#or was it canon and I just have to rewatch the show because I can’t tell if anything is canon or canon anymore😭

[shadyr4m]

REWATCHING SEASON 2 EPISODE 7 OF ARCANE

+ some of my highlights and notable moments that I enjoyed bc people can’t understand media anymore

This is mostly an infodump of stuff I can fit into a twitter thread/didn't rly want to make into a thread. I'm not great at words so I apologize in advance, I am sure there are many people much better at analysis than I.

I want to start off by saying I am heavily invested in timebomb so this is very much going to be a ship analysis. If you're looking for someone unbiased i am very much not the person for that 😭

FIRST OFF:

The disc on the music box is adorable!!! It features au Powder (who I am going to refer to as just Powder for the duration of my analysis) and au Ekko

Compared to the normal Disc

This is very obviously because it takes place in a different universe, one without Vi or "Jinx".

The first scene starts off with AU Ekko writing in his notebook. (Cute mention is Powder's doodle in his notebook!!) Then we see flashes of the wild rune. This is when AU Ekko switches to canon Ekko.

Also one of my favorite silly images from this episode is this one.. Powder is being so adorable and Ekko is just scared out of his MIND. it's so silly.

In the Last drop, Powder asks Ekko. "What is up with you? You've been out of it all day?". One thing I noticed in my rewatch is that i think Powder is aware this Ekko isn't HER Ekko. This is just one instance of many that makes me think this.

This hideout seems so much more vibrant and loved, similar to Jinx's hideout after Isha. It's colorful. There are guard rails that I like to think was pushed by Vander. We can see Ekko's art scattered around. It just shows how much more support and family Powder has compared to Jinx, which i mention a lot.

Id also like to note Ekko being shocked au him went to powder for help. In his mind at this time he believes Jinx to be all that is left, no more Powder. Through out the episode we see that change.

Notice how Powder gets upset at Ekko in this scene. However, she doesn't react explosively like Jinx would've. She handled it in a way that shows she had support. She told him to leave instead. Again, the main difference between Powder and Jinx isn't only Vi but also the existence of multiple support systems that Jinx simply didn't have.

THIS FLASHBACK! Oh my god this flashback. The fact it happened after he upset Powder? I think it shows just how much he truly cares about Jinx/Powder. He remembers VIVIDLY the day that he thought he killed her. Jinx was his childhood best friend, and I don't think that kind of feeling ever truly goes away. He doesn't want to hurt any version of her, not even the alternate universe her. We see that showcased more later on. Also, random probably insane note. He is interrupted by small children playing, having fun. This isn't a coincidence, it shows he does miss the moments from when they were kids.

While talking with Heimerdinger, we see Ekko look at Powder multiple times. Watching her laugh and be expressive, he smiles. When she doesn't return it we see him get upset. Once more this brings me to my point that he doesn't want to hurt her. Considering he hasn't known this Powder very long you can see where I gather my point that he doesn't want to hurt her in GENERAL. Any version of her.

THIS SCENE!! He is such a bad liar it's adorable. This brings me to my earlier point, Powder knows what's up!! She suspects something 100%. He is talking about this dream her like it was real.

"You aren't the kind of person who helps other people with their projects. Your ideas change the world. I can't shake the feeling that that's who you're supposed to be."

Are you LISTENING TO THIS? He is obviously talking about Jinx. You can tell this by the first sentence because obviously Powder IS that kind of person. He's starting to see that Jinx is just a part of Powder, one that is unavoidable and that he unknowingly appreciates in a sense. Like two sides of one coin he can't see Powder without Jinx and that is good. I think it is here he realizes truly just how much he cares about Jinx.

This whole montage is beautiful but I want to zero in on two things. Powder's reaction to the notebook and how she looks at Ekko after. NOW THIS. This is the nail in the coffin for her. She knows that this is not her Ekko. She has fully gathered that he isn't from this universe.

Also heimerdinger totally knows how Ekko feels you cannot tell me otherwise. Pushing him to go to the party? yeah he knows what you are.

THIS WHOLE SCENE. I AM NOT ANALYZING THE WHOLE THING HERE BUT IT IS GORGEOUS. I saw someone talking about how it was animated on 4's to signify the way Ekko can only go back 4 seconds and I honestly shed a tear. THE SONG TOO? I encourage everyone to look at the lyrics because they're beautiful.

Okay now for my favorite part of this episode so much to dissect and i'm totally going to mansplain but yk..

"I used to dream the undercity could be like this" — That sets the tone for the whole conversation and just what world he is talking about. The canon one.

"But somewhere, I got consumed by all the ways it wasn't. I gave up on it. Gave up on YOU." — Heavy emphasis on this line. Once more he is talking about Jinx. He is talking about how he got so consumed by the way that Jinx wasn't good, and he gave up on her. Believed she was irredeemable. Powder showed him that Jinx is capable of love and happiness, it's just under that tough protective shell. The undercity in the metaphor is Jinx, from my interpretation.

"I promise i'll never forget this." — Now time for my insanity. He doesn't forget this. That's why he saves Jinx from ending her life in the first place. He remembers Powder and knows that with the right support Jinx doesn't have to be the way she is. It's not that she "needs to be fixed" she just needs to be LOVED, like Powder. He sees that now. He sees how in the au the love that everyone shares for one another shaped the undercity beautifully, and made everyone in it much healthier mentally despite going through hardships. That is beautiful. People with mental illness are not unlovable they just need more support, it can't be cured, or fixed just healed. Mental illness is always there it is how you DEAL with it that matters.

Nothing too major to talk about with the kiss. It's sweet I love it, but nothing too notable for me to say about it.

Finally, Ekko leaves the au. I have seen people say that this is a sacrifice, he could've had everything he wanted and he gave it up to save the people at home. But i take insanity to another level. I see this as him appreciating his home. He knows he can never truly love this Powder because she isn't the version he fell in love with. He learned to appreciate Jinx even through her flaws, and that while this world has everything he could want and more he can have that home too.

I am experiencing HEAVY timebomb brainrot if you can’t already tell. I was tired of people taking things in the complete wrong way with this episode, if anyone has different views pls tell me I love hearing how other people took certain scenes. there are a few scenes I love but I would’ve made this post way too long..

[heartkaji]

★ ALVINNN !! ⸺ AND THE WINBRE BOYS ?!

synopsis ୨ৎ : relationship dynamics i think the winbre boys would have based on the chipmunks & chipettes

notes ୨ৎ : had this idea while rewatching alvin & the chip-munks with my baby brother </3 missed this show sm

❤︎ TOGAME JO — SIMON & JEANETTE

stay with me here.

i don’t mean simon & jeanette in the sense that two of you are nerds or anything. when i think simon and jeanette, i think emotionally mature simon and anxious girlfriend jeanette who’s always in need of simon’s reassurance ( they’re so cute i want to eat them )

it’s like that with you and jo. togame is more mature and the bigger person in every situation. he never lets you two go to bed angry, and he’ll appologize first, even in times when he thinks he’s not in the wrong. togame also NEVER raises his voice. never ever. i can’t imagine him & yelling in the same sentence. so even in heated arguments where you’re screaming and crying with mascara running down your cheeks togame stays gentle and quiet, fingers pressed into his palm so tight he’s nearly bleeding because god you’re crying and he has no fucking idea what he can say to help you calm down. he doesn’t even care about what you guys were fighting about anymore, he just needs you to feel better. ( GODDDD WHERE IS MY TOGAME 😭⁉️)

anxious attachment girlies your time has come

with togame your anxiety is never triggered. you have his location and all his passwords, and he’s 100% not the kind of guy who asks for yours in return. he also calls you to let you know when he’ll be running late. i wish i could lie and tell you he doesn’t leave you on read, but he canonically doesn’t text. he has a custom ringtone just for your contact though, so often times he’ll call you in response or send you a voice message. either way you’ll get some kind of answer, togame isn’t into ignoring you in any shape or form.

NEVER EVER disrespects you, and I’m not talking verbal disrespect or anything like that. i mean togame doesn’t like pictures of any woman other than you on his instagram, doesn’t borrow girls his jacket even to be polite, doesn’t help them pay—he’s your walking wallet only. he would never ever be caught dead doing anything that could cause someone to mistake him as being close to any girl other than you. he’s so perfect it’s insane.

togame also isn’t into playing games. he communicates anything and everything he’s uncomfortable with and sets boundaries in the sweetest possible manner. “i dont like it when you do that, baby. you can do this instead, okay ?” he says all of this while thumbing your cheek and pressing his lips to your forehead . he encourages you to commmunicate with him as well. if you’re more on the shy side and struggle with setting boundaries, it’s cool because togame does it for you. if he does something and notices a change in your demeanor, he makes a mental note to never do it again. he doesn’t voice out his observations though, he knows you so he knows your first reaction would be to deny that you’re uncomfortable. when it comes to communication, he’ll never press you, but he always makes it clear that he’s ready to listen when you’re ready to talk.

boyfriend rating : ∞/10 ; better not break up with him, this man is one in a billion.

❤︎ AKIHIKO NIREI — THEODORE & ELEANOR

i think this was very obvious LMAOO

i feel like a lot of people think of theo and eleanor as the sunshine duo, but theodore is actually pretty soft and shy. the dynamic between them is much like i described for simon and jeanette, except here the roles are reversed.

theodore is extremely talented, has lots of potential really, but is always putting himself down, much like nirei. you play eleanor, always encouraging nirei to think better of himself and put himself out there, even when he thinks it’s a terrible idea.

i feel nirei, like theodore, always overcompensates. i mean he feels he’s not worthy of you so he always goes out of his way to make you a little something, give you a little gift, just anything to make him feel like he’s not dead weight tying you down in this relationship with him. he’ll never tell you he feels this way & so you’ll never know & be able to reassure him or tell him otherwise, but when you smile with blood tinged nose and kiss his cheeks in appreciation like he’s the only boy on earth, he thinks that’s all the reassurance he needs.

if you have avoidant attachement issues i am respectfully asking you to stay the hell away from him. HE CANNOT HANDLE IT. your constant hot and cold drives him crazy and affects him more than the average person. nirei is someone who loves and feels deeply. he’ll overthink even the smallest things, whether that’s you leaving him on read or a comment about how clingy he is. like i said nirei overcompensates, so when he’s more comfortable in the relationship he gets very affectionate; not in terms of physical touch ( he still needs you to initiate that most of the time, the best he can give by himself are hugs ) but in terms of words of affirmation, acts of service and gift giving. if you comment on how he’s been doing too much for you these days, even if you’re speaking from a place of ’you’re doing so much for me, you should take some time for yourself’, he’ll misinterpret it as you getting sick of him. he tries to tone his acts of affection down, but then he’s plagued with the fear of you leaving him because he’s not doing enough. it’s an endless cycle :( my poor baby please treat him well </3

boyfriend rating : 5.5/10. i fear his insecurity & trouble comunicating makes dating him difficult, and his constant need for reassurance can get suffocating.

❤︎ ENDO YAMATO — ALVIN & BRITTANY

when i think alvin and brittany i think teasing ( but whipped ) boyfriend and done with his antics girlfriend.

that’s you and endo one hundred percent. endo yamoto is always up to no good, making cheeky comments or hiding your stuff just to rile you up and get a reaction out of you. you’re so fucking done with him—you don’t even know why you’re still dating this bastard but on midsummer days when endo decides to be more boy less devil you’re reminded ( just a little ) of why you love him.

endo yamoto has his sweet moments. of course it’s obvious he worships you like a god, but you often forget because of his troublesome nature. endo yamato is always thinking of you. it’s evident in how he always comes home with one or two trinkets that reminded him of you, whether it’s something he saw in the window of an antique shop or a pretty rock with colors that match your eyes.

endo is also very clingy. when you’re doing your makeup, getting ready to go out, endo tugs you out of your vanity chair and sits down so he can pull you into his lap, arms snug around your waist as he buries his nose into your neck. the feeling of his breath warm against your shoulder blades is distracting and it’s even worse when he’s dragging his lips across your skin. you knock his head with a makeup brush to get him to pull away even if just for a second, but he only responds with a grunt before his palm trails it’s way up & under your shirt.

yeah, he’s fucking impossible.

but it’s endearing. also did i mention he’s constantly teasing you ? he’s your own personal bully. but god forbid someone tries to make a fool out of you. if it’s a girl, he hurls the most gruesome insults he can think of, and if it’s a guy, lets just say the local hospital is gonna be taking in one more patient tonight ( he is UNHINGED, but we love him regardless )

boyfriend rating : 7/10. he’s a good boyfriend, but can get pretty possessive and extreme sometimes. also he often hurts your feelings on accident </3

© ─ heartkaji ; do not steal, copy, edit, translate or reupload

[maplemind]

Does anyone else think that Arthur would be at least sensitive to magic, if not actually have a tiny bit of magic himself?

I mean he was born of magic, it would make sense that something would have made its way into his DNA.

But it’s clear that he doesn’t know it on a conscious level, that he’s completely unaware (or perhaps wilfully ignorant).

I mean, we’re always being told how he’s Camelot’s greatest warrior, how he’s a genius at tactical planning and managing his knights… what if that’s the magic part?

Maybe he had “dreams” that showed him battle plans? Maybe he just knew the right things to do, and who to put where, and how things should be done?

Maybe he saw things no-one else could, or at least saw things in a different way. Maybe he was a little bit omnipresent, or could do some mild divination without realising it, or just had a feeling about certain future events that was always right.

Maybe he was connected to those around him, to people he loves, and to his knights in a different way. Maybe he could always sense them, or always knew where they were, or could somehow see them even though they were an impossible distance away. I mean, he always sensed when something was wrong with Merlin. Always. Even if he didn’t fully comprehend what kind of “something wrong” it was.

What if that’s why he never got suspicious of Merlin, no matter how many times it was obvious there was something a bit different about Merlin or something not quite explainable about a situation? Because the magic in him recognised the magic in Merlin and didn’t find it at all threatening - in fact, it found a kindred spirit.

Maybe that’s why Arthur got so strange when he eventually found out about Merlin’s magic - some subconscious part of him always knew and was sad that it could have had a companion, a sidekick, all this time? (That and the frustration that “we could have done it together”).

And, you know, it’s not really totally human and non-magic to be “The Once and Future King Who Will Rise From the Dead”, is it???

But also, what if some part of Merlin / Merlin's magic knew. What if that's part of why Merlin is so attracted, so attached, so connected to Arthur, even just at a subconscious level?

Imagine if all this had been played out in the series. Imagine if we’d found out Arthur has magic.

Well. I’m rewatching the series right now, and I can’t un-see it, so it’s canon in my head now.

[bylrlve]

Warning! Spoilers for Stranger Things 5 mentioned,

Rewatching episode 2, and I’m genuinely staggered by how many times Mike peeks at Will. It’s very clear his mind is on Will, in fact. I am also staggered by just how many small byler details are in here.

His whole face drops after no. 4 too, as @starbylers observed here.

I also want to include these @chirpsythismorning gifs from the roller rink scene, as they’re brilliant:

Mike watching Will get out of the van, and seemingly offering a hand to him.

Mike openly watching Will as they take their skates.

(X) (X)

These are very deliberate acting choices from Finn Wolfhard, and he was certainly doing it on instruction.

Some other notes on 402:

The transition from Mike and El being fake -> Murray looking up looking like he’s experiencing his Seeing Clearly -> Robin talking about Vickie laughing ‘and not like a cheap, fake laugh, but a real, genuine laugh’, right after we saw Mike hiding his genuine disgust at burritos for breakfast behind a tone of fake laughter.

Mike’s whole face just drops into an unhappy, spaced-out espression when it zooms in on El - this is after Will ignored his sock joke (video here by @buckybxarnes)

As many have observed, Mike and El look genuinely miserable when viewed from Angela’s perspective, as opposed to the shot of them skating with Will miserable behind them

It’s occurred to me that in s2, 3, and 4, the byler plot really takes off in episode 2. I’m wondering if that’s also the case with s5 - I’ve reconsidered my theory that the Mike + El rooftop scene takes place after the hospital plot in ep 2, as I’ve heard that the paparazzi at the filming site were told it was in episode 1.

The door slam/open transition between Joyce going to the bank to get the 40k random for Hopper, utterly singleminded, and Mike barging into the womens’ bathroom, being kicked out, and subsequently starting an argy-bargy with Will as opposed to continuing to prioritise El… well!

The disparity in time is so interesting. El counts off 185 days since she last saw Mike - which is roughly six months, as is canon within the show (Sept-Oct 1985-March 1986). And here Mike is, saying ‘you knew she was having trouble for, like, a year’ and Will saying ‘it’s been a year, Mike’ and, in 404, Mike saying ‘the last year has been weird.’ It’s pretty obvious the last one is Mike referring to their fight nine months earlier, plus the time prior that Mike had spent pulling away from the rest of the Party to focus on El. The second one is Will potentially referencing the time that elapsed since their fight - even if it’s moreso subtext from the writers. What, then, to make of Mike saying Will knew El was having trouble for, like, a year? What subtext could be meant by this? I’d love to hear your guys’ thoughts because u can’t quite deduce this.

Mike listing off everything Will did is so hilarious given the surveillance he carried out all day on the boy, and given the fact that poor El being humiliated publicly and assaulted with liquid before she skated off bawling did not, apparently, ruin the day. On second thoughts, I understand what Will meant… she’s in trouble having Mike’s gay ass for a boyfriend.

What’s striking me now is that this fight + El’s iconic roller skate moment, are the real emotional climaxes of this episode’s M/E/W plot. It could have been Mike finding El and comforting her before she lashed out at Angela. It could have been him talking to her afterwards. It could have been at the house - him following her up to her room and silently comforting her until she fell asleep. No, no. Mike and Will airing out their grievances (and Mike betraying which of the two truly emotionally affects him more) + El handling her own shit, while Mike thoroughly disapproves.

The way that Will just wants to be Mike’s friend, but it’s Mike making it so deeply weird.

The way, also, that they stick together at the rink even after the fight, and Mike openly is more preoccupied by Will in the van. I’ve seen it observed before: the parallel between El and Will staring out the same window in the van crying: Mike looks at Will in the shot. He does not look at El in the shot.

I think it’s hilarious that Mike ends the fight by feigning concern for El - he offered her no comfort whatsoever, actively stood away from her when she was waiting for Jonathan and Argyle to arrive, ignored her crying in the van, and of course:

She didn’t look fine.

Mike and Will are blocked together, not Mike and El

The sincerity of Mike’s concern over El juxtaposed with the rank falseness of ‘no, that’s…that’s not true, maybe I was a little upset in the moment’ etc really sticks out - the defensiveness is reminiscent of the tone he took with Will during the fight, but even then he was more sincere-sounding because he was more emotionally affected.

Bylers don’t talk enough about the insanity of ‘who… who said that I didn’t?’ In context, thinking logically, Mike is very likely referring to Will here (the bullies were shouting at her, he could hear what they were saying)- and why would his mind immediately go to ‘Will thinks I don’t love El, and has told her his suspicions?’ Why would he take a defensive tone?

Seriously, 402-403 M/W/E may well be the plot that (potentially) spells out byler endgame the most.

[iamumbra195]

Random things that I've noticed in my Detective Conan rewatch (Episode 1- 123)

Ran started suspecting Shinichi in the 7th episode, figuring out that he was the one leading the police and her father to the suspects so while she might’ve not suspected him as Shinichi again until way later, she knew he was smart enough to figure out cases all on his own

Yusaku has a very particular way of writing his ‘K’s

Yusaku left a treasure hunt for Shinichi to find when he was older so he could find an old unpublished book that had been stolen from him at one point because he knew Shinichi loved reading his books and having this little privilege of reading it all when no one but Yusaku and his editors have was Yusaku’s way of showing his love

Sonoko has an older sister named Ayako Suzuki

Shiratori is an architecture nerd (Movie 1)

Shiota Heihachiro was Kogoro and Megure’s mentor, also known as the Japanese Holmes but he’s also just as shameless as Kogoro (Episode 67)

The Organization owns a bar named Black Widows (Great Detective Turned Small Special)

Heizo Hattori used to do Kendo with a friend of his, he likely encouraged Heiji to take part in it (Episode 77)

Shinichi doesn’t really care much for privacy when investigating stuff which includes going into people’s rooms when they’re not there, answering their phone and mimicking their voice to get information. Heiji even comments that he had a lot of guts (episode 78)

Heiji picked up calling Ran ‘Ran-neechan’ from Conan

Heiji is surprised when he finds out the Shinichi still hasn’t told the Mouri’s the truth about him shrinking because it’s kinda unthinkable to him. Why would Conan not trust the ppl he loved with this secret? It’s not like their knowing would hurt them because at least they would know what sort of danger they were in by housing him

Ayumi is super observant and tends to be the first to notice things they’re looking for quicker than the others, especially in the earlier cases

Takagi smokes in the early cases, though I can't remember if he does later on

Conan tended to trick people with his voice changer to get them to do what he wanted them to do

Shinichi can’t sing for shit but is really good at recognizing the pitch of sounds which is why he’s able to replicate voices so perfectly just by his ear

Takayama Minami (a singer) has a very similar voice to Conan and is a character based on his voice actor

Shinichi once found missing Lunch money in fourth grade when Ran lost it (episode 84)

Yukiko and Yusaku fight a lot but not in a serious sense. It’s more like Yukiko likes the drama and Yusaku just indulges it (Episode 96)

Before she got married Fujimine Yukiko (now Kudo Yukiko) used to act in a show known as the Dangerous Policewoman Story. Yamamura used to watch it when he was younger and was inspired to become a policeman because of it (episode 96)

Shinichi has abnormally good hearing (Episode 96)

The first time Megure ever properly accused Kogoro of being cursed was in Episode 98

Ran learns that Shinichi’s favourite food is lemon pie from his so-called first love, Asami Uchida (Episode 100)

Kobayashi Sumiko, the teacher of class 1-B was actually kinda strict and mean in her introduction, although that was mostly just her overcompensating (Episode 112)

The canonical show Detective Samonji was introduced in (Episode 116)

Kazuha introduced while thinking Ran was the “Kudo” girl seducing Heiji. She said she’s like Heiji’s big sister lol. (Episode 118)

Ran gave Conan a pager because he always disappears on her (Episode 123)

There might be a second part to this depending on how far I get in this rewatch. Have a nice day!

[akileiaa]

I rewatched Julie and the Phantoms today and I can’t believe how many years it has been since it came out. Like four and a half years?? Where has the time gone? Also I haven’t watched it in like four years, mostly because I’m so mad it got cancelled and also because I know it ends in a freaking cliffhanger that will never get resolved. But today I just got this need to rewatch it and so I did.

And I have to say, after almost five years, I still think it’s amazing. All the actors are so talented, the music is amazing and so are the costumes! It just so good and it breaks my heart that we don’t get know what would’ve happened next. I have so many questions and things I wanted to see.

I want to learn more about Alex and Reggie’s families. I want to see more Alex and Willie and learn more about Willie too. How did he end up with Caleb having his soul? Does he have any family? When did he die?

I also wonder if they would have tried to free Willie from Caleb in the next season. I wish Alex had gotten his own song to sing. Did Julie learn Alex is gay and met Willie?

Also what is the boys’ unfinished business? How did Julie free them from Caleb? Why and how can they touch each other now? What is Caleb planning with possessing Nick? Aaggghhh I have so many questions!!

Anyone know any good fics that are continuation of where the show left off?? Recs are very welcome!

I have many headcanons too. One is that Reggie is bi (but maybe hasn’t fully realised it yet) and Luke is bi or pan. Also I think Luke and Alex dated in the 1990s, but decided that they just worked better as friends (but obviously stayed really close and still love each other).

Also I’m not really sure if it’s canon or not, but I like the thought that Alex had allergies and stuff when he was alive and still, as a ghost, carries his old epipen and other stuff in his fanny pack.

So uh that’s all the thoughts I had about jatp right now.

[forestleavescat]

Took time to think on Moominvalley S4. it still feels bad

I’ve thought about Moominvalley season 4. Seen other people respond to it. I still don’t feel great. There was a great journey from S1-3. But this season sorta fell off. It felt like character development disappeared. And I’ve seen people say it wasn’t queerbaiting and I disagree. I mean, you gotta trust that a lot of people have dealt with it before. We know what it is. And the argument that snufmin never had a chance isn’t true. I was starved for moomin content between seasons and listened to the team discuss moominvalley. There were podcasts where they would chuckle and say that they were a little in love. They know the fanbase. The argument that it would never happen because they never stray from the original story isn’t true. Each version makes changes. And I don’t think that people can argue that they wouldn’t stray from the source material when the finale was what it was. They completely turned that story on its head. I wanted to come back to the topic because I decided to rewatch the earlier seasons. I saw some of the ‘it’s not queerbaiting. They were never more than friends’ posts and I started to think that it was true. That I read too much into it. And then I watched The Spring Tune. And just. no ??? Ain’t no way there wasn’t anything going on there. And previous iterations usually had some level of pining while not committing to a romantic development. There were 100% moments, but it wasn’t like moominvalley. If you don’t care for the ship. That’s fine. If you liked the final season that’s great. But don’t tell fans that they can’t be upset about how this was handled. Don’t tell them ‘well you set yourself up for disappointment’ or ‘did you really think that would happen.’ It’s like you’re telling people who are disappointed in this happening that they were just delusional about it?? A lot of people, whether new to the community or not find a sense of belonging in queer media. It’s something welcoming and friendly. Especially if you’re either trying to figure out your identity or find comfort in media that embraces similar identities. Maybe it’s fans that grew up with it and found a sense of comfort with the close and romantically ambiguous relationship between snufkin and moomin and when you start to watch moominvalley it really does seem like there’s a chance compared to other iterations. The creators seem to support this. They acknowledge it outright. It seems more possible than ever. Or you’re just getting into the moomins. The way this show explores their relationship early on is something that really did help people with their identities. And when a show seems like it’s heading there and then pulls back completely in the final season it sucks. And it makes it so much worse when people say ‘well duh, of course it wouldn’t have happened.’ And moominvalley felt even worse. Because the creators outright acknowledged it on multiple occasions while older examples of queerbaiting didn’t. The creators wrote what seemed to be gay ships but dropped it after securing money and views. But the team didn’t wink and nudge the way this team did. And just look at the Lonely Mountains. That episode was not only the largest step towards it being canon but it didn’t finish what it set up. Snufkin never did finish that chat that got interrupted. Which made it seem like something they’d likely save for the last season. If season 4 handled them exactly like season 3 without their relationship going farther that would still be an improvement. They lose all of that subtle ‘what are we’ closeness. You gotta know moomin fans live throughout the world. Shows that are explicit with that tend to get censored overseas. But it’s easier to get past that when there’s an implicit thing that other members of the lgbtq community would pick up. Then America in a time where laws are censoring gay stuff. I feel like it’s important to consider how important queer media is and to observe past instances of queerbaiting and why that’s as harmful as it is.

S4 felt like the July 1st of moominvalley to me. Just ‘okay we’re done no more gay’

[bucksboobs]

It's very funny because I rewatched the show during the hiatus and Buck has no problem with his name outside of his parents using it. Ali calls him Evan. He even tells Natalia that he wants her to get the full Evan Buckley experience.

At the end of the day they’re just pissed that Buck has someone outside his family that calls him Evan that isn’t Eddie because for 3 seasons it was just Eddie and that felt like it Meant Something to Certain Shippers (I was at the devil’s sacrament. I know.) but the show picked up that a Love Interest having exclusive Evan Privileges would be an interesting way to distinguish them and so they did that for Tommy. If Tim hadn’t backtracked with that out of nowhere breakup, that Evan thing would set Tommy as The One as long as he kept saying it and they hated that. Because only Eddie can be the one, what about The Greatest Slow Burn of All Time? What about the Magnet Men? What about The Couches? The lasagna? If Eddie isn’t the only one outside the family that can call Buck “Evan” then it might mean that the show isn’t heading inexorably towards the foregone conclusion of Buddie and is being written as it goes and they can’t have that so actually Tommy calling Buck “Evan” is Bad Actually.

It really all comes back to the fact that Tommy is/was a real threat to Buddie canon, which is incidentally why every Buddie shipper was super cool with Tommy for as long as they though he would gently guide Buck into Eddie’s arms and once it became obvious that he was his own person with his own relationship to Buck, they turned on him in the span of a day (May 30th, aka the day 7x10 aired)

[nectarinesinthesun444]

Ok I just rewatched dps and I NEED to yap (a review basically)

Neil was in love with Todd there’s no way around it and he realised that when Todd did the poem in front of the class, and I also do not buy the idea that it was only acting that drove him to suicide, it just doesn’t add up and it falls flat. I can feel his emotions I can see it in his eyes during those arguments about the play with mr perry there’s was more to it!!!! he knew that there was just this one other thing about himself that he couldn’t let anyone in on.

He had so much love and passion for the world around him, for Todd, for acting, for Charlie, for Mr Keating, for poetry, all these things were taken away from him. On that night in his small world there was no way out other than death. And who knows he may have also been thinking that the more and longer he lives his homosexuality may be found out by Mr Perry and that would be his final straw. There was sooo much he was scared of risking he couldn’t go on.

In another lifetime he had another chance but horrifically not in this life.

And about my theories and beliefs on what happened to Todd post canon

I believe Todd stayed close with Charlie because they were closest to Neil and they bonded over that, I think in the early days of Neil’s passing they wrote letters to each other. We also know from Gale Hansen that Charlie became involved in the hippie scene/civil rights/lgbt rights etc which obviously includes poetry so I believe him and Todd were pretty close at this time in the mid late 60s and 70s and so on.

Todd SO found happiness and love and beauty in his life moving forward, those months with Neil in Welton changed his life forever and it made him realise so much about himself. I think that he definitely published poetry books and maybe even a memoir? I also do believe he was in love with Neil but only realised years later while reflecting on his life.

I also headcanon that Todd stayed in contact as much as he was able to with Mr Keating. And it’s also canon that Todd became an English teacher because of the sequel that never happened because of the unavailability of other actors so there’s that.

Todd had so much passion and energy inside of him and Neil helped him with that, and after his death he committed to being passionate about life and poetry, never forgetting the light in his life that was the Dead Poets Society and Neil. Because of the deleted scene that was meant to be intercut with Neil’s suicide where Todd recites his poem he was writing the entire film, we know that he was forever inspired and had confidence inside of him and Todd Anderson is a blessing to this world. Never Forget.

Neil is also a blessing to this earth and only in another life would he have had his name in lights performing in plays till his hearts content, basking in love and PASSION and the arts, rebelling and doing everything Mr Perry wouldn’t want him to do.

And now onto the beloved Charlie FUCKING DALTON because I can’t not talk about this man forgive me

He’s so more complex than just the funny guy and he lives for his friends, he’s so incredibly loyal and loving even though it’s hard for him to show the full range of his emotions, only when Neil died he felt like he could actually cry and be vulnerable

This book exerpt is also important to his character and I wish it was in the film because it shows that underneath his flamboyant funny persona he felt empty. He didn’t know who he really was, what he wanted out of life. Always searching for adrenaline and excitement by taking risks, but outside of his friends, where was the real passion? What did his heart belong to? what was his thing? It seemed like everyone else had a thing that they loved and had true passion for but who was the real Charlie Dalton?

I believe Charlie found himself more in the late 60s as he found freedom and love in the counter culture of the time, getting involved in left wing political movements, connecting with Todd in ways he couldn’t as more emotionally closed off teenagers. They shared their grief together in the end and found happiness in so many places. Supporting Todd at his live poetry events with the other remaining poets aswell.

Also in the scene right after Charlie is punished because of the phone call from god prank, and he stumbles out of Nolan’s office in indescribable pain still trying to play it cool

What I’m trying to get at here is when Neil talks to him in the doorway of Charlie’s dorm. Charlie is facing away and he doesn’t want to be seen crying. He forces a smile and says “Damn it Neil, the name’s Nuwanda.” and this line is quoted in a funny way a lot but if we pick it apart, it shows that he tries to make light of almost every situation. He struggles to face the pain, for other people to see him in distress and he still has to make a joke.

Going back into this film I was nervous that I would get almost sick of the film because of watching it so many times but the opposite has happened. It’s sadder every time and I have so much love in my heart for these three characters and I know Todd and Charlie find joy after this traumatic event. Neil gave himself eternal sleep and peace away from this sick, dark and conservative world who don’t want to see people like him thrive. And I’m not religious but I know he was looking down on Todd and was so happy for him and all he’s accomplished.

I’m gonna end this by saying Todd Anderson is autistic

[lissa612]

I’ve been binging 9-1-1 Lonestar and I just got to the point where I stopped binging before (and when I watched it before, it was mostly while doing other things). Someone on the main Reddit sub made a comparison between Tarlos and Tevan (I’m trying this out because it is nicer flowing than bucktommy) that I viscerally disagreed with but didn’t have the specific memories to debate in detail (Spoiler alert: It was a truly bad thesis with little to no actual canon support).

Anyway, I’m realizing how the general audience who doesn’t rewatch and discuss the OG show experience it because I remember ~things about the show without a lot of context.

The general audience isn’t expected to remember any specifics of what Tommy did in the Begins episodes. Perhaps some might remember feeling a certain way about some things (like I held annoyance with TK’s character for pushing Carlos even if I remembered nothing about the context), but it’s an insignificant distant memory for a GA member. They likely might remember it being bad as a whole, but most of what they’ll know about it will come from how Gerard behaves now and how people talk about it. After Chim smiling about how cool Tommy is and HenRen getting all giggly about Buck and Tommy’s appearance at the hospital and the Bathena rescue, anyone not being supportive of the relationship would seem out of place. A forced in apology that some people seem to want to see would be awkward. It would even be weird to have Buck and Tommy discuss the specifics of what happened back then unless the premiere picks up right where the finale left off - Why would it take weeks/months to come up?

Anyway, I’m so excited for S8 to start. I really want to know where they’re going with everything they left us with. I feel bad for people who have certain expectations tho because the show isn’t made for those of us that dissect it…It can’t actually be that deep because that’s just not how the genre works. But I hope they can enjoy what we are given and run with it in fandom to make what they want to see happen real for them.

[scoobydoodean]

How did, you think, the perception of Dean come to be so twisted/different from what is actually shown to us? Like some things I can see people just not bothering to look past superficial instances (The “no chic flick moment” thing, assuming that him not having Sam’s level of formal education means he’s automatically unintelligent because people assume that irl, for example) but others (Him being emotionally constipated in fandom but genuinely one of the most introspective and emotionally intelligent characters in canon, making him a slob/a bigot/an abuser, or someone that only hunts for the thrill of the kill) just… I can’t even begin to understand and it’s so homogeneous in the Fanon Mindset too.

I honestly do think a lot of these relate to Sam in an interesting way. A lot of narratives about Dean are in "contrast" to Sam. Sam is smart, Dean is dumb. Sam is introspective and emotionally intelligent, Dean is repressed. Dean is a slob, Sam is neat. We get many of these ideas from or through Sam.

Sam sometimes makes digs at Dean's intelligence (though he's far from the only one—even Dean himself is guilty of it) and people just kind of buy into that and regurgitate it despite the many examples we get to the contrary. In fact (and I wish I had tracked this in particular over this rewatch but I noticed how often it was happening pretty late) Dean is often referred to as dim-witted right before or right after displaying exactly how brilliant he is.

I think a lot of the idea that Dean is emotionally closed off also heavily comes down to Sam... because Sam is often the person asking demanding Dean open up, and when Dean refuses to open up to Sam, and Sam starts spouting off pop psychology talk about it not being good to "bury your emotions" or whatever... people buy into what's being sold to them... by Sam. Sam is selling a story that HE is emotionally healthy, but Dean is NOT emotionally healthy, and the details of what is upsetting Dean need to be pried out of him for his own good. When the truth is, 1) in many cases, what we are actually seeing is Sam being pushy and not respecting Dean's boundaries 2) many of these instances show Sam urging Dean to open up to him as a proxy for his OWN feelings that HE is avoiding (ex: 2.02, 5.11, 13.04) 3) other instances demonstrate that he is a poor confidant for Dean who is best avoided because he will harm Dean using what Dean's opened up to him about (ex: 2.09/2.11, 4.08/4.14/4.18/4.21, 6.02, 13.04). 4) Other episodes simply demonstrate that Sam is not always a preferred confidant because of their upbringing or whatever other reason but is still willing to be vulnerable with others (even if spurned by them too) (ex: 2.03, 3.10, 3.16, 4.15, 4.16, 4.22, 5.07, 6.02, 6.06, 7.04, ). And even then... Dean still opens up to Sam quite a lot! (ex: 1.16, 1.18, 1.22, 2.03, 2.09, 2.20, 4.10, 4.11, ... I'm losing steam here but you get the idea).

One of the reasons this happens I think is actually a lack of interest in Sam. Because many fans don't spend a lot of time analyzing Sam, they tend to vaguely grasp who he is based on how he talks. Then the issue multiplies when they use him as a self-insert in a fanfic instead of characterizing him as he is in the show, using him to tell Dean or Cas things the author wants them to hear, or to act as a confidant. That further lends to this belief that Sam is some High EQ Therapist Lite type who is endlessly sensitive and vulnerable and Dean is uniquely in need of Someone To Help Him Get His Shit Together.

The idea that Dean is a slob I give people a little more grace with, because I think it likely comes about more honestly through how Dean eats—and this is one area where Dean absolutely is not neat. He tends to ignore manners when eating, and I think a lot of people extrapolate from "Dean doesn't care about table manners" -> "Dean is a slob". Dean actually having some issues with germs at times is something members of the writing team have messed up before. It might also be related to Sam's weird perception of manners surrounding food (i.e., not eating food in other people's houses even when it's offered to him for some reason) and people associating his overemphasis on that with "neatness" in contrast to Dean.

Another angle here is probably classism rearing it's ugly head. Because Dean has less formal education than Sam, he has to be a slob, and he has to be emotionally closed off, and he must be a bigot, and etc etc etc.

The reasons some people insist on Dean being a bigot or an abuser are more nebulous (many forms of bigotry may be under discussion, many moments might be chosen as "proof" of one thing or another and that may require some more individual attention). In a broad sense, it's sometimes classism at work here. However, a lot of these ideas persist through certain metas passed around by people who already don't like Dean. Many of them developed a dislike for Dean early on and will always choose interpretations of various events that cast him in the worst light based on their first impression, whether their interpretation is all that reasonable or not. I mean, I could go around saying Sam idolizes a known pedophile and is afraid of people with certain disabilities because he's ableist, and I could insist his interactions with Madison in "Heart" are intentionally written to tell us that Sam is an absolute creep who takes advantage of vulnerable women, but if the goal is to analyze the show in good faith, my analysis ends up being more charitable as I dismiss some of these things as Writer Crimes or things that maybe I wasn't intended to take so seriously or things that are a product of their time. Of course we also all know that some Sam and Cas fans love to shit on Dean for doing the same shit their fave did. That does sometimes leave me wondering if people's selective memory on Sam and/or Cas is more of the issue than their selective memory on Dean, but I also think because Supernatural is so long, and there is SO much fanon content, a lot of people's views on the characters are based around fanon/fanfiction they read in ways they simply don't realize, and that ignorance persists and strengthens as memories of the actual source material become more hazy.

NOTE: I know you know this—but for others: I track some of these things in the following tags:

#my smart bby

#dean and introspection

#bad therapist sam

#dean and cleanliness

#dean minimizations

[starryinkart]

Hey so a bit of a possible crack theory:

So in the show, we’ve gotten three solver colors already, Red, which stands for Doll, Purple which stands for Uzi/Nori, Yellow which stands for the solver/CYN. But here’s something ALOT of people seemed to miss. After you rewatch the Season 1 trailer, you realize:

There’s a blue solver, most likely a blue solver holder. Hidden right before the infamous yellow of the solver we’ve come to know in the show.

If you watch the trailer, you also notice something else. Right before this symbol quickly shows up, we have a dialogue from N, running away from Uzi from the scene at the end of episode 2 and then him sitting in front of V being sad. But if you listen to that dialogue:

He says “We can’t be around the workers anymore V, we’re too dangerous…”

He eventually begins to hang around them again, but to me this line with the imagery is super important. We know from the most recent episode 7/8 teaser that N is the actual leader of the squad, most likely the strongest and most likely protected by CYN with her admin right before she was completely lost by the solver.

Through out the show, we see him confused at his own power at points, like in episode 4 when he shoots the arrow through another and catches them on fire, cracking the arrow board, proceeding to say:

“Did I do that?” All confused.

N obviously doesn’t know how powerful he is at all, but what if and hear me out, it’s not ONLY because he’s a Disassembly Drone?

We know that CYN blocked the solver from having access to him, V and J to most likely protect them from the fate the solver has for drones who are infected. She didn’t want the same thing happening to N, her brother, who she loved and his friends which he cared about and most likely she cared about before she was taken over completely.

But now, Uzi has unblocked them from being protected from the CYNs admin, which was presumably protecting the squad from the affects of possibly getting the solver, (under the assumption CYN was bad in general) by becoming their administrator. If Uzi is their admin, and she gets taken over by the solver in general, that means that her admin code basically becomes useless to protecting N and the others from being infected too. And remember Tessa found them in the dump and repaired them as well, like CYN so they have a high chance of contracting the solver since they were also disposed of incorrectly.

So here comes the point of this picture that was released as a teaser yesterday:

It’s N, looking down, whether at something or just on the verge of having a breakdown and losing it we are uncertain, but from the posture, the balled fists, he does NOT look okay at all.

The first thing yours eyes are drawn to are the building split in half in front of him, the exoplanets in the sky and N. But, on a more closer look, you see two things:

1. The snow flakes on the bottom left have a ominous blue tint to them, which should only happen if blue light is reflecting off of them…

2. If you didn’t notice on the first look, N has the same blue light, coming from right in front of him. Perhaps maybe the same color as this blue solver symbol we have yet to see with some weird lines and curves jutting out from the sides…

At first, I thought Khan would be the blue solver holder at the beginning of the series, being a surprise twist for him to have activated in him he was so afraid of due to him possibly seeing it with his wife Nori. Honestly while that would’ve been cool, episode 5 debunked this possibility, since Khan was flung out of the room by Doll when she was attempting to get the cyber bug from Uzi. Solver owners can’t effect other solver holders as proven from the series, it can only use items around them to throw or hurt them.

We haven’t seen N be affect by the solver once in the present time or in the flashback of episode 5.

Now I do know the merch video came out today, but it was stated in the video that

1. “It was totally not canonical to the series what so ever” which I HIGHLY doubt. Most of the merch and videos we have seen have been canon and it seems as though the characters have been pulled aside between episodes to “film” these fourth wall breaks.

2. The fact that the title of the video “N’s Final Form” and the thumbnail are most likely not just a joke. Notice his acrylic stand teaser from V’s acrylic stand released recently:

When I first saw this, it looked SUPER weird. Me and my significant other said it looked like N and we thought the two things in the foreground of his body were his wings, meaning he was looking away from the viewer of the stand.

But then we looked closer and I started looking at my King Solver N design you can find in the murder drones link in my FAQ and we drew a more accurate picture of what we were seeing. N was not looking away from the viewer, all the characters are looking at us, and it would be weird to have N be different. So this is what we came up with:

W stands for his wings, T stands for where his tail is, L stands for his legs, F stands for his face and H stands for his hands.

His hands look a-little weird don’t they?

Remember this:

It was mentioned some where on Tumblr that this looks similar to the cocoon that Uzi broke out of in Episode 4 when she transformed into her solver form only N is being dragged in. This is obviously a biomechanical phenomenon of the solver. But why is he being dragged in?

To have his “final transformation” , a “final form” you may say?

The only thing is, after Uzis transformation, is when the solver really started to gain power over her, taking control of her as seen in Episode 4 and recently in Episode 6. As soon as she became biomechanical, the solver gained more control over her.

(Edit: sO this cocoon theory was wrong, but his emotions can still spill over and cause this!!! So its not fully wrong yet!)

Now think of the scene above and what happened to Uzi in Episode 4, but with N. N gets dragged into this cocoon, fighting but not able to escape, while Uzi is fighting inside her mind with the real solver, posing as CYN in the mansion as Uzi is trying not to lose her mind. While she’s stuck, N has his transformation, now not able to be protected by CYNs administration since Uzi is now the administrator of him and V, so he undergoes the transition, the solver not having much to fight against converting him to a biomechanical creature like Uzi. This gives it more power over N, and gives it a chance to take advantage of the situation to bury itself into N’s code, making his solver string: true. Now N has the same thing inside him that has possibly taken everything from him.

After this, he either gets possessed fully and goes on a rampage or the possession is slow, painful after he manages to escape the cocoon and get to the surface. Either by this point Uzi is still fighting in her head and N thinks she’s fully gone or dead OR she has successfully fought the solver and is looking for N. All his repressed emotions, everything that has happened, everything he’s lost…it’s all become too much. He snaps, lashing out on whatever is in front of him, this being the building we see in half in the teaser from yesterday. Before he can stop himself, he angrily swings toward the building, but instead of a sword, his gun or his claws coming out, there is this fleshy, gross growth that emerges, a blue solver symbol appearing in front of him and shooting towards the building, snapping it in half like a toothpick.

There is a moment of either him stopping in pure panic due to this OR his panic, sadness and fear turns into full on anger, him not able to repress anything anymore, taking a turn into a full on uncontrollable breakdown. The reason he had to repress his emotions for all this time, for fear of lashing out and hurting the ones he cares for. But now, as far as he knows, no one is left to care for. After all in the merch teaser today Uzi said really sarcastically:

“You’re meant to be better than us! Don’t become swallowed by the darkness/animal based merchandise (murders) like I have!”

And

“HIS EMOTIONS… CAN NOT BE CONTAINED!”

(which can be very much true)

This could end in either him being used by the solver as a host or Uzi coming back to help him and in turn as he said in the teaser:

“Okay I’m back! I’m better and it’s even deeper down now….haha! “ (basically his repressed emotions being repressed further for an even worst breakdown in a season 2)

That’s one turn it could take, but another could he that when he stops from pure panic due to what he’s become, similar to Uzi, and in the merch trailer today, and realizes he can use his newfound powers to save the ones he loves that are either left alive or find another way to fix what has happened.

(Someone mentioned on here that N’s solver powers could be similar to Time-travel to places he’s been to in the past, (like Dolls in teleportation to only places she has seen and Uzi doesn’t really have one yet, she’s not that far along in development of her solver) to go back and correct what mistakes he has made, fixing the timeline and THAT would be super cool if he does think he has lost everything or really has. If it ever find it on here again, I will tag it.)

Sorry this was SO LONG, but basically, N will have the blue solver due to the final two episodes and he will get a transformation like Uzis, having him grasp the thing that has basically ruined his life several times over being apart of him now, having to use it to save his loved ones. All the while not having a mental breakdown or angry blowup and losing control of his powers. So basically affecting the story and his choices greatly.

[stinkw333d]

Episode title analysis

Not full episode analysis, literally just the titles. Since I googled what Sic Transit Gloria Mundi meant, I've paid more attention to the titles of the other episodes and what they tell us about the actual events of the episode, or vice versa. I'm mostly going crazy waiting for S3 and have rewatched this show, no joke, more times than I could probably count in the past two months. I have to put my thoughts somewhere. This is also just S1, I’ll probably analyze/post S2 tomorrow regardless of if this is interesting to anyone besides me.

 Pilot

- The literal pilot episode, doesn’t really count

- I guess there are pilots in the episode? (RIP pilot Robert, pilot Fred, and flight attendant Janet)

F- Sharp

- I do always enjoy when episode titles are just lines in the episode

- The juicy bit is that christian worship music is traditionally played in the key of F. Laura Lee wasn’t just having a regular piano lesson, she was probably practicing hymnals. 

- Laura Lee I’ll never forget you, no wonder your christian ass thought you caused the plane crash because you called your christian piano teacher a cunt in your head

The Dollhouse

-Not a line from the episode, though it is the episode where they find the cabin, and they’re all girls. Girl = doll, cabin = house? 

-Also reminds my girlfriend of a song from hairspray, “there's no food left in the big dollhouse!”

Bear Down

- Another ‘line from the episode’ title, Misty says it to Coach Ben while she’s propping him up to take a shit

- Also a double meaning of sorts. At this point it’s sinking in with everyone that they might not be rescued as soon as they think, and they have to simply “bear down” and assume their survivalist roles (Nat as hunter, Shauna as butcher, etc.) 

Blood Hive

- Line from the episode; “That cabin is like, the blood hive,” Travis to Nat

- This is maybe the most literal title besides Doomcoming. Everyone is stranded in a cabin (or hive, because they’re the Yellowjackets) together, on their synchronized periods. 

- Could double up with Lottie’s creepy french blood speech at the end of the seance. “It wants blood,” and the yellowjackets, in their hive, will provide. 

Saints

- We start seeing Lottie having hallucinations, and go to Laura Lee for spiritual advice. Laura Lee baptizes Lottie, and explains the visions of flames as “the holy spirit, you’ve been touched!” 

- In Catholicism, it is said that people canonized as saints have lived lives fully guided by the holy spirit. You could say that in this moment Laura Lee sees Lottie as a saint, as much as you could say the opposite. 

-Laura Lee knows what the bible says about visions, and “the lord working in mysterious ways,” and as far as she knows, Lottie just saw God; she was chosen specifically by the holy spirit.

-If Shauna thought she was annoyed by just Lottie’s woo woo bullshit over her baby, imagine if Laura Lee were still alive during her pregnancy. Van and Mari and Akilah all have faith in Lottie, but Laura Lee knows how to worship. 

- The opposite could be said, in that Lottie is having visions that she can’t explain, and Laura Lee gives her any explanation at all as to what’s happening. Lottie could just as well be envisioning Laura Lee as saintlike, in her own understanding, as Laura Lee is able to give spiritual explanations to what she’s seeing. 

No Compass

- Mostly literal, Tai has lost hope of rescue, and plans to blindly head south

- They do have the compass, it stops working, and with as little of a plan as they had, it probably wouldn’t have made much of a difference if they had the compass or not. 

-Also a metaphor for the internal, Tai even says at one point that she doesn't know what to do, but they can’t just do nothing- no one has any sense of what the right move could be 

Flight of The Bumblebee

- I was hoping for an F-sharp connection, as this is the last scene we get with Laura Lee while she’s alive, but there’s a noticeable lack of the F note in general in the song Flight of The Bumblebee

- Obviously Laura Lee does take flight, and we all know how it goes. I do also enjoy the thought of Laura Lee being a bumblebee among the yellowjackets. She’s part of the team, but there’s a gentleness in her that comes from her faith, that the rest of the yellowjackets just don’t understand. 

Doomcoming

- I mean, it’s Doomcoming bitch! 

- Literal title, iykyk

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

- The episode title that made me want to do this in the first place

-Literally translates to, “Thus passes, the glory of the world,” or more simply, “Fame is fleeting.” 

- The episode title alone spoils Jackie’s death, if you’re well versed in Latin.

-Pre- crash, Jackie was the glory of the team. She was their captain, their leader. In the simplest terms, the most famous of the team.

-The light had clearly gone out in Jackie at this point, she knew she wasn’t cut out for off the grid survival, and she was passively suicidal. She saw that her fame did no good for her out in the wilderness, and she knew everyone else was seeing it too.

- Obviously can be framed in a Jackie/Shauna way. Jackie was the light, the glory, of Shauna’s world, full stop. I don’t think Shauna is a negative person because of the wilderness. I think she went into the wilderness and it certainly exacerbated the issue, but she had a glass-half-full view of the world already. Jackie was the positive one, the comedy to her tragedy. 

- Adult Shauna mentions looking at the world as if all the light has gone out of it; Jackie’s mother toasts her, “your light shone too bright to be extinguished from our memories.” I’m clearly using light synonymously with glory here, which isn't quite grammatically correct, but it is correct in reference to Jackie Taylor. When she dies, her light, the glory she provides, is taken from the world, (And most importantly, from Shauna’s world.)

[faerlygraceful]

So I rewatched all of the “Begins” episodes last night and it only managed to cement my head canons about Tommy, which began forming after we saw him again.

Of course I don’t know if they thought this was going to be where the character ended up when they filled the firehouse back in season 2. I don’t know what Lou thought about his character. I don’t know what the intentions were. What I am doing (since this is my head canon), is taking new knowledge and using it to recategorize previous interactions. I’m queer, it’s what we all do.

So I’m going to share my analysis with all of y’all cause this is the internet, and I’m allowed.

Spoilers for… well everything.

Tommy is one of the three characters who shows up in all three Begins episodes, the other two being Athena and Sal DeLuca. His first appearance in the show is Hen Begins, but as we know Chimney Begins is chronologically first, so we’re starting there.

Chimney Begins

1) We first see Tommy when probie Howie walks in. He doesn’t seem to notice that Howie is a probie, asking who didn’t tip the takeout guy. Gerrard quickly takes the role of antagonist, and that’s when we move on.

2) At one point when they’re coming back from a call after Howie has been there a while, Tommy says, in a surprised tone, “You’re still here?” I think this is less of a, “You don’t belong here,” and more of a, “You’ve been here for weeks/months and haven’t been out once, I would have quit, why haven’t you?”

3) While man behind, Howie helps a guy who was having indigestion and a panic attack at the same time. When the rest get back, Howie tries to bond with them over the call, but is ignored. They are talking about takeout options and Gerrard asks Tommy, when his girlfriend is supposed to come in and cook. Tommy sounds extremely contained during this interaction, gives a a day, and when pressed he stammers and promises. The conversation fades off so we don’t hear what he promises, but he didn’t seem all that enthusiastic about his girlfriend coming in.

- Now this is where we really start getting into my hcs. Either Tommy is bi (which we’ll hopefully find out tomorrow) or he’s closeted. The tightness in his voice (which is all we have to go on because the camera is focused on the POV character), tells me that he’s extremely uncomfortable with the interaction. He’s been put on the spot, and he doesn’t like it. I think the girlfriend is either a) a friend he’s brought by the house once and everyone inferred or b) someone he manufactured in order to get out of team events ie, “Oh I can’t go out tonight, my girl is cooking.” He is uncomfortable with what his boss (a confirmed bigot) is asking for, and the man is pressuring him to produce his beard. If she was actually his girlfriend and Tommy is also bisexual, it could just be that’s he’s uncomfortable exposing her to the environment that the 118 is at that point.

4) Howie starts to try and broach the barriers between himself and the other firefighters, only to be rebuked. At one point he corners Tommy in the locker room, and starts naming off all these topics, stating, “Tell me what your thing is and I’ll make it mine.” Talking about his formidable people skills and asking if that means Tommy just didn’t like him that much.

Tommy tells him, “If I thought about you at all, I probably wouldn’t.” Which tells me that Tommy has already built his mask, his persona, and since the others don’t try to look beyond the surface he’s able to maintain it, but he can’t afford to let anyone in. He can’t think about the new guy on the squad, he’s too busy making sure Gerrard doesn’t find out about his closet. That would be just another person to have to hide from anyway.

This is when Howie gets pulled for the ambulance. Eli tells him that it’s not personal, because friends die and funerals are held. Which makes me also think that Howie stepped into the shoes of a firefighter who died. Maybe one who Tommy was particularly close to? Eli goes on to call Howie a puppy who doesn’t get a name until they know it’s gonna come through.

The next thing that happens is Kevin Lee’s death. Which is incredibly sad and is a big part of how Howie develops as a firefighter, but this meta is Tommy focused so moving on.

5) The garage collapse at the mall, and Tommy almost dies. More to it, Howie saved him. So Tommy decides to share some things with Howie. “Love Actually, monster trucks, and craft beer”. Maybe not a coming out story, but he did declare that one of his favorite movies is a rom com. It’s a start.

Hen Begins

1) Tommy is first seen when Hen walks into the house. He’s comes up to the railing after Gerrard calls for everyone and is positioned between the captain and DeLuca. Now it’s my personal opinion that DeLuca is an ass and that’s backed up by these episodes but even Hen defends him in Bobby Begins Again, and that started with this episode. But again, we’re not here to get into Sal DeLuca’s headspace, this is about Tommy. When Gerrard calls Hen an “diversity” hire, we see Tommy looking very uncomfortable, and Sal is the one to take up some of Captain’s dirty work for him (“For real?”). This is the episode where I truly see Tommy as “falling in line” with the captain. He’s opened up a little to Howie (no nickname yet), a little more inclined to joke, but still is holding these boundaries.

2) DeLuca talks about taking his girl to see some vampire movie and Tommy immediately knows it’s Twilight. DeLuca talks about how he likes Kristen Stewart (with Hen agreeing) before saying something about getting behind that, which makes Hen uncomfortable. (According to this, it would put it in 2008, which means she’s a paramedic for ten years prior to Buck joining which I hate. All those movies came out rather fast but could all be classified as “Twilight” so it was probably at least Eclipse in 2010 especially with the references made…. But then we start to go into how much I hate this timeline because nothing makes sense ever) Tommy talks about how he doesn’t understand the attraction to KS because she’s too… (Sal puts in hot here) broody, and Sal asks him if that means he’s Team Jacob (which is what makes me think it’s at least during Eclipse, I don’t see DeLuca being a Twi-Hard, and so his frame of reference would be movie based), and when Tommy acts confused (not sure if an act or not, he knew what Twilight was, but that doesn’t mean he knows about Team Edward vs Team Jacob), Chimney confirms that he’s implying that Tommy is gay. You. See. Him. Freeze. There is a few seconds where Tommy freezes in place like he’s processing before he makes a joke, blowing a kiss at Sal before laughing. Gerrard puts a stop to the conversation, and Hen takes a seat.

— Remember when Tommy has buried himself in the closet? What happened when someone rattles the door with a gay joke? One where it’s being implied that you are gay? When you’re bigot of a boss is sitting not five feet from you at the same table? You freeze to not immediately deny the accusation in a way that would make you look sus, and then you make a joke out of it. It hurts, so much.

———-Ah shit I’m going to timeline this———

From what we know, Tommy was in the army as a pilot. For Timeline purposes we’re going to assume that Eli leaving is the reason Hen went to the 118. During her med student arc it talks about how she was a paramedic for 10 years, so 2012 makes sense there. It doesn’t make sense with other thing’s because in Lonestar’s Hold the Line (2021 would make this make sense), Hen tells Owen that Denny is 10 and she and Karen and her were married for 8 years, (Same sex marriage has only been legal in CA since 2013). Bobby was their captain for a year in Worst Day Ever, they had a captain parade for two years (six captains) and before that they had a someone who was cleaning up after Gerrard. Also Hen and Karen were freshly back together when DADT was repealed. That makes Denny a baby on September 20th of 2011.

Enlistment periods are 8 years but that’s a mix of active and inactive duty. If Tommy signed up out of high school (18), was an active duty pilot for 6 years (24) and then moved to the reserves for the remaining two while he became a firefighter, it means he could have been a firefighter for two years longer than Hen or Chimney while being less than 10 years older than Buck.

Now none of this helps in placing where these episodes fall in the timeline, but I would say that Bobby’s first day falls about a year before the pilot, and Chimney Begins and Hen Begins butt right up together. Also I have no more information on Eli and how long he stayed after training Chim, and I probably never will because I cannot watch Boston.

More timeline BS. Hen and Karen had to have gotten together during the captain parade because Gerrard would not have let her on a call where she got hurt enough that Chim would make the call to Karen.

——————— Timeline bs over ——————

3) Tommy asks about how “New York bitchiness” could be a compliment after Howie mentioning that she has an East coast vibe, and Hen thanks him for the compliment. And then Howie makes it seem like Tommy’s calling her bitchy, but I don’t see it that way. What’s more likely is that’s the only vibe he knows from the east coast, so when Howie suggests she has it, he’s like, wait you think that’s a compliment? Howie treats it like Tommy’s calling Hen a bitch, but it honestly didn’t come off that way, more like Tommy trying to clarify that Howie wasn’t calling Hen a bitch by saying she has an “East Coast Vibe”. Anyway this conversation quickly devolves in Gerrard being a misogynist, and Tommy and DeLuca quickly scamper off.

4) Not Tommy related, but we do have someone with insight into being an openly gay firefighter now. Casey with the 115. He says that they knew he was gay from the moment he walked in, and it didn’t matter that he was the strongest guy in the firehouse. Here we have proof that it doesn’t matter your qualifications, if you’re perceived as gay, you’re automatically singled out. He said it was so hard that he was told to quit and find a new dream by his partner. Now, there is a red flag about your SO tellingly you to give up your dreams, but can you imagine how bad it would have been for the boyfriend to get to that point? The person you care about coming home every night defeated and downtrodden over something that’s supposed to be his dream? The ease in which Casey shed the boyfriend makes me think that they weren’t together long enough to earn those privileges, but the job also gets a red flag for being so bad that you’d advise your short term boyfriend to quit.

5) Hen’s speech. During this we don’t see him often, because he’s off to the side. The camera is more focused on Gerrard, DeLuca and Howie for the most part. But he does seem very closed off, when you do see him, his arms crossed, not standing defensively or challengingly like DeLuca, but like he’s trying to shrink. Actually it kind of reminds me of another queer firefighter that we all know.

6) We don’t get to see much more of the reactions because we go immediately into a call where a party limo crashed into a flower truck. Which we only know about because Hen went looking for it, saving the life of a little boy. Tommy tells her good job, that they would have discovered the secondary wreck eventually but that it would have been too late. She also has now earned Sal’s respect.

7) When they get back the Chief is there. Now remember, she gave her speech, they went out, they come back out and Gerrard is being removed. Nothing that happened on that call or involving her speech has anything to do with this. She thinks she’s being fired, that Gerrard called while heading to or back from the scene to have her removed, but that’s not the case. Her speech wasn’t actually necessary because everyone was already complaining about how Gerrard treated her. They even talk about someone who compared Gerrard and his behavior to hemorrhoids. Which I’m not saying could be from the army pilot who was probably deployed and had to undergo long-term constipation or diarrhea, but it could be.

Now all in all, there nothing really bad about Tommy’s behavior that we’ve seen. He doesn’t approach Hen, but we’ve seen from her interactions with Howie that she barely accepts his overtures of friendship in the beginning, and Tommy is much more closed off, remembering how he only opened up to Howie after he saved his life. He also doesn’t stand up for Hen to the captain’s face, but as an Army guy, he follows the chain of command. Doesn’t mean he won’t file one or two or three complaints through the proper channels. He just can’t afford to put himself in Gerrard’s crosshairs, can’t afford to undergo his scrutiny.

Bobby Begins Again

1) Hen has started a betting pool on the newest captain. Over under is 6 weeks, making me think that that’s the least amount of time a Captain stayed (about a month and a half and if they had 6 captains in 2 years that’s an average of 4 months). Tommy gives Nash a month and has to run to the ATM. DeLuca is obviously the main antagonizer, it sounds like he wanted the 118 and was denied (Also ABC, maybe bring him back ala Billy Tyson? Might be fun.).

2) Tommy has never worked on a farm, or dealt with toddlers. Cause he was floundering and falling all over himself when trying to catch Maurice the rooster. All in all these calls don’t show much. Tommy follows Bobby’s instructions, even though part of time he’s just parroting what Sal says, no arguments. Adds further credibility to the fact that he follows chain of command. It doesn’t matter that this guys only going to last a month, he’s my captain now.

3) During the Guillermo’s fire, Sal breaks rank to save the kid (which considering who that kid grows up to be, it sucks that he was successful). But when Bobby takes him to task for endangering them all, Sal doubles down. I thought I was paying attention during this scene, but it’s hard with the yelling. At least two people try to get him to cool it, one of them being Chimney who calls DeLuca “Fredo”.

4) They’re all at the bar, talking about Sal getting fired when Bobby shows up and the vibes change. Now sometime over the past twoish years Tommy is single, and it seems chronically at least to the house. Maybe because Gerrard is gone he doesn’t have to maintain a beard anymore, but with the endless captain parade and DeLuca being a tool, he doesn’t feel comfortable coming out? I think he’s also classified the 118 as unsafe, so maybe this lended a reason for his later transfer. But as he says, “Single is easier. Having the scars impresses women, getting ‘em freaks ‘em out.” Which gives heavy implications that like Buck in season one, Tommy isn’t dating but hooking up. If he’s gay, then his partners would have to be okay with the fact that he’s still closeted. And mention of women aside, it’s implied that a longer term relationship ended because he got hurt on the job. (This is why I don’t ascribe to the Tommy dated Abby theory. She implied that her relationship ended because of Patricia, and Tommy implies his last was due to injury. Which could be. He got hurt on the job and she couldn’t handle care giver burden for both of them? But that’s also turning Abby into Shannon Diaz pt 1 and while I dislike both women, they don’t need to be same character different font.) Here’s what I think. He got hurt on the job, and his long term boyfriend couldn’t even go to the hospital to check on him because he wasn’t out to his crew, causing them to break up.

Also for all you Buck/Tommy writers, Tommy canonically has a scar on his right side from a piece of shrapnel that he caught. He says it’s from a factory explosion. I don’t have the ability to get screen shots atm, but it’s pretty.

5) Tommy quotes Fight Club with Chim. So maybe another victim of the Han School of Movie References?

6) Bobby starts with family dinners. Tommy decides to transfer. The cake says, “The 217’s lose is our gain,” and they push his head into it.

The very next scene is Buck walking into the 118.

So all in all, we see Tommy as a deeply guarded character. He doesn’t open up easily, he follows orders, he has a soft side. I don’t really know how to conclude this because I sprinkled my impressions throughout, but I hope that this helps anyone who’s looking for Tommy characterization, and we’ll see tomorrow if any of this is right.

[quarterlifekitty]

rewatching the MW campaigns (the remakes) and my god i didn’t realize how much the fandom has well.. fanon-ized them LMAOO! i don’t have an issue with at all, im all for letting ppl have fun but sometimes i wish there was more fics of ppl tapping into their canon personality (like price and kyle are SO much more like… maybe not mean but aggressively dominant… i love perfect bf kyle and soft dom price but can we make them meaner…)

There is plenty of content that’s darker, and meaner! I would first and foremost recommend @/pricegouge and @/syoddeye for such content. Gouge in particular just did a Price piece that… no… I shan’t say 😈

I personally just can’t handle people being mean to me because I am a weenie and I want to be coddled

Also lol I think there’s a different between peoples work personalities and their at home personalities. And the video games never show them making breakfast in their boxers n shit so we gotta just come up with that part lol

[ms-scarletwings]

The Speculative Analysis About Irkens No One Asked For: Part II

Hiya! Back at it again with not shutting up about the lil green dudes. In case you found this first, here’s the Part One of this spiel, touching on some of the environmental theories about Irk and its cyberpunk-leaning cultural direction. While this post is dedicated to a more biological look of what’s going on with the Irkens, there was some leading context and other tidbits back in that one you may also enjoy, too.

So, carrying through what we previously set up, I want to… admit off the bat that, I found it a little difficult at first, you know?-To pick an angle I wanted to sink my teeth into. With how old the show’s become and how creative & enthusiastic a fanbase it attracted, it’s getting hard to really note (or theorize) something about Irken anatomy that hasn’t been said before somewhere. And don’t get me wrong, that’s awesome and I love almost every word of it I’ve read. A lot of it from various sources is almost certainly going to bleed together into the first half of this. So, keep it in mind, yet I will try to chew a little deeper into the questions we can’t actually answer with just a rewatch of the show, all good? Because there’s a few more base things we know from the canon I’m going to include to start listing: - Irkens lack any visible form of nose or ears, but are equipped with a pair of sensory antennae. Presumably, these organs fulfill the same roles, as they do in real-world insects. - Irken organs are obviously very alien, not well explained, artificially enhanced, and hard to compare to that of a human’s- outside of their general body shape, the presence of a primary brain separate from the PAK, and the fact that they do possess something of an internal skeleton. - A petite race on average (relative to humans), Irkens universally follow an unquestioned social hierarchy based on individual height. - Irkens are endowed with a remarkable ability to regenerate and heal superficial injuries, even up to repairing the damage of being nearly skinned alive (chest-down) or severely burning their corneas within a matter of hours. - Their preferred diet is one that is rich in (if not primarily made of) refined carbohydrates, and while they seem to tolerate fatty sources, such as processed dairy, their anatomy is poorly suited for dealing with high-protein foods like beans and meat. - In fact, all forms of contact with exposed animal meat itself will cause it to dissolve and meld into their own flesh, via an incredibly painful process. - On contact with water from Earth, their skin will receive harsh chemical burns (This has been explained by Vasquez to be a consequence of impurities and man-made pollutants, which Irkens seem sensitive to). - While I’m already on a roll about their skin, it also contains/produces a substance capable of killing lice.

Now, I think we’ve all heard a lot about sqeedily spooches, but does anyone else want to keep marinating a second longer on the topic of s k i n ? Because I have some damn thoughts to release about Zim’s outer casing.

Let’s Get Chemical

First hot take, and the hill I am willing to be slain on: That ain’t actually skin! At least, it is nothing chemically alike to Earth-native vertebrate skin. I’ve given all of the above and the general running theme about Irkens resembling arthropods a lot of thought, and I’ve come to about the only conclusion I could that makes their dermis equivalent… make sense.

See, one of the biggest traits that sets apart invertebrates from other animals in real life is the “innie or outie” skeleton question, but you gotta understand that the “skeletons” that bugs and crabs have would still be considered something completely different from our endoskeletons even if they were on the inside. The hard tissues that make up OUR skeletal systems are mostly made up of a *collagen (remember that word!) frame that is reinforced by calcium, phosphorus, and other minerals. The hard parts of an ant’s skeleton, on the other foot, are mainly composited of chitin.

Chitin, now, is a very neat substance. It’s a polysaccharide, meaning that it’s made up of a bunch of sugar molecules chained together. This makes it distinct from proteins, which are made of amino acid chains instead of carbs. Chitin is also one of the single most important structural polymers in the universe to a ton of existing life. It makes up the literal backbone of arthropods and the cell walls of all fungi. We’ve even found it in fish scales and some amphibians. So, must also be important to humans, right? NAH. Not a chance. Higher animals actually long ditched the ability to synthesize the stuff, and are not any the worse for it, since there’s more than one way to stick a bunch of creature pieces together. For two examples, keratin and *collagen are proteins we naturally synthesize that functionally do the same thing. Keratin is the hard substance that makes up hair & fingernails, and collagen is practically the wonderglue of flesh: It’s a fundamental binder that holds together your bones, your skin, your precious muscle meats, the ligaments, the tendies, the nerves…

pretty much the whole person blueprint if you get the picture.

And thus concludes your (VERY overly simplified) highshcool bio class recap, but what the hell did that have to do with the cartoon spacemen again? I’m gonna round back to them through a funny secret about exoskeletons, actually: They have a softer part, too! Chitin’s hella diverse in its forms and utility. What’s in an exoskeleton is actually a version of it modified with other materials (like what’s done to collagen in bone) to make it so rigid and shell-like. A purer chitin, on the other hand, is more leathery and flexible, less like the shell of a beetle and more like the squishy wall around a caterpillar or maggot. Even the hard bodied insects still have an endocuticle layer like this hiding just under the “shell”, still considered part of the whole exoskeleton, but suddenly looking and acting more like we’d call a skin.

Eh, see where I’m going with this? My conviction is this- Irkens may have used to be even more arthropodal in an earlier stage of their evolution, including BOTH an internal skeleton, and some form of protective exoskeleton in their body plan. And hey, maybe the two were extensions of the same system once, too. You recognize something like that in modern tortoises when you remember that their “shells” are actually just the bone structure of their own ribcage. Then, let’s say that Irkens later saw the loss of their heavier exocuticle, leaving behind the endoskeleton and the flexible inner (now just an outer) cuticle of what used to be an entire body shell. This could have been a gradual change, via natural selection, or it could have been another artificial mutation brought on by technology- wherein the elder brains decided the feature was less efficient and simply phased it out of the cloning process- the same as the loss of their species’ sexual organs.

But, you’re thinking, why on Irk would the loss of an entire badass armor layer be beneficial to their fitness? Few reasons- For one, they are cumbersome and limiting. The downgrade on freedom of movement and flexibility they would be for a bipedal humanoid is self-explanatory enough. When it came to structural integrity, the inner skeleton would have already done a well job with little modification. For all the protection they provide, they don’t leave much room for expansion, and need to be shed in order for the animal to grow any further or to recover from certain injuries. The process of molting itself would be an excruciating process for any intelligent species to have to endure; one that also temporarily leaves the critter in a very vulnerable and stressed state for every molt. To advance from more primitive origins into a dominant race, manual dexterity and mobility would have to take a front seat over a small amount of modest defenses, and mind you, Irk long ago woulda managed to compensate for that loss in the form of advanced weaponry (obviously).

I’m also of the mind that the shift away from an exoskeleton could have even been the key to allowing the Irkens to even grow to the size they are now. Recall back to Part One for a second, where I shared the likely case for Irk having a massive bulk behind its gravity field. Gravity is a hard thing on any skeletal structure, representing a constant strain to be fought against when moving, growing, and bearing weight .There’s a lot of factors behind why we don’t have horse sized spiders or elephant sized lobsters IRL, and weight is actually one of them. Notice how terrestrial isopods only get about to the size of a bean, but the aquatic ones can top out at over a foot long? And that’s only having Earth’s level of gravity to struggle against, let alone however harsh the conditions would be on a larger planet. So, there’s my framework for explaining what I think the aliens’ cuticle is not; however, what does that mean for what it is, besides “feels and looks like a grub’s”?

Well, look again at some of the extraordinary things it can do.

Cooties Immunity

“Germs” was a memorable episode that posed a very legitimate question to the viewer. Why IS IT that foreign pathogens aren’t a bigger concern for the invaders? They’re literally sent off to other worlds to blend in: Socializing with the native inhabitants, eating their foods, and living in an alien habitat. In the case of an undiscovered rock like Earth, our infectious diseases would have no reference available to the Armada whatsoever. Sure, species incompatibility would provide some protection, but the risk of something carrying over and adapting is always still there. Zoonoptic jumps happen all the time with bacteria and viruses, and Zim’s body temperature IS in the normal human range. And what about fungal pathogens, or parasites-

Oh, wait, the lice episode gave it away right there.

I love this sequence so much, because it’s coincidentally like, an exact “art imitates life” parallel to something a real species of primate does. Black lemurs live in the same area of Madagascar as these vibrant, red millipedes.

The millipedes are special because when threatened, they secrete a poisonous substance from their skin. The lemurs are special because they like to grab the bugs and nibble them for no other reason than to make them release those toxins. Those chemicals are then rubbed into their fur, because somehow the lemurs figured out it makes a really handy mosquito repellant. The lemurs also like to get completely zonked out on the chemicals too but eyy- Point was it stands to reason that Irkens may also secrete small amounts of their own potent toxin from the cuticle, perhaps for more hygienic than defensive purposes. This secretion would be responsible for protecting them from parasites and topical infections. Could it also make people blazed out of their minds? …Maybe? I think I’d like to promote the “Just Say No” policy on the matter of licking aliens, though. Ffs at least ask them out to dinner first.

When it comes to other kinds of sick, looks like it might be the trusty old PAK to the rescue here again. I imagine that, being an intergalactic, partially mechanical civilization, the Irken race has come down this road enough to put in a workaround. A standard PAK contains the entirety of the population’s collective knowledge/history- which would include a catalog of all known infectious agents they have encountered across the universe. Some kind of nanobot-bolstered immune system that could detect and respond appropriately to new threats isn’t out of the question, nor should a feature that can automatically administer the appropriate medicine directly into the wearer’s bloodstream. For all this awesomeness, nonetheless, there remains a downside or two that they haven’t quite conquered..

The Meaty, Sweety, Mending of DOOM

Anyone ever actually think about how as far as resilience is concerned, Zim is practically an X-man compared to any Earthling? He has regenerative capabilities that surpass anything else on earth, save idk, bamboo shoots, if even. Injuries that would leave a human permanently disabled only seem to incapacitate an Irken for a few hours to a day at most. They’re all the more tough to put out of commission when considering that a PAK doubles as a form of backup life support, ready to “soft reboot” the host with a quick jolt if it detects a sudden drop in vital signs. It is tempting to credit the same device as the source of this healing boost as well, teasing the nanobot suggestion again; however, I see a chance instead to bring this back a step.

Although not as quick-acting as Zim, or Skoodge’s healing, there are some remarkable examples of regeneration in real arthropods, from repairing tissues/organs to replacing entire lost limbs. What the aliens are packing doesn’t seem all that different, only refined (through years of bioengineering) to work at a truly frightening efficiency. It shows through in their diet as well. Almost always, if we see a member of this species eating on screen, and believe me there was no shortage of examples, what are we watching them shovel their face with?

Space doughnuts, space popcorn, space Fun-Dip, sodas, and curly fries. Sure, there’s plenty of calories here, no doubt with the amount of carbs and grease that could even turn the stomach of a college freshman, but is this… nutrition?

Yes. Just not for us.

Like their civilization, we have also turned the mass production of sweet-packed, fat loaded foods into one of our favored art forms, and there are scattered pockets of our planet that can enjoy these items in cheap abundance. The catch 22? Obesity and heart disease. Meanwhile, Irkens are so metabolically blessed that they can follow the same lifestyle and actually be thriving by it. We know that the majority of human food is utterly toxic to Zim, but then there were waffles, a literal stack of dessert and butter that pretends to be a breakfast…. Our guy was experiencing the “finally some good fucking food” meme from the first bite off that plate, but this can’t seriously be healthy,or if it is, then how?

Well, if I did sell you on the idea that much of their tissues and skeleton swaps out a chitin base where we would be using protein, there you go. Sugars for the building blocks to synthesize the connective/structural tissues for maintaining the body, and the bulk of the energy required to keep it running. And I won’t make the leap and suggest that’s all they have.

After all, the Irken equivalent of sandwiches do actually seem to contain “lettuce” and something that people will say looks like meat slices while not convincing me. I can get behind the thought of the natural or maybe original Irken diet to be a mix of plant matter and supplemental fungi, but everything I’ve put together implies that they are completely unfit for processing the goodies in animal flesh.

Overwhelmingly, I believe that the only time they possibly even seek out more sources of amino acids is going to be when they are smeets. That’s how it works in many wasp species. I.e. The growing larvae are the only ones that actually get to reap from the hard work of a colony hunting down enough protein to feed them with, yet the adults live out the rest of their lives more than content to gorge themselves on nectars and fruits exclusively!

And you even could put that aside, but you’ll have to grapple with the ungodly thing that happens every single time you see Zim touching a piece of meat. Would be awfully convenient to blame it on his personal brand of weirdness, or earth contaminants, but we remember this was a weakness that Tak approached fully aware of and expecting.

We know that polluted water can burn them. We know that beans and other foods can give them grotesque allergic reactions. Well what in the horrifying name of Resident Evil is this, though? Buddy pals, I think we got some unintended consequences of that bio-hacking on hand. Collagen and chitin aren’t just functionally similar to each other, they are practically analogous building blocks.

For a WILD science fact, consider that there’s a ton of ongoing research into the application of chitin and chitin-derivatives into having a role in tissue engineering, as a hypothetical scaffold in lab cultured meat, and as an effective wound dressing ingredient.

What we’re seeing with incidents like Dib throwing that Bologna at Zim could be an extreme form of the vise versa, because I know a certain protein that processed meat happens to be pretty high in :)))

Imagine the coupling of this with the bioengineered genome of Zim’s kind being so… reactive to a foreign intrusion, yet also flexible to modification. Maybe it is the acids, or some contaminant/seasoning on the meat that first damages the cuticle. That healing ability kicks in, but doesn’t stop where chitin does, readily binding to and with the collagens in these strange tissues that are sorta like an Irken’s but also just enough not like an Irken’s that it also kicks the immune system into overdrive. Think of all the pain and inflammation of a poison ivy rash but if the damn plant itself could also fuse itself with whatever you brushed against it. I think Zim actually had an understandable reason to be homicidally pissed off for that Bologna assault. Also how the Bologna virus was accelerated in Zim’s body. Once it had incorporated itself into his own DNA, it was game set and match with the speed and help those cells had to replicate themselves.

And uh, yeah, I think this post has gotten about as long as it reasonably should be here. I did have a couple more points I really wanted to get out of my brain about the Almighty Tallest, and I think that would be a good launching point actually for a possible (and hopefully final jfc) part three to this. Till then I got some off-topic scoliids to taxidermy 👀