astigmaticoracle

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[astigmaticoracle]

The Fantastic Four Family🩵💫

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Donna Noble was really the perfect Doctor companion. She wasn’t remotely attracted to him but loved him dearly. They were giddy, laughing all the time, she was so filled with WONDER to travel space and time with him and he NEEDED that sense of excitement again. But most of all, she was so deeply human and empathetic, she cried when people got hurt, she pushed him to stop closing himself off to suffering, she didn’t let him get away with any shit but always ended their bickering on a friendly note to let him know she loved him regardless. She didn’t have Amy’s bravery nor Clara’s confidence or Martha’s cleverness… but she still pushed on no matter how scared or in over her head she was. She was selfless and could see the doctor for the lonely and hurt man he was. Honestly, she was such a wonderful companion. I am glad to see her getting the love she deserves now both by the fandom and within the Doctor canon.

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Here’s why Jasnah and Hoid is a great ship:

It’s not a ship.

It’s a stopgap.

I think Jasnah and Hoid do, on a personal level, enjoy each other. I do not think Brandon is writing them to last, and that’s intentional.

Jasnah finds Hoid to be an intellectual equal—“after all this time” implying she has never encountered someone who could be on her level before. She finds him “fascinating”. She needs his knowledge to save her planet and people. She doesn’t trust him. The text says this directly.

Additionally, they’ve been ‘together’ for what can’t be more than a few months. I don’t remember how long between Oathbringer and ROW, but it’s not long. People don’t fall in love that fast, and both Jasnah and Wit are too smart and risk-averse to let themselves do such a thing. They are not in love. They are doing a very strange form of dating, on top of which they are facing down Odium. No walks in the menagerie for them, just a constant barrage of stressors on all sides. They are under a great level of stress and not doing anything remotely close to courting or dating, physical affection from Hoid aside. Jasnah doesn’t even call him Hoid, so it’s unclear if he’s divulged that name to her despite telling Dalinar and Kaladin, who forgot or refuse to use it. The text is clear that he has told her some things about himself, like not being Alethi, using some power of physical transformation, and being immortal, but she’s stymied on anything else. I don’t think she’s the sort of woman who would insist on calling him Wit in private if she knew a more personal name, but I could be wrong.

So: Jasnah needs Hoid as an ally, needs his vast knowledge of all things Odium/Rayse, and perhaps fancies him as a future partner (“curious how the relationship would develop”). She doesn’t seem to be betting on Hoid 4 Life, but is enjoying the comfort it provides in the moment.

What does Hoid get from this?

First, he gets his dick wet. Jasnah’s canonically very beautiful. The benefit there is obvious.

Secondly, he gets to influence her decisions. He is shifting the boulder to roll in the direction he wants. Hoid is after something, and we don’t know what it is. I do genuinely believe he wants Odium contained—having a God roaming around the universe who wants Hoid specifically to die would doubtlessly be a big ol’ wrench in whatever his plans are. Hoid can do his work much more effectively at Jasnah’s side than on his own. He gets into the Big Important Meetings and knows all of the Plans being made. He gets to cast his vote. Jasnah takes his opinions into consideration.

They are both deriving an immense benefit from their relationship. Don’t let the sex fool you into thinking it makes what they have deeper than it is—as an ace person, I believe Jasnah sees sex as a necessary compromise in maintaining the relationship (“she could provide the intimacy he desired….this was not a new experience for her”). This is unsurprising. Sex is a small price to pay for, uh, saving the planet from an enemy you only recently learned exists and also happens to be the god of hate incarnate.

Brandon has said of the pairing "Wow, that's a really great and a really terrible match all at the same time, and that's what I'm looking for, in a lot of ways.”

Great match for intellectual brains and snark. Terrible match because something is being set up under the pretense of what we are assuming is a sloppy last-minute ship randomly set up in the second half of ROW.

There’s a WOB about how Jasnah and Hoid perceive power—I cannot find it, so here’s the paraphrase I’m drawing on:

“we should be concerned about how both Hoid and Jasnah view power and that’s what drew them together”.

Jasnah and Hoid are creatures of philosophy. Jasnah values the masses over the individual and Hoid values the individual over the masses (“[he] is legitimately empathetic to the individual”; telling Dalinar he would watch Roshar burn to get what he wants while devoting time and risk to helping various characters through rough spots). This is where their attraction to power and how they subsequently use it will put them at odds. They do not have the same goal, though they don’t know it—or perhaps Hoid does already, but is playing the game. Jasnah wants to save Roshar. Hoid wants to save Roshar, but more importantly, as he’s said, he wants to save his own interests.

Jasnah is brilliant, but I do think Hoid is conniving enough to manipulate her. “Yes, he did seem genuinely fond of her. He said it had taken him by surprise as much as it had her” (ROW 99)—this does not mean romantic relationship. It could. It could also mean a general fondness, like a dear friend. We have not seen Hoid or Jasnah exactly palling around with anybody on their own. We don’t know if they’re awash in good judies. They are two very smart people burdened with difficult tasks. Jasnah didn’t like Wit when we first saw them interact. Now they get along and playfully banter. That’s some unexpected fondness for sure. Trauma bonding, baby! It’s a hell of a drug!

Jasnah and Hoid are not fated to be together. They’re not supposed to be convincingly in love, because they aren’t. They are together purely by circumstance and their time is largely consumed with trying to stop Odium or Jasnah picking Hoid’s brain for her scholarly pursuits. Their relationship is, for now, enabling them to tackle the task in front of them. They are together for now, to save Roshar for now. After the battle of champions in SA5, it’s anyone’s guess—mine is that Jasnah will use what she’s learned against him somehow, and he will oppose her directly in pursuit of his own unnamed goal.

There will come a day where they realize the next obstacle they face is each other. They are locked in an embrace with knives in their hands.

TL;DR: Jasnah and Hoid are not in love and it’s okay if you don’t think they’re a good match, because they aren’t, and Brandon has said as much. Their relationship is setting up a mighty, mighty plot point in the back half of Stormlight.

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Waxillium Ladrian - Endpaper Edition by Dan Watson

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Happy Birthday Josh Lee Holloway 🎂 (b. July 20, 1969)

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Completed Oracle commission!

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Night Girl by Robert Ullman

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Oracle IS Birds of Prey and Birds of Prey IS Oracle, these two ARE inextricable and you can’t have one of them without the other under any circumstance.

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From IDW's Star Trek Annual 2023.

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Sometimes a family can be a con artist, a fertility doctor, a mad scientist, a ghostbuster, an anthropologist and a Korean fisherman who only speaks a few words of English.

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Star Trek: Deep Space Nine // S04E07 Starship Down

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*Casually passes an axe*

Leverage S05E07 The Real Fake Car Job.

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Civil War should’ve never happened at all.

True. It’s done so much damage to fandom perceptions of Reed as a character, which is a shame because he isn’t like that at all and I think the real Reed would be pretty popular. He’s a loving dad! Fandom loves dads, and Reed has about 12 kids – you want someone who really does adopt every orphaned, troubled kid they come across? Reed. Who tucks their kids in at night and reads them bedtime stories? Very earnestly goes to their Little League games? Takes them on camping trips? (Well, okay. To be fair, the aliens weren’t his fault.) Chaperones class field trips? That’s Reed. He’s also a great, supportive husband, who loves his wife more than anything! And, like. His wife is more powerful than he is, and that doesn’t really bother him. His daughter is smarter than him (at 3), and it doesn’t bother him. He and Ben have Marvel’s original bromance! (I’m not counting Timely.) They were college roommates! They are lifelong best friends! They’ve been living together for decades! They’re raising their kids together! 

I mean, look at him, he’s adorable:

Civil War Reed is just the most OOC Reed ever written, but he’s somehow come to be what everyone thinks he’s like always.

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My acquisition of Cosmic Boy by Anthony Castrillo

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This comic is, as is usual for Wednesday’s comics, chosen by my Patrons. Speaking of…

Check my Patreon out if you’d like to support the comic, even a little bit helps. Or just to check out the reward tiers, there’s some neat bonus stuff and I tried to make them fun: https://www.patreon.com/waitingforthet

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The fact that you can't get people to read more LoSH. Like OK yes it's long, but with that cast and particularly with the pre-boot's development you can't just cram it into a trade and call it a day.

Their world is fleshed out and interesting, they're complicated and have complex relationships and they age and grow with time. They're unmistakably connected to the DCU, yet fully their own. They have silly stories and dark, hard-hitting stories and everything in-between.

There is so much to them and they're overlooked because their comics are older, or because they're not Batman, or because "it's confusing". It's not that confusing, not more than any other comic, and they have such a rich history and so much potential.