#you're free to ignore this

[pink-strawberry-kissess]

Leon x ships (and why I don’t support anything other than aeon)

THIS IS MY OPINION, you are free to ignore this. But these are my particular reasonings as to why I do not enjoy the other ships for Leon and why I find them incredibly problematic. 

❤️ Aeon (Leon x Ada) 

I started this blog because I fell in love with the ship. It has the right amount of hurt/comfort that I was desiring at the time, and when I really broke down all the intricacies of the ship, I couldn’t get over it. 

To get things as crystal clear as possible. MOST AEON shippers do not think that aeon is a healthy relationship. It’s very much a push and pull of two people that realistically shouldn’t be together but find each other in each other’s lives. 20 years were spent to work through this “relationship.” (think batman and catwoman)

re2 we have the meeting. The way they gravitate towards each other, but the way that Leon changes Ada. Only when she realizes that he’s simply a good person wanting to do the good thing, she struggled to finish what she needed to do. Which was HER JOB. It’s not too far to say that she WOULD’VE maybe been killed if she didn’t complete her job. She’s not in a safe position. People don’t realize that. When Ada “dies,” a part of Leon dies with him. 

re4 we have another meeting. Leon’s hurt. He’s confused and all of sudden Ada is alive again. He had years of mental anguish and survivors guilt. He holds a lot of resentment towards her. And yet Ada still finds the desire and need to want to protect him. She protects him during her entire campaign. (Play Separate ways before speaking to me..) and at the end, he lets her go with the virus. He doesn’t want this to happen but he can’t stop her. They leave each other in less that desirable circumstances. But he still doesn’t stop her.

off screen re5 we have simply, “the night,” they spend together. Romantic, maybe in a hotel. How we go from re4 to this is never expanded on and since it’s off screen, we’re only here to speculate on what could’ve happened. (They had sex) which is implied in-

re damnation “the sexy one.” a film in which they simply flirt with each other the entire time. The “so when are we going to um, carry on from where we left off that night?”

“So you missed me huh?” Even in this film, we have Ada saving Leon AGAIN. “You owe me one,” before she’s off again.

we have to remember that between re4 and damnation there’s SEVERAL YEARS for them to have potential other meetings that are simply not explored on screen.

more time passes and we have re6 “the aeon fanservice one.” I won’t go into too much detail for this one, but re6 aeon is still superior to me. we have established a sexual relationship at this point, we don’t know if they’ve explored more, and yet Leon’s willing to jump off a burning building the second he see’s Ada needing help? This is the Leon we know. Also they just have each other’s contacts at this point?? They leave again and this is the final time we see them together in the franchise. 

“See you down the road, Leon.”

❌ cleon (Leon x Claire)

Now to be completely honest. I DON’T HATE THE SHIP. I think it’s a delusional one, but the main reason I dislike the ship a lot, is actually because of the shippers. It’s a constant, “claire better,” fight. (I don’t have to say that Claire is a shitty character for me to not ship them etc. which seems to be the core of what cl*on shippers do, which is *drumroll* shit on Ada.)

And I find that most of these shippers are younger, white, and conservative and or naive. And also tend to lack in their abilities to read characterizations and understanding the complexities of morality. 

The shippers have lowkey ruined the character of Claire for me. And I always thought she was a cute character. Not my favourite, but she’s fine. I just never thought of her characterization or storyline to be particularly interesting. But what I do find interesting to me that most Leon x Reader fics simply have a character similar to Claire written in as reader instead.

The idea of two morally good characters together is simply not as interesting to me. It’s always been like this. They are not pulled to each other in a sexual or romantic way which is why I mostly think the ship is delusional. There are SEVERAL instances of this.

Claire does flirt with Leon briefly in re2r. However it’s very clear on Leon’s side that he does not read it as flirting. He barely spends any time with her, and at the end of it, Claire suggests that it “would’ve been one hell of a date,” not knowing that Leon spent more time with Ada for the entire duration of re2r. 

I don’t count degeneration since there’s a weird moment with Angela which I also don’t really count since she’s never heard of again. 

The only other time is infinite darkness. In which Leon refers to her as “a kid.” And that he doesn’t see her “as a woman.” OR to put it more clearly, he does not see her as a love interest. Not to mention the one scene cleon stans cream themselves over, in which Claire falls on top of Leon, where she’s like visibly disgusted. 

And to put the cherry on top, at the end of infinite darkness, they are no longer on speaking terms, and or no longer friends from what we can see. I’ll give cleon shippers one thing. They had a potential moment. “A dinner,” that could’ve happened and yet Claire and Leon both do not see eye to eye. They disagree morally (which is actually interesting) and so they separate. And as for the timeline now, they are no longer friends.

One final note, is that I find cleon shippers INCREDIBLY racist and misogynistic. OBVIOUSLY NOT ALL OF THEM. But all men, until it’s not all men. A large portion of cleon shippers use Ada is a scapegoat for their ship. Painting Ada as a sexual, manipulative, con woman that “steals,” Leon away from Claire. It’s so laughable when Leon was never Claire’s. 

When you have to resort to pinning women against other women, then I just simply do not care to interact with that. 

I also find the whole “caring mother figure,” to be incredibly gross. It’s the same kind of incel talk that guys use to declare what is desirable in a woman. That if you’re not good at being a mother, caring, nurturing etc. Then you’re just NOT DESIRABLE. That being a “pure, wholesome, good girl” is the only reason why you deserve a man, is something YOU need to work out on your own. Maybe do some soul searching on why you think that’s the only reason why you deserve love. 

❌  Leon x Ashley

Similarly, Leon speaks of Ashley as “a young girl,” or a “kid.” “Is this what they’re teaching kids these days?” He does not see her as a love interest. Sure, Ashley does flirt with him a lot. Who wouldn’t?

But at the end of the day, Ashley is a 21 year old girl in university. Still figuring out her life and what she wants. While Leon is a 27 year old trained special agent, whose boss is Ashley’s FATHER. Sure you can get into that fantasy all you want. I totally get that and I’ve been into that ship before. And as you age, oh boy does that ship dynamic not age well. 

There are huge age gap and dynamics that will not work. And I totally get people wanting that type of ship. But it’s REALLY GROSS FOR ME. 

But again, Leon turns her down multiple times, and rejects her as well. Ashley is also no longer seen in the canon.

❌  Leon x Helena

NOW BEFORE PEOPLE SAY ANYTHING. I ACTUALLY DON’T HATE THE SHIP. It’s when it comes down to the fact they have a 12 year age gap that makes me a bit barfy. But furthermore that Helena is younger than SHERRY.

Now if I were to exclude the age gap, I think that they’re VERY HOT. I really enjoy Helena’s character model and them in re6 is SO FUCKING FINE. BUT yup, I can’t get over that age gap. But one of the main issues is that Helena is also canonically an aeon shipper. Which I kind of find adorable? It definitely adds to the aeon storyline in re6.

Helena being 24, while at this point Leon is 36-37. And during re6, Sherry is 26-27. And KEEP IN MIND. When Leon met Sherry, he was 21 and SHE WAS 12.

So when Leon was 21, Helena would’ve been 9 YEARS OLD.

And I won’t even justify Leon x Sherry because

When Leon met Sherry, he was 21 and SHE WAS 12.

And all other ships I honestly do not care for or think are fine.

I’m also supportive of Chreon, metaltango, serrenndy. I read them occasionally but I’m just not that personally emotionally invested in them. I find them cute, and I support people who want to write lgbtq ships. Also chreon shippers are typically also Aeon shippers and I find they mingle well together in the same spaces sometimes.

[userparamore]

#someone get this man his glasses 🥸🤨

[marzipanandminutiae]

tumblr when mental illness makes you withdraw from company: nobody has the right to expect anything of you! take care of yourself! if they don't forgive you and act like nothing happened when you come back into the world, it's on them, not you! it's so very kind of you if you deign to try and overcome this for the sake of those annoying, awful people, but you don't have to if you don't want to! poor lamb!

tumblr when mental illness makes you need reassurance that people don't hate you: you should work on that. you should learn to compromise. expecting anyone on the other side to expend even a little bit of effort to help you is selfish and horrible. maybe just die actually

(NOTE: THE POINT HERE IS THAT BOTH SIDES DESERVE A DEGREE OF GRACE FROM OTHERS AND BOTH SIDES SHOULD WORK ON THEIR ISSUES. I hate that I have to explain it, but this is the Piss on the Poor website, so...)

[shenzhiheng]

pathetic wet men collection (43/?)

[ayo-edebiri]

#Phil Dunster acts around Brett Goldstein like men act around Andrew Garfield....

[dootznbootz]

My childhood friend said that my Odysseus looks like a mix of Chappell Roan and Griffith from Berserk and that thought is killing me. It's too correct.

(Lovely doodle of my boy courtesy of the wonderful fellow trashcat @thehelplessmortals :3 )

[qcomicsy]

Sometimes I feel like only Peter Parker gets how humbling it is to be poor jesus christ. I am enjoying my time despite not being my cup of tea (I am a dialogue person, I love dialogue I love dialogue as a dog loves little delicious treats. 60's comics unfortunately do not have the best kind of dialogues). But I am enjoying it, almost as a concept, hecause Stan Lee and Robin Dikto do not have the fear to show a pathetic little man, they don't have the embarrassment of showing your hero getting rejected by the girl, forgetting to let his suit dry and having to wear a wet scrunky suit, showing him being arrogant, being annoying, a very very antisocial guy.

I think reading so so many comics where it's clear how much the writers are trying to make the hero sound cool, the smartest, handsomest and smoothies guy in the room.

Peter is kind of a breath of fresh air. He gets it, he really does. He's not cool, he's not there yet. He's a kid doing dumb shit. Trying to do better, failing and failing and trying. No wonder so many people who got to read his comics as they were growing up hold Peter so close to their heart.

Because he's the proof you can try again, you can fuck up, in ten, twenty, thirty hell maybe forty years from now it won't matter. Just try again. Stand up. Try again.

@sciderman talks a lot about how Spider-Man is about reaching manhood and I've never get it, sure as a concept yes but I couldn't grasp why. Now I do.

It's not about waking up and being the man you should be, being responsible for having a cool montage of getting better and better. Nah it's the every day thing. Peter isn't (at least what I am getting of the comics while I read at my pace and time) the representation of becoming the power and responsability thing, he is the representation of having this as a goal. And trying each day.

[zerocybersickness]

thank you for nice comments...i read them all. here more of this guy ig

[silverwhittlingknife]

hi Silver! o/ because that fanart made me wonder - would you happen to know when/where Dick's stuffed elephant plush Zitka turns up in the comics?

GREETINGS CAM <3333 THAT ART WAS SO CUTE

Yeah, I think your instincts are right - it's a truly adorable bit of transformative fandom, but I'm 95% percent sure it's not comics canon. Barbara has canon plushies, but I don't think anyone else does.

I got kinda invested in the investigation (it's hard to prove a negative!) and I ended up typing out an entire History of Elinore/Zitka, so, uh, if you're curious, meet me below the cut for:

Where does Elinore / Zitka - the animal - appear in comics?

Did Dick ever have a stuffed elephant toy in comics?

Where does Elinore / Zitka appear in comics?

We're gonna go in chronological order!

Dick's circus elephant friend was first created for practical reasons: in Batman 436, Marv Wolfman does a big expanded flashback to Dick's circus backstory as a way to subtly show us Tim before officially introducing him (so that we can have a technically-solvable mystery-of-Tim's-identity in LPoD). In this comic, there's an elephant named Elinore who loves Dick:

Aww. Such a cute elephant!

Batman 436 comes out in August 1989. New Titans 60 comes out a few months later, in November, and guess what? When Dick visits the circus, he is suddenly surprised by an unexpected blast from the past! It turns out that even though it's been years, Elinore still remembers him!

Here's the part where Elinore remembers Dick:

SUCH a cute elephant. I love her.

(Guess who else still remembers Dick even though it was so long ago. Guess which other character is about to be an unexpected blast from the past. Guess which character Elinore is directly paralleling guess guess guess sorry everything is about Dick and Tim in my mind but I can focus I swear)

Four years later, in 1993, Batman: The Animated Series retells Dick's origin story. They like and keep Wolfman's elephant, but they change her name to Zitka:

Wolfman doesn't return to the elephant beyond those two appearances, and a few years down the line, New Titans gets cancelled and Wolfman's not writing Dick anymore anyway. So the animal gets abandoned for a while, until Devin Grayson, a fan of both Wolfman and B:tAS, revives the Wolfman-era Titans team in JLA/Titans and then the ongoing series Titans 1999.

Grayson then brings back the elephant in a flashback to Dick's past in Titans 16 (Jun 2000), where she imports the B:tAS name. Sometimes I'm skeptical of TV-to-comics imports, but honestly, I endorse this one. You lose the alliteration, which is a shame, but IMO Zitka is a better elephant name than Elinore.

Here's Dick with the newly-christened Zitka in Titans 16:

Grayson also briefly references the elephant in Gotham Knights 20 and - in a final angsty callback - in Nightwing 88 (Feb 2004), where Zitka tries futilely to comfort Dick in the midst of his trauma conga line:

... And... honestly, I think that's it for comic appearances? The two Wolfman comics plus the three Grayson comics.

Both Wolfman and Grayson are writing multiple titles - Batman, New Titans, Titans, Gotham Knights, and Nightwing between the two of them, spanning a big chunk of Dick's post-Crisis canon - and both writers use the elephant for heartwarming moments of nostalgia, which means if you're doing a post-Crisis readthrough for Dick, Elinore/Zitka feels memorable. But I don't think she actually shows up that much.

For post-2011, I am not as well-informed - throwing this out to the dash? anyone know? - but I feel like Zitka the heartwarming symbol of Dick's heartwarming circus past is, uh, thematically very at odds with the Court of Owls evil!circus vibes, so my instinct is that this story element was almost certainly dropped in the reboot.

Did Dick ever have a stuffed elephant toy in comics?

In WFA, yes; in main comics continuity, no. Technically, I have not read every comic ever published, so I could be wrong!! But I don't think so.

Below, find my rambling reasoning on the tonal vibes of pre-Crisis, post-Crisis, and post-2011, and why this particular story element doesn't seem right to me for the first two.

Pre-Crisis (...okay, mostly the Silver Age): stuffed animal, yes or no?

tl;dr no, requires too much background knowledge on the part of the reader, plus the elephant wasn't a thing until later

Elinore doesn't get created until post-Crisis, but also just generally, pre-Crisis callbacks are more along the lines of this reference in Batman 129 (published in 1960), where, wow, Batman and Robin are hunting jewel thieves - and it turns out Robin recognized this strongman! BUT HOW?!

The comic goes on to recap Dick's entire origin story in flashback, on the assumption that you may not know it.

(BTW, if you'd like to know more about Haly's Circus throughout the years, nightwingology has a great post here summarizing a lot of fun plotlines and characters!)

Basically: Silver Age comics are very self-consciously episodic and kid-friendly; they're not generally gonna do overly-elaborate callbacks because they don't know what comics their kid readers may have randomly picked up or remember.

By the time of post-Crisis, comic books were being written for an adult audience buying from the direct market, i.e. readers who are collecting whole runs & don't need or want Dick's origin story to be recapped to us in full every time it's referenced. That's why in post-Crisis, we get stuff like "hey, neat, this particular soda brand is getting mentioned in several different books!!" or "in order to understand this story arc, buy SIXTEEN DIFFERENT COMICS in FIVE DIFFERENT RUNS and read them ALL ACCORDING TO A NUMBERED ORDER and also you better be following the individual plotlines and recognize these five minor characters who we don't bother to introduce!! Good luck!!" But the elaborate post-Crisis plotlines - and subtler worldbuilding like a stuffed animal callback to Dick's backstory - don't make a lot of story sense UNLESS you're imagining your readers as completionist adult fans.

So IMO a stuffed animal wouldn't be a pre-Crisis thing unless it was The Episodic Story Of the Week, and I don't think a stuffed animal is action-adventure-y enough for the fast-paced storytelling of the Silver Age. (Unless it, like, came to life and tried to eat you or something.)

Post-Crisis: stuffed animals, yes or no?

tl;dr: no, Dick's a manly tough guy, he's not gonna have a stuffed animal, that'd be lame, like something Tim might do

Part of the edgy grimdark adult vibes in 80s/90s comics is that some characters who used to be kinda silly & goofy & lighthearted - like Batman and Robin - get reimagined as Serious and Angsty and Edgy in a Tough Cool Manly Brooding Way. This massively affects characterization for Bruce, Dick, and Bruce and Dick's relationship.

(I obviously love this change & love the tense Bruce-and-Dick interactions, but plenty of fans of the earlier fluffy comics really disliked the edgy retcons of Miller / Wolfman / Starlin / et al.)

The upshot is that post-Crisis is a period when you could have a recurring reference like a stuffed elephant, but you wouldn't have a stuffed elephant, not for Dick. I think a toy like that would be too cutesy / childish / effeminate to give a male character in post-Crisis, unless you were poking fun at him.

Now, you could probably let Tim have a stuffed animal, because Tim is sometimes cool but also sometimes a tryhard loser who is faking being cool and not entirely pulling it off (see e.g. the Robin comic where he practices tough-guy faces in the mirror, or the Teen Titans comic where Conner discovers his cringy Enya CD, or when he's fanboying over Connor and it's awkward, etc etc.). A stuffed animal would be deeply embarrassing, and you'd have to be careful to compensate by having Tim do something cool afterward - but Tim's character concept allows for "he's kind of a loser sometimes."

But Dick isn't!! In post-Crisis, Dick's a tough / impressive / "cool guy" character, the kind of guy anyone would want to be, even in the flashbacks where he's Robin, and even in the stories where he's more lighthearted than angsty. It'd be kinda lame for Dick to have a stuffed elephant, so he wouldn't. I feel like Dick would be more likely to poke fun at it if someone had one, like when he's making fun of Wally for liking the Hardy Boys. Dick could have a Batman action figure, at most, and if he had one he would have it ironically.

Basically: in post-Crisis, a male character hugging a stuffed elephant feels more likely to be a punchline to me, not something poignant. (Even with Tim, Tim could have an embarrassing stuffed animal, but he couldn't hug it when sad - that's too far. Maybe Booster Gold might do this. Probably he wouldn't, but spiritually, he would. Sorry Booster ilu! <3)

Instead, Dick instinctively deals with his inner turmoil like the TORTURED ACTION HERO he is: by punching things and brooding and yelling and joining the mob and sleeping on rooftops and going on obsessive secret missions and acquiring Angsty Stubble!! Just like Batman!

(Technically I don't know if Bruce ever joined the mob but you know he would.)

Anyway as you know this is my favorite continuity and I am poking fun affectionately, but uh, yeah sdfsfdsfs. No stuffed animals.

Post-2011 / Infinite Frontier / Wayne Family Adventures: stuffed animals, yes or no?

tl;dr it's in WFA! Probably not anywhere else, but it could be.

Post-2011 stuff tends to be cutesier overall, most of all in the current Infinite Frontier era. So I don't feel like this would be tonally out-of-line with IF comics. Taylor tends to go for more meme-y references rather than fanfic references, though.

So the obvious best fit is WFA, which is aiming for a rough approximation of Silver Age family-friendly vibes - wholesome, episodic plots, Teaching Good Moral Lessons For The Youth, etc. - plus lots of Easter eggs for fanfic readers and some comic references.

And look, here we are:

Aww.

Whew - that's everything I could find!

Anyway as you can probably tell, I LOVE the elephant, so this was a very entertaining rabbit hole to go down, thank you <3

[helluvapurf]

*sips tea seeing HB "Mastermind" making its rounds*

...Sooooo, this latest episode's content definitely was... alot, in more ways than one lol .w. Don't really have the energy atm to do a full "Pros & Cons" list like my prior reviews, soooo... have some jumbled first impressions below lmao:

NOTE: Obv there'll be some spoilers ahead so do keep note of that... aaaaand like usual these ARE just my own personal thoughts at the end of the day, so *please* try to keep things civil if you disagree with anything below. Thank you. 🙏

WOO, nice to see some more Sins introduced on-screen! 🤩Satan is pretty rad with his cowboy dragon aesthetic, the sleepy sheep lady (Belphegor, I think?) looks cute, and I do like the idea of Leviathan being a two-head split creature (tho ngl, I kiiiinda wish her "pretty" half wasn't just a taller version of the Glam twins 😭 might just be the Bi in me talking hlhjk but... Viv y u so allergic to giving us pretty monster ladiessss-)

Great to see Asmodeus, Beezlebub & Mammon back all at once, and their courtroom getups were pretty cool~ 👀Loved Ozzie & Bee's lil friendship, along with Mammon being the most annoying brother-like figure to both Bee & Ozzie lmao

BLITZ'S (almost) FINAL SPEECH TO HIS WHOLE CREW PRE-EXECUTION (+requesting M&M to take care of Loona if he died), MY HEART- 😭😭❤️For all this man's flaws/past mistakes, there's NO denying how much he loves his employees & loved ones at the end of the day (& vice-versa on their ends)... hhhhh q-q

The inner-most squee I had at the Fizz cameo & his frantic worry for Blitz (+texting Ozzie to protect his best friend), aaaaaa~ TwT 💕💕 (*also semi-related side note; but YAY a lil Verosika cameo too (loving her twin-tail hairdo~), even showing fearful concern for Blitz's fate? Aww~ 🥺🩷Plsss let this be a sign her character's not completely done in terms of screentime, I'd SO love for more Blitz/Verosika bonding moments (to maybe a potential brotp forming) as he got with Fizz! 🙏🙏*)

Striker returns, yaaaay!~ 😍 ...aaaand he's mainly just there to act like a dumb grunt to Andre's plotting, oh... 😐'least his court getup's pretty snazzy though, loving the jacket~👌

Blitz + IMP finally getting to receive some hero treatments in the public (Impkind's) eye, fireworks, street celebrations, and potential new clients-included? Sweeeeet~ 👏👏

...well I'll be, Stolas actually getting some narrative consequences here?? 😲😲Standing up for Blitz's life, taking the blame for the Grimoire's misuse, accepting his punishment of the 100 year ban from his status, wealth & powers that were part of his life since forever... daaaaang, now this is some good character building here!~ 👀 Now, with such an honorable & grand gesture Stolas did for the sake of Blitz, their brief duet, and the end shot of them basically becoming roommates now that Stolas has nothing left... does this make me an official Stol*itz shipper now?? 🤩 ...Hmmmmmmmmm, nah lol 🤷‍♀️Now, okay I don't mean to sound like some negative nancy bitch or however, cause I AM proud of Stolas taking the lengths he did to protect Blitz & IMP (and now with him not having a fancy prince title anymore, this could potentially give him the chance to challenge his past privileged/classist mindset, living in the same social class as the same Imps his fellow Goetia society have long-oppressed). However, if there's anything I've learned from shows like Bojack Horseman... big grand gestures are NOT the be-all/end-all answer to proving romantic compatibility 👏👏

When it comes to any sort of relationship, romantic or otherwise... what should matter most is consistent, genuine care & support from one partner to another. And as far as we've seen from Stolas & Blitz's dynamic up til this point... imo, they really haven't had enough positive (non-sexual) bonding moments (save for stuff like their attempts at small talk at "Ozzie's", Stolas laughing at Blitz's sitcom jokes in "Seeing Stars", one photo of Blitz smiling while they slept), to justify them being some "destined-for-one-another" couple? 🤷‍♀️ Not helped by how both men were constantly avoiding & bickering at one another for most of S2 up til now... Iiiii can't be the only one who found it just a tad rushed Blitz was suddenly all "loving/domestic hubby mode🥺🥺" towards Stolas at the end... right? .w.;; Esp. in light of Stolas going through so much as he had to in one trial (+the realization of what'll become of his daughter, following said-punishment) ...he really, really shouldn't be in the mindset for tackling romance rn (at least til he continues to grow & heal better, down the line)... with OR without Blitz😔

....buuut yeah, thats just my own take on the matter; so ofc NO shade at all to those who are genuine Stolas/Stol*itz fans btw (thanks to this ep and/or previous ones), you're valid!👍👍For me, I'll still be vibing onwards with my own personal HCs/ships, so feel free to stay tuned for that if you're curious! :>

Now that we've finally got to meet Vassago upfront, Iiiii'm honestly a lil disappointed he was just... "there" in terms of plot-relevancy (even with all his previous trailer/merch hype)? .w.;; Don't get me wrong, I DO find it refreshing that Vassago's actually a nice guy, and that Stolas did have some genuine support in the Goetia society after all. But other than Vassago wholesomely cheering on Stolas by the sidelines... hmmm, I can't help feeling like not much would've changed had Vassago not been here at all, ngl 🤷‍♀️ Maaaaybe S3 might change things if he gets more spotlight there instead (esp with what I remember everyone theorizing of Vassago (possibly) becoming a 2nd love interest for Stolas .3. idk, part of me's kinda curious how that'd play out with Blitz in the picture- 🤔)?

Andrealphus's antagonist spotlight here... was fine, I guess? Idk, I can't say I've ever been too big a fan of Andre beforehand (mainly from his late-inclusion in the Stolas plot feeling a lil forced + him stealing the spotlight of what could've been interesting villain potential for Stella imo). Not to say I didn't find some of his hammy dialogue funny, along with enjoying the visuals of his ice magic... buuuut yeah, still pretty lukewarm towards him either way 🤷‍♀️could've also done without those creepy af comments about his sister as well... like bruh that in*cest shit wasn't funny the first time, whyyy keep bringing that back- 🤢

Speaking of Stella... ehhhhh, still a pretty flat character as she was in previous episodes (which I guess shouldn't be too surprising with this show's track record with female characters ngl 🤷‍♀️). Interesting to finally see an on-screen interaction with her & Octavia though (granted, not exactly on a good note given her evil smirk at the end... but I guess it does answer some HC questions I had previously of what their mother/daughter dynamic is like, hmmm... 🤔).

As for Octavia in-question... hhHHHH MY POOR BIRD CHILD T-T 💔💔Girl practically watched her greatest fears coming true (aka: Stolas abandoning her for the sake of Blitz), seeing what became of her dad on live-TV. Even if she obviously doesn't know the full story (esp with her mom & uncle pulling strings), its still SO heartbreaking when you consider her trailer sneak-peek ("You never loved Mother, you don't love me, you love him-"). And with only one episode left before S2 wraps up... ooooof, this ain't gonna be pretty ;-;

---------

-Hoooo yeah, that was alot of rambling my bad... but yeah, thats about as clear of thoughts as I have rn regarding "Mastermind". Even with some of the (admittedly) bloated cast, and some other narrative nitpicks I have with it... I'm honestly hyped to see how the upcoming finale will tie all these big plot points together! 👀🤞🤞

[dr-lurker]

AU in which stargoth doesn't quarrel over keys and wishes but also doesn't know each other... until Chase, who partecipates as an artist to a project that basically lets people dedicate songs via telephone to their loved ones by choosing a small musician, selecting one of the available songs, leaving the receiver's number in their page site and add a message for the artist to read out before singing the song on the phone if the sender wants to, has to deliver one single song to Nox by calling him.

But Nox hates answering to unknown numers, so he doesn't, and to his contempt the calls just keep going on for days and days, up to the moment he decides to pick up in order to tell whoever the hell it is on the other line off. In the worst way possible. As one does.

Cue some arguing, Chase calling Nox again and again just to sing songs he knows he'll hate with his acoustic guitar, and Nox maybe getting used to the new routine. Perhaps there might even be a proper serenade in the middle of everything.

(The site is not my idea tho, it truly exists. I didn't explain it properly, but it's so well done and the artists are so talented.)

[cecoeur]

I need daniel to get over himself actually.

[sludge-engineer]

Today Trump announced that he's creating concentration camps (he's sending illegal immigrants to Guantanamo Bay i.e. life imprisonment without trial in a camp) and no one on this website is talking about it. It's not evening on the trending page.

[irhabiya]

commit to antizionism or fuck off

[sukibenders]

Summarizing Twitter and Tiktoks current climate: "Since you didn't stand in solidarity with me, I'm turning on you and going to the places that are actively assisting in your pain." + "While showing my true colors and expressing my fake activism, I'm also ignoring how I'm assisting in perpetuating a system that keeps me and others like me down as, for example, the places I go to that are assisting in your pain also assist in the pain of myself and others like me, but as long as I get to turn on you it's all good."