#I'll let y'all know if it gets homoerotic

[bumblingbabooshka]

From 'String Theory' by Kirsten Beyer 1] Seven of Nine, Hater of the Century /pos 2] Extremely high praise from Seven in a Mister Darcy sort of way 3] Interesting that Seven refers to B'Elanna as 'Human' whereas everyone else throughout the series really only ever refers to her as Klingon

[widowshill]

scientific ranking of all of vicki's boyfriends and girlfriends

1. roger collins canon status: 6/10 they are the moment. collinsport's own jane eyre reenactment in a 1960's feudal sardine empire, complete with lovely arsonist wife. they're soulmates. he might be her uncle (?). it's true love. it's workplace harassment. they're fated to be together. they're doomed. they're entwined but never joined. they're marrying other people. they're mimicking each other's dialogue. they went on two dates and they both sucked. she's the adoptive mother to his (?) child. he tried to fire her 2 million times. they never even kissed once. they got stuck in a cabin together in the middle of a storm. he gives her away at her wedding. he can't stand to see her married. she is one of the few people in this world that he finds worth caring about.

2. burke devlin (mitch ryan) canon status: 10/10 he's dangerous he's mysterious he's tall dark and handsome and he did not hit that guy with his car. he's an oil baron. he's an ex convict. he's a millionaire. he's roger collins' ex-boyfriend. he's going to set out to destroy everything but oh god not her he would never let anyone touch her. one of the few people who actually takes her bodily safety seriously and moves heaven and earth to rescue her (repeatedly). two poor kids from the wrong side of the tracks arrive in the same train car from new york to collinsport. one of them already knows the underside of the collins' heel and the other one is about to and he can't convince her to get out. he wants to wreck the collins name she wants it as her own but they're both too-well wrapped up in the myth to leave it.

3. carolyn stoddard canon status: 2/10 girlfriends. that's all i can say. i just think they are very much adorable and they do score points on the canon scale, remotely, for such subtle lines from Carolyn as: "Just what the doctor ordered to keep the wind from ruffling your dark and gorgeous hair," and "Here, alone with you, I can't pretend." never mind their sleepovers in vic's bed hanging out in their nightdresses. carolyn would sooner own up to having a crush on her uncle than having a crush on a woman because this is upper crust maine in the 1960's but listen ... for a character who enjoys flirting for fun but gets extremely anxious about settling down and marrying a man, who prefers the most distant, unobtainable men that she has no reasonable chance of actually ending up with (roger case in point), who gets jealous every time vicki is with someone no matter who it is ... maybe she does like men too, but let's investigate mama let's research. with the governess, preferably. (who could maybe be her half sister? see no. 1)

4. maggie evans (blonde wig) canon status: 0/10 i'll be honest with you all this one is purely vibes but the other boyfriends suck so she still gets to place ahead of them. don't tell me maggie's not looking at her in exactly the same way she looks at joe when she's eyeing him up as her next man. she got straighter when we lost the blonde wig but this entire counter scene in e1 is one long flirtation session and for however many episodes she keeps the wig i believe very strongly there's a devastatingly homoerotic female friendship developing. i'm not immune to the short hair blonde long hair brunette wlw aesthetic i'll admit. as i said vibes only but just trust me. y'all fw cartinelli? ok. well.

5. frank garner canon status: 10/10 i'm glad you were very helpful during the laura arc frank but i'll be honest you bore me to tears why are you even here. he's got the personality of wonder bread and he's in the wrong genre he should be arguing cases on bachelor father or solving hardy boys mysteries or something i truly do not know. these two together just means bouncing all our lawful good off each other and it self perpetuates into nothing interesting at all. they're not even maybe related! maybe if we continued further with the betty hanscombe story and he found some damning revelation about vicki's parentage he'd have something fun to contribute to the plot but as things stand he's just a duller ivy league version of joe and if we're gonna have an all-american boyfriend i'd rather she just date mr haskell.

6. burke devlin (anthony george) canon status: 10/10 you may think that he cannot have possibly fallen from 2nd to 6th with a recast ... surely not ... but you would be wrong. i give vic props for domesticating him but he's lost all his panache in his full-time role as romantic interest, and now he doesn't even look like handsome squidward anymore :( like frank, this version of burke is much too obviously a safe choice, where the original allure of burke is the fact that she wants him despite the enmity between him and the collins family, his destructive tendencies, his jawline ... I do give him props for going to extreme lengths to make her happy, not only in their personal relationship, but her overall circumstances, and the other things that matter to her. you're not last but i wasn't sad when the plane crashed either :/

7. barnabas collins canon status: 8.5/10 is this a real relationship ... i don't really know. i'm not sure the participants know. barnabas thinks it is and i guess they were technically engaged to be married at some point but that's only towards the goal of using her to vividly hallucinate his dead girlfriend so does that count. I will say in their favor it was extremely funny that she had to drive the getaway car for her own kidnapping/elopement/vamp enthrallment because he can't drive. honestly that was the only part of this whole situation i enjoyed. also when she married jeff and he sighed and put his head in his hands he was real for that. they're actually pretty compatible and would be amazing friends ... or like, they could host a podcast together, or something. not this.

8. jeffpeter clarkbradford canon status: 10/10 such a shitty boyfriend that roger collins opened his third eye to warn her that marrying him is the greatest mistake of her life. his only job in the entire world is to make sure that vicki does not hang for witchcraft and he fails multiple times. possibly the most annoying man on the planet. what if we gave a ken doll the personality of a republican congressional aide and he's played by an actor that is reviled by his castmates. comes to the future on the power of wanting to fuck vicki i guess and to spite me, specifically, who's very tired of seeing him, and makes her have a car accident where she could have died. kisses reincarnated french serial killers in the yard days before their big wedding. leaves her at the altar to go play in the dirt in the graveyard. later marries her in a shotgun ceremony at 3 in the morning and then vanishes back into The Past. after literally driving her to suicide, takes her to be with him in The Past where she hangs, again, and then dies off the cliff. TOMATO TOMATO TOMATO TOMATO.

[meadowmines]

OC-Tober/Tojoctober Day 23: Alley

[In which Yamaoka tries to buy some info, fucks around, and finds out. also I wish y'all could see my mental storyboard of the first part of this scene because it's peak canon-typical homoerotic violence]

"Ngh--!"

"One would think," Kuroshi begins, "that Patriarch Nishikiyama's prized hitman would have a little more common sense. You've brought me payment. I'm prepared to give you your money's worth. But if you would prefer to do business the hard way, I should warn you..." He wrenches Yamaoka's wrist up a little higher behind his back, presses his face a little tighter against the rough brick wall. "The next one will hurt."

He says, as if this one didn't.

"Fuck," Yamaoka wheezes. "Okay. Okay. Get off me."

"Your sidearms first. Both of them, if you please."

"How about this." Yamaoka makes no move to disarm himself. "I drop my guns, you drop your knife, and--" However he'd planned to finish that sentence, it's lost in a bitten-off yelp as Kuroshi twists that captured arm just so.

"You are in no position to haggle with me," Kuroshi snarls, right into Yamaoka's ear. "Drop your weapons, or see what happens if you don't. The choice is yours."

"All right. All right! Goddamn! You got a hand free, take the damn things."

"There." Kuroshi relieves the hitman of his weapons and kicks them deeper into the alley, safely out of reach. That done, he lets Yamaoka go and steps back, dagger in hand. Just in case, of course. "I'll return them to you once we're done here. Now, let's try this once more, and I'd appreciate some civility this time. But first, indulge me. Why would a Tojo man come to Kansai for information I'd wager could just as easily be sourced locally?"

"You namedropped my boss so I know you know a little something about him." Yamaoka spits blood on the filthy concrete and snorts out a humorless laugh. "If he found out I went to the Florist behind his back, I'd be good as dead. And I've done my homework on you, Kuroshi. You might have passed your territory on to the Florist in '89, but smart money says there's still plenty of overlap in your networks."

"Hm." Just the faintest hint of a smile tugs at the corner of Kuroshi's mouth. "I dare say you have the makings of a fine info broker yourself, Yamaoka-san." He shrugs widely. "It is as you say. I prefer not to step on the Florist's toes, but I do keep an ear out for interesting news from Tokyo. As I'm sure he does for Kansai. Let's cut to the chase, shall we? What exactly is it you want to know?"

Yamaoka doesn't answer, not right away. He reaches for an inside jacket pocket, notes Kuroshi's grip on his dagger tightening, and makes the biggest possible show of slowly fishing a somewhat battered pack of cigarettes out and lighting one up. "There's a job I did a while back," he says as he tucks the pack away. He takes a long drag off his cigarette, frowning as he does. "About three years ago. Target was a Majima Family man. Guy by the name of Aoyagi." He looks Kuroshi in the eye, like he's looking for some kind of reaction. Whatever it is he's looking for, he doesn't seem to find it. "I'm no rookie, Kuroshi. I've never lost sleep over putting a man down. But this one never quite sat right with me."

"Were you and this Aoyagi fellow friends?" Kuroshi asks him, and he laughs.

"Anything fucking but." The answer comes far too quickly. "....we had something in common. Let's just say there aren't a whole lot of yakuza like us running around and leave it at that, but... yeah, knowing there's one less of us in the world... not gonna lie, that doesn't exactly give me the warm fuzzies."

"Very well. Who called the hit, then?"

Another long drag. "Majima himself."

Kuroshi's brow furrows. "You're sure."

"He paid me half up front. In person. Doesn't get much more 'sure' than that." Yamaoka flicks ash onto the ground. "Told me Aoyagi would show up at this one warehouse at this certain time and he'd be alone."

"I don't suppose he gave a reason."

"If they don't say, I don't ask. None of my business as long as I'm getting paid."

"Of course. Go on."

"Well. I was out walking around, killing some time before that, and who should I see waving a cab down but my meal ticket for the night. I figured... sooner he was dead, sooner I'd get the other half of my money." Yamaoka exhales a long plume of smoke and leans back against the wall. "Little shit got away. Busted my lip, made a run for it. I couldn't get a clear shot and next thing I know, he's in a cab and gone. I figured he was heading for that warehouse so I grabbed the next cab in line."

"I see." Kuroshi nods sagely. "And that's where you killed him."

"Yeah, see, this is where shit goes off the rails," Yamaoka says. "I didn't kill Aoyagi." He drops the butt of his cigarette onto the damp concrete and grinds it out under his heel. "Someone else beat me to it."

[sarrie]

Ok fuck it I'm in a Music Mood and I'm going to include youtube links to all of my favorite Depeche Mode songs per album so this post is probably going to load like ass I apologize. Why am I doing this?? idk man growing up my dad listened to a ton of Depeche Mode and as a teenager I would lay in bed with headphones on listening to all my dad's old Depeche Mode CDs they've kind of just been present my whole life.

(i wish we could make our own customized Keep Reading text à la livejournal dot com)

From Greatest Hits (1987) because, listen, the amount of singles and single round-ups they have is wild so we're just going to start here since it includes a majority of what i like pre-1987 onward. Also I wish I could just share the entire album lmAO but i'm trying to keep the lists like. top top favorites.

I feel like Shake the Disease is this very bare bones version of Depeche Mode. Like, it's the staples. All the things that make up their future songs are there, but they haven't quite gotten comfortable in their style yet. It's such a good starting point for their sound, to me.

(tw referenced self harm in lyrics) Was I like 16 listening to this song and crying? MAYBE. The heavy industrial pushing this moody synth. Uuggghh IT'S SO GOOD. Surface level this song is good, and then you're going through some hard shit in high school and it becomes something that helps keep you together.

(cw flashing/strobing images at 1:06 to 1:17, and 1:54 to 2:02) The fucking dancing. The peppy "You treat me like a dog, get me down on my knees. :D" The superimposed dancing. It is, indeed, just A lot.

Another classic tbh. I love the train sounds at the beginning of the song. "Metropolis has nothing on this You're breathing in fumes, I taste when we kiss" I'm feral the imagery in this song is so so good. This is also a song where I feel like Dave's vocals really shine. And again got me weak with the Dave + Martin combo at the interlude.

Music For The Masses (1987)

Never Let Me Down Again is like. idk. one of those high ranking songs for me. The lack of separation between homoerotic subtext and the glaring drug addiction in the lyrics is so good. (I know it's about the drug addiction more than anything, but the vibes are there.) Soundscape-wise I LOVE how big this song feels. Depeche Mode is so good at that, though. I don't know how to explain it better, but it's like even if you're listening through headphones their music just fills the room.

Is it a list without Strangelove?? I give in to sin Because you have to make this life livable But when you think I've had enough from your sea of love I'll take more than another riverful Like y'all come on lmao.

I remember not particularly liking this song and then getting to the vocals/lyrics. The harmonizing between Dave and Martin's voices is so good. There is a comment on genius for the lyrics of this song that just says: The song is obviously about sexual submission, a subject in which Martin Gore is very interested. Which. Ok mood, Martin. But, I DUNNO MAN I feel like you can never be that face value with their music like that. That being said, good for him.

Did some digging on song meanings and one thing I got for this one was a younger man and an older woman in a relationship, with the narrator explaining to the younger guy what the older woman got out of the relationship which is. Interesting?? You get into the lyrics and it definitely fits. And then at like 2:04 it breaks into this tone shift and then the piano at 2:25 the whole thing becomes very serious. It's one of those songs that just kinda tells a story.