#anyway. sorry! bye!

[paceywittters]

yes, i do think lucy has fault in their relationship breakdown - happy to talk about that elsewhere if you want

okay, so @to-the-east asked me to expand on this thought from my other post and while i know this is an unpopular opinion on a beloved character, i don’t mind talking about it (even if it’s become a really polarizing thing for the rookie fandom). the fact that lucy's flaws get looked over in favor of constant praise for her actions is kind of odd to me.

a note before you see how long this is: this is just my opinion about a tv show, i am allowed to have it just like you are allowed to have yours! if you don't agree with me that is ok i will be fine and so will you. please don't come at me for typing my little essays, if you've been here long enough u know i just like to yap.

also just to be clear: i think lucy's a great character. i think she's good at her job. she deserves happiness personally and professionally in whatever way that looks like for her. i also, however, recognize that as a three-dimensional character, lucy's flawed - and i like that she's flawed. i want the show to delve further into those flaws the way they do with basically every other character rather than pretending they're not there. me saying lucy has flaws is not an attack on her character. it is observation and analysis of the source material. that is all.

ok now you may proceed if you want lol

some chenford fans looked at the breakup in season six and saw tim’s issues, tim’s faults, tim’s lies, etc. as the root cause - and they were absolutely part of the cause, but there were bigger things at play than just what was happening in the moment. tim’s knee-jerk reaction to his deception/inability to see himself in his actions/breach of his moral code during 6x06 was to break up with lucy, because he didn’t know who he was. he couldn’t trust himself with himself, so he certainly couldn’t trust himself with her. we’ve all heard this a hundred times over, i’m sure, but it’s worth repeating because i actually think the breakup happening like this did a major disservice to the characters. while i wanted a breakup, after sitting with the way it’s played out, this breakup didn’t scratch the itch for me, so to speak.

throughout the end of season 5 and the beginning of season 6, tim and lucy both wind up facing a major shift in their lives. they decide to be together in 5x08/5x09, and this is where we begin to see the…lack of consequences, more or less, for lucy’s actions specifically.

just to reiterate, because i'm about to sound harsh: i want lucy to succeed, and i want her to grow. i am not trying to say lucy should have to face consequences for things while others shouldn’t - this isn’t meant to be a comparison to anyone else in the cast, but an analysis of what we’ve seen laid out in front of us.

throughout the show’s run, lucy’s had fairly good luck when it comes to not facing disciplinary action when she should’ve - but this goes absolutely batshit crazy in season 5 and 6. in the span of a season, lucy:

breaks up with her boyfriend of at least 6 months who has been expressing interest in living with her, giving little to no reason re: why (regardless of how you feel about chris, this should've have some kind of consequence or challenge attached)

begins dating her superior officer in secret without disclosing that information appropriately despite knowing she is supposed to legally (skirting around rules, ultimately without any consequence)

devises an inter-departmental swap with a group of colleagues in order to find a way to benefit her personal life without consulting tim, who this would directly impact (she does eventually face a professional consequence for this, but not a personal one)

expresses no remorse to tim when she gets caught and he is, rightfully, irritated (she quite literally says “sorry, not sorry”)

learns that someone within the inter-departmental swap is not happy that she’s manipulated a bunch of people for her personal gain and doesn’t seem to understand this is a problem (again, she will eventually face a consequence with this - but does not appear to understand why, which is the issue)

continuously appears to understand that her boyfriend, who has baggage surrounding undercover work, is struggling with her decisions but is trying to put on a brave face and doesn’t call him out for a lack of communication (to be clear, this part is very much also on tim - in moments even more so than lucy - but we’ll get to that later)

picks fights with her boyfriend for doing his job/treating her like his colleague when she has directly asked him to do so (i will not be engaging on the discourse surrounding tim's behavior in 6x01 other than to say that lucy asked him to behave like a TO and he did)

pushes her boyfriend again on his stance on undercover work when he’s openly trying to resolve his issues with it in order to keep their relationship stable (6x01/6x02 pre lie detector test is wild)

makes some deeply dangerous and mostly unnecessary calls that put her in extreme danger in order to make herself stand out because she doesn’t feel she’s getting enough recognition at work (lucy getting that dinged up radio as a trophy was sweet but we veer away from the fact that lucy quite literally chose to do something she didn't need to for kudos and could've died because of it - instead, we see her praised and applauded for her efforts without any ounce of "but you didn't have to do all that")

ignores the fact that she knows going into her detective’s exam that one of the proctors is not in favor of her, and then doesn’t anticipate the fact that it will impact her score/opportunities moving forward (again - this is a time where she does face a consequence, but does not anticipate it whatsoever, which i think is part of the problem)

and that’s just the big stuff. lucy consistently doesn’t face consequences for her actions - the detective’s exam thing is probably one of the few times i feel like i’ve seen her actually find herself in a pickle due to something she’s finagled. i love the fact that lucy can be crafty and creative, it’s one of the things i enjoy the most about her character…but a lot of the writing in the last season or so has felt less to me like she’s being crafty or creative, and more like she’s just skirting any legitimate consequences for her actions/ignoring any faults she’s shown as she’s moved through this phase of her career. even when she does have to face her decisions head-on, lucy often winds up trying to justify her behavior rather than admitting she was just...deeply over-achieving, or trying to do something to better her situation. she rarely sees a consequence coming, which is confusing when her character is clearly someone who can analyze situations for others.

with that being said, let’s get to this part: tim and lucy had problems before their breakup, and neither of them wanted to talk about them. think about the back half of season 5 - we see tim struggling with lucy’s uc work, lucy struggling to talk to tim about it or get him to own up to his feelings.

early on in season 6 we see them confront this a little, but it comes to no resolution whatsoever - and while it’s tim’s problem with lucy’s uc work, lucy chooses to act like that’s the only problem in their relationship. in 6x02, tim’s discomfort with uc work is treated like it’s their biggest issue when we as viewers know that there have been multiple times lucy’s just straight up lied to/withheld information from tim, either because she doesn’t think he needs to know or doesn’t want him to be in the know. lucy’s long-preached having great communication skills/knowing that open honest communication (5x18) is the key to her relationship with tim…but she doesn’t actually practice it.

lucy, unfortunately, is a bad communicator who thinks she’s a lot better at sharing her own feelings than she is. lucy is good at facilitating communication for others - it's a major skill of hers - but she's far less in touch with her own self, and we've seen that many times through the course of the show.

seeing her refuse to acknowledge her faults to tim, who she’s supposed to be sharing herself with fully, is a struggle throughout the beginning of season 6 - and so the tension was brewing for chenford when tim’s whole past-life-army-drama came into play.

now, here’s the thing: tim also has some serious baggage that he brings into this relationship (and just being real, in your 30s/beyond who is not bringing baggage into a relationship? i would be offended if they didn’t) and he has his own level of fault. the direct cause of their breakup in 6x06 is a tim thing. he’s not communicative, he’s a people pleaser (this is what i meant when i said we’d get into that later - tim’s people pleasing tendencies, esp in interpersonal relationships, are huge, to the point that he needed to be hooked up to a lie detector to even really grasp that he had issues with lucy going uc. that man gaslights himself into thinking things sometimes, and he’s always going to try to be amenable to the people he loves because he doesn’t want to lose them - which is a big flaw and a big reason why he broke up with lucy, but i digress), and he’s the kind of bitch that self-sabotages. things got difficult and he fucked up and he took himself out of the equation because leaving is easier than getting left - which, honestly, is probably a new feeling for tim.

but. this is about lucy, and the fault she has in the breakdown of their relationship. to be clear: they share fault. they are very much both at fault for the breakdown of their relationship (again - the direct break up was tim’s call, but we’re talking about what led to that), and i don’t think either of them grasps it just yet.

lucy has become used to getting her way more often than not (not all the time, obv, but enough) and if she doesn’t get her way directly, she can usually find a path into what she wants without much consequence. she doesn’t speak directly about her feelings or find herself probing for the feelings of others in tough situations where she’s directly involved. it's a strange dichotomy for lucy, who comes from such a psychology heavy background - and i often think it's one of the most interesting parts of her character, but the way she's been written in the last season and a half has really brought to light how misused it feels as a trait when she doesn’t see it.

so, tl;dr: lucy has flaws in her communication style and often finds herself lucky enough not to face the consequences of her actions, so when they do crop up at times, she's gutted by them. her chronic over-achieving has become her fatal flaw, as she's often trying to overdo things to make herself look good, rather than taking a step back to actually consider situations. while we can see these things on screen, they’re not addressed by the show which can be frustrating.

these qualities of lucy’s wrapped up in a bow make for her own set of issues that lent directly to the slew of issues that simmered into a boil of a breakup for chenford. while i don't think lucy was the whole problem by any means, i'm also not going to put that fully on tim. i want lucy to be able to grow and change and receive recognition for her work in a meaningful way, but without actually focusing on her flaws and acknowledging them, i don't really see how the rookie can do that in a way that serves the character.

ok don't hate me bye

[hinamie]

*about any given drawing* cranking the saturation slider will fix this

[noornight]

Long distance besties. This definitely happened after the third movie (source: trust me bro)

Based on this

[kitamars]

doodles as i relive my spideyman phase from eighth grade

[xxplastic-cubexx]

alternate apocalypse ending or something who the hcrist knows anymore

[blee-bleep]

old man yaoi... save me... old man yaoi. save me

[egophiliac]

so excited for Kalim to save the day by swiper-no-swiping this dip. you can do it! I believe in you!

god I hope this reads properly

[gravedigg]

The Magician - Dorian Pavus

[throesofincreasingwonder]

Dean would not be femme as a woman because his hyper-performance of gender is entirely based on the deification of masculinity send tweet

[hotdogmchiggin]

I guess DARE wasn’t a thing in Goron City

[lizaisdrawing]

Casino; soul bets AU By @st4r_sh1r0t4 on insta!

Their Wally has such a cool design!

[thekittyokat]

you ever just have a lot, a LOT of feelings all at once about a character and not even remotely enough words or brainpower to FORM the words to describe everything you're feeling. so it feels like you may explode. yeah

[xxplastic-cubexx]

[right to left]

finally finished This Wip from Ever ago and so now i ask you ever look into another dudes eyes and suddenly want to do whatever he wants

[paladinsbrainrot]

she could fix me.

[averlym]

"you're lost, little girl"

[nhura]

Life is too short.

[ my art ] [ twitter ]

(detail + ratio rambling under the cut >_>)

This is one of those "I need a break between my ten other illustrations, let me do a lil sketchy sketch :D" that got too ambitious etc. etc. I never want to see the color red again" moments. BUT!

I really, really like to explore Ratio's viscerality and what's happening between his brain and his nerves, like... all of this thorough control and discipline and he still has to breathe and react to himself and his surroundings, you know? His accomplishments are insane for "his age"* but he's going to run out of "age" at some point! His ambitions are so far reaching that he's not worried about getting doctorate degree Number Nine! Rather, his efforts are pointed outwards, into the universe, for the universe. As you know.

Speaking of his degrees, I had a half thought a while ago that we've seen him with two types of laurel pins.

One is him in his suuuuuper cute mother goose avatar (three leaves) and the other is the hat he's wearing everywhere else (eight leaves).

The thought was, "Aww, what if they're like commemorative pins counting the number of his degrees or whatever :)". Literally only because there's eight in the current one. This is kind of silly because then you'd HAVE to have an obscene number of degrees even for a normal person for your leaf pin to start looking like a laurel in the first place so scratch that BUT it's cute to think that it's still academic regalia. Something something I work in higher ed myself and it's like... it's like that.

The university goldsmith appreciates the job security.

I REMEMBER WHY I BROUGHT THAT UP. FOLLOWING the fantasy where more leaves = more knowledge!, in summary, even though Ratio seems to be a little beyond trying to get a prize every time he learns something now. But he does want to Keep Going. He can only Keep Going.

So I drew him in a bathtub full of an uncountable amount of gold leaves looking at the camera with an indescribable expression born from a hunger that will never be satiated lol DETAIL SHOT!

*Referenced only vaguely in a comment in the context of astonishment, but it could have easily have been "woah he's accomplished so much for his age (young)" as it could be "woah he looks good for his age (older)". There is no canon age and even then, reconciling standardized system time versus planetary time versus "does his particular breed of lizard human have the same lifespan as tumblr user nhura?" is a losing game for everyone involved! Here's what I think: I think he started going grey in his early twenties, whatever that means in spacefantasygame, and that that's very cute on him.

Do YOU think Ratio would be tempted by immortality???? Or would he MIND HIS BUSINESS