#just for me personally it’s a really complicated thing

[serensama]

Literally Illario in my head.

No one would be more grateful to let go of so many things- his mind would reel at anyone accepting a part of him so readily, even wanting him, with all his sins and hang-ups, oh he really would turn out to be the man who cried each time he came 😂😭😏

Thinking of a man moaning "thank you" when he finally gets to cum inside 💕

[corkinavoid]

DPxDC It's Complicated

We've all seen the 'we have your son' trope done with both Bruce and Batman, but I've been thinking about it, and, hear me out, let's give it more flavor.

Bruce gets a call, and it's the usual 'we have your son, follow out orders or he dies', but the orders are not money. It's 'find us this other kid, and we'll trade your child for him'.

While that is an unusual demand, there's another thing: the child on the picture that the kidnappers sent Bruce looks exactly like Damian, sans the eye color. And he's smiling, but that's irrelevant right now. A clone? A decoy? A fake?

Oracle runs a face recognition and finds out that the kid's name is Daniel Fenton, and the record says he's been dead for two months now, buried in the local cemetery of Amity Park, Illinois. Have the kidnappers gone mad with grief? But, wait, there are several 'missing' reports that have been filed after the boy's death, submitted by Jasmine Fenton — the kid's sister — and Vlad Masters, the town's mayor? What does he have to do with the kid?

Meanwhile, Tim is sitting tied up in some warehouse, surrounded by Vlad and a dozen of his carbon copies. Is this man some kind of a meta with duplicating abilities? Why did he even decide to use such a weird scheme when contacting police, FBI, or hell, even the Justice League, would have been so much more effective?

It's just confusing all around.

But Vlad has good reasons! He really does, he swears!

The thing is, it's all his fault. If he didn't fund the GIW in the first place, none of this would have happened. The agents in white wouldn't have outed Danny for being Phantom and wouldn't have taken him away. Maddie and Jack wouldn't have rejected their still alive, just different, son, and wouldn't have put an empty casket in a grave with Daniel's name.

Police won't be searching for a person when they know they are already dead and buried. Justice League, who stands for all that's good and fair, won't go against a government agency that stands for the very same thing.

Which leaves Vlad to find other solutions. Like stealing a rich kid and making his even richer daddy do all the work.

If only said rich kid would stop talking.

Wait, what do you fucking mean 'that picture looks like my brother'?

[jollyparaphernalia]

*Inhales* Hey there, wanna see my 'In Stars And Time' AU? I call it 'Kingswap'

Hey, What's This?

My Brainrot <3 This is Kingswap: Also known as 'Hey lets swap The King and Siffrin's roles around in this play, and go from there'. There's more to it than that, but that's the premise. While 'The Guy Who Would Be Siffrin' has their life derailed in such a way that leads to them becoming the Main Villain, 'The Man Who Would Be King' likewise has his life play out in a way that has him in the shoes of a Saviour of Vaugarde.

WARNING This AU chatter post has spoilers for pretty much all of 'In Stars And Time', including stuff from 'Two-Hats'! and 'Start Again: A Prologue'. This is the Spoilers Zone. Also any Content Warnings that apply to In Stars and Time also applies to this post, just to cover my bases.

Let's Take a Look at The Stranger Who Could Have Been Siffrin:

Meet The Stagemaster. Potentially known as 'Sulking One'/SM/Don't Call Me Shirley Siffrin'. While the King and Siffrin in baseline ISAT woke up on a beach with no memories, i've decided it would be interesting to put 'Siffrin' in Corbeaux as a young adult when The Island disappears. He wakes up one day with no memories of his past, no name, and only a vague idea that he had a community in the city...that has forgotten him completely. He takes this Very Normally over the next 10 years (alongside some other...complications) and after some travelling, returns to Vaugarde to be a Menace.

He's also got some funny 'Craft Hands' that let him do things even when he has his hands in his cloak. These hands are also capable of conjuring wires/strings that allow him to physically bind/control people as an added bonus (For the Puppeteer motif) Watch the hands, Heroes!

But Wait, I thought The King Was Big, Why Isn't Stagemaster Big?

Because this tiny form isn't their 'true form'. THIS is what the Stagemaster ACTUALLY looks like, trapped in the House of Dormont by the Orb Door.

The Stagemaster...really isn't a person anymore. It's sort of debatable he was still human even before Big Mode. He can fly like this, and can control his cloak as though it's a part of himself (But he can still remove it) If you are looking at this going 'hey, he looks like a boss out of Kirby' then I did my job right. A theatre kid isn't very fun to watch unless seen, so, even before the Party gets to Dormont, it seemed fitting for SM to have a presence in Orbquest. So...Stagemaster controls a crafted avatar from afar - like playing a character in a game. There's a metaphor about disassociation from the self here. I personally love the idea of this nasty little guy interfering with the Orb Quest and antagonizing the Heroes - he is not NEARLY as powerful as his Big Form when he's Little Guy, so there's enough back and forth for Stagemaster to both be a threat, and also give some wiggle room for the Party to bully the Villain. Build up some rapport for funsies.

Stagemaster's a real piece of work. Imagine if Siffrin took all his self loathing, and then transformed that into outward loathing. If you took the WORST impulses from Loop and Act 5 Siffrin and put them in a blender, and then added a huge chip on his shoulder against the Universe, you might get the rancid creature you see here. Wet Meow Meow has transformed into a Feral Cat With Mange. And Rabies. And an impulsive urge to monologue. He doesn't even like puns!! Horrible!

The Party eventually calls him 'Smaster' for short before arriving in Dormont.

So if 'Siffrin' is in Kings place...Who or What is travelling with our beloved Party?

Meet Clovis (Named after an old King of Franks because I am very subtle). While Siffrin was a wet meow meow stray cat, Clovis is more a nervous dog. The King's explanation behind why he called himself The King seemed very utilitarian to me in ISAT, like he wanted to embody his role completely. So...here, Clovis puts all his eggs into his identity as 'Knight'. He doesn't serve anyone, he's just really into the idea of a brave, heroic persona. He's...very awkward and nervous, and often falls back onto 'what would a more brave, knightly sort do?' to make up for the fact his entire life was carved out of his skull with a spoon.

Look at this, took a perfectly good villain and made him a blorbo. Look at him, I gave him anxiety and sword autism. Like Siffrin, the party grows to love their weird wet dog. Mirabelle bonds over swords and anxious 'do it scared' behavior, Isabeau shares a 'battle bros'/'two bros sitting in a hot tub' dynamic, Bonnie treats him like a Substitute Teach ("yeah this is fine for kids c'mon lets go' 'uh, if you say so, boniface...') and Odile merrily bullies him (Paper beats rock)

Of course we need the Don Quixote reference. (He lost the fight, for the record.) Clovis is more than just a cute face, of course. Even he has his secrets.

Something is wrong here. Something wrong with him, maybe. Maybe he isn't supposed to be here.

Much like the King, Clovis also knows he's missing important things from his life, and has taken great effort (and personal injury) to keep what bits he can close to him - even when he really shouldn't.

The Party keeps Clovis from the Headache books not because they don't think they matter, but because the party doesn't want Clovis to hurt himself. They joke that he's an amnesiac prince from a far off land, but, well, at a certain angle, that's sort of the truth, isn't it? Clovis isn't a trap master like Siffrin, (or nearly as fast) but tends to walk as the lead of the Party because he's a Very Durable guy with some armor and protective Craft, so, any traps that explode in his face are easier to shrug off, and those that aren't...well, he's got quick reflexes.

But Wait! If The King is the looping hero, and Siffrin is the Big Evil Bad Guy, who does Clovis get as a Guide?

It's good ol' Loop! Our Loop, the Loopert we love and adore. SURPRISE! I fooled you!! This AU isn't meant to be a thought experiment, it's actually an overly elaborate way to give Loop as much psychic damage as physically possible!!

What's worse than having Another You take your place? Having a Tiny Version of your Nemesis take your place, earning the love and affection of your beloved family instead of you!

(They call him 'Princeling')

Needless to say, Loop and Clovis' dynamic is what we call in the scientific community fucking atrocious. Clovis wants to put his trust into this Guiding Star, and Loop is far, FAR worse to Clovis than Loop would be to a Siffrin. Loop may not be able to guess every single thought Clovis has, but any anxiety that is a reflection of Loop/Siffrin will be mercilessly picked apart with a smile. It's hate at first sight. At least Loop can take solace in the fact that Clovis is just as clueless as Loop/Siffrin was in their loops.

Clovis meanwhile is just intimidated. A guiding star of the universe?? And they hate him already??? 'Ohh...I really messed up already, haven't I? What'd I do???' Anyways, that's all for now. I just really wanted to get my initial brain worms out of my head and into the world. Please enjoy. If I do more posts like this, i'll prolly tag it as 'isat Kingswap au'. okay byyyyyyyyyeeeee thanks for reading! And thanks to the AU channel of the ISAT Discord for being so supportive of my brainrot!

[johns-walker]

I never really cared for John Walker in the Falcon TV series, but after watching Thunderrbolts, I kinda need him, bad. So if you’re willing to write a request, may I request just John, devouring reader in a kiss? Like, hot and heavy, pushing her against the wall 👉👈

for some reason i never even got notified of this ask but guess what i saw it in fact!!! also yes. yes yes yes.

john walker/f!reader

cw; making out, almost smut (again LOL)

Rooming with a superhero probably wasn’t something that you anticipated, or something that you could have even tried to predict the outcome of. Or, you were pretty sure he was a superhero? He was an Avenger, but before that he wasn’t an Avenger and he was just depressed and also living with you because he was going through a divorce. It was just supposed to be a minor living situation because you were both kind of out on your asses, but now you were… friends? Friends, but you were attracted to him and also he came home covered in blood and three days late half of the time and sometimes you simply weren’t sure how you were ever supposed to feel about the situation. 

Tonight was no exception to the rule. 

You were sitting on your couch when he walked in, his face bruised and his cheek split open. It was the same thing that it always was, with you patching him up. Typically, though, he would go to bed right after and you would talk a bit in the morning. But he had become friendlier with you since he joined this team. His mental health was doing better, and you were becoming closer. Regardless of how nervous it made you, you liked it. 

“Why do you sit up waiting for me?” He asked, leaning against the kitchen counter while you fixed him a cup of tea. 

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I came home at midnight and you were ready for me to get here, even though I’m late sometimes.” Late often, was more like it. But that really only made you sound worse in terms of the situation, so you didn’t feel the need to correct him.

“Because I care about you.” It was a simple answer, but one that you fully meant. You cared about him, and you were worried about him not coming home. You knew it was more than that, but he had always seemed pretty oblivious to that fact. Until now, at least. Now, he was looking at you like he could see right through you, and it was making you incredibly nervous. 

What you couldn’t have known was that he had a very candid conversation with Yelena and Ava earlier about his feelings, about the fact that he very clearly had a relatively intimate relationship with his roommate who they were certain was probably in love with him from the way that he described her. 

“Walker?”

He seemed to be pondering, moving closer to you. You held out the mug for him, assuming in your heart that was what he wanted. But he said nothing, and even though he took the mug, he simply set it down beside you. 

“John?” 

“Tell me to stop, if you want me to stop.” When you felt his hand on your jaw, cradling your cheek and tilting your face up so you would have to look at him, you knew there was some small part of your mind that was telling him that he should stop. You were friends, and you didn’t want to ruin that because of your complicated feelings toward him. But the way that he was looking at you told you that you had no reason to be so nervous, that your complicated feelings really didn’t need to be all that complicated anymore. 

When you didn’t tell him to stop, he didn’t bother hesitating as he pressed his lips against yours. It was experimental at first, neither of you really knowing what it was that the other person wanted. But when it became clear that what he wanted was you, and that what you wanted was him, neither of you really felt that need to be all too timid. 

It felt as if every single emotion that you had been trying to conceal within yourself was coming out. All of the passion that you felt toward him, the need to kiss him and be with him and tell him that you were painfully and obviously attracted to him and cared about him more than you were supposed to care about a friend. Everything came out, and he seemed to be enjoying it. The loss of tension, but the need to get somehow closer all-but consuming the both of you. 

His kiss became needy, and you were desperate for more. 

You didn’t notice that he had your back against the wall until you were there, his body trapping you between it and the flowery wallpaper that he had claimed he would change when you both decided to move into this apartment. Each second, it felt like his kiss got deeper. You could feel body pressed against yours, his lips against yours so roughly that it almost felt like he was trying to consume you whole. 

His teeth sunk into your bottom lip after a moment, a whine leaving your throat that almost embarrassed you. Walker’s bite was nearly enough to hurt, nearly enough to leave a mark on the inside of your mouth. You almost wished that he would, that his teeth would indent you so when he was away you could still feel him. He seemed to take note of that passion, of that lingering clinginess that you always tried to hide when he was away for prolonged periods of time. 

He didn’t mind that you grabbed onto his coat, pulling him tightly against you. I return, you didn’t mind when his hand snaked behind your head and tugged at your hair. He pulled your head back just enough so that he could trail his lips down your jaw, a needy sigh leaving your mouth as you felt his lips pulling your skin in between them. There was a desire building in your core that you couldn’t deny, a need to be even closer to him that was growing inside of you. 

After a moment, you grabbed his chin to pull his face back to yours. He let you kiss him with all the passion that you had been wanting to get out. The worry, and the desire, and the feelings that you had been trying to conceal. His hands moved to grab onto your hips, to keep you pressed against him as tightly as he could. You knew that you both wanted more. You could feel it in your stomach, in your chest, and in the way that he seemed to be subtly trying to get your leg up and over his hip so he could press against you even tighter. 

At some point, you would need to discuss this, but perhaps the moment wasn’t when you finally gave him what he wanted – when you could feel the evidence of his arousal against you. With one movement of his hips against yours, you knew that you would give into your desires before either of you even considered having a serious conversation about this. 

“We’ll talk-” He stopped talking after a moment, his voice rough, needy – breathless. “When I’m done with you.” 

It was as though he was reading your mind, but it wasn’t a surprise that you were both seemingly having the same thoughts about this situation.

With a smile, you pulled him back down to your level, your lips brushing against the corner of his mouth. “Sounds good to me.”

Of all of the long nights that you had since Walker became an Avenger, this was certainly the best one to date.

[revelboo]

Is it okay to ask how the TFP cons are doing in Gone? Just really wanna see Smokescreen doing his best to put the humans back and act like he didnt do shit and the autobots doing damage control and stalling for time till Smokescreen completes his job maybe 😅

Sure! 🔞 Mass displaced mech 🌶️

Gone-TFP Cons Pt 3

• “No,” Optimus growls, servos pressing against his helm as he stares at Smokescreen and tries to figure out a solution for the nightmare the young bot had just dumped in his lap. Kidnapping all of the humans from the Nemesis. Including mated and fully bonded humans. “You can’t just put them in an empty energon cube and leave them with a transponder broadcasting their location.” As tempting as it is, Megatron is going to come for them all over this. The warlord’s been relatively quiet lately and he glances at the human wrapped in a blanket to hide Megatron’s tacky, very obvious harness he’s put on you so everyone knows of his claim. As if the way you scent of the former gladiator isn’t enough to warn other mechs to not mess with you, except apparently Smokescreen. And you catch him staring at you and shoot him a filthy look.

• Arms crossed as you glare up at the enemy leader and pretend that you’re not scared shitless, you’re aware of the others looking to you. Because somehow you’re apparently the de facto leader here whether you want to be or not. What had been a surprise was finding out the others wanted to be returned to the Nemesis, too. You don’t actually have a choice. If you try and hide, your asshole mate is likely to start destroying the closest town looking for you. Starscream’s human had just snorted and said they liked being pampered by the ‘big turkey.’ The only ones on the fence had been the poor soul saddled with Predaking, but they’d also agreed, not wanting their nightmare fuel guardian to come looking for them and enact a Godzilla movie on their home town and Shockwave’s human had just flushed and muttered that they’re weren’t sure. Then there’s the one who may or may not have some kinky, poly thing going on with Knockout and Breakdown, but they’d nodded when asked if they wanted to be returned to their mechs.

• “So what? We just comm them and say oops, we sort of stole your humans, how about a truce so we can give them back?” Bulkhead mutters, frowning at the cluster of humans. And trying to wrap his processor around the fact that they want to be returned to the Decepticons. That the Decepticons are not only fragging humans, but bonding them somehow. Taking actual mates instead of just keeping them as toys. Hadn’t even imagined humans could be bonded as mates.

• “Personally, I’m with the kid and his box idea,” Arcee mutters, shooting Smokescreen a look. Because no matter what, Megatron isn’t going to ignore this. There’s going to be repercussions and maybe a viscous part of her she can’t admit to or acknowledge almost wants to open a ground bridge and sling the lot of them as far from their Decepticon mates as possible. Wants the Cons to suffer, because they don’t deserve happiness. Hates the fact that the only reason the Cons have been quiet is because they’ve been too busy fragging the native fauna. “The sooner they’re out of our base, the better. Wouldn’t surprise me if they’re chipped.” And that fully bonded one is a ticking time bomb no matter what. A bonded mech can always sense and track down his mate.

• Blinking at that, you’re about to protest that they wouldn’t chip you like a lost puppy. Except, you can absolutely see Knockout doing that to keep tabs on you. Uncomfortably rubbing a hand against your arm, you try to convince yourself that if he had injected a microchip in you, you’d know it. Probably. And you’re still not sure why you’d asked to go back. You’d wanted to go home, right? Like spending time with Knockout, but finding out some of the other humans are fucking their aliens? Everything’s suddenly more complicated.

• “Box,” Ratchet growls. “We all know that no matter what Megatron says, as soon as they safely have their humans back, the Cons are going to attack.” And honestly, he wouldn’t really blame them. Can’t believe the kid couldn’t scent the sex on at least a couple of the humans. They reek of their mechs. But then the kid’s young enough that maybe he’s never fragged at all some he grew up with the war in full swing. “I know it’s not ideal, but it’s our safest option.”

• Snarling as he strides out of the ground bridge, Megatron’s aware of the others following in his wake, the little datapad in his hand cracking as he squeezes, spotting a fragging energon cube with a blanket over it out in the middle of the desert. He’s going to rip Optimus’s spark out with his bare servos for this. Kneeling and yanking the blanket off, his servos tremble slightly as you look up at him and he reaches in to lift you free of the box. Seeing Soundwave snake a tendril in to claim his own human. And Knockout growls as Predaking snarls in his face, posing past him and reaching for his own. Little hands land on Megatron’s hand as he strokes a servo against you, reassuring himself that you’re okay. Wanting to lift you to his face, brush his mouth against you like Starscream is doing to his, but can’t appear weak in front of his followers. As soon as he gets you back to his habsuite, he’s going to claim you. Spend all recharge cycle buried inside you, filling and bonding you.

• “Thirteen,” voice strained as he cradles you to his chassis, antenna back, Shockwave is dimly aware of the others with their humans. Hears a startled moan and his head turns. Ah. Predaking apparently had mass shifted, hands cupping his human’s face, mouth sliding against theirs, the human’s eyes wide in surprise. And he needs to reassure himself that you’re okay, too. To feel you against him. “Prepare yourself to be claimed.” Sees your eyes widen slightly as he mass shifts and kneels with you.

• Wings flaring out in offense as Shockwave just frees his spike and starts rutting against his human, Dreadwing cups a hand against you, turning slightly so you don’t have see that. There’s no not hearing it, though. And Megatron is just staring at Shockwave, sharp denta bared in a grin as his human swears and covers their own eyes. And Shockwave isn’t the only one having control issues. Spots Soundwave coiling his tendrils around his human, one sliding between their thighs as the mech rubs his visor against their face. And he can’t deny that he’s tempted to claim you when he gets back to his habsuite after thinking he’d lost you. Needs to hold you, feel you against him. Would you let him love you? Claim you?

Previous

[valeisaslut]

DEAD – LYRICS ANALYSIS PART ONE OF READER’S ALBUM — PARALLELS W/ COLLIDE (BECAUSE I’M DERANGED)

i’ve been working on this for like a month now and when i say i’ve dissected every line, every note, i mean it. this isn’t just a tracklist—it’s a map. a mirror. a heartbreak scrapbook. the "album" lives in collide's world, and if you read closely (and listen even closer), you’ll find the parallels everywhere. the lyrics aren’t just songs—they’re memories. confessions. everything she couldn’t say out loud.

especially with the music—this is the heart of the story. the sound of losing her. the sound of still wanting her. the sound of standing on stage with a smile while bleeding under it.

thank you everyone for helping me build this!! every anon and follower that has suggested their songs and analyzed why they thought they fitted the story completely <3

this is where the pain lives. and this is how she sings through it.

TRACK 01: THE GREATEAST.

this is the first track on the album, the opening shot, the raw nerve—it's everything you never got to say to ellie when things first shattered, when the lines blurred from pretend lovers into something real and devastating.

"all the times i waited for you to want me naked" : this isn't about sex, not really. because yeah, sex was easy, effortless—fucking in hotel rooms and dressing rooms and anywhere else your bodies collided, tangled, desperate, hungry—but this was about something else. something more vulnerable. something that felt impossible to ask for: you waited for ellie to see past the fame, the chaos, the fake dating that felt too fucking real, and want you stripped bare emotionally, too. you waited for her to crave not just your body but the whole messy, complicated disaster that you were becoming together.

all your love, your patience, your desperate admiration for the person she could have been, was left bruised and unappreciated. it felt worthless.

"you could've been the greatest"

it’s not an accusation—it’s grief. mourning the ellie who wrote songs about you, who kissed you breathless backstage, who whispered promises she wasn’t strong enough to keep yet. mourning the person she was underneath drugs and cameras and the fucked-up pressure of fame that tore you both apart.

TRACK 02: MY EVERYTHING.

track two—"my everything"—is the aftermath of the greatest. the ache settling deep in your bones once ellie was actually gone, when she left to heal, leaving nothing but silence behind.

"you weren't my everything till we were nothing": when ellie was there, tangled up in addiction and chaos, breaking promises faster than she made them, you convinced yourself you'd survive losing her. but then she left, the room emptied out, and suddenly all the little things turned into everything you ever wanted, everything you lost.

"pain is just a consequence of love": it’s a confession, a surrender to reality. loving ellie meant accepting pain, accepting loss, accepting that maybe your pride had kept you from truly showing her how deep your feelings ran. maybe you were scared—scared of being vulnerable, scared of rejection, scared of loving someone whose demons threatened to take you both down.

"if i cross your mind, just know i'm yours": here’s your heart laid bare, bleeding openly. you’re begging ellie from afar, wherever she is, to understand your love didn't disappear with her. if she ever doubts it, if she ever wonders late at night, you want her to know you never really let go. your heart still carries her name, her touch, her chaos, even in her absence.

this track isn’t just regret—it’s clarity. the kind of clarity that only hits you after loss, when you’re forced to admit the messy, undeniable truth: ellie was—is—your everything.

TRACK 03: THE SUBWAY.

track three—"the subway"— (IT GOT COPYRIGHTED AND ISNT IN THE PLAYLIST IM GONNA DIE PLEASE) is that bitter, aching moment when reality hits and you're left behind, trapped in memories.

"she's got a way" vs. "she got away": perfect parallelism of heartbreak. ellie's charm, her way of drawing you in, her effortless cool—“she’s got a way.” but that same charm meant you couldn't hold onto her, couldn't stop her from slipping through your fingers—“she got away.”

"made you the villain, evil for just moving on": this line screams guilt. ellie left to save you, and you know deep down it’s not fair to resent her for it. but it doesn’t make your anger hurt less. it doesn’t stop you from seeing her shadow everywhere, even in the dark.

"it's never over": direct parallelism with ellie's song, she writes it after—"lover, you should've come over"—

TRACK O4: PAPER BAG.

track four—"paper bag"— (we LOVE FIONA APPLE IN THIS HOUSEHOLD) is raw hunger, emptiness, the brutal truth of realizing your hope was just an illusion. it’s about reaching desperately for something beautiful and real, only to realize too late it was never really there.

"i thought it was a bird, but it was just a paper bag": you mistook ellie's promises, her kisses, her whispered reassurances as something tangible, something true. but in the end, they floated away—empty, weightless, meaningless. the metaphor hits painfully deep because it mirrors your hunger, literally and emotionally. the emptiness left behind by ellie’s absence turned into something physical—starving yourself unintentionally, appetite replaced with heartache.

"i thought he was a man, but he was just a little boy": you thought ellie was steady—strong enough to love you, to choose you—but in the end, she was still that scared, reckless kid. the drugs, the outbursts, the running away… all of it screamed someone who never got to grow up.

when writing, i often portray ellie’s mannerisms—especially in the harder, rawer moments—as childish. not in a mocking way, but in a devastating one. her reactions, her outbursts, the way she shuts down or clings too tightly—they come from a place of arrested growth. like deep down, she’s still that scared, unloved kid who never got the chance to grow up before the world demanded too much from her.

"hunger hurts, but starving works when it costs too much to love": this line is heartbreakingly powerful. the ed worsened as ellie disappeared, your inability to eat mirroring your inability to move forward. pain became comfort, emptiness felt like control, something to hold onto when everything else slipped away.

TRACK O5: SPRING INTO SUMMER

track five — spring into summer — is the dream-state track. the foggy, weightless fantasy where ellie comes back, where love wasn’t lost before it was fully yours. it’s soft. it’s aching. it’s the kind of song that only exists in that cruel half-asleep place between memory and want.

"nobody knows what it's like to be us": that’s the truth at the center of everything. you and ellie were chaos, yes, but you were also real. no one knew what it felt like to share stages and secrets and sleepless nights in hotel rooms. no one knew the inside jokes, the way your bodies curled into each other after shows, the way ellie always grabbed your hand before going on stage like she had to touch you for luck. you were something rare. something nobody else understood.

"i'd never let you leave": she did leave. and maybe that was the right thing, maybe she had to. but in the dream version, the one that plays behind your eyelids when you’re too tired to fight it, she stays. she sees everything clearly this time. she doesn’t run. you don’t wake up empty.

"love you like i mean it just because i can": there’s something gentle here, a kind of tenderness you never got to hold onto when it all crashed down. this line is a fantasy: loving her fully, openly, without the fear. without the addiction. without the press. just love. just because.

this whole track feels like lying in the sun after a brutal winter. it’s not real, but you wish it was.

TRACK 06: FADE INTO YOU

track six — fade into you — is numb. not loud, not desperate—just quiet devastation. the moment when you're so emptied out, all you can do is stare at the person who ruined you and wonder if they ever really saw you at all.

"i look to you and i see nothing": this line is the collapse. the final straw. you loved her so deeply you forgot to protect yourself, and now when you reach for her, there’s nothing left. no light, no promise. just a shell. you look for answers in her face and find a void.

"you live your life, you go in shadows": ellie, with her addictions, her silences, her ghosts. you watched her disappear into herself over and over again. she was there but unreachable. a shadow in the bed next to you, the studio across from you. never fully real. never fully present.

"i wanna hold the hand inside you": this is the most intimate kind of wanting. not lust—not anymore. it’s that terrifying, tender desire to touch the parts of her even she can’t access. the parts she hides. the scared kid under all that bravado. you wanted to love her there. and she never let you.

this track doesn’t cry or scream. it just… aches. like the aftershocks of everything that’s come before. like you're dissolving into her memory, and she never even noticed.

TRACK 07: J'S LULLABY (DARLIN' ID WAIT FOR YOU)

track seven — j’s lullaby (darlin’ i’d wait for you) — is devotion. soft and impossible and unconditional. it’s the vow you made without ever saying it out loud: if ellie asked, you’d wait forever.

"when dividin’ up the universe, you could have mine": a direct, aching mirror to the supernova—ellie where she promised the universe but didn’t stay long enough to give it. here, you’re offering yours without hesitation. if the world had to be split, she could have all the light. you’d sit in the dark if it meant she’d feel warm.

"i’d give you the sun if you asked me": this line feels so young, so wide-eyed in its love. it’s a memory and a wish at the same time. how you used to look at ellie—like she made gravity optional. like she deserved everything. and maybe that was the problem. maybe you gave too much of yourself just trying to get her to stay.

"i’d put the piece in your backyard / in hopes to be enough for you to stay": this is where the heartbreak seeps in. you would’ve built a whole life around her, buried pieces of yourself in the hope she'd finally feel rooted.

this track is all the things you never said when she was here. and now you whisper them into the silence, hoping somehow she’ll hear.

TRACK 08: LOLM. AND OH. WE HAVE TO ANALYSE.

track eight — loml — is the THESIS of the album. in the MIDDLE. the collapse, the clarity, the quiet resignation. it’s everything you never got to say in that green room. it’s what you should’ve screamed when she walked away. it’s what still sits on your chest when you try to sleep.

"we embroidered the memories of the time i was away / stitching, 'we were just kids, babe’”: this is how you both survived it. by romanticizing it. by pretending it wasn’t as messy or painful as it really was. "we were just kids, babe.”

and babe—that was hers. the way ellie always called you babe even when you weren’t really hers, even when it was "fake dating". she said it like a tether. and you held onto it like it meant safety.

"in your suit and tie, in the nick of time": the grammys. self explanatory. the moment everything started being real, when the feelings poured and soaked the both of you. that is the moment with her you cherish the most.

"are they secondhand-embarrassed that i can’t get out of bed?": because the world moved on. the fans stayed entertained. but you—you're still in the wreckage. still in the hoodie she left. still in the ache. still in the bed. you wonder if people are tired of you being sad.

"what a valiant roar, what a bland goodbye / the coward claimed he was a lion": the green room. the breakup. that fight. and then she walked out like she was doing you a favor. like she’d decided to let you go, when in reality, she just couldn’t stay. and then trying to be strong for the crowd, to show the part of her everyone wished to see. the lion.

"but i’ve felt a hole like this / never before and ever since": because no one else comes close. no one else makes you feel like she did—high and low, wild and full and wrecked all at once. the hole she left is too specific, too jagged, too hers.

"you’re the loss of my life": not just the love. not just the muse. the loss. because at the end of everything—after the fake dating, the sex, the songs, the drugs, the award shows, the endless nights, the promises—what you’re left with is just that: she’s gone. and she took you with her.

TRACK 09: COOL ABOUT IT.

track nine — cool about it — is to talk. to smile. to pretend you’re okay. it’s playing house with grief. wearing a version of yourself that doesn’t scream when she walks in the room.

“i’ll pretend bein’ with you doesn’t feel like drowning”: this line is the quietest heartbreak. she’s could be sitting across from you, probably with a smile, maybe even sober, maybe even okay. and it still feels like drowning. and you still won’t let it show.

“once, i took your medication to know what it’s like”: this is devastating. because ellie’s addiction shaped everything. and maybe, in the worst moment, you tried to understand. to feel what she felt. and now you carry that knowledge like a curse. like a shared secret she doesn’t even know you have.

“wishin’ you were kind enough to be cruel about it”: because the worst kind of heartbreak is the soft kind. the kind that lingers. that doesn’t come with a slam or a scream or a final blow. ellie left gently. so gently it still confuses you. and you almost wish she’d just break your nose instead. at least then it would make sense.

this song doesn’t cry. it doesn’t rage. it just hurts. quietly. constantly. like her presence. like her absence. like everything that went unsaid.

FOLLOWING IN PT.2 BECAUSE TUMBLR DOESN'T LET ME ADD MORE THAN 30 IMAGES FUUUUUUCKKKKKK

[sirfrogsworth]

Clinging to sanity

Summary of this post...

My brain is broken. My A/C is broken. My phone is broken. My computer is broken. My support system is broken. My financial stability is broken. My family is broken.

And the big finale...

Please give Froggie a Yelp review to repair his relationship with his estranged uncles.

Seriously, I need a whole bunch of you to say nice things about me in a convoluted plan to get back the money my brother stole from my dying father.

If you don't feel like reading all of my broken stuff and just want to read about giving me a good review as a person, you can skip to the bullet point list at the end.

Alright, here we go...

I sometimes get in these states where I feel like my sanity is compromised. My mental defenses are minimal and I lose the filter on my brain that tells me "this is a good idea" or "this is a bad idea."

This causes me to say embarrassing things. I overshare with strangers. I keep myself from falling asleep because I have some amazing idea. But when I wake up in the morning I can't believe I lost all of that sleep for such a ridiculous idea. I write weird posts that no one likes. Or I post about controversial subjects like A.I. and trans people and RFK Jr. that I *know* will result in contentious feedback.

And my insane brain says, "You can handle it! Besides, you are so factually correct about this, no one will dare question your meticulous research. IT'S ALL GOOD! SEND IT, YOLO!"

I have a rule. If I am not emotionally or mentally prepared to defend my point of view on a controversial subject, I should wait until I am ready to publish.

Insane Froggie Brain ignores this rule.

After I "send it" and the negative feedback starts to flow in (even though I was assured by my brain it wouldn't), I become afraid to look at messages and replies and reblogs. And a lot of times I need that sense of community. I need to talk to my cool little community so I don't feel lonely. But Insane Froggie Brain cuts me off from that. I give myself all of this anxiety that could have been avoided by just posting another time.

And because I have no emotional defenses, that anxiety is amplified. Mean comments hurt much more. I obsess over them and my OCD causes thought feedback loops where I cannot get something out of my brain. I once couldn't sleep for a weekend because someone said I was wrong about how light reflects off the moon. They were right and I was also right but they said I was "misleading." And that just lived in my brain for days. I kept trying to think of new ways to better explain my point of view. I used up energy I didn't really have to take pictures of a baseball in a dark closet.

It was silly. It didn't matter. It was just a small disagreement. But OCD doesn't do small. OCD makes everything BIG.

What I'm trying to say is...

People need their emotional defenses.

People need their filters.

It's weird because I still have full access to my logical brain. So sane thoughts get all mixed in with the less sane ones. Sometimes I am self aware and can shut down the less sane ideas. Other times I am oblivious. And I *hate* losing control of my brain in any way. It's one of the reasons I've never touched alcohol. Which is why I get very disturbed when this happens.

I remember one time I was positive I was going to move to Florida and start a pet photography business. I had an entire business plan worked out where I trained people how to take the photos so the business could run itself if I got sick. I made an entire PowerPoint presentation to show Katrina so she would be my business partner. I was looking up rent prices for office space. I was making equipment lists for camera gear. She was going on a trip so she told me I could talk to her about it when she returned. And I am so lucky she wasn't available at the time.

Maybe if I had a normal person's energy, I could make something like that work. But once I returned to sanity, I realized it was orders of magnitude more complicated than anything I was actually capable of doing. I am still planning to do pet photography, but I have to come up with a more reasonable plan that does not involve Insane Froggie Brain.

I think it is just my ambitious mind trying to escape. Chronic illness is often heartbreaking because you have to temper all of your ambitions. And it is especially devastating when you are a very ambitious person, as I am.

I want to have all of these big ideas. But I have to filter them through reality. And when that filter is broken, I just unleash big ideas on all my friends. I once even held an official video chat meeting and we took notes and made plans. And I feel so guilty I wasted 4 people's time like that. None of those ideas happened. They had no chance of happening with my energy levels. But my friends and collaborators still did the meeting and nodded along like everything was fine. I appreciate them humoring me.

I also overshare. I overshare normally, but when I get like this I OVER SHARE. You are probably going to witness it in this very post. But I tell everyone everything about what is going on. I tell strangers. I tell a dog walking by.

"Hey doggie, my testosterone is returning and I'm struggling with having a libido again. I know most people would not complain, but it is very disruptive to my day! I have other things I want to do!"

Right now I am just not confident in anything I think or do. I wrote a post about social constructs yesterday. That literally took me all day to write. I was endlessly tweaking it and I thought it was going to be viral and helpful and win the trans debate for everyone.

It currently has 49 notes.

I'm afraid I did not fix trans rights.

Sorry about that.

And my rant about Christopher Nolan using IMAX is doing pretty well. I nerded out about film grain for like 2 paragraphs and it is getting way more notes than a philosophical perspective on constructs.

I just have no idea what people are going to like and I used to be pretty good at judging that. It's like I'm throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks but instead of a wall I'm throwing it into the void. The spaghetti just disappears into infinite darkness.

I'm clearly still recovering from the big house clean with Katrina. And I am more tired than normal. But I am also very stressed about losing the house. I'm trying to figure it out, but I may only have until the end of June before I have to make some scary decisions.

And also, my air conditioner is not working. It has a leaky evaporator. Last year, I had it recharged and that lasted the entire summer. If the leak is leaking at the same rate, I could just do that again. It would be expensive, but replacing the evaporator is so costly, I'd be better off getting a heat pump installed. I'm a good candidate, it could save me money in the long run, but I am nowhere near in a position to make that happen.

Also, my phone is falling apart.

Literally. The only thing keeping it together is the phone case.

And this laptop, which I love, was not meant to be my main computer. I bought it when my dad was sick and I needed something upstairs to manage his prescriptions and bills and appointments. It wasn't meant to be an image editing machine. And, to their credit, Apple has made a crazy powerful little computer. I admit it, I love an Apple product. It can handle way more than expected. But my photo restorations can sometimes end up with 5 gigabyte files. I can't even save them as PSDs. I have to use this weird "PSB" format. It stands for "Photoshop Big." When I fill up the RAM, my computer uses the main SSD. And when I fill that up, I think I can hear the laptop crying and saying, "I wasn't meant for this! Please use fewer layers!"

But I need to finish restoring these photos because I have delayed their completion by about 5 months (got sick before I could finish). And also because I need to pay for the A/C recharge.

You might be thinking, "Didn't you fundraise to get the big fancy powerful computer of your dreams a few years ago? Why don't you use that?"

My big fancy computer has been broken almost since I got it.

It was right before my mom got really sick and there is a major hardware problem. I worked with tech support for over a month and we could not figure out what the issue was. The computer is mostly unusable. Like, "can't even web browse" unusable.

It honestly has caused me so much depression. Like deep, deep, crying-myself-to-sleep-for-weeks depression. I still cry about it. I know it is just a thing, but I am genuinely heartbroken about it.

Why haven't I fixed it? I'm a good computer fixer, right?

Once I had to take care of my parents, I just did not have any extra energy to deal with it. After a month of back-and-forth emails from the manufacturer, I finally told them, "I'm sorry, my parents are sick. I will email you when I have the energy to revisit this."

If you know my story and how I took care of my parents all alone because I have a neglectful brother, then you can probably guess that energy never came.

I am good at tech support. I have been an expert in computers since I was a teenager. I have taken apart and built computers more times than I can count. I have never had a problem this frustrating before. It works fine for a few hours, and then it just progressively slows down to being unusable. I narrowed the issue to either the SSD, the CPU, or the motherboard. All things that are not easy to replace. (The SSD is behind the damn GPU.)

In the 30s, the Royal Air Force used to have issues with their planes that baffled them. This is where the term "gremlin" came from. No matter what they did, no matter how many parts they replaced, they could not get the "gremlin" out of the plane. These were professional mechanics who just could not fix something and it drove them nuts.

I have a computer gremlin. I've never experienced anything like it in all of my years of fixing computers. I was working with professional tech support people. I was on reddit forums. And the only thing left to do was start swapping out parts. I'd work on it maybe an hour each day with whatever energy I had and it eventually was too much. I just could not deal with it. They told me to send it back, but I could not take care of my parents without any access to a computer. So I just rebooted it every time I used it.

At that point, my parents were requiring 24/7 care and I was so overwhelmed that I said, "fuck it" and ordered this laptop. I figured I'd fix the computer when I had time or energy. But that time and energy never came. And I certainly didn't have the energy to haul a 60 pound computer upstairs, box it up, and then take it to UPS. So I just kept putting it off and putting it off.

And I let the warranty expire.

When I realized I did that, I cried myself to sleep for another few weeks. This material object has caused me legitimate emotional trauma.

Any part replacements are now on me. And there isn't really any way of knowing which part is faulty. I figured I'd buy a cheap SSD and start there.

I feel so fucking guilty because people donated money for me to have that machine. I feel like I let them all down by not getting it fixed. When I finish my recovery, I'm hoping I can sort it out. But that could be many months from now.

Recovery has been such a dark, lonely place. Trying to restore my health a millimeter at a time is a grueling marathon of misery. I have been struggling to keep Insane Froggie Brain at bay this entire time.

I felt like I was stuck in a hole.

And like a superhero with the power of friendship and puns, Katrina pulled me out of the giant hole I was in. My house turned into a biohazard. She flew from Florida to essentially clean and organize everything. How do you even begin to thank someone for that?

But also, she shouldn't have had to do that. I have a perfectly functional brother. But he hasn't spoken to me for nearly a year now.

I have other family in town. But I missed so many family gatherings over the years, they don't really know me. None of them have called. I'd have to rebuild those relationships if I want them to be a part of my life again.

And I haven't talked about this yet because it has been too painful.

But... my support system fell apart.

My aunt had to move away to take care of her father-in-law. A year before my mom passed she took care of my grandma as her end-of-life caregiver. And people should only have to do that once. But she has to do it again, and unfortunately, we haven't been able to speak much.

We were very good at keeping in touch in real life. But she is of an older generation and has trouble maintaining relationships on a smartphone. I mean, I get it. Some people are just better at meatspace than cyberspace. That was actually one of the things I liked about our bond. Almost all of my friendships are online. Having someone who liked to visit me and talk to me in person was special.

But, for the time being, I lost that. And it feels a bit like temporarily losing another parent.

I am struggling to even start writing the words for this next part.

I had two best friends. Katrina and I are great. Our friendship is probably better than it has ever been.

But my other best friend of nearly 15 years ghosted me without explanation.

I haven't talked about it because it has been too hard. Any time I try to think about it I get upset. My eyes are filling up with tears as I type this.

I have been pretending like it isn't happening.

Which is not working great.

I've been trying to hire a therapist.

They all have months-long waiting lists.

My friend just stopped talking to me and I don't know why.

They went from driving across the country and holding my hand at my dad's funeral to just not being a part of my life.

I'm so scared I said something terrible or did something terrible. I keep going through all of my memories trying to figure out what I could have done. But we had the kind of friendship where we'd talk about that stuff. If I screw up, they would tell me. We'd work it out.

This person who was in my life nearly every week for over a decade is just not there anymore. I keep losing people and I can't make it stop. And I am really worried that I am leaning on Katrina too much. She went from being part of a multifaceted support system to my entire support system. That isn't fair to her.

She has been very understanding. And she knows I am going to rebuild a support system as soon as I am able. But I don't want to overwhelm her and lose her too.

Weaning off this medication and living with no testosterone has been so miserable and she has been the only one helping me through it.

I'm doing so well with my recovery. I think I can be off the meds in 3 months and hopefully my testosterone will be fully back in range. I'm already more productive than I have been in nearly 8 months.

But I have 1 month of financial runway left and I am not going to get well enough before then.

Everything happens all at once. Every single time. And usually terrible things happen in my life at the same time terrible things happen in Katrina's life. She had terrible mold that destroyed her health for months. Thankfully it did not turn her transphobic, but it sure fucked her health for a while. She made all of this progress getting fit and healthy and BAM, the universe says, "You are doing too well, you need a challenge!"

So, what is my plan?

I am a problem solver and I have some doozies to solve.

Right now I am going to appeal to the family patriarchs on my dad's side. On his literal deathbed, my dad asked his brothers to "take care of me" and I am going to attempt to call in that favor.

I am going to ask them to talk to my brother and hopefully mediate a solution regarding the stolen inheritance. I want them to convince my brother to do the right thing and return the money he took from my dad.

Sorry, the money he "legally inherited" due to his wife "reinterpreting my dad's wishes" in the will.

Before you ask, I have no options to fight this in court. A verbal promise is not enough to overturn a written will. And the cost of fighting would be more than the inheritance. Please don't suggest any legal advice. I've talked to good lawyers. And unless I want to sue for emotional distress, there aren't any legal options available.

The best option is to appeal to my brother personally and ask him to keep his promise to my dad.

The only reason I am in this mess is because my brother repeatedly promised to give me the money. He said he didn't want it on multiple occasions. So all of my plans involved the expectation of this money. I was going to fix up the basement apartment and seek a roommate.

But it took over a year to just get it out of probate. A year I could have used to come up with other solutions. But he waited until the last minute and made his lawyer tell me he was screwing me.

I'm sure my brother will argue my dad knew what he was signing. But I know that is impossible. Before my dad passed, we were in the hospital and I saw the will for the first time. I asked him if it reflected his wishes. And I asked him if he meant to include my brother's wife in the will.

His response was, "Are you fucking kidding me???"

Readers, does that sound like a man that knew what was in his will?

Dad was so upset that he was about to have them cut off his leg just so he could live a few more weeks and fix the will.

You have to give my dad credit, he goes pretty hardcore when it comes to protecting his family.

I couldn't let him go through an amputation to protect me from my brother's shenanigans.

But I am pretty screwed now.

That said, my uncles are pretty hardcore too. One is *very* intimidating. So I feel like my uncles talking to my brother might carry some weight.

But I have one problem...

I mean, aside from the myriad problems already described.

How about... I have one additional problem...

My uncles don't like me very much.

They think I am a basement-dwelling loser who is faking his illness and was taking advantage of his parents for two decades.

One uncle even accused me of stealing from my dad.

They are protective of their brother. They loved my dad. Which is a good thing! As long as I can convince them that their assumptions about me are invalid, I think their love for my dad will compel them to help me.

They just don't have the context. They don't know me. They live in far-off lands. And due to some unfortunate timing, one uncle saw me at one of the lowest points of my life. This was maybe 8 years ago? He didn't realize I was thrown into the deep end and very recently took on the role as full-time caregiver for two very sick people.

My awful strategy at the time was "if I don't take care of myself, I'll have more energy to take care of my parents." If you are a caregiver, this is a bad strategy. It seems obvious you have to do some self care to give care to others, but when you are just starting out, that seems impossible.

My uncle showed up unannounced and I wasn't showered, I hadn't brushed my teeth in a week, and my room had a fun layer of trash on the floor. The trash can was overflowing and I literally did not have the spare energy to change the bag.

To make matters worse, my mom's medications and constant pain had broken the filter in her brain that prevents her from saying mean things. She was on this crazy chemo-like infusion that was basically using poison to fight her psoriatic arthritis. Her aggressive, blunt remarks were not her fault. That wasn't who she was. But she could not stop herself from saying hurtful things.

The kindest woman alive was suddenly Don Rickles without the "just kidding" subtext. And my uncle didn't know this and I got into an argument with my mom.

I probably looked like a pampered brat loser who just lies in bed and plays video games all day while arguing with his saint of a mother.

I don't blame him. Without context, that's exactly what it looked like.

So I am writing my uncles a letter.

It is essentially a memoir of the caregiving I gave to my parents. I hope to publish it publicly at some point, but right now it is just a letter to them. If it were a typical hardcover book, it would be about 70 pages long.

I am telling them everything.

If nothing else, I just need them to know my dad's story. I need them to know he was well taken care of. That I did everything humanly possible to make his last year as comfortable as I could. I need them to know he was *never* alone.

Sadly, because they probably think I am an unreliable narrator, I am my own worst witness. So I am asking 3 people in my current support system to write testimony to verify everything in my memoir is accurate. I even have a doctor's note!

It is probably insane to put this much effort into convincing my uncles to like me. But I'm pretty sure Sane Froggie Brain is behind the wheel of this endeavor. Sometimes the craziest, most desperate idea is the only option left.

Basically I am using my writing skills to try and save my Froggie butt.

I don't mean to be braggadocious, but people perusing my prose persistently pontificate that I am proficient at penning pleasing passages.

People say I write good sometimes.

And I think this memoir letter thingie is the best thing I've ever written. So I am hopeful I will deflate these dubious assumptions and tug on my uncles' heartstrings.

But there is something you all can do to help me.

A friend on tumblr is helping me edit this memoir monstrosity. And she gave me her testimonial to add to my 3 witnesses.

"I have been following The Frogman for well over a decade on his website. It was years before I learned his name was Benjamin! We all just call him Froggy. He was (and still is) one of the funniest internet guys out there. He is incredibly skilled at putting together humorous GIFs and photo sets, and his comedic writing is second to none. He regularly goes viral. Along with that, he was open and vulnerable about the toll CFS takes on him. I can attest to many folks over the years telling him that he has helped them as they dealt with their own health issues. He is so knowledgeable about so much--his posts are famous for being long, detailed, and wildly informative. And most of all, entertaining. They are a joy to read. We also followed along on his heartbreaking journey with his parents. He shared so much of them with us over the years that they felt like people we knew. It was so clear, from his long absences, how much he was doing for them. Our hearts broke when he told us his parents were no longer with us. Froggy has fans, and so did his parents. Otis, too. We love and support him and will always wish him the best."

It made me cry.

But it also felt like getting a Yelp review on... my entire deal.

And it gave me an idea.

What if I had a bunch of these as optional testimony for my uncles?

I'm not going to force them to read what a bunch of internet strangers have to say. But it could be a compelling way to prove my website antics were a serious attempt to build a livelihood for myself. My uncles were successful businessmen and respect a strong work ethic and trying to make your own way.

I was too early for monetization options like Patreon, TikTok, YouTube, and Twitch, but I ran a very successful comedy blog. If I had my 2013 success in the 2020s, I probably would've been able to retire and live off that for the rest of my life. I have several original GIFs that were downloaded tens of millions of times. Google said one of them was searched for over 100,000,000 times.

My blog was silly, but I took it seriously and I had sponsors and merch and an Otis plush.

They think what I did was like when you are at the family Christmas gathering and you ask your weird cousin what he's been up to and he says, "I run a blog about corgis from my parents' basement."

How do I relate the impact I had? They don't know what "Know Your Meme" is. They don't know what being on the front page of Reddit means. They don't know the amazing community I built. They don't know that I created one of the largest and most generous online support systems one could possibly have. I'm still alive and trying to make a life for myself because all of you continue to love and support me.

I was successful and I worked hard despite my disability.

I just had bad timing with the financial aspect of that success.

So, if you want to leave a Yelp review of The Frogman for my uncles, I'd appreciate it.

I came up with a list of things I need to prove to them. I'm just going to copy/paste the entire thing here. I'll strikethrough the ones you all probably can't speak to.

I am not a basement dwelling loser.

My website was more than a silly hobby.

I did not mooch off my parents for 20+ years.

I did not steal from my parents.

I am not the crazed, awkward mess [my uncle] witnessed.

I am disabled.

I cannot get a job.

I am a good person.

I am a likable person.

I was a good son.

I took good care of my parents.

My parents would not have been better off in a nursing home.

My parents would not have been better off moving closer to my brother.

My brother and his wife neglected and emotionally abused Mom & Dad.

My brother and his wife changed the will to benefit them against my mom & dad’s wishes.

My brother promised repeatedly the will was a mistake and I would receive the full amount.

I did not take care of my parents to “retain the house” or get money.

So, if you want to attempt to convince two elderly conservative Catholic men that my cat memes were lit, I would appreciate the help.

If you’ve been part of this community, and you’ve ever felt like I made you laugh, cry, or feel understood, a short 'review' of me as a person could mean the world.

Just remember your audience is...

Uncle #1: A stoic, but brilliant 80 year old who writes text messages like they are business emails. Complete with "Dear Ben" and "Regards, Your Uncle". He is still very sharp-minded and lucid. He thinks success is a high paying job, a house, and a family (my brother). He does not like weakness and consistently thought I should "be an adult and get a job." He is very loyal and respected my dad very much.

Uncle #2: A 60-something retired grandpa who thinks his constant dad jokes are genuinely funny. He is empathetic, but secretly judgmental. He will act like your best friend even if he doesn't care for you. He is an amazing grandpa. Very involved with his kids and their kids. He keeps every video of them getting a goal in sportsball on his phone. He will help you if you think you deserve to be helped. He is very close with Uncle #1.

So... kinda running the gamut there.

You can reblog this post or leave a reply or send a private message or email me at frogman54@gmail.com

I will be anonymizing your names for obvious reasons.

I fear my uncles might not understand why Tumblr user "PokemonAssBlaster69" is saying nice things about me.

Explaining "The Frogman" is hard enough.

Anyway, thank you in advance.

[hrrtshape]

(reposting this message because I'm worried it didn't reach you) dear emma, i could go on about how much i love your blog, how thoughtful and insightful you are, and all the kind things you absolutely deserve to hear (because you really do). but today, i’m coming to you with a selfish plea. consider this my confession. you’re the priest, and i’m stepping into the booth with my existential crisis. grab a cigarette, light a candle, or burn some incense because this is going to take a while to unravel. i've been a shifter since i was young. i've manifested countless times and shifted to better versions of my current reality. i even feel like i'm reliving this life because of all the déjà vu i experience constantly since I was little. but i can't seem to shift to a more "unrealistic" reality. and before you say “just assume you have” or “decide that you can,” please let me explain. even before i knew shifting existed, i was already doing it in my own way. at night i'd lie there imagining this whole elaborate world where my SO is literally my childhood friend who turned into this super controlling person who keeps kidnapping me and i'd hide under this magic blanket because i was basically a witch on the run, and it was my only protection because i had all these complicated feelings about him that i couldn't deal with. and it didn't stop when i got older either. i genuinely considered myself a fairy/witch while everyone else thought i was just being weird or whatever. i'd watch all these videos about getting ice powers like elsa or wings like the winx girls. i’d point to the leaves spinning in a tiny whirlwind and say that was me. i’d speak affirmations out loud, write them down, and end with, “so mote it be,” like a sacred ritual. i had this whole plan to open a little grocery shop in the middle of nowhere countryside. i even waited for an owl to leave my hogwarts letter by the window. and the thing is that there was no concept of limiting beliefs or doubts back then, so what gives? it wasn't pretend. i visualized EVERYTHING. i felt like i was actually there. i believed with every part of me. but… nothing ever physically happened. It still feels like such a letdown. what confuses me is that i know i have power. i’ve had prayers and manifestations come true. so when i learned about shifting in 2019, i thought: “this is it.” i listened to subs, i scripted, i read advice - i swear i've consumed every piece of shifting content that exists. but all i've been good at is manifesting better circumstances here. i know everyone's journey is different and it's all on me but like... what’s going on??? i guess what’s killing me is that i’m doing everything people say to do. i’ve been there, done that, got the t-shirt. i visualize, affirm, beg the universe or my higher self, shadow work, refresh shifting accounts obsessively, create my own methods and subliminals, half-ass techniques, let go, ignore the 3D, treat it like a game, live as if, restart my journey/mindset. i even tried shifting to a reality where i already am a master shifter. i acted like someone who’s done it a thousand times, revising old attempts and thinking, “that one didn’t work because of this specific reason, but it’s fine, i’ve got it now.” i tried to move like someone who had already figured it all out. sometimes i’d take full-on breaks from doing methods or even thinking about shifting. i would just live like i had already shifted or like i had come back from a visit like, “yeah, i just got back from my dr, and now i’m resting here for a bit.” i hoped that would make it click, like my brain would finally sync up with that version of me who has it all. but clearly, if that worked, i wouldn’t be writing this. and lately, i keep i keep circling back to the same thought: maybe there’s a reason i haven’t shifted. like i have some kind of mission here and am experiencing everything again for some important reason. things also always seem to get better, so it makes me wonder if that’s somehow keeping me from wanting it enough to actually shift to my dr/s.

sorry for this long vent session, i’m just really curious if any of this sounds familiar to you or if you have any theories or advice. like what do you think could be behind all this? if i need to reprogram my mindset, how am i supposed to do that? and how do i stay patient and keep acting as if when nothing seems to be happening? if anything comes to mind, i’m all ears. and if others want to chime in too, that would mean a lot. with love, angie

angie baby. i get it, believe me, i too had done every method, every mental gymnastics routine, i too had been the girl who made subliminals and then cried when they didn't work. so here's the real answer. stop waiting for proof. stop watching for signs. stop checking if you're close

so what do you do? you shift anyway. you don't wait for the click. you don't wait to feel ready. you pick a method, or none, and just do it. like brushing your teeth. affirm and mean it (i am there. i shifted. this is done.) and then go do something else. don't sit in the silence waiting for sparkles. go listen to music, fall asleep, stare at the ceiling

you've already done the hard part, you built the world, you believe it's real

[ratatoastwrites]

Break my bed to make me wanna stay

Spencer Reid x fem!reader

nsfw, 18+ MDNI

Synopsis: Romantic relationships and intimacy don’t come naturally to you. It’s rare that you sleep with the same person twice. That is, until your wonderful friend and colleague comes along, and the two of you discover together that commitment doesn’t have to be scary.

cw: no use of y/n, reader is implied to be aro but it isn’t mentioned, fwb/situationship that can be read as a qpr, secret relationship (except it’s not really a relationship), this is just pure filth with very little plot though, sub!Spencer, brief body worship (m receiving), mommy kink, dry humping, begging (m), slight dacryphilia, sloppy kissing, unprotected p in v sex, orgasm denial (m), creampie

wc: 2047

a/n: i’ve never written cowgirl before so idk if this is any good lol 🥸

title from Say It by Flume

You and Spencer had… a complicated relationship, so to say.

You two were friends, sure. You worked together, and in your line of work, that meant seeing each other almost 24/7. You weren’t exactly besties, but there was definitely a sense of understanding and camaraderie between you two.

That wasn’t all, though. There was a side to your relationship that was hidden from the rest of the team, or rather the rest of the world. Meetings that started in dark hotel rooms and dimly lit supply closets, and escalated into giving each other keys to your apartments, ‘just in case’.

But you weren’t together. There just simply wasn’t enough room for you in Spencer’s brain, that was always so full, filled with facts and numbers and things that you wouldn’t even pretend to understand. And you just found the whole concept of love so strange and foreign, the idea of falling in love with anyone filled you with anxiety rather than butterflies.

Relationships were difficult. They were complicated and required an amount of effort that neither of you were ready to give. What you two had however, was easy. It began as quick bursts of passion that lit you up from within, a cacophony of desire, pleasure and something almost bittersweet. The uncertainty of how much this would affect your friendship. Waiting with baited breaths until this tentative peace between you two was broken, until this entanglement caused more grievance than relief.

You sometimes still found it hard to believe that it never happened. Your involvement morphed into something more comfortable, the bittersweetness and uncertainty turning into stability and understanding. You didn’t need to tiptoe around the other in fear of what might happen and how they might react. The fire was still there, only even more amplified by the sheer trust that was more than tangible between you two.

You still enjoyed sneaking into his hotel room during sleepless nights, on out of state cases, but when you had the option of having him fall apart under your hands in your own bed, it was impossible not to prefer the latter.

The way he looked in your silk sheets, his hair spread out around his head like a halo, while he looked up at you with half-lided eyes, full of devotion, made you almost dizzy. His body felt soft and warm and familiar as you pressed burning kisses from his jawline, all the way to his navel, his soft pleas only amplifying the firey desire swirling in your chest. You wanted to completely devour him, your teeth digging into his skin, your nails leaving red marks in their wake, as your fingers cascaded down his body.

“Fuck, mommy, please.”

The way those pleading words fell from his lips, his voice nothing more than a shuddering gasp, was enough to drive you completely insane. You loved having him under you like this, so sweet and pliant, looking at you with those pretty hazel eyes that seemed almost black with how wide his pupils were, as he looked up at you.

“Please what, baby?”

You continued teasing him, straightening up above him, grinding your clothed cunt down on his leaking cock. He was so desperate, twitching and squirming under you, completely naked and vulnerable, while you still had most of your clothes on. Your blouse was unbuttoned, exposing your lacy bra, and your skirt was bunched up around your hips as your thighs caged him in, straddling him and keeping him completely under your mercy.

You could feel his hips buck upwards, desperately trying to get more of that delicious friction that you were providing. You tsked at his eagerness, raising your hips off him, causing him to whine in frustration.

“Don’t be rude. If you want something, you have to ask for it. Do you need me to remind you of your manners, or are you going to be a good boy for me?”

He shook his head quickly, desperately, his brows furrowing as he looked up at you with pleading puppy dog eyes.

“No. No, I’ll be good, mommy, I promise.”

“Good,” you purred, leaning down to trace his collarbone with your tongue, nipping at his milky skin. He whimpered in response, hips twitching under you, but he held back, just like you ordered him to. “Now, what does my good boy need?”

You straightened back up, your hips continuing to roll against his, making him moan softly. You didn’t stop though, hardly let him think, watching with a smug expression as his lips parted and closed uselessly.

“You,” he managed to gasp out after a few long seconds. “Need to feel you. Need to be inside of you. Please.”

You hummed in response, like you were contemplating his request, watching as his eyes glossed over in desperation. Your hands slowly slid down his chest, then traced his waist, before finally settling on his abdomen. His muscles clenched wherever you dragged your fingers, trembling under you with need. Like he could just burst at the seams from arousal, despite the fact that you’ve barely touched him.

“Well, I suppose you’ve been a fairly good boy today,” you sighed with a musing tone. “I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t give you what you want.”

Spencer moaned at your words, like your agreement was almost as good as being inside you. He looked up at you, like you were some deity, watching with parted lips and baited breath, as you pulled your soaked panties to the side, and finally sunk down on him.

The sound he let out was borderline pornographic, a loud, wounded whine, that turned into a moan at the end. His eyes were half-lidded, filled with need and want, but he knew better than to voice them, taking whatever you were willing to give him.

“Thank you,” he managed to gasp out shakily, which made you smile in satisfaction. “You feel so good, mommy.”

“That’s my polite boy,” you cooed, leaning down and giving him a deep, open-mouthed kiss, causing him to moan into your mouth.

“You’re so pretty,” you continued praising him, your lips moving to trail across his jaw. “I love seeing you like this. Love having you like this. So good for me.”

Your lips continued kissing down his neck, nipping at his pulse point, while your fingers mapped his torso, gently. You could feel him twitching inside of you, while small, needy whimpers left his lips. But he didn’t say anything, trying his very best to be good for you.

When you raised your hips, before sinking down on him again, though, he couldn’t help himself. His hands flew to your hips with a loud moan, his fingers grasping at the fabric of your skirt, like it was his only anchor to reality. Normally, you would’ve teased him about it, or depending on your mood, maybe even punished him for touching you without permission. You were in a giving mood though, or so it seemed, because you just gave him a sharp grin, before continuing to move your hips on top of him, relishing in the way he gasped and mewled under you.

“H-ah, mommy, mommy, feels so good, ah, mommy, you’re so t-ight.” Spencer was a moaning, whining mess under you, his fingers gripping your skirt tightly, while his head was thrown back from the sheer pleasure of having you ride him.

“Eyes on me, baby,” you reminded him, tapping his cheeks to make him look at you. “I won’t let you come if you don’t keep looking at me.”

You could tell he was close, could see it on his face, hear it in his sweet sounds. Your hands slid up his body to rest on his chest, leaning over him to hover your face above his. You arched your back, making each grind and bounce of your hips even deeper, making him tense up under you, his eyes screwing shut as his orgasm threatened to overtake him.

“I’m so close mommy, mnh, ‘m gonna c–“

“No, you’re not,” you huffed, pulling off him completely, raising your hips so that you were still hovering over him, but he received no ounce of friction at all.

His eyes snapped open with a strangled cry, looking at you like you just stabbed him in the back. His cock was a twitching, red mess on his stomach, leaking so much precum, that you almost took pity on him. Almost.

“Why?” Spencer half-asked, half-sobbed. His eyes were teary with need and desperation, and you knew that you were being a little cruel, ripping him away from his orgasm like this.

“I told you baby, didn’t I? I won’t let you come if you don’t keep your eyes on me,” you reminded him with a tut, tapping his cheeks lightly.

He threw his head back with a defeated whine, his hands sliding down from your hips to your thighs.

“Please,” he begged, looking up at you with tear-filled, kicked puppy eyes. He knew that it was your weakness, he knew what it did to you to see him so close to tears. “Please, mommy, I’ll be so good, I promise. Let me come, please.”

You sighed deeply, like he was asking the world of you. In reality though, this was just as hard for you, as it was for him. You ached to feel him inside of you again, longed to finish what you started and make yourself come all over his cock.

“I’ll cut you a deal, baby,” you said finally, looking at him with a small smirk. “If you let me use you to get off, like a good boy, I might let you come. But only after I’m satisfied. Got it?”

“Yes, yes, mommy, please, anything, make yourself feel good, please.”

He sounded so eager, so desperate, that you couldn’t hold back anymore. You sunk down on him again, tearing a loud moan from Spencer’s chest, but you didn’t focus on that. You began riding him earnestly, giving him no time to adjust to the feeling. You alternated between bouncing on his cock, and grinding his tip against your cervix, letting out a few moans of pleasure yourself.

Spencer was looking up at you with a slack jaw, admiration shining in his teary eyes, as he laid there and let you use him like a personal sex toy. He was turned on beyond belief, moaning and whimpering with each movement of your hips.

“Oh my god, mommy, you’re so beautiful like this. Feels so good, you– fuck, ah.”

One of your hands moved between your legs, as you began circling your clit. It made you clench around Spencer, while you threw your head back, your face scrunching up in pleasure.

“Please,” he moaned desperately, trembling and aching under you, longing for your release, just like he was longing for his own. “Please, mommy. Want to feel you come around my cock, wanna feel you–“

His words trailed off into a cry of pleasure, when you finally came, clamping down around him tightly, as your walls pulsed around him.

He was a begging, crying mess under you now, desperate pleas and whines tumbling from his lips, needing to hear your permission so he could finally finish.

“Go ahead, baby. You’ve earned it.”

And with those words, he came almost instantly, filling up your pussy with his warm spend. You continued rolling your hips, letting him ride out his high, while you leaned down and kissed him deeply, letting him pull you down on top of him, as his arms wrapped around your waist.

You stayed like that for a good few minutes, just trading lazy kisses and gentle touches. You kissed his tears away, while gently carding your fingers through his messy hair, whispering sweet, comforting nothings to him.

You knew that you would soon need to clean up. That you two couldn’t stay like this forever. But for now, you didn’t dare popping this peaceful bubble around you two. Maybe it would all come tumbling down between you tomorrow, or the day after that, but for now, you wouldn’t let yourself worry about that. Not when you had Spencer in your bed, in your arms, and for the first time, being with someone like this didn’t feel terrifying.

[sophieinwonderland]

Oh gods!

Another MAGAt who doesn't understand the 1st Amendment. Should I blame the failing education system or just all that propaganda you've been guzzling?

Let's start with the Christian one first because this actually does involve the 1st Amendment. The question of these types of cases are what constitutes speech and when it crosses the line into discrimination.

Discrimination is illegal and typically does not constitute speech of any kind. A homophobic Christian who sells hot dogs cannot refuse to sell hot dogs to somebody for being gay.

Now, some jobs do involve speech. So there may be a legitimate question of when refusal of service might be protected speech under the First Amendment. The courts exist to help to figure out those gray areas in the law.

If it's illegal to sell a person a hot dog because they are gay, we should also assume that it would be illegal to sell them a pre-made cake since they already made that cake. Selling something that they already made does not force them to say anything that violates their beliefs.

Do you agree that compelling businesses to sell an already made product does not violate the first amendment since you aren't really saying anything new? Since it's not technically speech. It is just discrimination.

To me, that seems pretty clear cut.

Where this gets tricky is when we are talking about compelled speech for something that is not already made. And I am going to actually come down on the side that says that you shouldn't be forced to create art that goes against your beliefs.

For example, there is a brutal violent ancient religion with a history of massacring non-believers, and that preaches non-believers deserve eternal suffering in a lake of fire. Members of this 2000-year-old barbaric religion are a protected class under the law and you cannot discriminate against them for their religious beliefs.

And personally, I agree. Even though I'm not part of this ancient barbaric religion, I think that it's fair that I can't legally discriminate against them. But at the same time, I don't think that I should be required to create art that explicitly endorses this ancient violent barbaric religion whose twisted followers believe we deserve to be tortured for eternity nor should I be required to endorse its outdated and bigoted beliefs.

I think that the best solution is to have a standard where the focus is on whether you would sell the same exact item to somebody who wasn't part of that protected class.

If we have already agreed that it is not free speech to refuse you sell someone an item that you already made, it also seems reasonable that you should not be able to refuse service to that person for an item that you would make for anyone else.

For example, if you were making a wedding cake that had something romantic written on it with the names... Let's say Marcy and Sasha for a random example... Would you make that same exact cake if Sasha was a guy but choose not to if Sasha is a woman. Because if the only thing the determines whether you are willing to create art for someone is their gender or sexuality, then it is not an issue of free speech, but discrimination.

Defining where the lines are for what constitutes free speech when applying it to a business is incredibly complicated though and there are a lot of diverse opinions on it.

Do you know what's not complicated though?

All of your other BS!

Because that is not a first amendment issue at all.

The First Amendment prevents the government from creating laws that would infringe on free speech. But private businesses are not the government. If you go into somebody's house or place of work and start spouting off nonsense the owner disagrees with, they are fully within their rights to have you leave.

Censorship in online platforms is not a First Amendment issue. These are private companies deciding what they want to allow on the platforms that they own. That's their right. And if you don't like it, you can go to a different platform.

And no, the president of the United States does not have a right to use a platform either just because they are president. In fact, Twitter allowed Trump to get away with a lot of speech that they would have banned other people for simply because he was the president.

That's kind of the thing with Trump. Doing things that clearly break all of the rules, getting away with it way more than anyone else could, facing some consequences for his actions, and then crying that he faced consequences.

Every single company has the right to censor whatever they want for whatever reason. If Twitter tomorrow announced that they would ban every single Democrat from the platform, that wouldn't violate the First Amendment!

Now, if they were banning people for being Muslim or gay or black, that might run afoul of discrimination laws. But that wouldn't be a first amendment issue either.

Social media bannings have nothing to do with the First Amendment!

But 8647 is a First Amendment issue. It directly relates to the government criminalizing free speech.

And your rhetoric to support this overreach is dangerous and authoritarian.

Threats typically require clear intent. If you argue that you should just automatically go with the most violent and extreme interpretations of someone's words and throw them in prison for them, there is a lot of free speech that can be interpreted as violent!

Just as 86 can rarely be used to refer to killing, so can literally any other phrase with the same meaning. Have you ever seen a movie where somebody has used "get rid of him" to mean kill? Well now saying to get rid of the president is a violent threat.

If 8647 is a violent threat, then a lot of speech could also be considered such.

As for the accusations of encouraging violence, I will remind you that it was Donald Trump's supporters who violently invaded the capitol with his encouragement while chanting hang Mike Pence. Those threats were not ambiguous. They were clear demands to murder the Vice President.

And Donald Trump pardoned them for their crimes, sending a clear message that he is perfectly okay with people trying to kill those he doesn't like.

This is the standard that Trump's criminal empire has created. Those who publicly call to hang his own vice president for daring to certify a democratic election are hailed as heroes and given pardons for criminal actions they were convicted for or pled guilty to. Someone posting seashells arranged in the shape of numbers is accused of threatening to assassinate him, and has the secret service sent after them.

Free speech of those he opposes is punished while evil is rewarded.

8647

did anything in particular prompt this wave of 8647? What line did Trump cross that set the whole internet on four-number fire?

Sending the Secret Police Service to investigate people for it.

Former FBI director James Comey posted this picture on his Instagram, and the right-wing media started spreading the lies that it's a death threat.

This escalated to MAGAts calling for him to be arrested, which would be a violation of the 1st Amendment, and the Secret Service being called on him. At least one other person who posted 8647 has been paid a visit by the Secret Service.

This is a massive overreach and abuse of power aimed at silencing political enemies. And that's why it's more important than ever to show support for those are being attacked for their free speech by standing with them against evil.

8647

[enticingmelanin]

Back from seeing Sinners for the third time. I really feel like I need to do a full breakdown of my thoughts.

This time around, I really honed in on the environmental sounds. The sound design is chef’s kiss. You FEEL like you're in Clarksdale, Mississippi, right there with them. It’s not only beautifully shot, it sounds beautiful AF. Ugh! I could keep watching forever.

Okay… I wasn’t too hard on Grace the first time I saw the film, but on this second and third watch? Nah. She wasn’t a real friend to the Black characters like Bo was. When she was negotiating with Smoke about the signs, notice how Bo mentions they only have red paint, and we KNOW the color red carries heavy risks and connotations. Then once Stack is killed, Bo wants to help, but Grace is basically begging him to grab the car and bounce. Like, “Fuck them.” Meanwhile, everyone else was looking out for her and Bo. And don’t get me started on Lisa. What Grace did left that poor girl an orphan… or worse.

It really reinforces the point that other communities often want to experience Black culture, but will drop us in a heartbeat—even if it ends up hurting them too. Cough this last election cough.

And THEN when Annie tells them they’re vampires and Remmick threatens her, suddenly Grace wants us to fight for her. Like… what?? As if everybody else in that room isn’t just as important. Once again, we’re expected to fight the good fight, sacrifice ourselves for others, and it’s rarely, if ever, returned. Yes, I said never. Because it’s not a critical mass of other communities showing up for us. It’s a handful, in the grand scheme of things.

Most of the characters were selfish... except Annie, Smoke, and Delta Slim. I would say Cornbread and Bo, but once they turned, they were lost and bloodthirsty. But even that could’ve been controlled, Stack didn’t go after Sammie, remember? I don't include Sammie in this critique, he did what he was supposed to do to fulfill his purpose in life.

Annie, Smoke, and Slim did what they were supposed to do. They looked out for each other until the very end. All three of them sacrificed themselves and helped others. You can tell how much Stack loved Annie and vice versa. He could’ve let her turn and joined her, but he respected her wishes. Annie was always protecting the twins, states between them stopped nothing. She passed on all that knowledge so they could survive. Delta Slim? That man kept his word. He sliced his arm open as a distraction so the others could escape. He lived a hard life and drowned his pain in alcohol, but he died a hero.

Now, back to my favorite theory… Stack having a thing for Annie. 😏 I was locked in on that moment when he bit her. He bites her, pauses, and then bites again. It felt like he had waited forever to “taste” her. This time, he beat his brother to it with Annie, even if it meant killing or turning her. I think Stack wanted her. Maybe he even noticed her first back in the day, but she was drawn to Smoke instead. Her spiritual, empathetic side was pulled to him, probably because Stack doesn’t show emotions the way Smoke does. There was definitely a wedge at some point, but they got past it. They’re twins; they love each other, even when it’s complicated.

I honestly don’t think there’ll ever be a time when this movie doesn’t make me emotional. It’s like a bittersweet, tragic dream come true. The White “savior” complex of Remmick and Mary completely wrecked everything. And no... I’m not changing my mind about Mary. I was more lenient on first watch, but she kept putting Stack and the whole community in danger. I get the “one-drop rule” and how it worked back then, but she still passed for White, and that put everyone at risk. One glance and a White person could’ve ended Stack right there. Delta Slim’s story about his friend being lynched over a lie involving a White woman? That sealed it.

Stack told her to leave him alone. He tried to push her away to protect her. But she defied him every chance she got, and other people paid the price. I get that she loved him, but he gave her every fair reason why they wouldn’t work. I’m not thrilled about them being the last ones together as vamps. Stack especially deserved peace, maybe even to reunite with his family in the afterlife. But I guess part of him felt like he couldn’t leave her behind in case she didn’t make it to the other side.

I could talk about this movie for hours, but I’ll stop here. Again… clean sweep come award season OR ELSE! 😏😍

[all-pacas]

Can you talk more about Chase and Wilson being similar? Or did I see it in another blog,and am mistaking things?

No, that was me!

I'll preface by saying that, while I don't think it's a stretch, it is less obvious and blatant than the Cameron-Cuddy and Foreman-House parallels; part of this is because Chase is actually a fairly minor character until S6 or so (compare the storylines the others get compared to his). Both Cameron and Foreman get arcs comparing them to Cuddy and House respectively, and are given relationships with the two; Chase and Wilson by contrast hardly ever speak.

But… it's still there.

I think you see it best in the roles the two characters play on the show. Wilson acts not quite as House's conscious, but as a sounding board and almost reluctant therapist at times: in many episodes, his job is to come in and lay out House's mental state for the audience. He delights in psycho-analyzing House, and is generally portrayed as being right (even if House rarely takes Wilson's advice). And… that's the same as Chase, with the team, even with House. He has the uncanny habit of calling out Foreman and Cameron on their issues (more trollishly than Wilson's usual sincerity); he is, for example, the one who talks to Foreman when Foreman is struggling with being in charge in S2, or who Cameron talks to about her crush on House. We hardly ever see Cameron and Foreman have these conversations with one another; Chase is the default. But it's more than Chase being a sounding board, just as Wilson is hardly a sounding board: both are perceptive, just as likely to call out and accuse as listen and give advice.

Beyond that, the two are still more similar than they're given credit for. Wilson and Chase are both notorious in-universe for their polite facades: Wilson is better at it, but Chase's accusations of being two-faced are the same thing: they put on polite and charming exteriors to mask their inner cynicism and apathy. Both are good at using their charm (and smarm) to manipulate: it's highlighted often with Wilson, but House actually turns to Chase for schemes and "sneakiness" surprisingly often: in S1 in particular, there's a few casual mentions of Chase being the person on the team with the task of talking down angry patients or convincing them to do a particular treatment (Paternity, Damned if You Do).

There's something also to be said about how Wilson and Chase treat romantic relationships. Wilson runs into marriage after marriage trying to fix and be there for his wives (a role Chase actually performs with Cameron, often doing a lot of the emotional labor in that relationship), but Wilson never… really seems to connect with his partners, is never entirely happy in love. Chase has the same struggle after his divorce, not just sleeping around but dating multiple women, wanting connection and failing to find it.

I think you can also see it a bit in Chase's S4/5 Boundaries Era: at a time when Foreman is still being groomed to take over for House, and Cameron is given an arc of learning to be Dean of Medicine, Chase… has his own job, is the best surgeon in the hospital, seems to be put on a path of being his own department head, wildly capable and able to help out but in his own sphere. Again, Wilson parallels.

Both Wilson and Chase are eager to please and eager to be liked, and just as eager to toss aside their morals and sense of self to make their own lives easier (Chase and Wilson have both had affairs with patients). They're both perceptive, and prone to calling out and exposing the inner workings of the people around them. They're both in House's orbit and deeply connected to his world, while being presented as "separate" from Diagnostics in a way the rest of the team aren't; they're both surprisingly manipulative and pragmatic under boyish, charming exteriors. And, crucially, they both like House. It's not to say that the others don't, but where Foreman's relationship to House is a complicated push-pull of mentorship and rivalry and admiration and dislike, and Cameron's admiration and love/former love are always a complicating factor in their relationship… Chase just, to use his own words, likes the guy. He thinks House is funny. He is neither trapped in House's orbit, unable to escape, or resentful after leaving: he likes House, but is able to move on from Diagnostics (in S1-5) and have a purely voluntary relationship with him. Again, much like Wilson.

There's quite a lot. It should be talked about more!

[ofeliaxoxo]

running by after seeing the imola driver's parade to ask if you have any thoughts on charcarlando? (i dont know their trio name)

Anon you have really come to the right place. Do I have thoughts on charcarlando…..it seems I struggle to have thoughts on anything else.

Like Look At Them. Oh my god…….. they make me crazy. (Me: god this makes me insane. Also me: is reacting to a very neutral photo of three men standing)

Let’s do a quick real life foundation. I think charlando can get snarky but don’t legit have serious problems with each other we’ve seen them have casual and friendly interactions too. I don’t think they’re buddies or enemies. They do seemingly get a little mean girl with each other on occasion but I’m fairly sure it slides off both of them I don’t think either man is ever like How Could You. Carlando are obviously good friends that care a lot for each other. Ik there’s lore about how they’re both precious about the word friend but tbh words and categories don’t mean all that much like if you act this much like friends you literally are friends there’s no special secret line. Charlos and friendship is more complicated in my eyes BUT they have both said they are friends now and they have stuck to each other a fair bit during 2025 race weekends so for the sake of simplicity those men are friends (literally goes against my nature to say so because I actually do see it as slightly more complicated BUT I’m not up there in the tax haven idk what goes on for real). So you have Carlos as the centre of this little group and he’s the one they both like and are notably linked with. Not each other. I don’t think Charles and Lando have ever publicly admitted to friendship. How i see it (and this is just how I see it these men are unknown to me) is that the strongest and most straightforwardly positive relationship is carlando, the snippiest and least developed relationship is charlando, and the most emotionally intense relationship is charlos.

So that’s the rock on which I build my church. Let’s move swiftly onwards to rpf its much sexier.

Now there’s absolutely threesome potential there but that doesn’t really do it for me so my flavour of this trio always keeps any actual romantic or sexual feelings between charlos, while carlando are besties and charlando are Not.

Even in the photo above, the rpf potential is perfect. Both standing so close they’re almost touching to Carlos. Carlos leaning in to Lando more, they’re actually chatting. Charles silent and looking outwards. It seems he’s not interacting with them but he’s standing near to Carlos, so near that it suggests a level of closeness and familiarity. You could absolutely say that carlando are happily chatting while Charles sulks about it. Stood on the other side like well idgaf about the conversation anyway. Carlos as truly the focal point of the three.

My favourite scenario for charcarlando is Charles being jealous of their friendship, he feels like Carlos likes Lando more and he hates that, furthermore he doesn’t personally love Lando all that much, and these feelings meld until he’s like. GOD. Why do you have to hang out with LANDO again. This works for established relationship charlos but it also works for other situations. Carlos doesn’t realise that’s what’s happening. If they’re not together, he already knows he likes Charles but he doesn’t know it’s reciprocated so he doesn’t ever think Charles might be jealous. You know the clip where he’s like here I am with my TWO favourite teammates when it’s obviously a carlando moment. I feel like those things would happen and Charles is gritting is teeth like Yeah You Are Great Friends. No Problem. And let’s combine that with the way he’d always insist he and Carlos knew each other SO well. Charles insisting on the closeness and emotionality of their relationship while everyone else is like waow carlando. It feels terrible to him but he doesn’t have the framework for why so it just translates into God I can’t stand lando. Does anyone else think he just fucking sucks. Lando is just so the worst and I don’t think anyone should be friends with him and THATS why I’m getting this sharp pain watching the two of them hug and smile and go for dinner and golf and on holidays. I just think that Carlos would be better off without him!

A charlos moment happens theyre like alone or chatting and Charles is feeling inexplicably happy everything is so nice and he thinks it must be his general good mood that has him feeling this rush of affection for Carlos like wow he’s so great and he’s paying so much attention to Charles they’re such good friends and then suddenly here comes Lando to join and Charles is trying desperately to hold on to the good mood but Carlos is turning to greet his lil bestie and Charles can’t explain why he’s so annoyed that Lando has joined all he knows is that he HATES it. There he was thinking about how much he likes his friendship with Carlos and now Carlos is talking to this other guy who everyone knows he’s far better friends with and now Charles just feels stupid:(

Throughout all of this Carlos would of course be delighted to know Charles even felt that strongly. He truly is just friends with Lando and has all these feelings for Charles that he doesn’t think are mutual. He has strong emotions as well as attraction but he’s electing to ignore it and remain cordial but distant with Charles because he thinks that’s what is best. He doesn’t think Charles would even especially notice if they stopped talking so he gravitates more and more towards Lando instead. All this would have to come to a head somehow. Oh maybe Charles and Lando have a fight. Charles is like fuck you!! over something random and Lando, who has no context for any of it, is like well ykw girl fuck YOU.

And now, some images:

“Yay the sun is shining I feel confident everything is good this is gonna be a great Sunday -”

“Ugh”

Like literally alone with Carlos smile:) but with carlando no smile:(

And finally, the ultimate charcarlando image

Finally got him close to you all to yourself and yet Lando’s still there…no DONT look over my shoulder at your orange bestie come close and let me hold you

Truly I could go on forever but I will stop here. If anyone ever needs another charcarlando rant hit me up I will be there I LOVE them

[cringecompanionapologist]

Lucky Day and The Interstellar Song Contest Aren’t Literally Kerblam to Me and Here’s Why

I enjoyed both Lucky Day and The Interstellar Song Contest. Alright. I confess. Cancel me. It’s not like I’m important. Honestly, my reason for liking these episodes was “I was entertained and not bored at all whilst watching them”. I rarely ever consciously choose media to like or dislike based on moral principles. Sometimes I will like or dislike something based on moral principles, but that’s not always the case. I sometimes feel that people watch stuff focusing more on the potential message than anything else about it, judging it to see if it passes or fails. Instead of saying that that’s the wrong way of looking at it, I’ll say that it just isn’t something I can do. 

But, that doesn’t mean that I don’t find these sorts of situations interesting. People make genuinely good points about the moral implications of stories and I’ll wonder why it Just Doesn’t Bother Me. Why do some moral fuck-ups bother me and some don’t? 

Lucky Day and The Interstellar Song contest have both been compared to Kerblam, an episode that I actually don’t like. So I’m thinking through why Kerblam bothered me and these two didn’t.

On the surface, these three episodes do some similar things with their antagonists, either deliberately giving them a good reason for their actions or accidentally giving them a good reason for their actions…maybe. In all cases, this is, in fact, a problem. But how big of a problem it is varies. I’m not going to say the episodes I like are Completely Unproblematic. Just that the problems aren’t as big as the ones they are being compared to.

In all of these episodes, I think there’s a certain dissonance between what they want to be about, and what they are perceived as being about. You could either claim this as a case of poor media literacy on the part of the audience or poor communication on the part of the writer. I can’t judge every single person who doesn’t like a given episode, so I’m not going to dismiss it as an audience problem. So, let’s just compare Kerblam, Lucky Day, and The Interstellar Song Contest, and see what’s similar and different about them.

Look. My main motivation for this is a love of overanalyzing the shit out of shows I like and that I’d rather do that than complain. This is fun for me. Scrolling through endless takes I don’t agree with is not fun for me. Debating with the people who have those takes is so not fun for me that I usually avoid doing it. So, let’s just not. Let’s have fun.

TW: Genocide! Terrorism! Torture! Eurovision! If you’re familiar with The Discourse surrounding these episodes, you know what I mean. I’ll have to bring up Israel and Palestine but I’m actively trying to go into it as little as possible. If you want more words about it, check out All of Tumblr, okay?

Here There Be Spoilers for: Planet of the Ood, The Zygon Inversion (I guess), Oxygen, Boom, and the three episodes this thing is actually about.

The thematic problems with these three episodes, and yes, they are still problems in the two I like, mostly stem from the dissonance I mentioned before. These episodes tend to want to be about one thing, but can feel like they’re about something else to a portion of the audience, and they are usually a very bad take on that something else.

Kerblam thinks it’s about automation, but it feels like it’s about workers rights. Lucky Day is about conspiracy theorists, but it feels like it’s about mistrust of the military. The Interstellar Song Contest…Okay, that one’s a bit more complicated. Let’s leave that one and come back later.

Part One: Kerblam and Capitalist Realism (yes, really)

Critics of Kerblam often talk about the antagonist Charlie as a vilified workers rights activist, but he isn’t. His intent is never to improve the conditions of workers, but to get rid of automation to provide more jobs. He wants there to be more workers. He’s not trying to get the people who are already workers better treatment. He’s a Luddite. 

During the Industrial Revolution, jobs that used to be done by hand started to be done by machine in factories. This put a lot of craftsmen out of the job. Sure, they could go work in the factories, but instead of selling their work for money, they were working for a company that took most of the money and gave them a small portion in wages. So the best case scenario was to replace your old job with a shittier job that paid less and that you had less control over. 

Now, it’s obvious that the problem here is capitalism. It’s not the machines themselves, it’s the people who own these factories setting up a system where they take the majority of the profit form other people’s work because they own the machines and the building they’re in, aka the means of production. The stuff you use to make other stuff. If the workers owned the machines by themselves or could access them freely, the automation would save them a lot of time and energy. They’d make more stuff in less time, giving them both more time and more money.

But, Luddites picked the wrong target. They blamed the machines for putting them out of the job and targeted them. That’s what Charlie is doing. He’s trying to stop automation. In a society where all jobs can be automated, having a job to have money to survive isn’t a good system. The problem is capitalism, greedy people upholding a system that’s outlived its usefulness for profit. The choice is one between inefficient work and poor conditions for human workers or automating everything and leading to mass unemployment and poverty. 

Looking at the whole situation, Charlie’s anger is justified, but he’s taking it out on the wrong thing. On top of that, his plan to turn the public against automation is…killing a bunch of innocent people, which will probably include other people with the same problems he has. He’s extremely misguided.

The problem is that the episode doesn’t seem to understand any of that. The writing of the episode is a victim of capitalist realism. If you’re wondering what the fuck that means, it’s that people are convinced that capitalism is basically the only system that even remotely works and they can’t imagine the end of capitalism or a system outside of it working. The episode cannot comprehend the idea of “why don’t we just let the machines do everything and give everyone a universal basic income so they won’t be dependent on employment to survive?” doesn’t occur to the episode. Actually, the episode kinda sorta agrees with Charlie, because he ultimately gets what he wants. The higher ups at Kerblam mention wanting to make Kerblam a more people-led company in the future. Less automation, more humans hired to work in terrible conditions doing bullshit jobs that only exist to give them some sort of job. The episode can’t think bigger than that after presenting a scenario where it kind of has to.

So those are the problems with the overall theme of the story. But wait! There’s more!

Part Two: Kerblam and the Shitty Twist at the End

Up until the reveal that Charlie’s the bad guy, the stuff we learn about Kerblam and the problems of the company have nothing to do with the theme of automation. Instead, we’re shown that the workers have no privacy and aren’t paid enough to regularly go home to see their families. Working for Kerblam sucks. That appears to be the main conflict. Yes, the Kerblam Men have a creepy design, but they represent the evils of the company. The problem isn’t that they’re robots, but that they’re being used to spy on people and cut off social interactions that might ever so slightly decrease productivity. The company itself is the cause of all the problems we see. They are obviously the bad guys here.

And then they throw in a twist. Everything bad Kerblam does is still a bad thing Kerblam does, but the guy who’s killing people is someone acting against the company and it was the AI managing the company robots that asked the Doctor for help. What have up until this point basically been the antagonist’s henchmen, are now who the Doctor is meant to help. And we’re expected to just roll with that. The established themes of the episode were red herrings to hide a plot twist and they can just be thrown out now that the twist has been revealed. None of the bad things Kerblam has done will even be acknowledged, because they were never meant to be important in the first place.

Kerblam isn’t even trying to be capitalist propaganda. The company is painted in a negative light. Kerblam just doesn’t care. The themes of the episode are thrown away so we can have a plot twist. This isn’t politically motivated bad writing. It’s just bad writing. It isn’t a story with problematic themes. It’s a story that disregards it’s themes.

Part Three: Kerblam and the Doctor

During 13’s era, the morality of the Doctor is rarely challenged. She can be factually incorrect, but never morally incorrect. If she screws up, it’s because she just didn’t know. Other incarnations of the Doctor aren’t immune to this, especially in the new series, but 13 got it significantly worse, especially in Series 11. 

Instead of just ranting about the potential problems with this, we’re going to sort of do what the show wants and just accept that that’s just how it works now. The Doctor is the moral compass of the story who will ultimately demonstrate whatever moral position the story wants the audience to take.

When the Doctor confronts Charlie, we’re supposed to agree with everything she says. Her companions, probably meant to act as audience surrogates, just back her up. Both her beliefs and her actions are supported by the characters who are usually the moral compass of Doctor Who.

The Doctor has no sympathy for Charlie at all. She also just sort of ignores that the Kerblam system killed Charlie’s girlfriend, an innocent girl, just to prove a point to him. Kira’s life is completely disregarded. Then she gives a Big Damn Lecture about how wrong Charlie is and it sucks.

There are a few points of the Big Damn Lecture that can be singled out. She tells Charlie that “This isn’t a cause.” and “You’re not an activist”. The first of these is objectively incorrect. Even if you don’t agree with his cause, Charlie is clearly motivated by a cause. The second statement is debatable. Charlie is a terrorist. He’s committing a politically motivated act of violence for the purpose of upsetting people in a way that is meant to benefit his cause. He’s not directly targeting the higher-ups of Kerblam making the decisions he disagrees with. He’s targeting innocent people to send a message to the public. He’s doing it for a cause, but it all comes down to whether or not you classify terrorism as activism. I’m not gonna start a debate on that. I’m not taking a side here because whichever side I take I won’t come out of the discourse looking good. I’ll either glorify terrorists or dismiss activists who aren’t peaceful enough, depending on the point of view of the reader. So let’s just not.

Then there’s the most infamous bit. “The systems aren’t the problem.” This line, as much as it sucks, is also sort of taken out of context. People tend to act as is the Doctor is referring to a political system here. But, she’s arguing about automation. She’s referring to the Kerblam AI as “the system” here. What was meant was, “The technology isn’t the problem. It’s how people use it and what they use it for that’s the problem.”. But, because this story is a goddamn mess, it sounds like she’s talking about capitalism. If they were referring specifically to technology, which I think they were, they should’ve just said it. The word “system” is used to refer to a variety of things. It’s too broad. Hence the confusion.

Then the Doctor sort of deliberately blows Charlie up. She has the Kerblam Men meant to deliver explosives to the masses deliver to themselves. Problem solved. She didn’t have to make the Kerblam Men detonate the explosives. She does tell Charlie to run but she gives him very little time and he freezes up in panic. The Doctor absolutely could’ve apprehended Charlie without killing him here. She just killed someone she didn’t need to kill and everyone ignores it because nobody liked that guy I guess. This is the point where you’d expect a companion to ask the Doctor if that was truly necessary and have a moment of reflection. But, because the Doctor is considered Morally Righteous in this era, this action isn’t called out.

So, I kinda had to go through Kerblam in detail to compare the others to it. That last bit is one I want you to remember. Unnecessary violence against the villain being treated as fully justified and going unquestioned. It’s one of the two things that makes Kerblam feel worse than the other two to me. The other thing is the order of information presented. Charlie is a third act twist villain. We see the evils of Kerblam first. By the time of the reveal the audience hates Kerblam more than they could possibly hate Charlie. This makes defeating him but seeing Kerblam go unpunished unsatisfying to the audience. Charlie feels like maybe A bad guy but not The Bad Guy here.

Anyway, let’s talk about the new stuff.

Part Four: Lucky Day and UNIT

Kerblam and Lucky Day were written by the same guy, so I’ll start by saying that the audience didn’t trust the writer not to do what he did in Kerblam, so they quickly pounced on the similarities. Honestly, Lucky Day does have problems with its moral, but they’re not actually the same problems as Kerblam. Actually, they’re problems that apply to this entire era of the show. We gotta talk about UNIT.

Instead of a corporation made up for the episode that the audience is given a lot of reason to dislike, we’ve got UNIT as the thing the bad guy’s trying to take down. Throughout the episode, it’s taken for granted that the audience will see UNIT as The Good Guys. The problem is that the audience didn’t do that and had good reasons to not do that.

UNIT in 15’s era are The Good Guys and, while they were always sort of allies of the Doctor, previous eras would sometimes paint them in a negative light. This started near the beginning. The second serial of the UNIT era was written by Malcolm Hulke, a communist who didn’t really like the premise of the UNIT era to begin with. So he wrote Doctor Who and the Silurians, which ends with UNIT committing genocide. 

The titual Silurians are sort of antagonists, but it’s more complicated than that. They are beings native to Earth who evolved into intelligent lifeforms before humans did. They want their planet back. You can compare this to colonialism, but not quite. You have “the people who were there first want their land back” but also…The humans here did colonialism unintentionally. They evolved on Earth and are just as native to the planet as the Silurians are. They have an equal right to it. There’s also nowhere else for 20th century humans to go, since they don’t have the technology to reach another planet capable of supporting life. So the only way the Silurians can get their planet back from the humans is to kill them.

The Doctor doesn’t want either species to genocide the other, so he tries to negociate peace. The story is a seven-parter so a lot of stuff happens, but progress is eventually made. The Silurians aren’t gonna kill all the humans. 

Then UNIT blows them up.

The Silurians were talked out of genocide, but it turns out that the humans weren’t. The Doctor is horrified. The story ends. In the next serial he’s still working with UNIT, a bit bitter about everything, but he’s still there. Malcolm Hulke basically demonstrated why the Doctor working with the military was a bad premise by having the Doctor’s peaceful solution undermined by UNIT insisting on violence. But, the show had to go on. The UNIT era was broken two stories in and yet it continued for years and everyone sort of forgot about the whole thing beyond Silurians existing.

But, the show continued to have the Doctor butt heads with the Brigadier and UNIT as an organization. They’d eventually find a way to work together, but it wasn’t always easy. Then the Doctor regenerates and pretty much immediately ditches them.

UNIT was basically reduced to the occasional cameo after around season 13, until fairly recently. Starting in new series 7, UNIT began to cameo in the new series and the cameos got more and more frequent. By 15’s era they’re routine. Ncuti Gatwa really likes the Third Doctor, the Doctor of the UNIT era, so it makes sense that it’s happening now. The people who grew up with the classic series, RTD’s generation, grew up with UNIT from the perspective of a child, easily missing moral nuance. UNIT was cool if you didn’t notice the moments when they weren’t. This influenced the new series version of UNIT.

This isn’t always the case, of course. The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion two-parter does have UNIT on the war path and the Doctor needing to give a big speech about how war is hell because he definitely knows that now. The Third Doctor’s pacifism was an abstract moral philosophy. The Twelfth Doctor’s pacifism comes from experience of war and violence. New series Doctors are actually in a better position to deliver an anti-war message than classic Doctors are.

So, there’s that, but that was a decade ago. UNIT in 15’s era are supposed to be the good guys who carry guns but only shoot them at monsters. Lucky Day assumes the audience will view UNIT this way, and thus be against Conrad for trying to take them down. For some people, this very clearly did not work.

There’s also a certain detachment between real world politics and Doctor Who world politics to consider. Instead of thinking of UNIT as UNIT, many audience members equated them to the real world police and/or military, because they have that aesthetic. Really, if the show wants to claim they’re not as military as they previously were, they should probably tone that down. But because of this, Conrad, instead of a conspiracy theorist ruining the reputations of good people, appears as a civilian questioning unchecked military authority. But that’s only the case if you treat UNIT as if they’re the same as the real world military and you don’t really have to do that. In this era, UNIT usually isn’t used as a stand-in for the real world military, but as the people who defend the Earth when the Doctor’s not around and back him up when he is.

Part Five: Why Lucky Day Just Doesn’t Bother Me

Conrad is an asshole. As a last minute twist villain, Charlie came across as fairly likable and he seemed genuinely devoted to his cause and because of Kira we know he’s capable of actually caring about people. Conrad is also a twist villain, but the twist is revealed halfway through the episode instead of towards the end, giving more time to show Conrad being overtly evil. The way he treats Ruby is terrible in a way that feels more grounded than all the alien stuff. As for his cause…he tried to join UNIT. At some point, he did believe in aliens and the like, but when he started spreading conspiracy theories for revenge, he began to believe his own lies. He isn’t sincere and he if he is doing anything right, it’s for the wrong reasons.

Then there’s the bit I mentioned about how Charlie dies. Lucky Day doesn’t make that mistake. First, the Doctor isn’t there for the final confrontation, which means that the actions UNIT takes against him are not endorsed by him. In fact, Kate says that the Doctor wouldn’t approve of what she’s doing. Kate’s actions against Conrad are not treated as morally right, even if Conrad is a bastard who deserves some sort of punishment.

Kate is in charge of the situation here and she ends up in a situation pretty typical for the Doctor. She’s pushed too far and starts being cruel to the villain beyond what is necessary. And Ruby, the companion, the traditional moral compass of the show, tells her to stop. Shirley also tells her to stop and as a member of UNIT, she sort of fills a companion role for Kate. When the Doctor does violence that the companion doesn’t approve of, that’s the show saying he’s in the wrong. This applies to Kate in this scene. Conrad did bad things and deserves some sort of punishment, but letting him get eaten by a monster is considered too far. Ruby gets to put a stop to it. Out of everyone in the room, Ruby was the one personally victimized by Conrad the most. She still tells him to go to hell. It’s clear that Ruby, and therefore the show, doesn’t forgive Conrad. She, and therefore the show, just doesn’t believe he deserves a violent death.

Part Six: The Interstellar Song Contest and Let’s Get This Part Over With

Alright. We’re gonna need to address the elephant in the room here. Space Eurovision. Anyone boycotting real Eurovision are going to be immediately on edge just hearing the premise. By this point, there is basically nothing this episode can do to come out of this looking good to this portion of the audience. Because everything in this season was years in the making, the idea to do Space Eurovision probably got started before October 7, 2023. Big Finish already did it during the Wilderness Years. Yes, I know, people were boycotting Eurovision for including Israel because of human rights violations in Palestine before the fall-out of October 7. But, it was then that things really heating up. Protesting human rights violations became very specifically protesting genocide. You can argue about how long what’s going on in Palestine has been genocide, but this is the point where pretty much anyone can see that it is.

So, doing a Space Eurovision episode is somewhat tone deaf and the actual story does feel like it’s commenting on current events. But, I enjoyed the episode for what it is. I can break down what the episode has to say and say that, at it’s worst, it’s applying typical kid show morality to a situation that it might not apply to. 

Part Seven: The Interstellar Song Contest and the Cycle of Violence

Let’s take a moment and stop talking about specific real world atrocities and focus on those atrocities in general. This episode isn’t about a specific genocide, but it definitely has stuff to say about genocide. Like that it’s bad and stuff. Really, what we’re getting is a pretty typical message about war and violence for a family show. Please remember that Doctor Who is, in fact, a show that is at least partially aimed at children. Any morals the show teaches are usually for the child audience, not the adult audience, though they can acknowledge them.

The Interstellar Song Contest is about the cycle of violence. It’s an abnormally violent episode despite nobody actually dying. 100,000 people are nearly killed in an act of terrorism and the deaths of 3 trillion more are stopped at the last minute. The terrorists themselves are victims of genocide done purely in the name of capitalism. The Doctor snaps and fucking tortures a guy. It’s a lot.

I mentioned the order of events in Kerblam. We spend a bunch of time focusing on the evils of the company and are then expected to forget about it after the twist. The Hellions being victims of genocide is a twist in this episode. They’re terrorists and the audience is told they’re Bad Guys from the Planet Bad Guy, which is actually a pretty common trope in Doctor Who. There are these aliens and they all suck. Who cares why.

This episode cares why. Turns out the Hellions were probably totally normal people who were victims of genocide. But a lot of people say “victims of genocide” and leave it at that. The Hellions weren’t victims of genocide because of bigotry. The genocide came first. The company destroyed the planet for profit and then vilified the Hellions, convincing the public that they’d done it to themselves. They caused the bigotry, or at least played into whatever was already there, to cover their asses.

In Kerblam, we got the evil company before the terrorism. In The Interstellar Song Contest, it’s the other way round. Kerblam’s twist throws out all previous themes. The Interstellar Song Contest’s twist puts the antagonists in a new light.

But, they’re still the antagonists. The Hellions aren’t, but the two who are trying to kill more people than a single planet could contain still are. But the species is no longer what’s being vilified. Instead, the nameless company very clearly started it. They committed genocide for profit, now two Hellions are committing terrorism for revenge. Terrorism on a scale that would probably wipe out the populations of multiple planets. They plan to commit more genocide. Even if we understand what drove them to this, even if we’re sympathetic, they still have to be stopped.

So the Doctor stops them. And then he immediately crosses a line, torturing Kid, the leader of the group. This isn’t portrayed as just. It’s portrayed as horrific. Susan tells the Doctor to stop and he doesn’t. It isn’t until Belinda shows up, a companion in the room with him witnessing what was happening, that he finally stops. It is, in fact, a problem that the show kind of moves on from this moment because there’s a million things going on and we gotta set up the finale.

Then we get the episode’s finale. Cora, another Hellion who’d disguised herself as a Trion (omfg Trion reference!!!), sings a song of her planet and people and everyone’s moved to tears, stunned silence, and then applause. I’ve seen complaints that this is a message about “protesting genocide the right way”, but it isn’t. It’s not about protesting genocide at all.

Here’s the piece that seems to be missing, the part where I really think critics are projecting real world events onto a fictional counterpart so hard that they don’t see the differences between the two. The Hellion genocide isn’t portrayed as something in progress. They talk about the destruction of the planet in the past tense, as if its already happened. Hellia is gone and any survivors have gone to other planets, at least one of them hiding her species to avoid prejudice. Cora’s song isn’t an act of protest. It’s an act of mourning. She sings a song of her world to mourn it. If you want to think of it as activism, she’s mourning publicly. The public have been told that the Hellions destroyed their own planet. But now they’re mourning it publicly. Clearly they lost something. Outsiders begin to have empathy for the Hellions for the first time. 

Will this solve everything? No. It is, in fact, a problem that we don’t see or hear what this leads to. We’re never told that the company is punished in any way. There are no representatives of the company present and the Doctor has to move on. We can’t go out of our way to nuke a factory or something. The season plot gets in the way of the episode’s ending which is, in fact, a problem.

It’s pretty common for Doctor Who, when a corporation is the antagonist, to not show the corporation be taken down, even if we’re told it is. The corporation’s current evil plan is thwarted and we leave it at that. 

As usual, when I mention something in Doctor Who being common, that doesn’t mean there aren’t exceptions. Planet of the Ood comes to mind. The entire institution of Ood slavery is pretty clearly dead by the end of the episode and the boss man’s been turned into an Ood and will be good now. 

So, Doctor Who can Do the Thing, but it usually doesn’t. Boom doesn’t. The war against nothing is stopped but the company that funded it…well the Doctor apparently already stopped it sometime in the company’s future offscreen. So we know it will be destroyed, at least. Oxygen has the Doctor just say the survivors of the episode filed a complaint and then Space Capitalism was ended forever and ever. Because of the peaceful, mundane act of filing a complaint.

I will say that Boom and Oxygen handle the evil corporation plots better. The Doctor doesn’t take either of them down in the episode, but we know that someone will. It is, in fact, a problem that The Interstellar Song Contest leaves this unclear. 

Looking at all the Evil Corp as Antagonist examples I gave, there’s another difference between them and The Interstellar Song Contest. In Planet of the Ood, Oxygen, and Boom, the Doctor lands in the middle of things. The corporation is in the process of doing The Bad Thing and the Doctor stops the process. In The Interstellar Song Contest, he arrives too late. He doesn’t land on Hellia while the genocide was in progress. He lands on a station after it already happened. Evil Corp here could be stopped in general. They could be shut down. But there’s no stopping the genocide that’s already been carried out. It’s too late to save Hellia. It’s already gone. All that can be done is make everyone aware of what the company did and hope they’re held accountable.

To take a moral stand, that’s the difference between Hellia and Palestine. Palestine is still there. There is something left to save.

Let’s circle back to the cycle of violence thing. None of the violence depicted here is motivated by a desire for change like Charlie’s was in Kerblam. If the genocide’s already happened, the terrorism isn’t in protest of it. It’s revenge for it. It’s killing trillions of people who weren’t knowingly involved at an event the company that did the genocide is sponsoring to maybe make them look bad, for the purpose of revenge. 

Then we reach the interesting part. The cycle of violence continues within the story. The company’s violence leads to Kid’s violence which leads to the Doctor’s violence, which isn’t treated as any more justified than the violence that inspired it. The Doctor accuses Kid of just wanting an excuse to hurt people, denying his sympathetic motivation, because the Doctor’s too angry to care. Belinda has already commented that he’s not acting like himself. The attempted murder of trillions of people including his companion completely sent him over the edge. He hurts Kid not out of a sense of justice but because he’s angry and he wants revenge and/or to take his rage out on someone. His motivations aren’t that far off from Kid’s by this point. The cycle of violence isn’t something happening purely to one-off characters that the Doctor can shame for it. It’s gotten to him too.

When Belinda stops the Doctor, it’s meant to be a stop to the cycle of violence. Because none of this violence is to achieve a real goal. It’s not a calculated strategy to achieve change. It’s just lashing out in anger, causing other people to lash out in anger right back.

Part Eight: The Interstellar Song Contest and Morals for Children

As brutal as the presentation is, the moral is simply that violence begets violence, a normal moral for a show aimed at kids. It doesn’t really apply the moral to real world situations, but to violence in general. The act of violence, lashing out in revenge, is stopped and replaced by an act of mourning that inspires compassion. The cycle of violence is stopped by compassion, meaning caring about other people, and empathy, understanding other people as people and seeing from their point of view. It’s a message that won’t solve the violence of the present, but maybe discourage violence in the future. That’s why we teach kids that violence is bad, even if there’s more nuance in practice. If a generation doesn’t believe in violence, then the acts of violence that require violence in return won’t happen. The cycle could stop someday. 

Adults engage in the political present. Children will engage in the political future. Morals for adults are about what to do in an unjust world. Morals for children are about how to create a just one. Ultimately, like it or not, The Interstellar Song Contest is normal. It was written by adults, so contemporary political issues might get mixed in, but the message isn’t for those adults. They’re not telling us how to stop an ongoing genocide. They’re trying to instill a mindset in our children that might prevent a future one.

Epilogue:

I never know how to end these things. Those are my thoughts. Lucky Day and The Interstellar Song Contest have problems, but I liked them. I hate that I felt like I had to defend them morally instead of just saying “I had fun”. It’s exhausting. But, I’ve said my piece, and now I’ll have my peace. I’ve said everything I have to say so I can stop talking about it.

I’m tired. I want to move on. Sometimes I like flawed television and don’t think flawed equates to evil. I lack the righteous blood lust to stay mad at things. I am bad at canceling people. I don’t like the feeling of hating things. If that makes me a bad person, you can guillotine me after the glorious revolution. I’m sure it’ll feel good if you’re into that sort of thing.

Anyway, Trion reference! Susan! It actually is the Rani this time!

I’m going to bed.

[crookshanks23]

The Wizard Steel

While I haven't gathered all my thoughts, I have gathered some of them. And boy do I have thoughts.

There are a couple questions that I'm trying to put together, and maybe by just putting them out into the world, y'all can help me.

What exactly does Steel know about Eioghorain and what happened with Soft and Stone? (Involved in these are me trying to piece together a timeline).

And did she know about the experimental shit that Morrow was doing?

Full explanations of where my brain is currently at under the cut.

I'm going to start with the second - Steel certainly doesn't seem like she knows what's going on with Morrow. Accom is "out in the fringes" as it were, and is connected to the Imperium, not the Citadel specifically. And that's what I had always assumed. Her surprise and outrage seemed genuine. But I will say that she said that they would "dismantle" the derrick, not destroy it. We know that she's not one to leave information on the table. She wants to study Ame's curse, she puts the Geass spell on Suvi, etc.

In the Fireside Chat for episode 47, Brennan remarks that it was important for the audience to not just see Steel as a leader, but as "a weapon" and "a special project" unto herself. He remarks, as her,"I have achieved the utmost limits.. I'm the one who signs off on the experimental spellcraft. I'm reading the finished spells. That crosses my desk for sure. Yeah, but you should also still have a sword. That's how much killing we need you to do."

And my brain went. Oh no. She must have known about Morrow then. But maybe not - he's not Citadel after all and it certainly doesn't seem that way.

To my first question - based on the information we have, here's what I know.

Suvi's parents died in 1656, which is the summer she spent at Wren's.

Steel doesn't become the Sword of the Citadel until 1664.

The campaign is currently happening in 1670.

This tells me a couple of things: 1. She didn't have her current station when all the shit went down with Eioghorain and Soft and Stone and the Acadetor. And it tells me that she didn't immediately ascend to that position upon their deaths or anything. 2. Interestingly, she hasn't held this position for very long.

Here are things I'm still curious about:

How Steel got her scars - we know that she got them that summer

How Eioghorain "betrayed" Soft and Stone. He says that he did, but not how, nor what really happened to them. Neither does Steel either - just that they were double agents.

Steel's full version of events as related to Soft and Stone. Clearly this was not a simple thing - she was left at Wren's for a full summer.

Ultimately, here's my take on the Wizard Steel, based on the little backstory we have of her.

She was taken from her family as a young girl to the Citadel based on her talents and wants nothing more than to give back to the institution that has given her everything. She was devastated when she found out that the League of Whispers was in fact, sanctioned, and not that she was saving her home. She approaches life with the things she can do for the Citadel, which Wren confirms for us - it seems her other relationships come second.

I don't think she's a villain at the end of the day. I do think she cares about people. But ultimately, I think she cares about the Citadel more. I understand why people hate her - she's our stand-in for the Citadel itself, which is not a great entity and the arm of an empire. But I appreciate that it's more complicated than that. She's just a person making her way in the world in a way that makes sense to her. And sometimes that's not great when you've been shaped by a problematic institution.

I'm really curious what her conversation is going to look like with Suvi in episode 49. Who knows, I may have to come back and make some addendums after.

[starryeyed-seer]

I need to put it eloquently & will some day but. bc I've butt heads again with someone about this in the fl discord...

I do not have an issue with the sun/bazaar relationship being heavily one sided, toxic, just a bit weird, messed up from a power dynamic pov. these are great things which add spice to any dynamic. one of them is a god bound to an oppressive reality-dictating Law who determines What Is with its vision. the other is a highly dedicated freak. to say it is an equal relationship with no tricky factors would be silly.

but I do continue to feel strongly about it being Only Abusive. certainly some of it is personal distaste for how many handle the topic of abuse. I have seen more than enough takes which take the concept of "the sun/bazaar was abusive" and follow through to "the bazaar is delusional hysterical (Woman™️) who was used, abused, and abandoned by sol, and now mourns the relationship (like a moron) and just needs to Get Over It." This kind of take sucks. Reducing the Bazaar to simply a Crazy Victim just sucks.

I also just don't like how much this reduces the bazaar's agency as a character. it spends a lot of time being miserable and drinking but it is undeniably very capable and intelligent. it didn't just stumble into the neath blindly to pine pathetically for 1000s of years. say what you will of its motivations and actions, it is an active agent in its story.

however. the other part I dislike about positioning suncrab as Simply Shitty Abusive is that narratively... it'd really suck. "in matters of the bazaar, look to love, always" is a strong quote bc it extends outside the bazaar to... the bizarre. when times are strange and hard and everything's overturned it's like you've fallen into a Weird Cave, look to love, always. it can continue and exist. there is no fertile earth here, and love still can grow.

FL isn't a thing where we can have a 'narrative conclusion' for the bazaar, but imagine if the game ended and there was an epilogue and it was just. 'the bazaar was 1000% wrong. it was in a shitty relationship and needed to get over its ex. it killed all those people and did all those ridiculous things, and it was for nothing, because it was an idiot in a abusive relationship'. Is that. satisfying for anyone.

of course, even if suncrab is some happily ever after scenario, it still Can Never Be. Whatever those two are, it isn't something that can exist without thousands, millions of dead. but what's wrong with that?

this is what I was talking about with someone where.... yes, a theme of fallen london is love, which can be consuming, toxic, dangerous, alluring, hungry.... so many things! could a one sided endless yearning in an unhappy relationship bazaar fit that theme? sure.

but a destructive cosmic somewhat mutual love also fits that. these two love each other, in their own weird ways. they both are doing illegal red science and causing huge problems and also all the murder/cannibalism. why can't they just match each other's freak. the bazaar is already displaying a complicated, hungry, obsessive love! if that love is mutual, if that love is happy, it's still Pretty Dark Because Of The Bodies.

Like.

Okay you can tell I'm rambling because I'm a bit annoyed, but I hope you get it. I'm sick of crab misogyny. I think making the Setting Inciting Incident pointless and about abuse goes against theme. I think if you want them to be unhappy or toxic, you don't need to make it so the Bazaar is Just A Victim Who Has To Get Over A Shit Boyfriend. I think it being a complicated affair steeped in the laws of society and chains of caste is more interesting.

the moon makes me anxious.

(look I'm just hyper aware of abuse narratives in fiction and the way they are written and perceived, and while I generally like FBG and trust FL's writing, I don't exactly trust the broad concept of 'a fandom' with those storylines yknow)