#and just thinking about it happening on a larger scale makes me want to kill myself fr

[lakemichigans]

are we okay to talk about the v d a y vid now and how sad it is that the very platform they built their careers and lives on was the platform that essentially outed them in such a traumatic way. obviously the youtube glitch was just an accident but can you even believe the cosmic irony of it all

[bynux]

"don't vote for Harris or you're supporting genocide" "voting blue is still voting for fascists" Then what else do you expect us to do?

Here are some options y'all seem to insist on and why they're fucking stupid:

Vote Third Party :: Until we have ranked-choice voting (and probably even if we did have ranked-choice voting), it is practically impossible to make a 3rd-party candidate viable. There's not enough of the population that's far enough from moderate to give up their "safe" blue vote for some "revolutionary."

Don't Vote At All :: I'd prefer to pick my enemy. If I'm going to be working in spite of the government, or even against it in some ways, I'd rather the people I'm working against not already be targeting me for being queer, for example. If my options are "bad" or "much, much worse" I'm gonna pick "bad" and try to improve things from there.

Violent Revolution :: It's a cosplay power fantasy in the same vein as the Right-wingers looking for a reason to shoot protesters. Assuming you even have enough people organized and enough firepower to pull that off in the first place…have you prepared a plan to keep the innocents alive and safe? Are you sure you can keep supply chains for food and medicines intact? Are you sure there will be resources available for the disabled, the scared, the young and old, those who won't be able to fight and still need to be taken care of? Turns out revolution is ugly and causes a lot of undue collateral damage. Are the lives "saved" really going to outweigh those whose lives will be upended and destroyed? It's not like a newly-toppled, unorganized country will be able to do anything about Israel/Gaza, so you're just hurting and killing far more people than you're saving.

As for the power you do have to better things (and make Leftism more viable as a political stance in the US)?

Work at the level of your local government. If you're in a small enough town or neighborhood and think you have what it takes, run for local office. Be a local face of the left wing; you're far more likely to sway a small town to your views than the whole country, and each small town with a socialist-leaning government is a dot on the map for larger-scale viability, and you can help keep your community safe while trying to build up in scale.

Build community so we can keep each other safe if worse does come to worst. Push mutual aid initiatives, help at food banks, grow produce to donate to those in need, apply to work at your local free clinic, empower local businesses whenever possible so that if there is a socioeconomic collapse, you and those you love aren't left completely without resources.

Protest, and make it disruptive. You can be disruptive without being violent: graffiti, blocking roads, encampments, sit-ins, to name a few examples. Create inconveniences so it gets people's attention whether they like it or not.

Above all, FUCKING VOTE BLUE. You're choosing your enemy. You get to help decide if the government we're working in spite of is run by milquetoast neoliberal war hawks who do, on some rare occasions, actually make things marginally better…or full-tilt Christo-fascists who want to kill some of us for kissing people with the same genitals as us. There aren't any other options that are going to be picked. It sucks, but at the bare minimum we can pick the option that isn't going to actively murder us while we try to build up viability for a candidate who won't sell out brown people to an ethnostate.

If you aren't doing at least one of the things above, then don't lecture me about how I keep myself and my community safe. I'd love to see a United States (or some future iteration of it) that acknowledges the sovereign rights of indigenous peoples, that doesn't fund genocide, that provides healthcare as a basic human right, that doesn't meddle in every other country's business. But if we are to see that, let alone help that happen, we need to survive this next presidential administration.

Edit: y'all have lost reblog privileges. If you wanna screenshot this and have stupid unnuanced opinions OFF of my post, be my guest. Just leave me tf alone.

[notebooks-and-laptops]

The thing that gets me about Varric in The Missing and the new gameplay, is that this has happened to him before.

He already had a friend who tore down his world - even if on a much smaller scale. He had a friend who was a mage, who had suffered and experienced injustice, and who used that as fuel to do something awful that might achieve his aims but would kill a lot of people, would tear about Varric's chosen family and...and he couldn't stop him. He didn't really try.

Varric in Inquisition is bitter - horribily bitter - about Anders. About what happened in Kirkwall. From da2 in his ambient dialogue we see that he knew something was wrong. He even says he thinks Anders will get himself killed if he keeps doing what he's doing. He's rightfully suspicious of him in the third act. But ultimately, he does nothing. Even when Anders is waiting there, possibly about to die, he refuses to commit to an opinion, to a side. And then in Inquisition he blames Anders bitterly. He's angry at him. But he also blames himself, it's all tangled up in the deep roads, in bartrand and red lyrium and the fact that he was the one who brought all these individuals together.

So skip forward to now. To Veilguard. To Solas trying to tear down the veil. And I honestly think Varric is seeing them both. He looks at Solas and he sees his friend Chuckles, and he sees his friend Blondie and he already failed one of them when they were in this situation. He stood by even and let Anders die! He didn't try and stop him, he saw the signs and did nothing. And this time he will not let that happen. This time he will not lose his friend. He will not stand by and watch him die, and he will not stand by and watch him destory the world.

The whole Solas thing is just a larger expansion of what happened in Kirkwall to Varric, except this time it's happening everywhere and the stakes are much higher. Which makes it even more tragic that all he wants to do is talk him down, give him another option, get his friend back. I just...fhjudbhajfdhfhareli

[vickyvicarious]

Hello! I was wondering what you make of Seward's phrase "is it possible that love is all subjective or all objective?" I've seen people allude to different meanings on the phrase but I can't quite figure out what it means

I wanted to wait until after 11 October to answer this ask, just so I didn't have to spoiler for the context of my reply. Which is that... my instinct is to oppose Jonathan and Seward's loves for this one. Specifically, in their reactions to the women they love becoming vampires. (I'm choosing Jack specifically to talk about because we get in his head more than we do for the other suitors, though by actions one could argue they fall more on the same side as he does.)

Firstly, let's take a brief moment to talk about the specific words used. Subjective generally means dictated by personal taste, and objective would be based on fact or truth. So, a love that is all one or the other could be very different depending on what the person you love is like. For example, an objective love would appreciate someone's virtues, while a subjective one might find things to love even in their flaws. Or on a larger scale, and much more relevant to how the phrase is used in the book... what would happen when the person you love is becoming a vampire, a creature that is factually and objectively evil and wrong? How would you react, how would you feel?

It depends on your type of love.

Jonathan's love is all subjective. Even though he absolutely hates and despises vampires, once he knows Mina is at risk of becoming one he resolves to join her if need be. He sees her rejected by God when the communion wafer burns her forehead, and he says 'actually no, I think the holiest kind of love is the one that would lead me to join her in her unholy state'. Even when Mina outright appeals to him to kill her if she is too far gone - an appeal to his objective understanding, for him to express his love in a way that confronts the truth of what she would become - Jonathan remains silent and in doing so refuses to make that promise. It's implied that he would be willing to fight the other men in order to protect her, even though they are his allies and friends. His beliefs warp around the shape of his love. He will destroy himself and others for the sake of his love, even if he knows through painful experience how objectively evil vampires are.

Jack's love meanwhile is all objective. Even though he didn't fully understand what a vampire was, he began to lose his love for Lucy as soon as he saw her acting in that way. In fact every time she was acting out of character to be more vampiric before her death, he seemed to notice and be a little put off by it, even though he didn't really seem to realize so much at the time. He outright says this quote when he is watching vampire!Lucy and realizing that he doesn't feel as horrible about mutilating the body of the woman he loved as he would have expected. When he learns Lucy has become a monster, he begins to feel repulsed by her - a process completed when he sees her up close and outright says his love for her is gone: "At that moment the remnant of my love passed into hate and loathing; had she then to be killed, I could have done it with savage delight." His determination to destroy the Thing she now is completely separates her in his mind from her living self. His love gives way to the objective facts. He will help to kill her, and gladly, because what she has become disgusts him... because what she has become is objectively evil.

Obviously, their experiences are different, and perhaps it's not quite such a true binary. Mina's gradual transformation, combined with Jonathan's pre-existing knowledge, is quite different from Jack's abrupt introduction to Lucy's vastly changed self and to the idea of the supernatural at all. But for the purposes of examining this quote, I think it works quite well to set them up at opposite ends of that scale.

.

It's also kind of curious because it calls back to another great line of Seward's: "(Mem., under what circumstances would I not avoid the pit of hell?)" The context of that line is Seward struggling to resist his dark impulses with regards to his treatment of Renfield. And he says this after having noticed himself actively doing something he says he'd normally avoid like the pit of hell, so that means he was approaching it until he caught himself. This is a struggle he repeatedly faces with Renfield, finding himself longing for a cause that he would consider it worthwhile abandoning his morals for, so that he could just give in to these urges.

But while Jack Seward is the person most drawn to the darkness, as we get introduced to the vampires are representatives of the ultimate darkness he backs firmly away. It's only in isolation that he feels so attracted to amoral experimentation; when together with his friends he pulls himself back to be more firmly opposed. His treatment of Renfield is a mess the entire time, don't get me wrong. He never really does right by him. But he doesn't seem to feel that same urge to push him in such a cruel way merely for his own interest/satisfaction. It becomes in the service of a greater goal, the objectively good idea of fighting Dracula. (Again, not saying his methods are good, but his motivation shifts.) He's always been conscious of an idea of what is right to do and he actively tries to follow that, with much greater success when not left to his own devices.

Meanwhile Jonathan has never felt such an intense draw to the darkness. He survived months alone surrounded by evil influences, and it only increased his determination to remain himself/human. He hates the vampires and he feels no true allure to the idea of being like them (outside the allure everyone feels when being hypnotized by them, etc.). He wanted nothing more than a normal happy life, he never longed for a cause that would be worth throwing his morals away. And yet, when Mina begins to turn we see Jonathan decide that this is the circumstance under which he will not avoid the pit of hell. This is the cause he can dedicate himself to as fully as any madman. Jonathan never felt the need to philosophize about trying to avoid such things before he was exposed to them by others, because he has no inherent urge to seek them out. But he also lacks that restrictive hold when a reason does come along.

(To visualize: if there's a pit, then Jack is the person who keeps wandering closer, desperately wanting to lean over the edge and see what's inside. Knowing this about himself, he's tied a rope around his waist to ensure he doesn't slip too far. Jonathan never even went near until he abruptly decides to sprint up and swan-dive straight into it when he thinks Mina's fallen in.)

[trans-queen-administrator]

Hey, can I hear about your shatterbird thoughts? She's always been my favourite member of the nine :]

[@faultlinescrew]

Oh I'm about to type for entirely too long.

Alright so a chunk of this is kinda headcanon, but any of that is fully based on canon. I had a giant fanfic planned that was literally an expanded telling of Shatterbird's life from trigger to death, and some plot points there may bleed into this unconsciously.

Number one favorite thing about Shatterbird is that initially, she did nothing wrong. She was unwillingly dosed with a Cauldron vial, and her scream and subsequent exploding of Dubai wasn't her fault. She had no intention to hurt anyone, it was done entirely out of her control as she gained powers and she should not be blamed for her first time destroying a city. The thing is, that doesn't matter in universe. She's still going to be hunted down by countless capes because she killed an untold number of people with that scream. No one's going to just let her go because it wasn't her fault, because she's the only person who can be blamed. People want revenge for their loved ones, and I'm willing to bet that she had a sizable bounty. It's similar to the situation we see with Rachel, where she can't have a normal life because she killed someone in her trigger and her identity is public, but on a much much larger scale.

I think the guilt ate at her so fucking bad at first. She killed her dad, her friends, her sister, her mother, countless others, and as much as it wasn't her fault she's still the one that did it. There's no way she doesn't blame herself for what happened, but when does she even have time to mourn? She's fled to a desert, she's gotta be struggling with food and water, and she's being hounded at every turn by people who want her dead. What's she supposed to do, let them kill her so she can atone for what she did or something?

I just love what a tragic backstory this is. She's one of the most horrible people we meet in canon, and I don't think it's unreasonable to say she has one of the highest body counts on Earth Bet, but she started as someone innocent and desperately trying to survive. And as much as I love this backstory and will defend to the death that she did nothing wrong at this point, it doesn't excuse who she becomes.

Shatterbird laughed.  “There’s only two ways to recover from something of that magnitude, to deal with the fact that you inadvertently killed thousands and thousands of people, and hospitalized twice that many.  You break, or you become it.”

(quote is from the missing interlude)

This is the quote that puts her entire character in a nutshell. The biggest question to me is... when did she become it? She implies in that interlude that it was rather quick, and that she went to Britain so she could hit a big target, but the Tattletale clone calls this out as a lie. She was running, the desert that she'd been in for months was unbearably loud with all that sand, and I think she was sick of living on the run. She wanted society, structure, something to make her feel human. I think she's full of shit saying she went there to destroy it, some accident or desperate confrontation occurred (timeline fits well enough for it to be a result of the Simurgh's attack, but that's just one possibility) and she broke London just as bad as she broke Dubai. What do you even do from there? Any slim hope of clearing her name is gone, she just has to keep running and try to ignore the guilt. And she ran to America, where the Slaughterhouse Nine found her.

The recruiting of people by the Slaughterhouse Nine fascinates me, because most are unwilling to join at first. Unfortunately the alternative is to die. No one in Brockton Bay was jumping to be the lucky winner, and the only people we know nominated themselves are Cherish and I think Siberian. Shatterbird (ever notice how she's the only S9 member with no canon first name? drives me nuts) was dragged into the recruitment process with no say in the matter just like most everyone is. Someone in the Nine found her, thought she would be a good fit because of London and Dubai (and how would that feel, to have someone on the S9 see you as just as bad as them?) and even if she explains that was on accident... what does it matter? It never matters that it was an accident. It never will matter. It's just something that she can tell herself to keep her sane.

So she's doing the fun little tests, I'm actually very curious how she altered herself for Mannequin's since he always does the same test, she's a very vain person, but that's off topic. Atrocities, horrors, being hunted by the Siberian, and suddenly she's at the end. Her and someone else.

“That’s not really a test,” Shatterbird spoke, “There hasn’t been a round of testing since I joined the group where we didn’t whittle it down to one candidate.” “We could forego the final test, pitting them against one another.” Shatterbird turned to him, “Ah.  But, again, the last test where we had to go that far was… mine?”

And she kills them. Dubai, London, those were accidents. This was on purpose, maybe even the first time she's done it on purpose. She could either break and decide she couldn't live with herself as a member of the nine, or she could just as horrible as everyone sees her. All her choices were rigged, there was never much of an opportunity to get better since so many paths closed off to her, but she voluntarily chooses to get worse. What's the point in holding on to the fact that it wasn't her fault at the beginning? She's never escaping what she did, so she'll become the monster everyone sees her as. You break, or you become it.

And there's not much of the more sympathetic side of Shatterbird in canon (partly because her backstory chapter was removed). She's fully embraced herself as a mass murderer. She revels in the attention, the fear. She parrots Jack's philosophy as a way to feel better about what she's doing, and eventually she doesn't need to feel better because she enjoys who she is now.

I don't know, I rambled for a while there but it boils down to me being fascinated by the circumstances of her gaining powers, and the shift from innocent but hated/feared to making damn sure that fear is justified.

Ok, so moving on from the backstory analysis, other miscellaneous details. Fuck it, I'm putting every thought I have on Shatterbird in this post.

She's the Nine's primary recruiter! Woo, good for her. Notably, she recruits Burnscar. Mimi is in a similar position to Shatterbird's past self with the whole involuntary mass destruction, although on a lesser scale (it'll always be on a lesser scale, Shatterbird has the worst trigger event out there in terms of consequences and she didn't even trigger). Mimi was on the streets and trying not to use her power, and Shatterbird scooped her up into the Nine.

“I- before I knew it, the Slaughterhouse Nine had found me.  Shatterbird recruited me.  And now I’m stuck.  I’m trapped.  You know there’s a kill order out on me?  If I try to quit, either the Nine or the cops will off me.  So I keep going, I work for them, and it all just gets worse.”

It's a situation Shatterbird can very likely relate to, but she's perpetuating it and making Mimi suffer like she did. No sympathy, no helping someone get through it and avoid the pitfalls she fell into, she's dragging other people down with her like a crab in a pot. Worth noting that I believe she's still bitter about the hand she was dealt even if she's embraced where it led her to, she remembers how horrible it was to be forced into everything and she does not care if she inflicts it on others.

But if someone else willingly joins the Nine, she takes it personally. Cherie says Shatterbird hates her, and that's because Cherie chooses the life Shatterbird was locked into. She's bitter that she never had that choice, and so she makes sure Cherie understands what it's like by chasing her for days for her test, not allowing any rest or sleep. However, this could also simply because Cherie sucks and is an unpleasant person to talk to, and Shatterbird is stuck-up.

Another thing I like is Shatterbird's appearance of knowledge and elegance. She's trying to appear put together, confident, in-control, and to be fair she does a pretty good job, her costume and theming are great. But under that is someone violent and angry, she's keeping up appearances to everyone else but also to herself. The fact that she's always trying to keep up appearances, even when locked in a room and doomed to die with one Witness (haha get it) she's trying to make it look like she was calm and in control when her body is found, is what 100% convinces me exploding Britain was an accident. The Tattletale clone calls her out, and to me it seems like another attempt to seem in control by framing it as deliberate.

Anyway, my attempts to woobify a mass murderer aside, I also like that she was a spoiled rich kid before all this and her prim asshole attitude points to that. She quotes Edgar Allen Poe, she reads because it makes her feel better than others, she's just so pretentious and unpleasant and to be clear I love this as a character trait, it's fun and leads to her speaking in overdramatic ways.

“Then you should know, nearly-Tattletale, that I’ve spent too long in the company of monsters to be scared by words.”

She thinks she was soooo cool saying that.

I also want to look at the last few weeks of her life. She spends so much effort propping herself up as great and in control, only to be locked in a box and puppeted around against her will. Genuinely I cannot think of anything more humiliating and agonizing for her to endure. She has nothing to do but think as she's used as a marionette.

She had a long time to reflect on her life, to look back at how she got here and what she regrets.

But I think she spent it stewing in her rage, itching and planning to get violent revenge and keep hurting others to be respected. She's unwilling and unable to go back, she'll double down on this forever because this is who she is now. And because 99% of characterization for Shatterbird isn't in Worm anyway, I may as well toss in this minor AU summary by Wildbow. If she escaped, she would have started her own version of the Nine with Damsel of Distress and Trickster. There is nothing left to sympathize with or redeem Shatterbird by the time we see her in canon, she's simply past that point. Side note but Shatterbird + Damsel of Distress + Trickster as a team is perhaps the funniest combo ever and I really wish those 3 fuckers got to interact in canon. Weirdo assholes who dress up fancy and have a taste for theatrics as a murder crew, we were robbed.

I could analyze the Hookwolf interlude but I don't want to. I'm very annoyed that Shatterbird (still no first name) is the only member of the Nine to lose the fight against her recruit instead of appearing terrifying and unstoppable. How come Burnscar can solo Faultline's crew but 3 nazis can take out Shatterbird, who has way more experience? It's pretty uncomfortable to have the only member of the Nine who isn't white be the one that loses to nazis, while one calls her a slur in his internal monologue, in the interludes where everyone else on her team is introduced as a force of nature. I think we should just collectively agree to make this interlude not canon and un-retcon the Witness interlude. While I'm on the topic it's also a bit questionable to have Sophia and Shatterbird (no first name. I am annoyed by this) as the only named capes puppeted by Regent?

But that's not the topic I wanna explore. The topic is that Shatterbird is a great character and I wish that she had depth in the story itself rather than scattered through 20 different sources, because she's legitimately my favorite non-undersider in the story. There is a lot of potential to explore her, one could interpret her backstory in a less charitable way than I did just for an example, and I really think she's neat! She takes hurting someone in an accident and then becoming the monster people see her as, something we see a few times throughout worm, to its ultimate conclusion in terms of scale. That alongside her outer layer of intellectualism and pretentiousness, which I'm a massive sucker for as a trait, and she's just perfect. Did nothing wrong (citation needed). I love her and I do hope that at least some of the stuff written her makes someone appreciate her character more.

Ok! That was... 2.2k words about Shatterbird (no first name). Woo! If some stuff seems inconsistent between paragraphs here, it's probably because I wrote this in chunks over the course of a few weeks and my feelings at the time can influence my interpretation of things and my writing to feel different when read all at once and compared. If you think I'm woobifying her too much, cool. I think it makes her more compelling to examine how much we know was her fault and how much she shouldn't be blamed for, and making her have less agency makes her more tragic which I always like. If you actually read this to the end, thank you! Have a nice day!

[xf-cases-solved]

S2E2: The Host 😔

Case: In what is an episode I have purposefully avoided rewatching for at least a decade—because it is DISGUSTING—we find ourselves off the coast of New Jersey, bc of course this hellscape of an episode takes place in fucking New Jersey. A Russian kid on a ship gets pulled into a septic tank (ew) by A Creature, and his body is discovered in a sewer (ew) a few days later. Skinner gives this case to Mulder, and Mulder is pissed about it, for which I don't blame him for a second bc it is, quite literally, shit work. (This does, however, lead to a very funny confrontation where Mulder throws a tantrum at Skinner, only to then discover he's currently in a meeting. I did lol at that, I'll admit.) 

Anyway, Mulder reluctantly continues with the case, secretly recruiting Scully on the side to do some autopsy(!!) work and to pick her brain for science, even though the bosses said they aren't allowed to sit next to each other in class anymore. The episode just gets worse and worse and fucking worse from there, when Scully discovers a flukeworm (ew) in the dead kid's body. More evidence continues to compile, soon making it clear that what they're dealing with is something much larger and much grosser than they could have ever anticipated. 

People keep walking around and getting covered in sewer water, making me want to scrub myself so clean all the skin comes off my body; a man coughs up a worm and it is Horrible; Deep Throat is gone, but it looks like he might have a successor (!!!); Mulder and Scully have a friend in the FBI, I wonder who it could be 🤔 (hint: he's bald); and Mulder briefly considers quitting, but somehow THIS fucking episode is the one that convinces him to stay. (Like, I get it, learning he has an ally in Skinner is all well and good or whatever, I GET IT, okay? But look. If my boss was claiming to be my ally and then forced me to chase after a giant man-eating sewer worm—requiring me to BE in the literal sewer in the process btw—I would quietly set my badge and gun down on my boss's desk, walk out the building, and get on the next flight to New Zealand. Fuuuuuuck that, and fuuuuuuck this episode.)

Does someone die in the cold open: Yes, and it is the worst way any person could possibly die.

Does Mulder present a slideshow: He no longer has anyone to present slideshows to. 😔

Does the evidence survive the investigation: If it did, they should fucking burn it.

Whodunit: ☹️ worm man ☹️

Convictions: Chris Carter, for the crime of writing this and then making it exist in the world where I had to watch it with my eyeballs and process its contents with my brain.

Did they solve it: Yes, I suppose they did, in the sense that they figured out what killed that guy, and had a semi-reasonable explanation for how the horrible monster worm was able to come to be. Whether or not the horrible monster worm is still out there being horrid and monstrous? Well, that part remains an X-File.

[how do i determine if a case is solved? check the scale here: x]

THIS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY: Bleach. Pour it in your eyes and also over your whole entire body and forget any of this ever happened.

Oh, and also sponsored by this funny text I accidentally sent my sister:

***

General Total Stats:

(green means stat has changed since last ep; red means new stat added to list)

Total Cases *Definitively* Solved So Far: 13 (first solve of the season. unfortunate that it had to be this)

Total Number of "Mulder/Scully, It's Me": 6 (told you it starts to go up rly fast)

Total Number of Times Scully Has Conveniently Not Seen Something Crucial: 6

Total Number of Times Mulder Has Been in Mortal Danger: 8 

Total Number of Times Scully Has Been in Mortal Danger: 8

Total Number of Sexually Charged, Uncomfortably Intimate, and/or Flirty Moments Between Friendly Coworkers: 13 (nothing overt, but they did have a nice conversation together, and mulder said something to the effect of being able to work with scully was the only reason he could think to stay at the fbi at this point)

Total Number of Autopsies Scully Has Performed On Screen: 4 (and there was a worm in the body ☹️)

Total Number of Times Scully Plays Doctor: 2

Total Number of Times Mulder Talks to an Informant: 16 (i was too grossed out watching this to properly appreciate it, but X has entered the chat!!!!! my favorite informant!!! i will get into more detail as to why as we make our way through the season, but eep!) 

Total Number of Times People Making Out in a Car Are Hurt or Killed: 2

Total Number of Times Someone Correctly Guesses a Password: 3 

Total Number of Nosebleeds: 4

Total Number of Times Mulder Has Tasted/Sniffed/Touched Something Questionable Without Following Proper Safety Procedures: 3 (you know what? i'm upping this stat. why did he go to the sewer in a suit???)

Total Number of Times Someone Says "Trust No One": 3 

Total Number of Times Someone Says "I Want to Believe": 3

Total Number of Times Someone Says "The Truth is Out There": 2

Total Number of Cigarettes Cigarette Smoking Man Has Smoked: 8

Total Number of Maggie Scully Sightings: 1

Total Number of Lone Gunmen Sightings: 1

Total Number of Alex Krycek Sightings: 0 (but i can hear his slow approach...)

Total Number of Times I Had to Look Up What State the Episode Takes Place in Even Though I Literally Just Watched It: 9½ (of COURSE it's new jersey) 

Total Number of Times I Had to Look at an Episode's Wikipedia Page to Fill This Out Because It Was Fucking Confusing and/or Too Boring for Me to Pay Attention: 5 (unfortunately i paid attention to the whole thing ☹️)

[cornyonmains]

Got some more thoughts about episode 3 in no particular order.

Episode 3 really helped confirm this strange phenomenon I've noticed of the dark subject matter colliding with rather optimistic symbolic imagery. Almost all the numbers Great sees are angel numbers with messages about seeking enlightenment, harmony, and trusting the path one is on. Black and white cats are symbols of good luck, symbolic of yin and yang. There's a lot of imagery happening between Great and Tyme symbolic of harmony, luck, and enlightenment.

I did not miss, for a single dadgum second, that slanted shot when Korn and Great were talking to each other at the end. If you think of that shot as two characters sitting on opposite sides of a scale, it definitely implies there's a huge imbalance of power favoring Korn, and I found it telling the slant continued when he left the room. Between Title, Korn, Tyme, it's really seeming like Great, for all his flaws, really was mostly just this quiet and oblivious guy who got jerked around and manipulated by a lot of personalities much larger than his own.

Great's far from perfect, but the core part of him is that guy who wanted to play the claw machine, and that puts him on a VERY different level from Korn, who's running a gambling empire and keeping tweakers for sugar baby side-pieces. That doesn't strike me as anything Great would ever conceive of doing, but more importantly, it's something he probably wouldn't have to do. I could see Korn being jealous of the protection he enjoys thanks to his mother's manipulations. She's throwing Korn into a line of fire he doesn't necessarily seem to want to be in either, and I think that's going to cause an issue, especially with Tonkla going off the deep end.

Great outlining the word sex in red when making that chart will never not be funny to me. That's such a guy thing to do.

I'm starting to wonder if Tonkla is on a different timeline, because I'm starting to think that's not the case. I think Great saving Dome happened first, then the killing happened second. I think the cover-up could have been set into motion because Great's prints were found on the rock.

Early Prediction - I think if Title and Korn come into contact with one another, these are two people who both have cause to feel alienated by Great, and who are probably operating with a lot more knowledge and capabilities than he is. I've been trying to figure out why Title is hanging out with Great for awhile now, and I think it has something to do with him maybe being a bit more aware of Great's family than Great is himself. I could definitely see him getting up to something with Korn if he can use the chance to attach himself to what he'd perceive as the favored brother of that family, as well as get revenge on Great.

Anyways, that's all for now, I'm working up the mental fortitude necessary to log onto my work platform and write some reports.

[wordslikesilver]

Sometimes I think about how ready discord servers of big companies and games are to literally just ban people for being homophobic or transphobic, zero tolerance whatsoever and I think for just one moment of blinding clarity how nice it would be if tumblr was actually that intolerant and direct about online bigotry as well. If facebook was like that. If Twitter was. Suddenly I feel like I get it. I understand what it would feel like to actually be supported and truly accepted by society. Like what the fuck kind of place is this where you can just spew hate speech and face nothing from the people who keep the lights on? Why is League of Legends more queer friendly than Tumblr?

Years ago, BLM protested and made the Pride parade in my city of Toronto ban cops from being in the parade and every year that passes I feel like I get it, more and more. How dare they let them march? How dare they let the police pretend they’re not still complicit in rampant queer and BIPOC violence and discrimination to this day?

How dare Tumblr tolerate TERFs and discriminate against trans women as freely and readily as they do? Fuck it makes me so angry. There’s a taboo against saying free speech is bad but you know what? We don’t need to be lawless and indifferent to the suffering of an already discriminated against people. We don’t need to welcome everyone. There’s no slippery slope or ruthless calculus, it’s basic fucking math. Bigotry and hate speech should not be welcome. Period. You’re right, it’s not free speech anymore, it’s the super spooky censorship devil. Censorship is not evil you stupid fucks. Reddit deleting r/jailbait is censorship. Deleting incel subreddits is censorship. Deleting racist, fascist, predatory cess pool subreddits is censorship. It’s a tool. And just like a shovel can be used to kill a person, so too are it be used to clean up the garden and remove the rot and the sickness.

I truly believe deep in my heart that making space for any and all opinions to be heard is cowardice. To make space for evil to flourish and refuse to weed it out is to welcome and encourage it. This is not subjective. The systemic oppression of and hunting of minorities is not a subject with deep or complicated nuance. It is evil. It is evil and it has always been evil. We’ve been so slow in the grand scheme of history to acknowledge this, but even slower to accept that we need to be kill the myth of the censorship devil and recognize that maintaining a stance that tolerates and thus encourages bigoted behaviour is to be accomplice to a wicked and wretched, rotted evil. I believe in the inherent intelligence and goodness of humanity, I fully believe without a single faltering of my heart that we can establish on far larger scales than a fucking discord server, rules of conduct and behaviour that reject the rampant and heinous bigotry that my trans sisters and DOZENS of other minorities face day to day. I believe without a moment of doubt or wavering resolve that it can be done in clear ways that are above and beyond reproach from the incessant, inane and ill intentioned questioning and muddying of rules that of course would follow from those who would cry villainy that they can no longer voice their disgusting, hate fuelled opinions on matters of basic human rights.

I know how I sound. I know these words can be used just as easily by The Other Side about the Woke Left and Special Snowflakes with fragile feelings being cowards who can’t Get Real and accept the world’s rejection of who they are. But isn’t that what they’re really afraid of? That they’re the ones who are wrong and need to change if they still want to be welcome anywhere? We don’t welcome cops in the pride parade because being queer isn’t about everyone being valid and welcome. We are a people and a community that will not quietly bow to hatred against us. Anyone who wants to claim they support us cannot abide the proliferation of hatred against us when it happens under their own god damn roof.

[paragonrobits]

also i think im increasingly starting to get really... not frustrated or angry PRECISELY with Protagonist Centered Morality, but it is becoming a lot more glaringly noticable to me when bad fandom takes, popular fanon that is antithetical to the characters or themes of the story they are from, and how it spreads in general.

To be clear, Protagonist Centered Morality (PCM) is the double standard of specific actions that are judged differently whether they're being down to the Characters You Care About, versus them happening to a neutral party or to an antagonist. As an example; AtLA fans who wanted the series to be more about heroic resistance and defeating all their enemies, complaining about Aang having a moral conflict over seemingly the only option being to kill Ozai (despite this being among one of the most grieveous crimes imaginable both to his people in series, and to the religion his character is inspired from) or presenting Jet as a morally gray character, arguing that any actions taken against the Fire Nation are automatically valid regardless of whether or not they target military at all (since his ACTUAL actions are just 'make the fire nation suffer no matter what' and targeting civilians, which doesn't accomplish anything from a strategic point of view).

The SU hatedom also provides an excellent example of this. There was, during the final episodes of the series, a great deal of people who wanted the series to end with humans victorious in a military conflict against the Gems by nuking Homeworld.

I want to repeat that. These fans wanted STEVEN UNIVERSE, the series about finding hearts in monsters and freeing them from oppressive systems of directive, and winning it by humans committing genocide. Apparently with no mental whiplash at all.

So PCM, in all its ugly forms, can be boiled down to this: "Its bad when you do it to us, but heroic when we do it to you."

This seems to share some similarities with a bunch of other troubling developments in fandom in general, which seems to follow cultural shifts in general. This includes the lionization of ruthlessness, and priorizing personal matters over larger moral issues or the Greater Good (however that applies in context).

Firstly, ruthlessness is often praised a lot. You get characters stated to be more effective because they're ruthless, don't hold punches or otherwise go for the kill at the first opportunity. You see fandom takes with people praising a character who kills without hesitation or any concern and is quite happy with themselves, never having a moment of guilt over it regardless of the scale. This is considered a positive, often in word choices implying that this is the ideal.

Secondly, personal being the most important thing. This is ESPECIALLY common in anti-Jedi rhetoric in Star Wars fandom, but you see it a lot in any case where characters are expected to place duty over personal ties; it is seen as inherently villainous to choose your duty or the good of others over the things personally of importance to you; a lot of the wording implies that these fans explicitly believe that its evil to not focus solely on the people you care about, or risking yourself for a stranger.

I believe this is also the source of the tendency to refer to any group that works well together or gets along as a found family, and saying it was found family bait when actually they worked together to do a job. The job gets done, and they move on. The idea that their togetherness is not more important to them to their personal agendas or that they have a family unrelated to the job seems unthinkable. So these fans interpret any kind of positive connection as the Most Important Thing, more so than what the characters may consider their duty.

i dunno, its just REALLY weird to me that a lot of thought I see around here implies that if you have, say, a protagonist discover that one of their friends is a traitor or has turned evil, its considered ideal for this protagonist to JOIN them; but if this protag just kills them without hesitation, or perhaps a brief comment about how they made an oath to take down tyrants like what their friend has become, it is considered reprehensible, despite otherwise falling in line with the ruthless vibe. It's just, i dunno, its weird to me.

[ctrsara]

I found this interesting comparison while looking for something else (link goes to Quora conversation. I don't know what they're called on Quora. Threads?)

Who would win in a fight, Iron Man or Captain America?

If you want to stack stats, you have to go to Marvel’s Power Grid.

Intelligence:

Captain America is rated 3, or learned.

Iron Man is rated at 6, or super-genius. Level 7 is omniscient. Tony’s intelligence is such that he can predict the future based on current trends.

Nod goes to Mr. Stark. Cap isn’t smart enough.

Strength:

Steve Rogers is rated as a 4, the peak of human ability. He can regularly lift 800 pounds. He’s likely the strongest non-powered human who ever lived.

The Iron Man armor is rated 6, regularly lifting 100 TONS. Stark once knocked out the Hulk in one punch. Additionally, he can override the safety protocols to push his suits even harder. He once easily lifted a nuclear sub weighing 16,000 tons by overriding his suit’s safeties.

Category goes to Tony. Cap isn’t strong enough.

Speed

Cap gets a rating 2 here, normal… although normal is relative. Steve can sustain a jog at 30 mph, and can sprint at nearly twice that. For reference, a 3 rating caps out at 700 mph.

Stark in the open is FAST and gets a 5 rating. Supersonic. Even in close quarters, the suit is fast enough to outmaneuver Spider-Man.

In a race at least, Stark wins. Cap isn’t fast enough.

Durability

Captain Rogers has a rating of 3. Enhanced. He has incredible stamina (he once sprinted five miles without being out of breath) and incredibly fast human healing.

Iron Man is rated 6 - superhuman. He has tanked nuclear warheads without even being concerned about the blast.

Iron Man wins by a longshot. Cap isn’t tough enough.

Energy/Projection

Cap is rated 1 for having no energy projection. To be fair, however, his shield does give him some distance attacks.

Iron Man is rated 6. He’s able to discharge multiple forms of energy, including making a sword and shield of pure energy, or even surrounding his already formidable suit with an energy shield.

Iron Man wins here, too. Cap doesn’t have energy enough.

Fighting Skills

Steve Rogers is rated 6 here - master of several forms of combat. His reflexes border on superhuman. He is a master tactician, able improvise at a high level.

Tony Stark is rated 4 - experienced fighter. He, too, is a master tactician, although perhaps more on a larger scale rather than hand-to-hand combat. He does have awesome technology to assist him here, however.

Rogers wins this category in the end. Stark isn’t the fighter Cap is.

Conclusion

Stark is faster, smarter, and more powerful in every conceivable way. Steve would have to incapacitate the armor, but he’s not smart enough to come up with a way of doing this that hasn’t already been anticipated and defended against. No offense to Steve, but punching Iron Man with his shield would be like me trying to suckerpunch a steamroller with a trash can lid.

Tony Stark wins, with one specific exception:

Unless it’s a Captain America comic book.

This all just makes me think of the final fight in Civil War. Tony had to be pulling his punches to some extent, because I feel like he could have taken Cap and Bucky out if not. But only if he was willing to kill them, which he wasn't. Have I mentioned how much I hate that Civil War ever happened though?

[synthetickitsune]

(X-)EXO Powers Headcanons

(This is really just a future reference for me when writing fics to keep things at least somewhat consistent and while thinking about this I had some fic ideas so hopefully I'll remember when I come back to this lol)

Anyway, a couple word before we start:

Some of these are based on the stuff that’s shown in MVs or that were mentioned in official contents, some are just me fucking around

Because of who I am as a person, I imagine the X-EXOs would all have stronger powers than EXOs - as in the powers they share would be stronger (e.g. no limit in how much amount of water X-EXO Suho can create before getting tired) and they’d have some skills EXOs just don’t have

Suho / Suhø

Power: Water

Water creation & manipulation - Pretty self-explanatory, also canon as far as official lore is concerned. - He can create water and manipulation it’s shape, move it and stuff - It’s canon that in Obsession, Suho drains water from Suhø’s body so that’s another way they could use their power - maybe on smaller scale to cause some health issues - By manipulation the surface tension, they could make it possible to walk on water I suppose - Maybe this could also do with increasing/decreasing humidity in the air if they wanted to make their job easier and just synthesize water from moisture in the air? - Adding to that ^ (I guess) it’s also canon that part of what they could do is make rain - Manipulation of liquids based on their water content - the higher it is, the easier it would be

Weakness: Dry areas

X-EXO exclusive abilities:

Water breathing - Listen, I’m just putting this here on the off-chance that I get to write something with EXO fighting against X-EXO because I want the angst of Suho drowning despite his power literally being water

Liquids manipulation - And since blood is and the liquids in human body are mostly water… perhaps some leverage over movements of a person, not enough to order them around, but maybe enough to make it a bit of a challenge to disobey his wishes (just to make it fun)

Xiumin / Xiūmin

Power: Frost

Ice creation and manipulation - Pretty self-explanatory, also canon as far as official lore is concerned. - So that’s freezing stuff and people, but also creating ice out of nothing, moving it around, shattering it into smaller pieces and all that - Moving objects covered in ice (but only if it doesn’t shatter under the weight of the moved object)

Can create hail and snow storms

Lowering temperature - Idk if this is canon or not tbh, but why not, seems logical 

Weakness: Hot areas

X-EXO exclusive abilities:

Frost resistance - Again, purely for angst purposes lol

Power boost if he freezes someone to death - That can be healing faster, getting stronger for a limited period of time etc.

Lay / Yïxing

Power: Healing

Healing - Pretty self-explanatory, also canon as far as official lore is concerned. - Healing himself, others, living things through touch (physical injuries and diseases only, not mental illness - Can heal either completely or just partly - Regeneration takes a toll on a body so the beings he helps are exhausted afterwards based on how much healing he does

Enhanced self-regeneration

X-EXO exclusive abilities:

Immortality - Not completely immortal, but basically yeah... really hard to kill - more so than regular Lay, his healing would be faster, he doesn’t age

Overhealing - You know what happens when the cells don’t grow as they’re supposed to despite cell growth being important for regeneration…

Reverse healing - He can cause all sorts of damage to alive beings through touch - cause bruising, cuts, break bones, speed up aging of the organism - Can cause injuries and some types of disease but not stuff like the flu, covid etc.

Lifesteal

Baekhyun / Baëkhyun

Power: Light

Light creation & reduction - Pretty self-explanatory, also canon as far as official lore is concerned. - He can create balls of light in the mvs but let’s say he can produce light on a larger scale as well and reduce it, make it disappear - Can blast light - He can light up his own body as well

Illusions - Pretty self-explanatory, also canon as far as official lore is concerned.

X-EXO exclusive abilities:

Light manipulation - He can manipulate the intensity and colors of light, meaning he could remove colors from the world - Enhanced abilities - can limit the disappearance of light and all of the above to a certain target aka person

Sharper senses - Other than sight, he’d have sharper senses since he’s used to living without his sight when he gets rid of light - And as a little side note for future me to consider: Baëkhyun being more sensitive to touch

Chen / Chën

Power: Thunder

Electricity creation and manipulation - Pretty self-explanatory, also canon as far as official lore is concerned. - He can create sparks of electricity at will, I suppose he could use to attack or overload electronics, use them without being plugged in etc.

Lightning - According to the official mvs, he can also bring storms and lightning, probably manipulate it as well

Weather manipulation - canon - can cause storms, hail and “other various weather phenomena” - immune to any and all weather conditions

Magnetic field creation

X-EXO exclusive abilities:

Conducting (or not) electricity through his body

Physiological changes - look I’m not a doctor but according to one Film Theory, you could erase someone’s memories by using electricity on their brain and that’s a great power to have for angst purposes so… - also a lot of stuff in the human body depends on some form of electricity so he could have a lot of fun with that

Chanyeol / Chanyeøl

Power: Fire

Fire creation and manipulation - Pretty self-explanatory, also canon as far as official lore is concerned. - Can either set things on fire or just create balls of fire regardless of the conditions (e.g. lack of oxygen wouldn’t be a problem), envelop his body in fire etc., move the flames as he wishes - or he can extinguish them

Fire resistance

Rising temperature - Idk if this is canon or not tbh, but why not, seems logical 

Weakness: Cold areas

X-EXO exclusive abilities:

Enhanced fire skills - He can create fire that cannot be extinguished by anyone but him - Can manipulate the temperature and color of his own flames

Fire and heat resistance

Power boost if he burns someone to death - That can be healing faster, getting stronger for a limited period of time etc.

D.O / Đ.O

Power: Force

Superior physical strength - Pretty self-explanatory, also canon as far as official lore is concerned.

Force - Also canon - He can manipulate object like he’s using telekinesis, lift them with invisible force, crush them, throw them, make them fly - Can manipulation mass, shape, form - He can also change gravity - make it stronger, lighter, so he could potentially make himself levitate and fly (sort of and it’d take quite a lot of effort and concentration I suppose)

X-EXO exclusive abilities:

Force fields

Enhanced stamina and durability(?) - Enhanced stamina + can harder his body so he cannot be harmed, reinforced bones, his skin is harder to cut and get through - If hit, can use the power of the impact to enhance his own attack but it has to be done immediately

Kai / Kāi

Power: Teleportation

Teleportation - Pretty self-explanatory, also canon as far as official lore is concerned. - Can also teleport other people, objects and energy from one place to another

X-EXO exclusive abilities:

Enhanced control  - can delay the teleportation for a second or less - can teleport just a part of the thing - either with damage or without → people can live without being harmed if i.e. only their arm is ported

Sehun / Sehůn

Power: Wind

Wind creation and manipulation - Pretty self-explanatory, also canon as far as official lore is concerned. - Can create breeze or a tornado, can change the direction and strength of blowing wind and use it to change trajectory of object in the air - Can enhance hearing and sense of smell through bringing scents and sounds closer to him - for himself or others

X-EXO exclusive abilities:

Air manipulation  - can manipulate but not really change (i.e. add or subtract elements) the content of the air - so he can make certain area of air more oxygen-rich by making another less oxygenated, can manipulate the air itself (create vacuum, decrease or increase volume), air resistance 

Levitation - can levitate and fly using the strength of the wind/air but it takes a lot of effort and practice

[elizabeth-dicewielder]

I don’t usually post about politics tbh but I am just. Infuriated by the way people are talking about the debate. News sources and activists whose opinions I trusted and values I thought aligned with my own have resorted to blatant ableism, ageism, and black-and-white thinking. Biden is old and has a stutter. If you do any research whatsoever you’ll find that he is still extremely effective at his job. So get the hell over it.

And I am exhausted of people putting Trump and Biden on any kind of similar basis.

“They’re both old white guys.” And one of them has difficulty explaining complex concepts in a two minute interval while the other repeatedly spouts lies. One of them continues to champion racial equality while the other wants immigrants dead. One of them signed an executive order to protect abortion rights while the other promises to ban abortion drugs entirely upon entering office. I understand the frustration that the presidential office is still restricted to this demographic, but them being old white men simply does not make them similar in any way that matters.

“We’re voting for the better of two evils.” Every politician, yes even the ones you love, has done or will do something that harms people. That is going to happen on a much larger scale when it comes to someone with as much power as the president. Trump and his supporters want to turn America into a dictatorship. He actively wants millions of people dead. I’m not going to pretend Biden has no blood on his hands. But please try to understand that people do actually have nuance. And pretending that Biden is flat-out evil is going to get people killed.

Others have said these things better than I have. I know the people who are gonna see this most likely already agree with me. But I am just so fucking pissed off that this is how people responded

[ultimaid]

I saw in a Kirumi post that you didn't like her trial 2 motivations. Can you elaborate more on that, I'm genuinely curious. Also, how would you write a blackened!Kirumi?

happy to answer!

disclaimer: i have not played or seen trial 2. i find it greatly upsetting and don’t think i’m ready to play it myself yet. everything i know about it comes from spoilers i’ve received and the game’s wiki. if i get a detail wrong, this is why.

my thoughts are basically that the motive itself doesn’t really seem to gel with why kirumi is a maid, why she does what she does. it’s like the love she has for others is completely lost. even at her cruelest, kirumi tries very hard to be kind, and that disappears when so many other people are involved.

it’s also just… so larger-than-life that it takes me out of the game. kirumi is a deeply human character and it feels like that humanity is lost in the outlandishness of her motive. i know part of the point of v3 is that it’s meant to be big and loud and kind of silly, but it feels like it diminishes the quiet humanity of kirumi to give her a motive that’s so absurd.

and!! it’s also just really boring! it doesn’t cut to her character’s core like some other motives do. kirumi’s core is that she is desperate to be cared for, and i want to see what happens when she reaches for that. not just a repeat of the same character we’ve already seen but at a larger scale. it’s like the game itself fell for the front she puts up.

how would i write a blackened kirumi? i’ve actually done it before, in my ao3 series the shakespearean tragedy of kirumi tojo. she kills ryoma in part because it’s a request from someone else, but also in part because she sees it as the only viable solution to her aching, all-consuming loneliness.

i think kirumi would do really, really well with a motive that gets to her heart. a motive that understands that she is deeply lonely, that she feels she needs to be perfect in order to be loved, that she wants to be loved more than anything in the world. killing because of a sense of duty is one thing, but killing because she sees it as the only way she’ll ever be cared for? that would be fascinating! it would be interesting! it would bare her soul to the player in a way the current game refuses to outside of her love hotel.

i just feel like there should be something in kirumi’s motivation that is driven by that deep desire to be cared for. it would make the case more interesting and would make her more interesting too. right now all we get is her facade taken to its logical extreme, but i want to see the scared little girl who’s terrified that nobody will ever love her.

i welcome any thoughts that anyone has!

[sso-maev]

Story quest thoughts!!!

Biggest impression I got from the quest is that the team has a direction for where they want to take the story. Which like finally. The quests being called “beginning of the end” really signifies to me that they’re not gonna keep stalling with the story anymore. The stakes are going up and it really feels like we’re nearing the end of the main story quests, at least the story we’ve been following.

Speaking of stakes, omg we actually bombed the DC headquarters. Went over this in a previous post but like. Sso has NEVER made a previously permanent area inaccessible. Im gonna miss the platform and emo crust-Justin (Gone but not forgotten❤️) but honestly? This was such a great way to make the scale of the battle so much larger. Also it does make sense to me that the HQ never actually drilled for oil. Dark core has other establishment that I’m sure were actually doing legit business, but since all the workers on the oil rig are robots anyway and it’s the location of the portal, it makes sense that they reserve the HQ for just the magic shenanigans.

Anne never hesitating to use her powers in the most dangerous way possible will never cease to be funny to me. Go queen commit whatever atrocities you need to. But I honestly think everyone was pretty well written in terms of dialogue. Anne takes a major risk with her powers, and it results in her getting the revenge she wanted. Alex isn’t only used as an engine for comedy, and I really like the bit where she expresses remorse for leaving us to face the dark riders on our own. Linda gets a lot more screentime than I expected, and she really reminds me of her book counterpart in these quests. The DR have nearly killed her so many times and she’s just not afraid of them at this point. She has this confident assertiveness to her that we don’t really see as much when she’s talking to friends, outside of short quips. Lisa is the only one who didn’t get that much through these quests, but I’ve kind of gotten used to that at this point. I can project my headcannons onto her regardless

Surprisingly I was also really fond of the soul horses this time! Concorde and Tincan had some really nice ominous foreshadowing to their dialogue (Runestones hasnt been used since WHAT dark times Tincan???????) and both Meteor and Starshine had some fun dialogue

The DR are always just so great. You don’t understand I love Jessica more than anything in this world. Her telling Katja to “do the thing” and it’s just them riding over an already iced river is absolutely wonderful. And oh my god the ENDING. Its so cinematiccccc. Mr sands is back after what. 7 years?? Insane. The three hits on the tree, the glowing red runes of the hammer, Sabines full name of general Malumi, Erissa sommersaulting out of the portal LIKE. The questline was short but it was so packed with new story developments. The soul riders think theyve won while the dark riders welcome their fourth general come onnn.

So Darko is dead right? Like if they were gonna bring him back they would at this point. I do wish they found a way to integrate him here, and if not that introduce him earlier in the game. I don’t really care that much about him as a character, but him being introduced as relevant, killing Elizabeth and then never being talked about again isn’t really the conclusion I want.

But overall I really liked the quests. Everyone felt in character, we got really impactful cutscenes, and the story is progressing in a way thats both natural and really exciting. I can’t wait to see whats gonna happen now that the HQ is gone and the dark riders are complete.

[rebeccalouisaferguson]

https://metro.style/people/celebrities/rebecca-ferguson-mission-impossible-dead-reckoning/35891

The Mission: Impossible movies have a unique creative process. They don’t start with a complete script but evolve as they go. How would you describe that on-set experience?

“Tom and McQ have a way of working which from the outside could look very odd, but it’s genius. The story is mostly in McQ and Tom’s heads, not on paper. For people who are new to the game, I guess that could be stressful because they don't really understand the process. But that’s why everyone’s there, to support everyone. The creation happens in the conversations between Tom and McQ. Everything that is created is enhanced by the dynamic between them. It is incredible to watch. It all comes together in front of you. It is extraordinary how much knowledge they have about film and camera angles and storytelling and building tension and character. Tom is extremely focused on character. ‘Why?’ is Tom’s question all the time. ‘Why is that happening? Why is he doing that?’ It’s so detailed.”

How would you describe the threat that the team face in this movie?

“What has been really interesting and extremely intelligently created by McQ and Tom in these movies is that they play with the question of what is actually good and bad. There’s a scene we cut from the last movie, between Ilsa and Ethan, where she is saying to him: ‘Why are we doing this, you and me? Why don’t we give up? There will always be people like us who can take over, so why don’t we let them and go and live the life that other people get to live?’ But it’s also the reverse. Who is really bad? In Fallout, Sean Harris’ Solomon Lane talks about bringing them over to a world that’s better, but in our world he was seen as evil because of the destruction [that would entail]. But is it? Or is it human growth? These films have always played with big thoughts of ownership and world control – how we have been controlled by the police, state and government, the politicians. Obviously [in these stories], the baddies are the baddies – and we know they are because they kill and want to destroy everyone and everything. But there’s always a philosophical mind at play in these stories too. What is actually ‘bad’ if you break it down? For a lot of these characters, that will depend on the balance of their beliefs – on what they believe is truthful and real. In this movie, Gabriel, the antagonist, is in full belief of what he wants, and that is justice, for the betterment of all mankind, or for whatever is left of it when he’s done.”

What is it about this story that’s so big it needs splitting into two movies?

“These movies just become bigger and bigger, with larger and larger themes. They are so big and grand, location-wise. It really is a mission, shooting these movies. So, linking two together? That is not an easy task, in any way, shape or form. But I think that the scale of what Tom and McQ have attempted here demands two movies. To let the story and characters breathe against this never-bigger, action-packed backdrop.”

Let’s talk Ilsa. What is she going through in this movie?

“This is where it gets hard! [Laughs] Because it’s very hard to promote a story that you don’t fully know. The way we work is that we shoot a lot of footage, and then they cut it together. Then we get to see that version at the premiere! And we go, ‘Oh, that makes sense!’ But that works perfectly for these films because the fact is that in these movies, these characters never have the full picture in front of them. The fun of watching these films is watching these characters discover things as they go. That’s where that wonderful dynamic comes from. Are they working together? Are they not working together? We ended the last movie thinking that there is sort of a collaboration here between Ilsa and Ethan. We begin this one very confused again. It’s that dance between these two characters that I have fallen in love with.”

In the trailer, we see Ilsa and Ethan embracing. What can we read into that?

“You can read whatever you want into that [laughs], but I don’t want to give anything away. What I will say is that we have always, for years, talked about the relationship between them because it’s so complex. The bond between these two people has been born of trauma and chaos – these are emotions that go beyond any form of love affair or kinship. They have this pure urge to protect and support each other, but also to have their own rights. They’re two very similar characters. What do you see? Is it love? Is it friendship? Is it family? Is it support? Is it just knowing that something’s about to blow up? That’s the whole point of this dynamic.”

The trailer also gives a glimpse of a showdown between Ilsa and Esai Morales’ Gabriel in Venice. What can you share about that sequence?

“It's always a wonderful moment when bad and good meet. What was fun about this meeting is that I got to train to sword fight for the scene, which was ridiculously hard and wonderfully exciting to do. I’ll never forget shooting that scene – sword fighting over turquoise waters in Venice. And Esai is phenomenal. He’s unpredictable, a classic baddie. It’s a dance.” 

What made the sword fighting so difficult to master?

“It’s so tricky. You always have the possibility of doing the fighting with lighter replicas. So, in some angles you have the sword and for certain other angles, if it’s dangerous, you switch that sword out for the replica, so you don’t chop someone’s head off. But the part you don’t realize until you first do it is how important the weight is. Because the weight is so important, you have to train with the real weapon. And then you have to remember what that weight feels like, so you can fight with something that’s not equally weighted but make it look the same. It’s not just the choreography – which is difficult enough in and of itself – but retaining the muscle memory of training with the real weapon. There’s so much more to it than I ever understood before.” 

A lot of the characters in this movie are exploring their darker sides. How does that play out on screen?

“I remember McQ and Tom talking a lot on the last movie, Fallout, about what they wanted to do with this one. They talked about not being scared, about wanting for the next film to basically eat up the franchise emotionally, to give the audience another level of action and emotion. People know the ingredients that make these films so great and one of them is their ability to give you a metaphorical emotional stomach punch. And Tom and I have often talked about not being afraid of giving these characters physical tasks and emotions to deal with. Whether it’s loss or love or fear, we have never been afraid to go deeper, to go further. And this movie is maybe the pinnacle of that.”

Is there a sense that these two new Mission movies are almost a love-letter to the whole series?

“Honestly, everything Tom and McQ do is intentional. Everything. Every angle, every shot, every line, every prop, the costumes, the music, the edit. This is a movie that has so much boom and abandon and adventure. But, also, there is so much in there that is an homage to something they loved in the previous movies, or something they loved in all the classic movies the two of them are always referencing on set. They are far too smart for me to ever try and even pretend to know what they’re talking about [laughs]. At the beginning, they’ll go, ‘Have you seen this classic movie or that classic movie?’ And at the start [on her first Mission movie, Rogue Nation], I would sometimes pretend that I had, to look smart. And then go and watch it that night. But now I’m just honest and say I haven’t seen it. I’ll be like, ‘Send me a list of all the films you want me to see. But remember I’m a novice.’” 

Dead Reckoning Part One promises to be a truly epic adventure for audiences. How much of an adventure have you had making it?

“It’s been incredible, it really has. The places we’ve seen, the things we’ve done. I absolutely loved Abu Dhabi. It was phenomenal. The desert location and the footage you get from it is just exquisite. Putting us into nature that is so uncontrollable, whether it’s a sandstorm or whatever, and us just having to adapt to it, was so beautiful and so apt. It’s the same with all the different inputs of nature – from rain to wind – that came into play on Tom’s bike jump. No matter how much planning you do, you can’t control Mother Nature. That’s what makes it so dangerous. And that’s what makes it so exciting to watch. People will never understand what it took for everyone involved to make that bike stunt work.”

[shopcat]

i'd like the rest of your opinion on jet if that's ok i like hearing peoples thoughts on him :)

SORRY i didn't see this okayyy hrm i can do that but i'll stick it under a cut. My rambles.

w the disclaimer that this really is just my opinion which means what my mind has scrambled up with without any prodding at it or outside interference (and i don't really read about or interact w content w jet and never really DID just as a btw) but basically: the way this show frames characters is very deliberate and going beyond the initial projection of who you're "meant" to see them as can be difficult sometimes (not just for this show, i mean in general wrt media analysis), esp when there's nothing else to like... cushion that.

for example iroh is obviously a fan favourite and i love him as a person who loves zuko (in both interps of that sentence), and their dynamic is really important (particularly + the standpoint of iroh being his brother's brother and what that means) but he was also you know, a revered general who lead a years long siege in support of the colonial regime...? this is kind of a mirror of what i'm getting at in that the show doesn't WANT you to or even feels the need to particularly dwell on that, even if his active hand in the war and then the subsequent movement to dismantle it firsthand is significant, because if people dwelt on it they... REALLY wouldn't like him as much on a much larger scale and he wouldn't be the same character anyways. i actually think it's a disservice to say the show doesn't at alllll address this bc i think it's obviously a huge part of who his character is next to zuko even though obviously the children's show is not going to be able to handle colonialism or genocide in a way that doesn't in some way feel flattened obv. anyway.

this is essentially why it took me such a while to warm up to jet even though he is a pretty cookie cutter "look beyond what you see" guy bc i couldn't really DO IT other than holding obviously a lot of sympathy for him and knowing he is deliberately presented as a certain kind of quote unquote extreme product of the fire nation's tyranny, much like hama is as another popular example, even if in real life it would actually be a pretty normal reaction and that hating your oppressors obviously doesn't make you evil. my autistic ass (SORRY) simply has to imagine a world where he can eventually go "i shouldn't have tried to kill an entire village of innocent people My bad" and it's easier to think about it wrt he is also you know, like 16? and obviously a victim. i've mentioned before i struggle with moral scrupulosity and what i consider to be "right" which does affect the things i like in context as well, and jet falls pretty squarely on morally pretty dark, esp in comparison to the other antagonists on the show, but that doesn't make him a villain obv. other than that the show itself presents him as an antagonist meant to cause conflict, and you're meant to sit with what it means to see people driven to such extremes bc they feel they have no choice, but you're not necessarily meant to like him i don't think, especially when you initially meet him. he really comes off as like a Cool Guy who's all charm who uses it to get his way which can feel kind of slimey i s'pose.

thinking about jet in regards to ZUKO is what helped me wrap my brain around him as a whole and soften to his like, harshness i guess bc i think they're good foils for each other. i think without making him necessarily fangless to do it that they're a really interesting duo and i honestly love that he came back to deliberately become an antagonistic figure to zuko as well (even that both "sides" just happened to meet him 😭 like what are actually the chances lol) and that prior to it they were working side by side even for a short time. i honestly wish the show was longer than it was bc i wish he hadn't figured out iroh was a firebender as quickly as he did, or at least hadn't assumed zuko was also one, bc i think it would've been really really interesting to see the behind the scenes conflict of them being friends and working together and jet forming some sort of relationship with zuko and iroh, and THEN finding out they're who he considers inherently immoral and an enemy even though he knows he and zuko are very similar/agree/he trusts them, and what that would mean for him. the initial "he'd just freak out and accuse them of betraying their trust and the same fight happens anyway" would be a natural conclusion but i can also see it NOT happening, bc while jet is an incredibly complex interesting character i think him coming to terms with certain things and shifting his mindset would have been fulfilling for ME at least.

i know that a character doesn't have to "redeem" themselves to be worthy and that moral pureness is not exclusive to being a Good Character and i like plenty of morally grey characters trust me etc etc but i just tend to want to... enjoy engaging characters who reflect my own values enough that it's justifiable WITHIN THE CONTEXT of the rest of whatever's going on in/the relationships of the other characters which is essentially why... he's fine and i like him but he's not my favourite. and what i mean by that is like as in, i love team avatar and i don't think they themselves would be friends with jet entirely as is, but if he was in another setting or situation or show or what the hell ever i honestly wouldn't care as much. i also think it's sort of strange to be like "ha ha you don't like the character who killed/wanted to kill kids" as if that's not like totally normal to be uncomfortable with 😭 anyway. other than all that i really like how he's a retro cool anime character transplanted into the show and i like his dumb mouth grass thing and i think he could've been a cool ally and wish they'd have leant more into his connection and closeness to the freedom fighters esp in ba sing se. i also think the angle that he's somehow kissed everyone in team avatar barring the littles is really fucking funny and they would gossip about him if it wasn't so like, tragic... also i don't think he died i think he can run real fast.

OH edit: one last thing i'll tack on to like the beginning of my own thought process re: the cushioning characters are afforded we see i think actually nothing of jets backstory other than what he says and nothing ELSE of his goal in life other than like, staying alive + keeping his fighters safe + what they stood for and fighting the fire nation. and while that's all like definitely plenty to establish his character it's why i couldn't come around to him as quickly bc i didn't really see the point when regardless of everything i've said i pretty much don't think he WOULD want to "redeem" himself or change as a character in any way and he's kind of just some guy to me so i didn't really want to put the effort in myself. i don't fault anyone who does ofc.