#the potato rants

[anxiouspotatorants]

Rory liked Dean but she didn’t love him. She liked going on dates with him. She liked that he’d spend time with her and watch movies with her and get along with her mother. But there was no fire, no matter how much she wanted there to be one. She couldn’t burn like she did for exploring the world and the written word. She couldn’t burn for him.

Rory loved Logan but she didn’t like him. She loved his freedom, his adventurous spirit, his lust for life. She loved how she could let herself go with him, put faith in something dangerous and not shatter. But she didn’t like how cruel he could be to others. She didn’t like how dismissive he was, of responsibilities, of consequences, of people’s hurt. She didn’t really like him.

Rory liked Jess and she loved him. She liked that he liked the same stuff as her, liked that he’d help out his uncle without bragging, and talk with her friends, and throw literary challenges at her because he genuinely wanted her opinion. She loved his honesty, his integrity, how he’d leave her speechless with his gaze and breathless with his kisses. How he looked at her, all of her, and never made her feel like she was lacking. She liked and she loved him. And it scared her shitless.

[asteroidtroglodyte]

It’s crazy how there’s so much misinformation about Food. The thing we need all the time. Arguably the point of getting up each day. Fucking food. You’d think educating our young on this central component of life would be the sort of thing we’d teach them as kids, but nooo, I have to go reading up on zookeeping techniques for keeping and feeding large primates in captivity to get a straight fucking answer about carbon and phosphorus sourcing instead of a bunch of pseudoscience or fatphobia or classism or racism or just good old fashioned taboos! [Chews furniture] HOW DO YOU DEMONIZE THE POTATO

[batwynn]

I typically have a pretty healthy respect for farmers and their work, especially having lived on and worked on many different farms growing up. I've woken up at 4am to milk cows, feed chickens, chop wood. I've pulled more weeds than you can imagine, tilled rows, and run out in hailstorms to protect crops. But I can't seem to dredge up a drop of respect for the farms around where I live these days. Because these guys don't actually do anything, and yet have a serious attitude about how much of better a person they are because they 'work hard' and 'kids these days don't wanna work' yadda yadda. They've convinced themselves and everyone around them that they work like people used to work on farms. In the field, backs bent, heavy lifting, etc. Except, you know, they don't. Everything is mechanized, and more than half of the year is spent doing nothing at all while the potatoes grow/over the winter. Every step of the planting, watering, spraying, harvesting, and storing process is run by a machine. The tractors don't even need them to direct them for most of the process. I've watched these guys fart around on their phones and pick their noses for 6 hours as the tractor goes back and forth, only waking up enough to turn the thing at the end of the row. For what isn't mechanized, (kale) they hire migrant workers to do the actual work. Meanwhile, these guys drive around in their un-used-for-anything-but-driving pickup trucks, yelling about migrant (non-white) workers and people asking for 'handouts'. Ironic, of course, because every single farm up here gets massive 'handout' from the government for multiple claims of u w u growing pwoblems. These same people will pick apart every single thing that you do 'wrong' because you don't do it the way they do it. (Like have a giant bulldozer to clear their driveway vs a small snow blower) If that wasn't enough, these aren't the neighbors that I grew up with. These same people have the ability to help others, and won't. They pull up to you after 5 months of grueling shoveling and clearing the driveway of snow and say, "Oh we could have done that for you for $40." And then never offer to do it next year. They'll stand outside and crack jokes about how our house is going to burn down because of how we set up the pellet stove, but not offer advice. They'll happily run their generators and settle in during the bomb cyclone that turned off the power for over a week at -60º and not even question if they should check on anyone living around them. They're greedy, selfish, lazy, cruel people and they say the kids are the problem?

[anxiouspotatorants]

@stellaluna33​ said: “I like pre-season 7 Marty! @anxiouspotatorants has some pretty strong feelings about this too, haha.”

Oh boy do I ever have feelings about Marty. Not only do I think pre-season 7 Marty is over-hated, I think he had the potential to be a great character and an important addition to Rory’s social life if ASP and company had just tapped into his potential. I don’t think Rory ever owed him returned feelings just because he was a better person than Logan (and I think that’s kind of a low bar to meet), but I do think his season 5 storyline worked well - it just wasn’t used to its full potential if you ask me. Not only was Marty’s unrequited feelings an issue for their friendship, nor that Rory liked someone else, but that she specifically liked Logan. Logan, who not only hung out with elitist assholes who treated everyone (but especially those of lesser financial means) like trash, but who himself put down and mocked Marty for no other reason than not being born into wealth like him. I’m convinced that Marty keeping a distance from Rory would’ve made more of an impact if they had made that conflict between Logan and Marty more explicit, and even more so if that had been Marty’s sole issue and not any attraction towards Rory.

I just generally also think that Rory deserved more friends and especially guy friends. College! Rory didn’t really get to make many true new friends, and those who appeared left as fast as they came. Not to mention that the LDB feel more like Logan’s entourage than people Rory herself got close with. Rory getting to actually make friends from her Yale years like Marty (or Glenn or her year 1 roomies) could have made for some really interesting changes to her social dynamics and opened up for new sideplots for Rory that weren’t just tied to her love life or her family. And not only having a friend like Marty inform those key aspects of her (aka love life and family) life but having uniquely platonic conflicts with him that could span several seasons would’ve been so cool to see!

Anyway, I’ll make due with a thousand different AUs where Marty and Rory got to be real friends and season 7 just didn’t happen.

i rlly wanna hear everyones opinion on Marty, hes definitely not the best character in the entire show but hes a little over-hated in my opinion. I think at the end of the day Marty was just an awkward loner guy who didnt know how to express his feelings properly. In my opinion he was much better than logan, that whole episode when Marty, Logan, and Rory go out for Chinese food and Logans friends are the most pathetic jerks ever. They way they make fun of him were not having enough money or when they give the most sarcastic unnecessarily rude response when Marty asked if Colin missed his family at boarding school. Logan and all of his friends have access to a stupid amount of daddies money, they all want to party all day, not take anything seriously, cause messes, and then throw money at people to clean up the filthy trail of expensive food and illegally bought drinks they left behind. Were Marty's actions absolutely perfect all the time? No, definitely not, he did some borderline jerk things sometimes but he was much better than Logan. He was smarter, kinder and just less pathetic. I do understand that it was annoying when the writers ruined their friendship by making Marty like Rory romantically but if i had to pick, it would be Marty over Logan any day.

[aniseandspearmint]

Part of the reasons the sudden sharp increase in costs of fast food is so terrible, is the food is mostly awful now.

Taco Bell tastes like old cat food smells, and it's NEVER hot anymore.

MacDonalds tastes like it was reheated in the microwave just before you bought it. Burger King is pretty much the same. And Wendy's too.

Checkers joins Taco Bell in the NEVER ACTUALLY HOT team, and Popeyes changed all their recipes to weak ass not actually spicy versions.

Subway has had multiple ingredient scandals, and the bread is like trying to chew a yoga mat.

KFC wants over 30 bucks for a bucket of chicken and sides and their mashed potatoes taste like glue now.

Crystals? The gimmick was tiny tasty burgers CHEAP, now they cost just as much as Wendy's.

Arby's? Dog food to Taco Bells cat food.

In what WORLD are ANY of these places selling something worth even a QUARTER of what they're charging?

[potatoesarecheese]

We need more mute characters in fiction

More mute characters in fiction that aren't infantilized or belittled or, god forbid, fixed. Characters that, instead of learning how to talk "normally" learn to stop hating themselves for being different.

Sure, we have the mute characters that physically can't speak, their throat was damaged, their vocal cords were ripped out, they're deaf. All those reasons are great.

But we need more mute characters that can speak, but actually can't in every way that matters. Characters that should be fine but they're not and they don't know what's wrong with them and they're just stuck feeling horrible all the time.

Characters that are trapped inside of their own heads, wanting to scream and speak and be heard, but also unable to because they are terrified of being perceived. because they shouldn't speak. because they won't speak.

Because they dug themselves into a hole but they have no idea what happened how to get back out of it or even call out for someone else to throw them a rope.

Because their whole society is built around this idea of perfection and how your body is supposed to work and so of course they're struggling. everyone else has baked it into their heads that they're “broken” and “useless” when they're really actually not.

Instead of getting fixed and learning to talk, they find a group of people that are normal about it. That treat them as an entire human being and help them unravel all of those ideas about the "normal" and "correct" way to do things.

We need more mute characters in fiction, because how can you ever even begin to communicate with someone if they don't know how to listen to you?

We need more mute characters in fictions, because it will help us unravel all those ideas about the "normal" and "correct" way to do things

[forevermore05]

Can I just talk about how excited I get when people send me asks? It feels so special and I cannot explain why. It's so exciting when people want to hear MY take. I have many Zutara prompts in my ask box and I am currently working on a fic. But when people send me an ask, it just makes my day. It makes me feel important, but it also helps me to think critically. I love getting asks.

As your potato lord, I demand more asks (please).

[anxiouspotatorants]

Very interesting stuff (also, thanks for tagging me!), and I have some thoughts too.

I agree with a lot of what @disasterbiwriter said, especially regarding balancing core canon and personal changes in fanfiction. While I think fanfiction is an amazing place for characters to go down different paths and make different choices, the way these stories are written need to keep the characters themselves intact - what makes them them.

I struggle with seeing a completely canon-compliant route for Rory where she doesn't keep the kid. I do think the fandom puts too much weight on the "Who is the next Lorelai/Luke/Chris" debacle, but it is true that a lot of Rory's story is about how much she relates either to her mom or to her grandparents. And while the show doesn't strike me as anti-choice (there are Planned Parenthood posters in Rory's room), it doesn't really show abortion as an option. In the world of Gilmore Girls, if you get pregnant you stay pregnant.

All that being said, my personal favourite post-AYITL fanfics are usually about breaking the cycle in some way. In a lot of them it involves Rory keeping the pregnancy and finding out how to be both herself and a mom in a way that is different from both Lorelai and Emily. I've also seen miscarriage fanfics where she deals with the loss and has to figure out what her life looks like when she doesn't have her mother as a functioning blueprint. What I haven't seen (and would honestly like to see more of) are fanfics where Rory chooses to have an abortion. I am very clearly pro-choice, and while I have no issues with Rory choosing to keep the pregnancy (it is most likely what ASP and company would've gone for), I do think it would be interesting to see what abortion on Gilmore Girls would look like.

Rory having important conversations with her mother and with Lane (women who chose to go through with unplanned pregnancies) and with their support (or without, but let's face it they would support Rory and be pro-choice) decide that she isn't ready would've been such a strong thing to see on the screen, and could be in writing. Would Rory treat a pregnancy-scare as a kick in the butt to get her life back on track? Would she feel shame over not following through with something in her 30s that her mother did when she was just 16? Who else in the story would she tell and how would they feel? Would Logan feel like he should've been consulted? Would her grandparents understand?

I think it's possible to write Gilmore Girls fanfiction with incredibly dark subject matter because the show has always had a lot of shadows in it (Liz, Jess, Dean's infidelity, Lorelai's fights with her parents, Lane getting kicked out). What's important then - in my opinion - is to keep the tone of the show and the natural reactions of the characters intact. So with or without a baby, by choice or not, Rory should deal with it how she as a character would. Once that's established, you can really do whatever you want.

But also, fanfiction is fanfiction. Some people go completely off script and wonderful things can come out of that too. And bad things and just okay things. That's the beauty of fanfiction <3

TW: discussions of pregnancy and miscarriages

Okay, this is a question and I hope I'm not too insensitive about it: why should people automatically assume that Rory will become a mom post AYITL?

Now, I'm pro choice, but has anyone considered that maybe, just maybe, that Rory could miscarriage? That it doesn't have to end the way AYITL is supposed to end?

Don't get me wrong, it's not because I hate Rory or because I hate that it's Logan's baby or anything, but why hasn't anyone considered that a possible scenario includes a miscarriage?

Now ASP (for those who haven't watched Mrs Maisel) is not afraid to go to dark places (see the first of S5 for context), so it's not incredibly out of the imaginary that ASP could go for a darker trajectory? What happens when Rory's path suddenly changes with something that I think often invokes grief, shame and doubt?

I feel that sometimes a lot of media depicts miscarriages but they never deal with the drama that can stem from that. Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel that instead of taking that full circle route, what happens when something breaks that loop?

I would really like to know @ernestonlysayslovelythings @disasterbiwriter @lorelaiileigh @stellaluna33 @sagesfandomspot @jessmmariano @anxiouspotatorants thoughts about this

[anxiouspotatorants]

Don’t mind me I’m just thinking about how Rory almost destroyed her life and definitely destroyed her sense of self trying to please everyone around her not because they explicitly demanded it of her but because she grew up with a deep rooted unadressed view of her own existence as the destruction of Lorelai and Christopher’s lives, causing her to be constantly mindful of what the world might expect of her and desperately trying to not just meet those demands but a whole lot more no matter the cost because that’s the only way to make up for the fact that she exists and is alive

[potatoqueenpal]

WHY is there racism and misogyny and homophobia in the Redacted Fandom right now?! What is going on?!

Yall it is literally just a bunch of VOICES.

THE LISTENERS CAN BE WHATEVER RACE, BODY TYPE, SEXUALITY SAME WITH THE CHARACTERS IT IS LITERALLY ALL UP TO INTERPRETATION THERE IS NO CANNON DESIGN. SO FUCKING. CHILL THE FUCK OUT.

JESUS CHRIST.

[muddthebugg]

I've Pretty Much Finished Wild Kratts and I'm Making It Everybody's Fuckin Problem :]c

Headcannons galore!!

I'd think Koki would be the go-to or "emergency" medic of the group.

Idk, she just vibes like that. Martin would probably be her assistant, or second hand. I don't remember the right phrase (Also, when I say "emergency", I moreso mean "something bad happened and we need someone to stabilize/calm the situation while we head for an actual medic/hospital").

Nobody else is allowed to touch the medical supplies that are in the Tortuga's med wing. Jimmy uses far too much than necessary, Aviva somehow gets grease and oil over all of it, and Chris messes up the system she has set up whenever he tries looking for something that isn't in a place he would expect it to be -

The medical supplies are the only thing Martin keeps organized,, XDD

said this in another post but Jimmy is a top tier pilot

like,, ya boi cannot be matched frfr.

I like to think that Koki largely built the Tortuga, and perhaps programmed the piloting (somewhat unconsciously) off of some very cool game she played when she was younger, or heard about from Jimmy. Or, maybe, they didn't want anybody but Jimmy to be their pilot, so she purposely made it so that the Tortuga would be difficult to pilot to anybody but him >:]c

Chris is his pilot-in-training, and only because one of the last episodes I saw had Chris in the pilot's seat while Jimmy was looking out the windows.

Aside from him, Jimmy doesn't really let anybody else pilot. Especially after the whole thing with Thornsley... ough.

Creature Power Discs use DNA and coding to function

I mean this one seems pretty obvious in the way that the show had progressed from episode 1... still!

Aviva is seen creating Creature Power Discs, or CPDs, either by doing what seems to be ground-up via coding and incorporating certain data points and limits from observations and scans, or from starting with a DNA sample and filling in blanks where applicable.

I would imagine this is also why, as is noticeable through the series, we get different "tiers" of Creature Power Suit Transformations, or CPSTs. Like another post has remarked:

Tier 1 is the Kratt Brothers in a fursuit. Really impressive cosplay they got going on there. Tier 2 is the Kratt Brothers in a sphinx situation, or in a quad-suit. That is a blue/green animal with a human face.... ok then. Tier 3 is the Kratt Brothers turning into blue/green animals. Why is that Very Blue Whale™ looking at me :( . And I swear that green(??) mountain goat just said human words -

There's also the secret fourth tier that didn't seem to be mentioned in the post (probably due to how little it seemed to happen in the show): oh that guy is piloting a mech suit of a whale/squid.

Aside from that, being that she can adjust the details of the suits, it's also why she has to be super careful with parts of the suit programming such as the Mood Stabilizer (or whatever it was she mentioned in the Bass episode).

Too much and ya boi goes fish-brained, not enough and he'll have to learn from scratch how to swim and use any of the most basic bass powers :/ tis a delicate process!!

Martin has a pretty good idea of how to make a CPD

Idk. Why not let him dabble in something else. Helps keep his mind stimulated :]c

And y'know, aside from the whole episode where we saw this happen (theeeee Erminator episode??), he in general could definitely do a thing (with more practice), if allowed to start with a pre-filled template (via using animal DNA to start with). He just has to remember to clear the activation cache so the disc won't have any ghost activations,, XDD

the Creature Power Suits cannot function without touching the animal...

CPS usually needs three things to activate a transformation. As the boys say: "insert animal disc, touch animal, activate animal power!" Disc. Animal. Button.

If you cannot touch the animal, you can use an alternative Point Source DNA, or PSDNA, such as a tooth, antler shed, horn, fur, scale shed, exoskeleton molt... etc. But you cannot activate a transformation without PSDNA.

Lets pretend I know anything about programming and say that the suit samples the PSDNA and stores it into a "data file" that the disc programming reads off of to send modified data back to the suit for it to read out and implement upon activation.

That was a lot of words.

So. CPS cannot function without touching the animal...

...but they can function without CPDs.

It is not recommended. Ever. Unless the wearer is in absolutely dire circumstances.

Thing is?? Like I hc'd, the discs take the data from the PSDNA, goes at it with a red pen like "ehh, don't do that, do this instead, and adjust that, then we're good" and the suit reads that before it activates.

If there is no disc, tho? The suit only has that DNA sequence to go off of. It won't have an error read out, it'll just go "eh, whatever you say, bud" and transform the wearer. Essentially, the wearer goes full animal. Tier 5, so to speak.

It could be that certain aspects of the wearer's personality and/or subconscious remain intact (for angst purposes, ofc), but the longer they remain like that, the worse shit is gonna get. The harder it'll be to bring em back, fully.

That, and it's just really hard to get the wearer to keep still long enough to deactivate. Nevermind if they're a very small, very large, very skittish, or very aggressive animal at the time.

...and perhaps, the discs are all pre-written with a special deactivation code/prompt. Perhaps, because I thought of this just now, if you activate without a disc, the longer you go makes it increasingly harder to do a safe deactivation. To the point where you would kinda sorta maybe need Aviva to take the suit apart while the wearer is still in it -

cough.

...yes i totally have a vague fic idea lined up for this...

the Tasmanian Devil episode could've gone much worse.

:|

that's it.

like!!! just based on the previous point's rant! Coulda gone super horizontal ngl.

Main reason it didn't, according to my unprofessional opinion, is because the T-Devil (was it T-Bone?) bit through both the CPD slot and the activation functions. It damaged both. Chris' brain didn't really have time to be affected by the Tasmanian Devil instincts 100% because his suit was rapidly changing between it and a human form.

Then again!! I know fuckshit about T-Devil behavior, so he may have just been a lil gremlin rather than a menace. Like, that entire episode was Chris advocating for T-Devils just being Lil Guys™ in spite of how they sound like. Y'know. Devils.

you shouldn't hold/touch more than one animal when activating

Literally the Halloween episode. Granted!! Martin's CPS was reactivated while he was holding like. 6 different guys and with the incorrect disc in.

I'm gonna hazard a guess that the processor in the suit got overloaded with all the requests and data sets being sent with at least 5 different PSDNAs... so it was like "fuck it, we ball" and spat out. You know.

I should draw that CPST sometime........

Alternatively!! I believe there was a time they (Chris??) had one CPD inserted and touched an animal related to the CPD he had inserted, but not the same one. So it just sparked, then didn't do anything. Could just be an incompatibility in the data sets that wasn't compensated for. Like how Aviva sometimes programs certain discs from one-species discs to multiple-species discs, so long as it's the same genus/kind or somethn.

I'm pretty sure she's done this before, and without making a new disc.

So there. That's my take ig :]c

[millerflintstone]

I have no idea how these little fruit fly things come to be in our house. There's no fruit or veg on the counter. I'm guessing the pipes? Or the 2 plants I haven't killed yet attracted them?

There was one buzzing around my face and coffee. It landed on the inside of the cup and I covered it with my hand and tapped the cup to drown it. Today's coffee sacrifice

We have these night light looking things with sticky tape and I also have window traps. Every summer it's the same thing but I always thought it was produce related.

[communicationnskills]

Sometimes I think the show forgets that Lucy was like... kidnapped by a serial killer and buried alive, and died? And that her best friend that she lived with got murdered? And that her parents don’t approve of her career or life choices so she doesn’t even technically have blood family around? And that she’s also been through like a hundred other things that never get brought up again? Yeah, I think about this a lot

[xylophone888]

personal opinion post: if i EVER have to see an another post unironically insinuating that rincewind has a potato fetish i will boil my neighbors

[twobellsilence]

The fact that I used scarecrows as reference for Ethan's appearance. Then realized he looked too much like a scarecrow. So I just made it so that he Hates being called Scarecrow because him looking Like That is just an unfortunate coincidence instead of making him less scarecrow-like. Work smarter not harder etc etc

[evol-astraea]

This quest has seriously (haha..) and emotionally destroyed me. But this whole part made me go FERAL.

This heckin' trainwreck of an edgelord (affectionate). Totally SMITTEN with his child the moment he appeared on screen. ah, my heart... And then, not even like, a few seconds later? He's like "I will protect this baby at all costs with my entire being."

And...man. Way to make me love a character even more. XD It hit worse than a truck at full speed. I screamed and cried, while repeating out loud "He's a dad! HE'S A DAD NOW!" in a sort of mantra. but then again, lots of emotions happening at once...

Amazing job, DE. Siete state bravi tutti.