#the beginning: commentary

[koushirouizumi]

M E: If I ever get an Ukkomon plush someday. Its getting chucked at the wall too. I WILL NOT TAKE NO for an Answer (DigiBeanies+Plush Get Chucked) {/Affectionately}

[milkbreadtoast]

idk how i want to draw him yet and not ready to make a srs attempt but here's a bad kdj phone doodle lol🚶🏻

[shadovvheart]

one hilarious example of veilguard's writing doing the quite aggressive hand-holding during a conversation to make sure people don't miss the important info. this is all in the same scene btw:

in case you missed: elgar'nan is HERE. right NOW. unlike ghilan'nain, who isn't.

i've adhd and auditory processing issues so i get easily distracted by the most random stuff but even i felt annoyed by the constant bombardment of repeated info over and over throughout the main quests

[skitskatdacat63]

2009 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix - Sebastian Vettel(ft. Mark Webber & Jenson Button)

[sergle]

you bitches have got to watch Scavengers Reign if you haven't yet, i'm only a few episodes in and it's already completely unlike anything else i've ever seen

[theladydi]

good to know that they filmed this scene of "what is this feeling" on cynthia's birthday

[girl4music]

I honestly find it so interesting how much of an idealistic romantic Gabrielle is in the first season and how her attraction seems to only be to warriors except that one guy that likes to tell stories like she does. Talus. It seemed to be less about attraction and more about recognition. She recognized in Talus a kindred spirit. He was kind and caring and sensitive and empathetic... Just like herself...

But with the warriors - Gabrielle’s interest in them was more obvious and she wasn’t drawing parallels to herself in them, but rather to Xena. And that’s how you knew that she was just substituting her unrealized attraction to Xena with these warriors. Even later on with the female warriors that had interest in her, she was still constantly rooted on her idealisation of Xena. Of being a warrior or with one.

And that would always be unhealthy for her - unless it was Xena.

But yeah, the other romantic interests that weren’t warriors… She was just drawing parallels to herself even though she wasn’t that way either. At least she was very quickly moving away and separating herself from that. Again - just an idealised version of the real person. And look - Perdicus only ever became interesting to Gabrielle when he was no longer just a villager too. When he was also a warrior with a tortured soul. Someone she could save. Someone she could fix...

But she already had that person in her life and she was already doing that job and playing that role for that person. She already had exactly what she was looking for in a romantic partner in Xena. She just never realized it because she mistook her attraction to and affection for Xena as just hero worship and the fantasy of being an adventuress.

Season 1 just lays it on really thick that the Perfect Match for either one of them is clearly each other. They said they weren’t doing this intentionally and you can see that but they understood the romantic interest characters were just paralleling both their lead characters in that the traits in them are the reason they were attractive to them.

It’s much more obvious with Gabrielle than with Xena but even Xena had romantic interests that were just an idealised male version of what she loved in Gabrielle. What she found attractive and desirable.

So really they HAD TO come to the conclusion that they do in Season 2 that it’s EACH OTHER because otherwise you’d just get this paralleling happening constantly and not really a progression. And only Xena’s bad boy attraction ever makes sense because that’s Ares. That’s what Ares does for and to her. He isn’t an idealisation. He isn’t ever a fantasy for her. She genuinely is attracted to him and desires him. That’s the only romantic interest character that doesn’t feel like a poor attempt to cover up the fact that it’s Gabrielle she wants to be with. But then what happens is every "bad boy" romantic interest character she has ends up just being a parallel to Ares instead. So it’s always either just one or the other. Ares or Gabrielle. Dark or Light.

There never seems to be a point where Xena’s paired with a romantic interest to recognize herself like Gabrielle is because it’s never about realizing her identity or sexuality. It’s about balancing her nature.

But even so,... it’s obvious the Perfect Match for her is Gabrielle. And this goes on for 2 entire seasons until the half-way point of Season 2 raises the stakes and they have to acknowledge the truth of what’s going on with the narrative when it comes to the romantic aspect.

The real romance is, always was and always will be EACH OTHER.

It’s like Xena had to be bashed in the head, die and come back life for them to get to the point of “Oh, it’s you. You’re my true love. You’re my Perfect Match. You’re my soulmate. You're the one for me!"

Even then it takes them half the fucking length of the TV show to even commit to anything actually solid within their relationship. They know their feelings, they know each other’s feelings by that point but they are still so absolutely clueless. 🤦‍♀️ They have to be told. They have to get this information hand fed to them via reincarnation and AU crazy shenanigans before they can be like “Okay, we can’t deny it now. We’re clearly meant to be together for eternity… so should we perhaps go for an actual romance? Should we be an official couple?"

And it’s so meta how they do this because it’s both an in-show and out-of-show thing. It’s like the moment they decide both in-Universe and in real life that this is where they’re going with their progression.

It just works. It works so well for it to happen like this - for them to progress like this - and it is so interesting to delve into and explore the slow burnish-ness to their character dynamic because these characters discover each other in such a way that you rarely ever see in TV. And when you do see it, it’s never two lead female characters.

I’m just so grateful. I am so fucking grateful for XENA and for a team of creators/cast/crew that AGREED! I mean the way they set it up not even intending for anything like this to occur but it just... does.

Steven L. Sears is right. Is it really a surprise that these incredibly dynamic female lead characters would end up as a WLW love story?

No,... because how else could they have progressed individually? This was the natural trajectory because it made the most sense for both characters to evolve in this way AND to be their Perfect Match. And it is a queer narrative all the way through from episode 1 to the last because... at the end of the day THEY were the heart of all of it. Everything that happens, every narrative choice, every theme, every plot arc twist - it all wraps extremely tightly around their love story. It doesn't matter whether it was initially intended or not. It was THE WAY the story was heading naturally because it's a queer narrative and they let these lead characters evolve the way it felt most right and I feel they really took this relationship seriously as a romantic one precisely because they didn't just make it about a romance. That their "have their cake and eat it too" made this show phenomenal and I don't care what anyone says. It's THE BEST WLW representation.

But only because the creators/cast/crew went there. Only because they agreed. Only because they allowed it. Deep fucking RESPECT!

[rickybaby]

Daniel Ricciardo sets the fastest lap record around the Marina Bay street circuit

[imaginita-est-omnibus]

Okay, given everything we learned about Sutekh in Empire of Death, and how much 73 Yards simultaneously did and didn't matter to the plot, I have formulated what I think is a pretty good theory as to the identity of the figure in 73 Yards:

I believe it is the TARDIS.

What I think was happening in that episode was that the fairy circle the Doctor stepped on was somehow a fixed point, and by breaking it, he broke that fixed point, breaking the universe and creating a branching, doomed timeline, a la Turn Left. In Turn Left, of course, the Doctor doesn't just disappear, but the TARDIS does go wonky because of the temporal weirdness of breaking a fixed point. In this case, the TARDIS broke down, the box becoming an unopenable husk, and the soul of the TARDIS was shunted out of it and into a temporally/spatially weird form. Whether this was a conscious decision on the TARDIS' part or just a result of the timeline breaking, I don't know, and it doesn't matter to this theory. What does matter is what happened to Sutekh.

With the TARDIS broken down, Sutekh couldn't stay attached to it, so it instead attached itself to Ruby, most likely hoping to use her as he had originally planned to use Susan T. as his anchor to the world. The TARDIS would want to prevent this, and so would reveal Sutekh clinging to Ruby, thus causing people to run away from Ruby and preventing her from making the connections Sutekh needed (and Susan T and the other creations were able to achieve) to spread his death. Both Sutekh and the TARDIS were able to cling on to remnants of the perception filter, which is why the TARDIS stayed 73 yards away, so that people standing by it would be outside that range and able to see Sutekh.

(Why didn't people further than 73 yards see Sutekh? Why don't people further than 73 yards take note of the Tardis? The perception filter works past that distance, but it's not actively affecting peoples' perception -- within that range, if the producer of that perception field doesn't want you to see it, you can't take note of it, but outside that range, someone can point it out to you and the filter will be broken for you)

Once Ruby reached the end of her life and died, the TARDIS was finally able to approach her safely, and they essentially merged somehow. The TARDIS in that temporally broken form most likely existed across all of time at once, which is why when Ruby merged with it, she was able to return back down her personal timeline and stop the paradox. However, in merging with the TARDIS, Ruby would bring along Sutekh as well, and if Sutekh was able to exist across all of time at once, well life would be done for, wouldn't it? It was only once Ruby was dead, and therefore Sutekh lost his connection to the living world, that the TARDIS could safely take her back down her own timeline. I think that, if Sutekh hadn't been there, the TARDIS would've somehow gotten Ruby to fix the timeline much sooner, likely with help from UNIT, similar to what happened in Turn Left.

So as one story: Doctor stepped on fixed-point fairy circle, causing the Doctor to disappear, the timeline to shatter, and the TARDIS to break. The TARDIS and Sutekh were both shunted out of the now inoperable box, the TARDIS taking up a form that exists across all of time (or at least all up and down Ruby's timeline) and Sutekh attaching itself to Ruby as his connection to the living world. Both the TARDIS and Sutekh are clinging on to remnants of the perception filter. Sutekh wants to enter into the world through Ruby, and the TARDIS prevents this by revealing to people Sutekh's presence and driving them away from Ruby so that she cannot gain enough influence for Sutekh to enact his plans. Once Ruby dies of old age, the TARDIS absorbs her consciousness (and Sutekh) and brings her back down her timeline to prevent the Doctor from breaking the fairy circle, thus fixing time.

Now, you may ask, where did the Doctor go in all of this? Barbieland, of course.

[lover-of-mine]

Buddie Countdown to Season 7:

84 days.

[sprintingficcommentator]

Warning: abuse talked about under the line

Also: TCF Spoilers

... Oh my god they are right and I didn't even notice, what the hell

Damn, if you read the novel again with KRS!Cale's past in mind it changes a lot of things, and not for the better

[koushirouizumi]

Some DigiAdvs+02 stan @ Me: "Oct. 27th is!!!--" Me: My bio parent's b-day, I know :) :)

[the-nysh]

Oh sweet! Looks like Trimax vol4's when Vash actually starts calling Meryl by name on a regular basis

As before--for context, he'd typically used the more distant, but still respectful 'insurance-san' to refer to the girls, but Trigun vol2 (right before Fifth Moon) was the first time he ever said her name so seriously, which was a very Big Deal to her, and their last exchange for 2 years.

That upon their hospital reunion scene in Trimax vol3, genuinely happy and relieved but still awkwardly not quite knowing what to say to each other after all this time, she bonks him for trying his 'old' way of address--denied! No more of that please; say her name!

So aha, here in Trimax vol4, after Zazie captures Meryl as a 'weakness' to bait him and things get personal...there it is. Now he's quite direct and no-nonsense about it! Surprising Milly and shocking even his opponents (in a 'whoa wtf, he behaves nothing like Knives!' kind of way by jumping out of a window for her) with his immediate 'cut the bullshit; I don't care about your games, I'm only here for Meryl; give her back' >:[ attitude!

(For reference, Milly generally calls Meryl 'sempai' while Wolfwood calls everybody nicknames, referring to the girls by their big/small heights. So Vash asserting a First Name basis for her is pretty significant.)

And just to check if Vash continues using her name, on his Important Mission to find her, even all alone, no matter what (Trimax vol5 spoilers)...

Oh yes he does. (Face to face now.) She's that important to him.

[theoneprecioustome]

Even MORE Sea Paradise Aikoto!

The merch line-up of the Sea Paradise event was just revealed, and it's filled with Aikoto!

First, we have Atlus' commentary on the matching Aikoto illustrations.

(What all sorts of things, Atlus? How beautiful and tragic Aikoto are?)

There's also a whole array of Aikoto merch! In order, we have: face towels, desk mats, tote bags, acrylic keychains and they even designed two matching armbands that are meant to be Aigis' (red) and Makoto's (blue).

Lastly, the collaboration also features an Aikoto Hotel Room and its assorted merch!

[asurrogateblog]

pink floyd's problem was that all of them thought they were the one human in a band full of muppets except for syd who understood that they are all muppets but also started to notice the hands

[quatregats]

I'm rereading Master and Commander and I'm deeply in danger of just posting every single passage from it ever but I did love the way that the capture of the prize in Chapter 6 was framed on either side by the logbook's entry, and also the way he transitions out of it to set the scene and tone:

Sunday, July 1 … Mustered the ship’s company by divisions read the Articles of War performed Divine Service and committed the body of Henry Gouges to the deep. At noon dº weather. Ditto weather: but the sun sank towards a livid, purple, tumescent cloud-bank piled deep on the western horizon, and it was clear to every seaman aboard that it was not going to remain ditto much longer. The seamen, sprawling abroad on the fo’c’sle and combing out their long hair or plaiting it up again for one another, kindly explained to the landmen that this long swell from the south and east, this strange sticky heat that came both from the sky and the glassy surface of the heaving sea, and this horribly threatening appearance of the sun, meant that there was to be a coming dissolution of all natural bonds, an apocalyptic upheaval, a right dirty night ahead. The sailormen had plenty of time to depress their hearers, already low in their spirits because of the unnatural death of Henry Gouges (had said, ‘Ha, ha, mates, I am fifty years old this day. Oh dear,’ and had died sitting there, still holding his untasted grog) – they had plenty of time, for this was Sunday afternoon, when in the course of nature the fo’c’sle was covered with sailors at their ease, their pigtails undone. Some of the more gifted had queues they could tuck into their belts; and now that these ornaments were loosened and combed out, lank when still wet, or bushy when dry and as yet ungreased, they gave their owners a strangely awful and foreboding look, like oracles; which added to the landmen’s uneasiness.

[...]

Jack leant back against the curved run of the stern-window and let Killick’s version of coffee down by gulps into his grateful stomach; and at the same time that its warmth spread through him, so there ran a lively tide of settled, pure, unfevered happiness – a happiness that another commander (remembering his own first prize) might have discerned from the log-entry, although it was not specifically mentioned there: 1/2 past 10 tacked, 11 in courses, reefed topsail. AM cloudy and rain. 1/2 past 4 chase observed E by S, distance 1/2 mile. Bore up and took possession of dº, which proved to be L’Aimable Louise, French polacre laden with corn and general merchandise for Cette, of about 200 tons, 6 guns and 19 men. Sent her with an officer and eight men to Mahon.