#none of this makes any sense at all

[twig-tea]

The Jack and Joker ending ended up falling on the side of 'organized crime is for the good of community', which I could maybe see the argument for if it had been positioned in terms of a balancing force against state and police corruption, or even if they'd shown the Four Horsemen to be doing anything other than playing with people's lives, exploiting them, and cheerfully sending people to their deaths for their own amusement. I am flabbergasted.

[theguardianace]

hate it when that happens :( i hope you're alright, try taking some pain medicine and eating a snack maybe? i hope your mood gets better soon /gen

thank you anon /gen <3

i have a hard time with medicine, but i’m going to take a shower and stretch out quick. clean my room while i’m at it too. the rest of the physical stuff with go with time. i just suck at handling negative emotions so it tends to spill out that way. (also things hurt because i play a high intensity sport that’s back in swing and lift today absolutely killed. good mood had overshadowed it but now that that’s gone. it hurts)

and yeah. to protect mine and my friends privacy i won’t say anything about the situation here, but it’s really really sucky. it didn’t have to happen at all but someone i used to consider a friend made some really awful choices and is continuing to do so. i can’t do anything about it bc as far as anyone involved is aware i have absolutely no clue it happened. but. yeah. i don’t think i’ll ever understand why people choose to be so mean.

[purpleshadow-star]

It's kind of funny (heartbreaking) that there were multiple Ravens who wanted a number, to the point where some tried to manipulate Jean into helping them one way or another, but none of them would have been next in line. No matter what they did, there was always someone ahead of them on the list. Someone who wasn't even on the team. That someone wasn't Neil. Neil was a surprise to everyone, including Riko. That someone was Andrew.

Kevin might have had to beg Riko to go visit Andrew, and Riko might have laughed at Kevin and dismissed Andrew when Andrew turned him down, but make no mistake, if Andrew had accepted and had become a Raven, he would have taken that #4 spot within his first year.

If we're being real, Andrew had more of a chance at becoming part of the perfect Court than any of those Ravens ever had. Even Jean thinks of Andrew as one of them.

The other Ravens never stood a chance.

[calware]

programming comments headcanons

june: tries to leave helpful comments but most of them are like

// this sucks

// this sucks

// ugh

karkat: constantly forgets to write comments so when he goes back and can't remember what he was doing he writes new comments that are just keysmashing

sollux: at one point he had to force himself to start writing comments because he was convinced he doesn't need them and kept having to learn the hard way that, yes, he does need them

vriska: convinced herself she doesn't need them. will never learn

equius: man i don't know. there are way too many of these guys

roxy: all of her comments are completely incomprehensible to everyone except her

dirk: all of his comments are written in iambic pentameter. they are also completely incomprehensible

[tavina-writes]

I'm not exactly sure how I want to phrase this yet, but I think a lot of the utterly weird takes I see sometimes float by me on our cursed blue hellsite (esp when it comes to mdzscql fandom) is coming from a refusal to meet the genre where it's at.

Like, why are we trying to interrogate classism in MDZS society, MDZS is a romance, the societal worldbuilding is just enough to support some general big ideas and the provide context for the romance. We can't get ANY kind of read on general classim/sexism/anything else from. this source material. if you think you can get granular when your sample size of characters from various social and gender strata are so small and we don't know how the vast majority of people in here live you are making stuff up.

Like, meet the story where it's at: it's a romance novel.

[robbyykeene]

Anyway I wish this show was actually bold enough to give Miguel an arc exploring his feelings of entitlement over the captaincy spot. Throughout the show Johnny has repeatedly told Miguel that Robby is a lost cause but hey, It’s okay because he has Miguel now. That Miguel’s his champion, his Number One Boy. So how could Miguel not feel at least somewhat entitled to the captain spot? How could he not feel insecure about his place in Johnny’s life with Robby not just back in the picture, but now literally taking the number one spot? When Johnny has repeatedly put into both kids heads that when it comes to his love and attention its one vs. the other, how could there be no lingering feelings of resentment and jealousy?

[odetojupiter]

this is a surprise to no one but i’m thinking of the twins again. cause i don’t know whether we’re told when tilda developed her drug addiction but considering her erratic behaviour surrounding the twins birth im assuming she was already using prior to the twins arrival. and if she was using before, during, and after giving birth, that introduces so many heartbreaking possibilities for the twins.

this one ran away from me (they say, as tho they don’t always)

i see people saying they just couldn’t take andrew or aaron seriously because they’re five foot even cause that’s a funny height apparently and i just think: did u know a long term impact of prenatal drug use is impaired growth? add that to potential malnutrition and yeah suddenly it’s not that funny anymore. besides andrew being short probably made him seem like an easy target to his abusers which is what made it necessary for him to learn to defend himself in the first place sooo

other impacts of prenatal drug use: altered brain development, cognitive and behavioural issues, damaged communication/language development, newborns can be born addicted and subsequently go through withdrawals (called neonatal abstinence syndrome, which has a long list of symptoms and can cause newborns to be hospitalised or worse). in any context, this is a horribly traumatic thing for a baby to go through but then consider this:

andrew’s brain is already struggling to develop properly thanks to his mother’s drug abuse. and then you add on frequent repetitive abuse including but not limited to several occurrences of child sa. already a 7 year old brain is not wired to be able to cope with that. tie that in with his significant abandonment issues stemming from first his mother and then every subsequent family he stays with giving him up. his own narrative tries so hard to doom him, and he responds to that the only way he can: through anger. violence. how else was he supposed to respond? yes this is more andrew defence bc it seems there’s been a sudden influx of andrew hate and it boils my piss

that brings me to a new point: andrew as a newborn. and his foster family does not want to give him the extra attention he needs as a baby born through prenatal drug use. so they give him up. again and again. so

but to talk about aaron for a sec - not only could he have been born addicted, but being breastfed by a drug user (it’s up in arms whether tilda would breast feed) also has its symptoms - can make the baby sick, can ruin its sleep, cause later behavioural issues and even transfer the drug to the baby. aaron, living with tilda, was also doomed to follow the narrative.

[epiphainie]

i can't with all these "the show is highlighting tommy's jealousy, they're planting seeds that it will cause problems" takes like bffr. he mentioned being envious over the 118's dynamic twice, sure, but in what world (literally how?) would that cause a relationship problem? do yall expect him to be in cahoots with gerrard behind their back and murder buck to take over his life or something?? like even with the hyperbole aside, i genuinely cannot see how they can turn this into relationship drama without going against everything they showed us with tommy so far

[nachosncheezies]

In defense of late-canon x files (including the revivals)

I was thinking about this poll after I commented on it, and I kinda want to be brave and say more.

Short answer to the poll's question before I go any further: If you're a new fan and a sensitive sort who thinks you'll struggle with your blorbos Really Going Through It and you really need a happy ending, I suggest you stop at the end of season 8. Do not pass go, do not look at spoilers. Disregard this post entirely, close the internet, and go look at something that makes you happy. (Also fuck every part of society that characterizes sensitivity as inherently weak and bad and some kind of personal failing, you are valid.)

That said, "quality" as a concept is entirely subjective, and the question of whether or not there's a decline in quality for any story is wholly subjective, too. In the case of x files? I'm not convinced there is a decline. I am going to be upfront that I haven't yet watched past season 8, though I am almost completely spoiled on events after that - and the reason I haven't watched yet is not because of how I know events are going to unfold, but simply because I don't want it to end!!! Ohh, the tension between "I CAN'T WAIT!!!" and "Nooo don't be over D:"

When I first came to txf fandom on tumblr and gradually became spoiled about what happens in late canon though, I was often left uncomfortable and tbh kinda queasy about it. As I said in my comment on the poll, the hate for especially the revival and IWTB, or to a lesser extent even seasons 8 & 9, is very well documented. But! There are other takes to be found here on tumblr if you figure out where to look, and my feelings have changed!

The thing is, I have yet to find myself in any fandom where there isn't a vocal subset of fans who dislike the story after a certain point. I am not joking when I say that no one hates the things they love as passionately as sci-fi and fantasy fans. In my experience, it often hinges on the extent to which a viewer has strong notions on where they would like the characters to end up. In particular with series where shipping is a dominant component for the bulk of a fandom, I have almost universally found that there comes some turning point in the story where "let them be happy you cowards" is the dominant view, and things that compromise the attainment of a degree of romantic stability and/or domesticity are, to many fans, annoying at best and despicable at worst. But! As one tagset on the linked poll said:

and I think for any fandom, that last tag especially is so so so important. (I think that's harder for people watching a weekly series live, bc you have so much time to analyze and speculate and dream before the next breadcrumb drops, but I digress.)

So why am I saying this and how do I apply it to x files? Well, I eventually found that there are also a subset of fans who find redeeming things right up to the very end and actually quite like the whole thing! The things that I had seen people rage and ventpost so much about honestly never quite sounded to me as "out of character" or "untrue to the story" etc as those same ventposts made them sound. And I've discovered I'm not the only one who felt that way. Do I love that the spooky squad had to go through all of those things? No, those poor guys D: Life is hard and they have been through so much trauma. But do those events and their choices make sense to me in light of everything that came before? Yes! And I honestly can't wait to see them fight to overcome those things, breaking, healing, always learning, always growing, always getting better.

So if you're wondering "where does it go wrong"... well, I'm a completionist, as many people who've answered that post are, but also my personal opinion is that I don't think it does go wrong. If you're new and interested in exploring why I've gone from "vaguely queasy" to "excited" about the whole thing, or want to maybe balance out the impressions you're getting about the later seasons before deciding whether or not you want to see the whole thing, I'll put a few blog names in the comments.

Final admission: even once I started feeling a little more confident in the possibility that "actually ok maybe I'm not crazy, maybe this all kind of is in character and does make sense", there was one big plot point that I was NOT looking forward to and I thought I would never be comfortable about. In hindsight, I think my discomfort came from the negative responses being SO seemingly universal that I hadn't stopped to let myself truly consider other possible interpretations on that point. (I mean my initial instinct when I first read about it was, why are we mad about this?? CSM is literally the most unreliable narrator in history???? it's obviously fake news?????? this must be either a fever dream someone's having or it's a misdirection ploy against whatever shadowy forces might still be lurking?????????????? but for whatever reason I guess I had halfway written that off.) Happily, just last month there's a new post-s11 novel out, and although reviews for the book as a whole are mixed, it seems to have laid the groundwork for resolving that plot issue in a way I think most fans would be broadly happy with. If you're interested in being spoiled about that and seeing how, I recommend searching #perihelion on @agent-troi who liveblogged reading it with receipts, scroll back chronological-style to the first post on the subject and see how it unfolded. (And never forget that Dana Katherine Scully is the queen of denial as a coping mechanism lol)

Everyone's mileage will vary. Each person can feel however they want! But for anyone new, I wanted you to know that the very many ventposts you might be seeing are not all there is to this show or its fandom. Some of us love it despite - or even because of - all the things that went "wrong". I think we just don't talk about it as much.

[read-write-thrive]

there are all of 6 fics on ao3 that come up when you search the word “disabled” in the dead boy detectives fandom. I’m dealing with a fibromyalgia flare up rn so I’ve decided to come up with some (potential!) disability/condition/syndrome/etc. headcanons. enjoy!

(oh and just to note: I stayed away from conditions with obvious facial / appearance difference as no actors with facial / appearance difference were cast in the show and I was unsure if it would be appropriate. while I have experience with a lot of the following diagnoses, I do not claim to be an expert on any of them and do not intend for this to be used as a diagnostic tool. if you feel any of these are offensive/inappropriate, please message me and I’m happy to talk about it :) this is more just to encourage broader disability representation within the fandom!)

Edwin: autistic, PTSD (from hell), chronic pain/fibromyalgia (from his death/hell), minor visual impairment (not enough to need the hard-to-come-by testing needed for glasses when he was alive and so assumed the various limits/effects were normal. was told otherwise by Niko), would’ve had shingles if lived long enough

Charles: ADHD, PTSD (from his father/growing up in an abusive household), dyslexia, Reynaud’s syndrome (either already born with it or as a result of his death—both angsty), was in the beginning stages of an ED prior to his death, post-concussion syndrome, near-sightedness (never given glasses bc he wasn’t about to tell his dad the board looked a little blurry sometimes)

Crystal: cPTSD (reminder that neglect is also abuse :), bipolar 1, IBS, endometriosis

Niko: autism, depression, POTS, hEDS, anxiety, sprite-induced agoraphobia, epilepsy, lactose intolerance

Monty: Depersonalization-derealization disorder, selective amnesia (this is not the first times Esther has messed with his form/killed and revived him, but the experience is traumatic and so his brain decides not to remember it), recurrent arrhythmia, synesthesia

Jenny: OCD, BPD, ED recovered, Celiac’s disease, diabetes type 1, anemia

TCK: autism, NPD, lactose intolerance, colourblind

Esther: chronic pain (I’m choosing to believe that the cane isn’t just for show!!), NPD, endometriosis

Tragic Mick: cPTSD, depression, HoH, arthritis, diabetes

(The Night Nurse , the Dandelion Sprites, and various other characters felt either too supernatural and/or not developed enough to assign anything to lmao)

[jackattack20writes]

As much as I love the reading of Bleach’s ending as a tragedy, one thing’s always bugged me about it and it’s why Renji has a happy ending. Like out of the core cast (in my eyes this is Ichigo, Rukia, Orihime, Chad, Uryuu, Renji & maybe Byakuya, just cause they’re most consistently prominent in the arcs) he!s the only one that doesn’t have the easy argument that he’s settled or unhappy with the epilogue, like Ichigo & Rukia you can argue their with people that aren’t who they love, Uryuu is a doctor and alone while his friends celebrate, Chad is using his fists for profit, Orihime is still at the bakery and never got to live the dreams she had (also she was probably kicked out of home at post high school because her aunt housing her was dependant on her grades) and Byakuya is tied with Rukia being unhappy.

But Renji is seemingly the happiest he’s ever been, he’s married the woman he’s spent over 80 years crushing on and he has a kid with her. But then it hit me the other day that’s exactly why his ending is one of the worst out of the characters I’ve mentioned. When Renji actually gains some detail as a character we find out he has one major goal in life, surpass Byakuya and save Rukia from the Kuchiki’s (slight paraphrasing). But Renji never manages any of it. He fails to both save Rukia and defeat Byakuya in the Soul Society arc, firstly because he’s too scared to try to go against them and then because he’s too weak (both these goals are also largely dropped here and Renji just kind of floats along as one of Ichigo’s multiple rivals and has no more character growth or change) but Ichigo achieves both of these goals rather easily in comparison. Ichigo unlocks Bankai ridiculously faster than Renji does and then defeats Byakuya and saves Rukia.

Meaning there’s nothing left for Renji to do. Sure he could continue trying to conquer Byakuya, but he never seems to reach his level (especially going by the fact Renji’s still his vice captain in the epilogue.) Byakuya is still the star Renji can’t reach. Same with Rukia, sure he marries her but she’s still Rukia Kuchiki. Hell she’s even a captain now while Renji is still a vice captain, not only is Rukia still as far from him as she was in the soul society arc she’s even further away, he’s just the stray dog barking at the moon he called himself back in the soul society arc. But then just like his goals if you compare it to Ichigo, ichigo does it. Ichigo’s symbolism is the rain is dried by the white moon, the moon is reachable by Ichigo, we’re shown one of Byakuya’s central beliefs of who he is loyalty to Ichigo. But Renji is trapped on earth seperate, never truly reaching the star or the moon.

And with how we’re shown Renji thinks about himself he’d never let himself forget it. Every member of his immediate family other than his daughter is someone he’s separated himself from in his mind and since we never get shown anything to indicate that changes, Occam’s razor suggests it doesn’t. Somthat’s renji’s tragedy in the ending. His entire life is reminding him every goal he ever set he not only failed but someone else achieved. That’s the tragedy of Renji’s ending and really is the final nail in the coffin that no one is truly happy or anything past content in Bleach’s ending.

[extravagav]

AND WE JUST DONT TALK ABOUT THIS?!?!?!!????

[willow-p012]

"Kotoko looks so angry in this scene" yeah old news LOOK AT HOW HER EYES LIGHT UP AT KEIKO/LUCKY!?!?? ARE WE IGNORING THAT???? IT JUST. LIKE. SHE'S FOCUSED, MAYBE SHE'S ANGRY, BUT KEIKO IS STILL SO IMPORTANT TO HER THAT SHE CAN'T HELP BUT LIGHT UP WHEN SHE SEES HER EVEN IF IT'S ONLY FOR A MOMENT.

[imaveryevilenby]

alright hold on hold on hold on we're doing 3am gender thinking again

so the initial idea of my views on gender that occurred to me at 5am last time in what was probably a manic episode is fuck gender I can't fit the boxes expected of me so I'll dismantle the whole system and do my own thing

so problem is I can't do that, I can't dismantle the whole system and go my own way because I am entirely dependent on the sex and gender systems we have in place and how other people view sex and gender

additionally the idea that gender itself is the outdated stereotypical system is flawed, gender is the way a person feels and we've made categories and boxes to describe incredibly complex feelings

the problem is the more specific a gender gets, the smaller that box gets, the more people are excluded from that box so the solution is another box that fits better or make their own like with neogenders

the solution is a line of gender boxes like hermit crabs...

the fun part about thinking of gender and stuff is that I personally believe that every single person on earth experiences gender and life differently from every other person, even if only slightly

so theoretically if every person on earth were to describe their gender outlook and gender experiences and form a gender identity from that, then there could theoretically be 8 billion god damn genders

the solution is more genders

the solution is running Doom (1993) on my fucking gender

[daemon-in-my-head]

Okay this might be the fever speaking, but Gortash's timeline makes absolutely 0 fucking sense if u think abt it, which I made the mistake of doing.

He first established himself as an Arms dealer and Slaver thx to selling weapons made out of Infernal Iron

But bitch only got the manuals from Zariel after selling Karlach (and if he didn't need em, how, why did no-one else do it yet, why sell Karlach in the 1st place then, where is his iron supply coming from, etc)

And Karlach was only sold around 1480 DR

And while ofc, if u never sleep, u can pull of the Absolute scheme in 10 years, Gort was already an established arms dealer when he started working on that plan

Which means that the Absolute stuff is less than 10 years old

Which is quite frankly impossible for such a massive operation. Esp when somewhere in between, he also developed and founded the Steelwatchers and wormed his way into becoming a political advisor for persons such as the four dukes (which takes a ton of trust, connections and bribing, so much bribing, the nobles of the Gate are horrible).

Which is my way of saying good lord someone please fix the timeline. And canon, for being absolutely illogical and impossible, can smd

I have a feeling the late addition of Karlachs infernal heart really fucked over the timeline here cuz suddenly Gorts main business and kinda his whole life stops making sense. How tf would Karlach work for him when his business, yk the one that allowed him to displace the Knights and threathen the Zhents, was rly only established and picked up after she was sold? How???

[triglycercule]

sometimes i like to think that horror comes to dust's room late at night just to talk to phantom papyrus. no he doesn't wanna talk to dust. horror probably doesn't even CARE if dust's awake at the asscrack of dawn or rambling off to the hallucination too loudly this late at night because he just wants to talk to phantom papyrus

horror's not delusional enough to believe that phantom paps is actually real and his own papyrus like dust does but sometimes he really wants to,,,, so just for these short moments between them he wants to pretend that the hallucination is his papyrus. that he gets to talk to his own brother before everything went to shit and before he ruined his brother's life. yeah sure phantom paps kinda says some crazy stuff that horror's papyrus never would back then but so what?? dust's papyrus is the closest thing he's got and at least he doesn't have to deal with the guilt at even LOOKING at his brother's face (the sunken eyesockets,,,, the uneven teeth,,,,, yeah no) because there's nothing there. horror doesn't have to do anything but keep his back turned to dust and just talk to papyrus through him

they both keep their backs turned to eachother when they do this because neither of them can stand looking at eachother. dust especially because hearing horror sound so much like how he was before. horror sounds so lighthearted and relaxed and just,,,,, normal that it almost reminds dust of himself. maybe if he closed his eyes and tuned out his own voice he could just imagine the moment being a conversation between himself and paps back then before he had to kill him over and over. dust doesn't want to have to look back and see horror's mutilated skull and his permanently replaced eye. he doesn't want the fake scenario he's choosing to indulge in right now to be broken

and then i think they talk like that for a long time; because horror has a lot to say to paps about himself and what he regrets and dust has a lot of reminiscing to do on the good old days before he lost himself :3