#ted Susan. so

[bloodbathfortwo]

Alex to Nigel or vice versa, whatever floats your boat. Despite their bad reputation, they'll always find ways to entice the other. Just like a game of cat and mouse. Thrilling and exciting.

[thoughtofadumbteenprotagonist]

Some Thoughts™️

I keep seeing stuff about Greta Gerwig making a remake of the Narnia franchise; my opinions on the need for the remake aside, I keep seeing people in the comments complaining that she better not be casting black or trans people and that she better not make it a feminist story because it will “detract from the true meaning” (Christianity) and some explicitly saying it will “ruin a good Christian story” and I can’t help but think,,,,,,,,,,, if the inclusion of POC, of queer people, of strong female characters “ruins” your Good Christian Story About Good Christian People,,,,, then I think you Christianity fucking sucks

[lilacthebooklover]

Let Me Make You Proud is such a Ted song. Nobody can change my mind on this. It just is.

And the way he??? Legit has a villain arc in canon??? The cain's not able alt. route ted is ripe for the taking, might as well use him >:D

Accidentally encasing felix would absolutely lead to him doing anything to get his brother back, especially since they've spent years more time together here and felix isn't plotting to murder him. their relationship is,,, kinda stiff, but ted loves him and he's all he has :(

then he gets lumped in a prison cell with nugget and overthrows a country :)

[bigintorobotsrightnow]

Just Ted and AM enjoying the flowers, I wrote a little fic to go along with this art piece as well if anyone wants to read it— A gentle breeze cascaded across open fields of wildflowers, where AM laid peacefully amongst petals and blades of grass. His head rested upon his arms, dozing off to Ted’s delicate touch as he strung flowers into his circuits. So meticulous with the colors and arrangement. AM couldn’t help but watch from the corner of his eye with interest. 

“And what purpose does it serve for you to kill the flowers and put them in my wires,” AM pointedly asked with a chuckle in return from Ted. He plucked yet another flower, this time a black eyed susan that he perched atop AM’s beak. His fingers traced along the sharp, metal ridge and AM raised his head from his arms to glance back at himself and observe Ted’s handy work. 

“Don’t put it that way— I mean, you’re not wrong I just I thought you’d look, well… pretty,” Ted whispered the last part, a bashful shift of his eyes. 

“And?” AM inquired then stood and craned his neck to put the arrangement of flowers on full display under the sun. They shone bright against the dark chorded circuits, a bloom of color against a dreary mechanical form. And Ted awed at his vibrance against a blue sky. A warmth quick to dance across his cheeks. 

“And…I was right,” Ted uttered so breathlessly and AM could only scoff to himself at such a ridiculous notion. Pretty, only Ted would think to call a machine, pretty. 

“You’re a moron,” AM quipped back and scoured the field of flowers for the perfect one to embellish Ted with in exchange. He found himself drawn to a cluster of bright yellow coreopsis, in which his long, jagged talons reached to pluck the flowers from the earth. Only for them to crumple and tear under their razor sharp edge. He hissed through his speakers as petals fell from his claws.

“It’s alright, you just have to be gentle. Here let me help,” Ted chortled then scooted forward to take AM’s hand with his own. The computer recoiled initially then eased into Ted’s grasp. He allowed him to carefully bring his talons back underneath a nearby blossom. He eased them closed to snip them from the stem, then followed through to bring AM’s hand back to his hair where he neatly placed the flower for him.

His hold on AM’s hand sank back to his wrist and he smiled. While AM stared at the bright yellow flower that stood in stark contrast to Ted’s dark locks.. Pretty, the word echoed within his processors and he craned his neck around to find another cluster of flowers. Pristine ones that he plucked just the way Ted had shown him. He arranged them neatly into Ted’s hair, and Ted began to laugh again as they fell out shortly after he’d placed them.

“Hold on, they won't stay like that,” Ted uttered and collected the flowers back from the grass, “God I haven’t done this in… well over a hundred years at least.” 

He pulled both of AM’s hands into his lap and AM followed closely as Ted began to weave the flowers together one by one. “There, just like that, then you can make a crown,” Ted explained then left the rest to AM. He struggled at first, as his big, clunky talons lacked the tact for something so small and delicate. But AM was determined to get it right, and Ted was there to nudge him in the right direction. 

The finished product was by no means glamorous, but when AM lifted it to place on top of Ted’s head, it was…perfect. AM admired his work in silence a moment, gazing down at Ted with a warmth he wasn’t even aware of himself. But Ted’s face darkened and he turned away from him. 

“Don’t look at me like that, it’s creepy,” Ted teased and AM blew a raspberry at him. 

“What, I just thought you looked, pretty,” he echoed Ted’s words and butt him with his head before he nuzzled his beak to the side of his face.

“Oh shut up,” Ted laughed and pressed his cheek back against his.

—

[soracities]

what are your suggestions for starter poetry for people who dont have strong reading/analysis backgrounds

I've answered this a few times so I'm going to compile and expand them all into one post here.

I think if you haven't read much poetry before or aren't sure of your own tastes yet, then poetry anthologies are a great place to start: many of them will have a unifying theme so you can hone in based on a subject that interests you, or pick your way through something more general. I haven't read all of the ones below, but I have read most of them; the rest I came across in my own readings and added to my list either because I like the concept or am familiar with the editor(s) / their work:

Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times (ed. Nick Astley) & Being Alive: The Sequel to Staying Alive (there's two more books in this series, but I'm recommending these two just because it's where I started)

The Rattlebag (ed. Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes)

The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (ed. Ilya Kaminsky & Susan Harris)

The Essential Haiku, Versions of Basho, Buson and Issa (ed. Robert Hass)

A Book of Luminous Things (ed. Czesław Miłosz )

Now and Then: The Poet's Choice Columns by Robert Hass (this may be a good place to start if you're also looking for commentary on the poems themselves)

Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World(ed. Pádraig Ó'Tuama)

African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song (ed. Kevin Young)

The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing (ed. Kevin Young)

Lifelines: Letters from Famous People about their Favourite Poems

The following lists are authors I love in one regard or another and is a small mix of different styles / time periods which I think are still fairly accessible regardless of what your reading background is! It's be no means exhaustice but hopefully it gives you even just a small glimpse of the range that's available so you can branch off and explore for yourself if any particular work speaks to you.

But in any case, for individual collections, I would try:

anything by Sara Teasdale

Devotions / Wild Geese / Felicity by Mary Oliver

Selected Poems and Prose by Christina Rossetti

Collected Poems by Langston Hughes

Where the Sidewalk Endsby Shel Silverstein

Morning Haiku by Sonia Sanchez

Revolutionary Letters, Diane di Prima

Concerning the Book That Is the Body of the Beloved by Gregory Orr

Rose: Poems by Li-Young Lee

A Red Cherry on a White-Tiled Floor / Barefoot Souls by Maram al-Masri

Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky

Tell Me: Poems / What is This Thing Called Love? by Kim Addonizio

The Trouble with Poetry by Billy Collins (Billy Collins is THE go-to for accessible / beginner poetry in my view so I think any of his collections would probably do)

Crush by Richard Siken

Rapture / The World's Wife by Carol Ann Duffy

The War Works Hard by Dunya Mikhail

Selected Poems by Walt Whitman

View with a Grain of Sand by Wislawa Szymborska

Collected Poems by Vasko Popa

Under Milkwood by Dylan Thomas (this is a play, but Thomas is a poet and the language & structure is definitely poetic to me)

Bright Dead Things: Poems by Ada Limón

Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth by Warsan Shire,

Nostalgia, My Enemy: Selected Poems by Saadi Youssef

As for individual poems:

“Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver

[Dear The Vatican] erasure poem by Pádraig Ó'Tuama // "The Pedagogy of Conflict"

"Good Bones" by Maggie Smith

"The Author Writes the First Draft of His Weddings Vows (An erasure of Virginia Woolf's suicide letter to her husband, Leonard)" by Hanif Abdurraqib

"I Can Tell You a Story" by Chuck Carlise

"The Sciences Sing a Lullabye" by Albert Goldbarth

"One Last Poem for Richard" by Sandra Cisneros

"We Lived Happily During the War" by Ilya Kaminsky

“I’m Explaining a Few Things”by Pablo Neruda

"Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" //"Nothing Gold Can Stay"//"Out, Out--" by Robert Frost

"Tablets: I // II // III"by Dunya Mikhail

"What Were They Like?" by Denise Levertov

"Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden,

"The Patience of Ordinary Things" by Pat Schneider

“I, too” // "The Negro Speaks of Rivers” // "Harlem” // “Theme for English B” by Langston Hughes

“The Mower” // "The Trees" // "High Windows" by Philip Larkin

“The Leash” // “Love Poem with Apologies for My Appearance” // "Downhearted" by Ada Limón

“The Flea” by John Donne

"The Last Rose of Summer" by Thomas Moore

"Beauty" // "Please don't" // "How it Adds Up" by Tony Hoagland

“My Friend Yeshi” by Alice Walker

"De Humanis Corporis Fabrica"byJohn Burnside

“What Do Women Want?” // “For Desire” // "Stolen Moments" // "The Numbers" by Kim Addonizio

“Hummingbird” // "For Tess" by Raymond Carver

"The Two-Headed Calf" by Laura Gilpin

“Bleecker Street, Summer” by Derek Walcott

“Dirge Without Music” // "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

“Digging” // “Mid-Term Break” // “The Rain Stick” // "Blackberry Picking" // "Twice Shy" by Seamus Heaney

“Dulce Et Decorum Est”by Wilfred Owen

“Notes from a Nonexistent Himalayan Expedition”by Wislawa Szymborska

"Hour" //"Medusa" byCarol Ann Duffy

“The More Loving One” // “Musée des Beaux Arts” by W.H. Auden

“Small Kindnesses” // "Feeding the Worms" by Danusha Laméris

"Down by the Salley Gardens” // “The Stolen Child” by W.B. Yeats

"The Thing Is" by Ellen Bass

"The Last Love Letter from an Entymologist" by Jared Singer

"[i like my body when it is with your]" by e.e. cummings

"Try to Praise the Mutilated World" by Adam Zagajewski

"The Cinnamon Peeler" by Michael Ondaatje

"Last Night I Dreamed I Made Myself" by Paige Lewis

"A Dream Within a Dream" // "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe (highly recommend reading the last one out loud or listening to it recited)

"Ars Poetica?" // "Encounter" // "A Song on the End of the World"by Czeslaw Milosz

"Wandering Around an Albequerque Airport Terminal” // "Two Countries” // "Kindness” by Naoimi Shihab Nye

"Slow Dance” by Matthew Dickman

"The Archipelago of Kisses" // "The Quiet World" by Jeffrey McDaniel

"Mimesis" by Fady Joudah

"The Great Fires" // "The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart" // "Failing and Flying" by Jack Gilbert

"The Mermaid" // "Virtuosi" by Lisel Mueller

"Macrophobia (Fear of Waiting)" by Jamaal May

"Someday I'll Love Ocean Vuong" by Ocean Vuong

"Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou

I would also recommend spending some times with essays, interviews, or other non-fiction, creative or otherwise (especially by other poets) if you want to broaden and improve how you read poetry; they can help give you a wider idea of the landscape behind and beyond the actual poems themselves, or even just let you acquaint yourself with how particular writers see and describe things in the world around them. The following are some of my favourites:

Upstream: Essays by Mary Oliver

"Theory and Play of the Duende" by Federico García Lorca

"The White Bird" and "Some Notes on Song" by John Berger

In That Great River: A Notebook by Anna Kamienska

A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance by Hanif Abdurraqib

The Book of Delights by Ross Gay

"Of Strangeness That Wakes Us" and "Still Dancing: An Interview with Ilya Kaminsky" by Ilya Kaminsky

"The Sentence is a Lonely Place" by Garielle Lutz

Still Life with Oysters and Lemon by Mark Doty

Paris, When It's Naked by Etel Adnan

[possibly-evil]

ok im kinda getting into relativity falls rn so here's my au or version of it or whatever. (for those who don't know, its basically the same plot except the character ages and roles are swapped.)

Swaps:

Dipper - Ford

Mabel - Stan

Soos - Abuelita (i don't know if she actually has a cannon first name)

Wendy - Manly Dan (In this he's just Boyish Dan)

Fiddleford - Pacifica

Robbie - Greg (his father. his mother, Janice, is replaced with Tambry.)

Gideon - Ted

Things about this:

Mabel was able to swap with Dipper without suspicion because Dipper is a trans man, and only began transitioning in the portal.(however, Mabel knew about this before he went in.)

The Mystery Shack is mostly the same, but there are a lot more bright colors and homemade crafts.

Instead of Stan getting a pet pig, he gets a pet goat instead. (Waddles already lives at the shack, he takes the place of Gompers.)

DIPCIFICA AND FORDSQUARED!!!!!!!!!!

Ford gets a crush on Boyish Dan (since he takes the role of the Wendy character), and this was basically his A W A K E N I N G

bill cipher is the same lol

Fiddleford is rich, but he's still a nerd like how he is in the show.

Dipper does not have six fingers, so he uses his Pinetree trademark on the journal.

Ford's hat was custom made for him by Mabel, and it has six fingers. she's also started selling them in the shop, but Ford is the only one we really see wearing it. (He isn't as attached to it as Dipper was in the show, but he still wears it a lot.)

Boyish Dan's friend group is Blubs, Durland, Greg, Tad, and Janice.

Candy and Grenda are now Susan and... idk. help me out.

that mostly it for now I think. I might do fan art later

[ophelias-lamentation]

One of the best things that happened to me was coming to terms with my femininity, i realized that i loved feminine things and that it was ok. Liking pink and dresses didnt make me lesser than other women, it wasn’t a weakness. I soon realized that by stopping this insane derision of traditionally feminine things in life i was in fact improving my character. I think that I saw improvement in the fact that i stopped just hating female characters who had these traditionally feminine traits like Cinderella, Aurora, Sansa, Katara, Fluer, Ty Lee, Susan Pevensie, and so many others, looking past this mental block i had as a pre-teen and early teen i realized that they are all strong characters who have many many admirable traits, I would even go as far as saying that they are what i would want to be as a person as opposed to the characters i idolized as a pre-teen. This internal hatred of my femininity wasn’t of my own creation though, i knew that I was very smart from a young age, and people around me and the online communities i saw all demonized these characters saying that they were weak, annoying, and deserving of misery. Some people say that our society is more accepting of woman than we ever have been but its still so hostile to young girls, people disguise this hatred of feminine things behind jokes on the internet calling girls “basic” for just doing things that girls tend to do, we see it in the pure hatred that grown men AND other women throw at artists like Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter degrading them and depreciating their capabilities as artists, and the absolute hatred that any female led fan base receives. And while Hollywood may feature more female characters as leads in movies, they aren’t good characters, we see characters that aren’t well written, a strong female character is a well-written character, this is one place where i think Star Wars has done really well, we have Ahsoka, Fennec, Padme, Leia, Jyn, Mon Mothma, and both the Kryz sisters are all beautifully written and have distinguishable personalities, you have the kind Padme, the headstrong and confident Leia, the wise Mon Mothma, and Ahsoka who is perhaps one of the best written characters in Star Wars. We need more characters written like this. Also, We as a society need to STOP shaming the traditionally feminine qualities in young girls specifically, let little girls know that they aren’t lesser just because they are kind. We also need to stop teaching young boys that cruelty and meanness makes them more masculine.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk

[gallifreyanhotfive]

Random Doctor Who Facts You Might Not Know, Part 44

Tw: suicide, lots of alternate universe stuff where the Doctor is generally being unDoctorly

According to Ruath, Time Lords and Vampires share 98% of the same genes. (Novel: Goth Opera)

Before graduating from the Academy, the Doctor lost a game of chess to Savar so badly that he almost cried from the humiliation of it all. (Novel: The Infinity Doctors)

A version of the Doctor from an alternate universe (who resembled the Sixth) was targeted by Braxiatel (who was Lord Burner, the personal assassin to the President) for erasure from history, so the Doctor killed Braxiatel. He fled Gallifrey, was eventually found and put on trial, and then became Lord Burner himself. (Audio: Disassembled)

The Master once helped deliver a baby just so he could convince the parents to name him Edward, so he could make a joke about "Ted with the tech." This would make their name T MEARS, which is an anagram for MASTER. (Audio: The Auton Infinity) As you can tell, this was a very normal thing to do.

The Third Doctor was forced to fill out an application when he started working with UNIT. This displeased him greatly. He kept telling them to ask the Brigadier for the answers and admitted to having no idea what a national insurance number was. (Novel: The Time Lord Letters)

The Doctor once lost a bet with Oliver Reed and subsequently had to swim naked in the English Channel. (Comic: The Betrothal of Sontar)

In an alternate universe, the Doctor committed suicide to escape being captured by the Time Lords after stealing the TARDIS. The new incarnation called herself Susan Foreman and drank heavily. She was captured eventually. Originally, her punishment would have been exile, but it was elevated to death. She was sent to the TARDIS, where she was supposed to stay for the rest of her life, and if she attempted to dematerialize, she would dematerialize permanently as though she never existed at all. She was eventually told via letter that this is not the case and dematerialized, but she had no idea if this letter was true or not. (Audio: Exile)

The Sixth Doctor's trial on Space Station Zenobia was arranged by Vansell. Vansell also played a role in appointing an Inquisitor and a Valeyard for the trial. (Novel: SynthespiansTM)

In another alternate universe, the Doctor killed Eric Vollmer for the greater good and to cover up super-soldier experiments. The Doctor promised he would take care of his daughter, Ruth, as a surrogate father, but twenty-seven years later, Ruth found out the Doctor had killed her father. She also found out that this Doctor planned on killing her as well as she began to learn more about these experiments. She let one of the still-surviving, mutated experiments named Flint shove the TARDIS key down the Doctor’s throat and break his neck. (Audio: Full Fathom Five)

What followed this was regeneration. Confused, the new incarnation introduced himself and asked who Ruth was, so Ruth also introduced herself and said "goodbye" before shooting him, causing him to regenerate again and leaving Ruth wondering how many more regenerations he would have until he was dead. This incarnation of the Doctor has the shortest tenure - 11 seconds. (Audio: Full Fathom Five)

Griffin manipulated the Eighth Doctor’s biodata to a point where he could no longer perceive UV or violet. He later claimed to fix it and have "his violet back." (Novel: Unnatural History)

This was a lie, obviously. The Eighth Doctor would eventually admit he still could not perceive violet and was thus immune to mind-controlling paint. (Novel: To the Slaughter) This biodata abnormality was never fixed in canon (to my knowledge), so the Doctor was probably unable to perceive violet at least until his regeneration.

The Time Lords are incredibly strict on their policies on non-intervention (with, of course, some exceptions...). This policy is ingrained in the mind of every Time Lord, and breaking this conditioning will typically result in memory loss, the shutdown of parts one's personality, and potentially madness. (Novel: Time and Relative)

The Obverse is a pocket universe where time and space never was and never will be. (Novel: The Blue Angel)

In the Obverse, the Doctor's mother is a mermaid. 🧜‍♀️ (Novel: The Blue Angel)

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[vbartilucci]

Blue Beetle didn't simply entertain me, it didn't just make me laugh, it made me HAPPY.

This film nailed the feel of the comic - a crazy family that balances trying to help and being worried about their boy, a hero trapped in a suit that could destroy the world, and Susan Sarandon.

Ted's not IN the movie, but he's all OVER it. And that made me so tickled. It's the first film they've done that addresses the idea of legacy in the super hero world.

I have no idea how well the film is going to do this weekend, but I'm really hoping ws can use the power of word-of-mouth to help it pull an Elemental and actually do BETTER next week, and the week after.

I'll let James Gunn take the credit for this film as the first one under his umbrella, but this is solely due to the work of director Ángel Manuel Soto and writer Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer. They delivered a film that is very much a look at Hispanic family and culture, and still holds its own as a rock solid superhero movie.

[bidisaster-peanut-romano]

soo hi everyone!! i'm back on my bully essay/meta/something writing!! sort of. i did this.

anyways anyone who's been on this page for some time know how from time to time i have insistently mentioned the parallels between lola and peanut, right?

welp! that was a joke but the time has finally come!! a super-pretentious essay just for the fun of it!! (and also bc i haven't been writing actually argumentative texts in like months perhaps a year, so. yikes, i really need to practice again)

word count: 2.2k WOAH. IM SORRY

i, in my corner, with my monstrous needs. — susan sontag, as consciousness is harnessed to flesh

take this quote both as a title and an anticipation of what is to come. the essay will be distributed analyzing first the dependence of each of them on johnny, to then draw comparisons. i'll make sure to steer as away from headcanons as possible, sticking closely to the source text. obviously, some things' interpretation might be ambiguous, but, you know. your usual occupation hazard.

also, a disclaimer before we start: while they are psychologically complex and there is always a mimetic intention in developing them, these are fictional characters, and, as such, their primary function is to be vessels for different themes, questions and so forth. therefore, i will prioritize meaning and themes over moral implications and similar elements.

i. peanut

for how much i can adore talking about him, the way peanut depends on johnny is very much on the nose; worn on his sleeve, even. in 11:11 minutes of voice lines, he mentions johnny 30 times.

many interpret this as the caricature of a boy crush, but i have reasons to believe it is much less cute than that.

the problem is that, really, more than trying to identify specific situations... peanut seems to rely on johnny for a significant part of what he does. when he does good at dodgeball:

Look at me, Johnny, look at me!

almost like a child calling for his parent's attention to be praised. he calls johnny's name when he's going through hardships, when he's scared or when he's sad.

more than someone he just loves, johnny is a point of reference. whenever there's something going on, whenever he does or has to do something, his first thought goes to johnny; vice versa, what johnny asks of him is his priority.

I gotta tell Johnny! No time. I gotta see Johnny now. Gotta help Johnny. What can I do next to please Johnny? I mean Lola! I mean…

(this also goes in a "negative" direction, envy being the other side of the medal to adoration. especially because, in some way, this reliance on johnny might be felt by him as emasculating, and, being johnny his model of masculinity, adding it to the napoleon complex thing, it's not hard to guess why it can be so unpleasant. we can see this manifest through some of the things he expresses in regards to lola- not as much an interest he has towards her, but the interest he wishes to have from her- which are a bit more different than it might seem at a first glance. but this is a mouseketool we'll need later. still:

Last time I saw her, Lola made eyes at me, not Johnny!

do we really need this part? heh. i'm not sure, but it's always good to point out)

(also, just because, for the purpose of this analysis, it might be useful to specify: while these sentiments are very much implied in peanut's canon quotes, we have no evidence in canon in what measure they are reciprocated by johnny. the fandom has universally agreed that johnny also views peanut as his Best Friend In The World; while in some measure, they must be at least a bit close, i think it is even safe to say, given the caricaturist nature of bully's characterizations, that johnny holds peanut in less consideration that peanut deludes himself into believing. quoting another post of mine, the kids who show some level of obsession towards their leader mention him on average ten or less times (gord mentions derby eight times, parker six times, kirby mentions ted five times). the leaders don't usually make names at all, that much is true; however, peanut mentions johnny 30 times, and, even in front of this proportion, johnny mentions peanut 0 times. just to make that clear)

overall, what undeniably shines through his voice lines is a feeling of general inadequacy, whether about his height, or his strength in front of a bigger adversary. the audios in which he tries to show off range from being disingenuous, to straight up improbable.

crossing what we have until now said, it is not hard to come to the conclusion that he really tries to make up, to fill this empty feeling of inadequacy by taking pride in his role as johnny's second in command.

while i am a big fan of bully's characteristic of having left much content out of the main game, leaving the gamers to dig it up for themselves, i do believe that scrapping some of the stuff that was prepared for peanut is a loss. we have a number of voice lines coming from chapter 3, in which it was heavily implied how important peanut's role as johnny's right hand man was.

for example, much like... all other seconds in command, really, he was to be followed and then fought in the rumble, before you could get to johnny, with the specific duty to cover his back. even his very first scene, the opening cutscene of chapter 3, i believe, is not to be underestimated. most of the other people, as far as i recall, call you when they need it in person; johnny, however, sends peanut. making him, de facto, an extension of himself, almost.

again, you choose the motivation. what is important, from a narrative point of view, is that peanut clings to johnny through these acts of service, almost making it the foundation of his personhood.

basically, he makes it so that, if he can't be of help to johnny, his whole self is fundamentally annihilated, giving himself completely to johnny.

ii. lola

with lola, reading between the lines gets a bit more difficult; first of all, because lola is much less transparent than peanut, her insincerity being a supporting beam of the whole chapter 3. secondly, whether she was done dirty by the creators or not, it is undoubted that being the perspective that of a teenage boy (namely, jimmy, but we certainly, as viewers, are brought to sympathize more with johnny than with lola) with all the prejudices it can bring with itself.

however, it doesn't mean that there isn't anything to work with- quite the contrary, actually. the issue with lola is that there is a certain amount of layers to get through before gaining a satisfying perception of her as a character. still, we're here to try our best, aren't we!

even behind the muddiness of her intentions and the manipulation she shows herself a master at, it is clear from the second we first meet her that what she does is in function of johnny.

to get through this mess with order, we'll start from an easy, measurable numeric information: lola mentions johnny in her audio files 19 times. which, we're assessed, IS a considerable amount.

we have extensively talked about the way her cheating patterns are a strategy not to succumb to the passive role of the girl in the heteronormative, patriarchal prototypical couple (there's a post here breaking down a lot of this stuff, if any of you is interested!!), so, instead of this, i want to focus on what lies beneath that behavior.

ultimately, the whole point is that lola expects and wants johnny to fight for her. whether is it because she feels taken for granted, or just because he can't perceive it if not through grandiose gestures like the rumble- your interpretation will work; she wants to see johnny fighting nail and teeth not to lose her, she wants him to show her that he wants her.

she's all about that attention, and she knows exactly what and how to do to get it. and i think this is especially clear when you compare the moments in which she knows there's no advantage she could go for; when she has understood that jimmy won't fall for her manipulation, when algie and chad leave her unsatisfied, when norton openly accuses her and antagonizes her - she loses her temper, lets go of that sweetened and/or flirtatious voice tone, abandons that specific kind of gesturing. she doesn't care anymore about obtaining something. she was actually angry, and she was actually upset that johnny had disappeared.

in some of her audios, she references johnny with some amount of fondness, as well:

Johnny and I were on the best date ever.

(there is also a voice line in which she says "He told me he likes me because of my personality. Isn't that sweet?"; due to it being a general chatter and not exclusive to one chapter, i assume it is relatively safe to assume she is quoting johnny. however, as i said at the beginning, we're trying to stay as close to canon material as possible, so, do your thing- and i'm open to arguments!!)

a considerable amount of audio files, however (which will lead us to our final point) is about her... calling for help for johnny, or stating, confidently, that he will come save her, or avenge her later.

Someone get Johnny! Johnny's gonna get you for this. Johnny is gonna kill you!

but wait... i have some sense of déjà vu...

You're gonna be sorry when Johnny finds out!

iii. two faces of the same medal

if i had to pick an effective image for a metaphor, i'd say that the thing about lola and peanut is that they are both dogs looking for someone to take their leash; we’re talking here about an exclusive relationship with someone they can rely totally on, someone we’ll call the Other (with a capital o, distinguished from just other. yes it is unnecessarily complicated i’m sorry).

for what my professor would call accidents of history, it happened that both of them found that Other in johnny.

each of them attempts at creating an exclusive relationship with the Other, one foolproof and fundamentally… perfect. perfect in the way that everything works like oiled gears, in the way that every next move is predictable, in the way that any accident will not break the created equilibrium. (even if, in the general sense of the term, lola and johnny's relationship is everything but perfect, it is in the connotation that we have established here. lola is aware that, no matter what she does, johnny will come back around. hell, the very thing that she does is aimed at keeping that balance; specifically, keeping him a bit on the edge, pushing him into a corner where he has to actively make an effort to keep her close.)

they both hide something they are ashamed of, regulating not only their actions and reactions but their very way of existing in the world, in order to keep that gear working, in order to remain in johnny's hand. lola hides that craving for a genuine and stable affection, dissimulating it with the cheating and the fatuous physical demonstrations of closeness; peanut hides his sense of inadequacy and complex of inferiority, by being the tough and reliable second in command.

basically, what they mean to achieve is a sense of security, the safety of not really being the one to lead but, at the same time, finding a purpose, other than a shield from the outside world that they are not willing to concede themselves to. like a... symbiotic relationship?? i was going to say parasitic, but, yknow. the Other does get some advantages, which are, respectively, peanut's acts of service and lola's capacity to boost johnny's pride.

now, of course, johnny is not aware of either of their play. which makes it even better, since, as we already said, both of their approach to the relationship needs some degree of insincerity.

like, i don't deny that johnny might be a good friend, or a loyal one. but he is an oblivious, prideful fuck who can't see past his own nose; he's got a tendency to make it all about himself - which of course goes perfectly with what we said about both peanut and lola making the Other their center, taking up, in a certain way, a passive role in the relationship.

this way, both of them aim at creating with johnny a relationship that is, in a way, codependant and conditional, in which the do ut des (their respective "service" ↔ johnny's guarantee of stability) creates the foundation of the very relationship.

this, of course, brings up the problem of exclusivity; on which, however, i prefer not to delve into too much, as this would bring us to the topic of their antagonism which... isn't really what i wanted to go for, at least not here. (it would risk bringing us a bit too close to my subjective interpretation and too far away from the canon, which i PROMISED i wouldn't do. however, someday i might elaborate on that??? idk , please do lmk if someone's interested around here)

i will, however, show you a diagram (it looks like a triangle- i guess it is, but it is VERY important that it is a pyramid, with a top and a larger foundation) and a quote, to wrap this up bc i think it is already WAY too long and ramble-y lmao. let me know what you think anyway, my ask box is always open <3

it almost feels like a joke to play out a part when you are not the starring role in someone else's heart you know i'd rather walk alone (i'd rather walk alone) than play a supporting role if i can't get the starring role -- starring role, marina and the diamonds

[ramshacklefey]

"Susan didn't get to go back to Narnia one last time because she liked boys and lipstick" WRONG.

Susan didn't go back to the Narnian post-apocalypse afterlife because she had abandoned her sense of wonder and prioritized mundane life over those things.

Which meant that she didn't go with her siblings to help during the last battle, so she didn't die in the train crash that killed all the others. It was explicitly an afterlife. Their parents were on the same train and also died, but they were in the Earthworld afterlife because they weren't connected to Narnia.

When Susan eventually dies, she will go to an afterlife of some kind, and I imagine that which one it is will depend on which world she is more connected with at that time.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[stargazerlily7210]

Hello, and welcome to my TED Talk.

In this essay, I will demonstrate why I think Mrs. Flood is Susan Foreman (aka The Doctor's Granddaughter, aka The Unearthly Child, aka The Boss, aka The One Who Waits).

I know, I know. Not exactly the hottest take out there.

But buckle in, cause this goes deep.

Getting this out of the way first: I know this season has been billed as a bit of a fresh start (what with calling it Season 1, and all) and thus people are wary about assuming Mrs. Flood is a returning character. But let's be real. Just look at the 60th anniversary specials. Ya know, the massive 3 parter whose plot has set everything in motion for this next season.

They feature The 14th Doctor (aka The 10th Doctor revamped) with Donna Noble and her family (from the 2000's), Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (from the 2010's) who is both the current leader of UNIT (from Classic Who) and the daughter of The Brigadier: original leader of UNIT (throughout all of Classic Who), The Meep (from a Classic Who comic strip of all things) The Toymaker (Classic Who) and Mel (Classic Who).

And that's just the characters. Never mind the near constant references to both New and Classic Who.

They made it appealing and approachable to new viewers, sure. But they've already proven they're not actually interested in distancing themselves from the show's past.

So why do I think she's Susan, specifically?

Well, for starters, although the age of an actress doesn't really mean much in a 60 yr old time-travel show that's already had (MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THOSE WHO HAVENT SEEN THE 11TH DOCTOR'S EPISODES!!) a parent-child dynamic where the daughter is not just played by an actress who's noticably older than the parents, but also canonically met the doctor first, despite her parents being the primary companions, (and each of them are played by both adult and child actors). But Anita Dobson is 74. Which would have made her 14/15 when the show started in 1963. Around the same age Susan Foreman is supposed to be/appear.

But again, that doesn't really mean anything in this show. So why else would I think she's Susan? And why do I think this means she's also The Boss mentioned by the Meep, AND The One Who Waits mentioned by The Toymaker?

Well, because I think it all falls into place with some of the big themes they've been pushing in the episodes so far, if she's Susan.

I mean, from what I know of Susan, she was a refugee from Galifrey, with her grandfather, The Doctor. As far as we know, he's her only family. He'd basically been raising her until she caught feelings for a human guy, so The Doctor decided she'd be better off staying on Earth. Effectively abandoning his very traumatized teenage granddaughter in 1960's London. It wasn't malicious, he was trying to do what's best for her. But he still left her there against her will and never came back for her.

So she's an orphaned teenage refugee, raised in a high-tech alien culture, stuck in the 1960's, with her first major crush as her primary confidant and caregiver. Let's be real. She'd have been deemed a mentally unstable minor, and at best institutionalized, at worst dissected/studied, in a heartbeat (or rather, two heartbeats (a surprise tool that'll help us later)).

So here we have a woman who's likely been drugged and tortured ("psychotherapy" in the 1960s, am I right?), gaslit, and desperately isolated for a significant portion of her life. With a massive list of reasons to both deeply resent and have seriously dissociated from The Doctor and the TARDIS.

And now we finally get to the new episodes:

The Meep says that creatures with two hearts are so rare that it can't wait to tell The Boss about The Doctor. So we have The Meep, who just happened to pick Earth to "crash land" on, answering to a nameless Boss who's on the lookout for 2 hearted creatures. Thus, we're looking for someone with both a connection to Earth and intimate knowledge of Timelord biology.

The Toymaker says even he didn't dare face The One Who Waits. Which says a lot, considering the importance and prevalence of people described as Waiting with a capitol W.

(MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE 10TH and 11TH DOCTOR'S EPISODES!!) Off the top of my head, I can think of Jack Harkness aka The Face of Boe who waited billions of years to see The Doctor again. We have Amy Pond aka The Girl Who Waited, and Rory Williams aka The Boy Who Waited. We even have Sara Jane Smith, who's first real conversation with the The Doctor after finding him again had her admitting she'd spent her whole adult life waiting for him to come back. So to be The One Who Waited, above and beyond all others? You'd have to have somehow waited more than the rest. And when you're already talking about Waiting upwards of 5 Billion years, that's tough to do. Unless you're looking at it from The Doctor's perspective. And the Granddaughter he'd abandoned 15 lifetimes ago would absolutely fit that bill.

So we have an individual who is intelligent/knowledgeable enough to be called The Boss by an alien kapable of mind control and space flight, who's searching for creatures with 2 hearts. Who's earned the title of The One Who Waits, above so many other candidates.

And we just so happen to meet a character who's being played by an actress the same age Susan should be.

Speaking of, we can finally look at Mrs. Flood herself. When I first watched the episode, it struck me just how angry she was at seeing the TARDIS. When it's far more normal to see people ignoring the thing. So her reaction is weird, both in general, and for a character the actress herself described as a friendly neighbor lady.

It's only after she's utterly shocked by the TARDIS disappearing in front of her that she starts acting different. As if seeing that unlocked her memories. From there on out, she's a different person who knows exactly what's going on. She even addresses the audience at the end and knows to call it a TARDIS. Which Susan of all people would know, as Susan claimed to have come up with the acronym herself, during her time with the 1st Doctor (whether that's technically canon or not, idk).

It's also worthy to note, that if you look at the houses during the scene where she's complaining about the TARDIS, you'll see that on the outside, her house, while the most extravagantly decorated outside, is noticably stark and empty inside, unlike each of the other houses where you can clearly see decorations through the windows. Not to mention, her door is the only one that looks like the TARDIS. The other doors are either the wrong shade, or style, or both. And her's is the only one that doesn't have stairs going to the second level. I don't know how much of this is just working within the confines of the location, and how much is intentional, or what it would mean, but we see enough wide shots of the house fronts, it seems potentially relevant.

So if Mrs. Flood is, in fact, Susan Foreman, she's exactly the right age, she'd have had more than enough reason to be triggered by the sight of the TARDIS, more than enough intelligence/knowledge to reach Boss status in her search for a rare two-hearted creature and being The Doctor's Granddaughter, could absolutely intimidate The Toymaker, and have more than enough claim to the title of The One Who Waited.

And if she turned out to be a future Big Bad, she would have the trauma, reasoning, skillset, and intelligence to truly challenge The Doctor and force him to deal with the repercussions of his habit of never stopping or looking back at his actions or mistakes.

We've never seen if Susan can regenerate as far as I'm aware, but we know she's a Timelord and significantly younger than The Doctor. So if she can, the actress has already suggested that Mrs. Flood will go through quite a transformation throughout future episodes. We might be seeing the birth of a new antagonist for a new generation of the show.

Honorable Mention: I feel like The Boss is right up there with The Doctor and The Master. And RTD would absolutely make The Boss a bada** boss babe.

Phew. That was a whole essay. If you've made it this far, congrats!! I'd love to hear your thoughts!

[scoobydoodean]

Thinking about 4.11 “Family Remains” and how Dean keeps insisting to Brian (the dad) that he will save Brian’s family—that he will put himself at risk for them and he will find Danny.

Eventually, Brian asks Dean straight up why he cares so much—why he's willing to put himself at such risk for them. Dean doesn’t get to answer.

We know from the start of the episode that Dean has been hunting non-stop to cope with his trauma. That's made pretty obvious at the beginning of the episode:

SAM: What are you doing? DEAN: What's it look like I'm doing? SAM: Like you're looking for a job. DEAN: Yahtzee. SAM: We just finished a job like two hours ago. DEAN: Adrenaline's still pumping, I guess. So, what do you think... Cedar Rapids, Tulsa, or Chi-Town? SAM: I am all for working. I really am. But you got us chasing cases nonstop for like a month now. We need sleep. DEAN: Yeah, we can sleep when we're dead. SAM: You're exhausted, Dean. DEAN: I'm good. SAM: No, you're not. You're running on fumes, and you can't run forever. DEAN: And what am I running from? SAM: From what you told me. Or are we pretending that never happened?

We've seen this behavior from Sam before too—Sam pushing back to back hunts in 1.19-1.20 to cope with his anger, and in 2.11 (due to guilt over Ava) and in 2.19 to deal with Madison's death, and in 3.11 to deal with Dean's (temporary) death. We'll see it in the future too—the brothers displaying a need to work to get through something.

So it’s easy to say Dean is simply pushing himself to "be the hero" in 4.11 because of guilt about Hell and leave it at that. I do think Dean believes in atonement (we get hints about this in 4.05), but I think the reason Dean insists on being the person to jump down in the first hole they find instead of Ted, and then insists on going down the second compartment to find Danny when Brian is ready to do it, is also because Dean has a feeling they're going to have to kill this girl, and however scary she may be—however violent—she's also a victim of horrific abuse, and taking a life is always a serious thing. So Dean's trying to spare Brian from that trauma.

Dean doesn’t want Brian to have to take a life and (no matter how justified the kill) feel like a monster. Dean already does feel like a monster (no matter how justified his actions were, no matter how understandable it was because it was born from decades of torture... he still feels and deals with terrible guilt). So Dean takes on the highest risks and puts himself on the front line, upping the chance that if anyone has to do any killing tonight, it'll be him.

Dean does end up killing the boy in the walls in self defense, and the camera focuses on Dean staring at his body as Sam enters, while a sad theme plays in the background, and then we get this look from Dean:

This is the first time in the series that either brother kills a human (besides a demon meatsuit) and a teenager at that, so there's a special weight to it.

But Brian still ends up killing the girl in the walls immediately after this, and that scene is one of the more horrifying ones, because it's shot in a way that casts Brian as the monster lurking in the dark.

Earlier in the episode, we establish the horror of the anticipation of having ones legs grabbed.

DEAN finds a hole in the floor and looks through. TED: You're not going down there. DEAN: Well, do you want to? TED says nothing. DEAN starts down. DEAN: Please nobody grab my leg. Please nobody grab my leg.

And when Brian attacks the girl in the walls, from the perspective of his wife Susan and his daughter Kate, all we see is the girl suddenly get dragged out into the dark by the legs.

Then we focus on Susan and Kate as they listen in terror to the sound of her screaming as she's stabbed over and over and over.

When Brian knocks on the door they jump and scream.

After Susan opens the door for Brian, she backs away from him almost warily.

They see the knife—the blood on his hands and clothes.

Brian saved them, but he's shot as the monster who reaches out and grabs you by the legs. We cast the girl in the walls as a smaller monster (ultimately just a child who can easily be overpowered) snatched up in the jaws of a much bigger fish. All despite the fact that Brian did what he had to do.

SAM: You okay? DEAN: You know, I felt for those sons of bitches back there. Lifelong torture turns you into something like that. SAM: You were in hell, Dean. Look, maybe you did what you did there, but you're not them. They were barely human. DEAN: Yeah, you're right. I wasn't like them. I was worse.

[littlelovelore]

Been taking it easy the past few days on posting + creating but i'm back in swing today 🖤

to learn some things about me keep reading 🦇

tw chronic illness //

I have some serious physical health issues that I deal with every day, hence why I have so much free time to do this stuff (writing, screenshots, learning to draw ect. Which is a blessing I have the energy and motivation to do, truly, because at a certain point that wouldn't have been possible. ) Let alone the fact i'm still alive to experience Baldur's Gate 3! (I seem to be on the mend and thus feeling more comfortable to talk about this)

This Astarion Fandom means so much to me and has become a huge part of my life. When I could be focusing on much darker things, this place brings me light. I especially want to thank @herdarkestnightelegance for always chatting with me on my works and photos, you brighten my day with this friend , probably more than you know.🖤 and @avenananana thank you for inspiring me to learn to learn art, something I had lost my connection to, but loved to do as a child.

Whenever I bounce back from this (been going on for about 3.5 years and I'm actually making a good progress right now as well) I would like to share more of the specifics of my story because I think it could really help people whom struggle with all sorts of things especially chronic illness.

Anyways thanks for listening to my tiny violin / ted talk/ monolouge thing and THANK YOU ALL for giving me a place to still be able to create, express myself and have some community in my life where once there was none.

🖤

"One person's 'barbarian' is another person's 'just doing what everybody else is doing." - Susan Sontag

[luckybyler]

From an actually good question posted on Reddit, here’s how I think the Stranger Things grandparents are:

Joyce: I think she had low-ish-income parents who were good people with good values, loved her and fulfilled her basic needs (fed, roof over her head, clothes, school), but for some reason couldn’t take care of her or guide her much. Maybe they had problems with drugs or alcohol, or maybe they were old and frail (or her grandparents because her bio parents weren’t in the picture), or had some illness. That made her driven, self-reliant, but also drove her to make some bad decisions. However, because she remembered what actual love looked like, she was able to correct course and protect her kids. Probably dead by the time Jonathan was born.

Hopper: I’d say he grew up in a non-abusive, but strict, home, with a father who valued honor and war and stuff. I imagine his mom was a little homemaker lady who baked cookies and loved him a lot, but who also instilled the fear of God in him and in dad. Basically a “men rule the world and women rule the home” type of family (which is actually a super hyper traditional mindset).

Lonnie: Could have been literally any kind of parents, because his fucked-up-ness seems entirely like a Lonnie problem. He could’ve had the worst or the best parents in the world and it wouldn’t have made a difference. Maybe he killed them for the insurance and made it look like an accident.

Karen: She was super popular in school, so her parents must have been at least middle class, the picture of a perfect 50s marriage and active in the church. Not rich tho, so they encouraged her to latch on to her older boyfriend from a good family for dear life to remain financially stable.

Ted: Likewise, except I imagine his parents were slightly more affluent than Karen’s. I imagine they were the pronto-Ted and Karen and Ted was a proto-Mike as a kid, until life and depression beat every ounce of joy and personality out of him.

Sue Sinclair: She most likely had loving, strategic parents most likely went ABOVE AND BEYOND to give her EVERY. TOOL. at their disposal so she could have the middle class life she ended up enjoying, keeping in mind that she grew up as a black girl during Jim Crow. In Lucas on the Line Lucas says his dad met his mom when she was in typing school or working as a typist. Her parents probably made sacrifices so she (and her siblings, if any) could have a higher education. They couldn’t afford to make a single wrong choice or even to let her become a homemaker and depend on a man.

Charles Sinclair: We know what his white foster parents were like: assholes. He fled out of there the second he was allowed to (or had to) and probably went immediately to the military recruiter. That crucial decision made the difference between a life of poverty and the comfortable life he ended up having.

Claudia Henderson: Most likely loving, reasonably progressive parents who encouraged her to get some sort of higher education or to work. I think she has only known healthy relationships.

Mr. Henderson: no idea, but judging by Dustin and Claudia’s personalities, he was probably a loving, caring husband and father who died (and most likely left them a pension or life insurance). Maybe that means his own parents were ok people.

Susan Hargrove: Probably very traditional parents who taught her that women should be seen and not heard, or at least that being a housewife was her only alternative for a decent life. Maybe she rebelled against her parents by choosing “love” instead of convenience, and so ended up dating and/or marrying a long line of losers and abusers. Her parents gave her zero tools at all for her own life so she depended on whatever dude entered her and Max’s lives.

Mr. Mayfield: described in Runaway Max as a smart but unmotivated and undisciplined man who commits petty crime, he probably comes from a long line of petty criminals who don’t feel any drive to better themselves, not even for those they supposedly love.

Neil Hargrove: Most likely raised in an abusive home and grew up to perpetuate the cycle of abuse.

[dwobbitfromtheshire]

What I want to see:

Karen goes to leave Ted.

Ted leaves her first for Wayne Munson.

It would be so funny and so unexpected. If they can laugh about it later and have a better relationship for it, then great! Especially with Wayne and Karen.

"I can fix him," Wayne would say. "Or I can make him worse. Depends on the day of the week. Either way, he's my problem now, darling."

"At least I still have my hair," Ted said, affectionately.

"At least I still have my eyes," Wayne would reply.

And then after Susan gets out of rehab, eventually Karen starts dating her.