#think he's immortal so there is a difference

[jd-loves-fiction]

Hello hello :3

I'm not sure if you take platonic requests so if you get to mine and you don't, pls lmk <3

Anyway. I would like to request platonic Boothill, Sampo, Mydei (if you can't write him yet then it's okay) and the Astral Express crew (you can leave out characters if it's too much) with a reader who is a former slave like Aventurine but they escaped by force and now respond to certain gestures with violence. Think about it like a wounded animal you're trying to approach. They lash out, bite, scratch, attack, anything.

🌑hello dear welcome!! I do take platonic requests 🫡and you can request as many characters as you want just know the more there are the longer I'll take😅 also I love love this idea 👀👀

✦ 𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐥 ✦

Ooh he gets it

You can't exactly hurt him, given the metal body, but even if you try he won't hold it against you

The circumstances might not be the same but he undoubtedly became a different, not violent, man after what the IPC did to his planet

Plus being a galaxy ranger is a lonely existence by design

He respects your need to distance yourself from people

But I feel there's a nurturing side to Boothill he doesn't get to tap into very often

So there's a part of him that will try to comfort you? Relate to you? He doesn't know what he's doing himself but something in his heart breaks for you and pulls him towards you

One stubborn fella about helping you but quite sturdy, let's say he's the guy letting the dog bite him to get its anger out and know that he can be trusted 🥺

✦ 𝐒𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐨 ✦

Menace I love him

Sampo is a con-man salesman - he wants to know everyone's secrets so that he can exploit them for his benefit

But there's some lines even he won't cross

He's got a soft heart somewhere in there (deep in there) so you can expect that he'll go easy on you when he comes to his scheming

Plus he knows how to calculate risk, so if messing with you is highly likely to get him fucked up, he won't try you... Too much

Another man whose life wasn't exactly easy (which is why he's the way he is) and with a soft spot for people with a similarly difficult past

I think he'd find his own way of showing companionship, implying that you can talk to him about stuff if you want (tho he won't blame you for thinking he's just trying to get to your secrets) and stuff like that. He'll just be very subtle about how honest he's being

Let's say he's the guy slowly leaving treats for the dog and pretending like he doesn't care if it likes him or not (he really does, he's incredibly intrigued)

✦ 𝐌𝐲𝐝𝐞𝐢 ✦

New character so bear with me

I feel like you're very similar in this way

He's got a heart of gold under all that aggression, specially when it comes to his people

He's just bad at expressing it in a gentle way😅

His childhood was... Traumatic to say the least, violence is all he knows

Another sturdy guy, he's literally immortal and seems to enjoy a good fight so hitting him in any way might just start a sparring session💀

If he doesn't know you, he wouldn't engage, he's got better things to worry about

But if he does, you might get to see a gentleness from him no one thought him capable of

He's a patient man but he genuinely wants to see you learn to live with your trauma like him

I don't think he's done healing, mind you, but you might be able to learn something from each other about living with your demons

✦ 𝐖𝐞𝐥𝐭 ✦

So much father energy LORD

The way he just immediately takes Sunday under his wing? Guiding him gently and patiently? That's a dad right there

He's deeply altruistic so he will try to help you please don't fight it😭

He's canonically one of the strongest characters so don't worry about hurting him. The fact that you even had to live through what you did, hurts him much more

Gentle but insistent, is how I'd describe him

He will not give up on you no matter what and that is a promise

When and if you decide to open up, he's a great listener

But even if you don't, he'll be there always🫡 because he genuinely just wants to see you be happy

✦ 𝐇𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐤𝐨 ✦

A fearless woman if I ever saw one

On the express she mostly keeps to herself, y'know navigating

But she undoubtedly cares deeply about the team so if you're part of it (let's say you are) you're included in that sentiment

She's not exactly... Motherly, per say, but she does care. She's just a bit... Awkward about it?

The type to do things like invite you to have coffee with her (don't drink it), or offer to teach you about navigating and stuff like that, just try to make you feel included

Not the type to outright ask about what happened but will listen if you tell her and will not judge - she doesn't see anything wrong with the way you handled things (Sunday train flashbacks)

Knows you're capable of protecting yourself, but will become somewhat protective of you

Tries to avoid setting you off as much as possible, she can hold her own no problem but she'd feel terrible if she hurt you in some way

✦ 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝟕𝐭𝐡 ✦

Sunshine incarnate

Might come off as overly friendly upon first meeting so if that sets you off well... she'll learn her lesson... maybe

Doesn't remember her past so if you don't wanna talk about yours it's all good with her

But if you do, she's a surprisingly good listener

Tho if you decide to be rude or aggressive to push her away, she'll definitely take it to heart, at first

She'll mope about it for a bit before her determination takes over

She wants to be your friend damnit 😡

She'll call you out for being rude but stick around regardless

She's got thicker skin than expected and she's hard to shake off (like a puppy...) if she decides she wants to be your friend, that's what she's gonna do

Plus after that first time, being rude to push her away won't work, she'll just talk right over you

In the end, she might just win you over through sheer determination 😭

✦ 𝐃𝐚𝐧 𝐇𝐞𝐧𝐠 ✦

Oh he cares so much bless him

Dan Heng is extremely protective of those he's close to

If you're in the express, you're immediately included in that

Quiet comfort is his thing

Like sitting together quietly because you just need some company while he reads or even offering a game of chess as a distraction

Doesn't blame you for how you react, but if you become physically dangerous to be around he will be the first to restrain you

Just because he gets it doesn't mean he likes seeing the people around him get hurt

I feel like he's got some words of wisdom regarding how to make peace with your past

But beyond that he's good to have around because he doesn't push for answers at all

Nobody knew about his past when he came onto the express so he'd be kind of a hypocrite if he cared

It's inevitable that he becomes attached and when he does he becomes just as protective with you as with any other member of the express, regardless of your past

[metashard]

Linguistic Features I Think Would Be Rad/Horrible for the Necrontyr to Have

- Korean honorific system (bake respect into everything including verb conjugation)

- Formality is also shown often through word choice (e.g. "thing" vs. "item")

- And through codified body language - bows, salutes, gestures. And by where your eyes are pointing. And now by the intensity and pattern of your body's node lights. If you screw any of this up, you will start a five hundred year long blood feud, good luck

- Egyptian determinatives (tone tags and emojis all in one)

- Glyphic writing and character-by-character writing are completely different systems that have no correlation

- Glyphic and calligraphic styles are also completely different systems with no correlation. If you know both, you're either a nerd or a cryptek

- Highly polysynthetic. Big compound words. The proper translation of "gauss cannon" would be closer to "carryable straight distance middle spectrum magnetic anti stability beam launching weapon," to use the cryptek terminology. Which the Immortals abbreviated to "qo-ess," "green light." Which the Imperials transliterated as "gauss."

- Linguistic unification just before biotransference would not fix the accent differences born from languages split across an entire galaxy. Zultanekh should be nearly incomprehensible to Szarekh.

- Linguistic unification did zilch to fix their societal stratification. Imotekh should be nearly incomprehensible to his own court due to speaking with a soldier's dialect. Sure, he can train out of it, but the battlefield doesn't leave time for flowery language.

- Linguistic unification did zilch to fix the kind of person Trazyn is. If the language was supposed to be some reconstructed "common ancestral tongue," you can bet he'd speak the reconstruction version he personally finds the most accurate.

- Imperial humans who try learning the language from tomb carvings sound incredibly stilted and, somehow, too formal to a natural speaker. This is sometimes itself taken as mockery. Five hundred years blood feud upon ye.

- Nearly 200 phonemes. All the Egyptian, all the English, add Welsh and Nahuatl in there to cover Llandu'gor and Khatlan. Add space noises and robot buzzing now for good measure.

- The character writing system has 31 characters to cover these nearly 200 phonemes. Welcome to English, hope you like the taste of ghoti.

- The glyphic writing system has over 3000 characters to memorize. Not including diacritics.

- The calligraphic writing system is supposedly so graceful that a skilled poet can write an entire stanza with one figure. Zahndrekh is not a skilled poet. His works aren't just bad poetry, they're sprawling spaghetti that occasionally scribbles off into neighboring pages.

- Informal singing is done in whatever tongue you like. Formal singing, things like religious or fine art performances, are done in a melismatic language specifically reserved for the arts. This language is nearly dead in the 41st millennium except for, once again, Trazyn being a knowledge-hoarding freak.

[mleprae]

I will be making a better layout tomorrow and add info as well but here's champion!

I spent.. an UNGODLY amount of time on his armor design. initially, i wanted to use the jerusalem cross, i didnt like the original colors so i inspired from KOH instead.. didnt work. went with a random design

hes a lamb (sheep?) man thing. his original concept is that he was raised by the clergy and became some sort of attack dog for a ver corrupt church. the thing is. champion is immortal and although he can die, he wakes up a week later, during the time that he is "dead" he will relive the days before his death in his head

he has been used as a sacrificial lamb many times for his immortality, though he has human intelligence, he also has the behaviour and brain of a sheep. even though he is literally killed on a daily basis by his own "family", he will never abandon them

he eventually "died" for good after he was sent to control a peasant revolt (he only has experiences with long sword for crowd control reasons), he was massively outnumbered and stuck in a iron coffin and dropped in the middle of the ocean.

he drowns.. then is revived later, drowns again... then is revived, he stays in this death-ressurrection loop for god knows how long. the memories of his family and friends get replaced by the memories of him constantly drowning, until he can no longer tell the difference from his dreams and real life

some thousands of years passes, the iron of his coffin degrades, finally letting him free, he floats to the surface and the waves carry him to land. The air is heavy with sulfur, the atmosphere is gone and unveils the naked rawness of the space above. the sun is blood red, humans and civilization is long gone but at least hes alive. i guess. he also make friends with the weird abominations that lives in the land now

CW: Nudity + Gore

Also a little doodle of how he probably looked when he came out of the water, i also wanted to remake the original headshot of his ref of his throat cut open

His old refs as well!

(2023 and 2024, i like to think i improved a bit...)

[bimboficationblues]

one thing that I think typifies bad or ill-conceived comic book opinions: the idea of a character being "out of character." this is not a purely audience problem; by emphasizing historical continuity and the relationship between the texts, Big 2 Comics invite you to think about their characters as though they possess a contiguous identity through all or most of their appearances. this is most evident in Spider-Man where the 2007 decision to keep Peter Parker locked in perpetual stasis infuriated fans so bad that you can't talk about contemporary Spider-Man anywhere without people malding. (that was not the only factor behind said malding.)

but, my point is comic characters only really have the appearance of unity or identity; all the different incarnations of Batman over the years from different writers and artists are really just different characters wearing the same collection of symbols as skin, with different emphases and additions or subtractions, and it's how those symbols get combined and new elements are introduced - and how those speak to the reader - that makes or breaks a good Batman story. the paranoiac thug, the man with a plan for everything, the urban myth, the jetsetting detective, the incarnation of everlasting grief, the one that is George W. Bush, the one who takes a bunch of Joker juice and becomes The Debil, they're all real and what lands or doesn't will probably depend on other, higher aesthetic priorities, what the representation *says*.

another comic opinion: the idea of a "love letter to a character" or whatever is not an inherently virtuous trait of a comic. superhero characters are not like inherently interesting, they are interesting for like, their ability to mix genres in a dynamic way, and for what they say and represent about us, for the philosophies and irrationalities that they conjure in us. something like Waid and Samnee's Daredevil or Ewing and Bennett's Immortal Hulk or Morrison/Quitely on All-Star Superman, I think go beyond just expanding or exploring a mythos and touch on bigger and resonant emotional ideas (depression and optimism, the social meaning of rage, mortality and legacy and symbolic aspiration). I don't think every comic can or should be on that level, and there is respect to be found in stuff that isn't that, but just fixating on the character's in-universe features at the expense of their symbolic, resonant qualities, what they communicate to and about us, is a missed chance.

another comic opinion: over-fixation on writers. comics are a visual medium with a relatively low barrier to entry as reader or creator and this is what distinguishes them from other narrative mediums. one thing that the best of shonen manga excel at while Anglo-American comics flounder is their visuals. there are artists who are willing to play with the Anglo-American form but there's a lot who are just doing swagless versions of Jim Lee and Bryan Hitch.

it's very noticeable to me that the Absolute and Ultimate books that have been the most successful have been those that have really distinct visual styles, a lot of dynamism or expression, and really talented colorists working with top-notch artists (Marco Checchetto, Peach Momoko, Nick Dragotta, Hayden Sherman, and although he's very much in house style I really love the character expressions and vibrancy of Juan Frigeri's Ultimates - despite being understated it has a real energy to it).

[rei-ismyname]

Who do you think has been the best at writing Kurt and what is your favorite stage of the character? Personally, Kurt from Excalibur is my big favorite.

Hey! I don't think I've actually talked about Kurt much, aside from complaining about his NPC status and bizarre priest coding (that was quickly reversed) in From The Ashes

It's hard to argue with Excalibur as a defining run for Kurt's character and his themes. He got to buckle his swash and I really enjoy the relationships built during Excalibur (except Brian. Dude sucks IMO) - even if those relationships and shared experiences have been backgrounded of late. I wasn't aware of different authors when I first read it but looking back Alan Davis if I have to pick.

My favourite stage of the character though is Krakoan Age Kurt. I enjoyed him under Hickman's pen (even if the third law was a mistake.) Si Spurrier made some pretty massive missteps in Way of X but I'm glad that his reaction to Krakoa generally and The Crucible specifically was explored. There's a lot of ways to approach 'I need to start a mutant religion' and zooming in on his personal crisis of faith and allying him with Legion really worked for me.

Focusing on people and examining the laws with the background threat of Onslaught was clever, and he reached the only conclusions that makes sense. I do wish it was longer and a deeper dive into the laws, but it'd break the premise a little if The Onslaught Revelation ended and Kurt said out loud that the Krakoan government is corrupt and we need to start from scratch. Everyone nearly died permanently because Xavier has too much power with no means of accountability.

I'd have hated it if he really did start a religion; The Spark was a secular philosophy that addressed his personal crisis and resonated with a certain kind of person. I've seen people call it a religion and it makes me wonder if they read the book. The foray into justice reform in Legion of X is something I loved on a conceptual level - yes he was using his QC position for legitimacy but at its core the Altar and Legionaries was about the little people, the younger folks, those working for redemption. Kurt's pointed and specific refusal to co-operate with Charles Xavier on his authoritarian bs was a great character beat, as was defending Juggernaut's agency and the chance to be better. I do wish the original sin of Sabertooth in the hole was touched on, but Victor LaValle nailed it elsewhere so I can't complain.

Combined with the Quiet Council dissolution in Immortal X-Men I think we'd have seen an upswell of younger, politically engaged mutants eager to reform their home. I digress.

I loved Kurt's time as Spider-Man (or spinnenmann lol) as a kind of back to basics during the worst time for mutants. It's relatable that he'd be overwhelmed by trauma and grief and just want to be 'a whole Kurt Wagner' for a while. Fight some bad guys, have a romance, eat pizza with Spider-Man. I definitely liked the retcons in X-Men Blue: Origins, the follow up in X-Men Forever, but most of all that he was allowed to be angry about it in Uncanny #700. Trust is earned and neither of his bio parents have done that.

As I mentioned, I'm unimpressed with how he's been used in From The Ashes. He's wasted as a background character and I think putting him on the Uncanny team was a mistake. If it was my decision I'd have him as a peacemaker, flitting from team to team and book to book. I especially feel like he'd visit Katschen himself and not be a party to Iceman spying on her. Kurt and Kitty have a much closer relationship. Tom Brevoort has been outspoken about the X-Men killing people in Fall of X - Kurt and Kitty are the perfect lens to explore that through.

I get that he was already taken by Uncanny, but focusing on Logan and Rogue (where their familial relationship 'upgrade' is recent and barely established) to the detriment of other longstanding relationships feels like a waste to me.

It seems I had more thoughts on Kurt than I thought. Thanks for the ask!

[victoryarchive]

Ok. I’ll bite. Hermit! Tommy? Because that looks an awful lot like a really cool Watcher au something? Please share!

Omg if you insist lmao

Buckle up this is gonna be a lot.

This all started when I was thinking about Greek mythology (a common occurrence I fear) and I was thinking how even though Helios is the sun and the god of the sun many people these days assign that role to Apollo (the god of light). And that got me thinking more and more about how as time progresses stories change and gods become gods of things they never were before. New gods exist. Old ones are completely forgotten. Their names change. Look at Roman mythology for a great example of this.

And because I’m one hell of a nerd this immediately translated to ‘how can I use this in fan fiction’

Another thing you must know about me is I hate to fall back on Minecraft mechanics, it feels lazy for me to do it (it’s fine to read I just hate writing it) and must always find a way to make things like respawn and different worlds fit into the lore of the story.

Thus began the world building:

Every watcher is a god of something, Xelqua/Grian: the sun, Pearl: the moon, Kristin: The underworld, XD: [redacted], etc. Each watcher has the ability to create a world (or multiple depending on their power) for their people to live (Grian: hermitcraft, Pearl: Empires, Kristin: the Antarctic Empire, XD: the DSMP, etc) Within these worlds it is very common practice for the Watchers to choose a devoted follower to give a small portion of their power to oversee their world, to make rules and keep everyone safe, an Admin. (Grian: Xisuma, Pearl: fWhip, Kristin: Philza, XD: Dream, etc.)

Now none of these watchers just spawned as watchers, no they became watchers through people worshipping them and writing stories about them as gods. These stories held power so the person held power and became essentially immortal and can do pretty much anything with that power, at least until they are forgotten.

So far the story begins with Xelqua brining his players back from their silly death game and being intercepted by a very very old goddess, one who had almost been completely forgotten. This primordial goddess is peace, not just the goddess of peace, she is peace. She is called Prime. She asks Grian and Xisuma to take her last worshipper and devotee, Tommy, and protect him from another Watcher. And with a little bit of convincing Grian’s like ‘yeah fine ig I’ll take the kid. How difficult can one child be.’

Now that’s as far as I’ve written aside from the beginning backstory stuff, but I’ve got a lot of stuff planned, including an entire few chapters inspired by ‘god games’ from epic the musical, where Grian has to go fight for some mortals life. One of them. I know which one. Yall don’t :)

There’s also a lot of Grian and Pearl back story from when they were kids and still mortal like thousands and thousands of years ago and how they eventually became literal gods.

Tommy learns how friends are supposed to work and gets mentored by none other than Mumbo Jumbo, or Impulse i haven’t decided yet. The only thing I know about Minecraft is redstone so he’s learning redstone.

Also it would be a damn shame for me to not include False and Tommy flying together a bunch bc they’re the only to avians that can match each others speed.

There’s some stuff going on with techno being an admin on an anarchy server. He comes in later in an absolute rage.

Also Joel is a demigod… it makes sense I swear.

I’m having a lot of fun playing around with the world building and each individual characters back story so I will expand on anything if people ask about it :))))

Thank you for asking this has been fun

[10thmusemoon]

For the title ask game, "laurels"!

This would be a PIDW Ning Yingying fic on the burden of being Luo Bingge's first love and first wife.

Starting scenes would be the blossoming romance on QJP as disciples interspersed with her realizing the horrifying extent of the SJ's abuse. Followed by her grief during the years in the abyss and the moment she decides to betray her sect.

When NYY enters LBH's house, though she has the title of first wife, there are of course other women already there. Her place at Bingge's side, managing the underground palace and estate, is unquestionable, but that doesn't keep her from being at the mercy of cruel harem politics.

NYY goes through her own blackening phase, the naivety that kept her as the favored shimei on qjp being burned away each day. By the time LMY officially joins the harem, it's like meeting a stranger. They find comfort in each other, among all the wives they get along best, but there is that one thing that they Do Not Talk About.

The man in the Water Prison.

I think hearing LMY, NYY would have a lot Contemplating to do. What made her so different from YQY if she was never able to curb SQQ either? And later, after realizing she's adopting some of his crueler habits or turns of phrases to deal with the little palace mistress, she's struck with the realization that maybe they do take after SQQ. LBH and NYY both.

This whole fic would be an introspective look at NYY's journey from favored disciple, to favored wife and realizing that the laurels upon her head are actually filled with thorns. Sprinkle in some comphet to butt up against too!

SQQ's favoritism caused her to stagnate not only in cultivation but in maturity, leaving her unprepared for life after leaving the sect. LBH, during his time in the abyss, created of image in his head immortalizing his kind shijie, and NYY often feels the pressure to fall into the whiny and willful person LBH (and airplane) imagines her as.

I think the last scene in this fic would be her finally going down to confront SJ, and even though he is the one hanging from the ceiling, a mess of scar tissue and dried blood.

He looks down at her with pity.

Kindness, cruelty, in the end, what difference did it make?

They are two trapped things in Lord Luo's house.

[bbiniana]

People in this fandom treat Louis like he’s a saint but he was a emotionally and verbally abusive partner to both lestat and Armand a lot of the time (trapping a person you barely like in rebound situationship hell is a different kind of cruel and if Armand and lestat weren’t Armand and lestat and were not abusers themselves people would be able to see this more clearly) was physically violent with Claudia ,Armand and grace, put hands on lestat and was an entire serial killer during the 70s specifically preying on gay men who were down and out, left the first person who helped him in Romania to get put down like a dog, tried to kill a young junkie kid for being stupid and saying dumb shit ( Daniel’s insane lack of empathy during that episode is acknowledged though because telling someone you’ll be better than their dead kid sick) and prostituted women fully knowing it was wrong just so he could keep his family in luxury and was physically and emotionally violent with a chronically ill elderly man who didn’t do anything wrong other than try to hold him accountable . He is an awful person like everyone else in the diabolicule and that’s just a fact. He tends to hide it in this hypocritical genteel veneer, but if you ignore his words and look solely at his actions you’ll see that Saint Louis is not an apt nickname at all. What’s worse is usually only does good things to assuage his guilt ( making claudia after getting an entire community screwed over, the bright young reporter speech after trying to kill Daniel and provoking Armand, making madeleine to make up for constantly neglecting Claudia and picking mentally ill twunks over her).

And ok this is the toxic fruity bloodsucker show and we don’t expect any of these guys to be sweet and wholesome but the way people treat him like he’s done nothing wrong in his relationships grinds my gears.

They are all bad people. Louis was no doubt the victim of manipulation, gaslighting and physical abuse in his relationships but he was also abusive, and we can try to justify his mistreatment of Armand and lestat because they are lestat and Armand but there’s no excuse for his neglect of Claudia, grabbing her that way, ignoring her self harm, going back to her abusive cheating father, choosing Armand(one of her murderers) over her and then spitting on her memory by running right back into the arms of the man who made her life miserable and lead to her death.

That’s the thing about this show, it’s just cruelty and bad decisions and romantic toxicity, it’s very heavy allegory of the way familial and platonic relationships are neglected in favour of romantic ones or used to sustain them. It’s knowing you have failed so many people you claimed to love and having to live with that until the sun fucking explodes because you’re literally immortal, but it’s also the hope that by having time as a completely infinite resource it’s possible unlearn these cycles. Louis and lestat were never healthy or good to each other but there was love there and it showed , and maybe they can find a way to make that enough this time around. I don’t think lestat will get over the events of their first marriage and I think when the self awareness kicks in Louis won’t escape the guilt either and maybe that’s what they both need,

There are always 2 sides.

The discourse around Louis and Lestat being a victim and abuser and nothing more drives me insane.

Something i don't think enough people remember is that the very same reason the fight began in 1×05 (lestat grabbing claudia by the throat when she tries to "take louis away") we see Louis himself do to her in 1×07 when she tries to get Louis to burn Lestat.

They BOTH would harm her rather than live in a world without the other. They are both guilty of abusing her and each other.

There is an implication that a good deal of time passed between Louis and Lestat meeting and the church. Louis expresses that he shares himself with Lestat in a way he only had with Paul. I would assume that goes both ways, to a degree. We know Louis knows at least enough about Nicki to discourage Claudia poking that wound. He also clearly knows that the threat of leaving is his most powerful weapon against Lestat.

Mental abuse is abuse. And Louis abused Lestat mentally for years. Shaming him, ridiculing him, shutting him out, manipulating him into making Claudia (a traumatic moment for him, whether Louis understands the depths of it or not) by promising to give him what he's being denying him, promising to never put him through what he fears the most.

Louis admits to purposely making Lestat suffer. He admits he was warned that Claudia would suffer and he wanted her anyway because he needed to feel redeemed. He is not innocent. He is not a trapped, weak victim. He made choices to hurt both Lestat and Claudia time and time again.

Does this justify Lestat's actions in 1×05? Obviously not. But we now know Louis was not willing to stop the fight. He taunted Lestat the same way he taunted the Alderman. He was unleashing years of frustrations just as Lestat was. His priority was not to protect Claudia, it was to hurt Lestat, consequences be damned.

I hate the drop scene as much as the next person and Lestat has admitted he will never earn forgiveness for what he did. But if you view Louis as some squeaky clean victim who was manipulated, trapped, and abused by Lestat you are missing so much of what this show is conveying.

We will always tend to paint ourselves as the hero of our own story. It is hard to accept your faults or that you hurt people you love. It is much easier to shift that blame on to someone else, to frame them as the villian. But life is not usually that black and white. Claudia had harsh words for them both in her diary, even before they got to Europe, for a reason. They both made hurtful mistakes with her, both treated her like a pawn in their relationship instead of a person, both harmed her, took away her choice, never prioritized her.

That is the great tragedy. That she never had a choice and was not allowed to be her own person. And in the end, they both are responsible for her misery and her death. That's what makes the reunion scene so important. They have been grieving her and carrying that guilt alone, all the while longing for the comfort of the other for 70+ years. Louis has found clarity in his memories, he has accepted his role in their suffering, he has seen Lestat's perspective more fully. Lestat is broken, totally consumed with that guilt and grief. Both know that although they cannot change what they've done, they can forgive the other, even if they can't forgive themselves. They can love each other despite everything they've done to one another because they cannot stop loving each other. But now they can try to rebuild that love from the rubble.

[nelkcats]

Haunted City

Danny could admit that pretending to be a "regular ghost" was pretty fun. He could hide in one place and scare people who were waiting for an open door and a creepy laugh.

Honestly, Danny could do a lot more than that, the ghosts people believed in were nothing like the ones he knew. He wondered if there were simply different types of ghosts, or supernatural creatures; it was quite likely, considering that the ghosts of the Realms weren't even of the same dimension so it wasn't a fair comparison.

Anyway, the halfa had spent a couple of days "haunting" Gotham. The place was too leggy and they needed a little excitement in their lives. Of course, this led to some rumors about a spirit suffering or something similar, he didn't really care.

The "heroes" of Gotham didn't seem to share his opinion, going through all the places that had been "attacked" (they were just jokes) and looking for some explanation before calling Justice League Dark, Danny had fun scaring them a little in the process.

But he wasn't too interested in being exorcised, banished or whatever they did with rebel ghosts, so he settled on a mansion that was too big for its few inhabitants. Scaring billionaires was almost therapeutic, although the butler didn't seem too impressed by his (minimal) efforts.

[noxemma]

I'm sure this has already been done, but I was rewatching Two Towers and I could not unsee the parallels of Aragorn trying to return Arwen's necklace and the mix tape scene from 12x19 🫠

[shroomerr]

I love this orange airpod

[backpackingspace]

Okay yes odysseus becomes the monster and when he gets home he is physically/changed/ he's different not quiet human anymore HOWEVER as the years go by slowly odysseus changes back slowly becomes human once more under the love of his wife of being /safe/

[crownedinmarigolds]

Sometimes a take about a character is so bad and so widely accepted by the fandom at large... it drives you crazy sometimes...

[doverstar]

actually I love Tentoo and he is the Doctor and it was the only ending for Rose that worked and it is a huge gift to be able to have the man she loves grow old with her, they were always heading for that, y'all be quiet. I 100% understand the angst but it's okay, they're okay, good ending-

[thewardenisonthecase]

honestly, maybe it's a hot take or whatever, but I think that tearing down the veil and *potentially* bringing back the immortality to the elves would not have helped them a lot

[rocksanddeadflowers]

so i've been listening to elysian fields way too much lately and thinking how fucked up that song is for the mechs to perform. like put death to the mechanisms out of your head (bc that basically didn't happen yet with udad) and listen.

they're immortal. they can't die. the song is all about the sweet release of death, and arguably a gentle one at that, cradled in the fields on a world were nature ceases, next to the grave of your deceased beloved. it's a beautiful song, and arguably, ulysses got their happy ending.

the mechanisms don't get that, though. most didn't even get the option of keeping mortality. they're stuck on the mortal plane, in flesh and metal, with no escape or release within reach.

their finale performance of this album is the bittersweet comfort of mortality and endings, something they're well aware they will never be granted.