#like if they're right it would be a really weird interesting potentially useful kind of immune response!!!! could indeed be a good vax!

[unopenablebox]

this is an insanely misleadingly overblown press release about a kind of lackluster paper that basically demonstrates none of these claims

the premise of this paper is that there is a version of mouse nodamuravirus (NoV) (which is as best as i can tell not a human pathogen nor terribly similar to any) which, when attenuated via mutation/KO of a protein that suppresses the cells' foreign-RNA-targeting RNAi response, does not cause disease in mice, presumably because the mice can destroy all the viruses with their RNAi pathway instead.

so what this paper shows is if you inoculate mice, even mice lacking the B and T cells that usually confer immune response to vaccines, with attenuated NoV followed by usually-lethal doses of normal NoV, this leads to survival by most of the mice for up to 3 months after initial inoculation. this is interesting because 1. it's unusually long-lasting for an adaptive-immunity-independent immune response 2. it implies that removing RNAi suppression could be a productive method of generating attenuated viruses as part of vaccine production, and that there's some kind of systemic (body-wide) response being generated to this specific attenuated virus (surprising if it really is due to RNAi activity, since RNAi is a cell-autonomous response)

things this paper absolutely does not show:

that this immunity comes from RNAi/is actually processing or responding to the "whole genome" of the virus

that it confers immunity to multiple variants or strains of NoV (they only tested the NoV strain that the attenuated virus was made from)

how strong the induced immune response is (e.g. is it causing the mice other issues from massive inflammation due to circulating attenuated virus or hypothetical circulating small RNAs?)

that it would last beyond 3 months (the press release claims "9 mouse days are 1 human year" which is extremely dishonest w/r/t the timeline of mouse vs. human immune response; for our purposes that's just a lie)

that it would work for a nasal spray (they use a kind of injection not used in human vaccines for everything except a negative control, where they nasal spray in a different virus that isn't immunized against by attenuated NoV and that accordingly it doesn't work on)

that it would work for the flu

that it would work in humans

the first three, especially 1 and 3, are, frankly, crazy oversights from a paper trying to propose a new vaccine development method & type of vaccine response and i'm kind of shocked they weren't addressed in the paper more. 4, 5, 6, and 7 would be pretty unreasonable criticisms of this paper and could be considered out of scope, except that there is an insanely irresponsible press release implying all these things are known.

the only time the paper touches on the idea of creating a non-strain-specific vaccine is in the final paragraph of the discussion a.k.a. the most speculative part. the entire premise of the claim that it would be non-strain-specific depends on the idea that this is all due to the body developing an RNAi-based "memory" of past viruses, possibly due to previous work (from the same lab) claiming that they find extracellular vesicles in the blood containing small viral RNAs after infection with attenuated NoV, and that adding these vesicles to cells promotes NoV resistance. however, they don't demonstrate that these small viral RNA vesicles are either sufficient or necessary to generating the kind of medium/long-term responses they're discussing in this vaccination paper. also, extracellular vesicle research in general is a... messy field with very bad causal demonstration (especially when you need to perfectly isolate the vesicles from any identically-sized viruses among them), it's otherwise not clear how RNAi could lead to a response over the whole body, and they don't even do any other tests impairing RNAi activity in order to confirm more clearly that this is an RNAi-dependent phenomenon.

like, if it were an RNAi-based vaccine that worked by somehow transmitting a long-lasting RNAi response against a virus to most or all cells in the body, that might well be relatively strain-agnostic and much harder for viruses to evade, and there's probably some chance it might work in some immunocompromised people if the b/t-cell-independence of the effect held true in humans and it doesn't work by e.g. also causing massive inflammation. but, uh, it's a real fucking journey from where we are to there.

“Scientists at UC Riverside have demonstrated a new, RNA-based vaccine strategy that is effective against any strain of a virus and can be used safely even by babies or the immunocompromised. Their flu vaccine will also likely be delivered in the form of a spray, as many people have an aversion to needles. “Respiratory infections move through the nose, so a spray might be an easier delivery system,” Hai said. Additionally, the researchers say there is little chance of a virus mutating to avoid this vaccination strategy. “Viruses may mutate in regions not targeted by traditional vaccines. However, we are targeting their whole genome with thousands of small RNAs. They cannot escape this,” Hai said. Ultimately, the researchers believe they can ‘cut and paste’ this strategy to make a one-and-done vaccine for any number of viruses. “There are several well-known human pathogens; dengue, SARS, COVID. They all have similar viral functions,” Ding said. “This should be applicable to these viruses in an easy transfer of knowledge.””

—

Vaccine breakthrough means no more chasing strains

This is HUGE. This will fundamentally change how we get inoculated.

[suzukiblu]

Five headcanons from the obligatory sugar daddy Tim/sugar baby Kon AU for Plot Bunny, which may or may not all make it into the actual fic itself. Headcanons are slightly leaned towards Kon’s powers because Plot Bunny was specifically interested in my headcanons for those in this AU, but also including Tim being a useless bisexual.

Kon brags constantly about the things his TTK does that are either Superman-esque abilities or that he thinks are either impressive or flashy enough to pass for impressive. He does not think to brag about things like “technically I have a 360-degree field of perception”, because he’s like “well it only works if nothing’s flying or hovering and it’s not like vision, so it’s just whatever” as opposed to being like “most things/people cannot fly or hover and it also accounts for things like people hiding behind cover, so actually it’s real fucking useful, isn’t it”. Frequently he just doesn’t think to mention little utility-specific uses of his powers at all, in fact. No, this acid isn’t touching him, he can be acidproof if he wants. No, he can’t actually choke on anything. Yeah, he can set bones and relocate dislocations on himself and others without needing an X-ray or an MRI involved. Sure, he could just stop somebody’s heart, but why would he?? 

Tim has gotten out of the habit of a lot of his hobbies in favor of Robin-ing. Robbies. He has Robbies now, not hobbies. It’s not like he never picks up a camera or a skateboard or a video game anymore, just . . . well . . . like, not never, that’s all. He’s pretty sure he touched his skateboard last week? When he . . . moved it to the other corner while he was cleaning his room . . . uh. Well. Still counts, right?? 

Kon has much better fine motor control over his TTK than he usually bothers to demonstrate in the field because he actually spends a lot of his time bored and understimulated in a lab environment, so he just fucks around with it to entertain himself. For him, it’s an extension of his sense of touch, which makes him incredibly tactile as a person. But he also thinks it might be a little weird how tactile he is compared to other people, so he is much likelier to be petting the soft silky thing with his TTK than his actual, oh, I don’t know, hands? Because people don’t even notice when it’s his TTK, obviously, but they definitely notice when he's doing it with his hands. He actually does a lot of little things with his TTK that people don’t usually pick up on, because it’s just things like adjusting crooked frames and plucking lint off people’s clothes and fixing their hair or tucking their shirt tags into their collars and picking inconvenient locks, and if Tim knew Kon could do that kind of thing so subtly and easily, he would immediately lose his ever-loving mind about it. And also teach him how to pick pockets and crack safes, probably. Kon, obliviously, does not realize just how fucking useful those little things could actually be in hero-ing, because to him they're just normal little tricks he can just do whenever, not anything special or impressive. And like, why would he pick the lock when he could just punch the door down? Superman would punch the door down, right? And punching the door down looks cooler! So obviously he's gonna do that! 

Tim accidentally developed his initial crush on Kon via constant exposure through stupid teen magazine posters. He will swear on his life it started when they first met and fought supervillains together, but no, it was definitely that Kon was hot in those stupid cheesy posters that Tim kept running into while he did research on the new kid in the superhero community. Also he read so many of those lame tabloid interviews. Just . . . so, so many. Ugh. And he actually does keep up on Kon's Twitter and probably his Insta too. 

Kon absolutely accidentally holds himself back from his full potential as a superhero without really realizing it because he thinks “what would Superman do?” while mostly knowing Superman through hearsay, information uploads from biased sources, and what few facets of his personality Clark is actually willing to show him. So he has a very skewed image of him, obviously, and is trying to grow up and be a person Clark isn't and no one really could be. But Kon identifies himself as Superboy because he doesn’t have anything else he knows how to be, and Superboy came from Superman, so he concentrates less on certain aspects of his powers and more on the Kryptonian-imitating ones. Again: he could just unlock the door, but Superman would punch it, right? Right??

[yourbloodysunrise]

Hi! I saw your blog and I love your writing btw.

Can you do a separate platonic hc of Ninjago ninjas (+Wu and Gaemadon but they're optional) with a male oc who's basically a lot like Sun Wukong from Lego Monkie Kid, but different?

Basically same idea, super powerful immortal dude thought to be gone, that caused havoc with the hierarchy. Unlike Sun Wukong the legends doesn't describe him as a hero, but as a cruel destructive monster, and yes the legends are true. So then dude was sealed away for centuries until villains freed him to help them conquer Ninjago and destroy the ninjas.

But then dude just doesn't, like straight up doesn't want to because he doesn't feel like it, turns out he's very chill and easy-going, also lazy, looks very human and normal but still powerful as hell. And then he just seems to take interest in the character that you're writing the hcs for, acts very mocking and condescending towards them for being 'mortals', likes to scare the shit out of them, will do it more often if they are scared of him, and sometimes show them what is supposed to be forgotten techniques and knowledge out of 'pity'. He actually do care about them but won't show it unless they're in actual real and serious danger. And may tone his annoying habits down with time.

As for Wu and Garmadon same thing he just acts way less condescending and mocking towards them than he does with the ninjas but it's still there.

🌤 — my, that's sound interesting!I'll do all my best to try making this as you expected to see :)

❝ Isn't this guy should be a villain? ❞

— FANDOM: NINJAGO

— PAIRING: MAIN NINJAS(+MASTER WU and MASTER GARMADON) x MALE!OC

— PLATONIC

— HEADCANONS

— TW: BAD GRAMMAR, BAD ENGLISH, OOC, IDK HOW TO CALL OC SO HE MENTIONED AS "you" xd, NINJA'S DON'T REALLY LIKE DUDE AND I CAN'T BLAME THEM, CAN CONTAIN SPOILERS

LLOYD:

☆ ┈ Like almost everyone else, at first he will treat you with distrust.

☆ ┈ It's like, "you're that dude from the legends, right?Shouldn't you be, well, evil?"

☆ ┈ Most likely, you are interested in him because of his status. The same green ninja who defeated the Overlord himself in the battle against good and evil, but is still a teenager?

☆ ┈ How intriguing.

☆ ┈ He is usually annoyed by your taunts and responds to them with sarcasm.

☆ ┈ You can't blame him, imagine that some guy from the legends is awakened by villains, but instead of fighting you, he starts just walking next to you and mocking you, and you can't even do anything about it.

☆ ┈ At first, he will be scared if you start scaring him, but over time he will get used to it and stop paying attention.

☆ ┈ He's really trying to treat you better, but your taunts in his direction put him off.

☆ ┈ Now, let's talk about what can fix the situation.

☆ ┈ For example, if you show him some kind of combat technique that is considered forgotten.This..Flatters him. No, really, he's pleased.

☆ ┈ Perhaps at some point you will offer him additional training to develop his potential, because "as a green ninja you could do better."

☆ ┈ I had the idea that you would literally be Lloyd's bodyguard at the time when the Sons of Garmadon took over the city.

☆ ┈ You is like: this girl Harumi hunting this green whiner? Pfft, tough shit. *secretly running away to kick her ass*

☆ ┈ Soon you will become something like..Friends, almost.

☆ ┈ Lloyd starts to like your company, but with time, and you stopped mocking him(not quiet, but in the most part)

☆ ┈ Others ninja's honest reaction when you two suddenly began to get along: 😶

— "I feel like I can be myself around you!"

— "..You're weird and lazy around me."

— "Think about it."

NYA:

☆ ┈ Her reaction to you would be "I won't hesitate, bitch." AND IT'S TRUE.

☆ ┈ Nya been hostile to you for a long time, mostly because she doesn't fully understand you.

☆ ┈ Wow, a dangerous dude who could destroy you turns out to be lazy and calm guy, and also constantly hangs out around you and laughs at you?

☆ ┈ Cool, yeeeaah…

☆ ┈ And why?

☆ ┈ You are definitely interested in her personality.  Independent, brave, but at the same time sensitive and also diffident. What a cocktail of feelings!

☆ ┈ You won't be able to scare or offend her, she'll get kind of angry, but she'll just try not to think about it.

☆ ┈ Due to the fact that Nya usually does not pay attention to you, some people from the outside see you as something like friends. It annoys, but it amuses you.

☆ ┈ After that, you will purposely call her like "bud", "darling", "Lily pad"..Just to see her reaction.

☆ ┈ Your relationship can definitely be called complicated.

☆ ┈ If the villains freed you during/before season 5, you will be the one who will help you train. Nya doesn't seem to mind, but she doesn't understand why you're helping her despite her hostility.

☆ ┈ I think she's just closed to you, but there will be times when she'll soften up. For example, if she is in danger and you help her.

☆ ┈ Over time, Nya may become more in contact with you, because in her eyes you cease to be an enemy. She is not ready to see you as an ally, because she still doubts you, but certainly does not consider you an enemy.

☆ ┈ It seems to me that Jay might be jealous, but not as much as he is of Cole. If your presence touches the love triangle of Jay, Nya and Cole, then you would be the one who pushed Nya to talk to them about it.

☆ ┈ Of course, it would sound something like "Come on, I just started to like you, pull yourself together and deal with them, don't make me change my mind!"

☆ ┈ But hey, you at least tried, right?

☆ ┈ In general, you have a dynamic of dangerous creature that for some reason simply refuses to destroy, and a person tired of it who cannot get rid of the creature.

— "What's up with you?"

— "Mm, what do you mean?"

— "You've been nice and helpful all day. What's your game?.."

JAY:

☆ ┈ Guy is completely confused and does not understand why you paid attention to him.

☆ ┈ Come on, man, there are so many people here!Just go away, okay?

☆ ┈ When you try to treat him condescendingly, Jay just either jokes or interrupts you and leaves.

☆ ┈ He actually feels uncomfortable about it. Like, is he worse than others, since you are bothering him or what?

☆ ┈ Jay could be really scared if you start scaring him, and if you continue to do this, he may start to get hysterical about it and try to get into a fight with you.

☆ ┈ He is stopped in time, but he will still feel hostility towards you for a long time. It seems to me that he is the most vindictive towards you of all.

☆ ┈ You will have a hard time if you try to establish a relationship with him. Yes, you care about Jay, but at the same time you treat him mockingly, so it definitely makes him angry.

☆ ┈ He, like Nya, will not quite appreciate your gesture if you reveal to him some forgotten knowledge. As it were, he would rather be confused and try to figure out why you did it.

☆ ┈ In order for you to somehow fix the relationship, you will most likely have to not scare him at all and turn ridicule into jokes. Only then will he think that you are not so bad.

☆ ┈ Jay will definitely start liking you more if you help him with Nya. No kidding, if you "out of pity" give him some advice without ridicule, he will be very grateful to you.

☆ ┈ In general, there are four phases in your communication with Jay: Denial, Anger, Confusion, Acceptance.

☆ ┈ I recently reviewed Skybound, and if I may mention it here:

☆ ┈ If you were freed after the events of Skybound, then he can mention you about it after the Acceptance stage, when he will already trust you at least a little, but not fully;

☆ ┈ If you were freed before/during the events of Skybound, I am sure that you will be the one who will actively protect Jay, so that you will instantly move to the stage above Acceptance, but I do not know exactly what the outcome of events will be, so be content with what you have :p

☆ ┈ It seems to me that you would have the dynamics of a more sensitive MK and Macaque, if compared with LMK.

*Jay and Nya look into each other's eyes*

*You open a can of soda*

— "Hey, can you keep it down?!We're having a romantic moment here!"

— "And I have soda."

KAI:

☆ ┈ Unlike others, he perceives you as a kind of rival.

☆ ┈ Kai is not mind a good opponent in the form of you. He is overconfident in this..However, this has always been his problem.

☆ ┈ Maybe you decide to feed his competitive spirit simply because it amuses you?

☆ ┈ Kai can't fight you seriously, considering that it's not in his best interests, but when it comes to something not deadly, he doesn't mind taking the initiative.

☆ ┈ For example, if you live with a ninja (no matter how much times they try to kick you out), he feels that he has to compete with you.

☆ ┈ You, finding an opportunity to have fun in his fiery mood to fight with you, play along with him.

☆ ┈ Because of this, you two really can't called enemies. You treat each other almost the same, make fun of each other or just joke, sometimes it feels like Kai doesn't even know how powerful you are. (most likely, he does not know, and he will find out later, but it is too late and he does not change his attitude towards you)

☆ ┈ This is probably a rare case where a ninja doesn't hate you right away. I would say that Kai finds you a rival, not a villain, especially considering the fact that you refused to destroy the ninja, even if you did it just because you didn't want to.

☆ ┈ He will often ask you to fight, of course you don't fight at full strength, so as not to flatten him against the wall, but enough to knock the spirit out of him.

☆ ┈ Kai is definitely the one who will train with you. At first it's just your usual duels, but with your advice, and later he can easily use your techniques. At some point, he may even actually fight you.

☆ ┈ The main thing: not overdo it!Other ninjas didn't like when you accidentally knocked Kai into the wall last time..

☆ ┈ If you were freed before/during season 4, expect a lot of work. In the end, what can you do if your favorite ninja is trying to fight an snake army of crazy noodle man, a fire snake squeezes all the strength out of him, some ghost inhabits his friend and also many bullshit?..A lot of work!

☆ ┈ P.s. When you scared him, he tried to scare you for 2 more weeks in retaliation.

— "Nice scar, hot head, but hair? Gosh, what you was thinking about, bud?"

— "Ha, you're the one who telling me that? You should see your hair after being sealed away for damn centuries!"

ZANE:

☆ ┈ He is..not sure how to react to you.

☆ ┈ Thanks for not helping the villains and all that, but is it necessary to mock him?..

☆ ┈ By the way, whether you will mock at him or not is a big question. Let's take a look at the possible options.

☆ ┈ If you were freed during/after 4 season, then you will most likely laugh at Zane for being a robot and easily incapacitated.

☆ ┈ If you still caught a moment when he looked like a human, then everything will be the same, BUT after he sacrifices himself and restores himself as a robot, your honest reaction will be this: 😳

☆ ┈ You can say that in the second option you leave Zane alone, because you most likely have already become attached to him and are just glad that he is here again.

☆ ┈ In general, it will probably be difficult for you to tease or scare him simply because he either does not understand most of your taunts or does not react in any way. Often both. And it doesn't work to scare him at all, he just passes by.

☆ ┈ He's strangely polite to you, and that puzzles you. Soon, if you stop mocking him, he may begin to see you as something of an ally.

☆ ┈ Zane will be grateful if you share with him something that is considered to be forgotten. Most likely, it will become publicly available later, so don't be surprised.

☆ ┈ P.I.X.A.L. DOESN'T like you, she constantly warns Zane that you are still a dangerous villain who brings destruction. In order for her to start trusting you, you'll probably have to save Zane from some bullshit.

☆ ┈ I thought back to season 11, and I had the idea that maybe Zane as the Ice Emperor could remotely remember something about you. (yeah, this is exaggerated, but listen-)

☆ ┈ Of course, he doesn't remember you fully, but he remembers that you were connected to him. Perhaps he has a silhouette of you or something in his memory, so his minions are strictly forbidden to attack you.

☆ ┈ All in all, to sum up, the two of you have a dynamic of "I can fix him." and "Haha, funny robot, lol."

— "You should stop acting ridicilous."

— "Well, someone's gotta be jester for the court, after all."

COLE:

☆ ┈ Okay, let's start with the fact that he doesn't understand you.

☆ ┈ Yes, exactly doesn't understand. Cole can't understand why you refuse to fight the ninja, why do you hang around him so often?

☆ ┈ He would be flattered by your attention if you didn't behave so condescendingly towards him.

☆ ┈ Cole finds you..Annoying, but at the same time, he's not against you. He wouldn't want you to help the villains who freed you capture Ninjago instead.

☆ ┈ Sometimes you can have fight, and, well, it's unpleasant for both of you..

☆ ┈ Cole is physically strong even without his elemental power, although it reinforces this, you are just as damn strong, but not completely physically. Because of this, you both get hurt in your fights, and your relationship noticeably hinders your ability to get closer.

☆ ┈ Soon, when he starts to get used to you, the fights will stop, but quarrels are still possible. Most often they happen if you make fun of him or try to scare him.

☆ ┈ Despite your quarrels, you and Cole are a great duo!In fights, the opponent should pray that you are not alone, otherwise nothing good will obviously happen.

☆ ┈ Both of you will soon relent. There are fewer quarrels, you become less condescending towards Cole, and he in turn becomes more relaxed with you.

☆ ┈ Show him an old, forgotten dance!No ancient knowledge or techniques can arouse his interest as much as dancing.

☆ ┈ If Cole has free time and Jay is busy, he prefers to spend it with you. Yes, you are not the best choice..But he likes you, so you have a pass!

☆ ┈ He most likely prefers to train with you, or, what else is better in his opinion, just be lazy with you. He even tried to teach you how to play his favorite video games.

☆ ┈ Your complicated relationship, even after a long time, will become something like a friendly one. Cole likes your presence, you like his personality.

☆ ┈ You form a strange but successful collaboration. Other ninjas don't say anything about it, because they see that you care about Cole, even in your own way.

— "I want a cake.."

— "Me too."

— "Let's steal it from that fiery guy!"

— "..."

— "Well, why not-"

MASTER WU & MASTER GARMADON:

☆ ┈ First, let me explain why they both in one headcanons, when others separate.

☆ ┈ Considering that Wu and Garmadon have lived for about a millennium, you are most likely familiar with them. Perhaps were even friends until you began to destroy, and Garmadon succumbed to evil? Who knows..

☆ ┈ I prefer to stick to that version that, and therefore it will be more convenient for me to write about them together.

☆ ┈ In this, you are interested in Wu and Garmadon rather because you are curious about what happened to them while you were sealed. After all, so many years have passed, you'd like to know how they went!

☆ ┈ If so, this explains why you mitigate your annoying habits with them. It's rude to mock old acquaintances, isn't it? This is definitely not the way to greet your friend!

☆ ┈ While you are trying to restore your friendly relations with Wu and Garmadon, despite everything you have done, Wu treats you neutrally, and Garmadon is more lenient.

☆ ┈ God, please don't mention that you and Garmadon are similar in that you both tried to destroy Ninjago, it will infuriate the hell out of him because unlike you, he was literally forced to become evil. (cough Overlord. cough)

☆ ┈ You're just trying to get your friendship back, which you're having a hard time doing. Garmadon is disappointed in you because of your actions, and Wu does not want to stir up the past because he already has a lot of problems related to it.

☆ ┈ Mocking or trying to scare one of them will most often end up with you being hit on the forehead with a staff. Because you've been sealed for centuries, you don't look very old, but they already look old, so you look like a naughty child and his guardians.

☆ ┈ For some reason, I have a feeling that you can make friends with Lloyd in this. In the plan, you probably won't be condescending to him just because he's Garmadon's son, and he'll be friendly with you.

☆ ┈ If you were freed before season 5, then rest your soul, because Morro can't stand you. If you have not yet been sealed at the moment when he was still a student of Wu, then he remembers you perfectly well, and this is BAD, because no matter how he resents Wu, he knows about your former friendship, and believes that you betrayed his Master, and for him this is unforgivable.

☆ ┈ At some point, they will most likely start to get used to you, which means they will stop being wary of you. You wouldn't put up with it for so long just to get back at them in the end.

☆ ┈ The dynamic of former friends, one of whom tries to restore friendship, and the other two ignores him, but eventually accept him, I think.

— "Heeyy!It was long time ago, friends!"

— "We're not your friends."

— "How do you even get in Monastery?"

— "..Okay, you two didn't miss me, I got it."

..:*･ﾟ☆.｡.:*･ﾟﾞ｡.:*･ﾟ☆.｡.:*･ﾟ🌤

🌤 — ah, I've finally finished writing this!sorry for the long wait, I had no motivation for some time, but here we are!

🌤 — I decided to do Wu and Garmadon because I long to write for characters that are important in the plot, but for some reason no one asks for them :/

🌤 — but here we are!hope you like it, come back soon!☆ <3

[datura-tea]

okey dokey! i just finished the fallout show! some Thoughts under the read more

tl:dr, the (bethesda) fallout vibes were definitely there. i liked it as a show on its own merits but as a part of the series canon... i'm mad, and that anger is kind of overriding the little i liked about it. overall maybe 2.5/5 stars and im being generous

things i liked:

visually, it's stunning - i could see scenes already being made into gifsets - the color grading is pretty good; even in dark scenes i could see and understand what was happening

the sets are soooo good!! costume design was alright too

title cards were fun and cute

they did some interesting stuff with the cultures of both vault 33 and the brotherhood of steel

they used the sound effects from the games :)

i liked the wastelanders!!! big npc and random encounter energy. i kind of want a whole show of just them. for example i love the marketplace and settlement in filly; it feels very lived in

the background characters weren't just young thin able-bodied conventionally attractive white people :) there's so many elders, which i loved!! ma june and barv were cool. i love gruff old lesbians

lucy!!! she was already kind of weird and a little off-putting even in vault 33 ("what's your sperm count" as an opener to the husband she was just arranged married to is WILD) and i like that. she's sweet and bullheaded and surprisingly competent :)

maximus is kind of an ass, but is also a pathetic nerd and brotherhood dickrider who actually doesn't really know anything. kind of a girlfailure

the ghoul was pretty cool too!! i liked him, though more for his prewar story than the one he has post-apocalypse

lucy's brother norman kinda grew on me. "i lack enthusiasm for every job that i do here" so relateable. also short king <3

THE DENTIST THAT BUYS TEETH. never thought that would be a Thing but now that i think about it, it makes sense

the monsters that we have were cool!! wish there had been more of them

MATT BERRY IS IN THIS!! i just really like him so i got excited :))

maximus and lucy's "wanna have sex?" talk LMAO

vault 4's various mutations!!

those giant unwieldy fuckass duffel bags that brotherhood squires lug around hahahhahahaaha

vault 4 and its genetic experiments because its main conceit is that it was ruled by scientists who hybridized humans. it's exactly the right amount of fucked up i want in a vault

i like that the protagonists regularly get captured and eat shit

FRED ARMISEN IS ALSO HERE

haha hacking minigame :) also chatting via terminals (and im assuming pipboys?) is canon now

they're growing crops in the wasteland + bustling trade + livestock + pets yay

robobrain was cute

things i was just ok with:

dane, the they/them brotherhood of steel aspirant who was fucked over so maximus can get their spot as a squire LMAO what a waste of a potentially cool character

IT'S SO FUNNY that there's yodelling whenever the ghoul comes into the scene ????? WHY

fight scenes.... pretty good but someone definitely had the bloody mess perk (i don't do well with gore so ew yucky). also lots of [VATS NOISE]

pipboy was not used as much as i thought it would be

cousin stuff... i get it, i guess in a vault you'd have a lot of cousins and not a lot of choice, so some incest would probably happen

the ghoul being vault boy's inspiration?? not sure what to feel about that tbh

the casual dismemberments... and equally casual attaching of limbs... not even prosthetic limbs.....

the vaulties eating good healthy well-balanced meals. giving out caviar in the welcome basket. kinda 50/50 on it

the vault 31 - 32 - 33 subplot couldve been more fucked up

have brotherhood knights always been celibate or did i miss the memo

there are regular chickens and... deer? for some reason?

the ghoul's design. it's fine in action but mostly it's meh

the vault 4 cult for moldaver

vault 4 as a refuge for shady sands survivors. im mad about it but like. i get it

that guys "elixir" (some altered jet??) fixing everything about thaddeus' foot instantenously AND GIVING HIM HEALING POWERS???

things i did not like:

lucy's plot premise is very much fallout 3 redux

lucy and maximus as a ship is very meh and kind of forced and not compelling. go give us nothing!!!

wilzig's head as a macguffin that everyone is after... ehh kind of just okay as a plot device

also the ghoul randomly eating that other ghoul???

the squire who bullied maximus calls himself fat but he isn't fat?? not even chubby??? hello????? just got a soft face

water chip being fucked feels very fallout 3 also but they kind of dropped it?

they definitely named cooper howard after todd. as tribute probably, which he doesn't deserve

fiend = cannibal now?????

maximus recognizing vault 4 as a cult but not recognizing the brotherhood as one lol

vault tec evil capitalism vs hollywood communists storyline was kind of basic. and bland. and weak

the enclave could've been established + explored better

no geckos or any other west coast-specific monsters

showing me ncr ranger armor when the ncr is gone

ghouls have healing powers?? WITHOUT RADIATION??

things i hated hated hated:

the ghoul needing drugs to combat the Disease That Turns Ghouls Feral

feral ghouls being basically zombies :/

IN EPISODE FIVE. THEY REVEAL. THAT SHADY SANDS. WAS BOMBED. THE ENTIRE NCR. WAS BOMBED. IN 2277. THE YEAR OF THE FIRST BATTLE OF HOOVER DAM

BASICALLY RETCONNED FNV?? IM PUTTING MY EARS IN MY FINGERS AND GOING LA LA LAAAAA

VAULT-TEC DROPPED THE BOMBS ???? BIG MT + MR HOUSE BEING IN ON IT????

THE BIG STUPID FUCKING REVEAL IN EPISODE EIGHT?? THAT THE OVERSEER BOMBED SHADY SANDS BECAUSE HIS WIFE DIDN'T WANT TO GO HOME WITH HIM??? FUCK THAT???

the brotherhood being the main faction of the west coast now. booo!! booo!!!!

the fucking last shot of new vegas being a burnt out husk. probably foreshadowing that hank is going to house's body but. UGH I HATE IT

to summarize: it came out strong! and stumbled hard falling face fucking first at the finish line. i would have liked it a lot more if it did not shit on the west coast as much as it did. because what the FUCK. if it was set literally anywhere else and left the ncr alone i would have liked it more, because on its own, as a self-contained story, divorced from the rest of the fallout series canon, it's not bad!!! it's fun, there's some good bits, it has the ~vibes~ but - and this is a big but - i don't know what it's trying to say. it's all very surface level and the very vague themes i picked up on are not really reiterated in the plot

it's like... the bits that make it fallout are there. vaults. the brotherhood. ghouls. a dog named dogmeat. but there's something lacking. it's like your usual sci-fi post-apocalypse show with a fallout veneer. idk. i like it for what it is but also i hate it for what it's emblematic of. that's all

[tossawary]

Everything surrounding Orihime's kidnapping in the Hueco Mundo arc of "Bleach" feels... weird and underwhelming to me. Like, I'm not fully certain what happened there. Did Ulquiorra hold those two random soul reaper escorts hostage until Orihime returned from saying her invisible goodbye, or was he just threatening her friends generally...?

The invisible goodbye thing has some interesting elements, but... I don't want to call Orihime a pushover for being threatened by genuinely scary people when she's feeling especially isolated, but it does seem to immediately and directly prove Urahara and others right when they said that Orihime is probably unsuited for the battlefield. Even medical / support people have to triage and improvise under fire and work within a greater structure! She (fairly!) does not like weighing lives!

(Though I do think that Urahara and others were very wrong to just tell Orihime to go away. She has no family! All she has left are her friends! And she's too self-sacrificing to ever willingly leave for her own sake! It would have been far better to keep her close and let her train for a medical / support position, so that she wouldn't get kidnapped like this (and would have had the confidence to work out some way to get around Aizen's weird mind games), when Ichigo is fucking notorious now for going apeshit if anything happens to even distant friends.)

When Ulquiorra first appeared in that space between worlds for an ambush, I was like, "OH SHIT, THAT'S COOL." This place is famously dangerous and if she and her escort disappear without a trace here, no one will know what happened. Perhaps Ulquiorra can destabilize whatever safety technology exists here and make it look like some mechanical failure. It's clever! (It also made me imagine Ulquiorra as some kind of deep sea leviathan, cleverly feeding on the plus souls and hollows passing over this trench, where the soul reapers don't think to look. Ulquiorra potentially first meeting Aizen by attempting to ambush him and swallow him whole in this inbetween place would be a great first encounter.)

And then Ulquiorra lets Orihime go to say a weird invisible goodbye? As part of Aizen's mind games to make the Gotei 13 think she left on her own and her feel like this kidnapping was partially her own choice? Unless Ulquiorra was holding those soul reapers hostage at this point in time, I'm really not sure why Orihime went along with this instead of trying to get help (besides her obvious feelings of isolation / depression + plot requires she be the damsel in distress to kick-start the Hueco Mundo arc). (There's REASONING, I'm just not fully persuaded by it.) It feels a little overcomplicated for me on Aizen's end, especially when I haven't yet seen it be paired with any other charisma or compelling persuasion from Aizen, this supposed master manipulator, when Orihime has plenty of buttons to press besides fear.

"Soul Society is broken and doesn't care for the poor people on the outside." "The Gotei 13 are corrupt and will ungratefully turn on people like Ichigo and Rukia as soon as they're no longer useful." "Hollows are people too, aren't they? And the soul reapers don't bother trying to help the people who need them most." "The Soul King is a threat to us all and I'm the only one who can stop him." There are so many lies and half-truths that Aizen could tell! This could be a point in time to showcase how he got so many people to follow him besides spiritual strength, and him being apparently nice to a vulnerable Orihime would be genuinely eerie given what we saw / know happened to Momo.

And this "making the Gotei 13 think that Orihime left of her own choice" story decision could work if Aizen had done more to frame her! But the fact that the Captain Commander immediately makes this assumption with so little evidence makes him look incompetent, when there are so many people who could immediately vouch for her and for the fact that it's way more likely she's been forced into something bad. Of course, maybe the story's point is to make the Captain Commander look bad at reading situations! Rather than simply ruthless for dismissing Orihime as lost and irrelevant. That gets a slight pass, I guess, but it's really such a wild and insulting and unnecessary assumption.

I think what I would have preferred to happen is OPTION 1) Aizen or underling kidnaps Tatsuki first and uses Tatsuki to get to Orihime.

This would bring Tatsuki fully into this arc instead of sidelining her again. It would be a nice culmination to the secrecy straining her friendships with both Ichigo and Orihime, and a nice bop to Ichigo's nose for trying to protect everyone on his own and his utter failure communicating danger to his friends and family. We could have a lot of fun stuff with Orihime and Tatsuki trying to survive together in this place. It would give Orihime some fucking motivation that isn't just "trying to help Ichigo". It would allow Orihime to find her strength by protecting the friend she has always viewed as being tougher and more confident. I need more women in this show who aren't made of relentless boob jokes.

OPTION 2) I would have preferred it if Aizen had found some way to locate Orihime's brother, Sora, and kidnapped him from Soul Society to use against her.

Aizen is supposedly a genius. It would track with the rest of the story if he could invent this technology. It would make the Gotei 13 look really bad if they have a way of helping families reconnect in the afterlife and just don't bother; and it would look really bad for them if Soul Society had utterly failed to be a safe place for Orihime's loved one. If Aizen is interested in Orihime's powers, he would probably be interested in seeing if her brother has any similar potential.

Option 2a is that Sora could be a regular plus soul and remembers Orihime. Aizen could have been experimenting on him and could be threatening to continue experimenting on Sora. Maybe being a regular plus soul in Hueco Mundo without the protection of a soul reaper's cultivation energy is dangerous. The air is toxic to him. He'll undergo hollowficafion again without special medicine from Aizen / Aizen's experiments keeping him as a normal plus soul, and he's terrified of becoming that monster again. Aizen coaxes Orihime to help him by claiming he's trying to find a way to cure hollowfication forever, so that Sora will be safe.

Option 2b is that Sora has no memories of Orihime or they've been suppressed, and Aizen has turned Sora into an Arrancar. Aizen claims that Sora was left vulnerable and starving on the outskirts of the Soul Society, abandoned to become a hollow again, or attacked by a hollow and transformed. Aizen has now used the Hogyoku to take Sora back to a mostly human state and given him Arrancar powers to "protect himself". Sora is grateful to Aizen for having saved him and as loyal as Ulquiorra. Aizen asks Orihime if she's prepared to fight her own brother. Doesn't she want to help him help Sora?

Honestly, I dig Ulquiorra so far and I'd like to keep him (he and Sora could have a weird not-twins thing going on), but you could totally replace his role in the story with Arrancar Sora and then put Orihime through the ringer torn between Ichigo and Sora. It feels so, SO weird to me that Orihime's dead brother never comes up again in this show about dead people and the story barely treats it as relevant.

OPTION 3) is that you bring both Tatsuki and Sora into it! Why not? Have amnesiac Arrancar Sora kidnap Tatsuki while Ulquiorra ambushes Orihime! Have Aizen threatening to turn both Tatsuki and plus soul Sora into hollows if Orihime doesn't cooperate!

I am feeling desperate for Orihime to have anything in her life again that is not her love for Ichigo. They don't have chemistry! The story is not taking the time to develop chemistry and bonding and partnership between them! Ichigo barely seems to remember she exists half the time.

Side note: I can barely fucking believe that Ichigo went off to train with the Visored without telling his family that he was leaving or where he would be. That's not a great sign for good mental health or healthy relationships! Which is probably (hopefully) the point! He could be dead in any alleyway for all his baby sisters know. That's not good big brother behavior! Ichigo has a real problem with not trusting anyone else to protect everyone (not without reason!), including not trusting his loved ones to protect themselves, and I'm not certain yet whether or not the story actually thinks this is a real problem and intends to have Ichigo fix his communication bullshit.

There is so much good, bloody material here if the story was genuinely willing to dig into the mess and make it hurt good. Instead, I'm watching Nel and her little hollow buddies do their fairly repetitive hijinks and Ichigo fight random nobodies who will not be meaningful to the story later. When Rukia finally ran into Aaroneiro pretending to be Kaien, I was like, "Oh, thank fuck, something with SOME emotional weight and compelling psychological turmoil again."

[homestuckreplay]

dave's gonna be pissed!!

(page 339-343)

I love when a story introduces a few separate and seemingly unrelated elements, and then gathers them all together in a neat conclusion that's even more satisfying because it's kind of unexpected. Homestuck does this on a really small scale - for example, the Sassacre book crushing the smoke pellets on p.96 bringing together John's sylladex accidents, the father-son prankster's gambit, and the two previous mentions of the Sassacre book's ability to crush things. But this is my favorite example yet.

A pattern is established with John and Rose that each character gets a command formatted as [strange noise/action] like a [creature] and [bodily function] on your [furniture]. Neither of these are relevant.

Dave's command is 'Bleat like a goat and piss on your turntable'. (p.315) but Dave 'would never consider allowing any fluid even remotely resembling urine to touch your beloved TURNTABLES.'

John gets a Little Monsters movie poster for his birthday and messages Dave about his favorite scene, where a monster pees in a kid's juice.

Later in the story, we see Dave find the bottle of apple juice in his closet that he found at the same moment that he was inspired to message John.

The Sburb Beta discs are established early on as a coveted item in the world of Homestuck, its importance increasing until it becomes the only item that can save the world.

Dave, who had a copy of this game before its true importance was established, reveals that he has lost it, and that 'its a stupid story and id rather not talk about it shit be embarrassing yo' (p.294)

All this comes together very delightfully when Dave finds himself unable to drink his unopened bottle of apple juice, unsettled by John's suggestion that a monster could reseal the bottle after pissing in it. He puts the juice back in his sylladex and immediately picks up another item, which forcefully ejects the juice, explaining the story of how Dave's game discs got damaged and fulfilling the prophecy of allowing a fluid resembling urine to touch his turntables.

This comic is basically engineered in a lab to be like one of those photo galleries of tiles that perfectly interlock and candy that's arranged in a perfect color gradient, it scratches the same itch. It's a storytelling technique that has infinite potential, but only works if it's spot on.

The Dave characterization here is really striking. Little Monsters is a movie where monsters under kids' beds are 100% real supernatural entities that make use of weird spatial/dimensional rules to play mean pranks on kids. Despite his obvious coolness and mastery of irony, and how dismissive he is of John's movie based interests. Dave can't shake the part of his brain that's like 'but what if monsters are real, what if there's one under my bed too'. I think he's like Rose in terms of meticulously constructing a personality that feels more 'adult', but their more childish aspects still slipping through the cracks (and nothing shows this better than their conversation on p.333 where they sound like they're rehearsing dialogue for the stage).

I've been thinking about John embodying characters from all his favorite movies, but maybe Dave is actually the Brian Stevenson parallel, right down to the sunglasses.

[halliescomut]

Love Sea Ep 2 Thoughts

Okay. I've had some time to consider the episode, organize my thoughts (potentially) but I think this still might be a bit of a ramble....sorry.

So we do start off right where we left off where they're coming back on the boat, and they're talking on the beach. I mentioned in my watch along a lot of these thoughts, so I'm kind of just expanding on them, so it might be helpful to read that first. But I've taken an interest in a lot of the body language happening in the show, and looking at the scene it gives me this feeling of Mut sort of invading Rak's space, but just enough.

Like their legs are entwined, but there's decent distance from their upper bodies, which given Rak's hesitation to get too close, or be too charmed by Mut really works for me. Given the scene prior, and Rak's sort of level of upset, it feels pretty clear that Mut is working to kind of distract Rak. And Rak basically jumps on that opportunity. It actually kind of reminds me of Sky in that way, like we don't have a confirmation of Sky's general MO in regard to sex, but the ONS read a little bit to me as an intentional decision to distract himself. I get that same feeling here, Rak doesn't want to think about why he reacted as he did, or consider how vulnerable he made himself, and so he kind of thinks by jumping into a sexual experience that will distract both him and Mut.

I have (as is kind of always the case with Mame) reservations on the kind of D/s undertones she uses. I got to be honest, part of the issue is the weird commitment to putting Peat's character in the more submissive position (she did it with Sky too) I honestly don't find that it suits him or his characters well, and is based solely on his body type versus his personality. Setting that aside for now, I will say that I appreciate direct expression of oral sex. In LITA specifically (I know I'm calling back to that a lot, but it's hard not to use it as a comparison, specifically for the NC scenes) we saw two separate allusions to oral sex, or honestly we were robbed of two NC scenes involving oral. The ONS, where Pai doesn't let Sky give him a BJ, and then the bathroom scene that ended up getting cut where we see Prapai giving. I made this observation (among friends, not publically...I don't think) that I think the intentional exclusion of that specific sex act in Thai BL leads me to believe there's a particular reason why it's not included. In terms of MM sex we see your standard penetrative sex pretty regularly, and then small sprinkles of handjobs in general, but oral is almost never even alluded to, much less shown. Now I'm honestly not super caught up on a lot of Thai BL, but I would say I've seen more direct expressions of oral in the last year, than I had seen in two years prior since I got into Thai BL. So overall I think it's a step in the right direction in encouraging a more well-rounded and accurate depiction of the gay experience.

In terms of the actual physical acting of the scene...I'm gonna say C+. It's less about their facial expressions and more about positioning and timing...in a way. I will salute the decision for oral sex if you're doing it on a beach, because that is going to be your least chafe-y option.

Following this we get a return of the humor with Rak saying they need to go back to the hotel room immediately...Clearly leading Mut to believe that the sexy times will continue, but they do not. Rak starts writing, we don't get insight into the specific scene, but I do wonder if the written scenes mirror the IRL experiences or not. Like how similar are they? During that time we see Mut basically pouting and then googling Rak. This gives us our first suggestion in the show I think that Rak is basically a self-insert for Mame. And we see the covers for The Boy Next World as well as Love Director, two novels that 'Rak' has written and are being made into series. He follows that up by checking what looks to be basically Rak's Instagram, containing many pictures of Rak looking incredibly attractive and then basically excuses himself to take a shower.

Rak finishes his scene, and I'm not really sure if he's kind of run out of mojo, or if he's just done with that scene in general, but he goes looking for Mut and he sure does find him. Now I did miss the arm movement initially and thought we were just appreciating the rear view so to speak, but then you realize that Mut is in fact jacking off.

Overall, it seems a case of "Well, we've already crossed the line" and we have the most minimal discussion of terms. I'm not a person who cares at all about the sexual decisions that adults make, but as someone who is close friends with people who have and continue to work in the sex industry, it is of course not a necessarily safe way to go about those types of negotiations. This is not a dealbreaker for me by any means in regards to watching the show, I genuinely don't expect anything overly realistic, it's just an observation.

Moving on to the main event as it were, the sort of antagonistic flirting is on point, which with Fort and Peat is not surprising. They mentioned that Mame gave them an opportunity to do what felt natural for their characters and I do feel that in the conversation and acting in the shower. Once we move back to the bedroom things move very quickly, and while I think the scene is very good, it doesn't feel passionate in the same way the earlier scene does, or previous NC scenes we've seen from FortPeat as PrapaiSky (except for one in particular and I'll get back to that). I'm not personally sure if this was an acting choice, if it was just how the scene ended up, if it was directing, I truly don't know. I think though it really fits the situation in a particular way. The almost emotionless sex feels appropriate because they don't truly have feelings for each other yet, not really. Flirting and attraction aside, there's not a true emotional connection, especially on Rak's part. And I'm sorry, but it reminds me of the ONS in LITA. It's the only sex scene we see of Prapai and Sky where there are positions where they aren't facing each other, which creates an emotional distance. It's why we see missionary position so often in BLs even when that may not be the go-to position for MM sex. Having characters face each other creates an emotional connection.

The choice makes sense if you consider that both Rak and Sky are going into this sexual encounter with the intention of maintaining emotional distance. And even Mut and Prapai at this point, while intrigued by this very attractive person, aren't coming into it from an overly emotional place. So, overall I do think in this scene it's a vibe that really works for me, and I'm interested to see how these scenes change as the characters open up more to each other.

Once Rak is done, he's very definitively done and sends Mut away, but does admit to himself that this Mut is one of the best he's ever had.

We then cut to the next day and get more of what I personally call Mut's village rounds, just him going around and talking to different people from the community, and we see more interactions with Palm, the bartender from episode one. They're interactions are really cute, I actually really enjoy him. He has good doofus energy. Anyway, after that Mut heads to the hotel because Palm told him that all the single staff there were trying to 1- figure out Rak's sexuality and 2- potentially woo him because he's rich. So Mut is there sitting with a group of ladies, to Rak's eyes he's flirting, but we don't hear much if any of the conversation, so it's unclear if there's actual flirting or if it's just Mut's general charisma. I also don't think we've gotten any specific clarity on Mut or Rak's sexuality in terms of whether they are gay, bi, or pan. I personally suspect that Rak does not feel attracted to women, but that's my own read on it. Mut is harder to nail down, but we haven't seen nearly as much of him in a flirting-approriate situation. But back to the point. Rak sees Mut with the women, he hears hotel staff talking about how he's a catch or something (I skimmed over that on the second watch, sorry) and he's jealous.

We see a peek at Rak's impulsiveness here (like the beach and the shower, and even the robe scene of last episode) and he sends Mut 65,000 Baht which is $1,771 in USD, so not small change, and basically comes up and stakes his claim on him. We get more of Peat's English here, and I'm guessing we might get more of it when he returns to Bangkok, or maybe just more if we see more conversations with Connor. I have feelings about the whole "I paid for you, I don't share", as discussed above, but I do think it gives insight to Rak, and the kind of slippery slope he's found himself on here.

Mut leaves with him after agreeing to feed him and we do get an adorable montage of them on the motorbike. While the tone of the episode shifts throughout, I don't feel like it's quite as abrupt as the previous episode, and I think the motorbike scene really sets up the future of Rak kind of finding some peace not only in Mut, but also in this rural community. Once they arrive at the area where the restaurant is we get the joke that the motorbike ride set up, which is that it may not be the best mode of transportation if you spent the previous night engaging in pretty vigorous anal activity. Fair enough, and the teasing there from Mut using his Southern dialect is downright adorable, but what's most interesting is we get confirmation that both Mut and Rak are out in their communities.

While this is not necessarily surprising with Mame, outside of her university set stories most of her characters are reconciled of their sexuality from the start. They may not necessarily be publicly out, but they're aware of and enerally accepting of their sexuality and even confident in it. I actually think Mame's spectrum of where people are at in their coming out journey is one of the better aspects of her shows, as it gives people at all different parts of that journey characters they can relate to.

We re-encounter Palm here, he's kind of similar to Mut, or at least Mut a few years ago, a less than flush native of the island who works whatever odd jobs he can find. Rak finds him a bit annoying which is fair, but I did enjoy the small bit of teasing between Palm and Mut. I think they have a pretty cute bro relationship. Once they go to sit down Rak (and we the viewer) get to meet another community member who heaps quite a bit of praise on Mut for his work and contribution to their community. Mut's shy reaction is very sweet and the scene overall offers a glimpse to Rak of the person Mut truly is, beyond the shameless flirt.

We also get backstory for Mut, learning that he had a falling out with his father at 15, leading to him leaving that home. It's not clear if his sexuality may have been a factor, but homophobic parents have been present in Mame's work before and are something that very sadly continues to be consistent in many queer kids lives IRL, so I don't think it's farfetched. This particular scene is one of the most well-acted I think we've gotten from Fort in it's minimalism. I think Fort feels comfortable with the flirty-charmer character type, and the way he holds himself, how he schools his face, his tone, as he talks about the fallout with his father is so well done. His eyes too, Fort does a lot of really excellent acting with his eyes. What particularly felt accurate to me was the sort of emotionlessness that we see. Experiences like he had, particularly with a parent are really hard to reconcile. As humans we want to have a loving relationship with our parents, more specifically we want to be certain they love us. When it becomes clear they don't, it's a very difficult thing to accept, in particular because it's necessary to simultaneously recognize that you are not at fault in the situation. That's kind of why most people require actual therapy to work through experiences like this. But when that's not an option, the way you deal with it is usually dissociation. You can't dwell on it, let it get to close, because then it will cause a problem, so you keep it at arm's length. That's what we see here with Mut, and what Fort portrays so well. We also get one of the most heartbreaking lines in Mut saying "My dad never takes back what he says. I suppose that's the only thing we have in common." Mut is proud of being a person who keeps their word, we see him mention it before, and we now see that it's a trait with a direct connection to his father. Seemingly the only potentially positive connection he can create there.

For Rak's part, we see those little cracks forming in those walls, he recognizes Mut's vulnerability, he's practically appalled at the idea of Mut's father kicking him out, which based on what we can presume is a very close relationship with his mother, sister, and niece, is understandable. He doesn't understand that betrayal from family really. But he's starting to see Mut as a more well rounded human being, versus the way he'd initially saw him which is solely a potential sex partner/distraction. We then start to get our first bit of insight into Rak when Mut asks him why he became a writer. In the voiceover we hear that he started writing to escape, but his spoken response is that it started as him just wanting to share stories he loved with people. Given that his chosen genre is romance, he wanted to escape to these happily ever after love stories, and share them with people who also want that, because to him happily ever after is only a fantasy, it's not attainable in the real world. Peat's body language is wonderful here, the crossed arms, and looking off kind of the side instead of meeting Mut's gaze directly show that he's being deliberate in how much he's sharing, but in the end I think he still reveals more than he intended with his answers. Mut questions if he's happy, and Rak says that if he weren't he wouldn't be Tongrak, the writer, to which Mut replies "That's all there is to life. And you've been doing a good job". Now I kind of feel like there's nuance missing in the translation, but I'm not the person to address that. But the sentiment seems to be 'happiness is what's important, and by valuing that you're doing a good job' and Rak is very touched by that. He says he doesn't recieve compliments very often, and while I don't know if that's fully accurate given his success and handsomeness, there's a great deal of difference in someone complimenting your work or your looks and someone recognizing that that you're doing a good job as a person, especially a person with a traumatic past. Being a survivor of any kind of trauma creates a lot of pitfalls that are difficult to overcome and create even a semblance of a normal life, and so having that effort recognized, even if not directly is really affirming. We see Rak very intentionally return this compliment to Mut, which communicates a level of recognition.

This conversation also kind of confirms for me that Rak is a bit of a self-insert character for Mame, especially considering that he brings up criticism that his stories get. I've never directly seen or encountered it, but I have heard rumors of Mame getting upset and even responding to negative critiques of her work. Her use of more problematic tropes is a valid criticism, and while I can see some progress from one series to the next, I do also feel like she falls back on what's "easy" instead of really trying to push her stories into more positive directions. While her sexuality is her business, she is a woman writing about gay male relationships, and honestly sometimes it's unrealistic to the point of being distracting. As I've said before, I don't truly expect realism from Mame, but her stories are meant to be in the genre of realistic fiction, they're not fantasy or sci-fi (leaving TBNW out of it for now). It's also very important to recognize that many gay men who watch BL do find some of the tropes she often uses to be damaging, both because they portray gay men in not the best light, but also because they set up potentially problematic expectations in young queer or questioning men who might partake in her stories.

We then cut to night again, joining Mut at home and he's trying to weasel information out of Kom, who does ask Connor, but Connor refuses to give any, only telling him to ask Rak himself, which I appreciate. We can suspect that Connor is kinda trying to matchmake here, but I appreciate him being a good friend to Rak and not revealing his secrets. In the end he calls Rak and invites him diving and we get to the last portion of this episode. Let us pray I can fit my thoughts in a single post.

Now aside from how honestly weird it is that Rak showed up for diving in a small fortunes worth of luxury jewlery (why?), when he sees Palm there as well he gets a little upset, seemingly because he thought there was potential for another hookup. Which I guess is fine, but why would you think diving is the code word for that, when it's literally part of how Mut makes is living? But moving on, they get out into the water, Mut get's Rak all set in his gear and as he's going to get Palm to help him get his gear on Rak goes ahead and dives (that impulsiveness again!). Setting aside my frustration with Rak's fully dangerous decision here, we do get a really lovely little scene of the underwater flora and fauna. Things take a downturn when Rak has a series of flashbacks. It's not really clear what triggers them here, but we see three scenes back to back. First his parents arguing, when he's quite young...8-9 (?), then him comforting his sister, both of them late teens it looks like (they look to be in school uniforms, but could potentially be college), after her boyfriend leaves her after finding out she's pregnant, and then with his mother again, the final sentence is a bit garbled, and not translated in the captions, but logically I think it's something along the lines of "Don't trust in love, if you don't want to end up like me."

As a child, watching two women he cares for deeply suffering because men that they trusted to love and care for them simply didn't would certainly put a bad taste in anyone's mouth about love. So we've kind of identified the catalyst for why Rak doesn't believe in love, even having witnessed it with Kom and Connor. Though I understand in the book there's perhaps some insight into negative feelings related to that relationship, and Kom "taking Connor away". I haven't read either Love Sea or Love Sand, so this is based off of conversations with people who have, so I could be wrong, but I don't think it's a stretch to think of Rak grappling with negative thoughts related to Kom and Connor, even if he's recognizing that those thoughts are a bit ridiculous. It's normal to mourn the loss of what was easy and comfortable when friends find romantic partners and you have to figure out what the new normal is, you just have to make sure you keep resentment and negative feelings under control and don't let them fester.

I will point out though, is that one cinematic choice that's made here is having the sort of washed out blue tones of the flashbacks match the underwater coloring. It keeps the scenes from being too jolting as they cut back and forth, an dI think it was an excellent idea.

Due to the flashback Rak kind of panics, looses his regulator and Mut basically finds him just in time. Giving him some mouth to mouth oxygen before getting him reset so they can go back to the surface.

This type of scene would have been very difficult to film, even if it wa managed in a single take, which is kind of unlikely, and so massive props to Fort and Peat for doing some amazing work here.

Returning to the boat we see Mut become very serious about how dangerous Rak's actions were, but that seriousness is balanced with a lot of empathy as well. I can't fully express my thoughts on the metaphor I feel like is intended in the "they need buddies" conversation, but there's something happening there. Mut does try to talk about why Rak panicked, but Rak shuts him down and we get a convo about the wordplay that is their names instead. Mut here is trying to lighten the situation a bit, and I think Rak kind of recognizes that, but is too stuck in his darker memories to really let it happen and he says something I don't know that he means to. That "Love is a figment of our imaginations". And he believes that, and you can see that Mut know he believes it, and his reaction is the most "Oh sweetie" look I've ever seen. (Seriously, Fort's expressions are always so fantastic). The moment is broken when Rak pulls a Kim Theerapanyakul and says "I'm hungry" and walks away.

We do get s teensy post credits scene which returns us to the restaurant where Rak sadly finds out that at many fresh seafood restaurants those tanks aren't just for ambiance (Bless you red fish for nourishing us) and we get some more good natured flirting from Mut "Will you eat me if I'm tasty"...boy if you don't.

Now we saw this same kind of thing last ep, where we ended on a pretty serious tone, go the end title screen and then a more humorous scene after. I think it's kind of intended to leave us as an audience on a more positive note instead of just wandering through the rest of our day traumatized and sobbing.

As we see the actual credits roll we get confirmation of my suspicion that the scene might change and progress as the episodes go on and indeed this episode we see Mut join Rak at the beach at a companionable distance. A bit curious to see if we might also have a change up when they go to the city.

Overall this was an excellent episode, clearly much to unpack (as you can see by this 4000 word post. It's well paced, the acting is very good, we're kept engaged as an audience. I didn't talk much about P'Vie and Mook, but I'll make a much shorter separate post for that.

[transmutationisms]

I would love to hear more of your thoughts on House & its relation to the detective genre ! I think that house (completely accidentally and very badly) stumbles into a good critique of how doctors & medical structures view addicts & disabled people, with house being a horrible hegemonic mr malpractice to his patients frequently yet half is series is unironically just about all the injustice/mistreatment he faces because his doctor colleagues can’t see him as a person but only as a problem to be solved/rehabbed/therapized/institutionalized/treated like a child with stolen candy/treated like a criminal. and then it also randomly takes an incredibly pro MAID stance. which isn’t really part of this but I just remembered how batshit insane that show was. and then chase killed a dictator and I feel like the show was squarely on his side for that one. Anyway. Do you have thoughts? I really like house.

ok here's my house md take. like a lot of medical dramas, the show essentially relies for its dramatic appeal on the construal of patients as gross, weird, and stupid—rubes who are too uneducated and self-serving in their petty lies to solve their own bodies, and thus need the intervention of house to fix them. this is standard for the genre, although slightly meaner on house than on some other examples (cf. grey's or even the older and soapier generation of these shows). i don't even think house committing malpractice is all that new; it's relatively common as a plot point that positions the noble rule-breaking doctor as someone who 'does what needs to be done' and skirts the bureaucratic red tape to follow their own superior judgment. what makes house more interesting is that from the get-go, house himself is both a doctor and an unwilling patient. in itself this isn't a tension that's new to the medical soap (injuring a major character is pretty par for the course) but house's particular interactions with the ruling biomedical epistemology are, as you point out, characterised by hostility and resistance, and the show frequently either sides with house, or at least leaves it somewhat up to the viewer to decide whether house is right to resist the pathologisation that cuddy and wilson try to impose on him.

this is kind of a tricky line to walk for 7 seasons or however long the show is. my recollection is there are episodes, for example, where it's very clear that house's pain is physical, and the writers use this to morally justify his vicodin use. this is obviously not a full-throated defence of opioid users, but it is at least pointing to a position on chronic pain that allows for the possibility that for some people, long-term use of drugs with a high addiction potential and side effects is legitimately the best thing. but, this messaging is also undercut by the fact that it's primetime television, they need to make drama, and there are definitely also episodes where house is framed as potentially lying about his pain, or at least mistaking a somatic problem for a physical one, which the writers often (not always, but often) present as evidence that actually, house shouldn't be trusted to make his own decisions about drug use, and ideally should be 'de-toxed' and probably sent to cbt or whatever. of course all of these considerations are also contextualised by the fact that house is, again, not just a patient but a doctor: his right and ability to make these types of calls for himself is, it's suggested, a result of his having attained medical education and credentials. the patients who come to be treated by him are seldom, if ever, given this same level of consideration or presumed to have sufficient self-awareness to make their own medical decisions. this isn't to say they're portrayed entirely unsympathetically, but ultimately the narrative engine of the show relies on house being the smartest guy in the room (though ofc, sometimes tragically 'held back by his addiction').

so, although there are moments on the show that genuinely transgress some of the norms of the med-drama genre, i have never agreed with people who thought that the show as a whole was presenting any sustained critique of the medical system, the treatment of chronic pain/disability, or the power-imbalanced doctor-patient relationship. ultimately all authority on house md is supposed to emanate from the physician, or the physician's superiors (cuddy as a 'check' on house, though sometimes a failed one! again because of the need to generate drama for like 140 episodes), and at its most radical the show is really only capable of presenting house himself as an out-of-control aberration whose existence strains the existing system rather than being produced by it.

this is where i think the comparison to the cop show genre becomes more clarifying. house md never made a secret of being an interpolation of the detective genre, specifically sherlock holmes. however, i'm not sure i've ever really seen writing on the show that analyses what effect this actually has on house. like police, doctors are tasked with maintaining certain social norms; the dichotomy between policing and medicine isn't even a solid line, as criminality is frequently rhetorically construed as a pathology in itself and medical authorities can and do have recourse to carceral systems in order to discipline and confine recalcitrant patients, the 'criminally insane', addicts, and so forth. (policing has historically also been understood in a more expansive sense than how we use the word today; our understanding of the medical/public health system as separate from police authority is arguably more to do with university credentialling than the actual exercise of social and political power).

so, if we want to be serious about the portrayal of medicine in popular culture (i am always serious about this) then we're necessarily talking about broader systems of power, social control, and discipline, and doubly so on a show like house that is explicitly inspired by detective fiction. this is where house md is most ideologically objectionable to me: as with the trope of the cop who breaks all the rules, house is basically positioned in one of two ways throughout the show. either he's a lone genius who alone is willing to achieve noble ends (cure) through distasteful means (breaking into patients' homes, berating them, performing risky interventions on them, &c), or—and this is rarer on house but does happen—he's portrayed as genuinely crossing an ethical line, in which case he's a kind of monstrous aberration from the normal, ethical functioning of the medical system, often represented metonymously by the objections that cuddy, wilson, or house's underlings raise. in both of these cases, as with copaganda, the function is ultimately to reinforce the idea that doctors, though occasionally capable of human error, are prima facie wiser than their patients, looking out for their patients' best interests, and performing noble social roles as healers. house, ofc, is very rarely willing to admit that he has any underlying ethical motivations, though much of the show is driven by the flashes where he is revealed to 'secretly' care about another person (often wilson) and anyway, the construction of an ethical society in which all individual actors are motivated solely by selfish interests is a very established rhetorical move for those interested in defending liberal capitalist societies (cf. charles darwin, thomas malthus, adam smith, &c).

because of television's need to generate profit via audience engagement, house md always relied on a certain level of shock or at least provocation in order to sustain itself. so, there are certain aberrations from the more overtly doctor-valorising medical dramas, like the suggestion (sometimes tongue-in-cheek) that house was better at his job when he was mildly high on opioids. this was, for the reasons outlined above, never a serious entry into political critique, but it was at least refreshing in a certain way as a departure from, eg, the portrayal of addiction and drug use that we see on grey's, which is completely limited to the medicalised AA narrative of 'recovery' as a battle against the malevolent intervention of an external chemical agent. which is to say that although house md is ultimately reactionary in the way we should expect from an american tv show, it did at least dabble in a certain level of caustic iconoclasm that allowed limited departures from the genre conventions. even with what was ultimately a pretty solid vindication of the anti-opioid narrative, the show does stand out in my mind as one of the few very popular presentations of any kind of alternative stance on chronic drug use. that it's usually put in house's own mouth means it is occasionally legitimated by his epistemological authority as a physician, though ofc ultimately this authority is challenged not through a critique of the medical system, but by presenting house as individually and aberrantly licentious, undisciplined, and insane—and his chronic pain/disability are both a justification for this, and a shorthand for conveying it.

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

That last ask about Animaestro, about LB's cat phobia made me remember that this chapter, chronologically, is before Chat Blanc... So, now I can't help but wonder if that was supposed to be some type of foreshadowing and/or the creator giving us a bit of a low-key spoiler.

It would have been a nice touch, if Maribug really got some screen PTSD (that someone from the PR Team said on their twitter that she indeed has it?). Yes, I know there is that chapter where she has this nightmare about Alya betraying her, but there is nothing else.

Awesome blog, btw, I love your pov regarding this show. I don't really feel that you are aggressively salty, just dissappointed about the wasted potential (like some of us). Even your "salt" towards the writers is pretty tame, but still pretty sure That Guy would block you lol.

(Post in question)

That's an interesting theory. I wouldn't put money on it being intentional, but it is totally possible! Chat Blanc was probably in the writers' minds for a while.

And did someone really claim that she officially has PTSD? Oh boy... I don't want to imply that mental health conditions only present in one way because they absolutely don't! There are a wide variety of ways that they can present themselves! There's also not a tried and true way for someone with PTSD to be triggered. Triggers can be really weird and seemingly make no sense. Things that seemingly should be triggers can somehow not effect you in the slightest and things that seem benign can be massively triggering. Brains are weird like that.

However, this is a story, so I can evaluate Marinette as a tool used to rep someone suffering from PTSD and not as a real person with PTSD who has no obligation to meet any sort of arbitrary standard. In that context, I feel comfortable saying that Marinette was not good rep. You don't get over PTSD by talking to your boyfriend and it's usually not a minor condition that lies dormant most of the time, letting you go about your life without any need for professional help.

One of my biggest pet peeves is stories giving characters a disability that never actually effects their life in a meaningful way. (Yes, PTSD is considered a disability or at least it can be one depending on how it presents.) They're called disabilities for a reason! They can and do have massive impacts on peoples' lives. If you want to include rep, then do it right! Don't give Marinette this condition and then only let it effect her when it's convenient for the story! Figure out her triggers and then let them effect her throughout the narrative because that's how PTSD works! If you don't want to do that, then don't say that she has PTSD.

You can be traumatized without getting PTSD. That is a thing. PTSD is not a synonym for trauma. It's a specific type of trauma response. It's also a real medical condition that requires professional help and a lot of hard work to manage because PTSD never really goes away. You just hopefully learn how to live with it and, in the process, get your symptoms to a manageable state.

Here are some examples of moments when Marinette's PTSD could have triggered, keeping in mind that this is a fictional character and not a real person, meaning that we're looking at this from a "set up the reveal" perspective and not a "people with PTSD have to react to this kind of trigger" perspective.

These moments from Dark Cupid and Derision are a perfect opportunity to show Marinette randomly panicking and to then bring it back during the reveal:

[Image description: two pictures of Kim down on one knee holding out a gift. The first image is from Dark Cupid and the second is from Derision.]

Marinette falling into the same pool in Derision and Mr. Pigeon 72 is another good one:

[Image description: two pictures of Marinette falling off of the same diving board. The first image is from Mr. Pigeon 72 and the second is from Derision.]

These were prime moments to show off her PTSD in a way that fit the story, but they didn't. Yet her condition is so bad that she panics over a bowl of cereal at the start of Derision, implying that her PTSD is pretty darn extreme! If it's that bad, then we should see at least a few hints of it before Derision or even after Derision, but we don't unless we're counting the many, many, many jokes told at Marinette's expense. Hopefully no one is arguing that those should count because using a trauma response for jokes is not quality rep. It also feels like a total cop out because the panic attacks in Derision are played in a wildly different manner from all the times Marinette freaked out in a silly, over-the-top way. It's not intuitive to connect those moments and it should be if those were supposed to be a true setup for the PTSD reveal. They weren't even treated as foreshadowing where Marinette's actions made no sense! Just what are we even doing here, writers?

If the writers are claiming that her PTSD comes from Chat Blanc and not Derision, then we have many examples of Chat Noir getting a white makeover without bothering Marinette, once again begging the question of where her PTSD is? What are her triggers? How is she learning to handle it?

I'll end this section by noting that I do know people who are officially diagnosed with PTSD and I even discussed Marinette with one of them, which is why I feel so comfortable saying that this is bad rep, though obviously you should defer to real experts on this one. If they say that this is great rep and that Marinette is presenting in a way that I'm not familiar with, then ignore me! My sample size is very limited.

I'll finish this off with a quick thank you for the lovely complement:

I don't really feel that you are aggressively salty

My goal is to come across as giving a critical assessment of canon and not just angry ranting, so this was very nice to hear! I want this blog to make you think, I'm really not looking to be angry or to make other people angry. I can't say that I'd blame That Guy for blocking me, though! I've never found creators doing that to be some kind of bad sign. Who wants to read brutal, unsolicited take-downs of their work? That's a special kind of doom scrolling. I'm a big fan of the "reviews are for readers" stance.

[statementlou]

why do you talk about Louis using blue and green signalling as if it isn't about Harry, that what the blue and green are- do you not believe in larrie?

short answer for the reading challenged trolls to cut down on asks yes I am a larrie, not that anything is wrong with not being one. But longer (much more interesting imo) answer: We know H and L were together, but no one really knows if they are still or again- I personally mostly believe that they are, but I get why people don't think so and can't see any reason to get pressed about it. But you make a solid point- blue and green and certainly things like Louis wearing the H shirt don't potentially signify anything other than larry right? Well that's what makes it so interesting to me- I kind of don't think Louis IS using those things that way! As my recent anon pointed out (and I agree) he wants people to think he is Freddie's dad, he is not presently trying to be perceived as gay in the face of people trying to force him in the closet- he is in charge of his image and is choosing to publicly put forward that he is a guy who got someone pregnant and dates women. And I do think him and H are together, but I don't think he particularly wants to talk to us about that, if that makes sense? But I believe he does want to connect with his beloved fans on a more personal level, to revel in the acceptance and love and shared wink, I know you know I know, me and you until the end, our eyes meet, together we're the greatest- and I think he uses the larry imagery to do that, rather than to talk about his relationship. I could do this for days he gives us SO MANY examples to choose from but just to pick one: the all blue and green lighting for All This Time. Think about it- if he actually had images of a rainbow flag on the screens at his shows or waved one or something, it would make the articles and press and be a whole thing and revive every rumor ever about him in every tabloid! But if he makes the entire lighting and screens for a song blue and green (or wears a shirt with a giant H on it or any of the other one million coded things he does), well so what? No journalist would think a thing of it, nothing to see here- but the larrie majority of his fanbase hears him saying "you were right about everything and yes I am gay and I love you for seeing it" and go completely bananas! It's fucking ingenious tbh, SBB at his finest! And the fact that the song he chose for his current unhinged bluegreener fest was All This Time was for me the thing that really cemented this theory for me; I know some people disagree, but to me that song reads as being about him being closeted and his public life and the fans and choosing this lighting for that rather than for like We Made It or something really feeds my conviction that he is bluegreening on main as a way to tell us that he is gay rather than to tell us anything about his personal relationship. TLDR yeah I DO think he is signaling, a lot, but I don't think it tells us anything about the status of his relationship with Harry or anyone else and the reasons I think they are together don't have anything to do with Louis' stage lighting choices, but also that means I don't think it makes sense to say he's not signaling anything ever because you don't think they're together; both can coexist and I think it's just weird to act like he's not making pretty clear choices

[scrapyardboyfriends]

Thoughts on the John Sugden of it all...

I'm still just mostly amused that they're attempting this at all. And I'm very glad my automatic reaction to it wasn't panic and dread the way it was when Ben was announced. Yay distance! Haha.

That said, I just feel like this is all going to fail spectacularly.

It's still really clear that they wanted Robert back but couldn't get Ryan. There's no way this story would be happening as it is otherwise.

I feel like people getting their hopes up that this means Robert will also return soon are probably going to get disappointed again. Never say never and all, but I don't think they would be doing this story the way they're doing it if they had Robert returning as a goal. There's just no reason.

The fact that anyone could think that the reason Robron worked was just because it was a Sugden and a Dingle is honestly just kind of comical. It worked because they were both characters with such a rich on screen history on the show and all of that respective history and the characters it created happened to mesh and clash in really interesting ways that they honestly just kind of lucked into. So much of Robron was luck and felt organic and any time they try and force a version of it, it never works the same way because it was such a fluke.

And while any love interest of Aaron's is going to have a majorly uphill battle in finding any acceptance with fans, trying to manufacture a situation like this is really not the way to go about it.

I still feel like if you want a love interest for Aaron to have a prayer of working, that character needs to come in and be well established as a character in his own right. They can't put any immediate romantic pressure on their interactions. It needs to be built as naturally as possible so you can root for it and that requires them to care about both characters in a way that they seem incapable of doing these days.

With this John stuff, you're already at a disadvantage because he's a bit of a Robert clone. I mean with this talk of Jimmy and the haulage too, I half expect John to be behind the missing deliveries or whatever and then end up working there anyway. In any case, they need to establish John as his own character in some fashion. And if they are going to go there with Aaron, which seems inevitable, they need to mention the Robert of it all in a big way. It needs to be brought up. It needs to be discussed. It needs to be a barrier to any potential relationship. Since they're really forcing it with the Sugden connection, they need to really acknowledge how much Robert meant to him and that any relationship with his long lost brother is going to be weird.

I feel like with an unconnected new love interest, they could get away with not really bringing Robert up, but in this instance with John there's no way they can get around that. Which in a way is a good thing because I don't feel like the show or the audience ever really moved on from Robron (unless you're an anti) and so it still feels strange not to bring Robert up if Aaron's going to have a new relationship on screen. It's still the most important relationship he's had and it feels disingenuous to ignore.

I also feel like, while it's very in character for Vic to be pushy about getting John to stay or pushing him at Aaron, they really need to tone that down a bit. I know they're not going to and it's going to once again make her really unlikable. I just feel like you can have her acknowledge her loneliness and isolation from her family without her being quite so over the top and obnoxious about it. Or at least acknowledge it in story that she's being too much and then scale her back. But again, that would require them understanding their characters instead of just using them for plot.

Vic also needs to acknowledge the Robert of it all both in the brother sense, along with Andy, and in the Robron sense if she does push John at Aaron.

I don't know. I feel like there's this incredibly slim chance of a version where this could all almost work if they did it properly but they absolutely won't so I expect it to be terrible. I just don't feel like I'm going to be as hurt by it as I was in the past and that's good.

[huntershowl]

SHIPPING INFO // ANSWER THE FOLLOWING FOR YOUR MUSES SO PEOPLE KNOW HOW SHIPPING WORKS ON YOUR BLOG.

WHAT IS YOUR OTP FOR YOUR CHARACTER(S)?

i don't have one particular otp — big ships change depending on the Era hellhound is in!

HOW LARGE DOES THE AGE GAP HAVE TO BE TO MAKE IT UNCOMFORTABLE?

nothing illegal obviously — other than that, aside from long-lifespan characters whose mental maturation is slower, i generally stay away from with 10+ year age gaps when the younger muse is under 20. just feels like a weird power dynamic i guess?

ARE YOU SELECTIVE WHEN SHIPPING?

yes! ships on this blog cannot be pre-established — i tend to lose interest fast if they don't build up naturally, either through lots of ooc plotting or through writing. on top of that, seph is ... piiiiicky. she has very specific Types. generally, ships with very gentle, soft, mentally well-adjusted characters are possible, but transient — seph falls out of love after a point, but remains staunchly protective of them.

the long and short of the matter is she's a freak, and you kind of have to match that to be compatible as a long-term partner. but even then they don't always line up perfectly! idk. seph's weird. simultaneously very easy to ship with and very hard to ship with.

WHO ARE OTHER CHARACTERS YOU SHIP YOUR CHARACTER WITH?

oh i've got lots of good ones going on right now!! pls forgive me for gushing. focusing on currently heavily-plotted and/or written ones for this bit bc otherwise it will be pages and pages!! if i forgot someone you have full permission to impale me on a pike i am SO SORRY. (all of these will be under a readmore at the end of the post for length!)

there are more sort of beginnings/potentials for ships that haven't been explored yet which i haven't included here, but i'm truly excited to see where each and every one of them goes!!!

DOES ONE HAVE TO ASK TO SHIP WITH YOU?

yes absolutely hahaha — at least communicating ooc about it is necessary! i'm much more comfortable shipping with partners i mesh well with as a mun and have an easy time talking to.

ARE YOU SHIP-OBSESSED OR SHIP MORE-OR-LESS?

LOOK I. LISTEN. LISTEN... IM FERAL FOR SHIPS. FERAL. even though seph is picky about them — and i promise it's not personal if it doesnt work, it truly is just her dumb creature ass being unable to normal.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE SHIP IN YOUR CURRENT FANDOM?

N/A for this blog, but as a fun trivia fact, i'm deep in satosugu hell rn

FINALLY, HOW DOES ONE SHIP WITH YOU?

it's all vibes babey. we just start writing their non-romantic dynamic buildup, and if it clicks (or even if u just think ur character would have a crush!) we talk about it ooc and plot some more, then plot some more and before u know it, the angst hammer looms over ur head

Tagged by: @bearratic (thank youuuu!!) Tagging: (points) do it

ship gushing below. <3

@vsagis' villain izuku— i had to put u first bc u kickstarted this shipping renaissance. seph and izuku clicked instantly and started a long-term trajectory that i don't think either of us writers expected. they're just freak enough to match each other, just soft enough to genuinely care. we're really putting these two through the horrors(tm) and watching them fall hopelessly, horribly in love. <3

@spiritcrown's pasha — how could i not mention pasha!! i was so happy to see you back, because pasha and seph's relationship was soooo formative for seph's development wrt romance. seph is absolutely, completely and utterly devoted to pasha. they worship at the altar of her. they would bend heaven and raise hell for her.

@crowshoots' jesper — UAHGHGBBHBH INCOHERENT CRYING NOISES. the first thing seph noticed about jesper was extremely respectable fighting skills, but even then they were definitely uhhhh touch and go for a while there before they started to simmer down and. pin each other down and — one thing led to another and jesper's being antagonized by her antagonists and they're too deeply in love to go back!! i love them. i l

@crowgreeds' kaz — HHHHHHHHH god. hi siri i know ur not around the dash much but idc im writing u into this. kaz and seph both have such a darkness in them that the other recognizes and not only feeds, but when necessary, balances. they're ruthless and violent and mean but at the same time, they have such a softness for each other that they both thought was dead. also, you're the recipient of probably the best rp reply i've ever written (that fucking. hellhound kill description. my GOD im feral for seph protecting him)

@tewwor.... goose is2g we really have the creatures ever. litho — FIRST SHIP!!!! FIRST SHIIIP i still cant believe it took 4 irl years for them to finally admit their stupid feelings. now they're soulmates and there's no turning back. he's the reason seph likes poetry in every verse. the softest snarkiest ship. probably the closest to a true YA-style soulmate seph has. she hasn't forgiven him for all the twilight jokes though tough luck jie & ricochet — the boys... the absolute chaos trio... i never expected seph and jie to fall for each other but honestly i should have. he falls so neatly into her "equally feral" type. ricochet is so calm and seph is kind of intoxicated by that. sheathed claws kind of vibe. just love these three their dynamic balances itself so well

@spungolden's dio — two femmes raised as weapons with deeply suppressed emotions, chillin in a murder alley, five feet apart cause theyre not g— (theyre gay. theyre so gay) these two are so sweet they sometimes make me tear up. they skipped the trauma stage and went straight into lesbian domestic fantasy with only occasional murder.

@chaoslulled oh boy(s). toji — brutally in love. they saw and embraced each other's monster, refused to shy away, and now they somehow revolve in this strange orbit of violent and incredibly soft with each other. i think he's the first of the current ship lineup that seph has in-thread said the L-word to. this ship was so easy to jump right into, the chemistry was like lightning in a bottle. satoru — one of the most genuinely unexpected slowburn ships i've stumbled into. these two read each other for filth INSTANTLY as lonely motherfuckers who, in some way or another, had loved and lost. they haven't even gotten to the oh-shit moment in the slowburn yet but i'm lookin forward to it yakuza sukuna — THE PAIN. THE SUFFERING. AUHHHGHGGGG HOL YOU'RE FUCKING KILLING MEEEE. these two are mirrors in the worst possible way. they've got their throats stuck under their boss' boot heels; they've been disfigured, they've had their siblings used as leverage, they've been made into muzzled dogs. despite hating each other at the start, they can't not recognize that, and it's led to this fierce protectiveness that isssss whoops evolving into feelings. i'm sure nothing will go wrong

@eraserisms' shota — AHHHHHHH god okay most of this ship has been pure plotting vibes and responses to memes, but i truly cannot wait to get into writing more of them because they own my heart and soul. i think they know each other to the marrow in a way that's not super common for seph, and the gentleness and caution with which they're starting to explore revisiting their care for each other is heartbreaking in the best way

@sasouken BEE!!!! ok chronologically(??): deku — so precious and wholesome from the start. your honor he's just a little guy with a big dumb crush. when i tell uuuuuu some of our plotting has literally made me tear up a little??? the absolute bleeding heart on this boy??? HURTS ME??? one day they'll hold hands casper — slated to be our angstiest dynamic, i just Know it. two motherfuckers who love their siblings, inextricably involved in a tangled web of crime and violence. two people who have lost so much and don't want to lose anyone ever again. i will die i WILL satoru — such... a different vibe than i was expecting in an amazing way?? his dynamic with seph is so fuckin sweet? so much physical touch born of trust and comfort. also again: her first ever fwb (for now), which is truly a wild thing to experience. sukuna — i .. . dont even know what to say about this one. (affectionate). he unlocked an entirely new dimension of freak in seph's psyche and attraction style that i couldn't comprehend before we started writing them but retrospectively makes so much sense. what the fuck is going on with these two i have no idea but i am OBSESSED with it. also writing them getting down nasty has been extremely fun, i'm enjoying it a lot

[captainzigo]

Luster Dawn should've been the first villain of G5

Opaline is fine, but Luster is WAY more interesting as a potential villain

Then again, maybe I'm just salty over Luster being forgotten about after G4

now personally i don't think she is evil. i think she's just a loser. also i dont know if timelines line up for her to be a bad guy in g5 unless she is extremely old, or immortal somehow.

however

that would be awesome if she was evil. or at least misguided. i think her evil plan / evil ways would be unethical friendship experiments. like forcing people to be friends to power a laser. figuring out how to put friendship in jars for later. studying friendship in a lab and putting the test subjects through like science rat mazes. kidnapping people to study their friendship. using friendship magic for evil stuff. making people do weird shit to harvest their friendship more efficiently. that kind of thing.

and in the process of defeating her people would have to like convince her subjects that their contrived super friendships aren't healthy. or that friendship is cooler when a machine isn't sucking it out to use for evil. or even that their friendships are cool, but that they're being used to hurt people.

at first our heroes might even help her because some other threat vaguely justifies having more powerful friendship magic. and the experiments would start out being ethical and kinda cool. like learning how to be better friends by putting it to the test in a lab. or just general social studies. but the whole time leading up to them realizing she is evil, she'd always be ready to take things too far.

she would be unstoppable by even super friendship magic because she would have some of her own. she would keep a few friends of hers in a bunker somewhere to power her with their friendship. she would keep them in a plato's cave truman show style situation. every so often she would visit them to foster their relationship and like give them a bunch of gifts and love. and they would have no idea what she did when she left their cave. a little friendship cult to make her immune to the the-elements-of-harmony-were-just-symbols style friendship blasts even when all else fails.

she's described as twilight's best student, and that's certainly not because of her friendship skills. and if we pretend that that must include starlight, then that probably makes her the most powerful unicorn of all time. so if she goes super freak style with the friendship alchemy then she'd be unstoppable. beating her would mean they'd have to go rainbow power again but this time it's like nebula power, or aurora borealis power or something like that. which would be great for toys

I’ve always thought it would be cool to have a my little pony villain who was like doing friendship, the right way, and had all of this friendship magic stuff as a result, but was also bad and evil. and like the whole lesson can be like some people can be really good friends or even do really nice things and even be really nice people but still do bad things and stuff like that. a lesson I’m sure they’ve had before, but they’ve been going for nine seasons. What lessons haven’t they had. I think luster is a good candidate for this role based on her like two lines from the finale lol.

[cabezadeperro]

Hello. (!!!!!!!) I am marathoning your Jango-long-works because I keep on turning the (stunning) way you write this man in my mind like a rotisserie chicken strapped to a wind turbine. I’m just, like. what is this guy’s deal?? Because I adore (adoreeeeeee), the way you write him as he’s like. Inescapable. (In the sense that im reading ‘ships in the night’ and I love how we’re getting a glimpse into his days pre-bounty hunter, pre-new-lungs, pre-‘my rage has simmered down’). Like, his line about: “Jango finished the job because that's why he’s being paid to do—and he has very little now, but his honor is one of those things.” I want to put it under a microscope because, why is he clinging to this job when surely he could have looked for allies? I feel like he feels such an overwhelming sense of. Guilt? Grief? Responsibility? For how Galidraan went, and he does use ‘selfish’ to refer to himself, could that mean he can’t relate or engage with that Mandalorian, even if their goals partially align, because that will be further defeat and he can’t take it. In short, (and thank you for your patience with my rambling! Feel free to reply or not, public or private is fine) the way he Will fulfill a contract but No he is not your mandalor (or he doesn’t even feel particularly patriotic) is such an odd thing that is deeply compelling and I admire (and it’s maddening) how the narrative (your writing style) is not out to Deus Ex Machina him to get himself fixed. I really love how you show the broken/competent/grim parts of him while also keeping him unapologetically himself (but maybe I am still firmly stuck in that harrowing scene he has with the Goran about Arla, that I’m realising now I’m unconsciously putting next to ‘ships in the night’ even if their timelines differ).

Anyway!! I realise I should close an ask with an actual ‘?’, so: did you have any goals when you set out to write ‘ships in the night’ and ‘Arla and Jango revenge road trip’, and if yes, is there any ‘director’s cut comment’ that you’d like to share?? 🤩🤩🤩

HIIII

i was going to answer privately, but when you do that the ask disappears into the ether forever, and i wanted to have some way to save this skdghkgh

thank you so much for reading and for reaching out!! it makes me very happy that you want to talk about those two fics specifically--i'm pretty proud about them and not that many people have read them dfdsfkj (understandable! they're very niche and no one owns me anything lol).

under the cut because this got Long lol

wecome to the "rotating jango fett like a rotisserie chicken" club. it's hard work but someone has to do it. he's my little meow meow and lives rent free in my brain etc etc. i think he's such an interesting character and has so much potential in the little we see him both in the movies and in other materials (like the comics or the videogame), and i don't want to judge other people's versions of the character but i feel like sometimes the fandom doesn't do him justice. he's just so Interesting, i want to study him like the bug. he's key for The Star War but at the same time he's kind of like illegible--kind of like a blank space but not. we know what he did, we know what happened to him, but we don't actually know any of his whys, and i find that fascinating.

his character as it first appears in the prequels is also very interesting. i love how still and quiet and bland and polite he is! he's just some guy (tm), nothing to see here.

iirc ships in the night was actually written as part of an event. it was a gift for a friend, and that meant that i knew i could get more personal with where i took the story. i thought that it would be interesting to explore his character when he was no longer jango fett, mand'alor, but he also wasn't jango fett, bounty hunter yet. your 20s are a Weird time, and i think that in his case they had to be even weirder. it may be because i personally just got "finished" with mine (i wrote those fics right before turning 30 lol), but i find that decade very interesting. there's a lot of change, a lot of shedding layers of dead skin and old personalities and trying out things and messing up and becoming one thing or another, and in jango's case (someone who's severely traumatised, who's lost and lost and lost, who hasn't actually had the time or the space to grieve properly) those years would be even more key for who he became afterwards. he's very raw. he's very scared and still grieving. but there's also this--coldness about him, this ability to intellectualise and dissect and actively ignore his sense of right and wrong until it scabs over and he can forget he ever had one. he's very young and very clever and completely ruthless, and he has nothing to lose anymore.

also, we don't actually know that much about what happened to him between escaping the spice freighter and doing that job for dooku. a decade goes by, and he becomes the Best Bounty Hunter In The Galaxy TM, and we just have no idea of what actually happens to him, or what he does.

that was also my thought process behind monsterkilling i believe? (sorry, it's been a while lol). i just wanted to write something about jango and arla, about arla finding out what happened to him and just deciding to find jango. i think i didn't quite do her justice, but i wanted to explore what would happen if the fact that she needs to take care of her little brother would make it through the trauma and the programming. they're both incredibly messed up and they don't really know each other anymore, and at the same time they're the only ones left. (also: arla's song in that fic is apple tree by marika hackman, and the last scene with the quince tree and the tombs is directly inspired by the song.)

so yeah. with both fics i think i wanted to explore ideas of growing up, change, vulnerability, grief and trauma. i wanted to write about connecting to people despite yourself, about hurting them and getting hurt in turn, and about taking in both the hurt you give and the hurt you receive and deciding what to do with all of it.

anyway! this is a lot! thank you for everything, for your comments as well ❤️❤️❤️ they made me very happy!!!!

[yggdraseed]

Thinking About the Itadori Family

Spoilers for Jujutsu Kaisen. Reader beware, you're in for a scare!

I find Kenjaku a fascinating character in a lot of different ways. There's always a game being played and a lie being told, and yet there's still this damp, flickering spark of humanity under all the theatrics, bullshit, and centuries of accumulated junk.

When Kenjaku escorted Itadori's former classmate from aeons ago back in chapter one out of the Sendai Colony, there was this really interesting softness they display nowhere else. Gone is all the pretense of mocking others and keeping secrets... perhaps because they knew most of it would be forgotten, as dreams often are. But it seems like Kenjaku may have given away some deep insight into the nature of sorcery by casually mentioning the "Cursed Realm" - which has never, to my knowledge, been mentioned before or since. Not only that, but Kenjaku tells her something truly shocking:

"Thank you for getting along with my son."

Like, you can see how weird this is, right? Face to face with Yuji, Kenjaku says, "I expect great things from you." Talking with Choso while Yuji isn't in the room, Kenjaku talks about him like some object; a mere vessel, the eye of the storm for the age to come. Talking with a non-sorcerer teenage girl who's unlikely to remember much, if any of the conversation, Kenjaku accepts Yuji as their son and expresses gratitude that she was kind to him.

So, is this a "Who we are in the dark" moment of honesty? Is this the consequence of Kenjaku being a composite of all these different personalities bubbling to the surface at different times? It's really, really hard to say. But I like the idea that somewhere at the bottom of it all, there is genuine love, if misguided in its expression. That's what I want to run with.

Personally, I've seen theories that Kenjaku duped Jin, or somehow used sorcery to enthrall him, or that Jin simply went insane before or after Kaori died and wasn't in his right mind. I think those are all possible, and they're more straightforward answers. But I want to get off the road and into the woods and see where I end up.

What if Jin knew? What if a pact was made to try to bring Kaori back, and even when the person who came back wasn't Kaori, Jin was still grateful? What if Jin was just grateful to get to see Kaori smile one last time, to get to hear her voice one last time, even if he knew in his heart it couldn't be the same ever again? Just like when Yaga brought Takeru back as a cursed corpse for Kusakabe's sister, so she could hear her son's voice and hug some part of him one last time.

And what if genuine love grew out of that gratitude? What if seeing this acceptance and kindness in Jin, of having someone give gratitude and a wish to be by Kenjaku's side, started to morph and change who Kenjaku was without them realizing the full ramifications of that at first?

What if that ache for a family, for a place to belong, for some connection to other human beings, has carved itself open inside this nomad of flesh and time? Journeying across a thousand years and potentially dozens of bodies, duping themselves into thinking they only cared about their grand experiment, only to narrowly dodge getting ensnared by their human heart and spending all this time since then trying to ignore their own humanity?

I still have a feeling Kenjaku isn't quite dead yet, and I want to believe a change that was started by Jin will have been finished by Takaba. With Kenjaku realizing they do want other people, that they do want to see human potential, not the potential of this mad experiment. And that they'll now be gunning to change the outcome of the Merger, in whatever way is possible.

Though I think this is probably just me spinning my own theories out into something that doesn't even resemble GeGe's plan. But hey! Each theory I make that's proven untrue by the author is an idea I can use in my own writing for free.

[rei-ismyname]

Do you have any thoughts about the new mutant kids from both exceptional and Uncanny?

Hey!

I loved Trista from Exceptional. They're likeable, vulnerable, really personable, kind but willing to push back against some pretty fucked up oppression. You only get one shot at a first impression and the moment a young mutant 'manifests' is a classic for a reason. It's tough to get all that across when a character is going through something terrifying and traumatic, but I think Ewing pulled it off well.

We get to meet their grandmother briefly who's super cool, and I found it endearing that they reached for friendship with Kitty. I'm not the right person to break down the race/mutant dichotomy there, but it shouldn't surprise that they look for allies and strengths in response to such an incident. I have a feeling we're going to see more of them and I'm eager. We've seen so many new mutants come and go without sticking around and it's one of the few sources of lasting change Marvel has.

Definitely a sweet and character establishing sequence.

As for the kids in Uncanny, we don't really get to know them very well. There's four of them (except one is not a mutant and says multiple racist/weird things) and the fight is super contrived IMO. It's like woo here's these kids, and we're fighting them for some reason, and they're winning for some reason, then they're not. It showed us they can throw hands which is cool, but I couldn't tell you their names or powers without looking them up and I've read that book double digit times to review it.

Dirty goblins, WTF? The goth kid is great though. I'm a sucker for weird goths that say odd shit and have gnarly powers. Not sure what those powers are, but the army of dead folks behind them are a hint as to what a 'Cyanide Dream' is. Could they be this Endling (last of their kind) people keep talking about? Maybe.

Super weird that two separate children have yelled that Rogue is hot in both issue 1 and 2 of Uncanny. I don't really get it tbh. For that matter, Rogue keeps talking about sex at odd moments.

Here's where we meet them properly. Deathdream sticks out again for me, simply because they're not talking like you'd expect them to. They could be just a goth kid who says fucked up stuff, or they could have wild death powers. Likely both. Them stinking of death is interesting, and I flipping the question back on 'Logan of the Trees' in Japanese (that they know he understands)was slick. Not sure I trust them but I want to know more.

Jitter didn't make much of an impression yet, and Ransom would be the same except for the 'Brotherhood' comment. (I swear that better not be about the Alaskan X-Men.) Calico... I'm not sure. I need to see more tbh. As a group I'm curious and see potential, and I'd like to see where this goes both narratively and characterisation-wise. 50/50 they're not what they seem, and I wonder what 'voice' directed them here. Xavier?

Thanks for the ask! What did you think of them?