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DAREDEVIL — 2.07 | THE PUNISHER — 1.09

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Stephanie Brown: it’s not my job to protect Crystals sobriety

Also Stephanie Brown: it’s absolutely my job to protect Crystals sobriety

This isn’t inconsistent to me at all btw . I think it makes a lot of sense and says a lot about the evolution of Steph and Crystals relationship.

I just find it super duper interesting. Bc Steph isn’t wrong at all, it isn’t her job, but it was. It was her job for a WHILE! it was her job to protect crystal because no one else (including crystal herself) was going to.

Crystal doesn’t really start to clean herself up until Cataclysm starts, and even then it’s not an automatic thing. Especially not for Steph, who doesn’t move on and accept that Crystals better now, that she’s going to be there for Steph, that Steph doesn’t have to protect her anymore, because that just hadn’t been true for the previous 15 years.

And it shows so evidently over and over again that Steph just doesn’t immediately accept and embrace this development. She supports Crystal all the way, and she loves her mom so goddamn much, but Steph doesn’t slot naturally into the ‘Crystal can be trusted to take care of me / I don’t need to take care of her’ dynamic at ALL!

In the very scene where we start to see Crystal recognizing her shortcomings as Steph’s parent, what I consider the turning point for Crystals recovery, we see how unnatural a relationship with Crystal where Steph doesn’t need to take care of her comes to Steph:

It’s Steph who reaches out to emotionally support Crystal, it’s Steph who crouches down to reassure her, it’s Steph who comforts and takes care of her and literally tucks her in to sleep. Steph is framed in every way as the caretaker, even as Crystal starts to recognize the unfairness of Steph taking on that role instead of Crystal.

Steph hides things from Crystal, she takes care of issues herself. When Crystals brother, Steph’s ‘Uncle Dave’ begins hitting on Steph, she takes care of it herself, and when Spoiler succeeds in sending him to jail, Steph brushes off Crystals question of where Dave went, seemingly finding it unnecessary and superfluous to explain anything to Crystal. After all, Steph makes the connection herself when she directly compares Arthur to Dave in terms of Crystals ‘malfunctioning lie detector’- Steph sees Crystal as just as ineffectual to protect Steph from Dave as Crystal was in protecting Steph from Arthur. It’s not something Steph has to think twice about at all, she deals with the issue herself, and she doesn’t worry Crystal with the details. She takes that burden automatically, because that was Steph’s childhood. Thats her natural state.

Not to mention the framing of this moment alongside another smaller instance of Steph looking out for Crystal, she made her breakfast.

There lots of smaller instances of Steph being unwilling to confide in Crystal, and while some of them come across as run of the mill teen angst- I think there is an understandable undercurrent. Even with their relationship at its very best- Steph can’t fully confide in or communicate effectively with Crystal. Steph usually comes to the conclusion that Crystal won’t get it, that Crystal won’t be able to understand very quickly. Reading this as an extension of how unreliable and just plain out of it Crystal was for the majority of Steph’s childhood, how ‘checked out’ mentally Crystal was feels like a fair read. And Crystals well meaning efforts to talk to Steph usually don’t extend very far past a dismissal from Steph. Crystal gave it a go, but seems to give up and move on fairly easily once stonewalled by Steph.

Steph’s subconscious image of Crystal while she gives birth is that of Crystal at her worst - enabling Arthur’s abuse and completely untrustworthy and unable to determine a dangerous situation.

Another quick example of Steph’s frame of mind when it comes to Crystal and Steph’s assumed responsibility for her:

These are all examples that take place after Crystal has begun to clean herself up and becomes much more aware of how she’d let down Steph in her childhood.

Anyway all that to say, I think it’s actually might be a good sign that Steph takes that angle, that she asserts aloud that maintaining Crystals sobriety isn’t her job. She’s not trying to be cruel, and she’s not heartless, and it definitely doesn’t mean she doesn’t love her mom, it just means maybe Steph has finally really started to come to terms with Crystals growth and their new relationship. Maybe their relationship has reached a point where even when they’re on the outs, when Steph is pissed and scared and upset at Crystal, she’s secure enough overall to trust that Crystal doesn’t need Steph to constantly be there like watching over her, that Crystals recovery isn’t Steph’s responsibility anymore.

Their relationship doesn’t get like instantly healed and it doesn’t mean they’re suddenly great at communicating, the opposite rly, Steph literally runs away to avoid having to be around Crystal, but I think this line says something and I think it’s probably a good something.

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my best tip for anyone trying to get back into reading is to remember that you can read books to avoid other responsibilities in ur life and it can become a vice if you play your cards right

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concepts i think would be fun for a nuwho companion:

a historical companion. like a proper one. none of this wishy-washy victorian nonsense. give me a tudor carpenter. a twelfth-century byzantine soldier. a tenth-century arab scholar. something to sink my teeth into!!!

ok rant over. now i want a bog standard young woman from london type companion... from the 70s/80s. it would be an interesting point of reflection for doctor who i think

a time lord companion. initially pitched similarly to romana (only minus the whole bird on his head guardian nonsense), the same age as romana in her first appearance - only, as soon becomes clear, drastically different in character. this time lord, barely of legal age, is (or was) a cia agent and bears the scars of growing up during and after the time war. can the doctor get this cynical, traumatised child to realise they've been forced to grow up too fast?

a robot. or an android, whatever word you prefer. similar to nardole but like, more obviously a robot. their consciousness was originally a living human's, uploaded by accident after the human's death to a factory work robot. they have all the core elements of the human, but their personality is different - travelling with the doctor is an opportunity to process their severe identity issues

an alien historian. like properly alien. really interested in studying a niche period of earth history - perhaps one from our future, even

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"Introduce yourself! Tell me the name of the boy who isn't going to die today."

"Davros. My name is Davros."

On this date nine years ago the episode 'The Magician's Apprentice' first aired.

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Things we know about Time Lord reproduction

Time Lords are sequential hermaphrodites[1]

Given that nobody at Clara’s Christmas dinner party was freaking out about the Doctor’s bizarre junk, their male(?) organs probably look basically like human ones, as well as everything else on the outside[2]

They appear to have mammaries[2]

They do not appear to have a pouch[2]

For some period of their history they may have reproduced asexually via Looms[3]

They have family hierarchy that includes spouses, parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren, siblings, and cousins[4]

Their children look basically like human children; they are not born full-grown (but we don’t know if they are born as human-equivalent babies, or how long it takes them to reach adulthood)[5]

At least two of them are weirded out to some degree by humanity’s seeming obsession with biological reproductive activity[6]

IDK why exactly I made this post; I started thinking about it back when a tiny minority of people were having a freakout about the Thirteenth Doctor being a woman and “how would that work,” like as if Time Lord sex has to work anything like human sex anyway? I mean look at clownfish, seahorses, and tetrahymena thermophilia, and that’s just three Earth species for examples… anyway I decided to gather together everything that I can think of that we know about Time Lord reproductive biology, based on the classic and new series, Virgin NAs, and Big Finish audios. Feel free to add more stuff, with references.

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something about damian makes people go “ooo little brother!”

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Overall the Magician's Apprentice/Witch's Familiar was pretty good, I really liked the interactions between old Davros and the Doctor, as well as the whole Twelve/Missy/Clara dynamic. But the ending, with Twelve going back to save Davros, bothered me. Like. Sorry. The only way the Daleks could have a concept of the word mercy is if the Doctor, specifically, implanted the idea into young Davros? Nowhere else in Davros' developing years in that warzone, which he survived, could he have encountered mercy? That felt so egotistical and bizarre.

Not only did it feel like him going back and changing his own timeline for no reason (I know the reason implied is that it already happened that way, bc they understand mercy, I'm saying that's a stupid explanation)--it also totally negated the weight of what happened. The Doctor should regret that moment. He chose to let that boy die, and that choice doomed billions of people. He made a huge mistake, and the only reason mistakes matter in this show is that you can't just erase them with time travel whenever you change your mind. They did that scene, and I thought this was gonna be a great setup for a larger character arc this season (it might still be, for all I know, but it's missed potential either way)

Huge character moment in the intro, working through all of that and what it means for the Doctor throughout two episodes, and then just "oopsie, just kidding, I changed my mind" at the end. This is definitely in Moffat's top 5 weakest writing choices so far (and they always seem to come in what would be otherwise great episodes)

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he thinks he’s hilarious

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COMMUNITY 3.04 Remedial Chaos Theory

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DOCTOR WHO | The Witch’s Familiar

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[IsraelHayom is Israeli Private Media]

An Israeli source familiar with the matter admitted that Jerusalem was taken by surprise by President Donald Trump's announcement of a deal with the Houthis, describing it as "very bad news for Israel," particularly amid ongoing US negotiations with Iran. [...]

Senior Houthi official Mohammed Ali al-Houthi declared that "Yemen's operations were and remain a show of support for Gaza, aimed at halting aggression and enabling the delivery of aid. The [Houthi] leader has made this clear. Our armed forces confirmed in their statements that the actions against US warships were a response to American aggression designed to halt Yemen's support for Gaza."

Al-Houthi added: "Trump's declaration of an end to US aggression against Yemen will first be tested on the ground. This is a victory that separates American support for Israel from Netanyahu's failure. He should resign."

[TimesOfIsrael is Israeli Private Media]

Asked about Houthi pledges to continue attacks against Israel despite having agreed to halt attacks on US ships in the Red Sea, US President Donald Trump responds, “I’ll discuss that if something happens.”

“I don’t know about that, but I know one thing: They want nothing to do with us, and they let that be known through all of their surrogates,” Trump responds when asked about the Houthi threats during questions from reporters in the Oval Office.

6 May 25

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# just the doctor being extremely cheerful when everyone is on the brink of death

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Doctor Who Advent Calendar —Day 16

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Joy Sullivan, from "(Luck I)", Instructions for Traveling West