#or people will keep living miserably

[basofy]

i think you can be as critical about the venezuelan opposition and maría corina and edmundo as you want but arent venezuelans allowed to choose for themselves even if the options arent perfect? are you willing to justify electoral fraud and police brutality, class inequality, bad management of resources, lack of maintenance of the country, breach of the law, lack of investment in health services and education etc etc just because the person doing it is someone you like or because you don't like the other option? are people at fault for wanting something different?

[radioactivepeasant]

Surprise Snippet because I didn't get time to post a schedule this week

(Woe: Summer Reading Programs be upon me)

But because I can never resist giving Damas of Spargus a hard time, I propose the following scenario: Jak carries germs from Sandover that modern people aren't vaccinated against. Modern people like Damas. And because Jak doesn't do anything by halves, it's a disease that only effects channelers because it's a non-dark-eco eco imbalance.

In his roughly twelve years as king of Spargus, Damas had dealt with the occasional illness. In the two years before he took the throne, he'd gotten all manner of unpleasant ailments. Crane Cough, White Flu, Dust Colic, even! And that was something most Wastelanders grew out of in infancy! But vaccinations were for the elite. For everyone else it was survive or die, unless you were willing to hand over your entire artifact intake for the week.

Damas had been one of the lucky ones: being a channeler meant he recovered far more quickly than some of the other recent exiles.

He'd grown complacent since then. A germ could be dealt with in no more than a day or two with a little eco and a couple hours of rest. He could pinpoint the early warning signs of every disease common to Spargus and Haven alike.

That was, in hindsight, the first sign that Jak had not originally come from Haven. Because whatever was rattling around in that bullheaded kid's immune system was like nothing the doctor had ever seen before.

It started so innocuously. A slight pain behind his eardrums that he could ignore. Stiffness in the joints that he put down to having finally passed forty. Something sluggish in the chest, almost like anxiety.

He already had Anxiety, that didn't narrow anything down at all.

And then, without warning, the symptoms all combined and intensified. It felt like influenza, but without the respiratory distress. Worse somehow.

The boy was present when the symptoms crossed from incubation to a full manifestation of whatever hell he'd just contracted. The timing could hardly be worse: he'd just finished reprimanding two young scouts for fighting in the vehicle pit. And of course, Jak had been one of those scouts. He'd thrown the first punch, because of course he had, but at least it hadn't been unprovoked this time.

"At least". As if there being two guilty parties was somehow better.

Evidently young Kwan had proposed some kind of bet revolving around artifacts, and suggested that the loser would have to go shirtless for a day and show off their scars.

Damas didn't support Jak breaking his nose, but seeing as he was convinced that every Wastelander under twenty-five had some degree of senselessness, he supposed it was probably a valuable lesson for Kwan.

Which did, unfortunately, make it hard to rule fairly between them.

Ultimately, Kwan was given a sharp rebuke about goading non-consenting comrades into bets -- especially when some degree of their autonomy was on the line.

Jak's reprimand was more along the lines of warning him to either walk away or find an older Wastelander to handle things, blast it all-!

But seeing as Jak was the first one to throw a punch, it was Jak who had to forfeit the artifacts he'd picked up for the day in order to pay for the eco Kwan would need.

Not that this stopped Damas from adding that this hadn't been the first time Kwan's love of bets had gotten him into trouble, but by Volcan it had better be the last.

A rather shame-faced Kwan had just left the tower -- like rot was Damas going to allow them to occupy the same elevator at the same time, somebody would be dead before the ground floor -- when the lung cramps started.

"I'm...sorry," Jak was in the middle of saying, with extreme reluctance, "for fighting in the garages. I'm not sorry for hitting him, though."

When his only answer was an unnaturally wet sounding cough, he looked up to find Damas clinging to his staff for support. His other hand gripped his chest, veins standing out. He'd gone pale.

"Oh shi- Damas!" Jak ran up the stairs. "What's wrong?"

"Are you choking?" Daxter asked in loud, exaggeratedly slow words, "Do you need assistance?"

What's it look like?! Damas wanted to shout, but he could barely get his lungs to expand enough to breathe, let alone speak.

Something bitter and hot flooded his mouth on the next cough.

At least his lungs had reopened with the ejection of the fluid, but he couldn't help wondering if he'd just coughed up a vital organ. Damas spat, and something thick and colorless splattered across his boots. It wasn't bile, nor mucus. There were, on closer inspection, specks of color floating in it. Green, red, yellow, blue- the colors of eco, but far more saturated than they had any right to be.

Jak pulled his fingerless glove off and laid the back of his hand against Damas’s forehead like he was a child. Just as quickly, he removed it.

"Uh. Have you been having like...a lot of aches? Joints and jaws and stuff?" he asked nervously.

Damas glared at him, but ultimately nodded.

"Crap. Crap crap- uhhhh okay. Okay!" Jak ran his fingers through his hair.

"Damas, you gotta sit down, okay? It's Blackwater virus, so altitude is bad, right?"

"Th' rot's* Blackwater?" Damas rasped. He clenched his teeth against the ache in his jaws.

"Pal," Daxter said to Jak, with an unusual gentleness, "They don't have that here. Probably haven't for a long time, you get me?"

The ottsel hopped down from his shoulder. "You stay with Lumpy Lungs there, I'm getting a doc to rule out everything else."

Damas knew without asking that Daxter was trying to spare Jak. That boy had a debilitating fear of exam chairs that went beyond the usual childhood disdain for doctor appointments. And by now, Damas wasn't the only Spargan who had connected the dots between his fear of doctors and his refusal to let anyone see all of his scars.

Jak took hold of his arm and pushed him down to sit on the stairs. Any other day the manhandling would've gotten someone at least a good punch in the gut. But right now Damas could barely catch his breath enough to stand his ground. That was humiliating even without the unidentified fluid still lurking at the back of his throat.

"Okay, okay-" Jak was talking more to himself than to Damas. "Eco's pretty saturated so you're prooooobably right at the beginning of this. Crap.”

The boy dropped to sit beside him with a groan.

"I- crap! I'm sorry, Damas! I didn't think I was in here often enough to pass Blackwater to you! I swear, I thought I wasn't contagious anymore!"

The pinching in Damas’s lungs returned, and with it, the wrenching coughs.

"You-?" he managed to gasp.

Jak winced. He looked so strangely young when he felt guilty about something.

"Two- two weeks ago? Remember I didn't take any jobs for a couple days and you had someone go make sure I was still in the city? I was getting over Blackwater virus. I um."

He tilted his head back and blew out a breath.

"Used to only get it when I was little. But after the- after what Praxis did to me, I'm more susceptible to it than I used to be. Usually I can catch it in the incubation period before it gets bad, but I've been more focused on work than tracking symptoms."

"Why," Damas wheezed, "didn't you just get eco?"

"From the white coats? Rot no!" Jak snapped.

"From. The well." Damas bent double with another cough. "I know. You're. A channeler."

"Oh." Jak looked away and tapped his fingers together nervously. "Good point. But...no, eco doesn't work on Blackwater."

"What?"

"It's the eco that's infected."

"What?!"

* author's note: the use of "rot" as a curse word in Spargus is used as an abbreviation of an older curse. The full phrase, usually lobbed at Marauders during skirmishes, would be "Go rot with your dead gods". That's a bit of a mouthful, so Wastelanders just looking for a handy expletive will shorten it to "rot"

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>

Legend said no one had ever made Damas of Spargus do anything against his will. Or at least, no one that lived to tell the tale. The previous ruler of Spargus didn't count. Just the idea of telling the king where he could and couldn't go was sacrilegious!

...unless you were the new kid, apparently.

In fairness, Damas didn't actually remember Jak talking to the doctor and that blasted moncaw. He didn't remember the moncaw reluctantly giving in to Jak’s...strongly-worded...demands to be shown where Damas slept at night. What he did remember was a ringing in his ears that blocked all sound, and a vicious ache in the front of his skull. He remembered someone slinging his arm over their shoulder, and then he was coughing too hard to actually pay any kind of attention to his surroundings whatsoever.

He didn't remember entering his rooms. But he most certainly remembered the moment he realized he was on the couch he used as a bed when he couldn't bear to unlock the room he'd shared with his wife and child. Jak was all but shouting at a monk who had apparently followed them in.

"He doesn't need eco! You give him that, he's gonna feel five times worse!"

"I hardly think a boy is qualified to tell me the ways of eco."

"It's rottin' Blackwater! You wanna help him, or you wanna poison him?!"

The monk planted his feet. "You will not stop me from treating my king, newcomer." He reached for the flask of eco all monks carried.

Daxter made a sound like a buzzer. "Brrrzt! Wrong answer! Jak, get this clown outta here."

Before Jak could oblige, Damas caught him by the wrist.

"No. Fighting," he coughed, and gave what he hoped was a stern look.

Jak softened his voice immediately. "I'm not, I'm not. Trust me, okay? I'm helping you."

"Sire!" cried the monk, clearly worried, "The scout won't listen to reason! The doctor brought me in because he couldn't identify this poison in your system! Let me give you the eco your body needs to heal, please!"

Jak shook his head firmly. "The virus will use it.”

"What virus?!" Brother Rhys exploded, "These are not the symptoms of a disease, they are the symptoms of a toxin!"

"I am aware." Jak turned away from him. "I get this about once every two months. I know what I'm talking about, okay?"

Daxter hopped up onto the couch as if he meant to intercept any eco. "It sounds counterintuitive, but you gotta go with the old ways on this one, doc. Modern medicine makes it worse."

Jak crouched in front of the couch, ignoring the monk.

"I'm gonna get you some water, okay?" he said in a low voice, "This is pretty much going to wreck your system for a couple days. You should probably cancel any meetings you got coming up."

"Probably?" Daxter sounded offended. "Try absolutely! Blackwater puts you out of commission for days, and you're you!"

"I'm not gonna tell you what to do-" Jak started.

"Yeah we are," Daxter interrupted.

"...yeah, I am," Jak sighed in resignation.

"I know it sucks, okay? But you gotta let this flush itself out."

"And how. Exactly. Will it do that?" Damas growled.

Who did this boy think he was, giving him orders like they were kin? He was barely out of puberty and he wanted to take command?

"Charcoal."

"You must be joking," Rhys complained, "We've gone back to the dark ages!"

"Why d'you think it's called Blackwater?" Daxter asked dryly. "You gotta flush the toxins the old fashioned way."

"Don't think," Damas wheezed around another chest cramp, "that there won't be a reckoning for this, boy, because there will."

"Uh-huh. After you drink the charcoal.”

[puppppppppy]

I love you when we haven’t talked in weeks and months I love you when I have 12 unread messages I love you when im not in the mood to talk. We’re still friends even when we spend time apart

[mswyrr]

more on michelin stars

I genuinely think it's going to be an important plot point in s3 re: why exactly Sydney wants a star and why *one* specifically. I went and researched and discovered something I used in my fic, which is that one Michelin star restaurants are excellent cuisine that normal people can still afford. And that connected, for me, to what Sydney had told Marcus about how going out was so special when she was a kid and she wanted to share that kind of amazing thing with people:

We didn't really like eat out a lot growing up, so when we did, it felt special even if it wasn't.... I wanna cook for people and make them happy and give them the best bacon on Earth (1x08)

I'm so hopeful/convinced that the research they have with, like, Matty (the chef who plays Fak) right there on set, means the writers know that about what one star places can be like. And that it's meant to be part of this - more humane vision of excellence for Sydney, where their spot is AMAZING, but it's not a cruel kitchen culture, it's not only for the rich.

For her, it’s *part* of her vision, where she says: 

“I think this place could be so different from all the other places we've been at. But, in order for that to be true, we need to run things different.“ (1x03)

But Carmy sees a star and all it means (all he’s ever known it to mean) as a repudiation of that kind of humanity. You say the word "star" and immediately Carmy goes "fuck stars" (2x01) as pure self-defense - because stars are just pain and suffering to him. They're NYC chef and everything that mess became.

He's so traumatized by the whole thing he doesn't think to ask the right questions: why do you want one? What is your vision for it? Why do you specifically want *one* instead of two or three? What timeline do you have in mind for getting there and how can we strategize on this together?

Instead, because he wants so desperately to please her, despite that instinctive, self-defensive "fuck stars" he relents and asks - okay, are you sure? Are you positive this is what you want? Really?? It's terrible. It's just dread and fear and throwing up every day before work. You really want me to give you this?

(I’ll give you anything you want)

He never asks the right questions. Just assuming the level of pain which is his only experience of this is what the thing IS--playing into that theme about how people only know what they're taught, only know what they are given, and if we are given pain and patterns of it it is so hard to even imagine things can be different and, when you can imagine it, still so hard to actually get there.

(It’s not a coincidence that the ASL sign is one of the few positive, healthy examples of kitchen culture Carmy witnessed - we only know what we’re taught, and it can be hard work to even figure out what “not shitty” IS let alone doing it)

So he's assuming all of that and it's like - if she's his CDC, does she want him to push her as hard as he was pushed? Push himself that hard again? He doesn't want to do either of those things. But that's all he knows. And she keeps saying this is what she wants. And he wants to give her everything she wants.

(In the same conversation she kept saying yes, this is what I want, she expressed admiration for the designer chef outfit he later buys her as a gift - he wants to give her everything she wants, even when it seems like a terrible idea he’s torn about)

I think this misunderstanding is intentional and it’s going to come out in S3. A one star restaurant fits so perfectly with what we know of Sydney’s goals and love for her work! And Carmy not able to even conceive of something better because of the patterns he’s stuck in and finding his way to her vision makes sense for him.

I think Carmy figuring out how this work can be joyful and humane is going to be a huge part of S3. Sydney not becoming lost in the high stress environment, not following in younger!Carmy's footsteps living a life of pure drive and dread, and Carmy finding that for the first time.

I do think that, given where they both end in 2x10, there’s going to be a period of conflict and a real bunch of issues for both of them - but with themes and ideas like this seeded into the story there’s so many ways to make s3 start out in a bad way and then really end in joy in a beautiful way?

[lucaanis]

I made a similar post before a long ass time ago for the other three da protags but now it's time for rook, this time in poll format <3

as always feel free to ramble about your ocs in the tags!! 👀

[lord-squiggletits]

What draws you so hard to pharma? I'm so interested in your takes and I'm curious what makes him ur number one cane of worms out of the cast. :O

I think all of the meta posts I've made about Pharma explain enough about why I like him from an analytical/meta perspective (wasted potential, hidden tragic hero, exposing Autobot hypocrisy, etc), so I'll go ahead and share a weirder/less apparent reason.

I wouldn't say that I'm so emotionally attached to Pharma out of resemblance/kinship with him. I don't really have anything in common with him beside some very broad strokes, and I liked him before an event happened in my life that sorta resembled something that happened to Pharma.

The only other IDW character that I've liked to the same extent, not just storywise but personal attachment, is Optimus. Both of them I've had actual real-life feelings over, gotten myself to cry IRL writing or thinking about, etc. What they both have in common are tragic, flawed hero elements, and (where my "weird" reason comes in) both of them have a near-death experience(s) and ultimately die at the end of their storylines with a murky/complicated finality of "did he die redeemed/remembered fondly by others/with people seeing his humanity." I'm a sucker for tragic stories, but it literally is the dying part, I think, that draws me to Pharma.

(Personal stuff under the cut)

A friend of mine died when I was a teenager, and after that happened my perspective on death completely changed. There was the grieving process of course, but their death also just made me ponder death in general... how it could happen, how it feels, what one might think in their final moments, what would make a death meaningful with resolution versus useless and unfulfilled? The particular way my friend died and the conversations we had before then meant that, for me personally, my friend's death left me with a permanent lack of closure on how/why it happened. I mean, I knew the literal cause of death, but I never found out (and probably never will) WHY it happened. If it was on accident or on purpose.

So, on top of all the other narrative juiciness Pharma brings, the fact that he dies three times (two if you think he only almost died on Messatine) makes me feel this indescribable way, more or less an intense empathy. I wonder how it felt for him, what he thought about while he was dying. If he wanted to die (and signs heavily indicate that him goading First Aid was a sort of 'suicide by cop') and if there could've been a way for him to not want to die. It makes me miserable to think of all the goodness he had and yet all of his deaths went basically unmourned and un-remarked upon by all except maybe two people. I look at his deaths not from a writing perspective but from an emotional perspective. His deaths were pointless, unresolved, had no closure. Arguably, both his suffering and his means of escaping that suffering were never healed or paid tribute to. So he makes me feel this sense of tragedy that no other character except Optimus did, whose death also invokes implications of suicidal ideation, questions on what the meaning of his life/death was, and whether he was mourned or not upon his passing.

So, reaching the end of this reflection, I guess the simplest way of putting it is that, without me even realizing it until now, I became attached to Pharma because he reminds me of my old friend.

[jils-things]

2024 is probably not my best year now that i think about it

[privatejoker]

after years on this website i no longer feel capable of safely expressing thoughts or opinions even in my day to day life. the general capacity for coping with difference or light friction on here is completely diminished. bunch of weird moral sadists. it will not save you

[snekdood]

why do ppl keep assuming us politicans have so much power in israel exactly. at the end of the day they dont exactly get a say in whats to happen if israel or hamas doesnt want to comply.

[blorb-el]

How are you feeling? How is life treating you?

Hi there o/ tbh not great, I stepped away from tumblr for a bit because I was doing too much doomscrolling, and it was crushing me into anxious inaction/despair instead of reminding me to do what I can. possibly a skill issue

[skunkes]

[shadyhouse]

.

[corellianhounds]

Like. Bo-Katan’s a white woman too, it’s not like there’d be anything ~problematic~ about depicting her as a vicious, power-hungry antagonist. You can make her as mean and conniving and ambitious as you want because it’s so much more satisfying to watch those characters fail or be defeated. Make her older, give her an objective, give her some teeth, and make her an active participant in the story, someone whose actions and reactions will drive others to act and react, and she’ll be a whole lot more interesting to watch. Write a compelling character, not a marketable one you can make into merchandise

[cerbreus]

the holiday malaise is getting to me a little bit

[bisexualautism]

-

[ahalliance]

vi arcane is making me see the naked but bandaged chest potential and i may be making adjustments to my post code death qetoiles design