#anyways fuck these gcses

[shiftingwitholive]

so i was trying to go to sleep early (i go back to school tomorrow and i need to do exams) but then i was imagining the first time i see my s/o and immediately had like a physical reaction wth 😭

i was gonna wait till after exams but tbh i'm just gonna shift tonight instead. i can't wait to walk into that room and see him for the first time ever aaaaaaaaahhhh

[thetardisisnotourdivision]

I am unreasonably upset about the fact that I've been forced to accept that Gabriel was a Gerald.

For context, in An Inspector Calls, Gerald Croft is engaged to Sheila Birling when he meets a homeless, struggling Eva Smith in a bar, and essentially in return for a home and money he shows her affection (ahem), then gets rid of her once he no longer has a use for her. Now, obviously this isn't a direct translation, but the essentials are - a Gerald is a character who uses another character, in return for something they need, usually masking the fact that they're using them with affection and love.

And against my will I've had to accept that this is exactly what Gabriel does to Nathalie.

Did I want to think he had potential to be better? Did I think he genuinely cared for Nathalie?? Hell, did I just really really want somebody to care about Nathalie???

Probably all of the above but the point is: he's Gerald. And I cannot - I literally can't unsee it now. Their whole dynamic in S3 is like “oh boohoo I'm sorry I wish you didn't have to use the peacock Miraculous and kill yourself over it but uh I need to use your powers” “yeah no that's fine I'm all good”. Which, given the "Gerald" theorem, I'm assuming leads to the fact that what Nathalie needed, above all, was someone to care about her - and Gabriel came along, as Sheila Birling puts it, "like a fairytale prince", and was so caring and gentle and... Yeah. She fell for him. And. Yeah he genuinely did seem to care like twice. But so did Gerald. Gerald actually admits that he did care for Eva, just not the way that she cared for him, and, uh, not enough to not just dispose of her. So he discards her anyway when she stops being useful.

Leading me neatly to my point.

He starts using the peacock Miraculous the second it's fixed, the slimy bastard, HOWEVER. It runs way deeper than that. Assuming I'm right (which I almost DEFINITELY am), then Gabriel only needed Nathalie while she was useful. She didn't stop being useful in season three - she's still scheming for him, helping him with plan after plan. It's only partway through season 5 that she officially servers ties with him, and starts to actively hinder him.

Nathalie stops being useful when she fails as Safari. And I reckon that's when Gabriel and Tomoe decided she had to go.

(It's painfully, I-was-ugly-crying-over-it obvious in Conformation that Gabriel is fully prepared to let Nathalie die - in the original storyboard, her alliance was encouraging her to sleep, and he's very obviously prepared for this moment - I've made a separate post about it that I'll link if I can find it. However, onto the next bit)

With all of this, there's one thing that sticks out to me - Nathalie didn't see any of it until it was already too late. There could be many reasons for this. But you know who would have seen through it? Whose parents were all loving and perfect until she married the wrong man? Emilie. Emilie, who left behind those videos, which on the surface look innocent, but when you look deeper look like a (love confession???????) AHEM a warning. I reckon Emilie noticed what was going on and realised that Nathalie wouldn't see through Gabriel, so she left those videos addressed to Nathalie (not Gabriel, which surely they should have been - they were about him, after all - unless they were there...) as a warning. I don't think the videos were supposed to be about helping Gabriel, I think Emilie was warning Nathalie to get the fuck out of that house, and to take Adrien with her. Because Emilie knew it'd end like this.

Yes I'm still mad ok give me a break.

[crypticcanidae]

okay so i saw a post recently that introduced me to. several kinda badly written vg codex entries. but specifically the entries 'halla's resolve' and 'contract: the next march'. i didn't find either of those when i played the game, so when i read them i kinda just. yknow. fucking what???

i have Some Thoughts about them. and some of the implications they have for. thedas' worldbuilding? idk. i've done my best to make this readable

halla's resolve mentions 'mutual respect that began when Antiva stood strong with the Dales'.

this is a retcon, right? i know that's been thrown at a lot of things in vg regardless of if it's correct or not but. this for sure is i think? there's never been mention of anything like this before?

antiva and the dales are pretty far apart, geographically. they have orlais, nevarra, and the free marches between them on land. by sea, antivan ships could follow the coast down into the waking sea, but that's assuming the dales have access to the sea and weren't cut off by orlesian territory. the dales also seem to have been fairly isolationist, and happy to keep to themselves as long as no one bothered them - understandable, given the elves had only been freed from the imperium for. a couple hundred years? but not really conducive to forming alliances with neighbours.

overall, the dales and antiva weren't close enough for sheer proximity to have forced any sort of friendship to form, and even if they were, the elves may not have been interested (which again. fair enough, honestly.), but there was also little reason for them to form any sort of relationship through trade or anything else. the dales don't really seem to have had any ties to the human nations around them, and none of those nations would really have had any reason to be willing to oppose the orlesian empire for the dales.

also. during the exalted march against the dales, antiva was. kinda busy? fending off an invasion? so they probably wouldn't have been able to help, even if they wanted to. (this is how i can tell i'm putting more thought into a 30-word codex entry than the writers did, i spent like half an hour on the wiki throwing together a timeline to figure out what events were happening around the fall of the dales lmao. and i looked at a map of thedas. i'm not entirely convinced the writers did that either.)

mutual respect between who exactly? the nations of the dales and antiva, one of which was destroyed? the nation of antiva and the dalish people? we don't have reason to believe antiva's elves are treated any better than in the rest of thedas.

if we ignore all that and assume that antiva was, for some reason, involved in the exalted march, on the side of the dales. shouldn't this have had consequences we would have heard about? given that they lost? was the antiva of the glory age more supportive of elves than every other andrastian nation, and those elves were simply blamed for dragging antiva into their war until any support had vanished? did orlais seek any sort of retribution against antiva for siding with their enemy? we know thedas' people can hold grudges for centuries, given that elves and mages are still mistreated for actions over seven hundred and a thousand years old, respectively. what impact did siding with the elves and then losing actually have??

contract: the next march has the line 'If nations march on the elves, Antiva will not be silent. Never again.'

does this not directly contradict halla's resolve? to me, this one implies that when the dales were destroyed antiva stayed out of it, but the other one implies antiva directly involved itself in some way. which is it?? (or is this just another casualty of vg being scraped out of joplin and morrison's corpses in. what. 2 years? like how the griffons are simultaneously both a decade old and also still babies. yes im still pissed abt that.)

or is the implication here that the crows wouldn't allow antiva to be silent in the event of another march? in which case. other people have already said plenty abt vg portraying the crows as a family of friendly freedom fighters (and i do not buy the justification that house arainai was actually the only house buying slaves and abusing it's assassins. arainai was first, then second talon until shortly before the fifth blight, if anything they would have been the gold standard for how crow houses operate. also. zevran deserves better.) the crows are an organisation of contract killers. yes, entire houses can be hired for an operation, and presumably the crows as a whole, if you had enough money, but that brings up another problem for me (actually a couple):

who hired the crows for this contract? with what money? and what are the targets? 1. presumably, the dalish in an effort to protect themselves in the future, but was this something arranged by one elf, or one clan, or was this debated and decided by every clan at an arlathvhen or several? 2. the dalish are self-sufficient nomads, with only a few clans willing to trade with humans. they can likely make a decent amount of coing through that, but not enough to hire enough crows to ensure a response from all of antiva. the most valuable things most clans probably have are artifacts from the dales, which they would never part with willingly given that their culture is built around preserving and recovering as much of the dales as possible (which. why are the veiljumpers dedicated to recovering arlathan? where did they even come from? what was bellara's clan like? was she their first? did she want to be a keeper? and also. how does the lords of fortune's dalish expert work? do the lords get paid for returning elven artifacts? with what money? what about old human or dwarven artifacts? how many advisors do the lords have? which cultures get advisors?). 3. if a march is called against the elves. do the crows murder every chantry official in antiva? blackmail the nobility into noncompliance? what are they actually supposed to do against a march??

contract: the next march's wiki page also notes the game files have a comment abt this entry, 'A standing contract should the elven nation come to threat.'

as i've noted before, there currently isn't an elven nation. unless vg is canonising the origins boon of the elves being granted land in ferelden! (and it's somehow survived the unspecified incident alistair can mention in da2). which is an odd choice but at this point. what the hell sure. that's why there's no dalish or city elves in vg, they're all actually getting blighted to starvation down in ferelden. which, if we're ignoring worldstate canons, could have three circles now! kinloch hold, the orzammar circle (the chantry prevents an independent circle so mages might head to orzammar anyway), and the jainen circle (from da legends, the mobile? game) which is mentioned in this crossroads note (the only good thing vg did).

also that timeline i mentioned, just in case anyone wants to check what i'm working off here

-165 ancient - land of the dales given to the elves

-30 ancient - nation of antiva formed

1:05 divine - darkspawn emerge in anderfels, second blight begins

1:16 divine - battle of cumberland

1:20 divine - nevarran accord signed, circle/templars/seekers founded

1:25 divine - darkspawn nearly destroy montsimmard, dales provide no assistance

1:31 divine - darkspawn assault minrathous, city survives but imperium is weakened. drakon's forces relieve siege of weisshaupt, conquer and convert anderfels.

1:40 divine - ferelden alamarri unite against darkspawn

1:45 divine - drakon dies, andrastianism becomes popular in antiva

1:50 divine - alamarri defeat chasind and avvar

1:65 divine - anderfels declare independence from orlais

1:95 divine - zazikel killed at starkhaven

2:09 glory - dales-orlais war breaks out after red crossing

2:10 glory - elves capture montsimmard, reach val royeaux. exalted march called, only orlais provides troops.

2:15 glory - starkhaven begins conquering free marches and antiva with tevinter support

2:20 glory - halamshiral conquered, elves split between city and dalish elves

2:33 glory - antivan cities ally with each other and free marches cities for defence

2:45 glory - starkhaven betrayed and annexed by tevinter

and some notes i couldn't really fit into the timeline

the imperium abandons the anderfels as the darkspawn spread east, at some point in the 26 years between the blight beginning and the darkspawn assaulting minrathous

drakon's armies are present at every major battle against the darkspawn across thedas, and they spread the chant of light everywhere they go

the elves don't help against the blight because they don't consider the orlesian empire to be any better than the imperium - this one's difficult because. yknow. the blight's an apocalypse, how can you not try to fight that? but also again. the elves have good reason not to trust humans. and if they had sent soldiers to combat the blight, who's to say orlais wouldn't have taken the chance to conquer the dales while they were weakened, even in the middle of a blight? they did exactly that in the anderfels, after all.

drakon's heir is ineffective militarily and politically, leading to a lot more damage from the blight, and creating the conditions for the anderfels to seek independence

the first dated crow contract (possibly just the first notable enough to be recorded?) was in 3:09 towers. the crows themselves began as an arm of the chantry in antiva. andrastianism, and then the orlesian chantry, was only becoming popular in antiva by 1:45 divine. the crows aren't mentioned in regards to starkhaven's invasion attempt in the glory age - does that mean they didn't quite exist yet, or that they just didn't have the power/influence to make an impact?

[zephlovesspacestuff]

When you're screaming at yourself to revise for ages but you just can't move because you're numb and tired and just want everything to be over already

[catoswound]

might have to start learning latin on my own. ermmm salwe qwuirites....

[grcetxt]

scrolling thru the "fuck gcses" tag and it being full of students like me being miserable and wanting to die GUYS WE WILL GET THROUGH THIS! THESE EXAMS DONT DETERMINE THE REST OF OUR LIVES. I PROMISE YOU THAT YOU WILL BE OKAY EVEN THOUGH TRUST ME IK HOW AWFUL IT IS RN

[applesaucesomething]

Some recent deltarune wips that i dont really like that much but meh

[pop-r0ckz]

yall I wasn’t even supposed to make it to 15 what do I do now

[karmaajr]

chat I have sm fucking homework/incomplete classwork to do or thats been due for ages and it's genuinley way too much, like there's a scratch at the back of my throat and I'm afraid only a revolver could satisfy it 😙🫶

BUT FUCK IT WE BALL FRFR

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

It's been like a week or so since I finished the book I read for the Non Fiction square for @batmanisagatewaydrug's book bingo because I have struggled to talk about The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot without crying. Whether those tears were because I was sad or angry was kinda irrelevant because it was kind of all the same.

The book is about Henrietta Lacks and the immortal cell line, HeLa, that came from her cervical cancer, but it's also about a lot more than that. A big part of it is about exploitation and patients' rights and the ethical boundaries that science and medicine should be practiced within, and how common it is for that latter one to be ignored. But more than anything, it's about Henrietta's daughter Deborah and her search to learn about her mother and about her older sister Elsie.

Henrietta Lacks was a black woman who went to John Hopkins Hospital in 1951 because she found a tumour on her cervix though she - and most other people - wouldn't have used those words exactly. While she was being treated, her doctor took a sample from her cervix to give to George Gey so he could try to keep a human cell line alive outside of the body. At no point did they even attempt to get consent for it because well, most scientists were in agreement then that they didn't need to get consent. She also wasn't warned that the radium treatments she was getting would make it so she couldn't have another child. She died later that year but her cells lived on and a lot of people made a lot of money from her cells. It wasn't long before her cells were being shipped around the globe to researchers everywhere. An entire manufacturing plant for them was built at Tuskegee and manned by mostly African Americans while the infamous Tuskegee Study was also going on.

And her family had no idea. People became millionaires from her cells and for the longest time, her family had no idea. Her family lived and continues to live (the book was published in 2010) in poverty and they've not had reliable health insurance. And once they were made aware, they never saw any money for it and it took a very long time for any scientist or doctor to treat them properly. They were targeted by scam artists, and there was one incident where a doctor essentially misled the family so that they could get blood samples from her kids.

There are other cases where people have been treated like this peppered in the book and it just makes you shake with rage. There's a story about at least one doctor saying that the Nuremberg Code isn't relevant in the US because it's the US and not Nazi Germany. Also a direct quote from the book goes as such: "But the Nuremberg Code – like other codes that would come after it – wasn’t law." It's enough to drive you crazy.

And then there's Elsie, Henrietta's eldest daughter. And fuck I'm crying again. I can't talk about Elsie without crying even when I'm typing. I'm just gonna keep it short to get through it, but Elsie was developmentally disabled and died in an institution at the age of 15 after likely being an unwilling participant in very cruel experiments that no one at the time would have even thought of asking consent for. She was never told her mother died, all she knew is that one day her mother stopped visiting.

In some ways, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a harrowing read, but it's also very beautiful at times. There's also an aside about an absolutely bonkers eugenicist and his immortal (except not really) chicken heart as well as his dreams of being a South American dictator (he was French btw) and his eventual death awaiting trial for collaborating with the Nazis. Insert Bill Hader SNL "this club has everything" gif.

"If the whole profession is doing it, how can you call it ‘unprofessional conduct’?"

[yanderethorne]

when i went away with my bestie last month we rewatched all time classic hairspray (2007) aka one of my absolute fav movies i watched obsessively as a kid.

this was just before all the new nikki blonsky drama came out and now knowing what i know it just saddens me.

[opalsanddiamonds]

i really hope nothing is due tomorrow, because if it is, i haven't done it

[slightlytoastedbagel]

actually On Your Feet gave us two good things (well. three if you like Realize which I do). Kohane's "it's frustrating" line and the great crack fic idea of Vivid Bad Squad getting cancelled online for skipping school to yell at The Kotaki Taiga as he was about to go back to America.

[kylewalker-peters]

16 year old me who refused to let her parents bully her into picking economics over drama for gcse because she knew she'd hate it and wouldn't cope with it and truly believed in her heart she'd never need it would murder me if she saw what was happening 8 years into her future

[witheringhouls]

goodnight to everyone except teachers who set summer homework.

[duskmite]

so i had an in-class test today and i got a good score because i studied really hard and wrote over fifty pages of notes on the topics (my revision method) including copious additional personal research and i was feeling proud of myself. but then i thought wait, did i actually work hard? because i love compiling information and had an absolute blast with it so it didn't feel like work at all and if it didn't feel like work then do i have the right to pride? work is supposed to be difficult and painful or else it doesn't mean anything, right? and then it hit me how sad it is that we ascribe moral value to misery