#the racism also doesn't help either! like fuck off!!!!!!!

[silentreigns]

MBS is up for reelection next year. He's been too controversial and liable to keep for another term. He's been accused of interfering with the Saudi Arabian 2023 results, sexist comments on his old website, accused Susie Wolff of being a conflict of interest, the jewelry ban, banning political statements, tried to stop the Las Vegas GP from happening, and much more. These are just the controversies I can remember off the top of my head! Not to mention I think the FIA vs FOM feud is still happening behind closed doors. Nobody in the F1 paddock likes this guy and he does more harm than good.

[sleepy-crypt1d]

i'm gonna be autistic about borderlands for a sec, everyone stay with me okay

i do not understand why the borderlands games try to make moxxi so important to jack, i dont get it, genuinely it doesn't make sense

so, spoilers for BL2, the pre-sequel, tales from the borderlands, and BL3 moxxi's heist- the general info you need is that jack and moxxi canonically dated for a period of time between the first game and TPS, how long this was we arent sure but we can make a guess that at the VERY most it was less then six months of them being together

we can piece this together by the vague timeline of TPS happening about a year or less after the first game

(this is estimated by the fact that Athena said she worked with jack five years ago, meaning TPS happened five years ago by the time the second game takes place and five years is also the amount of time that's passed between the first and the second game so- TPS took place in a very short few month period after the first game)

now we know that they couldn't have been together for long because moxxi was together with BOTH mordecai AND jack during this only a few month period of time between games- this is confirmed in a line of dialogue from BL2 where mordecai says moxxi left him for jack at the end of BL1 but then in TPS moxxi and jack are already broken up, which means they could have only been together for a few months for the timeline of five years to make sense! at the VERY most they were together for like, three months or even just a few weeks. all that matters is that it was not very long

in BL2 there's also a line about jack destroying moxxi's fighting dome because he thought she cheated on him, which is a thing he does AS handsome jack not as the normal dude jack he was when they broke up, the reason for which is still unknown but we know it was Vaguely Messy which is like whatever, sure, that sorta makes sense for him to do but what DOESN'T is the games trying to convince you that jack is in love with her.

okay you still following? cool

in TPS jack is visibly uncomfortable around moxxi and doesn't like working with her, even going as far as asking her to stop calling him 'sugar' a request she just, ignores and continues doing anyway, also during TPS is when jack gets together with nisha, his canon girlfriend he's had through the five years between BL1 and BL2. jack is INSANELY in love with nisha, we see this in the after credits art of both TPS and BL2 same with the way he talks to her/about her in TPS and in outside game material where he literally stutters when talking about her AND in the way he proudly displays her hat in his office in TFTBL alongside his most prized possessions.

he LOVES his woman with his entire heart, he gave her a whole town to prove it!! nisha is his everything outside of hyperion so, tell me, PLEASE why BL3 tried to tell us that jack was still in love with moxxi? because i do not get it at all

what im talking about here is 1. in moxxi's heist timothy is in love with moxxi, this is made canon in TPS where he fumbles through trying to flirt with her and in the heist dlc this is brought up again and timothy has a line about how jack asked moxxi on a date during his reign as handsome jack and sent timothy to go as him because he was busy but like, why would he do that? we know that jack is insane about nisha why would he then?? ask his ex that he visibly hates on a date??? and then 2. they added a fucking painting of her in his office in the casino.

i do not even know where to begin on how much i hate that detail

when you get to jack's office in the casino there are two paintings you find, one is of angel- makes sense, is his daughter who he loves even if he is really bad at it, it's the same as him having the picture of her in his office on helios, he loves his daughter, a painting of her being here is in line with everything else!! plus it's really pretty and i like it

then across from that is a painting of moxxi, which makes no fucking sense!!! why isn't it nisha!! it SHOULD be nisha!! the woman he is CURRENTLY TOGETHER WITH AND MADLY IN LOVE WITH????

i have DETESTED this detail since i first played the dlc, as much i love moxxi's heist and credit it as my favorite borderlands dlc the whole 'moxxi is jack's true love' thing makes me so confused?? they dated for MAYBE three months between BL1 and TPS and then he got into a five year long committed relationship that is never properly explored in the games and then the devs have the gall to say they wish they had done more with nisha like!!! good news you still could have!! but you didn't

anyways, i apologize for this, it has just been bothering me for months and i had to get it out and see if anyone else had noticed this and was bothered by it?? because it makes me go a little insane every time i think about it

then again maybe the character writing in BL3 is just bad

[postcardsfromheapside]

This game has been out since Halloween.

In that time, there have been numerous Veilguard positive posts in which patient, loving, wonderful, insightful and intelligent individuals attempt to impart lore onto a fanbase which doesn't deserve their time and attention.

I can't believe I'm running across posts made within the past five days which express disgust and frustration towards the devs over things which have been explained in great detail multiple times on this site, BUT IN THE DAMN GAME.

AND Y'ALL KEEP COMPLAINING THE GAME TELLS BUT DOESN'T SHOW. AND YOU DON'T EVEN LISTEN OR WATCH.

"the crows are presented as wholesome" - they are not. this site has a crow fanbase which has run off and lionized Viago as Daddy, conveniently ignored all the in-game details which either hint or baldly state things Definitely Aren't Cool, and generally fetishized what it means to be a Crow because of Zevran and Lucanis. Then the same people, or others who weren't paying proper attention, whined when the headcanon crowded out the actual in-game material, and they said "Antiva is whitewashed." There have been multiple posts about this.

"slaves are meant to be everywhere in Tevinter and we don't see that" - we aren't everywhere, we're specifically in Docktown which is poor and people generally can't afford slaves there, but we do see evidence of slavery, and we run around with abolitionists and help save people from fascist slavers and free people who will either be slaves or victims of blood magic so IDK what to tell you, there have been multiple posts explaining this too, maybe leave your slave or savior fetish somewhere else.

"Racism is supposed to be rampant" - fuck off. I actually will not be explaining this because for once it was nice not to be called a slur. If you need this to feel "immersed" or to feel there are actual problems, I need you to check yourself fucking hard. If you want to masquerade what it feels like to experience bigotry, go play one of the prior games. This has also been discussed in multiple posts.

"Handling pure lyrium is fine now" no handling the dagger is fine Solas cleansed it, the dagger woke something up in Harding specifically she talks about how some dwarves are connected to the stone, she previously had not been one of them and maybe the dagger woke something up in her, or did you need a pop up explaining this? Were you paying attention during cut scenes and dialogue?

"Adult Dalish without vallaslin" - in the 10 years since Inquisition/Trespasser, doubtless some dalish have come to adulthood and found out what assholes their gods were and made the decision not to go through that specific cultural rites. Or maybe city elves joined the Dalish. Who knows who made up the elf population at that ritual site. Elves are not a monolith. We've made multiple, multiple posts about elves not being monoliths.

"Solas' opinion on blood magic went from neutral to negative" SOLAS FUCKING LIES. We've made multiple posts about Solas lying, if you need this explained further I suggest you play the game all over again, he lies to you throughout the entire game.

"Re-write of the after credits scene in Inquisition to recontextualise the Flemeth and Solas interaction" it's recontextualized because now we know who and what they were to each other. Learning new information does that. This is literally what happens all the time in science and history. You recontextualize what you thought you knew with new information. You're supposed to change your position, not whine about how the new information makes everything different.

These are just some of the things I pulled from a list on a post in which someone was really just upset about everything. Everything. Varric, Morrigan, Solas, everything. But I can't take their criticisms seriously, because they're upset that "too much was told" and "not enough shown" and yet didn't even pay attention to DA lore or in-game dialogue or context clues around the world of Northern Thedas to answer their own questions.

Everything in this game makes complete sense if you use lore from prior games and a single iota of imagination to see how it fits. We've had many delightful posts discussing this, seeing how things could be explained, when approaching the game from a place of curiosity rather than being upset because personal headcanons weren't satisfied or long-held expectations weren't met.

[pyrrhiccomedy]

a collection of thoughts about Veilguard

it's pretty good! it's a fun, straightforward adventure story where you play the good guys, the bad guys are bad guys, and there's one morally ambiguous character but don't get scared, you have the whole game to decide what to do with him. the combat is fun, the cast is likable, and the world is pretty. if you like fantasy rpgs, you will probably like this one!

I said the cast is likeable. I didn't say they were interesting. everyone kinda comes off like they've been to therapy for at least six months, and have put in some effort to "do the work." Your party's character flaws are things like "people pleaser" or "rude (but still well-intentioned)" or "justifiably cynical." These are all more or less functional and mature adults who want to get along and experience very few obstacles to doing so.

The obstacles they do experience to getting along are pretty flimsy, and are sometimes resolved in under a minute.

Le wokisme is a problem with the factions, which is a problem with the game, because the game revolves around the factions. None of the factions are allowed to be - again - morally ambiguous. There's a faction of treasure hunters, but don't worry, they have experts to make sure they don't sell anything important to anyone's culture. There's a faction of assassins which in a previous game have been shown to be harsh mercenaries who traffic in slavery in order to acquire children to raise into professional killers, but don't worry, they've mellowed out a lot since then, and now they ~don't kill innocent people~ and all of the members are excited to be there. There's a faction of death-worshipping necromancers, but don't worry: they're pretty much treated as a joke faction, and they don't do anything darker than raising some friendly skeletons to do custodial work.

A lot of the game takes place in the Tevinter Imperium, which we know from previous games to be a racist imperial power built upon the labor of a mostly-elven slave force. I say we know that 'from previous games' because it really doesn't come up in this game. The Tevinter faction is a group of slave abolitionists, but you don't actually help them free any slaves. In fact, you never even meet any slaves. In fact, you never even see any slaves. In Minrathous, the capitol city of the slave empire.

We also never see any anti-elf racism, in Minrathous or anywhere else, or meet any elves anywhere who have much of anything negative to say about the current world state. I think it would have been interesting to engage with why some elves might actually support the Morally Ambiguous Guy Who Is Looking To Tear Down The Current World Order In Order To Restore The Elves To Their Bygone Glory, but then your protagonists might have been placed into an ethically dubious situation at some point, by opposing a guy, who is, among some more alarming intentions - let me be so clear - trying to free the elven slaves. And god forbid we make the player uncomfortable!

There are no titties in this game. You do fuck your love interest on the eve of the final battle, as is traditional, but there will be nary a titty in sight. That, like ethical conundrums or moral ambiguity, is evidently too grown-up for the target Veilguard audience.

Whoever it was on the writing team who was interested in the Qunari has either left the team, or is no longer interested in the Qunari. They are a non-presence, and the Big Grey Guys With Horns who you fight are just violent assholes who don't follow the Qun. They've also been redesigned again. They basically just look like tieflings, with even more awkward foreheads. RIP to a genuinely original fantasy race. We'll always have Sten and the DA2 Arishok.

Fans of previous games will, however, be pleased at how generous the writers have been with answering outstanding questions! You will learn what the titans were, what happened to them, what the Blight is, what caused the Blight, what the Golden/Black City is, why breaching it unleashed the Blight, who the Tevinter old gods were, what the deal was with the elven gods, and (not that anyone was in doubt of this after Inquisition anyway) that the Maker is fake for sure for sure.

Every religion in Thedas is proved to be fake by the end of the game, though, so it feels a bit less like "kids raised evangelical stick it to Big Church" this time.

Morrigan is back! Isabela is back! Dorian is back! Welcome visitations.

People are being shitty about there being an explicitly non-binary character. Fuck those people obviously, but I do wish they'd found something better to call this character than "non-binary," such a modern term that it slingshot me out of my fantasy world full of dragons and magic into a corporate diversity and inclusion training module.

Being a mage doesn't matter anymore. Sorry if you were hoping it might, but honestly that's on you. If they chickened out of doing anything with the mage conflict set up in DA:O and DA2 in Inquisition, I don't know why you expected they'd find a renewed interest in engaging with it now.

You can't be a blood mage. You can't actually do anything evil. Your PC is a Hero. I don't have a problem with this, exactly, but it contributes to the feeling of the series having moved to the kiddy end of the pool over the years.

Overall, I think this is almost surely going to be the last Dragon Age game, and I think that's almost definitely a good thing. It's a fun send-off that takes you on a whistle-stop tour of nearly all the places left in Thedas you haven't seen yet, ties up nearly all of the loose ends, and lets you hit an ogre with a warhammer so hard that he goes flying like he's full of packing peanuts.

Time enjoyably, but not meaningfully, spent.

[statementlou]

https://x.com/Harrygreeneyesx/status/1848371979381850298?t=_OQAw_4Tyvma-undNloWMg&s=19

It's the sun, so I don't know how reliable the source is, but if it's true, I'll be more upset than I already was with this preventable situation. Knowing liam kept going downstairs to the lobby so he wasn't alone and hotel workers SAW he needed help but did NOTHING just sent him back to his room instead of calling an ambulance or something was upsetting but if this is also true I just can't.

ugh I don't buy this at ALL. The link shows the Sun saying Liam was clean right before all this happened which is true; he had to stay in Argentina a few extra days to get his visa for the US reissued and in order to do that he had to drug test, and that test was clean. That's been widely reported. But then they say that the reason he then got fucked up was because a hotel employee "pushed" drugs on him which is fucking nonsense imo. I can't know! But they sure can't either and the likelihood that an addict who had just passed a sobriety test was like hell yeah a little reward and sought out the drugs is literally OFF THE CHARTS, MUCH higher than that an employee found a random guest and was like "heyyyy cmon you know you want to..." TBH the fucking racism and weird shit I'm seeing is INSANE and this is just more of the same if you ask me. I see people saying, unchallenged, that this wouldn't have happened in the US, that he would have been taken care of given proper treatment like ARE YOU JOKING?? This is exactly what would have happened in the US, if the cops didn't literally show up and shoot him, a genuinely common outcome of calling the police on people in altered states here in the US. I mean it's a tangent to this ask but: can we all just get our fucking xenophobia and racism under control for 10 minutes, actually?? This is a terrible situation and we would all like it to have gone differently but this is an opportunity to have some eyes opened to the treatment that users receive WORLDWIDE due to the puritanical stigmas and stereotyping around drug use and the way people DIE because of it every day, rather than be like "wow seems like people in LATAM are really fucked up gosh so glad WE'RE not like that" like babes? YOU ARE. YOUR COUNTRY IS TOO. Go volunteer at a needle exchange in Liam's honor and meet some addicts and understand that they are just people with problems and that they are being treated like human garbage for it everywhere and are DYING of that. Beautiful people with a lot to offer the world are dying every day because episodes like this are handled badly. Because there aren't safe use sites. Because they see themselves as lesser and worthless because they're told that's the case and they give up. Seeing this happen to someone you value can be a window to greater understanding and sympathy- having it instead be used to foster racism and a sense of superiority is a fucking shame and doesn't honor Liam in the least imo.

[spacechild-glitchypix]

A lot of people are making a lot of public statements considering this is a situation that has pretty much nothing to do with them.

Look, I'm usually one to be pretty civil on conversations like this in public because I generally feel like people are less likely to listen when you're angry and shouting but I'm also acutely aware that none of you are really paying any attention. You're glossing over statements, you're intentionally reading Rose's statements and apologies in bad faith. If you aren't going to have the good graces to truly listen to either Kab or Rose then, respectfully, back away. You're not contributing anything positive to the conversation, you're talking in circles about points already being addressed and claiming they aren't because the answer doesn't suit your narrative

You can think Rose's comments made in the privacy of his own server are unprofessional until the cows come home but, frankly, his professionalism isn't any of your concern unless you're employing him. And, as for the biphobia comments, I'll speak as someone who was literally in those discord screenshots.

The stuff said in Marshie's post is true but, on a larger scale, this was a common discussion in this server. It wasn't started by Rose, it certainly didn't end with Rose, this was an entire server of queer people who were just sick of the heteronormative way some people would develop their MCs. And if you took that as a personal attack then I apologise but I can't help you with your own feelings. We never expected this to reach public eyes, none of us would've actually said this to a person's face about their own MCs. We're not bullies, our words were posted in a public setting without our permission, the fact you people seemed to have missed that (or even claimed that we apparently weren't private enough because somehow we were supposed to just know one of our members was leaking screenshots of our conversations which is a stance I have seen at least one person take) is honestly very telling.

No one should be expected to be 100% polite or civil in their own spaces (this also includes Rose's blog, before one of you fires blossoming-attorney's post at me), we're allowed to have areas where we can speak our own grievance with friends and be hyperbolic without having to worry about people taking our works out of that space to be put completely on blast to the public. Have none of you people ever complained about a boss before???

But more importantly than that, I just think the level of tone-policing and dogpiling and harassment being leveled at one of my friends over a racist smear campaign is fucking appalling. I don't care if you do not think this is racist because race wasn't brought up, if this wasn't racism then why is Rose the only person you people have thought to go after. Why is he the only person that was named, why did no one try to find anyone else in those screenshots.

This fandom is, quite frankly, a racist cesspit, the people who started this harassment campaign by publiclly posting this bullshit on a throwaway reddit account are scum, the people who pushed it without any sort of critical thinking should be deeply ashamed of themselves and every major artist in the community making a statement as to their stance on this whole ordeal needs to back off

This community has destroyed an incredibly important space where me and many others made a number of good friends for nearly a year over the adrenaline rush of jumping on a bandwagon. You've hurt one of my good friends and tried to get him fired from his job to further a racist smear campaign because you didn't like that he's an outspoken black person.

I hope you're fucking proud of yourselves

[thewisecheerio]

Elden Ring is anti-war propaganda that is directly relevant to things happening in the world right now.

All the spoilers. All of them. And additional content warning for discussions of genocide and war, and mentions of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

Also big thank you to @starofancunin for asking a really good question about Queen Marika's motivations, which helped me better structure some of this post.

So in the base game, we knew that God Queen Marika committed a bunch of atrocities against other races. We thought this was just a bid for control in the base game, because lords war--even in our world--over things like power and territory and resources and racism. That was a perfectly fine motivation from a story perspective. But there were a lot of lingering questions about why she wanted that power in the first place.

What we learned in the DLC is wild. At some point in your wanderings, you come across where Marika is from. And you learn that the people she started her war against--the Hornsent--were killing her people first in really awful, gruesome ways. Her genocide seems to have followed another genocide.

Art by Halima Aziz. Follow here: https://www.instagram.com/palestinianartist/

So the order of events seems to be something like this:

1) The original sin Hornsent genocide Shamans (Marika's people) in the form of Jar rituals.

2) Marika's first choice Marika, tired of death, decides to seize control to stop this and sets off to become powerful enough to do so.

3) Marika's ascension She becomes a god and returns home to take control.

4) Death of the Shamans While she was away, all of the Shamans--all of her people--have been killed, kidnapped, or gruesomely tortured. The game tells us no one is left in her home town when she gets back.

5) Marika's second choice She decides on revenge instead.

6) The war of revenge begins Marika starts a war against the Hornsent, and brainwashes (at least some of) her children into soldiers to help her carry it out.

7) The war's sphere of violence grows The war doesn't end once Marika (or rather, her child on her behalf) has decimated the Hornsent. She starts decimating a bunch of other nonhumans (e.g. misbegotten) most likely in a bid to maintain control and "order" (that word you keep using, Marika...I do not think it means what you think it means). Because of course people are rebelling against what she's doing. And if they rebel, they need to be quelled, right? They're disrupting law and order and must be put down. It doesn't matter whether their dissent is a direct response to her violence; it's disorderly and must be controlled, of course.

8) Marika reverses course A long time later, Marika comes to eventually regret what she's done, likely due to the fact that her own children are either in the act of rebelling (see Ranni, Rykard, Mohg, Melina, Miquella) or are outright killed (Godwyn). The part of her personality that was always about healing--the part of her that bathed her (empty) village in gold healing light as a passionate tribute--reasserts control. So she forms a 4D chess plan to try to overthrow her own order. This is the base game's story in which the PC is tasked with stopping this nonsense on her behalf, since she can't do it herself for Plot Reasons.

9) The PC sets out to stop a new cycle of violence Either after or during that storyline (depending on player timing), the PC is sent to the realm Marika came from to learn all the history in 1-7 and stop another threat from repeating her mistakes (even if the big bad is probably, maybe, technically well-intended).

"When Family is the Only Shelter", painted during the assault on Gaza in 2021, by Malak Mattar. Follow here: https://www.instagram.com/malakmattarart/

So at the end of the day, Elden Ring criticizes the idea that genocide (or just plain war) as a "solution" to a past genocide isn't going to work, but rather will just perpetuate a cycle of blood. Marika's people had something absolutely fucked up happen to them, yes. But genociding them back didn't bring her people back. In fact, it directly led to a bunch more violence against (what became) her (new) people and other previously uninvolved races.

Someone characterized Elden Ring's cycle as "An endless trail of old women weeping over the bodies of their dead children", and yes. It's a good statement about the game, but also about cycles of violence. We know Marika wept over her murdered village. Subsequent to that, we meet Grandam in Belurat weeping over her people. And finally we see Marika weeping over her dead child in the base game.

Vincent van Gogh's "Weeping Woman", 1883

I am immediately reminded of parallels to how Israel is reacting to Palestine. The story was written before the most recent events, so I don't think that's intentional; rather, I think it's just that war follows the same old predictable patterns.

I hear a lot of people suggest that Israel is wholly in the right in the most recent assaults because they were "attacked first" (and sure, they were, if we arbitrarily start counting from 2023), and that therefore their retaliatory genocide is okay. The point, though, is that it's not an actual solution and probably much more complicated than that. Genociding back someone who attacked you (even multiple times) isn't actually a solution in our world, just like it's not a solution to Marika's problems. Such violence doesn't bring their lost children back, and it doesn't lead itself towards a true peace (or "true order" in Golden Order lingo). If anything, it breeds more bad blood and more violence--and we see that play out in the DLC where one of the surviving Hornsent literally sets out to get revenge again, starting a 3rd cycle of violence.

In fact, the long-standing oppression of an underclass of people followed by a vengeful genocide is more likely to make them rebel with violence than to join you--as we have seen play out both in the game and in Palestine's relationship to Israel. Would people actually be attracted to Hamas's violence were there not decades of discriminatory policies against Palestine? It's worth asking. After all, most people are not violent by nature, but by circumstance.

Art by Hadil, follow here: https://www.instagram.com/hoist_thecolors/

The PC's job in Elden Ring is literally to try to find a solution, in the form of 1 of 6 endings. And I find it fascinating that the default ending where you do nothing but seize power in your own name is called the "Age of Fracture" and hints that nothing has really changed except that you're in charge now. The world is still fractured. No one is unified. Violence is still going to happen under your (lazy) watch, because you predicated your reign on violence--just like Marika. It suggests that if you don't actually come up with a creative solution to the problem to ensure everyone is treated like humans (or sentient beings anyway), then the PC themself is also perpetuating the same cycle of violence in the name of power or "order". It directly criticizes revenge substituted for restorative justice as a means to peace.

No, I do not know the solution to Palestine and Israel, because I am not some brilliant political scholar. Nor did I know what the "best" ending would be for Elden Ring. Breaking the cycle of violence is *incredibly challenging*, and I'm not the scholar to do it. I'm just some gamer seeing parallels in this magnificent work of fiction to our world, and think its criticisms are timely, relevant, and well-constructed.

[demonqueenart]

Evie, hi! First of all I want to thank you for spending your time and energy to write all those answers and posts. I'm amazed that you're still able to keep them understanding and kind, which makes it much easier to have this conversation. Thank you!

Your frustration with DnP's lack of reaction is justified and the next thing I'm about to say isn't me coming up with excuses on their behalf or telling you to stop talking about it. It just hurts to see a kind and gentle person like you get upset, so I'm trying to give some consolation, but I'm not too good at that, so sorry in advance if I fuck it up.

Please have patience. Not for their sake, for your own. We won't stop trying to make them acknowledge the racism, but it might take some time. Since their comeback our way of interacting with DnP has been kind of a black box - we talk about stuff on different platforms and then they suddenly mention it. So we know they saw us talking, but we don't know exactly when.

The last 2 weeks have been pure chaos: the leak, the rushed announcement, the wrong dates in the promo, the venues not giving enough info or giving wrong info. After tickets went on sale they only had 4 days before they fucked off to have their just-the-two-of-us-ranch-ingredients vacation.

What I'm trying to say is: their current silence doesn't necessarily mean that they saw us talking and chose to ignore it. Maybe they haven't seen it yet, maybe they are thinking about what to do and what to say. Also, unfortunately white people do need a bit of time to go from "this is an unreasonable attack, I'm not a bad person and they are just haters" to "it's not an attack, it's reasonable criticism and I was being the asshole this whole time". I went through this process myself (and you were the one who helped me understand). Sorry it took me that long.

This isn't me saying it's fine that they haven't addressed anything so far - it's not. Just please don't give up hope yet. They listened to us when it came to Palestine, I'm sure they'll listen now too.

Oh, and ignore all the fuckers who are telling you to either leave or shut up. You make the phandom a better and kinder space. I want you here and many others do too. Plus it's not like anyone gets to gatekeep the community in the first place. You have the right to be here.

From beautiful hellscape with love 💜

Anon 🥹 I felt so cared for because of you. Thank you so much 🫂🫂💞💞 I always want this space to be gentle and kind, even when I’m hurt and angry, I still want to understand where everyone is coming from. I believe that everyone deserves to have their voice being heard. Even when our voices clash and don’t always go together, we can still come to a new understanding, try to mend and build a bridge together. Fighting isn’t always the end of things, it’s when two sides trying to express how unfair the situation is so that they can come together.

And of course, you’re right. They might be quite busy as you’ve pointed out, it doesn’t always mean they’re not going to do anything. I think why I assumed for the worst is because this is very much a new territory for them to cross. They have never brought up their racist remarks, never tried to address or take accountability in things. I’m just afraid it’ll end up just like any other time before.

But having you speaking this to me have reassured that I’m not fighting alone in this. In some way or the other, I have cultivated the most understanding and generous people of all who’re willing to support me during the toughest time, and for that, I’m so grateful. Thank you for reaching out and giving me some consolation to reassure me. Your words will not be wasted :) Thank you so much for everything 🫂🫂💖💖

[lurafita]

Malec prompt feat. time travel and dark Alec

Unusual prompt from me, because it's angsty at the start.

What if when Valentine and Magnus were switched, Valentine took just that bit longer to have his and Jace's image appear in front of Alec, making it so that Alec is too late to stop Imogen from slitting "Valentine's" throat.

After capturing the real Valentine in Magnus' body, any attempts to bring back Magnus' soul to its original vessel fail, and rather than have Valentine continue to parade around in Magnus' body, Alec kills him.

Heartbroken, wreaked with guilt, and enraged about it all, Alec summons Asmodeus, demanding the demon send him back in time, so he may prevent his love's death.

Asmodeus asks for the heart of an angel as payment. Alec agrees easily. Fuck the angels. All the help they had ever given them was a bit of their blood in exchange for a lifetime of servitute. The angels hadn't lifted a finger in all those years to help the shadowhunters or the downworlders, when it should have been so easy for the feathered asses to tell their chosen soldiers that bigotry and racism is wrong. They hadn't cared to save one of their own, leaving Ithuriel to Valentine's cruelty for years. Clearly, the angels don't care for the living, so why should Alec give a fuck about the angels? Especially if it will get him Magnus back.

(Either Alec kills an angel before time traveling, or back in the past, when he goes and offs a still captured Ithuriel. Doesn't matter when Asmodeus gets the heart)

Alec goes back in time, to the day before they will first bump into Clary. And this time, Alec swears to himself, things will be different. No more blind following of his "superiors" orders. No more letting his siblings undermine his authority. No fucking traitors in the institute (Hodge)

And Magnus. Knowing what it was like to lose him, Alec swears he will keep him safe this time, from everything, and cherish every minute they have together.

(featuring slighty dark Alec, who also becomes immortal as a side effect of killing an angel. Because immortal Malec!!)

[whooiew]

Hi! I'm very curious about what is the basis of the Kafsant ship? Just cause cute?

Hello! I actually have a full script for this one question!

I'll separate them into different bits depending on how interested you are in learning more

They both came from a pretty fucked up past Kafka needing to fight tooth and nail to survive on the Columbian streets Snowsant with POVERTY and RACISM They both also have a fondness for braids Kafka is all street smarts and 0 books smarts While Snowsant is all books smarts (a literaly prodigy engineer) and 0 street smarts (extremely obvious in her operator records) Snowsant is anxious and worries a lot about the future (not anymore since So Long Adele, she has more self confidence now, we love to see it) Kafka is more of a living in the moment kinda girl And most importantly, the part that slam jams this ship together in the first place Snowsant is a place of comfort and reliability that the operators can rely on She's extremely genuine and pure of heart Kafka desperately needs a place of comfort and reliability in her life, and is magnitized to people who she sees as genuine, cause she just, wants someone that she can trust

And from here we'll be going into the DETAILS (1257 words ahead, might get sexual towards the end)

Kafka has absolutely no idea what love is like, in fact she's completely avoiding it most of the time due to her past but due to the nurture and nature dillema of Kafka

She actually greatly yearns for any sort of connection, as shown in her operator records featuring Silence Her Module featuring Silence Her Operator files featuring Rhodes Island treating them extremely well, as shown in Pinecone's Operator Records and Kafka's Files where she takes cares of the children and actively makes gifts for the Mansfield crew Snowsant on the other hand we don't really have any idea how she's like in terms of the concept of love, but if the liberi trend is anything to go by she'll be pretty intimate with it, making Kafka the one outlier whom's actively avoiding it

And I have a concept on how they've met actually

In case you didn't know, Kafka's basically Arknight's version of Robin Hood, she runs around stealing and stabbing people on the streets of Columbia but she still has a heart of gold and really only shanks those that deserves it, if they don't she'll just steal it, and she also looks out for her fellow hobos despite everything

IN Kafka's operator records, towards the end it was shown that Silence has met Kafka before actually

Back when Kafka stole Silence's breakfast and passes it along to a homeless child before running off, she also paid Silence of course, leaving her with a single coin (we'll come back to the coin part in a bit for brain rot) Now how does this tie to Snowsant you may wonder Snowsant's a Lungmen character isn't she? She's from Lungmen, how would she have met a Columbian WELL MY DEAR READER SNOWSANT'S BEEN TO COLUMBIA BEFORE!

Using her painfully saved up money and her winnings at Lungmen's Invention Competition, she moved to Columbia to further her studies to be the most EPIC ENGINEER EVER

But life for our little Snowsant isn't that good in Columbia

Being a Lungman Citizen she got hit with a good dose of RACISM, her social standing doesn't help either, causing her to not be treated that kindly throughout her stay there

If you've read So Long Adele, you should know that Snowsant cried herself to sleep over the prices of writing letters there

She was not well off in Columbia at all Now she actually made something FUCKING AMAZING, ABSOLUTELY REVOLUTIONARY, but due to her ZERO STREET SMARTS, she didn't copyright it, it got stolen, and the thieves made BANK with HER CREATION, ASSHOLES

Least to say poor Snowsant was fucking dying at this point

Now that's when our favorite corvid comes along, KAFKA, OUR ROBIN HOOD, she descends from the heavens to provide food and stuff whenever she can to Snowsant cause Snowsant's her fellow hobo at this point basically And of course eventually Snowsant goes back to Lungmen and stuff yadda yadda BUT EVENTUALLY, Snowsant and Kafka met back up on Rhodes again

Snowsant's of course very thankful and stuff, and from there on they sorta just hang out more cause Kafka's like, omg a fellow street kid YOOOOOO

So Kafka pays more attention in terms of taking care of Snowsant, which causes Snowsant to think Kafka might have feelings for her, after a bit eventually Snowsant drags her on a date and something something, oh hey maybe Kafka likes her too and she'll have to be forced to confront to the idea of it causing her to explode into a mess of feathers

As a result who knows Snowsant might think she did something wrong due to how she is as a a character and now its a MESS OH NO, eventually Kafka will have to get through to her feelings and confront it and YIPPEE YURI Apart from that I just think they'd be really cute with each other, they bounce off each other's flaws really well, like, Kafka's infinite confidence and gusto countering Snowsant's sheer lack of it

And Snowsant just being a general safe zone for Kafka to let her guard down around, because Snowsant's never really hiding anything, she's always genuine

Which is something Kafka really likes. ALSO THEY HAVE THE SAME LIBERI TRAIT OF SIDE HAIR FEATHERS And that's pretty much the basics

So now that we've gone over express details on how Snowsant and Kafka are like as characters I'ma explain a bit more about them Snowsant is a pure of heart girl, your average goodie two shoes, she's a prodigy genius, she has an insane amount of mental endurance, being able to go through failure after failure but despite it all still being able to keep her head up high and continue moving forward

She cares for her family greatly, family is extremely important to her in fact, hell a good amount of her paycheck gets sent back to her family even

But all of that comes with a price, she's still slightly anxious about things, doesn't really take care of herself, and has a nasty habit of, zoning in too much (this will be discussed further later)

Kafka on the other hand, on the surface may seem like an annoying piece of shit, but once you get to know her she actually has a heart of gold, becoming Rhodes Island's invisible guardian angle in a sense, looking out for her fellow operators whenever wherever

She also has a fondness for kids as she visits them often and even makes gifts for them

Speaking of gift making, Kafka is an avid tinkerer and arts and crafts nerd

And of course can't forget, harboring of PLANT AUTISM

But yeah, she cares for people greatly, especially ones that's close to her

Be it anyone from the Mansfield Crew Silence Ifrit (implied) You the Doctor She's the peak of Liberi, with how Liberi characters are usually very caring about their relationships, be it their S/O or their friends and family, they care greatly for them Fitting for Kafka because she's a Jackdaw! Jackdaws immensely loyal to their partners and will pretty much never leave one once they find one all that aside, I just think these 2 would be really sweet and they'd just be happy to have someone that they can lean on especially Kafka

(This is where the sexual parts are: )

There's also the side to Snowsant where she actually surprisingly dominant

Which unironically fits how White Eared Pheasants are like

I've always made Snowsant the more assertive one, and more recent Snowsant content supports that fact

There's some parts to Snowsant, small parts, but pieced together it shows a bigger picture and I'd say Snowsant does have a dominant side to her but she keeps it in check It'll only really come out when she's in the mood and zone for it, specifically when she starts zoning stuff out again Like damn yeah she'd definitely tie Kafka up and whisper sensually into her ears while teasing her

The whole zoning out thing I've explored a bit more when writing a specific short fic but it was shown officially in her operator records where Snowsant completely zoned out everything around her when she got caught thinking about how to pay for her book publishing fee, completely zoning out the fact that Closure was telling her that Doc and Closure already paid for it

Which fits into white eared pheasants being usually pretty reserved when it comes to the act of sex until a switch flips on and they go into a breeding frenzy

Also Snowsant's fucking RICH NOW BABY YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[karlachismylife]

Gorilla!reader you say ? 👁️ 👁️

Yeah! Sorry I'm actually excited to yap about it hahaha cuz it has been really forming quite in details in my head last days

It is obviously very self-indulgent (in case not everyone noticed, I refer to myself as gorilla and it's a lifelong thing), not fully self-insert, but uhhh. My ideal self insert? Maybe not that either. But deeply personal and with a lot of my issues/problems/feelings projected there, that's what I mean. I don't know how enjoyable it will be for people reading it, but it's just something I really wanna write, so I'll do it anyway. And post it cuz well I'm an attention whore.

So I have been going back and forth on whether make it shapeshifter or hybrid, and I ended up deciding on shapeshifter. First of all, "weregorilla" is prime for stupid puns fueled by gorilla talk, and second, it will kida help me avoid misrepresenting gorillas (because this reader will be very aggressive and gorillas ARE NOT) + adds actually a layer of depth in the sense that I can play off the contrast of animal/human form in this case. Don't know if I'll go full on "two souls in one body" route, but there are things I want to show through the duality.

It's gonna be a classic "new addition to tf141 is a shapeshifter" plot, cuz I'm a basic bitch like that, and yes, it's gonna be poly 141 x reader but also big emphasise on found family. The more I think about it, the more I realize that it doesn't feel right for me to write it without touching on racism, in the military and in general, and it's probably gonna be very on the nose and clumsy, but this whole thing is basically on the nose and not nuanced at all. It's very much stemming from all the pent up rage I have inside, and rage knows no nuance. Oh and gender stuff too, cuz yeah, well, self-insert part, and I don't know gender. Never met her. That one would be fun actually, cuz gorillas are pretty patriarchal and form harems, but like. Where does a genderqueer gorilla fit into this hierarchy? Since obviously 141 will be like this reader's troop (gorilla pack), that would be a fun disruption if I manage to do it like I see it.

But I am very anxious about touching the race issue, and while I very much know that it's not anyone's job to educate me, if there are any black readers of mine that would be kind enough to let me run those episodes by them to make sure they are not downright awful before I post them, I would be immensly grateful. Maybe if people tell me there is no way this does not come across wrong, I'll cut it from the story. But help would be appreciated. Yeah.

So in short, it's my childish tantrum I have been dying to throw for years now, but packaged into text with four big guys liking the tantrum for no other reason than I want all four of them to be my troop.

I saw recently a post mocking the "strong female characters who are badass because they don't wear makeup and their only emotion is anger" and welp. That's gonna be it. Honestly I don't even feel upset that it looks so shallow.

One time a friend made me a birthday gift in a form of one visit to a "wreck it room" where they give you some plates and cheap old furniture and some other trash, and also baseball bats, crowbar (my favourite), a mallet and some other things. Blast heavy metal and such things through speakers. And let you break EVERYTHING in that room. Only walls are off limits, and I ended up even accidentally breaking a brick out while I was trying to break a stubborn chair leg in half. I destroyed everything they gave me in that one hour limit, even the guy who worked there was impressed. That's still one of my happiest memories.

And if channelling it makes for a shallow walking stereotype of a character, well, I don't give a fuck this time.

honestly even relaying all this made me feel better, sorry I dumped it all on you, I realize this might be not yours or anyone's cup of tea, but it's really something for me first and foremost. i think allowing myself to write dumb shallow angry shit might fix me just a little bit.

[princess-of-the-corner]

One thing I see brought up which is weird to tackle is Chloe's racism rooted largely in the Kung Food episode which is... Well frankly a racist episode in general. The reason this feels like a weird fit for Chloe's character though.

(In the sense of it being a conscious, primary motivator for bad behavior as opposed to just something picked up on by virtue of social osmosis she doesn't even realize & that most/all the white students do)

Is the fact it basically only exists for that episode. We've seen Chloe cheat, steal or sabotage others, or just generally be rude and abrasive in multiple episodes. There might be distinctions in motive or exact method but they are fairly consistent overall.

But then Kung Food is just out there with some very overtly shitty behavior and then it jsut... Never comes up again.

Like, if this was stuff she said or did all the time, if this tied into her obsession with Marinette, then it would have to have come up before now either by Marinette herself or just cos Chloe said something terrible.

Its why I'm fairly comfortable ignoring that character trait while I wouldn't roll with "Chloe would never classist, or snobby or elitists" cos she definitely has been those things consistently enough.

Its a bit like the train episode.

One can work it so that Chloe is kind of having a breakdown thanks to her mothers presence, abuse and also having been murdered by her the day before and then chastised for helping free her.

All that could be collectively used to justify such an extreme shift in scale of behavior.

But that doesn't really apply in Kung Food, its just introduced and then seemingly forgotten.

See the thing about Kung Food is that the lines everyone points to for racism are

1.) her getting the hell out of dodge after the sabotage by giving a 'whoops don't speak Japanese!' line and running off. Which yeah that one was a bit off I'm not gonna pretend it isn't. But it was also her getting the hell out of dodge as said before.

2.) the sushi line. Which, if you pay attention to the whole line, she is complaining about how 'soup isn't a main dish, why can't he make sushi /like everyone else/.' This line implies not racism, but that other people in the competition are making sushi. It's /Adrien/ that turns it into a race thing.

That said.

Even if we do take it as some intentional acts of racism and not just either mixing up words or genuine 'she's 13 and isn't familiar with the differences' or even taking from Season 4-5 where she's too stupid to pronounce multi-syllable words how would she be smart enough to know the difference:

Chloé's crime of mixing Chinese and Japanese is completely fucking neutralized by /the show itself mixing Chinese and Japanese when it comes to the Akuma/. Yes they say it was based more on Sun Wukong who Goku is also based on but he's got the orange outfit and spiky yellow hair and the target audience is likely more familiar with Goku than Sun Wukong. Not to mention giving him weapons that include SUSHI and the fucking Buster Sword, both more Japanese influence!

And yeah it's. It's a one-off. Her antagonism of her classmates isn't racially motivated as she'll bully all of them and she never makes any racist comments otherwise. It's just. Two lines in an episode that says 'don't do this' while demonstrating it as a good thing.

[ca-suffit]

To go exactlyyy at the other anon, Rice's racism was most blatant when it involved Marius. (Despite enslaver Louis! That's how bad it is!)

So Teskhamen (The God of the Grove from TVL) wanted someone who knew Egyptian/had been to the Lower Kingdom of Egypt to give the Dark Gift, but the Celtic (read: white) druids want a Celtic (read: white) man. Like that is explicitly why Mael kidnaps Marius, because he's a white blonde man (who knows Egyptian). Marius really has no redeeming qualities, regardless of how hard Rice's writing tries to circumvent that obvious fact, besides his whiteness.

I think the reason that Marius de Romanus' flaws and transgressions are so loudly ignored is bcuz he's really Anne Rice's thesis statement. In and by Marius history is literally whitewashed. (Well also bcuz Rice was bad at writing consistent relationships and too hung-up on her Catholic instant forgiveness complex to meaningfully reckon with her characters' actions.) The Pandora-Arjun-Marius "storyline" is probably the most fucked up in terms of sheer racism. God don't get me started on the Orientalism.

As for the pedophilia apologia, I think that has a lot of causes. One is def how normalised pedophilia was in SF/F spaces back in the day (look up Marion Zimmer Bradley), so combine that with people getting into the books in their early tweens and then developing 20+ year long parasocial relationships with Anne Rice so they never dare critically examine her work and... Well. Some fandoms also used to be sort of tolerating towards simulated CSAM, if you don’t know what "chan" was, count yourself lucky. Or look it up on fanlore I guess. Anyway, I think that's where these Marius defenders and Marius/Armand shippers come from. I reckon most of them lowkey got indoctrinated into this stuff.

(This is not meant in defense of them obvs, I just think that's what happened there. Mind you I was never actually in this fandom before the show. I read all the books without ever engaging in this Anne Rice Extended Universe but I am otherwise fandom old.)

Fascinating that they lack the wherewithal to realise the show's fandom won't tolerate them. Or maybe it's just entitlement, since like you've said somewhere before, they feel they're "owed" an adaption of the Vampire Chronicles so they'll "suffer" through IWTV.

Feel free to add to this if you think I missed something. - 🦁

(context)

that covers everything I could think of off the top of my head anyway. sometimes all these details are hard to keep track of bcuz there's just *so much* all the time. it's not just a genre thing either, it was whatever personal reason she put all that in there. most of it serves no purpose to any plot, it's just there. that's why defending a lot of it is even more crazy bcuz u could take a lot out and it doesn't change anything?? that's what makes the books so annoying and ppl who think it's high literature even more so. they don't rly say anything after a point and her themes get repetitive for no reason. she doesn't even write this stuff to make it horror or be critical of it (despite what a lot of book ppl claim), she just liked it for whatever reason. she was also out there in interviews over these time periods saying rly weird shit all the time as an adult woman and nobody ever pushed back about it, which also didn't help anyone to learn to question this stuff.

[seriousfic]

Okay, that's True Grit. That's entirely True Grit. Exact same plot, exact same tone, exact same Coen-wannabe dialogue (and Tom King is no Coen Brother)... all King did was transpose a bit of a by-now-generic high fantasy/space opera setting onto True fucking Grit. It's not even that obscure a work to rip off. There was a remake in 2010. Hailee Steinfeld debuted in that movie and she's still playing a 'Young' Avenger.

Oh, but hey, there's Supergirl in the Rooster Cogburn role. That's different, right? Because Supergirl is Supergirl and not a drunken, cynical badass type?

And if you've seen True Grit, either version, you pretty much know how it goes (aside from a shock value ending that is, surprise, deeply cynical and mean-spirited). King mercilessly mischaracterizes Kara into this very 90s bad grrl caricature--she calls Superman a little bitch at one point, because he's not as tuff as herrrr--and the bad guys all go "oh, you can't beat me, you're just a girl!" Aren't we past this?

I found the premise pretty unbelievable... I know comic writers have to know up with far-fetched scenarios, since the real top-tier superheroes are unbeatable otherwise... but Supergirl has turned 21 and wants to get drunk. She doesn't want to do this with any of her friends, apparently, so she takes a barely controllable starship to a sector of space with only red suns... she can't just borrow a red sun room in the Fortress of Solitude or wherever... and she lands on this world that's a hellish dictatorship where people are killed for laughing at jokes about the king... she brings Krypto along, who is also depowered... and she doesn't bring any kind of communication device so she can call a Green Lantern or someone for help... and she's gone for months, but no one thinks to look for her.

And the villain... this is another one of the very few changes from True Grit, where the killer is just a random thug, the kind of guy you'd expect to impulsively kill someone. Here, he's a criminal mastermind that can summon up magic that nearly kills Supergirl and he almost randomly hooks up with this gang of superpowered mass murderers (who indulge in ethnic cleansing so frequently that you'd think a Green Lantern or someone would go after them--seriously, they are depopulating planets on a weekly basis) so it takes more than five seconds for Kara to rout him.

There's also a super heavy-handed segregation/racism metaphor. I mean, it is TOS, "all his people are black on the left side and white on the right side!" blatant. Like, embarrassingly hamfisted.

And this comic is WORDY. Not only is OC donut steal Hailee Steinfeld doing her Coen act every time she speaks, but she also narrates, choking every panel with multiple paragraphs of PROSEPROSEPROSE. Everything is a speech, everything is a monologue. Mike Flanagan would read this and say "hey, buddy, don't you think you're overdoing it a tad?" And there's some good art here--that's the one real positive of the comic--but it is just drowned out by King not trusting his artist one iota to tell a story.

Supergirl is given this really stock "it sucks to be Superman" angst, which we're all tired of with Clark, right? Is it really fresh to just transpose him being broody and violent onto Kara? All the cursing and casual violence would be a little more appropriate for Power Girl, but I guess that wouldn't subvert expectations like making the main character an embittered Supergirl. Clearly, we're supposed to find all this shocking and edgy, but it just comes off risible. You're really going to have Krypto the Super-Dog and dead babies in the same exact story?

And since when does Supergirl hang out with Krypto? I thought her pet was Streaky. King goes all pre-Crisis with Comet the Super-Horse showing up and really being a man with a magic spell cast on him, but he doesn't know that Supergirl's pet is Streaky the Supercat? Boooooo.

[thegeminisage]

star trek update time. i'm WAY behind. friday we watched voy's "tattoo," saturday i finally womaned up and agreed to watch ds9's "the visitor" and then we also bravely soldiered on to "hippocratic oath," and last night we did ds9's "indiscretion" and "rejoined."

tattoo (voy):

it's a real shame about (waves vaguely at racefaking "expert" on voy's writing staff) because, due to my own lack of education, i never know which stuff is based in fact and which is just wholesale bullshit. i remember one time i googled something about chakotay's culture because it seemed so obviously fake, and it turned out to be Kind Of True But Not Like That. it sucks because not ONLY was it a huge missed opportunity for Representation And Education (tm) but chakotay is a really interesting guy and i'd like to know more about him and see him get to do more stuff without him getting buried in the like. mysticism and racism of it all. it's no good for him and it's no good to sit through either

bc like. at this episode's core. if you could somehow remove the racist panflute and the whole thing where we portray people from THE SPACE TRAVELING FUTUREEE as primitive savages, you could have had a good story. chakotay struggles with not feeling at home where he lives/in his own culture, goes to space about it, then has an emotional crisis when his dad dies while the two of them are on bad terms. i know that's a good story and i know star trek can make that a good story because do you know who else has that story? SPOCK.

LIKE. IT COULD HAVE BEEN SO EASY. WHAT WERE YOU DOING!

anyway, chakotay naked. i know he was naked for the wrong reasons but that man had his whole ass out. bold moves heretofore only taken by sir patrick stewart himself. GOOD FOR HIM!

oh yeah the b plot of this episode sucked. we have to give the doctor a cold because of his lack of compassion? since When has he ever complained about sick or whiny people? been gruff with them, sure, tough-love kind of guy definitely, but no one would program a doctor who hated serving patients?? i did like that kes gave him an extra hour to be evil though. i love her so much

the visitor (ds9):

i don't want to talk about it.

or, no, i actually already talked about it, and i don't have anything to add, except that 1. christopher nolan can still suck it 2. every episode of ds9's 4th season so far has made me feel like i need to give it a "must see" on the spreadsheet. i almost can't believe i'm watching star trek. i have to start grading the damn things on a curve

hippocratic oath:

THIS IS WHAT I MEAN. stuck with the jem'hadar and julian is like "i can fix them" and o'brien is like "i have been racist my whole life and i'm not about to stop now and also you cannot fix them so i am going to condemn them to a horrible death in order to save your life" because he did at the beginning of the episode say out loud with his mouth that he wished his wife was more like julian bashir and then promptly refused to examine that thought even a little bit

like this had EVERYTHING. gay people. ethical dilemmas. twink with a spine of steel. worf forgetting he's no longer in tng. my best friend odo disguising as an inanimate object. and i'm supposed to just give it a WATCH?

like, i was right there with julian. fix them fix them fix them it's so easy they CAN be weaned off of it this could change everything i was so livid with o'brien for condemning those guys to a painful and undignified ending and for repeatedly ruining julian's attempts to help with all his attempts to escape and then he was like. yeah. i did all that to save YOUR LIFE because i saw that YOU were in danger.

and it obviously doesn't excuse anything and you get the feeling julian COULD have helped them with enough time and the right tools and and and...but he didn't have all that, and obrien KNEW he didn't have all that, and he wasn't willing to risk his friend's life on a gamble when it came to helping enemy soldiers

like, it's his fucking cardassian ptsd. note how he didn't speak when they were captured but bashir did because the gun was on his friend. note how he had to explain why the commander couldn't escape with them. IT MKAES SO MUCH SENSE FOR HIS CHARACTER. who hasn't done horrible things for the people they love? if his wife doesn't get back soon he's going to be asking for julian's hand in marriage by season 5

indiscretion (ds9):

KIRA PULLING THE THORN OUT OF DUKAT'S ASS. sorry i'm good i'm normal

something about dukat...at first he was very boring and flat, and then he was funny but still pretty 2-dimensional, and then he was funny AND gay with sisko but still 2-dimensional, and now he's got all kinds of depth. i completely wrote him off as generic cardassian villain at first but i am genuinely thrilled to see him every time he shows up

like, the bajoran lover and the daughter is such an amazing plot twist, but also, sorry to say this, he and kira have q and picard energy. as in, q wants picard to fuck him so so so bad, and picard has zero interest in doing this, and somehow that interest gets even lower the more q wants it, and the lower his interest gets, the more rabid q is for him, and it's probably the only thing i really enjoyed about either character, a few of sir patrick stewart's better speeches aside. dukat is exactly like that with kira. he is GAGGING for her strap and she finds him vile and rephrensible and the closest they got to fucking was when she pulled the spine out of his ass cheek and laughed at him and he probably is going to put that in the spank bank for the rest of his life. and she will still never fuck him

really fun when she told him to shut up and he shut up <3

i just love episodes that deal with the fallout of the war...it's always such incredible character work. i was worried that with the dominion threat these kinds of episodes would go away and i'm glad that's not the case

also, hi, sisko fumbling things with his gf for the b-plot. dax and julian giving him romantic advice and then mocking him when he leaves. jake being the only one who can talk sense into him. incredible. 10/10

ALSO, not only did capt yates make him work at that apology she did NOT kiss his ass goodbye. and he deserved it.

even quark was funny in this episode, despite the misogyny. he was nice to jake in "the visitor" so i think i've forgiven him because i've made at least two quodo jokes since then. my first love will always be kiraodo (kodo?) though

rejoined (ds9):

LESBIANS IN STAR TREK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

as previously stated about 600 times on this blog i DID NOT KNOW there would be a gay kiss happening. i thought btvs held the honors for the first gay kiss and that this was going to be like an allegory or a metaphor like in tng. and i did like the tng ep for what it was! but holy shit this blows that out of the water.

i think it's so important that this would have been absolutely NO different whatsoever if either half of the couple had been a man. for the time period especially it's very much like. Queers Are Just Like Us which i think is an important step 1 to reel in potential bigots who are still on the fence. i cannot believe my mother is going to watch this episode someday

also, hi, the allies in this episode...? julian sitting through that WHOLE dinner without the first word of complaint. sisko telling dax it's a bad idea but he'll back her tf up. kira bewildered that any of it is any problem at all. sisko's moment was especially nice bc at first you think he's being a dick which is out of character for him and then you realize 1. he's scared for her 2. he loves her 3. he would probably fight the homophobic (recursionphobic...?) trills with his bare hands if he had a good excuse

it's also nice that zero people in this episode were weird about the idea of two women together. it was SO NORMAL. god i can't believe andor let those two women touch hands for a single shot and called it progressive between that and spn my standards are through the FLOOR!!

TONIGHT: ds9's "starship down" and "little green men," and then we're finally back to voyager.

[renaultmograine]

She holds herself in a way that suggests that she has a deep dislike for Warcraft and people that like it

Do you mean her comments about "white men" and rewriting Traveler to make the trolls and their loa less villainous?

Wow, way to try and cast what I said in the worst possible light! You truly are something.

"She holds herself in a way that suggests that she has a deep dislike for Warcraft" is talking about how she refuses to do basic research like checking to see if Alleria was on Azeroth when Arator was growing up. The fact that she was openly contemptuous of Metzen's wishes because she personally doesn't like when people name their kids after family members added to that. I've never read Traveler—you would know if I had from how much I liveblog everything else, and I've never seen people talk about the books either. At no time was I aware that this was apparently some drama.

Also. Yeah her comments about "white men." I don't give a fuck about arguing on if its racism or not because frankly it doesn't matter to my argument: you shouldn't openly antagonize your audience. Especially not when you are representing a company with them! There's a reason why the signed copy Shadows Rising never fucking sold out and is now being sold for six dollars on the store.

The off center cover isn't helping either.