#lampshade john

[merlins-art]

hope im doing this right

you asked for designs to draw

draw lampshade john!!

LAMPSHADE JOHN!!

I’ve actually been wanting to draw your john design for awhile now so thanks for making me actually remember to lol

[jesncin]

wip of someone at the end of their rope

[zxmbigirlfriend]

recurring theme in original saw script

[cowboysanddragons23]

While the Van der Linde gang is an outlaw gang, it operates more as a cult:

-Zero tolerance for criticism and questions: Dutch can't stand when someone questions or doubts him (ex. When John starts questioning him at Clemens Point, Dutch tells him that doubting means the end, aka weakness and forces him to say "Yes, Dutch." or when Uncle calls him out in a humorous manner, he threatens to kill him under the guise of following the joke).

-A belief that former followers are always wrong for leaving and there is never a legitimate reason to leave: Javier and Bill call John and Arthur traitors for abandoning them and Dutch, even though it was clear that Dutch was losing his sanity, he was going to get them all killed and both of them were trying to salvage what's left of the gang, a train of thought that lasts even after the gang disbanded.

-Lack of meaningful financial disclosure regarding money: Dutch constantly prattles about the fact that they need more money and at one point, he hid a box of money in one of the gang's hideouts.

-Abuse of members: While Dutch is not physically abusive of members, he is an abuser of the psychological variant (ex. When Molly raises legitimate concerns about how he is ignoring her and not paying her attention, he always dismisses her as delusional, even outright saying "I never met a woman with so many needs.")

-Absolute authoritarianism without accountability: If there is one thing that Dutch shows the most is his inability to take responsibility for his actions (ex. When he blames John for being the reason why the Saint Denis Bank heist went wrong, accusing him of being a rat, even though the main reason it went wrong was because Dutch was too reckless with his robberies to the trolley station and the boat, along with his kidnapping and killing of Angelo Bronte, the most powerful man of Saint Denis).

-Unreasonable fears about the outside world that involve evil conspiracies and persecution: Dutch fears civilization because it represents everything he hates and instills very irrational fears amongst them (ex. When Dutch tells John the law chases them because the gang represents everything they fear, yet ironically, after the gang disbands, Tilly has a happy life married to a lawyer and John has a normal life as a member of society).

-Cult of personality: The most obvious one. Dutch is seen like a father and a messiah amongst the gang (ex. In Red Dead Redemption, John tells Reyes that Dutch saved him, Bill and Javier.)

-Illegal and dangerous behaviour: The van der Linde are a gang of outlaws at first, but they ended up becoming the Wild West equivalent of domestic terrorists, with their attacks on the Cornwall Train, the Saint Denis Bank, a US Army Train....

-Charismatic leader: Dutch oozes charisma anytime he speaks, albeit of the superficial kind that has an iron hand on the people of his gang, which Kieran lampshades.

-Us VS Them mentality: Dutch enforced a very black and white view about their enemies, even outright admits so when he killed Bronte ("It is us or him.").

-Isolation and love-bombing: Once again, Molly is the biggest victim of this, with Dutch charming her into going with him and making her feel isolated on the gang, in order for her to depend on him and him alone.

-Time and energy: In the camp, you are expected to upgrade Dutch's tent first before upgrading the rest of the camp. And Dutch demands that money is put on the box, yet he himself never contributes to the box.

[mvctavish]

hesdcanosn for graves and price where the reader is pretty bossy and kind of intimidating? for graves she's sort of the co-commander of shadow co. and for price she's the 141's medic

𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐕𝐄𝐒 𝐍 𝐏𝐑𝐈𝐂𝐄 - 𝐁𝐎𝐒𝐒𝐘!𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐄𝐑 𝐇𝐂𝐒

notes: i love this idea so so much you're a genius anon!! since the relationship wasn't specified... i just made the reader their wife... cuz it felt right to me. if u were hoping for platonic hcs or anything different don't be afraid to send in another ask and i'll do it!! anyways, happy reading <3

summary: (seperate) headcanons of graves and price with a bossy/intimidating wife

cw: wife!reader (for both), deputycommander!reader (for graves), medic!reader (for price), general war stuff idk, probably inaccuracies when it comes to the military/PMCs, reader is kind of bitchy, for price reader is mentioned to be at least smaller than him

cdr. phillip graves

౿ ۪ ݁ he's scared of you, and it's pretty obvious despite his attempts at hiding it. when you get mad, he gets all quiet and mutters a quick and respectful "yes ma'am" no matter what you request or say to him. it's rather funny seeing the commander so scared of his own wife. phillip has seen first-hand just how angry you can get when things don't go your way. the aftermath ain't pretty. while he knows you'd never actually hurt him (besides throw around a few choice words) he prefers to keep the peace at all costs. he hates seeing you upset, whether it's a mission gone sour or down to something little like him leaving the toilet seat up.

you two first met way back in the marines, fresh outta boot camp and ready to conquer the world. even then you were intimidating, a fiery attitude that could challenge the sargeant above you both. you ended up leaving the military when phillip did, and got married not long after. despite the fact that he'd much rather have you not risk your life — you were insistent on being part of shadow company when it was formed, and not behind the scenes.

as his deputy commander, you're right there by his side. the shadows are like family to both you and graves — they're your boys — but you aren't afraid to whip them into shape if necessary. some new recruits are being too rambunctious for your liking? you're giving a sharp, glaring look to your husband and he's quick to get them in line. it doesn't take long at all for them to learn to respect (and fear) you, perhaps even more than graves. you're a force to be reckoned with.

down to the more domestic aspects of your life, you're always on his ass about the upkeep of the house. when you're both home, the work is split 50/50 (which was a huge shock to graves at first since he's always been a bit more traditional) but he knows it's only fair since you both work. you like your house in pristine condition, down to the floorboards being dusted, to the lampshades being in just the right position. you're bossy about little things, like always pairing up the socks when they're taken out of the dryer or him rinsing his beard trimmings down the sink whenever he's done shaving. he knows you tend to get a little pissy when things aren't done exactly how you like them, so that's why graves makes sure he — and the shadows — always listen to your input.

capt. john price

౿ ۪ ݁ price is more impressed than anything. there's so much fire and spirit crammed into one small thing: you. it's funny to him, how most people you interact with can be so intimidated by you. you have the bossy attitude as an angry mother bear, yet can still be sweet when it's needed. price first met you when he was still a lieutenant, suffering from a bad injury on the field. you were the only combat medic on duty. he'd tried to convince you that he was fine — there were other men that needed your help, too, and that he could keep going — but you'd grabbed him by the ear and chewed him out. calling him a "damn fool with a death wish," and that if he wanted to live he'd "better listen to you and sit his ass down." he'd immediately gone quiet and did as he was told. price wasn't used to being spoken to like that, much less from someone of a lower rank. that was the moment he knew he had to have you, and the rest was history.

it took a while to gain your attention around base, and you were the reason he grew out his beard in the first place, after a passing comment that you'd made about how you thought it'd make him more rugged. it took time, but you were worth every second.

relationships in your line of work can be messy, and perhaps one of the worst aspects could be the judgment from others. in one interaction with a new face on base, you'd gotten into quite a heated argument. the guy thought you'd be easy picking, a way to make fun of you and show off in front of his new pals. your sharp tongue and quick insults resulted in the man leaving close to tears, whilst price watched round the corner with a little smirk on his face. deep down, he'd always worry about you. you were his wife, his woman, his world. it was only natural — but instances like that reminded him that you could stand up for yourself. you were strong and independent, and never let anyone walk all over you. you'd been a people pleaser in the past, but never again. you lived for yourself.

once task force 141 was formed, it's obvious that your husband recruited you to join as well. it was difficult, and he had to abuse a few loopholes in the policies to even be allowed to be your CO, but in the end, it worked. rounding back to the mama bear point, ghost, gaz, and soap quickly warm up to you. you're honestly the closest thing any of them have to a mum. a scary, bossy, picky one, but still a mum. your team's safety is your number one priority, and you certainly aren't afraid of getting your hands dirty both figuratively and literally. you keep the boys and price in line, constantly nagging about drinking water and insisting that they need to eat more than just a damn protein barn before a mission. MREs suck, but it's better than going hungry.

price lets you boss him round whenever you two are home from deployment. of course, on the battlefield, he's in charge. but home? it's a different story. the lawn needs to be mowed? you bet it'll be done by the evening. low on groceries? he's starting a list and planning to drive down to the shops. you and price never really get into any real arguments. he's seen you on the battlefield, frightening as you shout orders to anyone around as you're patching up an injured soldier — that sort of intensity is one he does everything to avoid seeing in you.

[weaselandfriends]

youve probably already mused about this in the past but do you think cascade could work as the actual ending of homestuck? like is there a way in which homestuck could be read as a complete narrative with a somewhat satisfying ending if we were to consider cascade or its whereabouts the place where it ends? how much retooling would it need to work that way? is it even possible?

Oh now we're getting the REAL asks.

From a technical standpoint, I actually think it's totally doable to do a cut of Homestuck where Cascade is more-or-less the ending. Homestuck doesn't have nearly as many load-bearing elements as it seems to have at first glance. For instance, I think even the trolls can be cut from Homestuck altogether with minimal structural harm, as long as Vriska's game-breaking role is shifted to Rose. Hussie claimed his original vision for the story was for Cascade to be the climax, and Act 6 to be a relatively short denouement that would mostly involve cleaning up loose ends. That actually tracks with where he left the comic when Cascade ended. The unresolved stuff at the end of Cascade is:

The Scratch has created a new universe, which the players are all heading to. This fresh universe is where they will be able to complete the game.

Lord English!

Lingering mysteries about the kids in the new universe, who have been hinted at a few times throughout Act 5 (most notably regarding Liv Tyler the bunny, which shows up with a note from Jake, IIRC).

Bec Noir is still around, even if neutralized by PM.

I'm pretty sure this is it, not counting one-off lines like Rose playing the rain that are pretty structurally nonessential and could be excised easily or brushed off with some lampshading ("Wow isn't it funny we never played the rain!" -- I think Hussie actually does specific one anyway). There are also a few hints that HIC might have a role in the new universe, but I would likewise describe these as nonessential.

Looking at this list, it's easy to see both why Hussie thought he could end the story quickly and why he failed to do it. With the powers at the disposal of the main cast, going into the new universe and completing the game should be trivial. Hussie probably thought he'd quickly introduce Jake, Jane etc. in a nostalgic callback to the beginning of the story, then round up everyone for a final fight against Lord English/Bec Noir/HIC to put some fireworks on the ending. Cascade really had trimmed down the expansiveness and complexity of the story significantly, which made these few lingering plot elements seem so surmountable.

In actuality, though, Hussie quickly became mired in introducing the new characters. I think his problem was that he was struggling to reengineer the emotional stakes of the story. There's a desperate reek in the early parts of Act 6 where he is pleading for readers to care about the new kids. With the original kids, he took his time introducing them and let their personalities emerge organically over infrequent chatlogs while most of the action centered on John-as-reader-insert doing dumbassery. With the trolls, Hussie treated them like jokes and gave them over-the-top personalities with ridiculous, murderous drama, which fit the speedrunny way he introduced them. But the new kids are in this limbo where he wants to get them working (like Jar Jar) quickly, yet is giving them personalities that are at worst nondescript and at best Dave 2: Davier. (Roxy is the exception here.) They wind up having a lot of very cute, very cloying chatlogs that read super forced and I wonder if their failure to immediately get off the ground is why Hussie felt the need to spend more time with them, linger on them, until Jake winds up with one of the highest line counts of any character in the story despite saying exactly 0 things of value total.

Worse, though, is the villain situation, because it's directly tied to the story's stakes. Hussie has to make Lord English a more significant threat than Bec Noir, despite working at base with only a few references to him from Spades Slick and Doc Scratch. It's from this we get the laborious cherub stuff, the expansive dream bubble stuff (Lord English being able to double-kill ghosts is his major establishing moment of threat), and the general need to make this whole section of Homestuck feel as weighty and monumental as the first half.

The problem with Cascade is that, even though it doesn't resolve the plot, is resolves pretty much all of the emotional stakes and tension in the story. The idea of going quickly from Cascade to a final fight makes sense on paper but it doesn't make sense emotionally. That final fight would wind up as flaccid-feeling as Collide eventually did feel. Hussie's kudzu-plant expanding Act 6 reads to me as an attempt to rebuild to the level of tension that existed before Cascade, one that eventually failed because he got tired with the project and phoned in the climax anyway.

So, getting back to the original question, I think if we're to end Homestuck at Cascade then it really needs to END at Cascade, narratively as well as emotionally. Cascade does an admirable job cutting down Homestuck's plot threads from 100 to 4, but it really needs to cut them down from 100 to 0. This is a lot trickier than it seems because Cascade is, in the context of the narrative, not a moment of victory but a moment of... quitting. It's hitting the in-universe reset button. It's triumphantly hitting that button, but it cannot actually achieve total plot resolution without fundamentally changing what it actually is.

You can slim things down. Lord English can, believe it or not, be cut entirely. Prior to Act 6 he exists only in a handful of lines. Doc Scratch can be reframed as the ultimate evil himself, rather than simply its servant. He already is a pretty good villain in his own right.

Bec Noir is trickier because there's not really a good opportunity for the heroes to fight him. I wonder how necessary that is, though. It's not like Homestuck was ever a story where things got resolved by flashy cinematic fights. PM getting the ring is a satisfying, climactic moment in its own right; does she have to get locked into eternal stalemate with Bec Noir? Can she maybe just defeat him the moment she gets the ring? It's an unconventional ending, but one that makes sense in the concept of Homestuck. Given Collide, that's probably a superior way for the climax to go anyway.

That leaves the new universe kids. They can also probably be cut pretty easily. I'm fairly certain Liv Tyler is the only direct contribution they make to the pre-Cascade story. It'd take some changes to account for that, but not many. Alternatively, since we already can't get past the fact that Cascade is just a reset button press and not a resolution in and of itself, we could leave them in as characters who show up, briefly, in an epilogue of sorts, framed solely through the POV of the original kids. (i.e., forgo all the "Your name is JANE CROCKER etc.) Maybe don't even give them lines. Leave it to the fandom to come up with their personalities.

The way I'm envisioning this is that we end the story as quickly as possible after Cascade, and by that I mean literally 15-20 pages where we show everyone speedrun the new universe with their incredible god powers, maybe with a few cathartic final conversations between the surviving members of the cast. The longer you go on post-Cascade, the longer you're going to be tempted to go on, to make its new elements breathe in their own right, and when you do that it's only a matter of time before you get sucked into the Act 6 Vortex of bringing back meaningful stakes, which you have to do from Ground Zero.

I'm actually a big fan of Act 6, which is where I feel like Hussie gets a lot meaner, a lot more combative with the readership, with some fascinating results. Most of Act 6's failures stem from the failure of its ending, which is a separate issue caused by Hussie losing interest in the project after the Hiveswap debacle. But if you're doing Act 6, you gotta really DO Act 6. You can't just do it halfway. All or nothing.

[gendertrickster]

I'm so excited that Meat!Jane is back in focus, but I'm also a bit confused? I thought she and Jake stayed behind/got kidnapped by Jasprose? Was the panel showing Jasprose her dropping the two off on the ship? But even then their dialogue sounds like they were always on the ship, so I'm confused.

Mostly asking because it's been awhile since I read the Epilogues or the bonus material so it's very possible I'm just missing something crucial

i think vriska was doing retcons and tying up loose ends. right before all that happened there was dialogue between karkat and calliope that lampshaded the idea of retcons, which is framed with exactly as much dramatic irony as you've come to expect from homestuck by now

cue vriska breaching the divide, taking(?) the notes john left before going off to fight english alone, cue jasprose giving the classic sort of wistful stare into the distance off a balcony indicative of a night of pleasure coming to a slow end, cue vriska's impact with deltritus.

and for this ONE frame on page 770, the ship flashes white as the red streak [vriska] passes in front of it. what i think happened, then, is that vriska went and picked up jane and jake and retconned them into having always been on the ship. all of this, in addition to the fact that this upd8 retcons it such that meat!callie was the author-interpretor of the candy timeline all along, AND that it's called an "addendum" and not an intermission, means that it's pretty likely that it's vriska doing new helltier vriska shit, i.e. str8 up retcons

[hot-on-my-watch]

Reading Sherlock Scripts- The Final Problem

As always, here's a video from Erik Voss at New Rockstars for a bit of a refresh and detail spotting from the episode if desired:

What follows will be notes in a few minor differences between the script published on the BBC's website and the finished episode, a few bits of stage direction etc. that I personally enjoyed, and interesting things that I didn't spot before.

I will say that in terms of line changes, I DO realise that scenes need to be shortened, technicsl stuff doesn't always work, and even the best actors get lines slightly wrong - like that one guy that was supposedly amazing as Hamlet but kept mispronouncing "penguin"... so when John says the buffalo gun was from the 40s and the script said 50s... I don't care which is right. I'm not going to google buffalo guns. I'm just writing about bits that amuse me!

Firstly: Mycroft's cheesy noir detective film. I'm not sure I had cottoned on to all the lines about the man "keeping a close watch" on the woman, as Mycroft likes to do, not least on his siblings. Then she refers to "putting (herself) in the hands of the authorities" as Eurus has ostensibly done since TLD.

We then get a few extra lines of dialogue:

Obviously 'Persephone' refers to the Ancient Greek myth of a goddess abducted to the underworld who then becomes its queen, with the use of Greek mythogolgy tying into Sherlock's fake suicide operation 'LAZARUS'. And, "a parade of all the cliches" would have lampshaded the trope-filled nature of the scene.

On to Baker Street! In the script, Mycroft calls himself "an era-defining genius", but in the episode he has been downgraded to "remarkable" and the former label is given to Eurus, who remains "beyond Newton." Poor Myc.

The published script also has Mycroft saying "we played pirates" and describes "an overgrown pirate ship climbing frame", neglecting to mention the "funny gravestones" at this point. Probably Mycroft was too bored and serious to make a show of playing pirates at thirteen.

Something then that I hadn't previously noticed: in the shot of the three children in the kitchen the table is set for four; Redbeard has only just gone missing. In the script, Mrs Holmes can be heard asking where he is.

There's also the stage direction that Mycroft is eating "A LOT", and a description of a following shot of Eurus being interviewed by a policeman following.

Something else I hadn't even slightly noticed - I'd blame the ME/CFS but probably wrongly- the song that Mrs Hudson is vacuuming to. Obviously Iron Maiden's The Number of the Beast (which I have seen live) is a fantastically amusing choice genre-wise, but it also cuts off at "hell and fire about to be released."

I'm also compelled to comment at this point on the insanely ridiculous layout of 221 Baker Street and that although I enjoy the transition through the carpet of the living room, that's meant to be where Speedy's is, no?

Anyway, we get these delightful notes for one of the most improbable escapes in television history:

Hahaha, the shipping forecast. We weren't all born Radio 4 listeners, Moftiss! But I love it.

So we go to Sherrinford. Here John has an extra line about seeking work in it as a hospital, to which The Governor replies "it's not a hospital".

Again, I often fail to notice things: this time that the voice radioing for help was John's (even though nothing else would make sense) and that the recorded announcements e.g. "doors opening" are ALL Moriarty. And they planned to have "smiley face insignia" on the doors, and later a "frowney face" on the screens when the alarm goes off- I see why they abandoned that! My favourite bit here is that last sentence about Mycroft:

Mycroft then says in the script that Eurus has been capable of influencing people since she was seven, which has since been changed to five, now fitting with when she would have been institutionalised. In the broastcast episode Eurus gets extra lines now about The Governer's wife: "She smiles at you when you come home...smiling is advertising... I can help you with your wife...I'll fix her and give her back to you." In the published script it is not clear that she has any interest in The Governer's wife at this point.

Rather than being initially compliant to the men with guns and then making his daring escape, the script has John absolutely throwing down. he "lunges" at The Governer in an attempt to stop him from pressing the alarm, and when the orderlies arrive: "Mayhem. Mycroft is already restrained, but John is fighting like a madman. Slams one orderly against the wall, punches another across the room-" Wow.

And then: Moriarty! What a joy! There are a couple of notable changes from final script to episode here. Firstly, the bodyguard on his left has been promoted from "very uncaring in the afterglow" to merely "less caring." And then there's Jim's extra line between "insane criminality" and his question about cannibals:

There's a whole insect metaphor that goes on once our boys are locked in Eurus' cell:

In the Garridebs scene, Eurus gets a few more lines on her view of morality: "

I regret to say that in the script, the phonecall between Sherlock and Molly is even more heartbreaking! Why? How?! Because right before he asks her to tell him that she loves him, she says "for once don't make fun of me." Brutal! My heart!

Continuing notes on the script. The fake cell outside Musgrave has a window with a view possibly involving some kind of visual trickery that I don't understand. The aerial view we get of the London is hauntingly described as "the bomber's view." And to the news that John is in a well Sherlock replies "ding dong dell" which google tells me is a nursery rhyme suitably about a cat having been put in a well by one child and saved by another.

We then get to some of the omitted dialouge that sent me down this script-reading rabbit hole: Sherlock's admission regarding Mycroft.

I also enjoy the insult Sherlock gives Mycroft later in the scene: "he always lies, he's a corkscrew in human form", to which John replies "this time he's been protecting you. *beat* They're not dog's bones." Victor actually gets some lines in the flashback here too "Come on Captain Yellowbeard! We can take the ship and all her treasure! Quick! Quick!" Poor little Victor!

A couple more missing lines here. At the moment of realisation, Sherlock gives us another Greek reference, this time to Homer's The Odyssey: "'And Odysseus replied... Nemo'- latin for no one." Bloody private school kids and their latin ;-) I've written a pretty basic post on the tombstone cipher, but there are far more detailed analyses on here! Then, on speaking to Eurus in her room script Sherlock states the obvious, calling her ritual "a cry for help".

When we get into the closing scenes, we have another moment for the history books: Sherlock calls Lestrade by his actual first name unprompted! Here the script reads "A beat as Lestrade goes- Sherlock has always known his name. He heads away..." But what does this mean? Does Lestrade just think that Sherlock has known his name the entire bloody time, or has he actually? I'm big on the Death of the Author stuff and psychoanalytical readings, and in this case I choose to headcanon that Sherlock really did not know and only memorised "Greg" in The Six Thatchers. I'm open to being convinced otherwise though.

I've written a whole rant on the part where Mrs Holmes says that Sherlock was "always the grown-up" and no one disagrees.

In the script, we also get Eurus acting as violin teacher to Sherlock once again:

I have mixed feelings on Mary's "who you really are, it doesn't matter" speech and was horrified when I first heard it, but the script's shorter version is significantly worse. In the script, she doesn't say "A junky who solves crimes to get high and a doctor who never came home from the war." or "It's all about the legend. The stories. The adventures." She does say "what matters is who everbody else thinks you are. Knows you are." I'm glad they rewrote this!

Also, while the choice of "Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson" mirrors Arthur Conan Doyle's canon and Mycroft's lines at the close of A Study in Pink, it is a bit weird that Mary not only puts her beloved husband second, but also omits his first name. Oh well, they did they thing.

Meanwhile, the montage of the restoration of 221B and life going on. I wouldn't have realised that John is holding the letter on the msntelpiece for Sherlock to stab it, had I not read that bit of script posted by another Tumblr user! Thankyou whoever you were!

A couple of slight differences from the script here. Firstly, the episode has Lestrade and Molly visiting separately, but in the script they come together. One has to wonder why- were they at any point supposed to have been intended as a couple, and it was decided against, given that them arriving together for a professional matter seems unrealistic? Would Molly waiting outside seem like she hadn't recovered from The Phonecall? Did they just want to show her a bit more? Would it have ruined the fun circling camera thing they're doing here? I know, I'm definitely overthinking this!

Personally I really enjoy Cumberbatch's face as he directs Rosie back to johh with an expression we've pretty much never seen from Sherlock! And the fact that where he's pointing at "Daddy" is clearly where the baby's actual father was standing, not Freeman. But it works!

Secondly, Eurus and Sherlock's furious violin jam was intended to turn into: the Sherlock adventure theme! Fun! But, for whatever reason, this seems in the episode to be played by deeper sounding instruments over the top instead.

Finally, the cheesiest of the cheesey. The script ends with these words appearing on screen: The Beginning. That was cool when my friend did it in his children's novel, sure, but I'm not sure it would've worked here. Or would it?

Anyway, if you've made it this far, many many thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed my extremely minor contribution to the rich BBC Sherlock fandom! Either way, I very much welcome comments and discussion. "Obviously."

[dingodad]

wait okay i feel stupid as hell but… why are we saying Vriska *retconned* anything?? i know we’re seeing Jane and Jake on the ship when they previously were thought to be in wherever Catnapped takes place but why does that have to be something Vriska did? HOW would that be something Vriska did? then there’s John’s letters burning up, and… honestly i don’t understand what’s going on there but assuming Vriska’s blastoff set them on fire, where does that = retcon? this is a genuine question because i’m sure i’m just missing something obvious but i don’t Get It

to recap:

Vriska's journey is immediately preceded by Calliope and Karkat agreeing that rewrites and retcons "are a little amateurish", so the fact that things are immediately changed about the timeline is set up as an ironic subversion. James Roach even lampshades the fact that things are different now in the monthly check-in that came with the update.

the exact meaning of the burning letters is not clear, but it happens with the exact same flash of red that changes the colour of the planet Deltritus, indicating that Vriska's presence is changing things. the fact that the ship pulses with strange energy as Vriska passes through it and Jane and Jake appear right after this phenomenon is really only icing on the cake

we can see that the update is about Vriska's journey, we know that Vriska has just come into possession of some new powers that have a much higher level of influence on the cosmic level than Vriska has had before, and even if we didn't yet know what those powers were her journey within the Plot Point has already set us up to expect that they will have something to do with shaking up our expectations and/or subverting the kind of narrative influence we previously understood the Thief of Light to have.

Jasprose's last appearance was on page 666, collaborating in some way with Davepeta on Jane and Vriska's simultaneous therapy quests. so the idea that the two characters' arcs would be intertwined in such a way had already been seeded before Jasprose appeared in this addendum

[nerdyrevelries]

I think a lot of people miss how funny Little Women the novel is, so I wanted to share a couple of my favorite things that I never hear talked about.

Jo is so uninterested in Laurie as a romantic prospect that she ships him with every single one of her sisters throughout the books. Initially she makes plans for Teddy and Meg to eventually end up married so that Meg can have a rich husband to take care of her. Of course, this plan fails when Meg gets engaged to John Brooke.

Later, Jo sees Beth staring out the window wistfully and sighing when Laurie passes below. Beth is jealous of his good health because she knows she's dying, but Jo instead mistakes this for romantic interest. There's nothing romantic between the two outside of Jo's head.

Finally, Jo reflects that Amy and Laurie would be a perfect match, but given how her previous attempts at meddling have gone, she isn't going to try and do anything to make it happen. This time, it happens without her help.

It's very much the vibes of someone knowing a guy who they consider to be a really good dude but they have no personal interest in them, so instead they try to set him up with all of their friends. Laurie was never in the friend zone. He was always strictly in the brother-in-law zone.

As for Laurie, the book makes it clear that his affections are changing targets far before Laurie himself is willing to admit it, in an extremely funny way. Laurie is in Europe feeling sorry for himself after Jo has turned him down. At the same time, he's been getting closer to Amy.

But Laurie has convinced himself that his first love should be his last and decides to write an opera with Jo as his heroine. Except that Jo is not an easy fit for an opera heroine, and whenever he tries to call up romantic feelings about her, he finds himself remembering Jo at her least romantic doing very prosaic things like beating a carpet while in the old practical clothes one wears for cleaning.

So, Laurie decides to give up on making Jo his heroine and instead puts in a graceful lady with blonde hair and blue ribbons. Which, of course, doesn't sound at all like someone else we might know, right, Laurie? Definitely an Original Character, Do Not Steal. The text is very much aware of this and lampshades it.

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

I think I’ve said something to this effect before but yknow what other thing fascinates me abt their canon bodysharing arrangement, especially early on? is the privacy-invasion angle. or rather. the distinct lack of one.

like this is two strangers who just woke up jammed into the same body, and the one in charge of the eyes is NOT the one whose body it is. I feel like “so that'll be awkward when they need to like… bathe or use the bathroom or anything” is. something that would occur to most people pretty quickly when being presented with the situation. I mean in fics when John gets stuck with someone else that is something that generally gets addressed or at least nodded at early-ish on. and these two are frequently stuck in situations that don’t really allow for even a pretense of privacy, like, yknow, the guy with the body being comatose in the hospital for weeks while the guy with the eyes is awake. or. getting stuck in hole jail for multiple months.

and I cannot stress enough the extent to which nobody seems to give a fuck. they don’t even bother to lampshade the lack of discussion. Arthur wakes up from the coma and finds out abt said coma from the eye stealing demon he’s known for like, a subjective day, and he’s like. alright. yikes, time loss, we better get going. and just strips to change without any further comment. and that is how they deal with it from that point on forever. even when yellow comes in they and Arthur just continue on Not Caring. even tho those two are like, actively antagonizing each other and really don’t want to be together. privacy is still just not a part of it.

like given that they’re so often in scenarios where it is arguably weirder NOT to acknowledge it. it may not be intentional, but it feels VERY noticeable and it makes the vibe REALLY fascinating. to me at least. I want a fic where some other character asks about it like haha that must have been hard to adjust to and they’re both like “?? why would that matter” and the other char is like oh never mind. you’re perfect for each other I guess. continue.

[comicgeekery]

Sherlock & Co.: The Blanched Soldier

I really love the short adventures. They’re just so fun!

So this time we seem to have some mild repercussions for the scandal of Scandal, in that John got some kind of talking-to for posting episodes about Queen Victoria’s secret shame-baby. Still no tangible consequences, but I’ll keep watching for when the government decides it’s had enough of letting the gang just brag about all the crimes they commit with every case.

But short-term we get some shenanigans! It’s nice to see Sherlock out of his comfort zone and he certainly feels unsteady as the proper host!

I also enjoyed seeing John get angry and actually push back enough to make Sherlock face consequences. John gave a very good rant about the work it takes to turn “real life” events into episodes that have a satisfying narrative arc. Really, the show’s framing device is a overt yet easily overlooked example of how clever John is. Sherlock and Mariana should appreciate it more.

The writers were also clearly also having fun with this one, teasing about “James M.”, letting the gang get pampered at the spa, and having Sherlock straight-up forget to record his denouement. I guess everyone got to have a working vacation!

Things I liked:

1. Explaining the word “blanched” to Mariana (and the listeners). Blanched doesn’t get much use these days and it makes sense that Mariana wouldn’t know it as a non-native English speaker. It’s just a nice piece of continuity for her.

2. We opened with a gay hook-up! That’s almost like making Dodd and Emsworth in love, like they obviously are in the canon.

3. John and Dodd had some good camaraderie. It was nice to see John bond with someone new in a bros/soldiers way. I wouldn’t mind if Dodd came back here and there as part of John’s social life.

Sherlock & Co. gave The Blanched Soldier a pretty straight-forward update, which works fine. The original story was a bit ridiculous, hinging on bad medicine, a poor understanding of leprosy, a deeply unlikely twist, and a fair amount of racism. I think it really benefits from being changed to a story about drug addiction, even if it is kind of over-dramatic. (Seriously Dodd, you didn’t have to scream like that just for an episode cliffhanger.)

Unfortunately they’re still doing awful cringe humor for John, made even worse by how hard they lampshaded his stupid “hip” speech. John’s a brilliant writer! He’s constantly proving it with his descriptions on the show! More than that, Mariana was even pleading with him because she gets second-hand embarrassment. Me too, Mariana (and Joel)! Please let it stop!

This case also had the most open discussion about Sherlock’s drug problems. So far we haven’t seen any clear signs of his addiction interfering in his life, but with more and more hints getting dropped I assume that’s around the corner.

Anyway, overall it was a fun adventure. Looking forward to the next one!

[godfeelscanon]

Loved reading Callie's portion! As an autistic who's painfully aware of my social exhaustion it's nice to see it depicted in a character I like.

It really plays well into Calliope's character too! like, a lot of Homestuck's extended cast got shelfed for during the epilogues and while they lampshade it a bit with Callie it still never sat right with me. This makes her uninvolvement in candy's events make so much more sense (though im still desperate to know candy! Calliope's thoughts on roxy getting hitched to John out-of-the-blue.)

i always wanted to see more of Callie in the epilogues/hs2/hsbc, because yeah, they kinda get swept aside as a sort of mysterious cryptid. which, on a meta level, makes sense with the prevalence of alt!Callie as a narrator, given their desire to leave Callie out of the narration. something something cherubs are asocial you get it. but even with that being the case, Callie's a fascinating character and i want to hear more of their thoughts!

going into 3.2A, i knew one of the biggest challenges for me personally was gonna be fleshing out Calliope-- partly because i didn't have a great grasp on their voice, but also because of their aforementioned relative absence from post-canon. everyone else is bouncing off their post-canonical counterparts in some way, but Callie is a big question mark in that respect. but this is precisely the mandate of this Bridge, and one of the most fun parts of this collaboration has been honing in the unspoken frictions in their personality. it's not quite present here, but you'll see as the Bridge unfolds the ways we've chosen to emphasize Callie's alien cherub-ness. even compared to trolls, cherubs are weird and kind of unsettling! which is a great entrypoint into their character, because i'm weird and kind of unsettling myself! or at least, i was when i was 23. (i probably still am, but i'm a self-confident adult woman now which makes it sexy)

re: Candy!Roxygen, i think Callie has a benignly detached sense of humor about the whole thing. something i like about writing them is their relative lack of emotionality. godfeels runs on melodrama, these bitches looooooooove spilling their guts, but comparatively Calliope is as calm as a sphinx. so i find it interesting how they're observing people and thinking about relationships and missed opportunities, but these aren't necessarily sad thoughts. the trolls i think jokingly make reference to not understanding human society, but for Callie it's 100% true. in a lot of fiction i think a character so detached would turn sour and become cold, but Callie is the type of person who chooses to behave like the person they want to be even if they don't feel it. they've seen the alternatives (Caliborn, Alt!Callie) and aren't interested. the thing is that while it's impossible for me to imagine what it's like to be a cherub, it is exceptionally easy for me to imagine what it's like to not understand socialization even as you engage in it. as you say, this is a metaphorical representation of a particular variety of autism.

anyway i'm glad you enjoyed Callie's part in today's update, and i hope you enjoy the ones to come even more!

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 6/18/2024

might flood today! might not! who knows! i live in the paved over swamp! mackintosh’s main concern is this bowl of grapes

listening

sligo river blues performed by john fahey. part of the point of doing this weekly is when i sit down to draft these, i am occasionally forced to go "ooh. i forgot to listen to music while pacing around last week. maybe that's why i was a tremendous cunt and wanted to claw out of my own skin."

anyway i care about two people on tiktok and one of them is a couple renovating a stunning house in the pacific northwest from a level 5 hoard (DK Dreamhouse), and one is this guy dylanwesch who is i guess music nerd tok? a lot of ambient stuf which i love to click around on the computer to. listened to part of this album while debugging a GIS problem this week

-

reading

i read six books this week, which is really the clearest possible sign i need to up my antidepressants. read the shepherd king duology by rachel gillig (Fine but i had some issues with the authorial style, felt very YA as opposed to NA, did have a very cool magic system, unfortunately i liked the second couple’s banter and relationship Way More than the main couple’s). finished the last three books in the temeraire series, i have not much to say about them except i adored them wholeheartedly. also before i read those i wrote all the below in a fit of pique

the great state of west florida by kent wascom. instagram kept serving me ads for this book and i am once again a little unnerved by meta's advertising.

publishers' weekly synopis

In Wascom’s wacky and wild fourth adventure for the Woolsack clan (after The New Inheritors), lawless gunslingers and reactionary Christian nationalists face off in a divided Florida. The year is 2026 and 13-year-old orphan Rally Woolsack is rescued from the abusive foster family who brought him to Louisiana by his long-lost uncle Rodney, who regularly responds to challenges of mortal combat on the app DU3L. Rally is thrilled to get away from his tormentors and return to Florida, although it turns out Rodney has pulled him from the frying pan into the fire. Troy Yarbrough, a state legislator whose family runs a creepy evangelical Christian college in its mansion on Florida’s panhandle, has introduced a bill calling for the region to secede from the state. Rally, reckoning with the long-running bad blood between his family and the Yarbroughs, derides Troy’s vision as a “Jesus-riddled white ethnostate with a beachside pastel tinge.” With the bill on the floor of the state legislature, and with everyone packing firearms, the Florida Wars begin. Fans of pulpy dark humor will relish the climactic showdown between Yarbrough’s henchmen and those loyal to an elusive figure called the Governor, as right-wing nutjob Troy is saddled by mad cow disease and Rally is rescued by his crush. This high-octane satire feels all too plausible. Agent: Gail Hochman, Brandt & Hochman Literary. (May)

i had some trouble with this one! on its face it seems like the kind of thing i would eat with a spoon. in practice it's more of a coming-of-age than a just-before-the-apocalypse story and i have a lot of trouble relating to a thirteen-year-old boy. even if he is bisexual. in this interview wascom says he's "re-mythologizing the Western" which i can kind of see? it's very pulp and ultra-violent in a spaghetti western kind of way, and seems written in a way easily adaptable to the screen. not quite vaporwave but a lot of anime influence: the author thanks twelve Japanese directors and manga artists at the end of the book.

there's an odd authorial quirk where the thirteen-year-old boy often points out (internally and externally) that the adults in his life are just talking at him about politics. which is a pretty accurate portrayal of childhood, but lampshading it in this way doesn't really make me excited about wascom's authorial chops? this is your fourth book. this book revolved around a couple brutal fight scenes (and one giant setpiece crowd scene, which has vibes and atmosphere in spades), and that's a perfectly fine reason to write a book, but if that's your strength i would be very happy to have you focus on that instead of sections where both the kid and i the reader are bored.

there's a scene with babysitter/babysittee sexual abuse that unlocks how the abused character makes decisions for the rest of his life, but it was extremely graphic and i wasn't really prepared for that. i don't know that i would have read this book if i had that knowledge aforethought.

overall not quite what i wanted it to be: the author in this interview said he's been working on it for over a decade and had to keep throwing out parts coming true during trump's presidency. i picked this pulpy novel up as an escape from the terrible politics of today, which is not what this books is. i don't know if i buy that he was simply too good at predicting the future, but i do like the choice stated in his interview "I abandoned the predictive stuff and tried to tell a story like it was written on an obelisk in the future, like what Denis Johnson did with Fiskadoro, or Joanna Russ with The Female Man". it does feel very much like the narrator from Mad Max 2 telling his story of meeting Max as a feral kid. again, some interesting ideas in here, does deliver on the Southern Gothic doomed political family aspect, as well as the same flavor of heat-wave climate tragedy as JG Ballard's The Drowned World, but i would have liked to focus more on his cool furiosa-like aunt in a white mustang with an anime mech arm. criminally underused character

-

watching

watched The Hunter (2011, dir. Nettheim) because of the Temeraire books! they used an archaic name for Tasmania that made me go “where the Fuck is that” and then i looked at the media mentions section of the wikipedia page. beautiful film in a very spare way. lots of long loving shots of willem defoe in the wilderness enduring various weather conditions.

i don’t know if it stuck the landing quite as well as i would like, but like defoe you fall in love with the land and the family so slowly it’s very startling when you finally do fully realize it. i think i was supposed to cry at the end but didn’t quite manage it. one of my favorite springsteen songs is part of the diagetic score in a way that made me cry, which i also did not expect.

-

playing

shoutout to the Thing Matching genre of phone game. this one is very much watch-ads-to-win but the levels are pretty long and i like shuffling objects around while listening to podcasts and trying to fall asleep

-

making

fallow week

[dr-futbol-blog]

Hide and Seek

Finally, we get to Sheppard and McKay.

Lead characters, it is natural for them to be in scenes together. Their initial meeting is at the chair platform in the Antarctic base. The one notable aspect of this is that while McKay's jealousy of Beckett and his ATA gene was laid out real thick just moments ago, he displays only excitement watching the platform come to life at Sheppard's touch. He admires this man from the start.

The next time we see them together, it's in Atlantis. And for some reason, McKay seems to follow Sheppard where ever he goes. The major is walking around the gate room turning on lights around him and McKay is right on his heel. From the moment he steps out of the gate, he is following this man that is a stranger to him. They seem to keep winding up in the same places.

Rodney is also doing the looking but trying not to look thing. Looking everywhere else but where he clearly wants to be looking.

Make note that during this scene there was a clear focal point in the room in the bottle of champagne that had just rolled through the gate. Everyone else in the room was looking at Elizabeth holding up the bottle.

Their first proper exchange is the one where Sheppard reveals his math skills to McKay, which has been analyzed to death. Sheppard is cool and calculated, uses his charm to get his way. Rodney is only too quick to acquiesce. Unlike Col. Sumner and Dr. Weir, he is completely defenseless against it. Intuitively, Sheppard also knows what strings to pull. Weir is charmed through candor, Sumner (who does seem to warm up to him eventually) is charmed through the display of guile. Rodney McKay is charmed through intellect, so that's what Sheppard uses to manipulate him.

We get much more interaction between them in the next episode, Hide and Seek (S01E03).

The throwing off the balcony, shot him in the leg scene is familiar to everyone. There's certainly bonding going on, people seeking companionship marooned in another galaxy. McKay displays his admiration of Sheppard in multiple ways, the least of which is not volunteering for experimental and potentially dangerous gene therapy for the hope that he might become just a little bit more like the major.

(And note that while Sheppard and McKay are playing with each other, there are people still without living quarters because "the major seems to be taking his time" making sure they're safe. Priorities.)

There's a big lampshade moment in the scene where the two of them walk into the closet together, and then come out of the closet together. A closet is, in fact, explicitly referenced:

McKay: Someone thought it would make a nice closet. Sheppard: This is definitely not a closet.

This episode also marks the beginning of Rodney being oblivious to Sheppard finding double entendres and innuendo in something he says innocuously in a tense, potentially life-threatening situation.

Sheppard: Think we're going to need a bigger boat. McKay: Size doesn't matter. Sheppard: That's a myth!

My guy, is this really the time for this?

In fact, Sheppard never misses an opportunity to turn something McKay says into a sexual reference (and this is far from the only instance that reveals he is a total and utter size queen; what is he saying here? He's saying that a big dick is better, that's what he's saying here. He's saying that he prefers a big dick). It's pathological. It's Freudian. It's witness to Sheppard constantly having sex on the brain when it comes to this one man, and only this one man, as we never see him do it with anyone else.

All of this is really cute and fun, but what I actually want to highlight is Rodney's Big Damn Hero moment toward the end of the episode.

You see, John Sheppard is presented as the All-American Action Hero. We, as the audience, are supposed to see him like this and the people in-universe are supposed to think of him like this. Rodney McKay certainly sees him as the hero, idolizing him to the point of constructing an image of Sheppard that barely corresponds with reality. He is the protagonist.

Only, for John Sheppard, it is Rodney McKay that is the Hero.

This is lampshaded in the episodes Sateda (S03E04) and Tao of Rodney (S03E14). Rodney often surreptitiously volunteers information, masked in the guise of humour, that he means about Sheppard but would never confess out loud. In the former, he tells us (through describing to Beckett his relationship with Ronan): "We have an unspoken bond. I mean, there are things that go deeper than words, my friend. Deeper than words. But you wouldn't know anything about that, because you never look past the surface of anyone, do you?"

It is humorous when he says it about Ronan. It is absolutely true of his relationship with Sheppard.

Similarly, in Tao of Rodney he describes his relationship with Zelenka to Ronon: "He tries to hide it, but deep down, I'm the wind beneath his wings."

It is humorous when he says it about Zelenka. It is absolutely true of his relationship with Sheppard.

He is the wind beneath the wings of the flyboy, the pilot, the airforce major/colonel, the guy who thinks that people who don't want to fly are crazy. The guy with the wings. Rodney McKay has been the wind beneath them from the moment onward that happens at the climax of Hide and Seek that changes everything for Sheppard.

The lyrics of the song from Bette Midler, arguably the world's best known gay icon, tell us how Sheppard views McKay:

It must have been cold there in my shadow To never have sunlight on your face You were content to let me shine, that's your way You always walked a step behind

So I was the one with all the glory While you were the one with all the strength

Did I ever tell you you're my hero? You're everything, everything I wish I could be Oh, and I, I could fly higher than an eagle For you are the wind beneath my wings

It is obvious that Rodney thinks of Sheppard as his hero. Because we frequently see Rodney fear for his life, avoid conflict, think his way out of situations, his heroism is more difficult to recognize. But the thing is, Rodney feels the fear and does it anyway. He is not afraid to show that he is afraid.

John, on the other hand, is so full of fear every moment of his life that if he were to acknowledge it even for one moment, it would paralyze him. He cannot afford to entertain fear, let alone show it to anyone else, friend or foe. And it is not merely losing the people he cares about that he fears, he also fears showing other people who he is where Rodney is always unabashedly himself. John thinks that Rodney doesn't care whether people like him or not, which makes him free.

Conversely, John has consciously constructed himself into someone that people will like, he reflexively uses his charm as a weapon, as self-defense. He has spent his entire life pretending to be someone he is not, even going so far as to marry the woman his father liked, as a survival mechanism. In the episode, we learn that Sheppard thinks scary things (the masks of hockey goalies are scary while football "is a real man's sport") are unmanly. Fear is unmanly. Showing fear is the unmanliest thing there is.

For John Sheppard, Rodney McKay is a Hero.

We are shown this explicitly in Harmony (S04E14). Oh, we're meant to snicker at this. This is so counter to reality, is it not? This is not how the world sees it. This is not how Rodney McKay sees it, even though in the episode he jibes that this is how he remembers the events. But this is 100% exactly, entirely and fully the way John Sheppard views the two of them, and has done so since the end of Hide and Seek.

This is in contrast to Beckett and Peter making fun of McKay at the beginning of the episode by inventing hero names for him: Mister Invincible, Captain Untouchable. While everyone recognizes Rodney's intellect, no one else thinks of him in this way. The thread running through the episode is McKay conquering his fear which is highlighted by the ancient mcguffin that he is initially unable to turn off because his fear is too great to relinquish the protective barrier.

For John Sheppard, because of who he is and how he has lived his life, Rodney McKay is a Big Damn Hero. Rodney McKay is brave enough to not only feel the fear but to let his fear show, and go for the Hail Mary anyway.

At the beginning of the episode, John was mostly amused by Rodney and his antics; amused enough to want to spend time with him, invite him to share something very personal to him (the football game that was one of the few possessions he had brought with him), to repeatedly tease him knowing what buttons to push, to talk about him even when he wasn't there ("Don't tell McKay what I said about hockey not being a real man's sport ‘cause it's a Canadian thing; a little touchy about it."). Also, look at him smiling as he's thinking about McKay here! All of these classic signs of attraction, by the by.

And yet by the end of the episode it's transmorphed into something more, something genuine.

Where previously he mocked McKay for his fear ("He... fainted"; "That's okay, you might faint again"), he now reinforces Rodney's self-ascription ("Thank you for not saying the other thing"), displaying his respect and admiration for Rodney's willingness to and capacity for self-sacrifice even in the face of paralyzing fear. Sheppard recognizes that although he might undertake one suicide mission after another, Rodney is able to do something that he does not believe he ever could.

This is where it begins. This is why he falls so hard.

[variousqueerthings]

fascinated that in toeing the line of "the doctor both is and is not asexual, and because the show is ostensibly sexier now there should be imagery of especially david tennant and various women (shockingly no men with ten) smooshing lips," it means that the doctor only ever instigates a kiss when it's got some scifi-type reason behind it, even starting with nine removing the time vortex from rose.

so only counting lip-to-lip contact for a second here*:

jack kisses the doctor (the parting of the ways)

nine removes the time vortex from rose (the parting of the ways)

cassandra kisses the doctor (new earth)

madame de pompadour kisses the doctor (the girl in the fireplace)

jackie kisses the doctor (army of ghosts)

the doctor leaves a DNA print on martha (smith and jones)

martha gives the doctor cpr (smith and jones)

john smith kisses joan (human nature)

astrid kisses the doctor (voyage of the damned)

the doctor kisses astrid goodbye as she dies (voyage of the damned -- only instigation on the doctor's part of any kiss)**

donna shocks the doctor out of being poisoned (unicorn and the wasp)

christina de souza kisses the doctor in planet of the dead and is overall very flirtatious at him in a way that almost feels like idk. an anti-romance plot. it's like everything that came before (and tbh... also amy and river song) in terms of "sexy" doctor-and-companion tension is lampshaded and made a bit silly. I don't know if this is just because the actress and dtennant have minus chemistry, but it's very funny that this is the final flirting + kiss and it's so very... "shrug, you're not going to be my companion, okay, goodbye"

*I think the only time the doctor even jokingly talks about kissing is in dalek's of manhatten, when martha and bby andrew garfield/frank have been captured and the doctor arrives. martha expresses her relief, and the doctor says something along the lines of: "well, you can kiss me later. you too frank, if you want." this is to diffuse a very scary/tense situation

**I tend to read the astrid final kiss as a kindness/comfort rather than romantic interest or sexual interest. because she is dying. and she kissed the doctor earlier, and is very scared

but wait! tentoo and rose were really going at it, you say! tentoo is part human/specifically human in a donna sense. tentoo is also super up for settling down and having a monogamous relationship, which isn't exactly the doctor's style in any regeneration. so yeah.. tentoo is another part of the tightrope, just like john smith. change the doctor into someone who is almost-but-not-quite the same, enough plausible deniability and voila, it's almost like the doctor is kissing someone, but crucially, the doctor still Is Not. in tentoo's case, the doctor is in fact watching it happen with a somewhat despondent look, before turning and leaving without waiting for rose to say goodbye. because, youknow. canonically the doctor cannot give rose what she wants (because he's not alloromantic/allosexual because he's an immortal alien) so it's better just to leave

lastly flirting: the doctor does flirt, but not often. the most flirtatious the doctor gets outside of above kissing line is when jack briefly joins nine and rose, and I'd call that the jack-contagion (affectionately, it's a good thing). ten, actually, flirts... less. comparably. (and hilariously is annoyed that jack flirts so much around him) a bit with rose in christmas invasion and new earth, but apart from the "sexy" wink, not very overtly. I mean, maybe I'm very ace, but I think they do banter rather than flirting. the one time the doctor interprets something as flirting that funnily enough isn't is when rose is talking to a cat. the doctor similarly gets flirted at (madame de pompadour, shakespeare code, martha several times, health and safety, silence of the library) but doesn't tend to enjoy it or often even notice it