#the only one that isn't cohesive because of the jobs they can do

[apt502-if]

MONA/MASON WEN-ST.JAMES

For a long time, you didn't think of M. They were simply your best friend turned thorn at your side back in college. The friendship soured and there was no going back. Back when you graduated, you thought that'd be the last you see of them.

But now? You're working with them.

And it seems the heat between you hasn't died. M still holds that competitive streak and hatred for you they did in college. Looks like you're either going to encourage the rivalry or try to put an end to it. Good luck.

M is 5'9 and their style changes based on their job. No matter what, though, they wear a stylized dog tag necklace they got from their parents.

[nomazee]

"Ranpo. I'm falling asleep, man."

Your complaints are met with Ranpo's own disgruntled mumbles pressed into the damp skin of your neck. "Don't call me man. I'm trying to kiss you and that's what I get?"

"Trying to kiss me while I'm trying to sleep. Can you wait for the morning?"

Apparently, he can't, because he stays in his position on top of you. Every line of his body is pressed into yours as his arms stay wrapped around your shoulders, pulling you in and keeping you locked. You don't hate this, truthfully, but you are falling asleep. The only thing keeping you awake is your annoying partner who you love but also want to kick out of the bed for the night.

Ranpo trails innocent open-mouthed kisses along the soft part beneath your jawline before moving up to the corner of your mouth. He sighs a content little hum into your skin and you have to fight back a shiver. He's awfully good at this. You know he's not trying to do any more than kissing—he never does when you're both bone tired and swaddled in bed—but his incessant gestures are inching you more and more to full consciousness and you really need to get a full seven hours of sleep tonight.

"I need it," he tells you, earnest in the way he always is when the exhaustion starts to make his clever brain fuzzy. He's always a little more mushy with you past eleven PM, words and thoughts and actions slurring into one barely cohesive jumble. "Just a little. Won’t you do it for me? 'Cause you love me 'nd all."

He needs it. Good god. He’s gonna kill you with that one day.

Whatever smart response bubbling on your tongue immediately fizzes out when he covers your lips with his own. Hot and slow breaths puff between the both of you as he moves his mouth against yours in slow, pliant motions. You're far too weak for him and far too awake now, so you let him take you apart just for a moment, just to take the edge off his spontaneous neediness.

"Yeah, sure. Love you and whatever," you manage to squeeze out between his perpetual line of kisses, now spanning across your lips and to your cheek and the spot right beneath your eye, close enough to let you feel the way his soft breaths flutter against your eyelashes.

"One more," he tells you—but it's more like he's telling himself. Like a goal, a promise, a self-fulfilled prophecy. "Just one. M'kay? Then you can fall asleep all early like you're a senior citizen."

"This senior citizen is letting you kiss them, baby. Don't complain."

And, oh, isn't it such a delight, hearing the way his breaths turn shaky for just a second after the nickname leaves your mouth. Every time you call him baby he goes shaky and bashful, too embarrassed to say anything smart. It’s his weak point and you’re too addicted to be good about it.

“If you wake me up early,” you tell him, finally able to pry his face away from yours with the help of a firm hand cupping his cheek, “I’ll make you breakfast. And you can kiss me again. I’ll even walk to the store and get that good jam that you like.”

“You’re a good bargainer.”

“Comes with the job. Will you let me go to bed now?”

He makes a contemplative noise, a hum that buzzes through your fingertips from where you hold his face. “I said one more, right?”

Indeed he did. With a sigh, you let him press a big stupid kiss on your lips, complete with an obnoxiously loud mwah! sound effect from him that you roll your eyes at. What a man-child.

(You still walk to the store for him in the morning. You’re weak at heart, really.)

[ajaxbell]

Hard to Find was a teen dream come true for me though not in the usual way.

Though I very much enjoyed this I'm not sure if I can wholeheartedly recommend it. It's not going to be for some people. But for the ones who get it it will be perfect. For me this was the cdrama of my teen goth dreams (if I'd known what cdramas were way back then). And it did everything I needed it to do in that regard. But objectively I had issues with big chunks of the story, with great setups that were never used, and pieces that never quite came together in the end.

Right upfront I'll say story-wise and casting-wise this was really uneven. I don't think the female lead was quite on par with the male lead. He really carries most of this on the strength of his impeccable jawline. And I've seen him do scorching love scenes in other shows, but the female lead here can't quite meet the heat he brings. And initially I was a little concerned about every other cast member looking like they were 14 years old. But the core cast ended up doing a good job with what they were given and some of the characters turned out to be truly quite excellent.

The villain could have been stronger in the beginning (though his over the top scenery chewing really worked in the end). The romance was really quite sweet and decently done. There was a run of misunderstandings  as the basis for plot conflict which isn't my fave but ultimately I think it was handled well here. And a love triangle that I actually truly enjoyed how it ended up being handled.

I generally prefer cohesive plots and well developed characters with true arcs in my stories. I'm not much for just vibes being enough, but in this case, the vibes alone are worth it. I was a goth teen way back in youth and if this had existed then I would have been insufferable about it. People would have shunned me because I wouldn't have talked about anything else. I'd have gone to dance clubs in Helian Xi cosplay, swanning around in goth robes and playing at brooding in the snow. The first part of this really has the vibes of The Crow (1994). Zhao Yiqin is absolutely perfect as the gloomy goth prince, Helian Xi. He broods like a champ and his jawline is sharp enough to cut through any plot issues. The first part of this really has the vibes of The Crow mostly because Helian Xi really being his best ancient Chinese Eric Draven. A lot of gloomy fairy prince vibes here too. And the choices for the sets make this atmospheric in a very fairy tale way.

As I said, this is not without flaws and not as good as other stuff I've seen from this team. But it's so beautifully shot, it's worth watching for the visuals alone. It is decently acted despite all the teens. The sound track is excellent. The costumes are just gorgeous. Though I do not love the hairstyling on the female lead. It's truly distracting in an otherwise dazzling show. And the eps are all like 18 minutes long, so it's nearly impossible not to just race through it, entranced by how beautiful it is. It goes so fast you might not even notice the shaky story issues. Alas the ending does go in for choosing to further the plot at the expense of being true to the characters they developed, which is too bad, but it does not ruin the overall dreamy brooding goth mood of the show. So yeah, I recommend it only if you want the full on melodramatic teen goth feeling of overwhelming love in a fantasy kingdom of brooding princes and can look past the plot hitches. Really it's so visually stunning I would watch it again just for that.

[wordsandrobots]

'Real' robot? No thanks

I shan't be wasting time hang-wringing over the idea of a Gundam show from the point of view of the setting's antagonists. This is a well-worn and perfectly legitimate approach, and in any case, Mobile Suit Gundam (1979) goes out of its way to emphasise the humanity of the Principality of Zeon's soldiers. There are scouts who bend their orders to aid to civilians, wannabe special-forces who take the time to gawk at the teen prodigy who thwarted their attempt to blow up the Gundam, pilots who jump ship rather than go down with their mobile suits, and injured grunts who cling to family pictures while bleeding out in the desert. Even the actual *villains* of Gundam 79 – the Zabi family and their hangers-on – are generally presented as functioning people with loves and motivations beyond conquest. Only Gihren is utterly without morals. You know, the guy who took being compared to Hitler as a compliment? Garma, Degwin, Dozle, and even Kycilia all have moments of humanity, in spite of their reprehensible actions.

So yes, of course there are people fighting for Zeon because it's their job, because they believe the promise of spacenoid independence, because they buy into newtype theory, or simply because circumstances force them to. That's the kind of story Gundam is: the tragedy of people enduring a war driven by forces above their heads and beyond their control, who are just trying to make it home alive. If you don't get that, or that the Federation is squarely in the position of 'lesser evil but still a callous nation state doing dubious things to secure victory' from episode one, I don't know what to tell you. You've missed the point. I'm sorry, you just have.

There is nothing wrong with the premise 'wouldn't fighting against the Gundam be like living in a horror movie?' Indeed, I will go further: that is a good premise for a story.

But Netflix's Mobile Suit Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance is not a good story. It is, at best, a serviceable one, trotting from A to B with enough narrative cohesion and character beats to string the set-pieces together. By and large it manages an inoffensive momentum, unfolding a predictable sequence of events with reasonable competency. If I was not hugely entertained, I was not especially put off, either. They even remembered to turn on the contrast for the nighttime battles.

The biggest innovation displayed here is that this production was rendered in Unreal Engine as full CGI, eschewing Gundam's conventional animation style. In my view, that's also the key to its biggest problems. Let's take a quick spoiler break and I'll try to unpack what I mean.

I guess go watch the show before proceeding?

OK, so, there was a point in the middle of Requiem for Vengeance when I found myself questioning the physics of beam sabers. I'd never thought before about why what is essentially a burning stream of energy can be blocked by a bit of metal with a super-heated edge, or indeed by another such stream, because within the animation style usually used to depict such things, they are clearly physical in their interaction with the world. As solid as lightsabers and therefore as capable of acting like real swords.

But Requiem makes the decision to depict the Gundam's saber as, essentially, the jet from a blowtorch. Because that's what this *is*, isn't it? A narrow fountain of plasma? So it looks like fire, you can see the Zaku's heat-hawk through the Gundam's blade, and suddenly I'm wondering – how does that work? Why does the axe stop it instead of passing through? How does this obviously non-physical blade react as if it were a physical object?

There are any number of technobabble reasons you might give for how this works. Forcefields! It's probably forcefields. But what struck me was the beat of 'huh' I experienced, where I asked something I'd never previously *needed* to, even though it always existed as a legitimate question of the sci-fi mumbo-jumbo being deployed, and how that was a direct result of stylistic choices made when the Gundam was reinterpreted through the lens of CGI 'realism'.

Ah, yes. Realism. That elusive quality chased by film-makers and game-developers the world over. Or, specifically chased by a lot of big, mainstream studios who've decided it is vitally important the supernatural and the superscientific be placed within what is recognisably the real world.

In terms of such codifying modern works as 2008's Iron Man, this is primarily about papering over the stitching between what is filmed using actors and what is painted in later. In theory, something rendered entirely by computer does not have to worry about this. However, as many a 'triple-A' computer game has proven, the aspiration towards photographic quality remain. Characters and objects are honed so as to mimic the appearance and texture of real people and objects, with greater verisimilitude to life being a near-universally unquestioned goal.

I won't argue this doesn't have merit as a technical exercise. The results can be impressive. What I will say is: realism is worthless if it removes interest, and useless if it sacrifices coherence. The beam saber example is an instance of what I mean by the latter. Within Gundam 79, we apprehend immediately that the saber and the heat-hawk are of a kind, possessing an energised glow that is nevertheless opaque and physical. Within Requiem's portrayal, however, they no longer adhere to a visual language in which their interaction make sense. You cannot block an axe with a blowtorch flame. A minor illustration, yes, but it captures the tension created by transposing such elements into a more 'realistic' style.

Another may be found in the treatment of Zeon's various military vehicles. These are a bizarre selection of sci-fi objet d'art, from the aerodynamically questionable Dopp fighter jets to Magella tanks that can launch their turrets into open flight. They are strikingly weird designs that make little sense yet function perfectly inside their context. Where another, earlier anime would have had them belong to an alien species, Gundam is the show that pioneered 'what if the bad guys were human too' for the mecha genre, so they merely represent a design logic alien to the Earth Federation, which favours bold, blocky shapes more closely based on extant military hardware.

In Requiem, the Zeonic weirdness is deliberately muted. The Dopps are streamlined, literally flattened into a more traditional jet fighter profile. One Magella does attempt to launch its turret only to be blown apart before it can rise more than a couple of feet. Otherwise, they're just treated as ordinary tanks. And it's easy to see what the artists were doing here: "let's take these weird 70s designs and make them look like real tanks/jets." The result, unfortunately, is a dilution of the clear distinction between Zeon and Federation tech.

If you've watching the original Gundam and its sequels, you'll know how easy it is to tell at a glance which side something belongs to. Looking at them in stills, it is still reasonably clear these are meant to be Zeon vehicles. But in motion, it often took me a good few seconds to be sure I wasn't seeing their Federation equivalents. Visual interest doesn't exist purely for its own sake, after all; it serves to clarify the action. Plus, it seems to me that trying to downplay the wilder aspects of these designs actually draws attention towards those aspects. The Zeonic alienness has its own explanatory power; reducing it raises more questions, not fewer.

Lest you think me some terrible killjoy who doesn't like fun, I'm actually incredibly sympathetic to 'realistic' overhauls of classic designs. Have you seen what I spent years doing for the Daleks? Aesthetic overhauls aren't something I object to, nor do I think 'realism' as practised by the MCU and triple-A game developers is intrinsically a waste of time. What I am trying to demonstrate is Requiem's relation to its source material. It posits a story taking place exactly contemporaneously with episode 25 of Gundam 79, portraying the Battle of Odessa, the great Federation push-back that ejects Zeon forces from Earth. This is what was happening 'just off screen', depicted in a style actively at odds with that of the original

But not entirely at odds with it. Which brings us to another problem: an unwillingness to commit fully to the new style.

The big twist in Requiem episode 4 is that after being chased down by the Gundam and just barely managing to drive it off, Captain Iria Solari of the Red Wolf mobile suit squadron is recruited to go capture an example of the Federation's new mass-produced GM 'suit, so Zeon can identify its weaknesses. The hunted get to become the hunter, infiltrating a Federation base and attempting to hijack a couple of GMs, only for the Gundam to scupper things. All well and good. Not a bad swerve. Enables some useful developments.

Except this plan is delivered into the plot by a Zeon major general who appears to have stepped in from a different production entirely. Specifically, from Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team, because this is none other than Major General Yuri Kellerne, he of the Wolverine haircut and unfortunate disagreements with certain scientific officers (that is, it is unfortunate he should have disagreed with a man possessing so few qualms about massacring his own side).

It is truly surreal to have a character who looks like he actually belongs in a Gundam show enter the scene. I was quite impressed prior to this with the depiction of another character, Major Ronet, who captures the essence of a villain-of-the-week Zeon officer using Requiem's style. He looks entirely of a piece with the rest, while still being recognisably a certain type of character.

Kellerne though? For fuck's sake, he's got a full-blown anime bouffant. Juxtaposed with Solari's achingly realistic design, it's just – bad. This is bad. It's a stylistic clash that makes it impossible to take these scenes seriously. Not because either style is problematic on its own, but because they cannot work together.

It's worth pausing to consider Kellerne's native entry in the franchise, because 08th MS represents an older trend of revisiting the original setting. Starting with Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket, this saw the release of OVAs with a superior quality of animation and a more ground-level take on events of the Zeon/Federation war. In many respects, Requiem is positioned as the successor to these series, as Kellerne's cameo makes overt.

The thing is, War in the Pocket, Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory and 08th MS are all animes. Yes, they render the action with greater fidelity than Gundam 79. But they don't restyle it the way Requiem attempts to. The Dopp fighter is a great example of this. Compare the 08th MS version to the original and you will see that it merely adds extra layers of detail. It doesn't make it make more sense. Likewise for the character models. They look better than Gundam 79, by certain metrics. They still follow conventional anime aesthetics. You can't drop a design from this line of shows straight into a 'realistic' depiction and expect that to work.

Why does any of this matter? None of these issues exceed the threshold of nit-picking. OK, they're mildly distracting, but is there really a huge problem here?

Well, first, there is a philosophical underpinning to the drive for 'realism' we ought to grapple with, namely the idea only live-action and live-action-alike 'count'. I confess to having little time for this line of thought: the stylistic 'realism' discussed up to now matters far less than emotional or experiential realism. That is to say, whether something presents itself using stick-figures or a hyper-photographic style is not as important as whether it can convey the stakes, pathos, and other meat of a story. Art presents a plethora of options for communicating a message. Deciding one is intrinsically more valuable than the rest is a woefully narrow view of creativity. Traditional, non-realistic animation can be as emotionally arresting as any live performance. Why, therefore, should it be necessary to adapt it into a life-like style?

Second, there is the incomplete commitment to 'realism' that plagues Requiem and, I would argue, the entire concept of approaching works such as Gundam in this manner. Sure, stylistic 'realism' isn't about being strictly 'realistic'. It's about achieving a specific texture to the unreality that is functionally indistinguishable from that of the real elements. Yet doesn't the inclusion of a 17.5m-tall humanoid robot suits automatically grant you a get-out-of-realism-free card? If you have something that wild in play, why go to the effort of making it look like a real-world object? And if you're going to arbitrarily throw out the pretence for the sake of gratuitous continuity, what's the point of trying to begin with?

This circles close to what Requiem is, materially. If I use the phrase 'official fan-fiction', I hope you'll understand that's not necessarily derogatory. What I mean is something primarily homaging and reflecting a pre-existing work, rather than more straightforwardly building off it. 'Fan-fic' because it is bounded by what is already there; 'official' because it has the backing of corporate ownership and thus is positioned as more than merely people playing with the toys they enjoy. It's a category of derivative works into which I'd put previous projects such as Gundam Unicorn's animated adaptation – ring-fenced by an established canon, whatever their individual merits.

General Kellerne's stylistically disruptive presence is one example of the short-comings of such an approach. His design looks that way out of deference to 08th MS Team, whether or not it fits next to the other visuals (a side-effect of trying to cram him into Requiem's style is that he appears off-model anyway!).

Another is the plot. We might grant that doing Gundam-by-the-numbers is a self-contained introduction to the series' themes for a novice, but there isn't anything here those of us who've watched the anime(s) haven't seen a dozen times over. Even Solari's pocket-watch feels borrowed from 08th MS.

Now, credit where it's due: Requiem does not downplay the newtype angle. The psychic powers built up to over the course of Gundam 79 and made central to its sequels are usually the first thing ejected when the franchise tries to be more 'serious' and 'gritty'. It was a pleasant surprise to see them embraced. Solari is explicitly a newtype, with all the corresponding traits (supernaturally good pilot, able to sense threats, experiences predictive flashes etc). This is neatly used to establish some of the philosophy behind Zeon's cause, since most of our characters are already aware of newtype theory (humans moving to space tap into skills not previously needed) by dint of being on the side that uses this as justification for invading the Earth.

As in the source material, newtypes serve as a metaphor for the potential of each new generation. Solari was a talented violinist before the war, able to play near-impossible melodies, and this ability has been conscripted in much the same way OG protagonist Amuro Ray's mechanical genius was turned to murder. Equally, the central tragedy in Requiem resolves into newtype-on-newtype violence, as the pilot of the Gundam relentlessly hunting the Zeon soldiers is revealed to be a frightened teenager, paralleling both Solari's son, to whom she is fighting to return, and Solari herself, as someone struggling for their life in a war-zone.

I watching this straight after binging the original Gundam series (I'd previously seen the more refined compilation movies) and was struck there by how brief Amuro's interaction with fellow newtype Lalah Sune is prior to inadvertently killing her in battle. Then I remembered that's the point. These are two people sharing an identical potential for transforming the world, made opponents by circumstance, who understand one another immediately and intimately in the exact instant it is too late to matter. Amuro's cry that he has done something awful he cannot take back is not overlooking the other deaths he's responsible for; rather it is admitting the unique horror of lost possibility.

Following an encounter on the Federation base, Solari recognises the boy pursuing her is equally scared and out of his depth and thus attempts to talk him down. She even succeeds, reaching substitute!Amuro (hey look another traumatised child soldier who executes wild violence in a berserker-like fashion using a hyper-advanced military prototype; what are the odds?) and evoking his sympathy with her status as a mother (characterisation I'd be more annoyed by if Solari wasn't presented functionally identical to the trope of a father desiring to return to his family).

Then, immediately after saving Solari from being crushed by falling spaceship debris, substitute!Amuro is fatally stabbed in the back by another Zeon soldier.

Here we reach the crux of my dislike for Requiem. It has already muddied the clean Federation/Zeon divide and Gundam's internal physics in service of its chosen style, then compromised that style anyway in the name of slavishness to canonicity. Now, during what is position as the emotional climax, it openly rejects the visual language of newtypes.

Solari's powers are portrayed using vocally-stated unease and emotional connection to other individuals (as is standard), and a pair of dream sequences – one prophetic with respect to the Gundam pilot, another tying into newtypes' ability to draw in the souls of those who die around them. Performing at a darkened opera house, Solari's red dress slowly washes outwards, becoming a bloody wave as the audience is revealed to consist of the dead Zeon soldiers she failed to save. It's an arresting visual, as is the fiery descent into her own pocket watch (a souvenir from her dead husband, who was also conscripted into the war) that marks the earlier dream. We also see a brief shot of the Gundam staring straight back at her as she senses its presence on a distant battlefield. These are all effectively done and I genuinely enjoyed them.

Crucially, however, Requiem does not deploy the kind of over-layering that Gundam 79, Zeta Gundam, ZZ Gundam and the other follow-ups use to show the deep connections developed by newtypes. In the animes, in addition to visions and flashes of awareness, we have full-on mind-to-mind communication where people converse across voids of colour and light. Newtypes appear in ghostly form, too, interacting with the living during and after their deaths. There are also the obligatory glowing auras, cuing the viewer into supernatural happenings.

Requiem's 'realistic' style seemingly does not permit such things to occur in the waking world. That is to say, there is no reason you couldn't depict the standard newtype visuals in CGI, but this show opts not to. If I were to hazard a guess, given the restriction of overt psychedelia to dream sequences and what they did to the Zenoic designs, I would say the aritsts thought it would look silly.

The problem is, how do you then portray newtype connections? In the scene where Solari convinces substitute!Amuro to stop, we get a couple of cutaways to the kid in his cockpit, superposing with his Gundam's movements. That is a great decision, since the point of the newtype visuals is the characters looking past the armour and understanding the person within (not always a good thing, since antagonism can exist despite the link, but the central conceit is always to grasp the essence of somebody else). In these brief moments, we see, as Solari does, the human being, not the mechanical monster.

But the boy's subsequent death is just… the Gundam gets stabbed and keels over, and Solari is grief-stricken. That's it. No manifested ghost, psychic trauma conveyed by voice lines alone, a total absence in this crucial, heart-rending instant of substitute!Amuro's humanity. Just the destruction of property. The death of the monster, not the scared child.

If there had been one additional cutaway to the boy in the cockpit, I think this could have worked. A single shot of him looking at Solari in the second before being stabbed in the back. Something, anything, to imply the connection crucial to this scene. I am honestly baffled as to why it's not there. I feel I'm looking at a picture where a couple of critical numbers weren't coloured in.

To be clear, I don't personally care for the newtype concept as executed in the 'Universal Century' Gundam shows. I'm not annoyed by this because I'm wedded to the idea or the visual conceits. I'm annoyed by the incompetence of failing to land an obvious, even required emotional beat. The finale of Requiem for Vengeance is built around Solari confronting substitute!Amuro. She risks her chance to join the Zeon retreat from Earth – and thus of reuniting with her son – to help take down Federation forces endangering the departing space capsules. She then compounds this by attempting to convince the Gundam pilot to let everyone go, and ultimately abandons any possibility of returning home out of grief over his death. This is a life-changing encounter for her, as is normal for newtypes pushed into fighting each other.

In my opinion, the show does not sell that anywhere near as well as it could have. Further, it betrays the very concept of the newtype connection by leaving substitute!Amuro to be represented by his Gundam rather than his actual self in his final moments. There are cases where other newtypes meet such abrupt ends. Quess' death in Char's Counterattack springs immediately to mind. But that is a moment of a profound lack of communication, which is not what's happening here.

Animes such as the original Gundam shows can move seamlessly between high technology and visual metaphors for empathy without underselling either one. That they are not attempting to look 'real' provides the advantage of absolute coherence. Beam sabers, flying tanks, psychic powers – there are no joins to airbrush away. Everything is unreal, so everything fits together. A switch in medium and style creates the challenge of reinterpreting those disparate elements so they remain coherent. Ultimately, while Requiem for Vengeance has a good try at pulling everything across, it fails, not just at creating 'realism', but at capturing the conceptual depth of what it is assaying.

Being official fan-fic of the Battle of Odessa – being, essentially, 'the Gundam story' in miniature – invites unfavourable comparison with the original work. Unshackled from that, I suspect it could have done more to establish its own visuals, remove incongruities and find better means of conveying its emotional core. As it stands, I have to wonder if there's any sound argument for live-action-alike Gundam. Even the dream sequences don't provide something unique to this style. You could do the same in traditional animation and trivially push it further. So what, precisely, is gained by telling this story this way?

That's the question Requiem for Vengeance has left me pondering. And hey, if you want to answer with 'but it looks cool', fair enough. I'm writing way too much about my personal gripes with a perfectly passable piece of gratuitous mecha porn, simply because I found a more interesting complaint to make than “why the fuck didn't they hire somebody who knew how do facial animations?”

As for Captain Solari, she closing-monologues herself to Africa to join a Zeon remnant group and fight to give children a future without war. Never quite been sure how mecha pilots in these things envision that working, if I'm honest. Oh, and, uh, I guess nobody tell her that if she survives the next seventeen years, there's a decent chance she's going on a suicide run against the Federation spearheaded by a traumatised teenager strapped into a murder machine.

That might put a slight damper on what Netflix's music captions assure me is a heroic ending.

[A note to check you read all the way to the end: obviously the screenshot from Cucuruz Doan's Island shows CGI mobile suit models. But that's CGI aping traditional anime, rather than an attempt at realism. This is why I've been careful to talk about style, not medium.]

[tallochar]

I keep turning this concept in my head but I can't manage to write it satisfactorily so here I am, setting it out in the wild:

Tim Drake being alerted that Batman INC is something that is in the planning stages of it happening (maybe by Lucius, maybe by Tam, who even knows, look he was CEO for a while and someone is worried about Bruce Wayne about to go public with Batman INC and they get in touch with him) and going to Bruce and refusing to let him do this.

Because Bruce is needed in Gotham and Batman is needed in Gotham, and while Dick is doing a great job and no one will convince Tim of the contrary, that's not Dick's job. It's Bruce's.

(Who also has a son who just got his father back and if anyone knows what it would mean for a son who lost their father to get that father back when you know it's not going to happen... well lets say Tim has Opinions about this [and while he might not get along with Damian all that well yet, they are in that neutral state where Damian is like a cat observing things and studying dynamics and Tim has always been able to work with people he doesn't like or even trust much, so he's not going to punish the kid over whatever's went down between them.])

And besides, let's be real here Bruce, if you want a Batman that can go around the world and pull together teams and make them cohesive and knows what it's needed to be a successful team of young / upcoming young heroes, that's way more Dick than you yourself. Would be preferrable if he was allowed to do it as Nightwing, but the point still stands.

Just ... Tim pow-wowing with Bruce over the whole sitch and convicing him to back down. Not abandon the project, Tim knows that will not happen no matter what Tim does, but trusting it to Dick, who is way better with both younger people and people skills in general than Bruce.

(Which actually is not meant to separate Damian from Dick, Dick can come in from one assignment to the next and check on Damian and this is not the time it was when Tim was growing up, they have communications all over the globe now, Dick can phonecall and videocall Damian as many times as he wants and check on him as often as he wishes, but if Batman INC is happening, and it will happen because Bruce has decided it will, then Tim can only do damage control over this)

And possibly Bruce leveraging Tim staying in Gotham (which, joke's on Bruce, Tim was going to do that anyway, but sure he'll "concede") and possibly "asking" (ordering, let's be real here) Tim to help train Damian (which Tim isn't enthusiastic about but fine, he'll make it work as long as Bruce has his back), for multiple reasons.

A bit because Bruce sort of feels guilty that Tim was kicked out of the Robin role (Bruce HAD promised it would be Tim's until Tim decided otherwise, [which I don't think Dick knew about and even if he had, the situation still had been what it was, to be fair to Dick]) but also Bruce doesn't quite know what to do with Damian (and it wouldn't be the first time he's trusted Tim to teach young heroes / guide someone in a vigilante role) and also he both wants Tim to be there with him (he's missed him) and needs him there with himself (Tim the emotional regulation parentified wonder!).

And then shenanigans from there.

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 4/23/22

three months unemployed YAY. also wherein i get SUPER pressed about star wars lore

listening

funeral by tele novella. popped open tiktok to see something my best friend sent me and this was there, the first thing on the for you page. let's yoink a description of their previous album from an interview i'm going to quote at length in a bit: "The result was “exactly what we wanted it to be,” a perfumed mist of jingling, jangling, lilting, off-center pop—a strange little snowglobe gathering dust at the back of the shelf."

the lyrics did hit me like a train bc i often find myself mourning places and situations that were not necessarily good for me but were familiar.

Oh, you're not tied up Here comes the train The tracks feel safe because you know 'em

if you had told me this was made in about 2007-2009ish i would have believed you. very spare production in the way folksier songs of the time were spare. a bit raspy and direct in her delivery. there's a bandcamp interview wherein i found out this is the side project of a vintage/antiques dealer and she has a fascinating perspective on her own music:

Her passion for the craft is evident—in our conversation as much as in listening to the band—but music, for her, is a means to an end, a way to transmit stories. “As a musician, I’m mediocre at best,” Ribbons says matter-of-factly. “I think that my talent lies in my storytelling ability. I think that I’m a good storyteller.” It’s something instilled in her by her grandparents, “voracious readers” who were always buying her books and secretly wanted Ribbons to be a writer, she suspects.

i really adored this whole album as a cohesive work. "vampire cowgirl" is another standout for obvious reasons.

You came barrelin' down Rabid with some talk Of a gal who rides at night Picking off the stock

remarkably good at reproducing the general vibe of the midcentury cowboy western album, when tv cowboys were sweeping the nation

-

reading

T. Kingfisher's Nettle & Bone. enjoyed it, but not quite as much as her other stuff. whereas her other series are almost always comical and often stray into farce, this one was a bit grim. even with the addition of a demonic chicken. had to stop and really think about if my own experience with funerals and funerary rites (too many, too often) was coloring this for me but i think it is simply not as funny or interested in being funny as her other works. not a ding against it, but not what i was really expecting or in the mood for. image from tor, let's yoink the description from macmillan

This isn't the kind of fairy tale where the princess marries a prince. It's the one where she kills him. Marra — a shy, convent-raised, third-born daughter — is relieved not to be married off for the sake of her parents’ throne. Her older sister wasn’t so fortunate though, and her royal husband is as abusive as he is powerful. From the safety of the convent, Marra wonders who will come to her sister’s rescue and put a stop to this. But after years of watching their families and kingdoms pretend all is well, Marra realizes if any hero is coming, it will have to be Marra herself. If Marra can complete three impossible tasks, a witch will grant her the tools she needs. But, as is the way in stories of princes and the impossible, these tasks are only the beginning of Marra’s strange and enchanting journey to save her sister and topple a throne.

paywalled article, sorry, but i personally have a bone to pick with fanduel due to [REDACTED INCIDENTS] from [PREVIOUS JOB] so it does not surprise me in the slightest that they don't really seem to be doing a single fucking thing about money-laundering. allegedly.

-

watching

the bad batch, or the 13/16 episodes of the third and final season that are out. all these images are from comicbookreview bc i watched this on my actual television

one of the plots i hate most is the trying to get someone back plot. for example, i think finding nemo does this really well bc it's also a coming of age/parenting movie. i do not think the second finding nemo movie does this well bc as soon as one person is reunited with the group, through a wacky series of coincidences they lose another member. plus that movie is part of the downturn of modern pixar where they forgot how to tell interesting stories but that's neither here nor there. the bad batch falls into the finding nemo 2 category. it's simply frustrating to watch. it turns into a desperate floundering after whoever happens to be missing instead of using a The Searchers style plot to say something about the act of the search itself. i realize i am once again saying "what if star wars was good" but like. come on.

the bad batch s3 is surprisingly focused on retroactively filling in the backstory of how and why palpatine got cloned with his force powers intact, which is apparently a difficult technical problem. i would have cared about this if this show came out before the last movie and we had a cool breadcrumb style approach leading up to the movie. unfortunately that movie (and the sequel trilogy more broadly) killed a lot of my interest in modern star wars. anyway, this cloning problem leads to a lot of very technical conversations in a children's' show that are interesting to me, a grownup, bc no star wars media has ever successfully explained 1) what midichlorians actually are and 2) the biological processes by which they operate but refuse to be cloned? which is extremely funny to me bc midicholrians aren't supposed to be real. qui-gon has that whole little speech and blood test in the phantom menace but the series had So scrupulously stayed away from explaining how the force works before that. they still fail to explain it but they at least attempt to break two inches of new ground. side note this show gives us TWO canon trans girl clones and i really wish they were in a better show.

it's annoying that i'm annoyed about a children's show meant to sell toys. some fun things: the pyke syndicate shows up, a slew of my favorite bounty hunters show up, this show is much better at painterly backgrounds and has an overall more concept-art feel than the clone wars proper or rebels. i think it would be cool if they stopped whitewashing the clones. i'm going to finish out the season but i don't exactly have a lot going on in my life right now. i am not terribly sad that this is the final season but BOY do they have a lot of loose ends to wrap up in three episodes.

-

playing

new genshin update on uhhh thursday and it's kind of exciting bc i THINK it will finally fill in this hole on the map and the associated shorelines of three different countries!

i thought i had long since found all the chests in liyue (the second area released) but in the process of doing a recently released character quest set in liyue i found another chest. this game is very good at hidden objectives and little secrets but i wish it was better at letting you know when you have Actually cleared an area completely of all the little hidden stuff. anyway i have been holding back the last character hangout (ningguang, my best beloved ruthless girlboss business high femme) for a terrible day and that day came! unfortunately hanging out with the fake pretend video game lesbian did make me feel better!

also unfortunately i fucked up and cannot count so the gacha pity system (every 90 pulls you're guaranteed a 5-star character) gave me Neuvillette. who i don't hate but i wasn't really planning on pulling for. i do like his questline and his voice actor, he simply doesn't fit in super well with a mono-electro team bc i play this game like an insane woman.

the real bitch of the thing keeping me from upgrading him is going out in the overworld and collecting enough sea stars. why can't he need flowers or little gears or anything else i have a thousand of.

anyway this gal will be dropping sometime in the next six weeks and i AM extremely excited to pull for her. she has some cool abilities (GUN) and is part of a popular pair with the steampunk lolita character i love and leads my other main team. i hope their abilities play well off each other but she has such a cool storyline and design i don't super care if she fits in with my playstyle. i will adapt for her in a way i am not willing to do with neuvilette

-

making

i am once again obsessed with gallery walls, bc a friend has asked me to find the correct gigantic size frames to put some comics on his wall, and that has given me an excuse to go to thrift stores again.

unfortunately i have mostly found frames for me, and the projects i have been working on have kind of a long tail of when they will actually be on my walls. i picked up four 16x20 frames for $2.50 each (solid wood! remarkably detailed!) bc i eventually want to put up these fallout maps in the style of national parks maps up on the map wall in my office. i suppose this means i should join @ruffledringdove and actually play '76, bc that's the one modern game i haven't played. these are getting scuff sanded with 120 and painted with a eggshell paint sample in a bright white u all know the drill at this point. ive painted a lot of frames in the past few weeks.

left is one of the painted 16x20 map frames, right i have also finally sanded and painted both 12x16 deckle-edged wood frames i picked up off the side of the road in MA. and found glass + backs for them! eventually i will procure fancy mats and print + frame my grandmothers' portraits. they will eventually go on the living room wall, which is a neutrals and blue-greens wall of slightly disdainful women. this will help me swap the three maps in there to the office map wall.

i have also acquired this gigantic plaster-over-wood mirror for $15. i am using leftover rub n buff bc i don't have a great spot to spraypaint here without sheeting my entire front porch, and rub n buff is way less susceptible to 80% humidity than spray paint. also i would have to buy spray paint. i am looking up suspiciously bc i thought there was a bug. not sure what mackie was looking at.

[seraphim-emily]

Ok One person asked so I shall try and put it to words! XD

Here's my (hopefully cohesive) take on the new episode!!!

Anyway. Blitzø... He deserves to be loved and I will die on this hill. I've seen people say that Stolas deserves better, and to that I say Fuck You, Stolas is JUST AS MUCH OF AN ASSHOLE AS BLITZ IS!!!

Anyway. Civilized tone! XD

The thing is, in my opinion, most of the hate for Blitzø stems from the fact that people do not like Angry People. Society condones those who lash out! Humans do not like confrontation.

And Blitzø does all of those things.

He does it, because it's the only thing he has left. He has been hurt SO MUCH, by so many people, he genuenly can't comprehend anyone caring about him anymore. He EXPECTS to be hurt, to not be cared about or to left behind again.

So he built up walls, he turned angry, dismissive, because if he doesn't let people get close, if he makes them dislike him on his terms... they can't hurt him.

The problem with that is... Blitzø CARES, so much, about people.

He loved Fizz (who 'didn't want to see him anymore')

He loved his mother (who died)

He loved his father, like children do (and he sold him. For *literal trash*)

He loves Luna (who is angry, like him)

He even loves Millie and Moxxie.

And most of all, he started to love Stolas.

Stolas, who treats him like a toy, an accessory. Stolas who calls him his 'little imp plaything', who only wants to see him for sex (Stolas didn't do a good job in showing him otherwise, but that's another topic), Stolas, who didn't bother defending him against Asmodeous, because Blitzø isn't as important as his standing in society, because he's an imp...

And what does Stolas do, when he confesses, and Blitzø can't believe him, can't possibly think that someone might *actually love him*, and he plays it off as a joke, because if it's not a joke, then that means Stolas can hurt him...

Stolas puts words into his mouth. He ignores everything, their power dynamic, his prwbious behaviour he never actually apologized for... And he tells Blitzø that his response is an answer, *when it's not*.

And, listen. I feel for Stolas as well. Being told 'I love you' for the first time, like this? It must've hurt.

But then, when Blitzø finally realizes he's serious... he walks away.

He doesn't listen to Blitz, not really. When Blitz lashes out, because he has every reason to, has *nothing else he could do, because everything else has always failed him...* Stolas takes it personally. Takes the FACTS Blitzø tells him and makes it into a personal attack.

"I didn't think you thought so lowly of me" (not exact quote, I'll fix that at some point)

Stolas... honey... You never showed him otherwise. You treat him like a lower class, like a toy, then spring all this on him, without giving him time to process, work through his emotions or anything...

And he *doesn't even let Blitz apologize*.

He, again, uses their power imbalance. Uses his magic on Blitz, takes the control from him.

This entire situation was rigged in Stolas' favour, he held all the cards... and he doesn't even give Blitz the chance to recognize what game they're playing before he *decides* he lost and kicks him out...

[greatwesternway]

Diesel Does It Some More

A thing I think is sort of overlooked about Diesel is that he is one of the few characters in the series who gets genuine development over the course of the show. Some characters get that over the course of two episodes, particularly if they are a one-off, but Diesel is the only one who got development slowly - so slowly - over the course of several seasons.

I have a longer, different post coming about his early history on Sodor so we're not gonna talk about Duck v. Diesel here. This post concerns what happens after the point at which we can assume Sir Topham Hatt finally gave in and bought Diesel outright, securing his place on the NWR's roster.

Effectively, what this means is Diesel is no longer in danger of being sent away, but it also means he has to invest more in his relationships with other engines because it's a small island.

He's not been well prepared for this on the Other Railway. Luckily he has tons of time to learn.

The first few seasons after his acquisition are rocky. Diesel needs to show he deserves his place on Sodor, but he usually tries to accomplish this by undermining other engines which is not conductive to getting the work done ("Fergus Breaks the Rules"). He's also still telling them that steam engines will be scrapped ("Thomas to the Rescue", "Squeak, Rattle and Roll"), which is obviously not true on Sodor but is often an effective way of achieving his first method. (It's also, I think, important to note that the punishment for the thing with Fergus was being sent to work at the smelter's, which is where 'Arry and Bert work, but that's an entire other post too. It set him back, let's just say.)

From here on out, though, Diesel is sometimes treated by the narrative neutrally rather than as a villain. In "Respect for Gordon" he's making fun of Gordon, but so is Emily so that's not really a comment on him so much (also he does this by facetiously wishing Gordon well which is an interesting and funny twist on that). He's the villain in "Emily and the Special Coaches" but it comes about that he's behaved this way because his accomplishment of shunting the most trucks in a day has been overlooked and he's acknowledged for it by the end of the episode.

In "Thomas and the Billboard", Diesel is actually the victim of circumstance (and his own reputation, let's be real). During a photoshoot for a billboard, Diesel is directed by the photographer to move forward and he accidentally obscures Thomas from the shot. Later, when Thomas sees the billboard, he assumes Diesel blocked him on purpose. Shit happens, the billboard has to be redone anyway, but this time, Thomas deliberately does not tell Diesel about the rescheduled shoot. Thomas keeps stalling the reshoot to keep Diesel from finding out about it, which in turn keeps all the other engines off their jobs as well. It later turns out the Diesel was doing the priority stuff they were all supposed to be doing and was now late to do his own jobs.

So to sum up, Diesel is the only one doing his fkn job today and Thomas is trying to fuck him over all unbeknownst. Fascinating! Thomas does apologize eventually and everyone gets to be on the billboard.

Then you got "Don't Go Back" where Diesel keeps goading Thomas into - more or less - friendly races that end up causing confusion and delay. The episode concludes with them setting out on another race so the takeaway isn't that Diesel was actually out to make trouble so much as just show he was better than Thomas.

These are all from the model series. I don't necessarily think there was any sort of organized effort to make Diesel more friendly here. One might even attribute this to the show seemingly forgetting who certain characters were. I'm pretty sure the show bible at this point specifically said he was a villain. Still, there's a cohesion to it and they're doing interesting things with the expectations. (Also, as an aside, Diesel being the only one doing his work also happened in "Diesel Does It Again" so that's not exactly out of character, hilariously enough.)

Diesel gets sidelined to cameos for a while as the show transitions to CGI, but he does have one notable outing in which he's desperate for the approval of children and commandeers a bunch of other engines' seemingly better freight to get it ("Diesel's Special Delivery"). This episode is sort of ??? but I do like the end where Diesel's boring utilitarian freight (slate to repair their school's roof) is actually what the children want. It's not a full treatise on steam/diesel relations, but most people probably think the Class 08 is boring compared to steam engines so if you're choosing to see this as a metaphor, then it's nice the functional freight got the appreciation in the end.

And this is where shit starts getting real interesting!

Day of the Diesels is... it's not a good movie. I won't lie and tell you that. But it does do very interesting things with the diesel vs. steam concept. It points out things that would happen on Sodor as a logical conclusion of dieselization on the mainland (things that look much more unfair than they are in a show that prefers to disregard that part of the lore) and I love how they re-conceptualized Diesel 10 from his Thomas and the Magic Railroad debut. That stuff deserves its own essay, but the important thing about Day of the Diesels today is that it's the first time we see a steam engine really giving Diesel the benefit of the doubt.

The engine in question is Percy and he's ideally suited to extend this olive branch. As far as steam engines go, he's got the least status among them. He pulls the mail train, but even the Pride of the Line is treated as beneath most of the other steam engines. He also lacks a pedigree. Granted, most of Hatt's early acquisitions have dubious claims to lineage but Percy's just a straight up mongrel with no discernible builder. And most exploitable, many the other steam engines don't treat Percy with much respect either. Even Thomas is blowing him off in the movie, which is what gives the diesels their opportunity.

It's no accident that the diesels choose Percy as the target for their appeal and it's no accident they enlist Diesel to reel him in. Diesel is convincing, persuasive, and knows the motions of sympathy even if he doesn't quite manage empathy.

Unfortunately, the second Percy arrives at the Dieselworks, they literally put Diesel on a shelf and Diesel 10 takes over.

But the point is, Percy is now an ally of diesel equity and he's got a sort of acquaintance with Diesel himself (aside from it undoubtedly being Percy's idea to strike rather than work with Diesel, who he'd only just met at that point). And it comes back around later.

In "Percy and the Calliope", Percy and Diesel are tasked with taking a busted-ass calliope to the smelter's, but Percy wants to see if it can be fixed. Diesel disparages the operation the whole time... but he does go along with every single thing that Percy wants to try too. Even after Percy insulted him by mistaking his squeaking axles for the Monster of Brendham six episodes earlier.

"Disappearing Diesels" is when the effort to actually develop him starts in earnest. Up to now, things have just been kind of moving along in a lazy and convenient sort of way. Diesel gets to approach the possibility of being cool as a matter of deus ex machina. This episode marks the first time they actually put a specific thing in that they reach back for later to show he's learned something.

In this episode, Diesel convinces all the other diesels to hide from Paxton. And Paxton, not being too bright, comes to the conclusion that all the diesels on Sodor have disappeared. He searches all over Sodor until he happens upon Diesel at the docks. Diesel runs from him but because he spends so fuel evading Paxton, he runs dry on the line. Paxton then shunts Diesel to the next station to get refueled which Diesel does not understand because this is surely not a thing that he would do.

"That's what friends are for," says Paxton.

That evening, Diesel takes the berth next to Paxton's and, though he cannot bring himself to say thank you, he does give him a pained little smile.

The next season, we've got "Wild Water Rescue", in which Diesel commandeers a job Percy was given because he thinks he's going to get his picture in the newspaper. He sends Percy to an abandoned quarry instead where Percy runs himself into a pond and puts out his firebox. Later, Diesel (after finding that the photo was only of Search and Rescue vehicles) goes to find Percy and tries to pull him out, only to flood his own generator too.

And as they are sitting there in that pond, Diesel makes a valiant effort to actually apologize to Percy. He can't quite get the word "Sorry" out of his mouth and he's interrupted by the entire Sodor Search and Rescue before he could manage it. Unlike the thank you he owed to Paxton in "Disappearing Diesels" though, he's actually making an effort here for Percy.

And Percy knows what's up. Percy knows what's good! The next day, he visits Diesel in the Dieselworks to thank him for trying to rescue him (even if Diesel tricked him in the first place) and to show him that he did get his photo in the paper.

Couple seasons later, there's "Springtime for Diesel" where he bumps Daisy so hard that her springs sprong. She has to go to the Dieselworks and it takes so long to get replacement springs in for her that rumors start circulating that she may have to be scrapped. Diesel feels terrible about this and goes to visit her. She pretends to be asleep though, which permits Diesel to actually say that he's sorry this time. With the words and everything!

He's then quick to excuse his behavior by saying that he's mean to other engines because they're mean to him and they blame him for everything, but that he likes Daisy and wishes he could make everything right again. He's resigned though that after this, she's probably not going to want to be his friend.

When Daisy does get her new springs, Diesel is the first to meet her on the tracks. She doesn't directly acknowledge his apology because I think she does get that's a big step for him and she doesn't want to call attention to it. She does tell him though that if he wants to be friends, he has to change his ways.

And he does!

...until literally the next episode where he's trying to start shit between her and Harvey, but Diesel is as Diesel does.

Finally - finally! - in "Sonny's Second Chance", Diesel comes full circle and takes responsibility for his mischief in order to save Sonny from being sent away.

In this episode, Sonny (a steam engine who arrived in the company of a pair of thieves) has been offered the chance to stay and work on Sodor, but only if he proves himself trustworthy and Useful. He finds however that though he tries to be helpful, his actions are interpreted in bad faith by other engines, leaving him ripe for exploitation by a certain engine who knows that song and dance by heart.

Diesel tricks Sonny into hauling his cars to the dump, but they're actually having fun together.

But Diesel fucks it up 'cause of course. On his next job, he brags to Percy that he tricked Sonny into pulling his fish cars, but Sonny overhears. He storms off to deliver the cars and Diesel, realizing he's fucked another friendship, chases after him, but gets switched onto a siding, derails, and almost falls into a Class 08-sized grave. Sonny (who has notably quick reflexes demonstrated both here and earlier when he bumped James out from under falling watermelons) is able to hook a tow chain on and pull Diesel away from the hole. He accidentally derails his own fish cars by backing up so fast, but he catches Diesel before he falls in.

And Diesel thanks him for it! No hesitation, no hemming and hawwing. And. AND! He also admits that he did not deserve to be rescued. Look at my boy! Look at him GO! And Sonny! Sonny tells him straight up, "No, probably not." Which, gangster. "Consider it a second chance." A second chance! For Diesel! No one's ever actually given him one of those before.

Then Sir Topham Hatt rolls up and - in form we've not seen Hatt Bullshit in for quite some time - looks upon this scene and focuses his attentions on clearly the most pressing and important thing: "What's going on here? And what are those fish doing on the tracks?"

Sonny takes responsibility for the fish, and Hatt is all "Well, you've had your chance. I did say you'd have to leave if-"

"No!" interrupts Diesel. And he begs Hatt not to send Sonny away. And admits that everything was his fault. And tells Hatt that Sonny saved him.

"Is this true?" Hatt asks in his blithe Hatt Bullshit way. And it is, so Hatt declares that Sonny can stay and word gets around that Sonny's a hero.

Then they cancelled the show so we never get to see him again!

I'm real fuckin' mad about it honestly because not only was Sonny's episode the culmination of a seasons' long character arc for Diesel, but Sonny is such a uniquely perfect character to give Diesel a proper friend, which I'd argue he never got. Paxton is too trusting, Percy has better options, Daisy obviously isn't going to be BFF's with this guy.

Sonny was so uniquely positioned to be a good friend for Diesel. He's new so he doesn't have existing relationships to interfere with or a long history of previous slights to overlook. He's already committed to giving Diesel a second chance at getting this friend thing right, but he's not forgiving or naive the way Percy and Paxton are. Sonny suffers from the same problems of reputation that Diesel does but is determined to overcome them, which Diesel has never had motivation or incentive to do before. They'd be good accountabili-buddies that way. And perhaps most importantly, Sonny is a steam engine so he'd be closing that old diesel vs. steam gap once and for all.

That Diesel actually fessed up to keep a steam engine on Sodor is something on its own. The implication is that Diesel has found something compelling and resonant about this guy that copping to his bullshit is preferable to Sonny being sent away. If you're keeping dieselization in the back of your mind, you perhaps know there's not many other places anymore for such an engine to go.

What a turnaround for the guy who first arrived on Sodor bragging about how revolutionary he was.

[chrysanthemumgames]

Me (finding out that “Persephonysus” and Hades share a common relative): …..okay.

Me (Immediately thinking about the culprit before I read further to confirm it): OF COURSE WE SHARE A COMMON RELATIVE!

But I ultimately gave the Zeus a pass, since it’s most likely he didn’t know about it before the forced marriage and he doesn’t seem like my enemy (at least not in my gameplay), though it always amuses me how he gets so angry, even when my joke at his expense is so trivial (and yes, I’ve tried multiple options). He also has a mega huge ego with all his “We” talk, but the Olympic throne situation and my throne situation in the Underworld—I’m not gonna lie, it made me swoon at first—but then after three more play throughs, I felt so bad for Hera that I made a few changes, and I was surprised at how much I love having Hera as a close friend (from her letter to the entire garden scene which was chefs kiss). I always thought FOA demo Hera was a bit cold and didn’t think too much about her—or Zeus—until I decided to merge two deities into one to form my personality/attributes and until the throne situation wouldn’t leave my head. I feel like a traitor for switching up on Hestia and Aphrodite, lol, but I genuinely love Hera’s bond on the friend route the most out of all the options (though I still haven’t tried the enemy Artemis route). I kind of felt bad initially, knowing the myth about how Hera treats Zeus’s children out of wedlock, but Friend!Hermes handled it way better than I thought he would, if confused, maybe a touch sad, but mostly supportive. True bestie material.

I didn’t think too much during the FOA demo, but since I have done multiple playthrough on Hades’ route, over the past two months, I originally thought Hades’s epic ‘arrival’ in the beginning was just to annoy Zeus…actually that might still be true, but from how I seem to always get immensely, yet thankfully momentarily on Zeus’s nerves no matter what I say (due to my people skills—for the “Nysus” part to my Persephonysus), I noticed that Hades might have done that also as a way to protect me via distraction. Even when we were strangers…Swoon 😂

I also love how we have more scenes with the core 6, but also with Makaria and Kerberos (even Daeira and Empusa). On my next playthrough, I’ll finally work with the fates (after doing every other job) and I’ll finally meet Hypnos—for the first time ever. Safe to say, I started playing the demo back in September 2023, but the finished product is way more than I expected, and I love how little changes can drastically change the gameplay and how all of the branching keeps the story cohesive enough, that even through my multiple gameplays over the last two months, I am still finding new options and dialogues, and I know I’ll find even more when I force myself to get off of Hades’ route to play the others. So far I did the initially scared of Hades route, boldly flirting with hades route, shyly flirting with Hades route, a mix of boldly and shyly flirting with Hades route, Platonic friends who stay married route (lol), etc. but the thing is…I never get bored of it and I still find different ways to play on Hades’s route. The only thing I think I can’t do is the (one-sided) enemies to lovers route with Hades, since I’ll doubt he’d be mean to me and it’ll crush my heart to read his responses to me being mean to him.

I'm delighted you enjoy the game, anon, truly.

I'm a little confused though; I'm not sure what common relative you're talking about. Of course, in the myths there are several relatives in common between almost everyone, but I have broken up the family tree quite extensively here.

If you're talking about Harmonia, Iasion (and thus the PC) are only related to her through her mother, and Hades is only related to her through her father, so I guess in some sense she's a common relative, but there isn't anything untoward about the Hades/PC match because of it, if that was the concern.

[happyk44]

Since HPD isn't as well known as the others, I wanted to make a list of ways I think Piper would display it. I made a greater list with ways HPD could present in general, but I'm iffy on posting it because I don't have HPD so it's like 😬😬. I might post it later, we'll see.

Anyway! Piper!

Preoccupation with appearance is a criterion according to the DSM and a frequent symptom experienced. While I think Piper does pay more attention to her appearance than she believes she does, she does so in a way that people's first thought isn't "oh she's so pretty" or "oh she looks so strange/interesting". She puts a lot of effort into looking normal/boy-ish, which obviously makes her stand out compared to her siblings when at camp, but also makes her stand out in general public because she expressly denies femininity, wears a feather in her hair, oversized or ill-fitting clothing. I think she both thrifts and "shops" (steals) from expensive stores so her outfits have a mismatched element there as well.

It's supposed to prove that she doesn't care about looking pretty and therefore doesn't care about people paying her any mind, but they always do, and then she can feign annoyance or distress over people telling her she'd look so much better if she wore things that fit or had any cohesion to her choices, or even complimenting her on her eccentricity.

It's not a criterion but people with HPD have said that they tend to lie or exaggerate situations. In the early stages of her dad's career taking off and her refusal to acknowledge it, she probably started lying about what he did for a job when it came up or lying to sabotage his jobs because she was desperate for him to spend time with her like he used to. Maybe even lying to explain why she doesn't have a mom. It just gradually escalates from there until she's lying about things that don't even matter.

Breaking the law is also not a criterion and it's not something that's come up frequently in people discussing their live experiences BUT it is the primary way that Piper has sought out attention from her dad and I can't imagine that she manages to shake it off so easily. She steals, not always for the thrill of it, but in an obvious manner so she'll get caught. When she seeks novelty or excitement, she might steal less obviously. She gets frustrated when a cashier or clerk notices her stealing but doesn't care.

I do like her having shallow and shifting emotions, lacking depth in her feelings. Everything is so fleeting it would cause emotional whiplash in anyone else. She's good at disguising how she feels internally, but she still struggles with her emotions. One minute she's the happiest girl in the world, the next she's sad, the next she's angry, the next numb, then back to happy. It flashes through her like lightning.

It's kind of like standing in a puddle when everyone else is enjoying their own lake. They tell her to swim like they do and she can't because she just has this tiny puddle of glee. It's not deep enough to swim. So she just gets her feet wet and nothing else. Feels glee but it's so faint. So she jumps to the angry puddle, but it's just the same problem. She's learned how to fake swimming, and sometimes the puddles will become lakes, bur they shrink back to a puddle so fast it's almost like the lake never happened. Only the residue of water drying in her hair and on her clothes lets her know it was real.

Interpreting relationships as closer than they are is such a good one as well!

Jason: Not entirely her fault, Hera did mess with her memories, but instead of taking a step back and giving them both breathing room to truly get to know each other for reals this time, she stuck with the "he's my boyfriend, everyone else can fuck off" attitude, even though technically they'd never dated and weren't through TLH

Putting a claim on Jason and then dating him also provides her with attention because Jason is so perfect and everyone is jealous about it, as well as unintentional charmspeak making Jason ignore other girls. But then Jason moves back to Camp Jupiter while she stays at CHB and she starts to lose that jealousy from others, as well as the attention she needs from Jason himself, plus her own feelings regarding her sexuality, so oops, turns out I never loved you, it was all fake because of your step-mom, bye

Leo: She definitely thinks they're closer than they are. She thinks she knows everything about him, when the reality is she knows everything Leo wants people to know about him. He keeps everything private and personal and traumatic locked deep inside himself. She only knows the persona and never once questions that there may be more below the surface because she doesn't really need to know him fully to get attention from him.

Leo being her primary source of attention because others find him too annoying to tolerate so she's really his only friend (until Jason) is one of my favourite headcanons with this AU because Leo is not as social as he pretends to be and requires more space and time alone than she is willing to give, so she gets deeply frustrated about and bothers him constantly because, until camp, he's really the only one provides her with positive attention

Annabeth: Piper becoming quickly attached to Annabeth and thinking of them as best friends is a concept I really like. In BOO, I always found that one scene between the two of them very odd. Not necessarily because it wasn't a good scene, but because it made them appear much closer than I had thought they were. Annabeth is the only member of the seven that I see being actual friends with everyone of the ship, but I wouldn't necessarily think of her as being close to all of them.

Annabeth is eager to fix things and provide solutions, so Piper is able to overshare and rapidly talk about herself and her life. Under NPD!Annabeth, I think this works out in both their favours because Annabeth gets praise and admiration for her intelligence, and Piper gets attention and focus. With canon Annabeth, I think she'd get winded far too quickly because Piper puts a lot of emotional needs on her and it's a little overwhelming

People with HPD have also talked about validation and seeking approval from others. This kind of couples in with the suggestibility/easily influenced criterion. Piper will default to either the most popular choice or to the side of whoever she seeks most approval from. I like to imagine this as being Jason or Annabeth.

When they're on opposing sides, she will become nervous and afraid that the other will like her less for not choosing them so she exhibits fawning and/or people-pleasing behaviours towards them as sort of an apology and to also ensure they're still willing to pay attention to her.

If it seems they're not, she will start to crash and/or become much more clingy and dependent on the person she did choose, which can cause a sort of tonal whiplash because one minute she's apologetic and kind and the next she's ignoring you and rude.

I don't think this is so much as easily influenced on her behalf, so much as her lacking her own moral structure. She's focused on the present, what feels good in the moment. She might have stronger opinions in certain moral and ethical discussions and be willing to vocalize them even if they oppose everyone else's stance, but for the most part she lacks that development.

Like Percy, or even Clarisse, she relies on other people to define her morality, but where they are very stagnant in the people they've chosen to mimic, she's much more wishy-washy about it. If Jason expresses opinion A, she will express opinion A. But if Jason leaves and Annabeth expresses opinion B, she will express opinion B. If someone comes up to her and asks her for her opinion, she might be vague about it or assess the person and vocalize the opinion she believes they would most prefer. For Percy, it's more Sally has expressed opinion A, so Percy will typically always express opinion A, even if Annabeth or Grover express opinion B.

There's definitely stances Piper is firm on. But a lot of things, especially stuff she doesn't know, are much more vague. She's less willing to admit to disinterest, especially if it's something the other person is passionate about, because then they may not engage with her.

This isn't really HPD specific, but according to one study, it was found that two thirds (67%) of people with HPD also met the criteria for ASPD. Now ASPD has a low threshold to qualify (3/7 versus 5/8 for HPD), so there is that to consider. But I do like the idea that she does have noticeable traits of ASPD, even if she does not qualify, re: disregard for the law (the constant theft), lack of remorse/rationalizing mistreating other people ("people just like giving me stuff"), lying repeatedly for personal gain (attention).

I get that she didn't know she had charmspeak at the time, but given her intention was to steal the car for attention from her dad, I don't think the lack of knowledge about charmspeak matters. She knew the salesman would let her drive the car, even if she wasn't sure why, and even if he wasn't willing, she could've easily started damaging the cars and received the same outcome (police called, dad comes).

In summation:

Disregard for the law, often in obvious manners in order to get caught

Excessive focus on appearing "not like other girls" and unfeminine; drawing attention to her Native American ancestry, even though feathers in your hair is not commonplace

Pathological lying

Quick attachment to others; overestimating her closeness with people; disposing of people when they do not provide enough attention

Clinginess

Oversharing personal information

Constantly seeks approval from people she thinks highly of

Struggles with indecisiveness

Fluid/flexible opinions and moral code

Lack of remorse or guilt, even when the behaviour is detrimental to others; rationalizes harm or mistreatment of others, whether actions were intentional or not

Shallow expression of emotions

As always, if anyone reading this has HPD and their own ideas or thoughts on this headcanon, feel free to send me an ask about it.

[deramin2]

Too many people in this fandom put Orym on a pedestal as "the good one" or "the stable one." Even though that's not the story that Liam's been telling. Then other people project their own baggage on that.

Some people seem to equate being stoic and quiet with repressed feelings. He actually shares his feelings quite a lot and has no issue articulating them when he wants to. He just doesn't always want to process them with other people immediately. You know, like a normal person.

The other party members view him as a rock so fandom projects that he must want to be that and put all his self worth into being that. When he's shown over and over that while he likes being a shield protecting people, he wants to be side by side with others doing that and doesn't think he can be relied on all on his own. He feels he failed to defend Will and Derrig. He'd like to do better himself, but he's also repeatedly expressed that he needs the support of a team working together to do that. Military combat is about the entire unit working together to cover each other and do things no individual can alone. Getting better is all of them being more cohesive and filling in each other's weaknesses, not taking them all on himself until it crushes him.

Orym himself has never claimed to have better moral judgement than the rest of Bell's Hells. He has in fact been uncomfortable when they've suggested that. He likes getting into mischief, too. He doesn't like unnecessary conflict with authority figures, and prefers to be on the level, but he's also well aware that's not always possible and some things you have to handle privately and illegally. He's just careful about which those are. One of the first things they did in ExU was take a job from a criminal.

He's firm in his sense of what's right and wrong, but he's not rigid or inflexible. And he's never once claimed to be neutral as they've uncovered what the Ruby Vanguard is doing. As a victim he cannot and SHOULD NOT be neutral. And personally I think we should listen to victims about how individuals, groups, and institutions have harmed them. Ignoring the experiences of victims is not neutral or objective, it's siding with the abuser to protect their power.

The actual show has done a tremendously good job in depicting the inherent conflict between someone who was substantially harmed (Orym), and someone (Imogen) who has personal and biased reasons for wanting to believe a person who committed that harm (Liliana) can't be that bad deep down. Imogen wants Liliana's intentions to be good and Orym is right to point out that intentions never negate the harm being done. (And also Liliana's intentions are only good if you believe a narrow subset of things to be true that largely ignores reality and might be based on being manipulated by a predatory power. She is in a doomsday cult.)

Imogen has longed for her mother her whole life and dreamed of a reunion where they run through a field of flowers and embrace and then all is well and all is forgiven and they can suddenly have a wonderful relationship. After everything they've learned, her mother has to be a total victim not in control of her actions for this to work. But more and more evidence is that she is in control and this is what she wants and she will murder any innocent person she needs to to get it. That isn't what Imogen wants to hear so she's been in denial of it. Which Orym is right to point out is making excuses for that harm.

Imogen can do what she needs to and thinks is right, but Orym's firm that his plan is to stop them because what they're doing in the name of their ideology is evil. It's not even a matter of if that ideology is good in a vacuum. In the real world they're doing monstrous things to enact it and that is not okay. If your ideology is that puppies should get smoochies and little nose boops, but you're murdering innocent people to enforce that, you need to be stopped, even by people who think giving puppies smoochies is generally a good thing. That's how's you can get people like Ashton and Deni$e who are generally in camp "fuck the gods, they do jack shit for us" but are also firmly in camp "stop Ludinus." As Orym said, if there's a power vacuum, Ludinus cannot be the person to fill it.

Orym had never claimed to be infallible (quite the opposite), but there are definitely people with blorbo vision who think their little meow meow can do no wrong. And counter to them are the people who hate seeing Orym be put on a pedestal and are reacting by trying to pull him off of it and smash him on the ground. And who are using mental health speak to act like he's the real abuser for acting from his convictions in ways that aren't perfect. The line of thinking seems to go: Orym clearly isn't totally good or totally stable so if people have that impression it's because he's deliberately misleading them and manipulating them to get his way. Instead of just being a normally flawed guy people are projecting things onto, who has motivations, doesn't act with perfect clarity in every decision in every moment, and had conflicting needs and opinions with others.

Clearly that nod means he wants Delilah back for the power at any cost to Laudna and is manipulating her to get it and that makes him no different from Ludinus. Add opposed to saying he'll back up whatever Laudna wants to do herself including tapping into the power she had been actively using for 9 minutes prior, and that if she didn't kill Bor'Dor he would. But I guess that sounds too much like normal yes-and decision making in a split second in D&D and not like a meticulously plotted villain arc. Because if people you trusted to be the moral compass turn out to be just as flawed and fucked up as all of their friends, that's a massive and deliberate betrayal of trust, not just proof they're actually just mortal and fallible like everyone else.

Good people, after all, never get angry until it becomes unproductive and negatively shapes their actions. They were secretly evil the whole time and now the mask has come off revealing the truth. And other such things people who have never unpacked black and white fundamentalist thinking say without any apparent inclination of how that also reflects on them or how it will come for them because good people by that definition do not exist and everyone's a sinner waiting for their turn at being punished.

(Also interesting that when Fjord the man made a pact with a betrayer god for power after eschewing Uk'otoa's power with help before, it wasn't the Might Nein manipulating him into it. He was allowed to have agency over his decision and it was a second team effort to get back out of it again. Relapsing got to be a crooked path to character growth, not powerless victimhood like is being ascribed to Laudna the woman.)

Orym is a flawed guy trying his best to do good in an impossible situation that's making him feel smaller and more powerless than he ever has before. He doesn't always have the right answer and Bell's Hells putting too much trust in him is just as much a reflection of them as him. Nothing is simple right now and nothing has easy answers. None of this is black and white and purely theoretical ideology is not functional when it runs into real (fantasy) world actions. If you can't approach what's happening with nuance and understand that EVERYONE is a little right and a little wrong and they're just doing the best imperfect work they can, then you're not going to understand what's going on and make weird accusations.

This isn't a morality play. There aren't clear sides or clear right and wrong. There are characters with their own motivations working together and sometimes those motivations conflict. This is the party that fought Ira for caging a werewolf and forcing him to make new werewolves while he was working for Ludinus. And then WORKED with Ira multiple times because he wanted to fuck with his now former employer and that was good enough alignment. Chetney is being bounty hunted currently for assaulting a shop keeper at home for charging too much. Multiple party members have tried to murder the party. These aren't the days of solidly heroic fantasy Vox Machina. Seems like people are just disappointed enough to throw tantrums that Orym is exactly like all of his closest friends.

[the-therapist-is-ace]

Hello! As promised to @rubberduckyrye, here are some of my notes I got about my social psychology class, about leadership! (And of course I thought of V3. Of course. So I'm sharing the ones that could be linked to it x)

(Please keep in mind that those datas were extracted from social experiments in real life, not a killing game tho xD)

There's four "main" types of leadership:

Authoritarian (like in the army)

Transactional (preferably one for a short period of time or objective; this one is quite literally, a transaction. You do this task, you get this reward. It's not a long-term option)

Transformative (This one is the most looked after in companies: it's one that focus on changing things for the better, helping employees too in the process, but also it's looking for long-terms solutions and practice. The one that can motivate others, and help employees with their problems)

And lastly the "let it be", a type of leadership that let the "employees" -keep in mind those experiments were done in companies' settings- do what they want and doing much about it.

First of all, it's good to know that the leadership authoritarian is less performant than the transactional, or the transformative. But it's still WAY BETTER than the "let it be"! To give a hierarchy:

"let it be" < authoritarian < transactional < transformative.

(Again, in a company's setting. But I think it would work best in a killing game too, since everyone have to collaborate for a long term objective, leaving, when there's one actual traitor in their group)

Kaede and Kokichi (because I am still talking about V3, of course!) both tried -Kaede... more or less- a transformative leadership. Which, good idea! The problem being that Kaede also took some major part of the "let it be" type as well. Asides from the Death Road of Despair, and when she asked Miu for help, she pretty much didn't let the others contribute.

Kokichi too; well he let Miu, Gonta and maybe a bit Shuichi contribute, but after the first trial there's not a lot of people willing to listen to him asides the first two I mentionned.

Angie in chapter 3, tried an authoritarian leadership. Which... works, until the authority figure isn't respected (or feared) and people start doing whatever they want again. (And the problem with her, is that she only was respected by half of the class to begin with. It was bond to fail)

And all three of them struggle with the notion to let others than their allies do the work for the group (which, in a killing game is understandable. There's a mastermind lurking around) but it doesn't help the overall cohesion, conflicts in the group happens because "it's always the same doing the things" (in a company setting anyway.)

An annoying thing too, is that once a leader is designated, all the others around are like "oh cool, they'll do all the work and I can chill" only doing things if the leader actually tell them to. In a company setting (or in a group project...) no problem. In a killing game on the other hand...

The followers have the tendency to take the values of their leader in mind when taking decisions; in a company, it's seen as a HR employee avoiding to recruit women because he knows his superior is mysogynist. In the killing game, it's seen when Kaede declare they're all friends, and despite the murders that happens, everyone claim this mentality. (Claim. Not necessary follow... *look at the murders*)

Because yes, having people with differents values/goals (i.e: the mastermind working against them) obviously doesn't help the group.

And then, interestings things are seen.

It has been shown in the experiments, that the one stepping up to be the leader, isn't always the most qualified for the job.

Not only that, but people that chose their leader doesn't necessary makes the right choice, and prefer to have someone they like in charge, they are biased.

Looks familiar to anyone?

And now the most fascinating thing:

If no real leader (recognized, followed by everyone or the biggest majority and most importantly: DOING A GOOD JOB) is there, that's when a scapegoat is "designed".

You know, the one that everyone claim to be the source of all problems (the "villain") the one that get ignored (even when they are BLEEDING) the one that can get all their hard work for the group overlooked, even when said-work help to end the crisis? (AKA, the killing game?)

Hm, wonder who that is in V3!

On a lighter note, homor is a great idea in leadership. Studies showed that a joking leader eased the tensions in the group, and help motivate people to go forwards.

Hm, wonder who could try to make jokes to ease the tension...

[vowill89]

Some thoughts on the future ahead

We're going to have another rough four years ahead of us, there is no question about that. But there are some things that I don't see a lot of people talking about, and I want to bring them up to let everyone know that while it will be bad, we at least know what we're dealing with. 1. The media liked to harp on Biden's age, so let's talk about Trump's age. This man is 8 years older than when he ran in 2016. Back then he was energetic, charismatic, sharp and witty and could easily verbally spar with the best of them. 2024 Trump is tired, lethargic and mentally/physically deteriorating/unwell. The job of president demands much of those who sit in the oval office and Trump doesn't have that same energy as before. This job may just kill him, one way or another. 2. Trump lies constantly. How many promises did he make in 2016 that he just didn't bother to uphold during his first term? Where's the wall? We could see a lot of that this time around, he demonized nearly everyone and anyone he could and promised to hurt them. Do you think he has the mental energy to sit through meetings discussing the logistics on how to do that? Do you think he has the physical fortitude to be as active this time as he was last time? What may happen is that he walks into the White House on the 22nd of January, march straight for the bedroom, lock the door and never come out for four years. 3. J.D. Vance may be a carbon copy of Trump, flaws and all. He's charismatic when he spews lies and he may actually believe them too. But Vance is more performer than politician, much like Trump. When he debated Walz, he did the one sin a performer could do; he broke character. When given the smallest and lightest amount of push back by the moderators, he broke character. He cracked under the slightest amount of pressure and, for a moment, crumpled. He may have designs to become the president by ousting Trump, but the presidency is nothing BUT pressure. J.D. Vance has no idea what he's getting himself into and he will regret it. 4. Trump likes to hire only the best. And by the best I mean the best of the worst. And by the best of the worst, I mean the worst of the worst. He's going to hire nothing but opportunistic and ambitious yes men who'll do anything and everything they can to advance their own career. But they're not clever enough to do so that doesn't involve internal strife and fighting. They'll backstab each other just so they can get a win for themselves. And when they join, Vance will be the VP and seen as a roadblock, so should Vance become the president, they may be too stupid to put aside their petty opinions of him to properly work together. 5. Mitch McConnell is leaving politics for good. This raisin of a human was the only reason the Republican Party had even some semblance of focus and direction. He was one of the old school politicians who knew how to do politics properly and now he's leaving. The Republican party is going to break internally because everyone wants to do their own thing and there is no one at the helm of the ship steering them. Remember when the house had to have the vote for speaker 15 times because the Republicans couldn't act as a cohesive unit? We may see that, but far more exaggerated because of McConnell's absence. These are just my thoughts, and maybe I'm grasping at straws here, looking for a silver lining where there is none. But this isn't like last time were we didn't know what we were dealing with. We do now, we know from experience. I just wish that experience was enough to dissuade everyone from voting for him again.

[leofrith]

i'm trying to figure out a way to articulate the fact that defending bad media by saying "mindless entertainment is good sometimes" really isn't a good argument and i think it's just that... no media is ever truly "mindless." every piece of art is a reflection of something, even if that "something" is disney's love of making money. you are still using your brain to jump through hoops to explain how [insert stupid and nonsensical creative decision] is actually all a part of some grand plan that will pay off later (spoiler: it probably won't. but if it does, it'll probably be in the most unfulfilling and bland way possible). you're still using your brain to think up reasons for why the completely nonsensical decisions made in the creation of this bad show are really deep, actually.

if the "mindless entertainment" in question is offloading the work of the showrunners—whose job it is to create a cohesive story in the first place—onto the audience, then it's no longer very mindless, is it? because now you're the one having to make connections that literally aren't there in the first place, and then giving the showrunners undue credit for the work you did! the only way i can really think to describe it is that it feels like the fandom is a crutch for dave & co., constantly putting in the free labour of making sense of their half-assed shows on behalf of a bunch of people who are very much just not doing their fucking jobs.

mindless entertainment, to me, is entertainment that doesn't require you to think very hard and there is a huge difference between that and a piece of media that just doesn't make any fucking sense in the first place, lmao.

[cherubchoirs]

Do they ever take there drone pet out on walks or blood hunts? If so do they put a sticker on him or something so he doesn't get mistaken for another drone? And does the ferryman ever petsit?

And how did Gabriel and the little drone meet? Did he notice it couldn't shoot?

oh yeah i like to think the drone goes out sometimes with them!! it got to meet the virtues (they're....kind of similar.....) and gabriel brings it out to hunt for fresh blood (it can be difficult to get v1 to share, so he typically feeds it). the drone actually regularly gets custom paint jobs from v1, where it picks out radioactive palettes that it WISHES it could have itself but because of its special plating, it has to live vicariously through the drone lol gabriel isn't sure if they're pleasing or even cohesive choices most times, but it is pretty cute that the drone always goes to look at itself in the mirror every time and seems excited so...perhaps it's a machine thing. the ferryman approves of its expressed creativity, and they do look after the drone when they stay at gabriel and v1's apartment - it doesn't need much supervision (it won't wander off on its own that this point for the most part, though curiosity can get the better of it), but they find it a charming companion and probably the closest thing one can have to a pet in hell.

i think gabe likely saw the drone on its own, which is unusual for them since he's only ever seen them in groups - when he went in for a closer look, it tried to fly away rather than engage which told him something was definitely wrong. he thought it was a little funny, almost like rescuing an injured bird, but he knew it would never survive with a broken gun otherwise...though honestly, drones don't really survive in any case, given how fragile they are, so maybe this one was actually pretty lucky

[numetaljackdog]

sos

my number one skill is never shutting the fuck up ever and indeed in many circumstances it's more of a curse than a blessing because i genuinely can't control it for the most part but it does come in handy including throughout the entirety of my academic experience as well as just about every desk job i've ever had because it means i can fill a lot of space with a vast quantity of words that scan with a great deal of clarity and cohesion despite ultimately saying very little over the course of that volume. the result of this is that those who are reviewing my writing, which are usually people with varying degrees of power over my continued success, scan the content i've generated and deem it to be of high quality because everything seems well-thought out and competently composed and so they give it an instant pass, at least as long as they aren't paying too much attention, which - spoiler alert! - pretty much nobody ever is. they've all got their own shit to worry about, things that matter far more to them than whether or not you ended a sentence with a preposition in your 10-page report for a course that they're already sick of. now, what i did just there was a little trick where i actually violated my own natural cadence and patterns of writing in order to include a little gag! in the sentence where i mention the concept of ending a sentence with a preposition, i did just that; the sentence ended with "of." but for me, i normally would have phrased that sentence as follows: "they've all got their own shit to worry about, things that matter far more to them than whether or not you ended a sentence with a preposition in your 10-page report for a course that they're already sick of teaching." if this were actually a report with a word count minimum, obviously i would include that final word at the end of the sentence, because getting all cute and meta with the way i phrase things isn't worth losing that extra word of length. but in projects where the minimum requirements are more lax, i find it's helpful for my motivation to allow myself to have a little bit of genuine fun with it and liven the place up some. of course, that only applies if you're like me and you're a massive nerd who has fun doing that sort of thing, but i would say that there's a pretty decent chance that is true about you, seeing as how you're on tumblr dot com, a website that has an observably quite high population of huge nerds, and also you're presumably following me, which means you've identified with my nerd self enough to choose to see more of my blog. for what it's worth to you, my external keyboard seemingly ran out of battery several sentences ago, which is really kind of funny when you think about it. what an ironic time for that to happen, as i'm discussing and demonstrating my ability to type forever and ever! this is the first time i've had the battery in this keyboard die, so it must have had fresh ones in at the time i got it. i wouldn't know for sure, because i got it secondhand from someone i know who was clearing out some old inventory from their workplace's office building. that's where i got my big external monitor, as well. i really like tech appliances but honestly i really don't know much about them, that was never my area of expertise. as is likely obvious from this post alone, my passions have always remained more with the humanities. good god i have to stop now before i give you my whole fucking autobiography but i think by now i've sufficiently proven my point - i could easily do this until the end of time.

i have to create a new block now because of tumblr's character-per-block limitation. the one last thing i'll tell you is that, since i'm now typing on my laptop's keyboard which is at a somewhat awkward angle from me, my wrists are in danger of mucking with the trackpad, and just a few moments ago i accidentally selected the entire wall of text i've typed here and replaced it with what i was continuing to type. so thank goodness for the tumblr post editor's ability to undo, or else nobody ever would have seen this very intellectual and not at all frivolous and annoying post that i've generated here. if you actually read all of this, you're a huge freak and i'm proposing to you right now.