#(at least for the in-world explanation)

[polkadotjohnson]

Murderbot 3 - Risk Assessment (2025)

[emioliravioli]

all of the blazes in issue 4 of the DC crossover

[loverboybrightsideghost]

one of my favorite clark headcanons that i have (that is completely unsupported by canon) is that he's transgender by kryptonian standards. martha and jon kent raised him as a boy and as he grew up he never had any reason to doubt it at all, he was like yeah i'm a boy, makes sense. and then he gets to the fortress of solitude for the first time and it turns out how Gender works on krypton was just Different enough that clark doesn't really fit the kryptonian standards of whatever he was supposed to be. bonus points because this makes him feel like even more of an outsider as a kryptonian, even if he's the last one left.

[aroaceleovaldez]

Jason, Reyna, and Nico have one billion in-jokes about Mediterranean history between the bronze age to the renaissance that they find absolutely hilarious and no one else understands in the slightest. i know this in my heart to be true.

[tropicalcontinental]

So real 💥💥💥

Andrew mentioning the fact thay Chris had a creeper birthday suit skin + mentioning he had a cringe gamer boy MC skin way back when + the aforementioned tags has culminated into this, they sillys

[spearxwind]

Idk if this counts as spoilers but if Adri is essentially like a computer virus where did he get a physical body from?? Did he steal it from someone or was it provided for him to he put into??? So much to think about........

GREAT QUESTION! He stole it :)

He stole the body and the body's name for himself, and then fabricated an appearance and personality and mannerisms.

His body is one of the previously many nanomachine systems set in place in the Old World to safeguard and maintain both people and machinery. They were known as Guardian Arrays, but now they are referred to as Angels. Only two are currently known to still be fully operational, Adri being one of them.

The Fall (Otherwise known as the literal end of the world) was an apocalypse event where a system bug caused every advanced enough AI to go rogue and turn on mankind. It started small, but spread far and wide exponentially and it irreparably changed whatever it infected. The Arrays, being as important as they were, had more safeguards in place against this stuff but it still didn't stop them from becoming infected. Especially ADRIEL. The corruption inside it became severe enough that it first became a virus, and then grew into a full fledged self compiled AI that was notorious enough to be given its own name "Usurper", though you know it as "The Hydra".

The only way to avoid being completely wiped out during this event was to mass purge absolutely EVERYTHING (so humanity lost basically 99% of their tech and their knowledge). Did this work? kiiiind of.

Because of it's self compiled nature, ADRIEL was never able to be properly purged, so instead it was (after a monumental, worldwide effort) put to sleep beneath the earth, never to be disturbed again.

Until....

[tonhalszendvics]

Okay so this post made me realise that either Carvahall or Roran's family is done for good. Like, in the beginning of the story, the village starts as maybe a bunch of free farmers living their best life away from a feudal lord. But by the end? They have Roran there in the edge of their village as a local noble. As a noble, he ought to not do certain stuff, like working on the field, or the other nobles would look down on his family. Meaning, Ismira wouldn't get a nice noble boy asking for her hand, and if she marries a farmer or a mercenary, her children wouldn't inherit her rank.

As for any future children: the same goes for all girls, and the boys' kids might still be nobles, but there is a slooow ramp downwards.

Unless one of them decides to go full lord and would do lordy things like offering help to struggling farmers in exchange for pieces of their freedom, until they are fully dependent from their lord – becoming the people you'd call peasants.

Which means: Roran's family either loses all wealth and name in max. two generations, or Carvahall slowly turns from a free village to a lord's possession.

[zukkaoru]

ohhh you guys are reading bsd without suspending your disbelief. you guys are expecting to get a clear cut perfectly understandable scientific explanation for something that can't actually happen in the real world, and then you're upset when you don't get it. you're forgetting that bsd has always had fantastical elements in it and it is not meant to be a 1:1 replication of Our World. you don't have to know and understand every single scientific concept being talked about in the recent chapters; you just have to be able to get the general idea and realize that this isn't the real world, so it won't make sense by the standards of our reality. then maybe you can stop whining about how nonsensical all the dialogue is and start appreciating the story itself

[everykabuto]

[jakeluppin]

if you had to pick 5 songs to represent today (whatever that means to you), what would you pick?

oooh this fun okay let's see

portugal - walk the moon

anxious - hippo campus

finger back - vampire weekend

miss delaney - jack's mannequin

synesthesia - andrew mcmahon in the wilderness

[asgardian--angels]

things I wish I could relive for the first time again:

that magical window where you finish a new piece of media, having watched/read it all by yourself with no fandom contact whatsoever, and you are just so happy about it, and full of interesting theories and takeaways, and just in love with it as a gorgeous piece of art.

because I swear to god as soon as you join the fandom for anything, you're bombarded with how you're supposed to view characters and their arcs, how you're supposed to morally and ethically judge the plot and the ways it apparently failed to present the right message, and if you don't you'll either be shunned for not sharing the popular headcanons or you'll be harassed for not criticizing the source material enough.

like how is it that the fans of a piece of media are also the ones being the most negative about it? If I like a show or a movie or a book, well, I liked it. That's kind of the point. I'm actually not here to tear it apart and talk about how it didn't live up to standards other people had! I enjoyed it for what it was, and forcing myself to find negative things to say about it doesn't actually bring me more enjoyment of it or reap any benefit to me. Fandom's a double-edged sword; you want to join a community to share your love for a piece of art, and the price you pay for a modicum of joy is a mountain of negativity. that's one main reason that I never engage with fandom until I'm completely done with a show, because if I was plugged into all of that commentary and discourse during the process, I'd be completely colored by how I'm expected to interpret everything this piece of art is presenting to me without being able to even form my own opinions.

[curemoonliite]

if you're wondering how my day is going, my mom and i just came across an egg with a dead bird still inside and i said "ew gross" a few seconds too quickly so i wouldn't be able to say the thing i really wanted to say (the fucking utena student council speech)

[unproduciblesmackdown]

winston my quant of billions

[eri-pl]

So I was thinking about how the solution to Legendarium (and adulting in general! And arguably other things) is always "the secret third solution, but you can't try to cheat, and it'll be harder than you think" (sorry, I can't phrase it better. But see: B&L, Fingon rescuing Maedhros, what to do with the Ring, probably a lot of other things I forgot).

And I thought about Turgon sending all those sailors to Valinor, which kinda was the third option, and asked myself: what if Turgon sailed himself? (Leaving ruling the city to Idril for example).

It feels like something that might have worked despite the ban and all (it is out-of-the-box, and he was Ulmo's fav Elf). (Yes, I know it is said that Earendil got to Valinor only because he had the Silmaril.)

What do you think?

[avelera]

Where the heck is Satan in Good Omens S2?

And could we perhaps find evidence of him in the places where the furniture used to be?

For reference:

Hastur & Ligur, 1.1: "All Hail Satan." "All Hail Satan."

Crowley, 1.5: "I never asked to be a demon. I was just minding my own business one day and then… oh, lookie here, it's Lucifer and the guys."

Adam Young 1.6: "You're not my dad and you never were."

Satan, 1.6: "No, no, no!" (He promptly dissolves into black ash and vanishes. Immediately after, Aziraphale and Crowley look at their no-longer-flaming sword and tire iron as if not entirely sure why they're there.)

Crowley, 2.1: "Do you ever think, what's the point? ... Heaven, Hell, Demons, Angels?"

Crowley 2.2 (circa ~2000 BCE): "Satan and his diabolical ministers..."

Gabriel 2.3: "I remember when the morning stars sang together and all the angels of god shouted for joy.” (emphasis mine. Lucifer/Satan was the Morning Star. Why the heck is morning stars plural??)

Edit: Shax 2.6: “I demand that you hand over both Gabriel and Beelzebub as gifts for Satan, our master.” (Could debunk the whole theory, might not only because she seems pretty low-ranked and could be going through the motions even though he's gone, but we'll see. Including to get all the evidence down.)

... And I think there's some other S2 references to higher ups and "Our Lord" by Shax supposedly, but I'm too sleep-deprived to go combing through for them (I'd be much obliged if anyone else could grab any other exact quotes that mention Satan by name or seem to refer to him in Season 2.)

Let's first get the Doylist explanation for why Satan might not be around out of the way: Satan was the Big Bad of Season 1. He's been dispatched. Furthermore, he's played by the most likely very expensive Benedict Cumberbatch, so he's not likely to be back in a hurry if it at all can be avoided, and alluding to him at all might just create confusion with viewers who will then expect to see Satan.

(Below the cut: but what if there's more to it than that?)

But as others may have seen with the, "Metatron is actively editing the Book of Life in S2 and that's why things are weird," meta, there's quite a bit of speculation going around that something fucky is going on in S2.

However, while I agree that some points in S2 are certainly fucky I'm not convinced on all or even most of the supporting evidence. Most of the explanations have a Doylist counterpoint like "It's just bad writing," or "They just wanted to bring back some actors they enjoyed working with," or, "The film crew just made a mistake," or "They just forgot that bit of continuity." After all, half of the original writing duo is tragically no longer with us, so there's going to be some level of story drift regardless.

While in general I find the, "It's not that deep," explanation more plausible in most instances, I'd be a very poor disgruntled English Major indeed if I made sweeping claims that the wallpaper being blue is always a coincidence. It's muddier with TV because there's so many proverbial cooks in the kitchen and plenty of human error to go around, but I'd equally never claim that I think Good Omens S2 wasn't a labor of love by those who worked on it, and certainly there's evidence that care was taken in its production, so everything that's off being a mistake is also not a sweeping generalization I'd want to make either.

Which is my way of saying that I'm not convinced by the Metatron meta but I think some of the ideas there are on to something. I don't think it's plausible that a writer would in S3 reveal that in S2, the heretofore largely off-screen character of the Metatron was actively editing the story as we went with the heretofore only mentioned once, never seen, and immediately denounced as a joke Book of Life. BUT, there is some fucky stuff happening that I won't say was the result of some Genius Mastermind Writer deciding it was a good idea to actively write badly and provide stories with no payoff, but I will consider that some of the apparent continuity errors might not be so accidental as they seem, because this was a labor of love and at least on this count, I don't think that Neil was necessarily that careless. Or at least, I'm more inclined to look for clues in places where I can see logistical choices being made, rather than in more subjective claims like "This bad writing is meant to be Bad Writing and therefore a Clue." Because writing is hard even under the best of circumstances, especially in TV and having lost the aforementioned half of a beloved writing duo.

Moving on! Thing is, if we're to believe that there's some sort of mystery hidden in plain sight that was introduced in Season 2, then it did not pay off yet. This makes me a little suspicious of the overall claims that there was a hidden Season 2 mystery, because a good mystery really should pay off within the text, and expecting the reader to keep their unsatisfied suspicions in their heads for 3-4 years for a later satisfying conclusion is... optimistic at best and downright sloppy at worst.

Unless, the mystery spans the entire show. If the clues we're seeing are meant to pay off in S3, and we assume some level of competence, then more likely these are series spanning mysteries that will be satisfying when one is able to watch all three installments. And that means, if there is a mystery in S2, we should be checking back with Season 1 to look for the roots of it.

Which is what brings me to Satan.

What on Earth happened to Satan?

Is Satan still around?

Now, my theory would be much more satisfying to me, personally, if Satan's name was never spoken in S2 but alas, there is the Book of Job episode and I believe some other mentions by name, mostly by Shax? I'd love some backup on that. But I very deliberately don't count demons just saying things like, "Our lord" or making vague referrals to the powers that be to be references to Satan because if he's vanished, someone could have easily filled the power vacuum or there could be an empty throne room somewhere and everyone is just going through the motions (or he's become the Sandman Lucifer who fucked off to lie on a beach, which would be delightful. Anyway).

When Hastur and Ligure showed up in 1.1 they specifically said, "All Hail Satan," and Crowley was shown to be an outsider that he did not return this familiar call-and-response. Yet no one in Hell in S2 uses the All Hail Satan greeting. The references to Satan are few, even in Hell. There doesn't seem to be a lot of fear of Satan either, but more around other higher-ups like Beelzebub, Duke of Hell, who appears to be the highest ranking person we see in Hell?

And also interestingly, Crowley and Beelzebub are both lamenting how pointless all of this seems. Kind of interesting for two individuals who still despise Heaven too and, presumably, took Satan's side once long ago when they all Fell. The political fire has definitely gone out of them, which can be plausibly attributed to the Apocalypse failing and/or the two of them falling in love with their Angelic counterparts, but it's also just kind of weird that suddenly they both really don't see the point in any of these conflicts that once defined their existence.

Perhaps, and this is where I go out on a limb or ten, because Satan isn't around anymore?

Is there no longer a hand at the wheel in Hell, reminding everyone of their loathing of Heaven?

Is there no longer someone actively above Beelzebub, telling them what to do, such that they have the freedom to sneak away and pursue a romance with an archangel and not have their boss show up to stop them the way Gabriel's did?

Did Adam, when he made Satan not his father but more importantly that Satan never was his father, undo more than we realize?

Because that's the kind of Gaiman mystery that I can wholly believe is lurking in plain sight, because Satan was a big deal in S1, he was the Big Bad! It's in the text! The damned book series is built on the idea of a satirical Antichrist take on The Omen. All Hail Satan is one of the first spoken lines of dialogue in the book. Satan is kind of central to any story that's going to revolve around a battle between Heaven and Hell!

And yet... he's barely mentioned this season. And demons suddenly don't remember what they're fighting for. How odd.

Maggie and Nina's actresses also played nuns of the Satanic Chattering Order of St. Beryl. If there was no Antichrist, isn't it possible that neither of those women would have become Satanic nuns and might, instead, own a coffee shop and a record store somewhere?

If there was no Antichrist, isn't it possible that through some convoluted series of events, Madame Tracy, a witch, fell afoul of a demon or managed to become one herself?

Isn't it possible that once you open the door to the ripple effects of a Satan who either never existed (though the Fall still happened) or who only existed up until at least Job, but who was never Adam's father, that some other fucky things could happen too, like Aziraphale suddenly not being fond of alcohol? This continuity detail is much more of a stretch but it is such a plot point in the book that Aziraphale loves to drink and S1 that I do find that particular continuity break particularly vexing and it's one I side-eye the most in terms of "not sure if sloppiness or a Clue".

Anyway, point is:

Satan is curiously absent this season and technically, he was unmade or at least unmade as Adam's father last season. If something is fucking with the timeline, I think that on-screen, very visible event deserves some scrutiny over and beyond vaguely alluded to, off-screen fuckery by the Metatron with no in-text confirmation at all.

There's a lot of weird and bad writing in S2, sure, but some of the continuity breaks do, admittedly, feel too big to be simple oversights and I don't think it's entirely conspiratorial to think something more might be going on and if such a mystery is going to span multiple seasons, we should look back to S1 for the seeds.

It is possible that the unmaking of Satan has had ripple effects that explain some of these continuity changes and some of the cheeky casting of S1 actors in new roles as perhaps not entirely without in-story justification.

So in my mind, the question I have no answer to, but that might deserve some scrutiny going into Season 3 is:

How much did Satan never being Adam's father alter the timeline?

Edit: And here's one last spooky quote to consider: “I remember when the morning stars sang together and all the angels of god shouted for joy." - Gabriel's weird prophecy / quoting of God

Why single out the reference to morning stars plural? Lucifer is very famously the Morning Star, you can't accidentally allude to morning stars in this context without referring to him, you just can't. So what the fuck is going on with this Biblically sourced quote that sort of alludes to Satan, but not by name, and makes the reference to the Morning Star plural?? And even though it is the original text, apparently, it's still a choice by the writers to really highlight the line about morning stars and give that line to Gabriel to say in the present too. Something is sus.

[seaofreverie]

I was tagged by @carcarrot to share 9 perfect road trip/travel albums! Yippee thank you ❤️

Tagging @become-a-robot @marrasmoon @find-your-way-from-here @crystalblast @where-did-the-groove-go and anyone else who wants to do this!