#I'm hoping for the latter

[utsukushiatsushisushi]

Okay I finally finished my 3rd every 3 year rewatch of Person of Interest.

I just love this show so fucking much! I have watched many many many amazing tv shows and NONE of them are as amazing as POI. I tried watching it with a bit of a critical lens and found a miniscule amount of flaws. It's just PERFECT.

Please bring this show back. I NEED IT!!!!!!!

#Root is ALIVE 2k23

#SHOOT is ALIVE 2k23

#The Machine is ALIVE 2k23

#POI is ALIVE 2k23

[theminecraftbee]

Just reread the whole scs tag and now I want to see Three's first meeting with Etho (Iirc the clip of Grian being scared of Etho sneaking around and then seeming to teleport outside the ice shop is Grian's first meeting with Etho? (And it was season 7.) And I think the "two nervous animals stare at each other" vibes could fit.)

Three is nervous.

It has heard of Etho before. Etho is very high on the threat rankings it had memorized; Etho is considered more of a threat than is currently worth taking out; Etho is, apparently, a legend even around Players who do not understand quite how much of a threat he is. There are standing orders and plans still programmed into Three on how to take him out in a way that would not make a martyr of him. Three thinks many of these plans are stupid.

Three--

Three is nervous. It has heard of Etho before, and it does not know if Etho would have heard of a Blade before, or if any of that would get in the way of it conversing with Etho. Three is relatively confident it could beat Etho in a fight. For all Etho is a threat, he is merely a Player, and Three is a Blade. That had never been why Etho is a threat. That had...

Mumbo had promised Etho was not mean. Three had asked Mumbo what that had to do with anything. Mumbo had mumbled something about how, well, if Three was worried about Etho yelling at it, then Etho wouldn't. Etho would actually also worry, Mumbo assured Three. Etho seems cool at first, but he's actually kind of awkward, Mumbo assured Three.

Three had commented that 'seeming cool at first but actually being kind of awkward' is, apparently, a common problem. It can understand why.

None of that really solves why Three is nervous, but going over the ways Etho is a threat, and the plans it has to mitigate that threat is... nice. It should not use them, because Mumbo has promised that Hermitcraft is safe. Three finds it does not want to be the reason it is not safe. Three will not mitigate the threat of Etho. Three should not have to mitigate the threat of Etho.

Three is nervous because it wants something from Etho, and doesn't have anything to offer in return.

It stands in the jungle and waits. It sees Etho arrive, because it is watching for him, but Etho seems surprised, backing away nervously on seeing Three.

"Oh. Um. Hello there. You're Mumbo's scary friend. The new one he brought here. That one. That needed help? Um, I'm Etho."

"I know. Does Mumbo describe me as scary?"

"Not usually?" Etho says.

"Oh," Three says. It does not give away its disappointment. Etho is not a handler and not another Watcher, but it is best not to give away emotions like disappointment when it wants something from him anyway.

"Is there a reason you're, uh, lurking in my base?"

Three does not fidget. It is too well-trained to. "I am here to ask a favor."

"Shoot, uh, I guess I can hear it," Etho says.

"You are making your base out of interiors, you said, in the meeting," Three says. "I--I want. I want to do that. I want--I want you to show me how to do that." The words are harder to pull out of its mouth than it thought they would be. "I do not have much to offer you. I could take care of one of your enemies, but Mumbo says Hermitcraft is safe, and I do not know if I want to do that, I just know that I want..."

Three trails off.

"Apologies. I am unclear. Will clarify," Three says.

Asking for things it wants is--hard. It's still hard. It is not good at reporting on what it wants. Etho is staring at it. Three stands perfectly still, because it is well-trained.

"Most builders aren't a big fan of interiors," Etho says slowly, "let alone a base entirely out of them. That's, uh, a big favor you're asking. Can I ask why?"

Beneath the mask, Three opens its mouth. It closes it again. It does not know how to say: because I am the thing that replaced someone who built big empty shells. Because I filled one of those empty shells. Because I could have been one of those empty shells. Because I do not want to leave behind empty shells. Because if I am gone, I want the things to leave to be knit socks and cozy rooms and laughter, not a big empty temple with a farm in the middle. Because I am Three, and I am a person, and I want the world to remember that.

What Three says instead is: "I can pay you back. I am useful."

Etho looks at Three. He rubs the back of his head. "You know, normally no one is dumb enough to give me an IOU this early in the season?" He laughs almost nervously. "Sure, man, I can teach you to make a base out of interiors. Why not."

"Thank you," Three says, and its shoulders do not slump, because it is well-trained.

"No problem. Say, what do you think about pranks?"

"I would like to learn to do those too," Three says promptly.

Etho also wears a mask. This does not stop Three from being able to tell the man is smirking.

"You know what? We're gonna get along just fine," he says. Strangely, Three believes him.

[aheroonahistorybookpage]

I can't decide which theory about Kim that I want to be the wrong one the most.

Kim looks like Shannon to everyone

Kim looks like Shannon to Eddie only

Kim is a figment of Eddie's imagination (grief, ptsd, take your pick)

[downtohide]

The thing that I really do love about No Children is that it represents such a turning point. Like, if you're interpreting Tallahassee as a linear progression of events, I do think that that song is the moment when our heroes go from attempting to salvage a wreck to just embracing the wreckage.

In all of the songs previously, there's at least an element of optimism. They are fixing up their house. They are buying each other lavish gifts. Yes they're sitting in the living room drinking all day, but 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨'𝘴 𝘨𝘰𝘯𝘯𝘢 𝘣𝘦 𝘰𝘬𝘢𝘺 𝘴𝘰𝘰𝘯. Of course there's all this foreshadowing that everything will go up in flames at the end, but the Alpha Couple don't accept that.

And then No Children happens, and that slight ray of hopefulness is gone from all the subsequent tracks. They get a lot more reflective, but it's presented like they're looking back at their odd, ill-fated version of glory days. There's no more trying to keep our spirits high. There's only the damage we've done, and the worse things that we'll do.

[wonder-worker]

"Administratively, too, [...] queens were considered the legal lords of their landholdings. [...] Grants noted that the queen's officials had administrative autonomy without being subject to the king or anyone else, and evidence of the same assumption can be gleaned from court rolls that were recorded with headings indicating the lord of the manor whose court proceedings were being enrolled. As an example, some court rolls for the manor of Haveringatte-Bower specified that it was the court of [Margaret of Anjou] that was in session, while later rolls recorded Elizabeth Woodville as the lord of the manor court."

-Michele Seah, 'My Lady Queen, the Lord of the Manor': The Economic Roles of Late Medieval Queens", Parergon, Volume 37, Number 2, 2020.

[dhwty-writes]

Today's the day that I'm finally telling my very Catholic grandparents that I'm trans. Stay tuned to find out whether or not I'll be disowned I guess

[lloydfrontera]

tfw when you write an entire novel with two protagonists that spent the entire plot getting closer to each other, becoming best friends and eventually both of them deciding they would rather die than allow the other to not live a long, fulfilling life, their friendship carrying most of the emotional weight of the entire plot and the emotional climax being one of them sacrificing his life so the other can live and then the other crossing literal universes to find him, a tearful smile in his face as he confesses how much he missed him. which is the scene you wanted to write and show the most because, again, this is the pay off to the slowburn you've been writing in the entire novel and what everything has been building up to since the very first chapter. and then you end the novel by having them share a smile, finally confident they'll be able to have a happy future.

but you also just gotta have one of them marry offscreen because everyone knows you can't be happy if you're not in a het marriage with kids lmao it's whatever it's okay i'm fiNE-

[pigeon-ponders]

cx-2 is tech because of his movements and behavior: ❌️

cx-2 is tech bc he said "domicile": ✅️

[johnslittlespoon]

You're A Dog (I'm Your Man)

Ch. 6/8 – 'But You Keep Coming When I Call'

[WC: 35K | Gale Cleven/John Egan, Pining, Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn, Requited Unrequited Love]

John Egan loves like a dog.

[AO3 LINK]

[andavs]

I’m pinballing back and forth between 

We’re going full Vertigo and Kim’s a hired actress intentionally fucking with Eddie for some reason, in which case the options are pretty much just Marisol hired her or some shady Moriarty-type is fucking with everyone’s lives for some reason…

and 

Eddie’s life actually just sucks that much and if he doesn't snap out of this real quick, they’re about to dig this thing way too deep to satisfyingly wrap up in two episodes. So either it’s going to drag on into next season and we slog through more Shannon trauma, or this all gets largely dismissed as a fun Vertigo homage that we all pretend never happened.

[uncanny-tranny]

To every person whose pain and/or disability is exasperated in the autumn and winter as the northern hemisphere is entering the colder months: I'm standing in solidarity and may these coming months be kind to you

[kaythefloppa]

The Winter and Spring Dates for the 2025 tour of Wild Kratts Live 2.0: Activate Creature Power have dropped and I could not be more excited!

The live tour will be heading into the state of Missouri, 9 months from now, which is where I'm currently living in for college.

I've currently registered for pre-sales today. I'm yet to find ways of obtaining V.I.P. tickets that'll allow me to meet the Kratt Brothers in person, but regardless, if all goes well, I might have a chance of heading to Wild Kratts Live for the first time in my life!!

[jewishvitya]

CW - talking about antisemitic depictions and about the house elves and the depiction of slavery in the books.

I'm having a frustrating day with a lot of physical pain, so I'm not the best at judging currently if I should be posting all of these thoughts. It's a response to multiple arguments by rude anons that I blocked (not for being rude, for being transphobic), but the arguments themselves stay on my mind and I just. Need this out. Ignore this, it will be all over the place, I'm basically venting. Hoping it'll be the last bit of HP criticism I post.

I'll tag it for you to block, as usual.

I've been asked what I expect of Rowling, since my criticism of the goblins included the books. She already wrote the books, they're printed and they're out there. She can't just change them, criticism does nothing because she has no path to correct her mistake.

First of all, with her transphobia - as far as I'm concerned she has blood on her hands at this point. The way she emboldens transphobia endangers lives and erodes queer rights. Anyone who contributes to the current push against trans people is complicit in trans genocide - and she made herself a symbol of that movement. Even if she did a 180 on her issues with Jewish stereotypes, she wouldn't redeem herself.

But she isn't the only one who wrote a story and then realized that her story has deep issues. What does it look like, if an author doesn't want to perpetuate those?

From what I know of Tolkien (and I know nothing LOTR or anything, just heard this from other Jewish creators who discussed this issue, treat this paragraph like I'm repeating a rumor) - Tolkien did stumble on an antisemitic depiction while writing his dwarves. Then he course-corrected by creating a more complex and nuanced picture of the society in his future works. Basically, he leaned into the idea of his dwarves as a Jewish allegory and made it a better and more respectful allegory. They have wonderful cultural details, like having foreign-language names used outside of their community - and names in their own native language that they call each other. Half of my family comes from France, and my mom was born there. She had a Hebrew name and a legal French name. That's extremely common among Jews in some areas of the world.

This response is what I would have expected if an author cares about being respectful of Jewish people. Acknowledge the issue, and try to do better.

But what if the issue was brought to your attention after you completely finished your story? In that case: "Yes, I'm sorry, I didn't realize I was writing an antisemitic narrative with my depiction of this fantasy race." Support the voices criticizing your work, and apologize. Let it be an example of tropes to avoid, and encourage others to be careful of the same pitfalls.

What you don't do, is act horrified and say "Oh, how could you, I never intended to make the goblins an antisemitic allegory! Surely if I don't mean it, it can't be hurtful!"

Also, if you truly care, you don't then abuse the memory of the holocaust when you write spin-offs of your original story, including its imagery to support a bigoted villain's argument.

Marginalized people understand that not everyone knows what we do. The stereotypes and the harmful ideas that weaved themselves into popular culture are about us. We know that it's invisible to people who aren't the target, and as a result aren't forced to learn these things. To many people, it's just a trope they're used to seeing. Like villains have hooked noses - it's practically a shorthand for an evil character.

All the stories we tell are based in some measure on stories we heard. Narratives and tropes feed off each other between different pieces of media. It's easy to pull together a harmful narrative without realizing, when the tropes that make it up usually go together, and are so common they're everywhere. So we know a person who means no harm can create something really hurtful, without knowing it.

That's why we criticize media: we want you to see and be aware.

In addition to this, I've been accused multiple times of ignoring the fact that these books discuss bigotry and condemn it. I'm not ignoring it, I know they do - or they try to. But Rowling wrote a story against racism without understanding it and without interrogating it in herself. She only knew to condemn it when it's rude and violent and outright hateful. Not the foundations of it.

So, sure, say she didn't mean to write something harmful. What does she do when she learns she did? Nothing. And not just about the issue of the goblins - about everything. I detailed the problems with her depiction of lycanthropy, but she did the same thing with the house elves.

There's lore about creatures called brownies. They'll perform chores for you, but they'd rather not be seen while they do. If you try to pay them, they'll get offended. If you give them clothes, they'll leave. This is a very partial description, but you can see the inspiration here.

And then she turned them into a slave race. They're bound to their enslavers, possessing powerful magic but using it in their service, forced to punish themselves for disobedience and endure extreme abuse. Kreacher actively wishes to have his head put on display when he's too old and weak to be of use.

To show the reader the horrors of freedom for an elf, JKR turned poor Winky into a depressed drunk with no purpose in her life. Winky's story is horrifying.

Only Dobby takes care of Winky for that whole year. She never recovers during it. Then she's made to witness the interrogation of Barty Crouch Jr., which upsets her and causes her distress. As a result, she hears about Crouch's death through a toneless forced confession - and the interrogation continues around her. That same day, she watches the last member of the household she loved have his soul taken by a dementor, and then she's left alone with the body while Dumbledore argues with Fudge. Only after, he sends Madam Pomfrey to do what she can for Winky, and take her to the kitchens where Dobby will take care of her again.

And Rowling wrote all of this. Did she think this is an example that even compliant house elves suffer and get neglected, even by the sympathetic wizards? Was this a lesson that even those who don't seek freedom suffer and lack agency in this system?

No. Rowling turned it into a cautionary tale against freeing slaves. Unless they're "weird" like Dobby.

Maybe she didn't try to be racist, but this fits disturbingly well with the arguments against ending slavery in reality. That enslaved people will turn into aimless drunks. That they need to be enslaved to have purpose. That those who want freedom have something wrong with them.

And I know this was criticized. What was the response to the criticism? Nothing direct as far as I know, but after all of this - there was an article published on Pottermore to argue that Winky's story is a warning against freeing the elves. It was taken down fortunately, but after this article the arguments against freedom are no longer the opinion of characters within the world - it's a message given to us by real people.

She doubles down. Every time. People keep yelling that she had nothing to do with Hogwarts Legacy, she's not responsible for the way it builds on her original canon. Well, she seems to approve of it. It continues painting the same line with the same brush - just bolder.

She doesn't care about the racism, she doesn't care about antisemitism - she just wanted to use the nazis as her easy villains. She doesn't have the imagination for any other kind.

[byanyan]

byan being extremely defensive of their substance abuse habits. byan being so very familiar with being looked down upon for drinking & doing drugs that they're terrified of those they've let close thinking less of them for for it. they've been kicked out of homes for it. they've been suspended & expelled from schools over it. they've had nasty things said and done to them because of it. it's only natural that they anticipate the worst from even those most important to them, so they tend to take steps to hide it where, around anyone else, they might instead broadcast it.

byan, upon being found out by someone close to them, getting either aggressively defensive or becoming a sobbing, apologizing mess.

[broadwaybaggins]

I'm gonna need All Creatures Great and Small to either fix things with Audrey and Gerald, or let Siegfried admit that he's in love with Audrey, because this back and forth is exhausting

[rubberbandballqueen]

ever since i found out that highway gothic (typeface commissioned for use in the american highways) is optimized for legibility with just a brief glance at high speeds i cannot stop thinking abt how easily readable it is. like my eyesight isn't like immaculate or anything so i can sometimes have a hard time reading fine print but even when the roadsigns are kind of blurry they're still pretty easy to read