#that's not the root of the problem

[mollysunder]

I ran into this post again after watching s2 and I'm kind of impressed how s2 sidestepped any meaningful exploration in the implications of Heimerdinger and Viktor's relationship. Instead the show applies this larger pattern where they have characters sort of address any conflict they may have had through a proxy. With Heimerdinger, his failures with Zaun and Viktor are sort of handwaved through his relationship with Ekko and the Firelights. Once Heimerdinger begins to aid Ekko and the Firelights that's essentially the end of his character arc, thus is his change and nothing else needs to be addressed.

In fact, outside of Heimerdinger's ignorance the show vindicated him about pretty much everything else. He was right about the hexcore. He was right that inherent corruptive nature of magic. And I'm not even trying to uncharitable, but the show said he was right to let Viktor die. There's no way around it. Viktor shouldn't have tried to "fix" himself, he should have just died and saved everyone a lot of trouble.

I don't think we've ever thoroughly unpacked how messed up the way Heimerdinger "comforted" Viktor. The only thing that Heimerdinger could really say is that the "brightest stars burn the fastest", but that's not what's going on here.

Viktor's dying from an unnatural cause!!! He's been poisoned by gas from the mines Piltover excavated in Zaun. This isn't a tragedy caused by random chance, Viktor's condition was done to him by Piltover, by Heimerdinger!

Heimerdinger is essentially comforting his own victim, and he tells Viktor that his death is just the way things are, as if there's no responsible parties involved except fate itself. I wonder if Viktor thought about this himself while Heimerdinger was talking to him. What a truly genuinely awful moment for him to sit through.

[morganbritton132]

Part 2 of this post:

Steve probably could’ve handled it.

He wouldn’t have liked it and he’d bitch the whole time about the handcuffs, but annoyance did a lot to starve off panic. He could’ve been fine.

Let Eddie get his joke in and then disappear into the background. It’s not like he didn’t deserve to be the butt of a joke or two.

He could’ve done that but then Eddie touched his face.

He put his hand on his cheek and pressed his thumb against his chin, and Steve’s vision fizzled out into punch, punch, punch, questions and no answers, pliers and fingernails, needles and Robin. Fear.

All he could hear was his own ringing ears echoing around his skull like an empty house. It takes his a second to realize that someone is talking and another second to realize that it’s him. Words pressed together, breathing short, “I work at Scoops Ahoy, I work at Scoops Ahoy, I work-“

Awareness floods back like a tidal wave - all at once - and everybody is yelling. Telling Eddie to hurry up. Steve only connects the urgency to the handcuffs once they’re off and a hand is clasped over his wrist when the metal cut in.

He must’ve struggled. He struggled last time too.

Steve looks around, wide eyes on a lot of faces but not - “Where’s…?”

“At home,” Dustin said readily. “Robin is at home. And she is safe, and - and alive.”

Steve nods and then the numbness breaks, embarrassment floods him. This isn’t the first time Dustin has caught him in the middle of a panic attack but it’s the first time anyone else has and, yeah.

“I have to go,” He says standing up abruptly, shaking off Eddie’s hand. The cuts not so bad but the skin will probably bruise. “You can get a ride with-“

“I got him,” Eddie finally speaks. “Harrington, I’m-“

But Steve is gone and Dustin follows. Neither comes back.

When Eddie asks what the hell just happened, Mike gives him a bitch look and says, “Dude, he was in the mall fire.”

That answers nothing.

[vincentvangoghs]

When Tommy saved Bobby for the second time—this time eight years in the past—it flashed me back to last summer, when Tim Minear posted a BuckTommy video to his facebook.

In that video, a fan effectively highlighted the concept of 'Invisible String Theory' and how it related to BuckTommy as a pairing, while also pointing out how this made Tommy Kinard stand out as not just a unique and effective love interest for Buck, but also an influential character for the direction of the show in general.

So, having a new flashback where Tommy is the one to save Bobby in the past, when it could have just as easily been anyone else who saved him, adds even more contextual layers to the concept. Because had Tommy not intervened at this moment, Bobby likely would have fallen into the inferno and died, leading to the alteration or complete erasure of just about everything we have witnessed in the show since 1x01--never mind just Buck no longer meeting Tommy. It makes me consider that the concept of ‘Invisible String Theory’ may have actually resonated with Minear in a truly influential way once it was brought to his attention, via that video or elsewhere, and that he didn’t just post that video for mere fandom points. Because with this latest development, we have veered away from ‘accidental Invisible String Theory’, to what appears to now be intentional. With this latest development, the writing continues to integrate Tommy into the show’s past and present, while further establishing a strong foundation for his place in the show’s future. It's yet another solid piece of evidence pointing to true longevity for the BuckTommy pairing.

Hen has her Karen, Maddie has her Chimney, Athena had her Bobby, and Buck will have his Tommy.

[the-barefoot-hatter]

pediatricians are hard to find.

you aren't broken and other important things a triangle needs to hear

[actuallyjustabiscuit]

Ok so

I personally didn’t see this scene as Ragatha realizing she’s alone

I actually think this is her making the choice to give up on getting closer with Pomni

See, It’s important that we got these moments in between Ragatha realizing Pomni and Jax have grown close enough to act like friends

Between her getting to know about someone she’s supposedly been stuck with for years and still being on good terms with someone she’s felt guilty for treating poorly

Ragatha is actually shown to be growing closer with the others

This is her feeling the warmth and validation she’s been seeking out

She doesn’t need more friends, she’s had some pretty good ones already, and in her obsession to be liked by yet another person has made her forget that a bit

Her brief moment of explosive anger with Pomni (very justified anger I might add) and then witnessing how Pomni was choosing to keep talking with Jax (the one who made her angry in the first place) made her feel betrayed

She’s watching Pomni bond with someone who likes to hurt others

She’s been wanting to get closer with a person who who wants to spend their time with someone who hurts her

So at the end, I think she’s realizing that this is not the kind of person she wants to get close with anymore

[quuuueto]

BURGER WORLD

[grouper]

[gingerswagfreckles]

Not really loving how my post about the left's love affair with eugenics and blood and soil ideology framed as "decolonization" got coopted into another "wait it's all Christianity??" "It always has been" post." Y'all are sticking your heads in the sand if you think this is a problem with "cultural Christianity." This is the exact same pattern we saw play out in the 1979 Iranian revolution and much of this ideology was coopted from the Nazis by the Soviets and reframed as progressive. This is not an issue with Western "cultural Christianity" and it would be great if Jumblr could stop engaging in the same "there's actually one secret root cause of every problem in the world and if we get rid of it we will have utopia" thing that antisemites have been using against Jews for 2000 years.

[suzuma-side]

the mastermind… he’s called grain or something…

[katerinaaqu]

The greatest problem with retellings is that they do not retell an old story. They tell an original story. Their writers just didn't want to invest and commit in original characters to tell it.

[paddysol]

what an entertaining 12 hour stream. time to watch another one! :'D

[vimeddiart]

Drew some space turnips to help with my burnout

[utilitycaster]

actually, separating this out from my long-ass post about Ruidusborn As Oppressed Group being an impossibly broken metaphor: I think a huge problem here is that Imogen is, genuinely, a valid if imperfect metaphor for disability on an individual level, but not on a systemic level, and that failure to distinguish the individual from the systemic is a massive problem in a ton of political discourse today. (I also think it underscores a disability-specific issue, that of disability genuinely being a problem for many people with or without the presence of ableism on top of it, which is not true of, say, race, which ceases to be a problem in any capacity in the absence of racism.) In other words: Imogen's experience can be extremely relatable on a personal level both in terms of living with disability/chronic illness, and for a personal experience of discrimination; however, while it stands as a metaphor for experiencing the drawbacks of disability/chronic illness (symptoms, energy levels, decisions one must make, etc) it fails as a metaphor for systems of oppression: it is purely individual.

Imogen's powers are indeed a burden, especially early on! She struggles with them and they cause very specific problems for her on a physical and emotional level. They disrupt her sleep and cause her to make different choices than she would if a potential flare-up (pun genuinely not intended here) were not an ever-present risk. She does not know their source and is frustrated by this. This is completely in line with a metaphor for chronic illness on an individual level, ie, Imogen's experience would be immediately recognizable to someone with a chronic illness, especially someone who had to fight to find a source or get a diagnosis. However, the effects her powers have on other people means that treating her with caution or distancing themselves from a mindreader is not unjustified; which makes it an extremely bad metaphor for discrimination, and in turn for any form of oppression for something that is not a problem in the absence of discrimination, such as sexuality (and I've talked about this extensively before). Again: her experience of isolation may still be relatable to someone who has experienced that for race or sexuality in real life; but only as an individual experience. It does not properly scale in-world to a systemic one.

And, for what it's worth, I think this is the fundamental issue with Bells Hells and their interpretations (and many fandom interpretations of a number of events in C3, and, as mentioned, irl political discourse): the inability to accurate distinguish individual experience from systemic issues (and more generally, the actual root cause). It's what ultimately leads to a story in which Bells Hells make their choices (or don't, as the case may be) on the basis of a falsely assumed universality of highly specific niche experiences. This does not mean, again, that their pain is not valid; but they ascribe it to something that is not in fact responsible. They take a single point and extrapolate not just a line, but an entire plane. And, as in reality, this means the root cause ultimately goes unaddressed while people point fingers.

[leroibobo]

really do not think people understand the extent to which palestinian sites/landmarks (especially muslim ones) were destroyed, beginning in 1948 until now, even in cities. the oldest extant mosque in jaffa (al-bahr mosque) was built in 1675, even though islam came there in the 7th century

[hajimedics]

my fairly oddparents ocs :) tsubaki is an overachiever who thinks she’s mature for her age (she’s just a kid.) and believes wishing for things to go her way is too childish, while kira is her easygoing, friendly, butler-like godfather that gladly goes along with her bizarre wishes. one day, tsubaki lied about being an esper to her classmates so now she has to rely on kira for her “tricks” and “chasing away ghosts”. hazel does notice that she mutters the phrase “I wish” a lot, though…

tsubaki wants to find loopholes in da rules for her beliefs, thinking that she’s gonna be doing them a favor ("I wonder how far the extent of the fairies’ power is") while kira is one of the few fairies to actively vocalize their opinions regarding the hypocrisy and flaws in the godparenting system, so he's somewhat infamous in the fairy world. they’re on the same wavelength. also kira may or may not have worked for big daddy in the past and that’s why he’s been taking interest in peri’s potential

[zoomclown]

Bryony's whole "you're just as bad as me" supervillain schtick is really interesting because at face value, she and Warren do have some very similar behavior patterns. Both of them have a history of making horrifying and disastrous choices, and then choosing to run from them instead of facing the consequences.

mean, Bryony will commit all kinds of crimes and claim she has nothing to hide, but at the end of the day when things look like they aren't going to go her way she always runs for the hills. First with Teddy Bears Picnic, then when she's fired from working at Red Valley. Woman knows how to make a hasty exit.

She torments Warren for his his supposed inability to take responsibility for the things he's done, but she's behaved exactly the same, probably more times than we even get to see in the show.

The thing is that their reasons for this behavior couldn't be more different. Every time Bryony hurts someone, it is a deliberate, active choice. Everything she does is premeditated. When Bryony runs away, it's because that was always the backup plan if things went south.

Meanwhile almost *nothing* Warren does is premeditated. He lashes out when he's backed into a corner, when his PTSD is triggered. When he runs it's more out of shame/blind panic than anything else. This show talks a lot about identity, and how much of who you are is within your control. When Warren actually makes conscious, deliberate choices (not just instinctual reactions) they are almost always to try and help other people. Usually Gordon, but more recently the residents at Red Valley as well. Warren *wants* to help people.

Warren hurts people when he's at his worst.

Bryony hurts people when she's at her best.

Warren's lowest moment is just Bryony's typical Tuesday. But when your mental health is in the shitter (like Warrens is most of the show) both of those look remarkably similar.