the body better than anyone (I mean- I point to how he reacts to Min's death, and then to Bad Sam's in season 4- so enraged he storms out but also so depressed he steals his last bottle of booze). He didn't get to spare her from that, but he is trying to spare her from the rest of it too(an impulse he couldn't help but let go in the last episode of season 3- while still not incriminating himself, mind you), and that's hard! Because he's not supposed to have a heart ("What goodness? What heart?", "Oh have a heart, Jackson!") but he DOES! And he's taken it upon himself to break it time and time again just so he can keep himself at the top of his game- even though, and here's the secret: it's his heart that makes him the best at what he does! Because he does get involved! "I think your attention has been split between finding [Hassan Ahmed] and burning me!"- he does on some level actually give a shit about lives lost! Something Lady Di and Tearney and Duffy and even Cartwright Sr. don't consider when THEY play the game. And he cares about the kind of people that have everything to lose from the actions of the people at the top! And he'll martyr himself about it over and over again because he's got the skill better than anyone to do it and he knows it! And to make sure Standish stays right where she is- out of harms way- he'll fucking go to the ends of... idk England. Probably. To make sure she stays out of harms way where she belongs. And as a thread running co-current to that: I think he understands how much having found Partner's body haunts her every waking moment more than she knows- from his own experience, though he's definitely got a higher body count. They all weigh on him just the same ("By the time I was your age, I'd lost a baker's dozen. It was bad enough when the wall was up, but once they reduced it to bricks and rubble, everything went to shit. Whole networks of Joes, rounded up, blown. I haven't forgotten any of them. And I won't forget Sid.")

And then, on the other side of the dice, I think there's also a bit of a self-torture mixed with sadism that's a part of why he keeps her around too. I mean in a lot of ways it seems that it is absolute torture to him to keep Catherine around, considering she's always harping on about cHaRlEs PaRtNeR (who as we have established- it grates on Jackson that in Catherine's mind Partner is a knight in shining armor when really *he* did all of that way more than Partner ever did for her- though I don't even think Lamb would give himself the credit for that he can't stand that she sees him that way when he was disenchanted and knew all these horrible truths about what he did to his own people for money), and part of that co-dependency is (and I hate to say it) is that he needs to torture SOMEONE other than himself externally for his own friendship with Partner and literally Catherine is the only person with a shred of shared history that he can really do that to. And at the same time, she gets to do it to him. He gets to let her torture him also just a little bit ("What did your last servant die of?" "What did your last boss die of?"). He thrives off of that push and pull of torturing others while actually torturing himself. It's his own fucked up emotional bdsm basically.

Now of course to the biggest question of all: Is it love? Who's to say? Can Lamb ever cut the bullshit and admit to himself that his feelings about the whole Partner situation haunt him like his own shadow? Forever attached to his being? Can Standish ever see beyond her rose-colored glasses about Partner and give Jackson some forgiveness before he farts himself into an early grave for it? I don't know but they're on the fucking clock and I tend to swing back and forth like a pendulum on the notion (like I wouldn't say I ship them, but I wouldn't say that I don't either. Secret third thing: they're just really narratively fucking interesting and that gets me off just as well as anything else so? Yeah I guess).