#not every single episode and every single part

[bullet-prooflove]

Recipe For Disaster: Rip Wheeler x Reader

Tagging: @kmc1989 @trublu2u @alisbackalleybbq @mia1653 @privatetruths

You have a problem.

It comes in the form of a six foot three Army Ranger that you find standing in your kitchen, wearing an apron and following a recipe from one of your mother’s old cookbooks.

“Harry.” You say as you hear Rip’s footsteps on the porch behind you. “What are you doing here?”

“Making dinner.” Your ex-fiancé says as if it’s the most natural thing in the world before leaning over to adjust the temperature setting on your oven. “I thought I’d make you something special for your birthday.”

Your birthday…

That was three months ago.

You understand almost immediately what Harry’s in the midst of one of his episodes. They’ve become more common over the recent years, they often take the form of phone calls because he forgets the two of you aren’t together anymore. It’s part of his condition, a traumatic brain injury he’d received when an IED exploded back in Afghanistan. It fucks with his memory, makes him unpredictable.

Right now he’s reliving your birthday from five years ago, the one where cooked your mother’s humble pie before he got down on one knee and proposed to you in front of the fire.

You feel Rip’s presence behind you, the shift in the air as his gaze comes to land on the stranger in your home, the one with the knife in his hand. It glints wickedly in the light, reminding you of just how quickly this situation can turn if it’s not handled right.

“Rip.” You say as calmly as possible because you know that every single instinct in him is vying to take down the threat. “This is Harry.”

You see the moment it dawns on him, who Harry is. His dark eyebrows furrow into frown because Harry shouldn’t be here, he should be in the VA care facility outside of Bozeman that specialises in looking after veterans with his type of illness.

“You staying for dinner Rip?” Harry asks him, his hand trembling just a little as he continues to dice the carrots into cubes.

“I…Yea.” Rip responds because there’s no way in hell he’s leaving you in the company of a man who once choked you out in the midst of a breakdown.

“Cool.” He says setting the knife down, before he clenches and unclenches his fist. “Man I do not know what’s going on with my hand today.”

You know. It’s another effect of the brain injury, a tremor that comes and goes depending on his stress levels. Escaping from the facility, making the journey here and breaking into your home, it’s all exacerbated his condition and you know what comes along with that, you still have nightmares about it.

“Why don’t I help you out there?” Rip says, stepping into the kitchen, his palm coming to rest upon the knife, pressing it flat onto the counter. “You can start lining the tin with that pastry and I’ll take care of the chopping.”

Your body tenses because you aren’t sure how Harry’s going to react to another man stepping onto his territory. You wonder if his fight or flight response will kick in, the way it usually does. To your immense surprise he concedes by nodding his agreement and  busying himself with the task at hand. The relief you feel in that moment is palpable, Rip must see it in your features as he tilts his head up to meet your gaze.

“Imogen, why don’t you make those calls.” He says gently before tipping his head towards Harry. “I’ve got this.”

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[torchship-rpg]

Dev Diary 19 - State of the Union Part 1

It’s been a while, cosmonauts, but we’re back at it. This last week has been an incredibly productive one for Torchship, solving a ton of longstanding issues holding up the Alpha, and digging back into the art.

But you’re here for the mechanics, and boy, we have some pretty cool ones for you this Diary. Today we’re going to be talking about the meta-campaign and the core of what drives a multi-episode run of Torchship; playing not just to encounter little morality plays out in the stars, but to find out how the resolution of those issues changes things back home.

To be clear; this is campaign mechanics, and long campaign mechanics at that. You can play short campaigns and one-shots too, but we want to write a game that’ll hold up to truly epic campaigns, or sequential campaigns if you ever wanted to do Torchship: The Next Generation.

Your campaign can take you a great many places, but all of them revolve around one question:

The Star Union & Representative Agents

As we’ve mentioned before, the players are not just playing the crew of their spacecraft as they go trekking around the stars. That crew is the product of a society, and when the players are out making decisions in the stars, we assume that similar choices with similar reasoning are being made by the people back home.

For that reason, players get to have a lot of influence over the direction of the Star Union both through their actions in the actual episodes, and through decisions and votes they hold over what the Star Union does. This isn’t actually their characters deciding what’s happening unilaterally; it’s the assumption that your crew are, in a sense, the median voter. When the players decide to invest the Union’s resources into a certain upgrade path or project, this represents the Union’s population settling on that course of action for all the same reasons the characters would make that decision in their place.

For this reason, while you can be many things in Torchship, you can’t really be a rebel. If you try, you will be part of an enormous rebellious movement that will very quickly become the new authority and now you’re right back to your day job as a government employee, looking wistfully at your old leather jacket as you file a T-18 Use Of Telemat Report.

I can already hear your protests that you want to be a bold iconoclast that strikes out in defiance of the norms of society. I regret to inform you that you want this because it is a norm of your society to be a bold iconoclast striking out in defiance of things.

It’s The Economy, Stupid

The Star Union is mechanically represented with its own character sheet and its own stats; changing that sheet over time is your job. It’s relatively simple, with stats primarily acting as ways of gating your access to the cool upgrades that improve your capabilities, make your rocket better, and get you shiny new toys, but it matters a lot.

At the end of every Episode, you go into a mode of the game called Resupply. This quite literally represents the time passing as your rocket flies from one star to another, usually taking about one week before arriving at the next planet/on the television sets of households across the nation.

Resupply is a portion of the game which can be resolved immediately after the start of one episode or before the start of another, but one of the best ways to do it is during the time between your play sessions; it’s designed to be something easily hashed out over chat programs and the like. We’ll go into more detail about what you do there and how in the future, but the important part is knowing that this is when the Union’s economy starts mattering.

The Union has two sets of Economic stats. The first contains just a single stat, Productivity. This is how many Credits the Star Union generates at the end of each Episode because it has a bunch of factories and farms and stuff. Productivity is difficult and costly to increase; you can do so by starting Projects, with the amount of time and Credits required varying depending on what kind of Project it is. 

Getting infrastructure in place to exploit a rich belt of Very High Rotation asteroids for the valuable quark nuggets inside is a relatively quick and cheap project; it just requires you the players to find and secure such a resource. By contrast, building up Production through modernization and expansion of existing industrial capability is slow, hard work that will take multiple episodes to complete.

The second set of stats is the Infrastructure stats, covering all the stuff that production is used to maintain. These are Social, Technological, Military, and Redundant Infrastructure. Respectively, this is the Union’s standard of living, how shiny and new its stuff is, how big Star Force has gotten, and how many warehouses you have. You increase all of the stats by paying into funds for them, investing your Credits when you have a surplus until you’ve paid them off.

For the most part, these are used to gate access to upgrades; if you want that shiny new laser, you need to get Technology and Military Infrastructure to a certain point first. Redundant Infrastructure is the odd-man out; it doesn’t really give you access to many new Upgrades, but it has a vital function we’ll get to in a second.

Every point of Infrastructure costs 1 Credit per Episode to run, and at the start of the Campaign, the Star Union is overextended; it’s trying to take on all the costs and responsibilities of being the leading power of Local Space while simultaneously managing an enormous humanitarian crisis partially of its own making, and integrating a large number of refugees from the aforementioned enormous humanitarian crisis. Infrastructure will be higher than Production, and that means the balance has to be paid by none other than the Star Union’s exploration, diplomacy, and prospecting service.

That’s you.

This difference is called your Union Dues, and it's very important that you pay them. If you fail to pay, you’ll have to roll on the WHOOPS I FORGOT TO PAY THE POWER BILL table. Regrettably, this is not its final name, but it is what’s in the document right now.

You might think that this isn’t too big a threat; you’ll just always make sure to save up enough Credits to pay your Union Dues even if you have a bad Episode. That’s where we smile maliciously and tell you that you can’t. Societies don’t typically like sitting on huge amounts of surplus production and not using it on things that people want and need, so for that reason, the amount of Credits you can store between Episodes is limited by your Redundant Infrastructure. You know, Infrastructure you also have to pay for.

If your Dues aren’t out of control, you aren’t running too many Projects that you don’t want to fail, and you’re not burning your expensive consumables, then yes, you can usually meet your Union Dues no problem using the banked Credits from Redundancy. But a streak of bad episodes or out of control spending can send your campaign into a death spiral. The good news is that eventually, the Star Union will contract until it reaches equilibrium, either voluntarily or through terrible rolls.

The bad news is that the Star Union will contract until it reaches equilibrium, and you live in the Star Union! And so do a great many people who are going to have opinions about that.

Speaking of…

Getting Political

The Star Union is more than just a series of economic stats. All the people those stats represent have hopes and dreams, and more importantly, they have voting power on local councils. Being a direct democracy, the Star Union has a tendency to undergo pretty seismic political shifts very quickly when circumstances change, and any good campaign is going to have a lot of Circumstances.

To represent this, we use a series of Movements. You may remember us talking about these way back, or rather an earlier version of them; we’ve since expanded how they work and set up a system which allows them to exist alongside others.

So… let’s meet a Movement.

The Centralists are the Leading Movement at the start of your Campaign; they’ll be largely unopposed for the moment, but the Civil Anarchists and the Neo-Trotskyites are waiting in the wings and can join them in a coalition fairly easily.

What that means in practical terms is that they have the highest Power Rank at 5. As both a Major Power and the Leading Power, the Centralists give you two passive effects. Their Major Power bonus relates to Stability, which we’ll talk about in a moment, while their Leading Movement Effect is the benefit you get for being at 10-12 Unity on the Unity track. You’ll remember that from Dev Diary 15; that universal rule is actually just the default you get from these guys being in charge!

They also have a Taboo, which represents a value of this Movement, the violation of which discredits their influence; it’s stuff that makes them look hypocritical or disgusts their followers. For the Centralists, that’s failing to keep Promises made to groups in negotiation; their reputation is built around being the trustworthy and reliable ones that follow through on their deals.

Here’s some examples of other Movements’ Major Power Effect, Leading Movement Effect, and Taboo:

Progress Triggers

Movements advance in Power Rank by gaining Progress; that’s what is tracked on that neat little circular dial. At the end of each Episode, you go through the Triggers for all the active Movements and add Progress based on which ones got done. As a Movement rises in Power Rank, the Triggers are reduced in strength proportionally; at Rank 5, the only Trigger which actually gives the Centralists Progress is bringing new Members into the Union. Don’t worry, though; they have another means of keeping power.

You’ll notice that the 4 Progress trigger, Focus on Fundamentals, triggers when you miss Union Dues. A lot of Movements have triggers like this; this is where we put the stuff that the Movement specifically believes they’d do better. So when the Centralists are out of power, they get a boost from the economic mismanagement of whoever is, but once they have influence in government, failing to balance the budget isn’t going to work in their favour.

By extension, lower-value triggers tend to be things that drive or revitalise a weak Movement, while high-value triggers are triumphs or threats that validate them, either mobilizing a weak movement with a victory, or cementing the authority of a strong one.

For another example, here are the Neo-Trot Triggers. You can see how their lower triggers, the first ones to fade, are the relatively small fundamental issues that form the emotional foundation of the Movement; the Neo-Trots won’t be irrelevant so long as we keep finding planets ruled by jerks and evil computers, and their quest for increased military spending grows more pressing every time a Star Patrol rocket limps back full of holes.

The #4 trigger here ceases to help the Neo-Trots once they take power; it’s expected of them. Both the Centralists and Civil Anarchists get this trigger at 5 instead, which creates an interesting contradiction; once they’re in power, winning battles empowers their rivals because, through victory, they are making themselves obsolete. If they keep winning their fights, why do we need to shovel more resources into Star Force?

That’s why their highest triggers are stuff that give them more material power directly instead. Producing and distributing weapons increases the size of those sectors in the Union’s economy and bureaucracy, increasing their influence, while a war breaking out mobilizes the economy and places all their experts in positions of authority. This also, of course, gives them an incentive to keep arming people and fighting wars once they’re in power…

Stability

Each time an Opposition Movement (that’s any Movement which isn’t the Leading Movement) goes up by a Power Rank, it prompts a Stability Check. You also have to roll Stability Checks if you fail to pay your Union Dues. This is pretty simple; Stability is a number from 0-6 representing people’s faith in the current leadership of the Star Union. You roll 1d6 for each Stability Check; if the result is above your current Stability, the Leading Movement loses 1d6 Progress, potentially sliding back to lower Power Levels. If that happens enough, they’ll be displaced as the Leading Power.

Note that passing Stability Checks has an effect; each test you pass lowers Stability by 1. Fortunately, restoring Stability is pretty easy; every Credit put into the Social Infrastructure fund raises Stability by 1, and incidentally also gives the Leading Movement 3 Progress. 

So basically, the Leading Movement can have whatever ideologically it wants, but once it's actually in power, it only stays in power by raising people’s standards of living, though it does benefit from a slow decay of everyone else’s Progress. If the Centralists spend the entire budget on giant golden statues of Yuri Gagarin, then they won’t be in power for very long, and if they really screw it up… well, that’s what Crises are for.

Endgames

Each Movement has a number of Endgames; the five major movements all have a sort of soft ‘win’ condition that cements their power in some way and makes a lasting change on your game. For example, Federation-Builders basically cements the Centralists’ power for the foreseeable future by having them make good on their promises, and in the process gain a new and fiercely loyal following.

Well, I say soft win condition; they aren’t always.

A ‘lose’ condition deactivates or disempowers a Movement, representing the movement breaking apart, being thoroughly discredited, or otherwise losing their ability to carry on. For the Centralists, the only thing that’ll knock them out of the game is the Cybernetic Democrats actually getting their wild experiment off the ground and fully implemented, which is a huge and expensive Project.

How severe these lose conditions are will vary. Some movements will be outright destroyed, either instantly or by fading out, but others are more resilient.

Finally, we have the Crisis. Crises are triggered if Stability hits 0, and they’re bad. The most survivable ones prompt multi-episode arcs in a mad scramble to save the Union; the worst functionally end the campaign. The Centralists being in charge when the state they build fails means that it all comes apart in their scramble to save it; the cordial competition for the future of the Union becomes a shooting war. This might be where you end your campaign, or it might be where you throw in with another Movement and try to win it for them!

Many Crises will be internal…

… but not all of them.

Expanded Movements

The five core movements we mentioned before are all primary Movements, with a full set of triggers, effects, and endgames. Each of them represents a potentially valid direction for the Union that you, as players, can choose to back or suppress. 

However, the nature of this system makes it very easy for us to add new Movements to the game. Most of these Movements are Minor Movements, with reduced triggers and rules which are usually single-issue and whose Endgames are simplified and easier to hit. Minor Movements don’t cause Stability hits when they gain Power Ranks and can’t take the Leading Faction slot, they can slot easily into a ruling coalition without breaking things, or fade once their purpose is achieved.

For an example, if you integrate the Nariene into the Star Union (either by defeating its current government or making an alliance that bypasses that; we’ll be talking about them in the next Dev Diary), you get the very pressing Minor Movement “Nariene Green Movement”, which is clamouring, quite reasonably, to have their planet saved from the runaway greenhouse effect they’re under. They’ll gain power quite quickly with triggers firing based on the Union’s economy growing, and once they hit Major they’ll mandate the funding of their Project. Once their homeworld is saved, their endgame is triggered and the Movement fades, leaving you with a nice permanent bonus as everyone in the Star Union gets a bit better at reducing, reusing, and recycling.

Not all late-joining Movements are Minors, though; some of them can very much become the Leading Power and change your game accordingly.

Finally… not all the Movements are intended to be viable paths forward. Movements can emerge in dire circumstances, reflecting adverse pressures, but they can also come out of your actions as Star Patrol, if you feed the worst impulses of the Union and give material power to bad actors.

Which is why you don’t start your campaign with five moments. You start with six.

[alltheboysandgirlsiloved]

Okay, okay, hold my hand through this.

Since apparently season 3 of jwct will be the final one, and we know that with Jurassic Wold Chaos Theory they weren't allowed to go beyond Jurassic World Dominion what is – WHAT IF – they are actually wrapping this part of the story up, to start a new segment aka the bridge between Dominion and Rebirth? It would make sense... since from the summary of Rebirth we know that mankind is going to face new challenges, so it would make sense for the campers to face new challenges too?

So like, jwct season 3 final episode is just the Nublar Six chatting, one of them (Kenji?) says "I think this is finally over now", and then we get yet another time skip (just like at the jwcc finale), let's say one or two years, and it's Nublar Six again sitting together, faces grim and Darius says "I guess it will never be completely over"????

cue dramatic music

this series is so successful they could be making spinoff after spinoff and people would still watch it... every single season the fandom grows and the characters are so adored... like come on universal...

[ploppythespaceship]

So to absolutely no one's surprise, the new Section 31 movie is quite bad. Critics are tearing it to pieces, and rightfully so. As IGN said, "Section 31 will infuriate Star Trek fans and bore everyone else." And... yeah, that's about right. I don't know if it's the worst Trek movie ever made, but it's certainly in one of the bottom slots.

This post has no major spoilers, but I am putting it under a cut because it turned into a long rant.

The core problem here is the cast. It's an ensemble piece consisting of characters ranging from mildly boring to actively irritating. There's no depth or interesting dynamics at play here. Just a bunch of characters trying to be zany and edgy.

Which brings me to the next issue -- the tone. Basically, this movie wants to be James Gunn's Suicide Squad, but it doesn't understand the careful balance needed to pull that off. It wants to be the edgy, gritty Star Trek movie where people get to murder and be bad, while also having wacky side characters that get to joke around. The result is that half the cast feels like it's in a gritty drama, and the other half feels like it's in a bad comedy.

To emphasize how bad this issue is -- the very last line of the movie is a yo mama joke. No, I am not kidding.

The pacing is pretty bad. You can tell that this was conceived as a miniseries before being cut down to a 90 minute film. The whole thing feels choppy and uneven. They spend too long in some sections and then not long enough in others. At one point halfway through, I literally said out loud, "Oh that's where episode one would have ended," because you could practically feel the entire film switch gears.

We also don't see enough of Georgiou and San's relationship, which the climax sort of hinges on. All we get are flashbacks of them pressing foreheads together in a backlit room, saying that they're one.

This either needed to be stretched back out to a full miniseries -- which probably still would have been pretty bad -- or it needed to be drastically reworked to better suit its runtime.

The style is also absolutely all over the place. It's trying to emulate something like Suicide Squad or Guardians of the Galaxy, but with a laughable incompetence. The first scene left me gaping in awe of how terrible the editing was. There are so many badly placed cross-fades, extended establishing shots, weird almost-music-sequences that aren't willing to commit... then other scenes will just be filmed normally. If they wanted this film to have its own distinct style, they needed to fully commit to it, and make that part of the story's core identity. This just feels like they tacked things on without fully understanding how to actually utilize them.

And the QUICK ZOOMS. This might be a weird thing to fixate on, but I genuinely felt like I was losing my mind. This movie would not stop doing quick zooms, on everything, for every scene. You'll be watching two characters exchange quiet, calm dialogue, and the camera just keeps cranking in closer to their faces. It's just another stylistic choice that they're doing without any real understanding of why.

Perhaps most irritatingly, this movie fundamentally misunderstands the concept of Section 31. First, they just don't get the most basic premise of the organization they based their entire movie on. A Starfleet officer is an official part of their team, expressly there to serve as their Federation oversight. Excuse me?? Did you watch a SINGLE previous Section 31 episode?? The entire point of this group is that they exist beyond official oversight.

But even worse, I'm not sure these writers understand that Section 31 are the bad guys. One of Georgiou's lines is, "Section 31 is just the place for officers who bend the rules, never quite break them, until they do." The final scene has Garrett fondly calling Georgiou a "bad bitch." And the team doesn't really do anything all that morally questionable -- they all just crack terrible edgy jokes the whole time. In this movie, Section 31 genuinely is just Starfleet but edgy, and it pisses me the hell off.

Genuinely, the utter misunderstanding of Section 31 is one of my least favorite things about modern Trek. I really hope this movie's reception will convince them to just shelve the group entirely for a while.

I do think a decent version of this movie could have existed. Cut the entire side cast to have a tighter focus on a trio of Georgiou, Alok, and Garrett. Georgiou and Alok have a similar enough backstory that they could develop a really interesting dynamic with more screentime. And Garrett can be there as the Starfleet officer who stumbled into the situation against her will, and tries to maintain her moral compass while also recognizing that drastic action is needed to defend the Federation.

Then you could actually explore the meaningful differences in morality between these characters. Touch on the core themes of what Section 31 was originally meant to be. Do the ends justify the means? At what point have you gone too far? And with Georgiou specifically -- is it even possible for someone like to her to seek redemption? Can she truly earn it?

Instead, we get a bland movie that isn't interested in exploring any deeper meanings. It just wants to be an edgy Star Trek version of Suicide Squad. And that's a damn shame.

[thefeastandthefast]

Flourished Peony thoughts (spoilers up to episode 11):

I find it incredibly satisfying that Jiang Changyang refrains from intervening in Mudan’s life unless she explicitly seeks out his help.

I was actually expecting the contrary and bracing myself for a bit of white-knighting, since I'd read criticism from someone who'd watched up to episode 11 specifically complaining about the FL being written as supposedly empowered and strong but instead relies too much on the ML, who always happens to be present whenever she needs help. But now having watched up to episode 11 myself, I wholeheartedly disagree with describing a FL who astutely leverages her limited resources as weak and disempowered.

She first goes to him for aid with her divorce in absolute desperation, because her other proactive and well-executed gambits needed time to come to fruition and she didn't have time. It's a hail mary move and he proves himself unexpectedly sympathetic. Ultimately, though, the legal victory he helped her achieve means very little on a practical level. She still ends up on the run, starting over from scratch, without her divorce papers and without her dowry.

This drama skillfully establishes how the realpolitikal power of strategic relationships and networks (that perennial term 关系) softens and often even circumvents the barriers of social convention and hierarchies in a way a single individual has little hope to do. The patronage of the powerful and influential is worthwhile to cultivate in this context, especially valuable when the price for patronage doesn't require moral compromise from the protege (i.e. in the case of Liu Chang).

Jiang Changyang is powerful and influential and, most importantly to Mudan, does not demand what she isn't willing to give, consistently demonstrating that he adheres to the adage he keeps quoting- "a gentleman doesn't demand/take that which others hold dearest." Mudan has real skills and expertise to offer in exchange for fair patronage. Her reliance on his financial and social capital and continued cultivation of this relationship simply demonstrates that she's smart?

If we want to have more period-plausible shows like this one, which tries to be consistent in applying the rules and structural inequalities of its world to all of its characters, then it only makes narrative sense that the FL may need to occasionally rely on the aid of more powerful others and won't be able to only scheme and Charisma check herself out of every sticky situation. It doesn't make her poorly written or disempowered. Besides, Jiang Changyang is not the only connection she cultivates to great effect- she is able to help Shengyi obtain her divorce with Yun Niang's help and seems to have just found new allies in A'Fu and her mother.

Plus, as of episode 11, we see the intentional care he takes to NOT overstep the agreed-upon boundaries of this patronage relationship. The gorgeous, gorgeous scene when Jiang Changyang is behind the screen, watching Mudan's heartbreak and dogged determination as she gathers up the last handfuls of coin she has left to refund the angry mob- even obscured by the fabric haze, we see how deeply he empathizes with her in that moment, his always bemused eyes holding not a trace of laughter for the first time since he's appeared in this show.

He's a guarded man who's constantly shifting from mask to mask. His favorite persona is that of a gleefully avaricious fop who takes no one and nothing too seriously. But in that scene, we see that detachment fail and the pain in his face shows just how seriously he takes her pain. Even so, he also takes seriously the easily upset balance of power inherent in their relationship and his trust in her ability to resolve her own problems. Without her specific request for aid, any presumption on his part to step in would create the kind of debt she cannot afford and may not want to repay.

[xf-cases-solved]

S2E10: Red Museum

Case: Bro, don't make me try to summarize "Red Museum," so many things happen and every single one of them is baffling.

You know what? This entire episode feels like an SNL Stefon sketch, so I'm going to write it as one.

If you're looking for a monster-of-the-week X-Files tale centering around obscure religions, look no further. Fox network's hottest new episode is "Red Museum." This episode has everything. A cult of creepy vegetarians who all wear red turbans and whose sermons are all written on the fly by a dude who has a really impressive WPM. Children wandering around the woods in their underwear with "HE/SHE IS ONE" written on their backs with black Sharpie. Walk-ins.

Oh, what's a walk-in? It's that thing where a body's original soul is replaced by a new, different soul for some reason.

But that's okay if that's not for you. If what you're looking for is a story about a deep-seated conspiracy of unethical medical experiments, look no further. Fox network's hottest new episode is still "Red Museum." This episode has everything. An awkward road trip with an old man out into the countryside where he tells you his life story, unprompted. A random plane crash implicating the local doctor. Bovine somatotropin.

Oh, what's bovine somatotropin? It's that thing where you genetically engineer a growth hormone and give it to cows to make them produce more milk.

Still not what you're looking for? That's no problem. For those of you itching for some more myth arc plot, look no further. Fox network's hottest new episode continues to be fucking "Red Museum." This episode has everything. A middle-aged white man you're somehow supposed to distinguish from the millions of other middle-aged white men and remember that he's the guy that killed Deep Throat. A complete lack of usable evidence. Purity Control derivatives.

Oh, what's Purity Control? It's that thing from "The Erlenmeyer Flask" where you mix human DNA with alien DNA to conduct a series of experiments on the unsuspecting human population. 

Also, there's a perv creeping on kids through peepholes.

Anyway. This episode... goes some places. 

Moving on.

Does someone die in the cold open: My notes say, "no death in CO, but that kid is fucked up," which I feel is a good summary.

Does Mulder present a slideshow: YES!! Our boy and his projector have finally been reunited at last! He hasn't done a slideshow since "Tooms," which actually makes it all make sense now, bc that was the one he did in court that made me (and Scully) want to die from secondhand embarrassment. Maybe Scully had been keeping the projector locked away until he proved he could be trusted with it. She had the key to the storage closet in her pocket when she was abducted.

Does the evidence survive the investigation: Yeah, nah.

Whodunit: Bro, I don't fucking know. All of them. They all did it. Every single person is complicit. You're complicit. I'm complicit. Just blow the planet up and start over.

Convictions: 🙄😒

Did they solve it: Last line of the episode is "this case remains open and unsolved," soooooo. I'm not even giving them a "no, but" bc they didn't even manage to keep Deep Throat's killer alive long enough to get any useful information out of him. Maybe they shouldn't have given you guys the X-Files back, actually...

[how do i determine if a case is solved? check the scale here: x]

This episode is sponsored by: Part one of this five part SNL Stefon YouTube compilation for those of you who had no idea wtf I was referencing up there

***

General Total Stats:

(green means stat has changed since last ep; red means new stat added to list)

Total Cases *Definitively* Solved So Far: 15 (they haven't solved anything since fucking "blood," and technically they weren't even on the x-files then. they haven't solved a genuine x-file since "roland," and i only gave them that one out of pity. time to just keep the x-files closed and assign them to the department that tracks down people who pirate movies. mulder & scully and the search for the Truth 20-something college kid making copies of jurassic park to give to his cousin in exchange for weed)

Total Number of "Mulder/Scully, It's Me": 9

Total Number of Times Scully Has Conveniently Not Seen Something Crucial: 6

Total Number of Times Mulder Has Been in Mortal Danger: 14 (i think they technically both could have gotten blown up, right?) 

Total Number of Times Scully Has Been in Mortal Danger: 14 (i expected these two stats specifically to be more disproportionate, but so far they're pretty even huh)

Total Number of Sexually Charged, Uncomfortably Intimate, and/or Flirty Moments Between Friendly Coworkers: 19 (bbq napkin scene. she wants to devour those ribs and then devour him)

Total Number of Autopsies Scully Has Performed On Screen: 5

Total Number of Times Scully Plays Doctor: 2 

Total Number of Times Mulder Talks to an Informant: 21

Total Number of Times People Making Out in a Car Are Hurt or Killed: 2

Total Number of Times Someone Correctly Guesses a Password: 3 

Total Number of (Plot Relevant) Nosebleeds: 5

Total Number of Times Mulder Has Tasted/Sniffed/Touched Something Questionable Without Following Proper Safety Procedures: 4 (it was just gas, but it was on the floor of a slaughterhouse, directly underneath a hanging hunk of beef, and there was a very obvious red can labeled "gasoline" sitting three feet away on the floor, so i feel like he could have made that inference without sticking his hand in it)

Total Number of Times People Fight in a Parking Garage: 1 

Total Number of Times Someone Says "Trust No One": 3 

Total Number of Times Someone Says "I Want to Believe": 4 

Total Number of Times Someone Says "The Truth is Out There": 2 

Total Number of Cigarettes Cigarette Smoking Man Has Smoked: 16 

Total Number of Maggie Scully Sightings: 3

Total Number of Lone Gunmen Sightings: 3

Total Number of Alex Krycek Sightings: 3 (no more krycek for right now 😔. mulder's projector has returned, but still we lie in wait for rat boy's resurgence)

Total Number of Times I Had to Look Up What State the Episode Takes Place in Even Though I Literally Just Watched It: 13½ (not only did i not know, but i wrote this up over the course of two days, and had already forgotten by the time i got to this stat even tho i looked it up yesterday)

Total Number of Times I Had to Look at an Episode's Wikipedia Page to Fill This Out Because It Was Fucking Confusing and/or Too Boring for Me to Pay Attention: 7 (i am still not convinced i followed the whole thing. i don't think it's possible)

[plotholes-and-spellingerrors]

I think the thing is that, fundamentally, there's no such thing as running an "AI" locally. (I'm assuming that when you say "AI" you're referring to the "generative" models where a user makes a natural-language request, e.g. "re-organize my business", and the model outputs an org chart or something.) The problem is that these models require so much compute that you basically cannot run them on a personal computer. If you saw that post going around talking about Windows quietly turning on constant system snapshots to run it's AI assistant, the article pointed out that some features were only available on machines with specially beefed-up processors and memory, and even then, internet connectivity was vital because it was sending data back to Microsoft to be processed - that was part of the privacy/security risk, that images potentially displaying passwords, etc., were being stored on Microsoft servers. The point being, you need massive server farms to ingest, store, and analyze the data that these models are being built on - and it never ends, or the model becomes stale. And even once you have the model, calculating a response is also incredibly resource intensive. That's why every single Google AI result takes so much more water and electricity than the entirety of the actual search results combined.

I have shared the link before, but I am begging people to listen to the "Data Vampires" miniseries from Tech Won't Save Us. They make clear very early on that the reason Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are pushing AI so much is because they are data center companies: they make money every time a service uses their data centers. And you know where ChatGPT and MidJourney results are being processed? On Microsoft and Google and Amazon's data centers. In fact, a lot of the "money" that these companies are investing into GenAI orgs is actually just donating server usage to them, to get them locked in on those servers, which will then need to be paid for. So the GenAI companies have to find a way to get people to pay for AI services, because they're paying for AI compute power.

The other thing, and I cannot stress this enough, is that these are not knowledge models. They are very sophisticated duplication models. If you say to the "AI", "Make my workflow simpler", it doesn't have a semantic understanding of what "simpler" means (and it certainly can't ask for clarification). All it can do is look at its massive data set and try to predict a version of whatever it is outputting that is associated with the string of letters "simpler", based on a bunch of stuff that has previously been labeled as "simple" (or similar words). So you might get a work flow that has fewer steps, for example, but what the "AI" might not realize (because it doesn't have a concept of what any of the steps are) is that maybe it's actually added that are meaningless, maybe it's just shuffled some steps to it looks like there's fewer but actually it's just hidden a couple... or maybe it's eliminated some vital error-checking steps that 98% of the time result in nothing (it looks like a waste of time, so simplify it out) but 1.7% of the time catches something minor (oh good, that would have wasted resources to fix) and 0.3% of the time catches something mission-critical (this error could have brought us to bankruptcy/court/prison). And keep in mind, the person asking an automated system to simplify their business workflow is NOT the person who designed the workflow and knows what needs to be in there (if they were, they wouldn't need a computer to tell them how to fix it) - they're the person trying to not need to pay someone to design the workflow.

And for that matter, a lot of what happens when some "AI" system is inserted into a process is that it's still doing the same task (just at a much higher computational requirement, and potentially wrong), but it looks simpler because the human user is only clicking one button rather than five.

And look, I'm all for automating tasks that are repetitive and time-consuming for a human - that's the whole point of computers in the first place. But a truly effective and efficient replacement for human work is one that was designed by people who are intimately familiar with the required tasks and thinking deeply about how to make their jobs easier.

You know, these techbros love to make it sound like humans are just bad at making systems, computers will be so much better at it, but I think that's a lie they tell because they want to make one generic product and get everyone to buy it. That's the promise of "general artificial intelligence" - it's one system that can do everything. But what else in life works like that? Do you put your clothes and your dishes in the same washing device? Something that does a lot of things well is typically very simple. You can fry an egg and boil water in the same pan because it's a bent piece of metal sitting over heat. An espresso machine, however, will have a harder time with the egg. Good software generally focuses on doing one thing - the difference is whether that one thing is simple and can be applied to a lot of different things (Firefox renders web content, it just happens that you can have all kinds of stuff on the web) or if that one thing is extremely specific (Audacity edits music and GIMP edits images - audio and images are both data types that Firefox can show you, but can you imagine what a mess GIMPdacity would be?); the problem is that this specialization requires human effort, and these techbros do not want to PAY for human effort; the problem is that this specialization means that you have target audiences, and these techbros want to sell to a general (read: bigger) audience. And conversely, those byzantine systems that are so terrible? Often it's not because people are just dumb, it's because either the job is a very complicated one, and the system is tailored to success in that task, or because someone wanted a general system that accomplishes all kinds of things, and often what they want accomplished is METRICS so that the efficiency of the business can be micromanaged. But that's another story for another time. In short, don't ever let someone who is trying to sell you bullshit tell you the lie that you couldn't do better on your own.

Anyway, IDK if this is really even what OP meant, it's just where my mind went. If you put up with me to the end, thanks for reading.

MAN, can you imagine the clusterfuck of working at a company that’s become reliant on an AI layer between itself/its employees, and knowing how to do their jobs and use their systems and stuff? Like when that AI layer goes down, poof, you’re all hosed. And they don’t strike me as super robust…

I guess there are ways of training and running them locally, but they’re so seductive they’re definitely going to be deployed in places that aren’t up to the task of maintaining them in a sane state. Like… damn… cutting headcount in favor of relying on AI is like. A raccoon stuffing its head into a yogurt container. This is gonna be killing off organizations in a few years.

Unless AI gets good at destroying preexisting fucked up byzantine workflows and replacing them with simpler, human-friendly ones. That would be okay. But it is gonna irrevocably destroy a lot of records and botch a lot of database migrations on its way there.

[respectthepetty]

Idol Factory, I just want to talk with you about why, WHY, you have GLs where one of the main characters must cry every single DAMN episode?!

GAP, every damn episode.

My Marvellous Dream is You, every damn episode.

The Loyal Pin, let me guess . . . every damn episode.

Are these actresses staying hydrated?! Are they getting paid for each tear? It is in the contract that they must cry every episode or their check gets docked? I just need to know the reasons because I watched Earn in The Secret of Us cry for two episodes (not an Idol Factory production) due to her own lack of communication, and I'm annoyed at all the tears.

I'm not writing that women cannot cry because Kim has reasons to be crying over her mom in My Marvellous Dream is You, but I need reasons why these women are crying about ev👏🏾ery👏🏾thang👏🏾 every damn episode when at least three-quarters of those things are their own damn fault!

I have not cried since 2008? 2006? But that's because I live in 110 degree weather and crying tears is a waste of valuable water that my body could be using TO SURVIVE GLOBAL WARMING, so I know my priorities are different than these fictional characters, but at least make it make sense and if it doesn't make sense, at least make it unnecessarily enjoyable like The Story of Us!

2025, this is your notice. If I see another wee little lesbian crying some crocodile tears for something that is her own damn fault every single episode instead of fixing the problem, it's on. Texas Chicken parking lot. Pinning up the hair. Taking off the hoops. Turning the rings around. Putting the Vaseline on the face.

I'm fucking you up, sis.

[anna-scribbles]

does anyone have like a pet ml episode that is not one of the huge banger plot-heavy ones but just feels like your special episode you’re so fond of. i think mine is psychomedian

[secriden]

*cracks knuckles* Okay lets talk about the elephant in the room: Style going to the support group for those who've suffered loss and telling what appears to be a fake story about losing his pet dog.

I'm going to point out a few things that I think provide a framework for Style's actions here. Not because I think it excuses what he did, but because I think a nuanced read is what the character deserves.

Point 1: An irresistible opportunity

The subs put the "Support Group for Loss" on the image in the notebook, but I'm not sure there's anything to suggest that Style would've known that was what this image represents until he showed up and saw the sign on top of the door.

In episode 2, Bison says, "He plans everything down from years, months, weeks to days" and then tells Kant:

So Style is literally just going to addresses/locations at given days and times, potentially not knowing what to expect. And as much as Fadel is certainly attending this meeting as a response to having that heartbreaking flashback (😭), this is also something he attends regularly and has planned to attend way in advance. So Style has no reason to think Fadel is attending this meeting because of a recent resurfacing of his pain.

What we, the audience, and what the characters know are very different things.

Now, should Style have turned his cute ass right around once he realised what this meeting was? Of course he should. But that wouldn't have been true to Style's character. We've been told by his best friend that he is "crazy" and been shown repeatedly that he lives right up to that description.

Style is impulsive. He's all base instinct and he acts on his desires without thought or contemplation. And by this point he is desperate for a deeper connection with Fadel. He's fascinated, captivated by the mystery that is Fadel and this is an excellent opportunity to finally see behind the wall Fadel so carefully maintains.

When Style sees the sign above the door, Style looks at the notebook (which, again, shows nothing but people sitting in a circle with the words RISE UP) like he's just realising what it means. He then gets this amused, almost rueful look on his face (like he's thinking "am I really going to do this?") before it shifts to determination and he walks through the door.

(My soul for the ability to once again gif something because FUCK Dunk is doing SO MUCH in this show!!)

To Style, this is just too good of an opportunity to give up.

Because let's be real, Fadel is so clearly lying and hiding something:

Fadel is shady as FUCK. He is simultaneously actually a really good cook (Style finally tries his burger so he knows, now), and also has the skills to work at a strip host club, and also can take on 3 guys in a fight, and also can break a man's arm with his thighs. Can you honestly blame Style for losing his mind just a little bit about wanting to get his hands on something, anything, to figure this man out?

Style is being absolutely consistent in his persistence to understand Fadel. This isn't about the car or about finally 'winning' the fight (thank you @airenyah for giving such a detailed framework to understand what Style's been doing until this point) anymore. This is about Style wanting to know Fadel himself.

Point 2: The potential implications of the setting

Now, what might give us a bit of insight as to why Style is this way? I have a theory (albeit one that could prove to be very wrong, but hear me out). I think this whole entire show is set in what could potentially be quite a small town/suburb.

There's a few things that make this theory plausible:

(1) Fadel and Bison are in hiding after Bison blew their previous cover. They're probably on the run from some section of the authorities and so it makes sense to settle in a quiet/out of the way place.

(2) Style seems to be really familiar with the people in the area. Like he grew up there and its the kind of small town where everyone knows everyone and everyone is in everyone else's business.

(3) Style is clearly the darling of the market aunties and uncles.

Style just lost her a sale and potentially a loyal customer, and she's still rooting for him? In episode 2, when Style asks the uncle to let him borrow his cart, it takes nothing but his word for the uncle to give Style his entire cart of produce for his ridiculous scheme.

Style is so clearly someone they all know well and have great affection for, and a very plausible explanation for this is that they all watched him grow up and the entire market (town/village) is fond of him.

And honestly?? Yeah, we see the way Style is actually quite sweet in that careless, guileless, thoughtless way. He goes the extra mile to fix his mistake with Fadel by replacing his car parts for free in episode 1. He helps out by taking orders in episode 2 without being asked and takes it seriously. In episode 3, he tries to drive more business to Fadel's store (bless him, he so clearly does NOT understand how restaurants work, but he MEANS well!!), and can we all acknowledge that it works?? He understands how to appeal to potential customers in the area because he knows the people there. It's not (entirely) his fault that Fadel wasn't remotely prepared for an actual rush crowd and Bison was off getting kinky with Kant and not doing his (fake) job. He is so clear about not judging Fadel's host job and tries his hardest to help him (to absolutely NO effect, but still) when the 3 guys gang up on Fadel.

Style is so loved and more importantly so very loveable.

Point 3: What this could mean for Style's character

So, potentially, Style is someone who grew up in a small town, who has been well loved, potentially spoiled and coddled, but also very much kept within the confines of the narrow viewpoint that a quiet, country town places on you.

It's in the way his dad scolds him as if he was still a child when he's at least in his mid to late 20s. It's in the way Style was so mad at Fadel for scolding him ("thanks for the lecture, dad"), like that hit a sore point for Style. It's in the way no one in the market takes him seriously; they're fond, but he's still a kid in their eyes. It's in the way he has an abundance of free time like he doesn't REALLY need to work at his dad's shop. It's in the way he sees Fadel beat 3 guys up with ease, starts wondering if Fadel is an assassin or a hitman, and is completely unfazed like he doesn't quite have a handle on reality.

It's in the way his best friend is a man who has no qualms about lying to him and putting his life in danger, and how Style seems to have no other friends or people (aside from his dad) in his life.

@wuxian-vs-wangji made a comment to me about Style being desperate for a meaningful connection, and I think she hit the nail on the head. Because along comes Fadel, a mysterious stranger with a suspiciously versatile set of skills who is also very hot and keeps giving Style these wonderfully complex reactions? Who sometimes wants nothing to do with Style, but at other times seems to be at war within himself about desperately wanting him? Who treats Style with anything but apathy?

This is catnip to Style; he never had any hope of resisting this.

Breaking news: Style is a complex and imperfect character...

Here's the thing, though: he was never going to try. The show has been incredibly upfront about who Style is as a person. Regardless of whether I'm correct about why he is this way (ie. that he is very much the product of the environment that didn't know how to handle a kid with Style's personality), episode 3 shouldn't have surprised anyone about Style. He's been incredibly consistent and true to himself.

He wants Fadel and he's "crazy" enough to go all in, no holds barred about it, and the Support Group was the biggest doorway to finally discovering something REAL about Fadel.

And its not just about sex or to prove his superiority anymore. Because if it was just that, then Style would have reacted very differently to their first time.

In this scene, Style is pleased and evidently enjoying himself, but he isn't exuberant. He isn't overcome with joy. If anything, he was more happy and excited when Fadel let him help out in the diner (I mentioned this in the tags in this post too) than he was when Fadel is literally fucking him. He lets Fadel set the pace; barely moves to touch Fadel except to hold him close. Almost like he doesn't want to accidentally mess this up, like he's worried he'll take too much, so he'll take what Fadel gives him and no more (please appreciate @braceletofteeth's amazing tags on this post). For a character that has been so aggressively on the offensive, this is shocking until you realise that sleeping with Fadel - while it's a step in the right direction - isn't Style's end goal anymore.

And he makes that abundantly clear in this episode:

Does Style even fully realise the weight of this desire? I doubt it. But I do believe that Style is in earnest. He doesn't fully understand his own feelings, but he also doesn't really care to either. All he knows is that he wants Fadel, wants his attention and his passion and his focus and his heart.

...but Style is also kind of, sort of, perfect.

Because he's exactly, precisely, breathtakingly exactly what Fadel needs.

Because Fadel is hurt and broken and bleeding inside. Because Fadel is barely holding it all together for Bison's sake, but has already given up hope for any true happiness for himself. Because Fadel can't trust anyone or anything in his life, when he's been used and used and used by the family who should've loved and cared and protected him.

Because it's going to take nothing short of this kind of unwavering, unshakable, uncomplicated determination to give Fadel even a chance of healing and opening his heart to love again.

[hethinkslikeaking]

"omg homophobia :( the lesbian ship i want to kiss didn't kiss in an episode that was obviously going to be the backstory of another main character :( hes EXPLICITLY gay in a MARVEL DISNEY+ show and kisses his boyfriend but its still so homophobic :( the episode wasn't straight out of my headcannon so i hate it :("

do you know how dumb u sound rn

[sscarletvenus]

they're like the powerpuff girls for really miserable bitches

[vaggieslefteye]

HAZBIN HOTEL (2024—): Season 1 ↳ Alastor being fake vs. Lucifer being real.

[irlnorthshaw]

@yanxioustrikas post abt joao reminded me of this edit i made centuries ago when i first came into the fandom 😭 (it’s been 5 years, how crazy is that)

[quartztwst]

You can’t be the Ohio gyatt rizzler and the sigma of all sigmas! 😡 BECAUSE IM THE OHIO GYATT RIZZLER AND SIGMA OF ALL SIGMAS!! I have a certificate and multiple witnesses to prove it too! I am the TRUE mew master because I mew every minute and my mewing streak is 10,000!! You better check under your bed tonight because I’m about to to end your mewing streak for good! 😤 anyways watching your rizz training arc is killing me. My advice is to try to hit her with pickup lines. My personal favorites are: 1. You must be debt because my interest in you is growing 2. Are you sure you’re not tired? Because you’ve been running around my mind all day. 3. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE ONE CHANCE BABYGIRL I CAN TREAT YOU BETTER I SWEAR!! Goodluck fellow rizzler, may the best sigma win.

At this point I'm gonna rizz her up with gifts but she hates gifts

Guys what if I gave up 😞😞😞😞

[mikimeiko]

Midnight Mass | Miniseries (2021), Mike Flanagan