#poly Tina you’re real to me

[furoruisa]

Rewatching two for Tina because is such a fun episode and I love it!

[zydrateacademy]

Current Activities in Sims 4 #1

The Sims was never really a franchise I cared much for. They had some good city builders but Cities: Skylines dethroned them as the go-to. I remember watching my brother play the older Sims games and I never liked the idea of playing through the nuances of taking a piss and eating breakfast. I still don’t, so it should be no surprise that the first mod I got was the cheat console that allowed me to basically hack in a couple of those traits where my sims don’t need to sleep, eat, etc. Those are rewards that are typically only acquired when you grind through a few aspiration things, and a fair bit of them to boot. I didn’t take them all. My characters still need to take a piss and sometimes it’s prudent to have them sleep to shake off some negative emotions. So it’s not like I’m not doing any of the survival bits at all - I just got irritated by how quickly it was drained. In some of my early hours of gameplay I wrestled with 2-3 things hitting the red at the same time so my ladies would flail around doing normal survival stuff before leaving for work. Basically, I would only have a few minutes of actual, interesting gameplay. Which to me is typically exploring, meeting new people, grinding up skills, shopping, and with a certain mod... A whole lotta fuckin’.

That was quickly a second mod I got, and discovered I needed to also download a bunch of animation packs so my girls would do more than fondle each other in bed (and literally nothing else). That probably comprises most of my mods, as there’s not much in the way of creator content that I care about. Some neat clothing, but nothing I can’t absolutely live without. Instead, I went on a sort of brief spending spree to get a few of the DLC’s but right now they’re at full price, no sales, so I need to resist the urge to just drop another 200$ and call it a full game. I really need to wait for a sale. Because y’see, the creator gallery is invaluable to me. I can’t really figure out how to build pretty houses on my own, I can only modify what other people give me. However, so much of the good shit is locked behind an alert that says “This uses assets from the following packs: ALMOST ALL OF THEM”. Or rather, all the ones that add building pieces. So eventually I want most, if not all of them, in my possession. So as the lifestyle simulator thing goes, I’ve had a lot of fun recreating characters from my various stories and lore, as sort of alternative versions of themselves. I started with my usual go to but then imported Kiur Kenneth at one point, my Death Knight from WoW. She was a good experiment to have the “Erratic” trait, which suited her.

I later evolved into having actual original characters. Some of their names I don’t fully remember, but the kissing ladies above are original concepts. The gothy, dark skinned babe is Dana I think. A stay at home nerd of sorts, in theory she is living rent free because the girl she’s kidding is a secret agent that apparently gets paid very well. Kind of how I justified cheating in all the money so I can have them live wherever I want. I also tossed up a sort of thrown-together vampire trio. Was fiddling with the nudism thing that the sex mod comes with but I found that it doesn’t carry over when you’re not actively playing them. Every time I visit them, or get visited by them, they’re always wearing their standard stuff. Either way, once I got a few poly-lady households going, I finally settled down my gameplay enough to have a solo Trans girl whom is... basically me, and it’s scratched a fantasy that I’ve never been able to acquire in other games.

I sadly don’t have a frontal shot of her yet except for two things. One, just showing off how a bunch of gnomes really fucked my home up for a whole day.

Second, making out with one of many potential suitors, I’m not even sure which one I want her to properly date yet. The glory that is polyamory helps with this decision, of course.

Other than vampires and magic not being real (that I am yet aware of), this playthrough is basically me. I don’t know where exactly I’d get the 20000$ to have my own starter home at only 400$ rent, but this girl is basically living my life that I wish I could. Thanks to an intersex setting, she still has her penis just as I may in some years when life actually allows me to begin my transition. It’s let to some very fun encounters, and I can appreciate that I barely have to push the sex thing at all. I’m propositioned by the other characters most of the time when my girl is just on her computer programming games. 

I wish I could show some of the actual nudity involved, because it’s fairly impressive for a six year old game and the animators can really make the simplistic skeletons dance in their favor. Sadly, Tumblr has lost its titties so I’ll need to find a different venue for that. I leave this post with one anecdote that I can’t stop giggling about. The sex mod adds peeping toms and tinas, thankfully I mostly just get the tinas (whom are incredibly hard to woo, most conversations put her in the negatives). Well, they do age and die apparently as an elder variant caught the above gal going at it with a different vampire. They had her fun, and she had her fun at the window and then went and dropped dead in the snow. Death came and claimed her, and I have a screenshot of it because it’s so goddamn funny. I made her tombstone read: “Died as she lived. Flickin’ dat bean”.

[kinetic-elaboration]

February 2: Thoughts on 4x01 Echoes

Mmmmkay, literally JUST finished watching 4x01. I’m very proud of myself because I completely avoided ALL spoilers and I’m not going to unblock tumblr until I finish this reaction post so I can write down my totally spontaneous and unadulterated thoughts.

My general reaction: I actually kind of liked it. I wouldn’t say I liked it as much as Seasons 1 and 2 and I wouldn’t say I’m optimistic about the season and frankly I still have a lot of complaints, most of which are so general I don’t think they’ll ever be resolved BUT I would undoubtedly say that 4x01 was better than 3x01 and I’m actually looking forward to 4x02; it looks like just the kind of plot I like: tense, self-contained, lots of delinquents.

(loooong reaction under the read more)

So some things I didn’t like first so I can get my negativity out of the way:

I never fully believed that either Jarod Joseph or Chelsey Reist were going to be regulars because I thought that people were reading a lot into kind of vague tweets but I wanted to believe it, especially with Jarod Joseph and honestly even though I don’t like Harper…they both deserve main status by now. I mean they’ve lasted this fucking long. I cannot believe Zack McGowan gets main status and Jarod and Chelsey don’t.

I don’t give a fuck about the Grounders. I don’t! I don’t care!! And I will never care. So all this Polis shit, Grounder politics, Echo yammering on, blah blah blah. I can’t follow it and I don’t even want to follow it. In my incredibly subjective opinion, it really weighs the show down.

Roan constantly sounds like he’s having a * Tina Fey voice * talking like this contest. I have no idea what his real voice sounds like but if this is at all a put on accent he needs to tone it down for realsies I cannot take him seriously.

Monty/Harper. Get it away get it away. (I’m not going to go into why I hate them but rest assured every reaction I write this entire season will have some variation of this point, if the episode in question features them as a couple at all. Having a canon NoTP is such a fannish burden so I’m going to whine about it at top volume all the time.)

NO MILLER. A TRAVESTY.

This isn’t entirely the show’s fault but I roll my eyes every time I hear L*xa’s name, like some kind of Pavlovian dog, so obviously I did a lot of eye rolling and now my eyes kind of hurt. In particular, Clarke’s overwrought sadness about her was just so… I’m done, I’m tired of it, I don’t care. I know I’m not being fair, because in the timeline of the show obviously L’s death is very close. But, first off, I don’t think Clarke loved her at all—I think she thinks she did but she did not, and I don’t think that line would even have been included if it weren’t for RL events. Second, and relatedly, I think that little scene with Abby and the Dramatic Single Tear TM when she hands over the chip were so clearly about appeasing fans and doing penance for daring to kill a lesbian that they took me out of the show. I wasn’t watching Clarke in Polis, I was watching Eliza Taylor acting on a set. I hope that’s the end of that, and we never have to deal with that shit again.

I didn’t like Kane’s line to Bellamy about eventually deserving to survive. I know why it’s in there, both in an in-universe and in a line-to-the-fans way, but frankly my initial thought is: all human beings deserve survival. It’s not like only good people should be allowed to live a radiation free life lol. And second, can we just leave him the fuck alone already? I’m done with the Bellamy dogpile. Let’s hope that shit’s done too.

Speaking of lines I didn’t like, Bellamy calling Clarke Princess is basically the definition of Do Not Want. It’s the sort of thing that, small as it is, makes me think that the writers don’t know their own creation and it makes me lose faith in them again. That name was an insult—it was always a fucking insult, it’s not cute, it’s not a pet name, and it has no place in the Bellarke relationship anymore. Such an unnecessary false note. (I probably seem/am disproportionately mad about it…but I hate it.)

I could have done without that last scene. It just looked so….fake. Again it just took me out of the show completely. Was it supposed to show us how dire everything is? I got that message the last 20 times lol.

The stuff I did like:

BELLAMY. There wasn’t enough of him, but he was A FUCKING STAR in the scenes he did get, especially the negotiation scene. Like I could list every line I liked and every moment I liked and that would probably be more proportional to the degree I liked them but it’s probably faster and more efficient to say that I loved it all. I loved that he and Clarke acted like (mostly) equal co-leaders. I liked that they looked to each other all the time, and had all of these silent eye-communication moments. I liked the scene with him and Kane and Indra before the meeting with Echo, I loved that Echo views him as the only Sky Person she’ll talk to, and I loved…basically all of it but I guess what I’m trying to say is I loved both how he handled the negotiation and that HE was the one doing it.

Indra was killing it in this ep too. I loved the hug with Kane of course. I loved her and Murphy in the pre-negotiation scene (“I never agreed to [guns].” / “That’s because you’re not stupid.”) (She and Murphy need their own show like I would watch it.) I like how she’s basically chilling with the Sky People now—like the little scene in the temple had such a cool collection of characters, I was digging it. (Except for Octavia…who I really don’t know what to make of this season yet so.)

Speaking of Murphy…. Okay, I wasn’t impressed by Murphy/Emori in Season 3 but I did like their scenes in this episode. Unfortunately, I was really looking forward to them joining up with the Sky People in Arkadia; I want to see another Grounder trying to find a place in Arkadia (since Lincoln was brutally murdered and all) and I want to see Murphy re-integrate himself because tbh he really is at his best when he has people to play off of. People who aren’t Emori. So I was a little bummed when they ran off into the night together because I really don’t care to watch the two of them in a vacuum and also…we already saw that? But anyway I did like their scenes in this ep so they’re in the positive column. I also like that we finally got an explanation as to why Emori took the chip.

I’ve had sort of mixed feelings about Jaha because I’m not sure whether or not I can follow his story line/character progression or not but I will say: I am 100% Team Jaha as of right now. I do think that, whatever he was on the Ark or in S1, his late S1/early S2 transformation was genuine, and he really is trying to be a good person who helps people. I hope he finds the salvation and the purpose he’s been looking for. And his role in the little ploy with Octavia and the shroud was great.

That whole sequence was probably the strongest in the episode. I think one of The 100’s greatest weaknesses at this point is the complexity of its various allegiances and all the old bad blood that’s been spilled everywhere. I haven’t seen S3 since it aired and so even as a pretty big fan I still find some stuff hard to follow—it’s hard to remember who betrayed who when and all this shit and even though some Obvious Exposition is peppered in to help us along, it’s not enough for me sometimes. But this spider web of interconnected relationships, both good and bad, is also an asset of the show and I thought that middle sequence, from the “we surrender” line to Roan waking up, really played all of that up in a good way. It brought a lot of characters and a lot of history together in a way that generally worked very well. I liked the shroud ploy (though omg the Azgeda warriors are dumb AF—how could Octavia just get up and walk around and no one noticed her? Like they’re all looking outward and no one’s looking at the big ol’ empty middle of the room? And then she, a child who lived sixteen very unhealthy years under the floor and has been on Earth probably less than a year with only a handful of months of warrior training if that is able to take out a whole room of the most fearsome warriors in the post-apocalypse? It defies belief I’m sorry). I liked the Griffins operating together. I loved the tension. (Lessened somewhat by knowing Roan would live, what with him being a main and all.) Loved the whole goshdarn thing.

Most of the Arkadia stuff was pretty eh but only in that there wasn’t much of it, and what there was, we’d seen before in promotional clips and stuff (though I will say: they did better with the promotional stuff this year; I think last year they gave away some of their surprises in a way that made the scenes ring very false on a first viewing imo). But obviously I loved my boy Jasper. I would have found his almost-suicide very hard to watch if I hadn’t known it was coming but as it was, I could be more detached about it. I wish we’d seen more of his room but what we did see was interesting (I have an obsession with the Ark/Arkadia sets okay): his art—not just Maya’s favorite painting but another one near the door; his goggles with the plastic over the eyes knocked out—like him, just a shell of their former selves; all his random tools on his desk like why does he have those?; his notebooks. And, oh, that he left a suicide note to Monty. And even just their small interaction at the door was great.

Also… while in a way I find it an odd beat for him to go from his last scene with Monty in 3x16 to almost killing himself in 4x01, mere hours later in the canon timeline… I believe it, and I’m glad that my previous fears, that the show would just forget what he’d gone through and do a Jasper re-set in the new season, can be put to rest. I liked and believed in his transition from really-ready-to-die, to well-the-world’s-gonna-kill-me-and-make-it-easy-might-as-well-enjoy-Earth.

But the best Arkadia scene was the one between Jasper and Raven. First of all because I FUCKING CALLED IT that Raven shouldn’t have the sort of coding/computer abilities that she has. I hypothesized that she might have improved her skills at some point during the S2-S3 hiatus because her disability lessened her ability to do legwork, but I also mentioned that it could have been ALIE which still means I WAS RIGHT BOOM. (I just like being right a lot okay.) Also the “upgrade” talk reminded me of Dollhouse. Which was exciting but also made me all bitter and mad because Dollhouse did the idea of artificial upgrades to your brain so much better. Made me feel inspired for my Dollhouse AU though so there’s that.

I don’t ship Jasper/Raven but I do friend-ship them and I hope they bond over having been ALIE-d.

Also speaking of being AlIE-d, I don’t think Harper forgives Jasper for what his chipped self did. And she probably shouldn’t honestly because my theory is still that ALIE pulled from the real feelings and thoughts of chipped people and maybe someday I’ll write a full explanation of why I think that—which isn’t to say that Jasper wants to hurt Harper but just to say that ‘pleading the chip’ isn’t as straightforward as all that. Still, even though it makes sense narratively, because I will pick Jasper over pretty much everyone this is sorta another reason to unfairly dislike Harper. If there is anything even remotely like a Monty having to choose scenario I will be very perturbed though.  (This isn’t something I especially liked or disliked, the thought just occurred to me while I was talking about Arkadia stuff.)

It’s pretty early to say anything about her at all but Unnamed Possible Priestess (Kenza??) is looking so promising. First, we know from the trailer she’s gorgeous and I’m always here for that. Second and to be less shallow for a second, Indra seems to know her, maybe, so that could be cool. And third, while I have yet to be impressed by Grounder religion, I am very curious to see if she’s going to be bringing in a different aspect to their spirituality. I don’t know her but I already want to see her go head to head with Roan.

I had a bit of a discussion/ramble with my mom yesterday when she was telling me a bit about the episode in a vague spoiler-free way and I was trying to explain when I like Clarke (when she’s a co-leader with a reasonably sized head, when she’s cunning and imaginative like in early S2) (early S2 Clarke is my favorite Clarke fyi) and when I don’t like her (when she’s arrogant, when she thinks she can do everything herself, when she doesn’t listen to others—basically season 2B Clarke and Clarke in parts of S3), and she said I thought I would like her in this ep. I was on the fence. I liked her with Bellamy. And she had moments that objectively I probably should have liked but I’ve just been so tired of her shit for so long it’s hard for me not to feel Tired Of Her in general. But… I guess I’ll say I think Clarke looks promising.

I kind of loved how at the end of the episode when Kabby were saying goodbye to their children and story-line heirs Bellarke, Abby says “Okay let’s do this” or some such, and then the first thing she does is hug Clarke. I know she means “okay, let’s accomplish the plan, which means separating, so I gotta say goodbye to my daughter first” but it looked a little like the “this” was hugging. Which is sort of sweet.

…Um wow I’ve written a lot and I can’t think of anything so I guess I’m done FOR NOW.

Looking forward to lots of delinquents, some hopefully cool tense scenes, more Miller and Bryan, and Clarke in a better outfit next time.