#Eras Edge

[sliceworks]

The Problem I Couldn't Solve (Quit)

Location: Neodymium CityPoint of Interest: Chrono ArborBackground: The Chrono Arbor is an ancient tree, said to be as old as time itself. It stands tall and majestic, its roots delving deep into the temporal fabric of the multiverse. Legend has it that the Chrono Arbor was planted by the first Tempus Imperium, a coalition of time masters who sought to bring order to the chaotic multiverse after…

[what-the-daredevil]

that was so homoerotic for a second there i forgot this was marvel disney and frank and matt weren’t gonna fuck nasty at the end of it

[polaritydisturbed]

One thing that’s become really clear while watching Classic Doctor Who alongside the current era—especially starting with the Fifteenth Doctor—is how well the Ninth through Twelfth Doctor eras nailed the balance of episode length and story structure.

Classic Who usually split its stories into four or five 20–25 minute episodes per arc, which roughly equals the runtime of a modern two-parter. But while that format allowed for sprawling narratives, it came with a tradeoff: pacing. Entire episodes sometimes feel like narrative treading water—not because the writing was bad, but because of the constraints of mid-20th century television. (That’s its own fascinating rabbit hole, but we’ll save that for another time.)

To be fair, Classic Who did experiment with its format. Some stories, like The Edge of Destruction—a tight, two-part psychological thriller set entirely inside the TARDIS—used a smaller runtime to great effect. It’s still one of the strongest entries of Season 1, partly because it had no room to meander.

Later, the show dabbled in stories of two 45-minute episodes during Season 22. But those episodes often had the same problem: some stories still didn’t need the extra time. Take The Mark of the Rani, for example. It was padded out to fit that two-part, 45-minute-per-episode format (roughly 90 minutes total), but honestly? It could’ve been a sharper, more effective 40-minute story. There’s a lot of unnecessary fluff that drags the pacing down.

But then you get something like The Keys of Marinus—a six-parter (20 min each part) that essentially functions as a sci-fi anthology. Each episode throws the Doctor and co. into a completely new setting with its own self-contained mini-plot. It uses its extended format to experiment and surprise without feeling stale. That’s when the long form works.

Then came the 2005–2017 revival era, and honestly? The show hit its structural gold standard: twelve episodes per season, blending 40-minute standalones with 80-minute two-parters. And it just worked.

Episodes like Blink and Midnight were tight, high-impact stories that landed precisely because they didn’t overstay their welcome. Try stretching either one to feature-length, and the tension would unravel. Meanwhile, two-parters like The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances had room to build atmosphere, layer in character development, and deliver those signature emotional wallops. They remain fan favorites for a reason: the format gave them the breathing room they needed—and then stopped.

Which brings us to the Fifteenth Doctor’s era.

Right now, we’re back to a one-size-fits-all approach but the opposite direction: single 40-minute episodes across the season, with only the finale allowed to be a two-parter. And the result? Some stories just aren’t getting the space they need to land.

Doctor Who thrives on structural flexibility. Some stories need 80 minutes to unfold. Others are perfect little 40-minute excursions. Locking every episode into the same runtime is like asking every alien to fit inside a human suit: it works until it doesn’t, and when it doesn’t, it’s obvious.

The point is: variety in format has always been one of Doctor Who’s strengths. When the show leans into that, it sings. When it forgets that… well, you end up with stories that could’ve soared if they were just given a little more space to breathe.

(Also I don’t mean to exclude 13—it’s just that her era experimented with structure so much across her run that it’s kind of its own thing, there’s a whole separate post to be written about what worked and didn’t there.)

(Fun fact for reading this far: The Edge of Destruction was only two 25-minute parts because the production team didn’t know if the show was getting picked up for more episodes. They wrote a short, self-contained story set entirely inside the TARDIS to avoid building new sets. It was meant to be cheap filler—and it ended up being one of the highlights of the First Doctor’s era.)

[tanasha-not-yet]

dagur was the first pokemaster

[namisweatheria]

I feel like we don't discuss Nami's relationship with gender enough. Her entire character is so deeply informed by being a girl in a male-dominated pirate world and it's so interesting and so worth talking about.

The background creepiness of Bad pirate crews, which are most of them, how they tend to not have any female crew members at all, how they beckon any pretty young woman around to come play with them and join them. It's real bad. It's also like, a totally 2 dimensional portrayal of evil that is reserved for the most background of background characters.

However I think their ubiquity says a lot about how piracy is meant to be perceived by the public in One Piece, and is one of the strongest indicators of how prevalent misogyny is in-world.

It's very normal in One Piece for regular island inhabitants to have never met a Different class of pirate in their life. There's no reason for them to withhold judgement that maybe these pirates won't be like every crew that attacked before, and to wait and judge them by their actions. I mean frankly that would be irrationally weak self-preservation.

There are people who live peacefully under the flags of Yonkos who protect them, and feel loyalty and gratitude to them for it, but that seems to only be thing with very big name pirates. The East Blue, being the weakest and least populated, has no such plethora of powerful people and resulting turf wars.

So. Nami. Is very clearly implied to have never met any Different pirates before. I'm thinking about what that means. About how every group of pirates she stole from were creepy, dangerous men. How she started going out stealing when she was still a young child. How she didn't have a mother anymore to guide her or comfort her. How Arlong would grab her chin inappropriately, talk about her as a "human female", as property, and god knows what else.

How all the men in Arlong's crew treated her patronizingly, pretending they're all friends, teasing her and playing at respect when really not a single one of them ever stuck up for her or hesitated to accuse her of betrayal. Who were always ready to kill her if she refused to cooperate. Who grabbed her and intimidated her when they felt like it.

That's what she had to come back to after a close call with stealing from other predatory men, instead of the relief of home there was a dark, cramped room filled with endless hours of misery and isolation and blood. Where any one of her captors could barge in and demand new maps, work faster, where did you go, you took too long again this time. Endless threats and incursions.

I'm thinking about that her fight scene in Alabasta, where she tumbles and rips off her cape and uses it to catch her enemy's spikes, before leaping to her feet and running out the back door, all in one moment. How it makes her enemy reconsider her and think, "so the girl's not a total novice at fighting after all." What that implies about her experiences as a young thief. The times she wasn't fast or clever enough and had to fight and claw her way out. Why she always carried a staff and a knife. Why she was the only one before Chopper who had any medical knowledge or experience.

You know she was stitching herself up. And the weapons, how do you think she learned to use those? If any of the Arlong Pirates helped her it wasn't out of kindness and it wasn't gentle.

Then I think about Nojiko, and Bellemere's memory, and the only softness in a hard life. How easily Nami connects to every young woman experiencing hardship that she meets. How completely she dismisses the struggles of men unless they mean something to her and are going through something terrible. The way that Nami only has sympathy for women and children is easily noticeable in-text, but it's also something confirmed in those words by the author. And it's clearly because of the life she lived, the men who had all the power and only abused it, who saw her as nothing but a girl to take advantage of, without anyone aside from her sister clearly knowing and caring about any of it.

Nami clearly isn't bitter, she doesn't think the world owes her recompense, on the contrary she knows she is far from the only person in the world to suffer the things she has suffered. She is endlessly reaching out and kind, but only to those that she isn't sure would get help without her. Certainly, before Luffy, Usopp, and Zoro, no man ever reached out a hand to her without an ulterior motive.

I think when she sees a girl in trouble, a girl biting her lip to hold in a scream of grief, a girl running in the woods away from a monster, a girl captured by pirates, she sees someone who no one is coming for. Who no one will stick up for. A person without allies in a world against her. Whether it's actually true in this case or not, she runs straight for that girl anyways every single time.

[thebibliosphere]

Sat too long in my feelings about the Gotham Knights video game Jason Todd going to therapy and trying to engage with his siblings from a place of healing and hurt myself, so now I'm inflicting this on all of you, but:

Do you ever think about how Jason only ever gets to experience Dick as an extension of the breakdown of Dick and Bruce's relationship at that time? Granted, depending on the comic era, Dick maybe doesn't show up as much as he should, or Jason acts like an antagonistic little shit, but overall, Dick's falling out with Bruce overshadows all of it.

And, like, yeah, it's funny to joke that only Jason knows that Dick went through a shitbag teenage phase and that no one ever believes him. (Gaslight, Gate Keep, Gotham ✌) And Jason is irate about it because how can they not see through what is clearly The World's Best Big Brother Act? How can no one else see it's fake?

(Unless it's not fake, and Jason just wasn't worth loving... No, fuck off, he doesn't care, he doesn't. Leave him alone.)

But at the same time, what if Jason's the only one who realizes it's a trauma response?

What if Jason's in the middle of a therapy session or reading one of the self-help books we see him ordering, and he just has to take a moment to breathe because, of course, it's a fucking trauma response. Of course, it is.

Dick's not pretending to be anything. He was, in fact, so severely affected by Jason's death that he over-corrected and now refuses to let himself be anything other than the Perfect Big Brother. Because he can't. Because when he's not perfect, when he's not there for them, they die.

Suddenly the golden retriever's cheerfulness is less grating and more worrying. Dick's need for perfection is less an annoying personality trait to compete with and more an exhausted cry for help that no one else seems to see. Not even Dick.

Because Jason realizes now that he might have never managed to live up to the Golden Boy mantle, but Dick will never get to put it down, either. Because he can't let himself. Because bad shit happens when he does.

So what if that's what he hopes Dick reads between the lines in the email he sends him in GK?

What if, by saying, "Hey, I realize now trying to hold myself to your standards was damaging my relationship with you, but I need you to know it wasn't your fault," was also Jason saying, "Hey, this shit isn't healthy are you fucking okay?"

[smilesrobotlover]

FD is just tryna make him breakfast 😭

[rox-of-iu]

some more miscellaneous peak lord doodles because they bring me joy

[itsguysnightitsironic]

If your overlord doesn't give you a campy outfit you're allowed to kill them with an icepick.

🧊⛏️

Adapting to 31 and 32 of EOM by redesigning the redesigns because Lethica no fur coat, Lethica 1920's figure, no fur coat? JAIL FOR DEREK, JAIL FOR A HUNDRED YEARS!!

I miss my teeth, guys, I miss them a lot.

[lulublack90]

Prompt 11 - First Kiss

@wolfstarmicrofic January 11, word count 404

Sirius had been obsessing over Remus’s lips for weeks, months, probably years. He’d become suddenly aware of how much Remus affected him one evening when they were crowded around one of the fireplaces in the Gryffindor Common room, and Remus had just finished off this third chocolate frog. There was a thin smear left on the corner of his mouth. Sirius watched as the tip of Remus’s tongue poked out and swiped the last bit of chocolate, disappearing back into Remus’s mouth before poking out again and slipping across Remus’s lips. Since then, Sirius hadn’t gone a day without wanting to touch them with his own. 

He and Remus were sitting in the quidditch stands, watching James racing up and down the pitch with the quaffle as Gryffindor played against Ravenclaw for the quidditch cup. 

The game went on for hours, both teams neck and neck for points, it was going to come down to whoever caught the snitch first. 

Sirius had grabbed onto Remus’s sleeve half an hour ago when Fuller had almost caught the snitch, her fingers brushing against the golden ball for a second before the snitch darted out of her reach. A wave of exasperated sighs chorused around the stadium at poor Fuller’s fumble.

Twenty minutes later, Fuller suddenly shot straight up and reached out her hand. She levelled off with her hand firmly clasped around the golden snitch. 

The roar that rose from the Gryffindor supporters was deafening. The crowd jumped to their feet, jumping and cheering as the players circled the stands. 

Sirius turned to Remus to join in the celebrations with him, and then he saw the joy on Remus’s face and the smile stretching his lips. He couldn’t take it any more. He took a huge chance, grabbed Remus’s face with his hands, and captured his lips with his own. 

They were soft, yet had a firmness to them when, to his surprise, they kissed him back. Remus wrapped his arms around him and Sirius melted into him. All the surrounding noise disappeared as he and Remus kissed. Someone could have been talking directly to him, and he wouldn’t have heard them, because at that moment only Remus mattered. 

They broke away and stared at each other breathless and with uncertain eyes. 

“Hi,” Sirius said, his voice cracking. Remus smiled at him. 

“Hi,” And then he was kissing Sirius again and Sirius had never been happier. 

[casualshrimp-but-undertale]

…guys i have a confession to make.

my favourite undertale character….. is napstablook. the silliest of all + like me for real

And I LOVE THIS DESIGN ITS MY FAVOURITE GHOST BUT SANS WOAH (THERES SO MUCH GOOD IDEAS THE HEART OF TEARS ON HIS BACK OR HIS STITCHES ON HIS NOSE BEING LIKE NAPSTA’S ORIGINAL NOSE) and THE STORY?????

tear sans belongs to @eriscary (you cooked with tear (chara design and story wise), definitely not the last time i’m drawing them hehehe)

doodles under the cut

(also can i just say every time i see you (yes you eri, if you see this) reblog something with tear you do it with a paragraph of pure kindness and i respect you so much for that??? anyways i hope your break is going well, take care of yourself!!)

[karkaliciouswhimsy]

bring me the horizon 2004

[uhbasicallyjustmilex]

💜

[tanasha-not-yet]

[snoflurriee]

whenever wolfstar fights, remus keeps his hands shoved in his back pockets because no matter how bad the argument gets he would never lay a hand on sirius out of anger and doesn't want them to worry even for a second that he would

[beast-of-bray-road]