#which makes this anachronistic

[lostheaventales]

Garden of Eden PT.2

Description: Joe introduces Vito to one of the wise guys they used to see as children. Unbeknownst to him, Vito knew this wise guy in more ways than one and that way would leave to life-changing consequences.

Relationship: Vito Scaletta x Henry Tomasino

⚠️Warning⚠️: Vomiting, Anachronism

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Vito arrived at Freddy’s to meet with Joe after doing Derek the favor of shaking down the dock workers. He didn’t know what he wanted, but he hoped that it would bring some money in his pocket. The deadline to pay the debtor was coming up on him. He climbed up to the second floor of the bar. Joe was lounging in a booth with a beer and a cigarette.

“Hey, where the hell have you been?” He greeted, putting the beer down on the table.

“I came right over as soon as you call. What’s going on?” He sat adjacent to him.

“Remember the wise guys we used to see when he was kids?” Joe questioned.

How could Vito forget them? When looking to start up some trouble, him and Joe would see them heading to the local bars and strip clubs or they would hear about them on the radio. Vito always looked up to them, hoping one day they would be just like them.

“The guy we’re meeting here is one of them. His name’s Henry Tomasino,” Joe said, dropping the name he thought he would never hear again.

Vito felt his heart drop into his stomach. The man he fucked a few weeks ago was going to be giving him a job. He didn’t know how he felt like that. A part of him was excited that he was going to be seeing the man again. Another part of him felt it would make things awkward between them as their relationship would be more than business. The temperature around them suddenly gotten warmer as Vito’s nervousness grew.

Henry approached them, instantly shaking Joe’s hand. Bubbles began bursting inside of Vito’s stomach for some reason. Henry went to shake his hand, pretending as if they had just met, when he couldn’t control whatever this was that he was feeling.

“Excuse me for a second.” Vito put a hand over his mouth and almost fell as he got up from the booth.

“What? Do I stink or something?” Henry asked, sniffing his blazer and armpits.

Vito could feel the daggers Joe was staring into him as he ran to the bathroom, which was all the way downstairs. He almost knocked down a waitress on his way there. Once there, he spilled his guts. His chest and throat burned as the acidic liquid traveled up his esophagus and out his mouth. He flushed the toilet when he was sure he was done. Vito turned on the faucet to the sink, cupped his hands underneath the running water, and sipped up the water he managed to catch in his palms. He gargled and spit it out, relieving him from the aftertaste of the vomit.

When he made it back to the booth, Joe and Henry were sitting there in silence. Joe’s glare pierced through him like a knife.

“I’m sorry about that, guys. Must’ve been something I ate.” Vito sat back down in his spot.

“Now that’s out of the way, let’s get back to business,” Henry said.

He went on to explain what he had to do. This job was only for him so he could prove his loyalty and ability. Joe was given something else to do. He wanted gas stamps to sell and the only way to get them was stealing them from the Office of Price Administration. Due to the gas shortage, they were expensive. Henry was willing to give him 600 dollars for the job. It was risky and could land him in jail, but he needed the money. He accepted the job with no hesitation.

As he was heading out, Henry gave him a wink. Vito just smiled, still unsure about all of this. Even though Henry was being professional, never once giving away that they already knew each other, Vito feared it would come back to bite him sooner or later. He was questioning whether he should continue working with him and hand it all over to Joe to do. Yes, he would be missing out on a lot of much needed money, but he was willing to take the sacrifice.

Vito was unable to make a decision. Both working with him and not working with him sounded like bad ideas. He didn’t want to know what would happen to him, his mother, and Francesca if they miss the deadline and he didn’t want to know what would happen if his relations with Henry got to the higher ups.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The job went well. He was able to pay off his deceased father’s debt. Now that one problem was out of the way, it was time for another to make its presence known. Vito was at the clinic. Since the night of the job, the vomiting and nausea hadn’t stopped. It had actually gotten worse. Along with that, no matter the hours of sleep he got, it seemed like he was always napping and was going to the bathroom every thirty minutes.

Joe had convinced him to go to the doctor as it was starting to interfere with getting jobs. He would constantly plead to stay home, leaving Joe to do all the work of making them money. With him being his friend, he knew something was wrong with his body even if Vito didn’t know it himself, which he didn’t.

He shifted in the uncomfortable chair, glancing around the cramped waiting room of Empire Baby Medical Clinic. Everything was clean. Too clean for his liking. He’d never been too fond of hospitals and doctors, especially after his father’s death. His family was always too poor to afford medical care anyways. The last time he had a proper appointment was when he was 10 when he had come down with a really bad fever. His parents spent their last dollar to make sure he got the best care possible. After all those years, he forgot what a visit would entail.

As he waited, the light chatter of nurses and wails of children could be heard , which helped increase his nervousness.

“Vittorio Scaletta? A nurse called, breaking through his thoughts.

He followed the nurse to one of the examination rooms. She wrapped a cuff around his arm. It was used to measure his blood pressure. She pressed down on the bulb. The cuff began tightening around his bicep. Before the tightness became too uncomfortable, she removed it. His blood pressure read as normal.

“The doctor will be with you in a minute,” she declared, leaving the room shortly after.

He kicked his legs back and forth, staring blankly at the wall. One single emotion wavered around him. Fear. He was afraid of what the result might be. His family was already in a tight spot. After the death of their father, his mother and sister relied on him. Francesca’s bookkeeping job didn’t pay much just like their father’s job at the docks. It wouldn’t be enough to support herself, him, their mother, the apartment, and his potential medical expenses. If he died or became too sick, there would be nobody to care for them. They managed to avoid homelessness for most of their lives thankfully. With his death, they’d be thrown out on the streets, unable to pay the overwhelming bills and rent.

The creak of a door caught his attention. He turned his eyes to it, seeing the doctor dressed in a white lab coat walk into the room. A clipboard was in his hand. With a friendly handshake, the doctor introduced himself as Dr. Assante. He pulled over a stool and took a seat a few inches away from him.

“So Vito, if you don’t mind me calling you that, how have you been feeling?” The doctor asked, crossing his leg over his knee.

“If I’m being honest, not good,” Vito admitted.

Vito described his symptoms. The doctor recorded what he said on whatever it was that was attached to the clipboard. Dr. Asante unwrapped his stethoscope from around his neck. He stuck the earpieces into his and placed the chest piece over where his heart was. They sat theirs, frozen in time as he listened to his heartbeat. Then, he moved the metallic part to his back.

“Breathe in for me,” he directed.

Vito inhaled.

“Breathe out.”

He exhaled.

“Everything sounds normal. Your heart is beating at a normal rate. There’s no concerns with your breathing. Will you be willing to take a blood test?” The doctor questioned, returning the stethoscope to its place around his neck.

Vito hesitated with his answer. “Would it cost money?”

“No, not at all.” He shook his head.

“Then, it’s okay with me.”

Dr. Asante disappeared from the room, coming back with a rolling tray of tools set on top of it. As he prepared the test, Vito lifted his sleeve, revealing his forearm. The doctor stuck a syringe into a vein. Fresh red blood filled the vial. Once it was filled to the top, he removed it from his arm.

“The results will be mailed to you within two or three days. If something shows, then you can decide whether or not to have a follow up appointment,” he explained, taking off his glasses.

Vito shook the doctor’s hand on the way out. He exited the clinic, glad to be away from that place for, hopefully, a while.

[snowballthekitteninwonderland]

Rewatched Gilda (1946) recently, and immediately thought of the bnnuy and doggo husbands. The movie is so good, there's literally only ONE issue, which I *know* would be 100% solved if the Freelance Husbands were the main characters (will probably get into why that is in a different post tho) and so, a couple or more AU ideas were born....(Including a canon divergence/never met as kids/met as young adults AU, for which I also have a fic WIP)

Really wanna make an animatic redoing the whole Put The Blame On Mame scene but with the freelance husbands, with of course, Max being Gilda. There's even an excellent song cover from Alexandre Covers at YT, a Max animation is practically begging to be made....I really wanna do it qjhHUaj.

[absenthearted]

HISTORICAL WESTERN || HACKEARNEY + ALTERNATE UNIVERSES [2/?]

PERSONAL.—Gentleman, aged 56, Sheriff and owner of valuable mining property, seeking the acquaintance of a single or widow lady of any means, and with good character and disposition. Object matrimony if suited. Contact C. Hackett, North Kill, NY.

[...]

BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY.—Apprenticeship available for a hardworking, dedicated Physician in mining town upstate. Lodging and transportation provided. Ability to serve both man and beast preferred. Contact C. Hackett, North Kill, NY.

Between dealing with roving outlaws, petty small-town disputes, and feral wild wolves, Sheriff Travis Hackett doesn’t have time for marriage and a wife. His meddling brother decides to help him out—whether he wants it or not.

Laura Kearney never thought she would become a mail-order bride, but she’s willing to do almost anything to pursue her dream of becoming an animal doctor.

In which a secret matchmaking plan goes terribly wrong, Laura gets rejected by her supposed fiancé on the same day that she meets him, and Travis makes a terrible first impression. [Inspired by @genevievedarcygranger’s prompt from the Hackearney Fic Exchange.]

[jondrettegirls]

[ID: A crowded, saturated, digital drawing of Les Amis de l’ABC from “Les Miserables.” Bahorel and Jehan are chatting with Grantaire, who has an arm around Joly, who is talking to Bossuet. Enjolras and Combeferre are in discussion, with Feuilly coming to join. Courfeyrac talks to Marius, which Eponine watches. Gavroche is pickpocketing Bossuet. End ID.]

messing around w les amis designs hmm

[compacflt]

hi!! very excited about your next batch! but i was wondering if you ever think of posting some of the (wonderful) female!mav scenes you wrote (the question mark on my computer decided to stop working but this is indeed a question)

have a great weekend!!

yeah sure! again— this isn’t finished and never will be finished, I posted the reasons below. But here are a bunch of snippets from the fem!mav/lesbian charliemav AU from this summer. Would love to hear your thoughts, because politically it gave me some pause! lol.

1. On how mav survives (the central motif of the one-shot is Mav cutting her hair with scissors which is why the emphasis here)

2. On ice (straight icemav will never work because fundamentally ice is a misogynistic cunt)

3. on sex with girly girls (one of life’s greatest pleasures)

ehhh you get the picture of what’s under the cut

4. on charliemav

5. on charlie

7. The end (post Layton mission [mav proving herself by saving ice’s life] and the end of TG86, Mav gearing up to cut her hair again in Charlie’s house)

and here, copy-pasted, were the tags i planned to affix to the charliemav one-shot, which I think explain also why I stopped writing it—maverick is insanely out of character here!

“some discussion of issues that would affect a female pilot in the 1980s in this one: SA, sexism, etc. u have been warned / i would love to talk to anyone about the politics of this one cause hoo boy i had to think about it / it’s a little personal to me too / i wouldn’t necessarily say i struggle with my gender identity but i do have a really complicated relationship with it / i think this mav is incredibly out of character / it turns out mav’s thoughtless overperformance of masculinity is so ingrained into his character that / if you make it intentional he/she turns into an entirely different character. / i often struggle with writing maverick way way too bitter (there’s something very gentle about tgm mav I struggle replicating) / & this is a VERY bitter & cynical & calculating mav as well. she has to be. But i fear i lose some of mav’s original character in the cynicism. 🤷🏽‍♀️ / that’s why i struggle writing AUs—you lose so much of the original characters who are DEFINED by the stories they’re from / if that makes sense. / i think a female maverick isn’t maverick. / you might as well be writing original fiction at that point. / this 1 shot is pretty much just original fiction. / idk would love to hear ppls thoughts on the fandom philosophy behind AUs / something i would love to think about more / top gun fanfiction / charlotte charlie Blackwood / pete maverick mitchell / Tom iceman kazansky/ nick goose bradshaw / genderbent top gun / charliemav / in this universe mav and Charlie break up and mav gets back together with Penny according to the tgm timeline btw / TGM mav might as well be a lesbian like nothing really has to change in the script at all. / post 2010 tom cruise just gives lesbian. no change necessary / soundtrack for this one is ‘I have a woman inside my soul’ by yoko ono”

I also stopped writing this one because I could not for the life of me figure out how to write goose, canonically a sexist just like mav and ice. made things difficult and a little awkward

[keepthemacramesecret]

uh oh i found a third seperate conflicting description of the stupid cricket jackets 😭

[nimblermortal]

He's at it again

Þó munk mitt ok móður hrør fǫður fall fyrst of telja; þat berk út ór orðhofi mærðar timbr máli laufgat.

My rearrangement for syntax (this one was actually pretty straightforward):

Þó mun-ek mitt fǫður ok móður fall hrør fyrst of telja; ek bera þat út ór orðhofi mærðar timbr máli laufgat.

My translation word by word:

Nevertheless prefer-I me father and mother fall corpse first of counting; I bear it out of word-building praise's timber speech [become leafy]

My smoother translation:

Nevertheless I would prefer that father and mother fall to corpses first in the reckoning. I bear* it out of my word-court to make praise's bare timber leafy with my speech.

*the pun with 'bare', as in bare branches**, translates and is doubtless intentional

**or, a verse earlier, naked bloated drowned corpse

[70smarauderz]

marauders favorite artists and other music-related headcanons totally not based on me being obsessed with late60s-70s music

james potter: yes, jethro tull, steely dan, donna summers, billy joel, the kinks, van halen

i think james would listen to anything and everything tbh, he’s he epitome of eclectic music taste to me, he has his faves obvs but he honestly enjoys all of his friends' faves too totally didn’t put billy joel there because of only the good die young...

sirius black: the rolling stones, queen, led zepellin, ac/dc, black sabbath, KISS, judas priest

i imagine sirius loving black dog by led zeppelin and saying that it’s his song even b4 completing his animagus transformation and it only gets worse after that

remus lupin: elton john, the beatles, david bowie, the who, the doors, boston, joy division

remus lupin would f*cking love people are strange FIGHT ME. post-1981 remus would listen to a lot of joy division, and i swear im not just saying that cause ian curtis gives off remus vibes to me

peter pettigrew: alvin stardust, the rubettes, blue öyester cult, genesis, squeeze

putting blue öyster cult for peter and just picturing sirius saying something like he's shocked peter finally developed some good taste 100% did not put BÖC for peter because of career of evil idk what ure talking about

lily evans: fleetwood mac, marvin gaye, the beatles, creedence clearwater revival, ABBA, neil young, barry manilow

this is 100% a stolen hc from a microfic but lily thinks something by the beatles is the peak of romantic lyricism (btw if u know what microfic i’m talking about pls tell me, cause i can’t find it anywhere) lily and remus like the beatles because it reminds them of their moms

mary macdonald: the beach boys, bee gees, fleetwood mac, nina simone, stevie wonder, eric clapton, diana ross

i think mary and lily had a pretty similar music taste and gave recs to each other when they discovered new songs lily and mary saw eric clapton live in 1978 and ABBA in 1975 (i wanted them to see fleetwood mac live but the dates of their UK concerts just don't really work, unless i put them going to a concert in 1980 which seems a bit weird to me cause yk the war)

marlene mckinnon: the clash, heart, sweet, thin lizzy, pink floyd, the damned, x-ray spex

marlene listens to psycho killer by the talking heads non-stop and everyone groans when she puts it on; sirius gets it because he does the same with killer queen marlene introduces thin lizzy to sirius and james and the three of them saw them live on the 1977 Reading Rock Festival

[archduchessofnowhere]

We can say many things about the latest Sisi adaptations but to be honest I'm glad (most of them) were so open about how inaccurate they were from the very beginning. No one tried to convince us they were super serious biopics.

[1800duckhotline]

I also really want to design Trillo in the fantasyverse because she's effectively Salice's "Bad End", like trillo is a separate entity from salice but like. The fundamental thing is that she still very much uses Salice's body/is made from her corpse so

[vamptastic]

one small thing that bugs me about disco elysium is the lack of Fantasy Jews. i mean every setting that creates analogues of real world cultures tends to forget about us (i am generously overlooking when they make us into goblins or some shit). but still, idk, it'd be cool, and for the setting you'd figure we'd factor in a little. idk though, i know a decent amount about the history of jews in american socialism but little about our role in european communism especially outside of the ussr. there were certainly jewish communist movements within the ussr but most of us would've been gone long before the fall of the soviet union ig.

[aroaessidhe]

2023 reads // twitter thread      

The Name Bearer

Queer Latinx YA fantasy

a girl destined to bring the newborn king’s name from the flowers of prophecy to them, is instead told she must wait 10 years to find the new true king, and is taken to train in hiding with a group of warrior women

found family, start of series

[stuck-in-the-ghost-zone]

MAC HELLO i am saying hi, been a hot minute since i've been in ur inbox wow its so nice in here did u redecorate??? ANYWAY i just want 2 come in and say hello and ask how ur doin!!!! i finished writing the dstuck tntduo chapter and i'm literally going to gnaw on wood rn they drive me fucking INSANE mac do u wanna read it i'll genuinely let u read it early if u want bc i just need someone else 2 see why i'm absolutely fucking BONKERS AND FUCKING YONKERS rn. (also also i have vashie pics 2 send u and ros but i keep forgetting!!! i gave him. a little hat. :3 vashie pics SOON i prommy) i would send u a doodle or somethin rn but i am not sending this from my phone so here is a little copy pasted emoticon instead ʕ•́ᴥ•̀ʔっ little guy!!! i hope u r doin well!!!!! :3

HI WHISKEY!!!!!!!!! im doin good im doin ok!!! im at the beach again so i am invincible for the next. 4 days. i love my wife.

IF U WANT TO SHARE DSTUCK TNTDUO WITH ME I WOULD BE HONORED. IM SO EXCITED FOR THEM 👁👁 and VASHIE HAT?!?!?!?! show me his hat i need 2 see him..... ive been thinkin abt making my vashie another coat like the one from ep 12 so he can be goth.... i have some black fabric lying around at home but i have 0 sewing skills so it may take me a while . but i want him 2 have little outfits hehe

I HOPE U ARE ALSO DOING WELL <33333 ILYSM !!! here here i am going 2 see u off with a beach pic bc shes soooooo9 pretty. also i havent been outside yet this morning (<< just woke up like 5 mins ago) so it gives me an excuse to go out on the balcony :]

[ghostiboos]

Anti-Capitalism and ChatGPT

(wordcount: 1,177)

Here’s the thing. I’ll be the first to admit that ChatGPT is cool, yeah? And I’m far from ignorant of the wonderful things it’s made possible. But there’s a pretty big problem with its professional usage,

and before you stop reading,

I promise that the point of this post is not "you have to stop using ChatGPT." Just. Stick with me for a minute, cuz contrary to what you might expect, this is not a problem contained to just the normies that don’t use ChatGPT: this is about how ChatGPT will affect you.

I’m about to use some scary words like “scalping” and “exploitation,” but remember I’m not accusing you of anything. In fact, let’s start with the good stuff.

Among other things, it could be argued that ChatGPT actually enhances workplace accessibility by “leveling the playing field,” in a way. Any job candidate can quickly make up for lack of time/skill/ability in one area by using ChatGPT to fill in the gaps, right? An individual’s personal quality of life can improve by “outsourcing” aspects of their work to ChatGPT — they have more free time, and maybe their work quality and pay grade improve too.

But I’d like to point out that this isn’t ChatGPT making life better for employees. This is actually ChatGPT eliminating the entire role of “employee.”

Okay, crazy statement time:

A person using ChatGPT in a professional setting is no longer an employee, but, in practice, actually a corporation.

What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Well, in concise terms, ChatGPT catalyzes the exploitation of labor by collecting it all in one place, meaning that the labor of hundreds of people can be scalped and represented as the work of a single entity: the individual using ChatGPT.

This essentially transforms the individual employee into a CEO of their own small corporation, which is being outsourced to larger corporations for work. Our new “CEO” doesn’t even have to pay any “employees,” keeping all of the profit they earned with the labor scalped by ChatGPT. This is why the individual is able to reap so much more profit from using ChatGPT than they ever could from working as a single employee.

You may think I’m trying to frame our new little “CEO” as the villain of this story, but it’s exactly the opposite. They’re just playing by the rules of the system, and within the system, it’s way nicer being a corporation than it is living as an employee. It’s just proof of concept that life on top is exactly as easy as we’ve all been guessing it is, and the only requirement for leveling up is a willingness to exploit labor. ChatGPT is a shiny new miracle tool that makes exploitation easy and accessible to everyone, and it doesn’t even look or feel like exploitation because there are no faces attached.

But that’s where this short-term improvement goes downhill: it’s accessible to everyone, including the actual corporations, who have already amassed the means to exploit labor en masse. If ChatGPT gives individuals a level-up by eliminating the role of employee and allowing them to act as corporations, how does that same level-up work when a corporation uses it? Well, I guess it’s a good thing the role of “employee” has been eliminated, because they aren’t needed anymore lol: not if your goal is to turn a profit, and we all know that’s just how things go.

But hey— galaxy brain here, but couldn’t that be kind of a good thing actually? The current system doesn’t function without people on the bottom who are available for exploitation, so if ChatGPT can automate the exploited parties for us by scalping labor from the past, then doesn’t that mean that the endless work necessitating human employment in the first place is finally… unnecessary? For the first time ever, we could be looking at a society where pretty much all of the labor is already accounted for, meaning all humans are free to pursue any passion they want regardless of their background, regardless of their class, regardless of how much money they- oh, right… Money.

The world I described above either sounds like a utopia to you or a dogshit stupid pipe dream, and unfortunately, both are true.

The problem is,

while technology has advanced to the point where it’s finally ready for automated labor, society has not.

We still live in a system where if you don’t work, you don’t eat, regardless of whether any work actually needs to be done. So… what actually happens in the current system if labor is automated?

Well, I won’t bore you with the typical “THE ROBOTS ARE TAKING ALL OUR JOBS” routine, but like. It’s only half wrong? I mean, we don’t even have the tech to automate all labor anyway, so it’s not like that’s literally what’s happening. But there are still… a lot of jobs that can be automated now, and that puts a lot of people in positions where they have to compete with ChatGPT in order to keep food on the table. It’s already a losing battle for a lot of people.

Using ChatGPT gives you a taste of corporate power, of the ability to exploit if it makes things financially easier for you. And that’s understandable, right? We’re all struggling in a system like this. Just don’t forget that line of reasoning when it comes full circle, where instead of getting to do the exploiting, you’re the one being exploited (again). Don’t forget what it was like to be on top: how normal it felt, reasonable, unremarkable. It didn’t feel like exploitation when you only experienced the profits. That is who owns you now. Let that radicalize you.

So long story short,

the existence and usage of ChatGPT is not the problem. In a better world, you’re right that ChatGPT could be a great ally, but the current structure of the job market has transformed it into a competitor. The human working class and ChatGPT are forced to compete against each other, not because it is rational for us to be enemies, but because the system pits all laborers against each other for the “privilege” of work. People are realizing that they really can’t beat the competition this time, so don’t scold them when they don’t share your enthusiasm. We’re all dogs in this fight, and ChatGPT has fucking lazer eyes.

It’s not the end of the world – the job market has always been prone to fluctuation – but this is different from your average fluctuation. It re-frames so much that used to seem impossible, but if we don’t change the system itself to match this advancement in technology, I guarantee it’s not gonna be the people at the top who pay the price.

The choice is not whether or not to use ChatGPT.

The choice is whether to discontinue ChatGPT so that society can continue with the relative stability it had before, or to embrace ChatGPT as the ally it could be by changing the structures that weaponize it against us.

(Okay I’m getting off my soapbox now, I sure hope nobody else is in this abandoned soapbox factory, can you imagine how embarrassing it would be if anyone actually heard me say all that lol)

[foone]

Full disclosure ahead of time: I'm trans, and not a fan of Harry Potter, as you might guess. However...

My favorite thing about the writing of Harry Potter is how the first book is set several years earlier for no reason. It's set in 1991 and came out in 1997

Then because of how the books came out over many year and each book is a year later in the story, the last book ends up being set in 1997 and published in 2007, a full decade later.

This would be an interesting writing exercise if it was at all used by J. K. Rowling, but it's not. This very specific dating of the books, and increasing dated setting is just there so that Rowling can make repeated anachronistic errors because she forgot her characters aren't living in the modern day.

There is no upside to definitively setting Harry Potter in the near past: nothing comes of it in a way that'd be impossible to do if the books were set in a vague present. All setting them in the past does is let Rowling repeatedly make mistake, like having Dudley get a Playstation for his birthday.

In the 1997 she wrote that in? Perfectly reasonable present for a kid! In the summer of 1994 this scene is set it? Fucking impossible. The PS1 wouldn't be out in Japan until that December, and wouldn't be released in Europe until the next year, after his NEXT birthday.

And it's like... This is just the most well known of the anachronisms. There's an endless parade of them solely because she decided to set the books in specific years, a choice which gained her NOTHING! This doesn't happen because the final battle needs to happen at the millennium for prophecy reasons, or because she needs her characters to meet up with real life people who were dead or otherwise unavailable by the time the books were written, it's just some story element she picked and then never for one second thought about the consequences.

(Another retroactively funny mistake caused by this is that she ends up having a character inadvertently misgender Margaret Thatcher of all people, because they call the previous prime minister "he", and the because the scene is set in 1996, the prime minister is John Major, so the previous one should be Thatcher, but she's clearly thinking the current PM would be Tony Blair, and the previous one would be John Major)

I dunno. It feels like there's something meaningful in how J. K. Rowling made a clearly bad decision once and hasn't thought about any of the negative effects of her decision, standing by and doubling down on it, no matter how much it doesn't help her or anyone. It just seems like this might be a metaphor for something.

But who can really say?

(that last line assumes you're using dark mode)

[empyrealarthropod]

there’s a limit to how long you can let a phase go on before it’s just stagnation. jinx’s apathy and lack of motivation is a little out of character considering her decision at the end of season one, but i can see it as a temporary phase she would struggle with.

however, the show’s almost over and they’re not letting her do anything outside of it. it’s been 2/3 of the very limited runtime and she’s still not herself. she’s not scheming or planning, her homicidal tendencies, anger, insecurity, hallucinations, desperate need for connection, codependency, impulsivity, and willingness to be extreme are suddenly gone with no explanation, her usual strange anachronistic and unusual way of speaking and mannerisms are gone and have been replaced with mild sarcasm, and on the rare occasions they let her build something, it has no lasting effects and is immediately undone.

jinx’s creation of fishbones and the attack on the council was the culmination of her season one arc and one of the most dramatic moments in the entire season. but the effects of the rocket are toned down and brushed off. fishbones barely gets fired once before being torn apart by the hextech glitching, which doesn’t make any sense considering the gauntlets and rifle and sevika’s scar were all fine after the glitching stopped. her other guns are quickly disposed of as well, being torn apart by vi and overloaded by isha, and jinx only fires them a couple ineffective times before they’re scrapped. her bombs don’t do anything either, with a few harmless firework/smoke bombs being used as distractions and one that could actually do some damage showing up to magically un-lobotomize vander. she stops fighting back against piltover apart from one scene where she redirects the gray away from zaun and splatters a few buildings with paint. that can barely even be considered an attack. the arm that she builds sevika gets an interesting scene but it’s quickly reworked and destroyed as well. her inventions and creations are a huge part of her character and they’re stripped of effectiveness and meaning.

with better writing, maybe a slightly longer runtime, and shortening down some less necessary plotlines or cutting them out entirely to save them for one of the other shows they’ve said they want to make, it would be easily possible to show both jinx’s emotional vulnerability, grief about the loss of silco and disconnect with vi, connection with isha/sevika/zaun, and her usual weirdness and creativity and volatility. several of those things could be blended together and showed in the same scene. but they’re not.

they’re also just not letting her have any substantial effect on the plot or make decisions of her own. she doesn’t choose anything, she gets pushed along by the whims of others and what the people around her want. she’s not acting, she’s just reacting. and somehow her first thought upon seeing warwick is to go clean up and recruit vi? and then she doesn’t have any anger or complex feelings about the whole situation with vander returning but not silco? as soon as vander’s back she stops missing silco apart from when she finds his coat? she just cooperates with vi’s plan to get warwick healed and wanders around viktor’s cult aimlessly without a care in the world, letting everyone else do whatever while she sits around with isha? she doesn’t have anything she wants, she doesn’t have any goals, she doesn’t care about the piltover vs zaun conflict anymore, her anger about the entire political situation is inexplicably gone just like caitlyn’s.

i’m hoping that we get a few good moments in act 3, but considering that they just killed off isha right before the last act and now she’s going to be straight back to grieving, it’s difficult to keep my hopes up. also please no spoilers i haven’t seen the leaks and i don’t want to