#just some musing

[poore-choice-of-words]

An important mentality I've built when recovering from Evangelical nonsense is this:

It doesn't matter whether or not someone deserves whatever. What matters is what they should have, sometimes that's a need, sometimes it's a desire.

I've spent too much time being told everyone deserves to go to hell to believe anyone deserves anything good, but I can believe people should have good things.

[seekerwithsneakers]

i love 5pm when the sun sets after 7

5 pm is for the people resting

taking a tea break

or waking up from their naps

it is sunny, but not harsh just enough sun to warm u up on the walk from lab to the dining hall to get a beverage

the campus is mostly empty and so pretty

i love 5 pm

reminds me of the period before the start of the hustle and bustle , when you are holding your breath or having the last bite of food before the show begins

[timethehobo]

Help he’s just too cute I can’t stop drawing him. 😭💀

[artisimpossible]

There's a huge difference between redemption and humanization. I feel like a lot of "redemption arcs" aren't actually redemption at all, they're just attempts to humanize the villain so that they seem multi-faceted, but people read them as "redemption arcs" and think that that is meant to justify all the evil they've done before and negate whatever made them a villain in the first place. I think true "redemption arcs" are actually kind of rare because true redemption would take making the villain acknowledge their crimes, reevaluate their actions, actively choose to do better, and then proceed to make amends and become a better person, and that would this take more time than most stories are allowed to give their characters.

I've also seen people argue that a character has to be poised for redemption from the jump for it to work because once a character does something "too bad", they can't be redeemed. I completely disagree because redemption isn't justification or forgiveness, so no matter how horrible a character's actions, they could choose to become better, but because a lot of people (including writers) think redemption means "erasing the character's flaws and making it so they did nothing wrong ever", a lot of attempted "redemption arcs" just end up erasing a character's entire history or justifying every evil thing they've ever done. And yeah, in these cases, the only way to make a character go from a villain to a perfect cinnamon roll with no flaws *is* to have been planning it from the beginning and make sure they never do anything that can't be explained away later.

TLDR: real redemption arcs require a lot of self-awareness, patience, and growth, which are things that are rarely actually allocated to villains, and that's why real redemption arcs almost never get executed. The reason people think redemption arcs are overdone is because there are so many attempts to either humanize a villain that get misconstrued as redemption or attempts to blatantly erase who a character was in the name of "redemption", which is really just poor character development.

[zubzooks]

first art of 2025.... >:)

[madamemiz]

sad: falling out of a hyperfixation

tragic: watching your beloved friends and mutuals fall out of the hyperfixation while you're still in it

[lucabyte]

Different standards

[canisalbus]

Ok ok hear me out: it could end in tragedy,, AND have a happy ending. The attempt(s) on Machete’s life force him to flee, he doesn’t even have the chance to find Vasco. Cue gay longing for at least a few years while Machete despairs over the loss of his love, his life, his status. He and Vasco only reunite (again) in their later years. Their relationship is forever flavored with loss and loneliness, but that only means they savor every moment that much more

I also I would like to see them as old men. Vasco would be so droopy :)

You gave me such old dog brainworms.

[nothatsmi]

Lovely isn't he.

I finished the third book. It's been a few days already but with work and stuff... Anyway now I'm digging through the additional content Nora posted on Tumblr, took me a while to understand how it works but now I am pleased.

I cannot express the emotionnal damage these books have done to me, but I'm not finished drawing any of the foxes. Just saying.

[inkedberries]

npcs somewhere in the capital, circa 1920

Andrey is an owner of an edgy underground club and architecture is his hobby whereas Peter is an artist the Kains commission frequently and alcohol is his hobby.

[alderaanplacesss]

After the events of Veilguard, Rook and her companions become quite famous over Thedas. They’re spoken about in ways that will one day become lore, like the legend of the Inquisitor and the immortal wolf who loved her.

But they also have lives, and families, and normalcy to return to. And what isn’t as famous at first, is Rook’s sweeping romance that started at The Lighthouse.

It isn’t until she starts showing up at the back of Mourn Watcher lecture halls, or is spotted frequently in Nevarran gardens that people start to gossip.

Rook is hard to miss; the person who fearlessly commanded Elven Gods to stand down definitely has a presence. She doesn’t fit the mold of a student, and she certainly isn’t in need of instruction. No, her sudden and frequent appearances to The Necropolis are for something else entirely. Someone else.

Emmrich does anything but hide it. He’s madly in love with his scandalously younger girlfriend. The professor blushes when students ask him about their epic tale, happy to gush about his beloved Rook. He has a framed portrait of her on his office wall, where he can sometimes be found writing her love letters when she is away. Emmrich escorts her on his arm when they walk through the halls of the college, always making time for her.

One day, the couple is spotted in the cemetery during Emmrich’s lunch break, and Rook is wearing a gorgeous black diamond on her ring finger. The future Mrs. Volkarin, is how he proudly refers to her now. Sometimes it is My beloved fiancee. He can hardly wait for it to be My Darling Wife.

The day they marry, all the wisps in the Necropolis dance and chime so brightly that the dark city is filled with a constellation of spirits. It’s a sight to behold - a rare and beautiful thing that is talked about for years to come.

[lemm-moxx]

Yes killer i believe you do.

[tossawary]

Looking in on fandoms from the outside is great, because you occasionally get to make casual observations to your friend like, "You guys apparently have a reverence for this man's pain and suffering that I usually associate with paintings of martyred saints. The artistry here is impressive and also more than a little bit horny."

[walkingstackofbooks]

IPS/BIL AU where Tain dies before he can send the message. Garak and Worf never go to the gamma quadrant. Julian and Martok don't get rescued.

Back on DS9 the changeling is stopped pretty much just as it was in canon, with Kira and Dax managing to stop the Yukon from reaching the sun, just as it explodes. (Maybe since Garak is still on the station, he notifies Sisko that Bashir has taken the Yukon out?) This time, however, no-one knows it was a changeling, and among all the shock and grief, there's tense speculation about what the hell Julian was doing out there in a runabout with a bomb.

The changeling had planned to never be identified, believing it would sow more confusion and fear in the Federation if they believe one of their own had been secretly allied with the Dominion. And so the changeling had left behind a trail of "Julian" interacting with highly questionable locked-down message-boards such as "Would enhanced individuals be better off under the Dominion?", which would never have been tracked back to him apart from under such scrutiny he's now post-humously receiving. (The changeling knew about Julian's enhancements - to become something is to understand that thing, after all.)

Of course, it is considered whether Julian may have been impersonated by a changeling, but once the link to his enhancements has been revealed - and his parents can't hide it, they confess, and are sentenced to time in a penal colony - it seems very much decided that Doctor Bashir had become an augment extremist, biding his time on DS9 until he could play out his part in the Dominion plot. There's varying levels of acceptance of this among Julian's friends - even if it seems that they have to admit it, it's still almost impossible to believe that Julian could have tried to do that. But it doesn't really matter what they think - life has to go on, and the war's continuing whether they like it or not, and little by little they move on with their now-Julian-less lives.

Time passes. they get a new CMO. The Cardassians re-occupy the station, and Sisko leads the campaign to get it back. Worf and Jadzia get married. Garak gets a message.

A.L.I.V.E. J.S.B.

And no-one knows what to think. JSB can't be... can it? But how...

Garak argues that Doctor Bashir's death is so well-known that no-one would use his name as the basis for some sort of trap. Miles agrees. Everyone else wants to agree. (For a certain definition of 'want'. Julian being alive, not a traitor... that also means he's been doing somewhere in the past ten months, and it's difficult to think about what sort of awful place that might have been.)

Garak and Worf are sent out to chase this signal - in theory, it's recon, but naturally it quickly devolves. They get captured themsleves, finding Camp 371 and Julian, looking ten months worse for wear. Garak learns about Tain's death, and the subspace transmitter he'd began working on and that they'd only just been able to finish, having managed to recruit a recently-abducted Starfleet engineer. An engineer who's currently in solitary, leaving them with a plan to escape now there's a runabout in orbit, but no way to effect it. Unless there's something Garak can do...

And Worf, of course, meets Martok, and is impressed by the Klingon's tale of daily fights for nearly three years. "Almost every day," Martok corrects him. "There have been times when I've woken up with a sore head to find that the doctor has taken my place."

Worf looks to Julian, nodding. "So you are the man we remember," he says. "Your enhancements may have helped you fight, but it was an honourable thing to volunteer."

"My... my enhancements?" asks Julian faintly. "What- what do you mean?"

"Commander, is now really the time—" Garak tries to interrupt but Julian speaks over him.

"No, Garak, I want to know— I-I need to know. What do you mean, Worf?"

And Worf, in his short, succinct way tells Julian how they had believed he had died, and what they had discovered thereafter, and while they know now that he is not an augment extremist, his parents' confession made it clear that he is an augment.

Julian doesn't say very much after that, apart from what is needed to help with the rescue - he calms Garak down, he volunteers to try and figure out what needs doing in the crawl space ("I've learnt at least a few things from tinkering with it over those seven months...") - but otherwise, he's withdrawn and spacey. Garak perserveres - he must get Julian back to DS9, has to hope there's still time to rekindle that light in his doctor's eyes - and manages to get them out, and even locking onto the engineer's life sign in solitary. They make it to the runabout, and escape.

It's a very different sort of homecoming. This time, rather than having only a few hours to get used to the idea that Julian had been missing for a month, they've been mourning him for almost a year, angry and confused and left with so many questions. And they've had almost a week of wondering what's become of Worf and Garak, and to tie themselves in circles wondering if J.S.B really could be Julian Subatoi Bashir.

Garak gets them all beamed directly to sickbay, and it's obvious that Julian's overwhelmed enough by that without having hordes of emotional friends come to greet him. So they're allowed in, one at a time. Miles petitions to be first, and wraps Julian up in what would have been the firmest of hugs - apart from Julian's so gaunt, so... so fragile, that Miles finds he dares not squeeze too hard. Words gush out - ones that he'd never have thought he'd admit out loud - about how much he missed Julian and how glad he is none of what they said was true, and it takes him some time to realise that he's been blabbering on and Julian's not been saying a word.

Julian has been clinging onto him tightly, though, and that... that's got to be enough, for now.

[kayomin]

mohn jarston

[iffondrels-library]

More of the Chain in TotK! They just had their first encounter with a Gloom Spawn (it didn't go well).