#either would cure a lot of things on this planet

[youchangedmedestiel]

I need to say it. Art and gifs of Destiel/Cockles kissing as gorgeous, amazing, incredible, any other adjective like those as they are (I'll be honest I wouldn't be able to create one as good as those I saw here on Tumblr and without them we have nothing), I think deeply inside of me that they don't even come close to what that kiss would be, given the insane chemistry that these two men have.

And it's the same about fanfic, as good of a writer as some are, and there are incredible writers out there whose fics I love to read again and again, hell I even write Destiel fics myself, but it's the same that for the art and gifs, describing a kiss as good as you can do it with a language limited by words can't do enough justice to how the real kiss would happen.

I only wish I could be able to see them kiss for real, because I'm sure if it happens one day, it will catch my heart, rip it out of my chest, hug it tight and put it back in there (even to describe what I would feel, words aren't enough).

[ohfugecannada]

I was thinking about Grootfall (derogatory) and suddenly realised this parallel.

[nekropsii]

Ask Game Speed Round!!

[For the Unpopular Opinion Ask Game!!]

These are all a bunch of smaller ones I thought would be too cumbersome and spammy to post on their own... Enjoy!!

Content Warning: Long.

While I do really like Dave's character as it exists in the comic- no clue what version of Dave most of the fandom is talking about, but I don't know him- I kind of like the themes in Davesprite's character more than I do Dave's. It's another Hal situation.

Dave's character tackled a lot of things very personally relatable to me in ways I'd never seen illustrated before, but Davesprite is more interesting to think about, and seems a little more fun to write. Dave was great representation for me, as someone who grew up in a very bad home, but Davesprite just has that extra oomph with his talk of humanity and individuality. Really like that guy.

---

@lupinecalibrator

This may come across as crass, or stepping out of my own lane, but I don't think giving them either multiple sets of pronouns, neopronouns, or both actually rids them of the bigotry in their characters. Lipstick on a pig situation. It just seems like a lazy, incurious fix. Yes, trans headcanons are great, but more and more often I see people use it as a cure-all to the issues a character has, either in a Doylist or Watsonian way. Queer friendliness does not eliminate racism. If a character is a bigoted caricature of a specific group of people, then slapping on a leftist layer of paint by saying "actually they're a minority icon in this other way" doesn't actually... Get rid of the problem. It's just kind of... Tone deaf.

We see this often with Transmisogynistic Caricatures getting claimed as Gay Icons, and people just saying that because they've just claimed them as a campy gay queen, the transmisogyny has been nullified- you can't talk about it anymore, they're the real good leftist in the room, you're a killjoy, and they've defeated bigotry. Not how it works.

---

Kind of tired of how some act like her only character traits are Silly Ditzy Furry Girl. Jade is an incredibly, incredibly intelligent young girl, an excellent marksman, and so, so deeply lonely. We need to talk about Jade's chronic loneliness more.

Also, I think she's some kind of Psychotic. One of the flavors. It just feels right to me. It feels canon-adjacent. Or, at least, a textually valid way to read her character. I have a whole post about it somewhere. Mituna and Jade shaking hands on the Psychosis.

---

Taking this opportunity to defend Aranea. Some people really need to stop acting like she's worse than Vriska. We all know what Aranea did was justified. Maybe not correct, but justified. And fucking awesome to watch.

Like, look. She spent an unfathomable amount of years being shot down and ignored and belittled by people who were supposed to be her friends... Aranea had to literally pay Meenah, her own best friend, to listen to her infodump, and even then Meenah couldn't afford to give her own best friend enough respect to just listen to her talk about something she's passionate about for 5 minutes.

I need you to think to yourself, genuinely. If you spent thousands- and I mean thousands upon thousands- of years getting ignored and walked on by everyone around you, even your own friends... If you spent thousands upon thousands of years getting called boring and a doormat to your face by even your own friends... Wouldn't you go crazy, too? Wouldn't you snap? Wouldn't you want to do something drastic just to get people to look at you? Just to be seen as something other than weak and boring? Just to be seen as worth even an iota of interest, a shred of someone's time? Wouldn't you? Because I think any normal person wouldn't take thousands upon thousands of years. I don't think you would last a decade. I wouldn't either, and I'm a pretty patient person.

Y'all are just jealous you can't play billiards with planets using your mind when you're mad. That shit was so awesome.

---

@searedtroutpeacharugula

This is not an Unpopular Opinion, or even an Opinion, I'm just pointing this out. Do you ever think about the fact that we hardly got any conversations between Rose and Jade? I do. This haunts me. This fucks me up so bad. We get plenty between John and Dave, and Dave and Jade, and Dave and Rose, and Rose and John, and Jade and John... But hardly anything between Rose and Jade!! This is so fucked up. We were robbed. I need to watch them hang out.

---

Okay, this is less of an Unpopular Opinion, and more of an Unpopular Fact, but... Mituna doesn't just throw slurs at people. That's one of the things people jump to when they're talking about Defanging Mituna- they always say something about how he "calls people slurs every two seconds". He literally doesn't. That is legitimately not a thing he does. If you heard that before and believed it, you were literally lied to. That is straight up demonstrably not true.

Like, if you're trying to think of something Mituna does every two seconds unprompted, it's either sex jokes or apologizing. Slurs aren't a thing he just slings around casually. He said a grand total of one slur... To Meenah... And it's a fake troll slur. And then we get it defined to us... Aaaand it's the troll equivalent to "Cracker". That's it. That's the crime he's committed- calling someone a word that is immediately after defined to us as "Someone who is at the top of and benefits from the furthering of the oppressive Fuchsia-Down power structure, and the Lowbloods that help enforce it." That's the slur he used. That's what made people start declaring that "he would totally say the N Word" with full and complete confidence. Absolutely ridiculous. He's called no one else any kind of genuine slur. He just called Meenah a Wader once, and then she and Kankri got upset about it, because they are both, by definition, Waders.

---

Leijon Hot Take Party Pack: If you think Nepeta shipping her friends together is fine, or even adorable, but then sneer at or get grossed out by Meulin doing the same thing, you're a hypocrite. I don't care if you say "Meulin's writing Friend Fic, though, that's weird!!" the problem with Shipping Your Friends and Writing Romantic Fanfiction Of Your Friends is at the same root.

The problem with these things isn't the presence of writing, it's the presence of, you know, shipping your friends? If you're fine with Nepeta doing it, you've gotta be fine with Meulin doing it. Be fine with both or neither. It's the same damn thing. I'm pretty sure both friend groups are fine with it, too, so it's not like this is a boundaries issue or anything. Both or neither. Pick one.

---

Observation: I do think it's cool how Jane and Jake are related and have similarly opposing relationships with their gender. Jake's oft presented with Feminine themes and imagery, and Jane with Masculine themes and imagery. Very cool. Wish more people made that correlation.

---

Okay, that's all for now!! Thank you for reading, if you did. Have a nice rest of your day. :)

[looseratinthegarage]

Hi! I've been thinking about this for awhile but how would slashers survive an zombie apocalypse with or without a s/o?

Slashers in a zombie apocalypse

Omg I had sm fun writing this!!

Michael Rz

•Terrified. Undoubtedly. Terrified. But! Would do remarkably well! He’d dig a hole somewhere and call it home.

•he’s a big man so food is an issue. But he manages.

•would have constant adrenaline if he has a s/o. He wants to protect you and keep you safe. If you die, especially if it’s because of him, he’ll…. He’ll walk unarmed into a swarm of zombies and fight them with his bare hands. Once he is inevitably turned, his body will wreak havoc while his mind is finally put to rest.

Michael Og

•lil man would be fine. He’d pick a house to make a base in and board it up.

•if the zombies are drawn to noise he’ll be totally okay. Dude doesn’t speak and is so quiet walking around. There’s no way he’d gain their attention…. Unless his unbathed stench brought them…

•I think he’d kill a bunch of zombies…. and eat them. Therefore turning into one. Unlike someone else on this list, he wasn’t trying to fuck around, he just needed food and went nom nom.

Jason

•Now this one’s interesting! Are we talking about zombie Jason? Or living?

•Zombie Jason is a fucking unit and would turn the most people. The only drawback is he kills extremely violently, he rips his victims apart, aka he makes a lot of crawlers or immobile zombinos.

•Living Jason I think would get very overwhelmed. He’d use his machete and or some sort of long ranged weapon that isn’t a gun.

•He’d do well for a long time, but Pamela would call to him from the other side, but only if he was alone or if y/n had been infected/died. He’d cradle his mom's head and possibly his s/o or a belonging of theirs and bury himself in the earth.

Hewitt Family

•Thomas goes into sheer panic. But less panic when he remembers how far from civilization they live.

•Thomas, Hoyt, and Monty if it’s before that even cut Thomas gave him will work together to make huge scrap metal and wood walls on the perimeter of their property.

•Luda Mae goes up into the attic to find scraps of cloth, old guns, and other helpful stuff. She’ll be handling the house and cooking as she normally does, while Thomas, Hoyt and again, maybe Monty, will patrol the perimeter.

•The tea lady moves into the Hewitt estate, and Henrietta brings her trailer into the encased property.

•they’re very stressed about how they’ll be able to provide food for everyone. They’ll turn one or more of the fields into crop land. Luda Mae, Thomas, Monty, and Henrietta will work the fields as well. Not Hoyt. Never Hoyt. I think he’s worried about breaking a nail.

•Long story short, I think they’ll do very well for themselves.

Sawyer Family (-choptop)

•Almost a complete disaster. Nubbins has a zombie chained up outside, he’s been calling it his gross dog. Drayton and Bubba tried to build a wall around the house, but couldn't do it by themselves. Bubbas panicking because they’ll have to eat his pet chicken. Drayton is taking his stress out on everyone. Grandpa is god knows where, no one’s remembered to check on him.

•Yeah they don’t make it.

Freddy

•he would either do amazing or instantly get turned, no in between.

•I think he’d bite a zombie- “how ya like that bitch” and then turn…. Like an idiot.

•Undead Freddy is far more nightmarish than living Freddy. Yuck!

•or on the other hand would kick some undead ass.

•his powers wouldn’t really help him? If my memory serves me well, the more people fear him, the more power he has. Zombies can’t feel fear, there’s only one thing they think about nom nom. Hence he’d have to use his claws or another weapon.

Yautja

•100% fine. Out of all of the boys, he’s good. Like- he’s going to be completely fine. Bruh doesn’t even live on this planet.

•He’ll make sure there’s not a scratch on his s/o, and gods forbid you get infected he can easily cure you with yautja technology.

•they can’t infect him, cus he’s, ya know, a fucking alien. So even if they do bite him, he’ll just be more pissed off then anything.

•He’s not worried about it, he can hop in his ship and just leave. Depending on your mate, he might let you bring family or close friends with you both. He’s not going to be happy about it. But he’ll allow it. Will also allow pets…..hesitantly….

[foggynitefic]

Drop Them Bones Chapter 9: Hard and Fast

This one's a doozy...

Hard and Fast

To be sure of, without a doubt, without debate History: In seafaring times, the term ‘hard and fast’ was used to describe a vessel that was beached on land and unable to be moved. [Don’t lie. Absolutely none of us thought it meant that. None of us.]

So, funny thing. Since posting Chapter 8, I had a wonderful long weekend in Manhattan, followed by the worst stomach flu I’ve gotten in at least a decade. Then, after a few weeks recovering from that, I partially dislocated my knee and sprained my MCL. Full damage assessment still TBD in a couple months, but I have a care plan for now.

What I’ve posted as Chapter 9 was supposed to be ten pages max plus additional scenes, and then this happened. So, I have 6k words of Chapter 10 already because I split Chapter 9 in half, and I’ve had the final scene in Chapter 10 (originally intended for Chapter 6, hah!) written for the last three months…

I currently have 9 more chapters planned out, but as this adventure has shown me, that’s more like guidelines. This chapter would have been out sooner, but reference above, and in retrospect, this chapter’s title also describes me in seafaring times right now…

Notes

At least I’m recuperating and back to excessive research spiraling:

If you have the equipment, time, and inclination, you too can om a gator nom. I have only ever outsourced my gator dining experience to trustworthy restaurants, because I’m happy to compensate people accordingly for their labor and gator meat is fucking expensive to have shipped up north.

I’ve mostly encountered alligator fried or in etouffees in restaurants, and if you can’t source alligator or just think they’re too cute to eat (look at them faces!), they do taste like a fishy chicken, but less swampy than frog, and have the consistency of a pork chop. So, imo, you can substitute either white chicken meat or pork to about the same effects in all the recipes except the whole smoked gator. Alligator meat is very lean and easy to dry out, though (flashbacks to straw-like fried, breaded nonsense on that one trip to Florida…) The Daily Beast has an article from 2019 that goes into more detail on taste, etc. I’m not going to link to any of the butchering videos I watched to make this fic, but if you’re interested, deermeatfordinner on Youtube has a good one.

And yes, in true Louisiana fashion, the state government does have an alligator cookbook available in PDF for free. The final page notes that funds for it came from both Florida and Louisiana, and the most approximate publication date I can find for it is 1994. Its text, graphics, and ingredients definitely look like something from the 80s or 90s…

I was not tracking that discarded crocodile and alligator fat can be used to produce biodiesel at competitive prices…

I went down a lot of interesting 1700-1800s sailing history that involved the provisions given per day to British Navy sailors, how much salt was needed to brine 100 lbs of meat, and how the brining process actually worked (floating eggs and meats, oh my!) The average alligator yields about 40 lbs of meat, so all the proportions and weights for applegators came from multiplying that by three, then adding on more layers of fat than an alligator would have because applegators can also go out in the deep sea. Yes, I know this is a fanfic for fantasy pirates on an imaginary planet. If Oda-sensei can say they’re all stronger because gravity, I can make chonky applegators.

Curing meat Wikipedia article; Quora entry (of all things) on sailor provisions; Colonies, Ships and Pirates blog; and an NIH paper with some science of curing meats; plus a definition of pellicle; and some historical pre-refrigeration context.  Salting meat Wikipedia article and smoking meat Wikipedia article. And of course, once the fancy bougie restaurants start using salt water, it’s cool again.

If you don’t have a smoker at home, here’s a stove-top smoked salmon recipe that could work with any type of fish (though, I don’t think a sweet cure would really go with white fish).

How to dehydrate food without a dehydrator ideas

Making a ground oven: I actually learned about this technique back in anthropology of food, as it’s one of the oldest cooking methods that we know of, and I’ve always wanted to try it. Darn you, local fire ordinances.

Random fandom trivia: If you’re a fan of 911 Lone Star, you may remember the first (I think) season episode of a family ground cooking in their backyard and their racist neighbor being a dick about it then getting a righteous comeuppance from the team. Is it over the top justice? Yes. Is the drama hilarious? Also, yes.

They use a technique in this chapter that I based off a New England clambake set up. Mainly, a pit on the beach with seaweed, hot rocks, and a wet sail over top, covered with sand. General bake concepts and times came from here (if you can read it through that horrible font…)

Sustainably harvesting seaweed.  Modern Farmer has a pretty informative newsletter I’ve been subscribed to for a couple years – It’s an interesting read if you’re into agriculture news (food-related technology, regulations, innovations, etc.) and like to know more about your food supply chain.

I didn’t know how to make sausage before. Behold, basic sausage tutorial!

Recipes bludgeoned in the making of this chapter:

I have never cooked gator meat or a whole pig, but here are recipes that sound like horrifying fun:

Whole Smoked Gator

But also, whole pig ground cooked

Kalua Pork  

Alligator Jerky

Songs: 

[fightabear]

Hi. I know ur very into Dirge (ff7) and wanted to know ur thoughts on the ending as i was confused. How did Wiess die, how long was he dead for and what was his and Nero’s plan? Ur a art account so don’t answer this if you don’t want to post not art content

HAHA oh anon, oh anon.

i'm always happy to blather about dirge but this... this goes into the deep lore. the forgotten lore. the lore of ancient bygone times.

by which i mean playonline.

playonline was a short lived multiplayer mode set in deepground where the player character is a tsviet. it lasted for about eight months and then went offline, and with it - went basically all of the lore surrounding deepground.

we're still missing a lot of information. but, we have a vague understanding of what's going on thanks to the cutscenes (which we also never got stateside) translated by grimoire valentine. you can watch that here and it explains a little bit.

the tl;dr is that Weiss had a virus in him and if he killed the Restrictors (DeepGround's jailers, there's a whole mess of lore there) then the time-release virus would be let loose and Weiss would be damning himself to die.

Now, this is sort of where things get shaky as we don't know how long it took the virus to kill Weiss, nor are we entirely certain when PlayOnline took place in the grand scheme of things. Rosso said that they killed their jailers three years ago, and at some point Weiss died and Nero started pretending to be Weiss to keep DeepGround in line, and then Hojo made contact with Nero and proposed the whole Omega deal.

But we don't know when any of these beats take place. Weiss could have been dead the full three years and Nero was just hanging out by his corpse in full delululand until Hojo found a perfectly good body just waiting to be inhabited. I think it's a safe bet to say that even if Weiss had died, Nero would have found a way to perserve the body in hopes of finding some kind of cure.

( There's also the possibility that Weiss' death was more a brain death and his body kept breathing / he was experiencing some kind of 'locked in' syndrome - again, we don't know!)

He also could have just been battling the illness and may have only died recently.

I believe it was said somewhere that he died while using his SND abilities to hunt for a cure, which probably only could have happened once the networks came back online. I was under the impression for years that Hojo possessed Weiss and told the plan to Nero, but after reading the Japanese script it seems that Nero knew it was Hojo the whole time and just went with it.

Again, shit is shaky. Hojo Jojo apparently needed the networks to come online in order to make contact with DeepGround again. We know that's fairly recent, as if I am remembering correctly, that's what the festival in Kalm is celebrating.

We also aren't sure if Weiss was involved in the plan, or if Nero had just lost his fucking mind at this point and was agreeing to do what Hojo proposed without considering that it was - y'know, Hojo. We do have Weiss' speech so it's entirely possible Weiss was still alive during this hunk of it and then died as things went on.

As for the plan - I gotta be honest, I don't think either of them were spearheading this thing. I'm pretty sure this whole hysterical idea came about because Hojo took advantage of Nero's intense grief and Nero was just doing shit without thinking too hard about it. He probably thought he was doing what Lucrecia did for Vincent, because I sure as shit don't think Nero would think destroying the entire planet to get his brother back would solve his problem of 'well fuck, we're separated by death'. So I'm not sure Nero even fully understood what would happen when Omega ascended until Hojo monologued about it and pissed him off enough to come back from the dead.

Nero and Weiss only really got a plan when Nero ( who, I'm still shaky on what's happening with Nero in those final moments. My best guess is his physical body finally gave out and due to Circumstances /gestures vaguely at chapter 9 of rebirth/ his soul can't go into the lifestream for Reasons) wrested control back from Hojo and fused with Weiss. They did intend to just give the middle finger to the planet and soar the stars, because at that point - what else can they do? But Omega was corrupted because Nero is as impure as things in the lifestream can get, and so they manifested a fucked up version of it.

My personal take is the brother's didn't fully fuse and that the "omega" weiss rides around in the Omega Weiss fight is what's left of Nero / is basically what Chaos would look like if Chaos wasn't using Vincent as a host? And the reason why Chaos "goes back to the planet" is because Chaos fucks off into Nero's body and Omega is still sort of chilling out in Weiss.

[lady-sci-fi]

There’s an extra layer to “DS9: Statistical Probabilities” that is kind of hidden, but adds a lot to it.

Julian and the Jack Pack’s plan of surrender to the Dominion relies upon one thing to make it in any way positive (other than possibly immediately saving lives through not fighting back). The idea that 200-ish years along the line after the Federation or the entire Alpha/Beta Quadrants are taken over, a rebellion will start with Earth as the main gathering point.

BASHIR: If we fight, there will be over nine hundred billion casualties. If we surrender, no one dies. Either way we're in for five generations of Dominion rule. Eventually a rebellion will form, centering on Earth. It'll spread, and within another generation, they'll succeed in conquering the Dominion. The Alpha Quadrant will unite and a new, stronger Federation will rule for thousands of years. Since we can't win this war, why don't we save as many lives as we can? I know it's difficult to accept. SISKO: I don't accept it. Your entire argument is based on a series of statistical probabilities and assumptions. BASHIR: They're not just assumptions.

But this assumption that there would be an opportunity for a rebellious uprising like that is a completely wrong one. This exact scenario is something we see Weyoun and Dukat discuss a few episodes before in “Sacrifice of Angels.”

DUKAT: We didn't defeat the Federation by being cautious. WEYOUN: We haven't defeated it yet. And even if we do, it's only the beginning. Holding on to a prize as vast as the Federation isn't going to be easy. It's going to require an enormous number of ships, a massive occupation army and constant vigilance. DUKAT: I look forward to it. WEYOUN: If you ask me, the key to holding the Federation is Earth. If there's going to be an organized resistance against us, its birthplace will be there. DUKAT: You could be right. WEYOUN: Then our first step is to eradicate its population. It's the only way. DUKAT: You can't do that. WEYOUN: Why not? DUKAT: Because! A true victory is to make your enemy see they were wrong to oppose you in the first place. To force them to acknowledge your greatness. WEYOUN: Then you kill them? DUKAT: Only if it's necessary. WEYOUN: I had no idea.

If the Dominion wins, however they do it, they know Earth is very important. It wouldn’t matter if Dukat and the Cardassians want to make everyone grovel at their feet and not kill them. The Dominion viewpoint would win out and Weyoun knows exactly what that means. In fact, he didn’t even realize being the “benevolent dictator” like Dukat wants could be an option, because that’s not how the Dominion works. To Weyoun and the Founders, either you join them without resistance or they deal with you with brutality and little mercy.

Near the end of Season 4 in “The Quickening”, Julian spent a month trying to cure a disease engineered by the Dominion to punish one planet of people who defied them. (And remember, Julian did not cure the disease for everyone, he only made it possible for future babies to not be born with it).

BASHIR: I'm a doctor, and I have access to sophisticated diagnostic equipment. TREVEAN: We had sophisticated equipment once. Do you think our world was always this way? Two centuries ago, we were no different from you. We built vast cities, travelled to neighbouring worlds. We believed nothing was beyond our abilities. We even thought we could resist the Dominion. I see you've heard of them. Then take care not to defy them or your people will pay the same price we did. The Jem'Hadar destroyed our world as an example to others. More than anything, the Dominion wanted my people to bear the mark of their defiance. So they brought us the Blight.

Julian saw first-hand what defeat or surrender to the Dominion would mean.  While we don’t know exactly what those people did to get that wrath, surely the Dominion would view the Federation and other Alpha and Beta Powers as much worse defiance.

If they were willing to kill a bunch of this planet’s population, then destroy them physically and mentally for all generations afterwards, imagine what else they have absolutely no moral problems with doing. I also doubt this treatment would only be used on Earth. The Dominion would know that other places are important, like Vulcan, Qonos, Romulus... any former major positions of power that they’ve defeated where a potential big uprising could happen.

While I can’t fault Julian and the Jack Pack for not having full understanding of the Dominion’s set of morality or what they do when it comes to defeated enemies while running the numbers and thinking of plans, Julian did have some practical experience with it. Julian got so caught up in it that he forgot that or didn’t think that would happen to them.

But that assumption that the Dominion would take over and essentially leave them alone enough for a successful rebellion to occur in 5-6 generations was a very dangerous one, and one we know was wrong.

(For further proof of this Dominion brutality, in “What You Leave Behind”, what’s their response to Damar’s rebellion going on a little too long for their liking? Bomb an entire city of Cardassians, who are as a majority group their allies, to the ground and threaten to do it again for punishment and motivation).

(Dialogue source: Chakoteya’s Transcripts)

[sharky-the-idiot]

So Maria is the granddaughter of Dr.Gerald robotnik, who is also the grandfather of eggman. Maria and eggman are cousins I believe, unless it's been changed as of like 2018+. Maria has N.I.D.S, an illness that causes the affected person to get weaker and weaker and need constant medical attention as it progresses, and so her and her grandfather are in space, due to the anti gravity helping the symptoms to not progress as fast. While up there, her grandfather, who was actually the opposite of eggman, a kind caring person who wanted to use science for good and help cure his granddaughter was put on a task to create the ultimate life form by the government. So he created shadow, Gerald gave Shadow a soul so that humanity would not abuse his power for monstrous acts. Little did Gerald know that in the end, he himself was still only human. the plan was called off while still being worked on, and he was taken away and executed by the govfor creating shadow and 'putting humanity in danger' despite building its best protector. They interrogated him, before asking "is that all?" And it cuts to black, them prolly shooting him off screen. He didn't get a trial either, so it was straight up murder. While all this was happening, it's seen in the cutscenes of both the games and anime, that Maria was standing above a control panel weakly, before it cuts to a scene of shadow in the tube thing, in shadows flashback it showing maria saying how she wanted revenge on humanity. this is seen altered a lot though And YKNOW WHAT REALLY FUCKS ME UP? The fact that Gerald altered shadows memory so he wouldn't feel as pained, only the true meaning and stuff coming out when Amy says something that triggers it. And because of eggman being related, imagine if that's the reason he's so fucked up now This actually would explain why Eggman has so many childish characteristics despite being a grown man - since people who have experienced severe trauma as children often carry on childlike traits well into their adulthood to cope with the fact that the innocence of their childhood was cut short. It makes the concept of his "Eggmanland" amusement park SO much more tragic when you think about how it's probably a manifestation of the final drops of a traumatized childs innocence seeping through the cracks of an angry, bitter and broken old man's rampage of revenge against a world that wronged him and his loved ones so brutally, suddenly and pointlessly that he lost his goddamn mind That might also be why he hates sonic so much, due to him striking a resemblance to shadow. Oh and btw Shadow's design is based on the Prophecy of Super Sonic. In otherwords, Shadow almost owes his existence to Sonic in every way. but also due to Gerald coming into contact with Black Doom during his experimental processes, who offered up his immortal alien DNA in order to create Shadow. That's why Shadow looks like Black Doom and its why he's immortal while being able to channel the power of the Chaos Emeralds. Black doom is also why they shut down the project AND HIS FUCKING LAST SPEACH FUCKS ME ALL THE WAY UP! YOU DONT EXPEVT LINES LIKE "You ungrateful humans who took everything away from me will feel my loss and despair…" FROM A GOD DAMN SONIC GAME WHERE SOMEBODY IS CHAINED UP AND ABOUT TO BE KILLED Oh and Shadow tried to retcon certain details; such as wanting to remember Gerald fondly. The same man that nearly destroyed the entire planet from beyond the grave due to being driven mad with grief. This entire story line (not including silvers, knuckles backstory, blaze's lore ect) is why I'm still so into sonic.

infodump on shadow the hedgehog lore ehe

I saw Maria and thought both "SPLATOON⁉️⁉️⁉️" AND "OMORI⁉️⁉️⁉️" at the same time I need help

anyways BUT YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO CUUUT ME OFFFF /ref

[imperial-topaz2003]

Arcann, what we could’ve had.

So, yesterday, I came across this discussion right here detailing on how a relationship between Arcann and the Outlander could potentially be toxic (great discussion BTW, go check it out), and it made me wonder what if Arcann was written a bit better?

Strap in, this one’s gonna be a long one. Now, I don’t HATE Arcann. I think he’s a fairly serviceable antagonist who does his job well and possess a threat to the main protagonists. He does have his sympathetic qualities, like his backstory being neglected by his own father, and the time on the Asylum where he was willing to let your companions go as long as you’re willing to surrender to him.

However...that’s all he really has. The whole rest of the time, he’s just a generic, raging warmonger with daddy issues. Then he’s taken to the Voss and either instantly cured of all of his negative qualities, or just eventually killed.  Now, I do like post-Voss Arcann quite a bit, but I feel like there could’ve been a bit better buildup to his eventual redemption.

My suggestion? Make his sympathetic qualities more prominent.  Instead of just being a tyrant for the sake of it, perhaps he was aware of his father’s plan to consume the whole galaxy, and dreads being just another pawn in his game. However, since his father’s one of the most powerful force users in the galaxy, all he could do was play along for now. But with Valkorion out of the way, he can focus now on ‘uniting the galaxy’, from a certain point of view. Essentially, he wants to turn Zakuul into a thriving civilization that can oppose any apocalyptic threat to the galaxy, wether that be Valkorion or something else.  That would help make him to a foil to the Outlander. Both of you want to unite your respective factions against a common foe, but while you’re doing it through unity and inspiration, he’s doing it through control and oppression. 

On top of that, we could also have a foil WITHIN the Eternal Empire. Enter Vaylin.

Perhaps instead of Arcann being the one who’s glassing planets and torturing people, Vaylin’s the one who takes that role. She’d be the one who’s responsible for the Eternal Empire’s more heinous actions, constantly going behind her brother’s back to achieve these actions. Meanwhile, Arcann can only really tell her off, because if he does anything about it, he’ll appear weak in the eyes of Zakuulan society.  So instead of two batshit insane siblings, we have an orderly and focused brother, and his unhinged sister.

We can still have things like that chat on Asylum, but let’s take that up a notch. Perhaps he shows that he genuinely admires and respects the Outlander and wants them to join him against Valkorion, rather than just trying to stab them whenever he can. This could pave the way for philosophical debates between the Outlander and Arcann, discussing their methods and ideals and such. We could even have times where Arcann lowers his guard, showing he might genuinely believe the Outlander to a degree and gradually understanding them more and more. So, instead of just being Deus Ex Machina’d into being a good guy, he gradually goes from being your biggest obstacle to being your ally, in an organic way. This could make his friendship, and yes even his romance arc, seem a lot healthier and more heartfelt. 

But that’s my two cents. What do you guys think?

[faithfulpuppy]

Serious Thoughts About Jod (Nona spoilers)

Alright fine. I don’t really want Jod discourse to be the focal point of my locked tomb experience but since at least one person cares enough about what I think post-Nona to send me anons, I’ve collected my thoughts here. [Keep in mind that I was raised an atheist so I don’t have either happy religious context or religious trauma context for this series, and I’m aware that because of that I’m missing nuances. We’re all just going to have to live with that.]

Apologies in advance that this is a long one. Nobody’s under any obligation to read any of it. Saying that, I’m not going to be engaging with comments about or by: anyone who clearly didn’t read this post properly; viewpoints that are already set in stone; anyone who thinks that John is incapable of telling the truth in any way or form; the baby finger flower crown. Save your energy.

Alright: have my feelings about John changed since reading Nona? Well, not a huge amount. Bear with me. When I made a controversial shitpost outlining my enjoyment of John as a character, I wasn’t trying to make out that he was blameless or even a good guy. I said "I have to face the fact he might be a bad guy" which apparently did not land as a joke, my bad; however I do see a distinction between ‘bad guy for the sake of evil muahaha’ and ‘bad guy with sympathetic or understandable reasons’. Is John a bad guy? Yes, obviously he’s one of the villains in this story. But it’s not that simple. Casting it as black and white feels like a disservice to Tamsyn Muir’s writing.

My read of Jod’s story during Nona is the tragic fall of a good person to evil. [I’m taking his account to Alecto/Harrow as fact, because I feel that it was very deliberately set in a dream in order to let him speak freely and honestly.] Jod starts out as just some biologist in New Zealand trying to save the planet and as much of humanity as he can ("Nobody knowingly left behind"). That’s one point for Good Guy. Pretty much everything he does from there to the fall is a logical step, at least on some level. Should he have done some things differently? 100%. But I don’t think at any point leading up to the Resurrection he truly made a decision in the spirit of evil. (Later, yep, evil things were done. But I'm looking at the period from cryo project to Resurrection era specifically.)

Let’s take things one at a time. 1) John Gets Granted The Power Of Necromancy. None of this would have happened if he’d walked away from necromancy there and then: the billionaires would have left with no warning, humanity would have burned itself out or not… who’s to say? But could he have walked away? If he had tried to ignore it, would he still have been able to sense death? I’m not sure that was a possibility once the power was in him. He felt that he could use it to fix what was wrong, he was planning to use it for good. He started going a bit mad pretty much immediately, and that makes sense. The huge shock of the project getting shut down and then the utter strangeness of being able to sense the bodies. I think I’d start to go a bit strange too.

2) They Stream The Necromancy. Lots of people came to see John for miracles and he cured everything he could (+1 good guy point). It was the nun/Cristabel who told him he had to limit it or charge for it or whatever. (I wonder how differently would things have turned out if he had continued to spend 20 hours a day curing fibro and cancer?) She said it would bring the heat down if he kept doing it, but it was a bit late by then, wasn't it? The government asked them to come in, as they’d been dreading. Should they have given themselves up? It didn’t seem like anyone else had the means to save the planet. I don’t think it was wrong to resist. They would have arrested his friends and put him in a lab underground to study. I don’t think it’s wrong to try and avoid that. Any genuine hero would.

3) Magical Inside-Out Animal-Shield Man. This one is always going to cause arguments. Do I like that he built a wall out of animals? No. Do I think it was evil? Also no. As he points out, it was quicker and more painless than slaughter for eating, and since a lot of them were destined for eating and I’m not vegetarian I can’t really fault that. I understand that any vegans reading this series are going to be pretty unmovable on this specific point. I respect that. It would definitely be bad guy points if he was nasty about it, but he was ashamed and acknowledged that it sucked. I think "extenuating circumstances" is a fair defence here. [It drives me kind of nuts that people reading this series use ‘cows have best friends’ as serious condemnation. You’re agreeing with the scumbag billionaires, guys!]

4) They Realise The Billionaires Are Running. In all honesty everyone got a little too obsessed with this. It sucked that they were going to take the ships that were supposed to be used for cryo, but aside from that, so? Good riddance, right? I think it was something for them to focus on when they didn’t know what else to do. They all seemed to conflate stopping the ships from leaving with fixing things. Cassiopeia asked if they should be focusing on the ships when they could be focusing on saving the planet instead, but nobody listened to her. It was Pyrrha who told John to ‘be a bad wizard’! Honestly I feel like most of the bad decisions John made were under peer pressure from his friends.

5) John Agrees to Puppet A World Leader. Mostly he did it because they offered so much money, and that sounds like bad guy points but they were out of options for saving the planet without money. When he realised it was – the president of the US or something – he didn’t want to do it but the others pushed him to keep going. And he didn’t want the nuke (+1 good guy points)! That’s very important. Mercy and Augustine pressured him into that too (premeditated).

6) John Kills A Bunch Of People. Okay, this one seems like it should be easy bad guy points, but I hesitate. He finally sees something that might be The Soul when those five people die outside the dome and describes it as crack cocaine, or what he imagines crack cocaine would be like. I’ve never done cocaine, but from what I understand about it I’m not sure I can entirely hold John responsible for what he did next. Yes, killing all those people was Bad and Wrong and Murder and Illegal and any number of other synonyms – but he was high. He was like a shark in a blood frenzy. He was not in control of his senses. That doesn’t make the killing less wrong, but was it something he chose to do? Not… exactly? He admits that it wasn’t an accident but if we’re going to hold him fully responsible for that we have to condemn every coke addict for their actions while high as if they were sober and in their right minds. (I’m sure some of you will. Drugs and addiction are a mental health issue. Those people need rehab, not prison time.) John is very sick by this stage.

7) They Spook The Trillionaires. Talking to the government sends the FTL crew into a rush to get out. John’s team, especially Mercy, desperately want to stop them, I think so they can use the same ships to get everyone out in cryo instead? (Meanwhile the only thing John really cares about is working out the missing link between alive and dead. He’s consumed by needing to understand necromancy. I think I would be too, to be fair. Can you imagine being given awesome and terrible power that nobody else has ever had and being expected to focus on anything else?) Anyway that’s when they decide to use the nuke as a threat (+1 bad guy points, but not entirely his idea). He still doesn’t want to use it, but he arms it without telling the others (+1 bad guy points, though I think it’s a little unfair of the others to be mad when they forced him to have it in the first place). At this point John threatens nuclear war through his Leader Puppet (+1 bad guy points), which the others really are mad about (fair). I don’t know if he still thinks he is saving the world at this point. Cassiopeia doesn’t think so. He’s become an environmental terrorist.

8) Necromancy Cultists Change Their Minds And Take Hostages. Let’s tally up problems. G1deon-with-nuke is sniper bait in Australia while John tries to negotiate. He has his puppet’s finger hovering over the button on the really big nukes. It’s mere hours until the ships launch. The cultists are threatening to gun them all down. What do you do in this situation? The right answer is obviously don’t nuke anyone – but then the ships escape and you probably all die by cultist unless you’re willing to remotely murder them (and John says that he didn’t because he was proving a point, not because it’s morally wrong at this stage (+1 bad guy points?). I’d say let the stupid ships go, once they’re gone you can use the money they left behind to build more, right? But the ships aren’t taking all the politicians who still want to arrest John and co, so it doesn’t really solve his problem. John’s biggest fear at this point was that he’d lost his friends. That’s important, remember that for later. He offers to give himself up to save the hostages (+1 good guy points?) and the others won’t let him so he sends skeletons instead and that’s when the cultists manage to break into the facility. He wants to kill everyone nearby so he has space to think (+1 bad guy points) but doesn’t (+1 good guy points?). Ironically it probably would all have worked out a lot better if he’d just accepted the cost and killed the cultists so he could focus on all the negotiations and maybe find a solution (or at least enough presence of mind to think ‘what the fuck’ and back down from the nukes).

9) Cristabel Kills Herself. John thought she was there to kill him and he was going to let her. Instead she shot herself to try to help him find The Soul and it worked. He found the key to the soul, but he also found Alecto. He couldn’t hear anything over the sound of her screaming. All he had wanted from the beginning was to save the planet and he could suddenly see her soul and how much pain she was in. From this point on (until the end of his account) I don’t think John really made any decisions, per se. This next part is written like a dream within a dream. There was gunfire inside the facility and everyone was dying – he could probably have caught their souls and put them back in, but what would the point have been if they’d just immediately get shot again? I don’t even know if he could have when all he could hear was Alecto. So he set off all the nukes because he couldn’t concentrate on everything anymore (+1 big bad guy points) and everyone else died. He killed as many as he could before the nukes got to them, painlessly like the cows (+1 good guy points?). He was still obsessed with stopping the ships. I don’t even think it was his own obsession at this point. It was the last human thing he had to cling to, the memory of fear and anger that the ships were abandoning everyone.

I don’t think this can be compared to anything real. Nobody has ever faced something like this. I can’t say what I would have done in his position because I have never had to deal with the pain and fear and noise of a whole planet screaming in my ears while staggering with godlike magical power. Neither have you. You can’t say you would have done better.

10) John Eats Alecto. Again, the cocaine hit. Again, the blood frenzy. Once he started eating souls he couldn’t stop. That’s bad guy points, but almost by proxy. He wasn’t in control. He was barely human. He wanted Alecto to take him but she didn’t, so he took her instead. He wanted her to stop being in pain. He went about it badly. He should have left her to scream herself out and then lick her wounds and recover. But I don’t think stopping was an option for him, by that point. I think he’d have had to kill himself to avoid the pain of her screams and I’m sure a lot of people think he definitely should have, but I’m not into encouraging people to commit suicide even if they’re a bad person, so. [Everyone’s obsessed with him making her look like Barbie and how yuck that is, but he also says he tried to make her look like a Renaissance angel. I think he was trying to be respectful to her by conjuring the best image of beauty he could in the midst of madness and panic. Based on the way she ‘kisses’ Harrow later I don’t think there’s anything remotely sexual between them or even romantic, so I don’t think it’s that weird to try to make her beautiful.] Anyway he can’t reach the ships so he also eats the sun and the other planets (+1 bad guy points but Alecto’s just as keen as him so only half blame) and then he does his best to kill everyone on the ships (+1 bad guy points) but mostly fails as they’ve already hit FTL. He should have given up on the billionaires, at least later after he’d had time to calm down and get used to sharing two bodies with Alecto. He should have just let them go. But of course it’s not just his anger, he’s sharing Alecto’s pain and betrayal toward them. He might not be able to stop hating them as long as she’s alive.

11) The Resurrection. It’s good guy points that he brings people back, but bad guy points that he’s choosy about it. He should have resurrected everyone and let them start over since he was wiping memories anyway. I understand why he wiped the memories. In general, how could he try to build a better world if everyone was clinging to the past? It doesn’t make it right, but I see the logic. Regarding his friends specifically, partly it’s that fear from earlier that he’d lose them because of what he did, but partly it’s also pity. Mercy and Augustine in particular, but all of them, share responsibility for what happened. They pushed him to keep going. They developed the obsession with the ships. They got him the nukes. He didn’t want them to carry the same guilt. I’m not saying it was right to wipe their memories. But I understand it. Some people think he doesn’t care about the people around him, but I think John cares too much. He’s willing to do very bad things because he cares too much about his loved ones. It’s bordering on obsession which is toxic, but it was born from real love. (Why did he change their names? Did he even change them? I don’t know. That’s one of the missing pieces. I don’t feel a need to speculate on it at this stage.)

He knew the RBs were coming and didn’t tell his Lyctors initially (+1 bad guy points, buuuut he hasn’t explained why). Or that he couldn’t be killed by them. Why does he run from them? Send his favourite companions to die? I hope we’ll find out.

He let his friends get the Lyctoral process wrong (+1 bad guy points) and kill their other halves – I’ve seen a theory that it’s because he was jealous of Mercy, Augustine, G1deon, Cassiopeia loving anyone else, but he seemed to love Pyrrha so much too. Maybe that’s why she’s the one that kind of survived.

He tried to build a society that was better than the one he left behind – no cars, no nuclear, no homophobia, no internet – and in some ways he probably succeeded (good guy points?). It’s an imperialist society (I think fascist is a stretch – it’s not very different to most conquering nations in earth’s history and to call them all fascist because they wanted to expand just seems kind of pointless) and the Cohort stuff is bad – child soldiers are big bad guy points – but a lot of that was G1deon and Pyrrha (John obviously has final say on everything but I’m saying it wasn’t necessarily his idea). The people living in the Houses seem reasonably happy, at least outside the Eighth and Ninth Houses. [I don’t think ‘he’s the leader of a death cult’ is reasonable grounds to condemn – I don’t think necromancy is inherently evil, in general, compared to a lot of other kinds of magic. That’s a wholeass conversation on its own, though.]

He locked Alecto away (+1 bad guy points) because he was afraid she was a vulnerability (and because the others kept begging him to kill her because she’s a ‘monster’). This is honestly one of his worst moments for me because it’s a definite Bad Choice he made with time to think it through and consider his options. I could argue that he was protecting her because Harrow says "You’re afraid of so many things, but she’s only afraid to die" and maybe it was a kindness to put her to sleep where she was safe – but he didn’t do it to alleviate her fear, he did it to protect himself. No moral high ground there.

He can’t let go of his need to punish the billionaires/BoE (+1 bad guy points, though as I’ve discussed I’m not sure that’s all him) – funnily enough wiping the memories really screws himself over in this case, as he tells Augustine the man he was before the Resurrection would have been disgusted at the idea of letting them go and it’s probably true. Billionaires/BoE are undeniably bad guys too (discussion for another post) but that doesn’t mean it’s good guy points to keep going after them.

There’s a ‘discrepancy’ in the numbers of souls Resurrected which is a puzzle I’m hoping will be solved in AtN – I have no idea what’s going on there so I’m not counting it as good or bad right now.

He thinks about killing everyone and starting over again with another Resurrection (+1 bad guy points). I almost wonder if he’s done it before. Ten thousand years is such a long time. He’s so calm and thoughtful about it and that’s horrifying. John is thoroughly insane. Grief, guilt, sharing Alecto’s soul, and the sheer weight of time have stripped away his humanity. He was barely human when he merged with Alecto and he is something else entirely by now. Once again I don’t think it’s useful to compare to real-life scenarios. There has never been and never will be anyone like him. We cannot comprehend what the inside of his head is like. I think it must be awful to be him. He’s insane and he’s alone and he’s very traumatized and I think the only remotely human emotions he has left are the fear that his friends will leave him and the anger that the billionaires abandoned earth. He completely falls apart after he loses Mercy and Augustine and G1deon – yeah yeah, he deserved it in the end blah blah- but isn’t that sad? Fear and anger and terrible numbness for ten thousand years. I pity him. I pity those he’s hurt too, but those feelings can co-exist.

[I don’t know what’s going on with him and Gideon/Kiriona. I do think he was genuinely pleased and excited to find out he had a child, but the timing bombed. I don’t know why he didn’t Resurrect her properly (can he even still do that with Alecto locked away?). I don’t know why he changed her name. The situation is not a good look. +1 bad guy points.]

John is absolutely a villain as the series stands, but I don’t think he started out with selfish or evil intentions. His story is the perfect example of ‘you either die, or live long enough to become the villain’. It’s a classic trope in fantasy. He knows that he was awful and calls what he did 'a damned thing' - he cries, he rages, he carries so much regret and guilt for it: that says tragic fall to me. Another thing that strikes me: I live with a lot of mental illnesses and to me this is the story of someone who is very unwell. Tamsyn Muir has been reasonably open about her own struggles with mental illness; so much of this series is about mental illness in various forms. I think that’s an important lens to view John’s story through. He’s a wretched character and it doesn’t excuse the sins he’s committed and continues to commit, but I think it certainly explains them. I think he made more mistakes than evil choices. I can condemn some of his actions and the way he lives now, but I feel pity too. He wanted to save the world and nobody listened to him and everyone vilified him and he was living with the burden of necromancy and he was racing against the clock and he snapped and I think that’s realistic. It doesn’t make him right but it makes him human and very very sad.

[1863-project]

I’m going to be honest - it heartens me so much to see so many of you starting to stand up and say things about the ableism in certain popular Submas depictions in this fandom. There have been times I felt like I was alone or one of very few people saying things about it, and the more of you that are vocal about this, the less alienated I feel as an autistic person.

I’m what people on this website would consider “old,” even though in real life I’m still pretty young (33 isn’t ancient, you know). But when I was diagnosed as autistic in 2009 at age 20, it was still a verrrry difficult time. Autism Speaks dominated the autism narrative in the United States, and people like me were being dehumanized by their rhetoric constantly. But autistic people were starting to fight back, and I ultimately was able to become part of this self-advocate community and stand up for myself and other autistic people. In 2017, I took things one step further and founded the Autistic Gaming Initiative, an all-autistic streaming team raising money and awareness of autistic-led charities, like @autisticadvocacy and @awn-network - AWN’s Autistic People of Color Fund is especially a favorite cause of ours. Since then I’ve spoken at conferences and been published in an ALA publication about libraries and autism, which still doesn’t feel real to me!

Needless to say, I’ve become intensely aware of how the general public still perceives us over the years. Although we’ve made some incredible strides in the decade plus since I’ve been actively advocating for change, due to organizations like Autism Speaks and others dominating the narrative for so long we’re still perceived as a “tragedy,” something like cancer, and there are so many people that think we need to be “cured.” Which...there is no cure. We’d basically be eliminated. It’s eugenics. And the general public still believes so much of it - the anti-vaxxers, the Autism Parents (TM) who think there’s a “normal” child inside their autistic child, the people who think they can cure their autistic children with bleach enemas. These people still see me - and every autistic person reading this, and every autistic person on the planet - as “tragic.” They want us gone.

That’s why it was so difficult for me to go into the Submas tags. The angst hurt, but the ableism hurt more. These characters mean so much to me as autistic-coded characters who are so much more like me than any other fictional characters I’ve ever seen, and to go into the tags and see so many people playing with my identity like a toy or prop and more or less fetishizing mental illness to boot...it cut me so deeply. I spent a lot of time actually struggling with my mental health over this, because it was a reminder that the world still sees me and everyone like me like this. We’re still not allowed to simply be human to so many people.

A few examples:

The “one of the twins is a Zoroark” things, like the “N is a Zoroark” before them, play into the narrative that autistic people aren’t fully human. As I’ve mentioned before, there’s a valid theory that changeling myths were created as a way to explain the existence of neurodivergent children, particularly autistic children.

Certain ships, which I won’t name, blatantly fetishize mental illness for entertainment.

Emmet ALWAYS gets the worst of this, and he has since 2010, when he was also frequently either infantilized or made to be violent or “unhinged.” The fact that it’s the more blatantly autistic-coded of the two characters that gets this treatment again and again says something, and what it says isn’t good. It’s a reflection of how society views people like us as a whole, unfortunately.

So every time I see another one of you speak out against these ableist depictions, even just in the tags, it helps me feel a little better. People like you make it possible for people like me to exist. Thank you.

[paigemathews]

When three planets burn as one over a sky of dancing light, Magic will rest on a holy day to welcome a twice blessed child. 

I'm never not fascinated by Wyatt Halliwell and the prophecy surrounding him. But let's investigate the second half, shall we?

Magic will rest on a holy day to welcome a twice blessed child

Magic itself, good and evil, completely ceases. What power has done this before? The closest that I can think of is the Hollow, but that consumes magic. This is magic itself pausing just to welcome Wyatt's arrival. This has never happened before, nor do we get any indication that it'll happen again. And while there's a lot that you could do with this, this post specifically is going to be a theory for an AU, similar to that post about the impact being conceived on the ghostly plane had on Chris. This does goes significantly more hardcore on powers, however, because, well. It's Wyatt.

What if Wyatt wields control over magic itself? Magic rests to prepare to be wielded be a child, which is why everyone is so desperate to either stop him from being born or be able to wield him as a weapon. (And, of course, no one wants to tell the sisters about any of this.)

And none of the Halliwells really know about it. Because evil has no intention of empowering the sisters with that knowledge and the last thing that the Elders need the sisters to know is that the baby can control literally all of their magic.

With Wyatt being how he is, and the tentative settling of the Underworld post-finale, it's not like they'd stumble across it very easily. And Wyatt is so hesitant when it comes to using his powers, struggles to deal with the power that he thinks he has without knowing how much stronger he truly is.

And his spells and potions are so much stronger than everyone else's, even his mother's. They don't always go the way that he wants them to, but everyone quickly learns that if Wyatt casts a spell or brews a potion, it'll do something big. Which is great for demon vanquishes, not so much for hangover cures.

Still though, no one realizes this. Until, until, until... well, what could possibly drive Wyatt to a point that he realizes?

May I offer a possibility? (that also inspired this.)

Wyatt, under a demon's control - and have you seen a dog in a cage with the door pushed to but unlocked? how they think themselves trapped, despite all it takes is a push to be free? - and turned against his family. And soon enough, even the Elders drop in, lightning at their fingertips, because an out of control Twice-Blessed isn't a threat. It's the apocalypse waiting to happen -

And the unchanged future, a world that a haunted-eyed brunette witchlighter came back to change but never breathed a word of his brother's real power for fear of what everyone'd do (of what the giggling baby would do if he perceived him as a threat). What it must be like to feel your magic, an element of your essence, something that travels with you throughout lifetimes, a part of your soul, be twisted out from underneath your grip in the midst of a battle? To look up to see a malevolent smile across the battle field as your powers slowly falter and fail before turning against you? What witch could possibly remain?

- and the Elders cannot risk it, no matter how useful the asset. But Warrens are loyal beyond the bone, to the very soul, and not willing to let the Elders destroy one of their own because they're a threat (aren't they all threats, anyways?) (and none notice the moment of hesitation that Piper and Phoebe have, a single look and memory of five strangers vs. one sister, except for Paige, who doesn't know that lesson (who would've never learned it) but says with ferocity that they're the Charmed Ones and they're bringing him home.)

And they initially think to reason with them, until it's too late and they realize that it's a trick after Wyatt, eyes hazy and unfocused, is surrounded. Chris and Melinda, the only two left in the circle trying to convince Wyatt to break free, deflect attacks for as long as they can until even they go down, not prepared to fight a battle on two fronts. And it's a pity to lose them with Wyatt, but two witches aren't worth the risk to the world, so they don't stop, even as Piper is screaming and the two realize what's about to happen.

But here's the trick: Wyatt is a Halliwell and an older brother. They'd never do it, but here's the trick: he'd drop anything the moment they call for him. Here's the trick: there is no trick but loyalty and family and devotion stamped across his heart and soul and magic that hears his brother and sister scream for him and acts.

Lighting arches towards them on all sides, towards two injured and desperate witches and Magic himself. The moment before it hits, the lightning hits a shield, glowing and sparking with electricity.

Chris and Melinda, wrapped around each other in a futile attempt to get the other out alive, look up to see their brother, eyes glowing neon blue and murderous, standing over them. When he drops his hands, every sign of magic from every being in the room - bar one - dissipates like it was never there.

His voice couldn't be more than a whisper but is heard by every being inside.

"Touch them, and I'll destroy you."

[nerendus]

I've seen a lot of posts and Youtube comments that say otherwise, but I love how the original Subnautica, how I see it at least, does show sympathy towards the Architects.

Yes, at the beginning of the game during your first encounter they are portrayed as being imposing and threatening—destroying your once only shot of getting off the planet (which you should've stayed on) and then intercepting a broadcast of their enforcers saying that they are going to kill you.

But as you learn of Khaara and the quarantine that has been imposed for several hundred years, walking through the subsequent alien facilities and seeing not a soul of those who built them, it feels...sad and incredibly lonely. I can't help but always feel bad for those who wouldn't have made it to the sanctuaries to upload their consciousness, as well as those who did but will never wake up—we see Al-An in Below Zero, but no others. Did they silently return home? Or are they still sleeping, doomed to never know they could come back to life?

And the game sort of goes out if its way to...quietly suggest they are not so different from humans when it comes to behaviour. They are significantly more intelligent and advanced, yes, but the glass casings in the facilities tells us of their culture that seems to hold a lot in traditions that most Sci-fi series wouldn't give to super intelligent extraterrestrials. They study other less developed species, similar to how humans study animals—which many in those fields do it out of respect. They had safe havens for their kind to retreat to when they became overwhelmed with the likely possibility of their death.

The violence they are shown committing is...not at all beyond what humans would do if they were in that situation. The Architects were faced with total annihilation, and they set up a weapon to keep other societies from facing what they faced. And if they survived the initial attack, their quarantine enforcers will spare those who manage to stay healthy, and whilst most definitely inflicting pain, I doubt the Warpers would go out of their way for a sadistic treatment for the infected.

I've always wondered why the planet would be under a strict quarantine yet there would be no broadcast in outer space alerting travelers of the dangers. And I have two theories why that might be the case: they either did have a broadcast and for whatever reason it no longer plays in orbit or, as the Architects have never seemingly made direct contact with humans before, they didn't send out a broadcast in hopes that others would see the planet as a useless drop of water—as an alien broadcast would certainly arouse curiosity, and explorers would head down there despite the warnings.

I feel that much of the distaste towards the Architects comes from not their violence but their treatment of the Sea Emperor Leviathan. Now, admittedly, I am deeply in love with both of them, but sadly, I am more of an Architect simper, so I naturally have to side with them when it comes to this argument.

But again, this is a species on the brink of total extinction and the loss of a culture far older than the entirety of humanity, it only makes sense that they would take drastic measures in attempt to save themselves.

One thing that I've recently realised, is that when the Sea Emperor says that they could not hear her and her pleas to release her children, I first assumed that it meant that they heard what she said and just disregarded it. But as a species that is highly intelligent, that doesn't exactly add up. They wanted her children to hatch and to release the enzyme that would save them and the planet, and if they were going to all go into hiding within data pods until the planet was healed, it logically only makes sense to let her children leave so they go spread the cure around. So, I think that is meant to be taken literally. Despite their translators and own telepathy, the Architects were incompatible with the Sea Emperor, and thus subjected both of them to a lifetime of misery and loneliness.

Anyways, in case it wasn't obvious, I'm in love with the Architects and the stupid lore of this stupid game set on a stupid water planet and I wrote way too much for what its worth. I'll probably post something like this again with slightly different wording in a few years as this is the only thing in my mind.

[lonesomedreamer]

SNW Liveblog: “The Elysian Kingdom”

This episode? Messy af. Spock in a wig? Sexy af.

The scene with M’Benga and Rukiya is precious, as always—though the subtext of it (her desire to change endings and rewrite stories more to her liking) is a little on-the-nose, considering that the writers of SNW are basically rewriting a classic television show to suit their own whims.

If Rukiya is running out of time, in theory all M’Benga has to do is stop materializing her so frequently…assuming that, while her pattern is in the transporter, she’s not conscious/aware. If she IS, that’s an entirely different (and horrifying) can of worms.

The exchange about superstitions between Pike and Spock is nice.

“Drinks are on me.” This is why Pike’s crew seems so undisciplined, imo. We know that Kirk would, and did, drink with his crew. But he wasn’t casually offering to buy them drinks from the captain’s chair.

“You gonna say the thing?” “Hit it.” Thanks, I still hate it.

I miss TOS’s buttons and tactile controls so much. They’re just more visually appealing (and frankly, more practical) than touch screens.

“Perhaps you did, indeed, jinx it.” I love Spock, lmao. (Also, as someone who calls out sports announcers and coworkers for jinxing things regularly…Pike totally jinxed it.)

People falling out of their chairs during turbulence is a real Trek classic!

Great, M’Benga is what, hallucinating?

These kinds of zany episodes on TOS/TNG took place either on a strange planet—like in “Squire of Gothos” or “Shore Leave”—or on the holodeck. Setting this on the Enterprise instead was…well, a choice.

La’an’s princess costume is delightfully ridiculous and sparkly.

It’s kind of a bummer to see that Christina Chong has real acting chops (even if “Princess Thalia” is intentionally way over-the-top), but is denied the chance to do much acting thanks to how flatly her character is written.

Ethan is hot. No notes.

“Maybe I can get us out of here with the help of some powerful magic called science.”

I vastly prefer hammy/possessed Kirk to hammy/possessed Pike. Sorry ’bout it. (Maybe it’s just the actors, or maybe it’s because regular Kirk comes off as so much more sincere than Pike to me?)

Why is Hemmer, an alien with inherent telepathic abilities, immune to whatever’s happening on the Enterprise, whereas Spock, an alien (well, half-alien) with inherent telepathic abilities, succumbed to it? I can hand-wave most plot holes…this one’s just lazy writing, though.

Worth it? Worth it.

I would watch THIS show.

“Truthfully, I should have known it as well…since that’s what he does in the book.”

“Don’t beat yourself up about it.”

“There’s no such place, my queen, he’s bluffing.”

All those lines were funny and delivered well!

Even though classic tricorders look pretty out-of-place on this redesigned Enterprise, I still love seeing them.

The resolution of the Rukiya subplot reminds me a lot of the end of The Motion Picture.

The moral quandry of it is enormous, way bigger than “storing your daughter’s biological pattern in the transporter to keep her alive,” which raises plenty of ethical questions of its own. M’Benga tells Rukiya that “it’s up to you”—but how can such a young child make such a huge decision: to exist in space as a disembodied consciousness for an infinite amount of time or to wait in stasis for a cure for her human body?! It’s uncomfortably reminiscent of the “willing” sacrifice made by the little boy in Episode 6…not really the comparison you want viewers to be drawing, given how that one ended. Children that age can’t give meaningful consent.

Besides, what does M’Benga know about this entity? How do either of them know that they can trust it? It’s been using the Enterprise as a dollhouse for hours out of boredom/loneliness! What might it do to Rukiya’s energy? And how will becoming said disembodied consciousness impact a nine- or ten-year-old human girl? There are actually a number of great science fiction (horror) stories about this, the premise being that human minds are ill-equipped for that kind of existence. For all M’Benga knows, he could find the cure next week. It was teased in Episode 6. All he needs to do is keep Rukiya safely the transporter—which really shouldn’t be a problem unless she is, in fact, conscious in there. But the writers obviously just wanted to wrap this problematic subplot up and move on.

A grown-up version of Rukiya appears to comfort M’Benga and tell him about her many “adventures,” because it turns out time exists differently for her now even though it’s been ~30 seconds of real time…? It cheapens the scene before and makes me feel belittled as a viewer. I’m okay with feeling uneasy about M’Benga’s choice! I’m not okay with being cajoled into thinking that it was the correct choice. When Kirk let Edith Keeler die, her ghost didn’t reappear to assure him that she understood why he had to! He—and by extension, the audience—just had to live with it.

“She’s safe.” He doesn’t and can’t know that for certain. He let an alien consciousness he neither studied/analyzed nor communicated directly with spirit his daughter away after two minutes of deliberation! Anything could be happening to her out there. Though, to be totally fair, she’s not going to die, so…there’s that?

So yes: this episode is messy. I rewatched it after seeing the ending and reading a lot of reviews/commentary and actually revised this liveblog. It’s not as bad as I initially thought! However, I’ve come to think that the Rukiya subplot itself was a poor choice, one full of troubling implications, dubious decision-making, and questionable ethics. I understand why the writers scrambled to get rid of it. And conveptually, this episode wasn’t even a bad send-off for Rukiya! The execution was just lacking. It could’ve been so much more.

But hey…at least we got La’an’s princess dress, Uhura’s evil queen ensemble, and Spock in that wig.

The Good: Gorgeous costumes—the actress playing Rukiya was a delight; I’ll miss her—Spock in general—some very funny lines/delivery—Christina Chong gets to act!

The Bad: The writing, pacing, set design, and some of the acting was all pretty clumsy—for an episode that turned so heavy, the campy fairy tale stuff was too light and took up too much time. Too much of Ortegas and Pike; not enough of La’an and Spock. (I think there’s too much Ortegas on the show, period. She just doesn’t work for me. No judgment towards other people who may feel differently.) Some truly WTF parenting choices made by M’Benga—huge unresolved questions/plot holes by the end.

But the beauty of SNW returning to Trek’s episodic roots is that it’s a standalone episode. Hoping for better (and more Spockstine!) in the next installment.

[tachvintlogic]

DP Biology and Headcanons Masterlist Notes

Masterlist

This is just commentary about the various essays in the masterlist.

(I've had this in drafts for a really long time so I'm just going to publish it.)

So when I started, I basically wanted a way that ghosts and half-ghosts work that is somewhat self consistent, and I think I succeeded in that.

I made it very clear that Danny's halves can't survive without each other. This contradicts certain events in canon but I don't really care. I wanted Danny's status as a half-ghost to not be reversible. His parents "curing" him wasn't a possibility I wanted to entertain.

One thing that's contrarian to a lot of fics is the idea that different ecto-signatures aren't compatible with each other. This means that Danny can't get donated blood from a ghost or another half-ghost. In fact in my system such blood is less compatible for him than regular blood with the right blood type. I find that kind of interesting.

I really loved that the signatured and unsignatured divide led to a really nice solution for why the ecto-dejecto would in theory make ghosts weaker but doesn't, which then led nicely into why Elle/Dani got better using the ecto-dejecto.

Sure, that solution basically threw out the need for mid-morph DNA to be a thing, but to me that's a pro, not a con.

For the ghost zone culture at large, there are a lot of fics where the Ghost King is necessary for the Ghost Zone to exist, or really bad things happen without at least someone in the postiion. And those fics are fine. They're great. It's just for my own worldbuilding, that's not an idea I'm interested in.

I'm more interested in the idea that the universe doesn't revolve around human problems and is far bigger than anyone could ever hope to explore. When the ghost zone is only focused on Earth, and there are only either Earth ghosts or god-like beings it feels smaller. Which is weird, because the afterlife should feel huge. It contains past relics from the last 13.7 billion years. That's a lot of stuff.

So my worldbuilding is very clear that when talking about the ghost zone most things that Danny's going to see are Earth-centric, which is a very tiny part of the entire ghost zone. Even the god-like entities like Clockwork are Earth-centric. Other planet's afterlives have their own god-like entities.

And of course the Yetis are aliens. I will never not believe this headcanon. Danny would be so happy to find that out.

For the Ghost King, I needed to mesh 2 contradictory ideas:

1. The position is important.

2. After the Ghost King was locked in a box, no one bothered to appoint a new one nor felt the need to do so.

Now, if no one's in the rush to fill the position, how can it be important?

Some fics go with the idea that the King filters the ectoplasm of the entire zone. This works because their most important role is passive so it's okay if they can't do any actual ruling.

However, for my worldbuilding, the Ghost King is an Earth-centric position, so it's importance and lack thereof comes from ruling. I think what I came up with something that works.

The Ghost King is important, but if they were replaced with a potted plant, it would take an embarrassingly long time for anyone to notice.

[antidotesprout]

Mad Max/Wasteland Pokémon AU

So I developed this AU in my mind and was having trouble getting it all down for like a couple months now. I've taken to affectionately calling it the Groudonverse but... Here goes. Sorry if this sounds rushed, I just had to get it out of my brain.

I'd been using Mad Max movies as background noise and all I can think about is an AU where the world was mostly modernized (like 1980s tech) and then Primal Groudon came around (I guess yay for team magma?) and fucked shit up. Now we got a desert planet with little pockets of humanity ruled by what we know as various villainous teams.

Everyone is alive at the same time and it's been about 40 years since the Primal Groudon event. As is the way of things, the way the world has gone is not Groudon's fault, humans just made the situation worse(TM), inciting wars over resources that basically got us to this point.

Meanwhile gym leaders/elite four and protagonists are leading resistances/just existing and trying to survive within the various settlements.

Vehicles in this universe are also helped along by various Pokémon due to components breaking down, so a lot of drivers team up with electric types to help power vehicles as batteries. You'll also find people modifying their cars to allow for their Pokémon to fight if they're attacked on the road.

(On a more humourous note, on a desert planet Palossand is all powerful.)

Now when I say the colonies are basically run by the villainous teams, this is actually not including Team Skull and Team Yell, because we can all acknowledge Aether and Macro Cosmos were more the villains in those respective games.

On to the juicy lil details.

The Settlements:

Rocket: The primary hoarders of remaining gasoline. They're on top of an oil field and managed to get their hands on some old refining knowledge from the before times. If you want your cars to run, you'll probably have to either attack their convoys or lift straight from them. As such they're known for a fairly ruthless security squad.

Magma: Weird religious cult that cares for the Groudon hybernating within their colony's depths. They don't really supply much to the colonies aside from guarding Groudon, but Groudon "basically started" the world down this path, so the others generally don't want to piss them off.

Aqua: if you're looking for water type Pokémon, Aqua has a monopoly. Literally you will not see water Pokémon without Aqua being involved somehow. As would be expected they're in charge of water distribution amongst the colonies. Just don't worry about the sleeping water legendary under their colony. Sure they COULD put the world back as it was, but they have so much power right now.

Galaxy: Specialize mostly in weapons and vehicles. Providing amunition, or helping to restore cars to a useable state. If it's metal, they can make weapons with it or make it move. A sort of "bullet farm."

Plasma: Mostly focus on breeding Pokémon to supply the various settlements with security. Think people that are obsessed only with breeding perfect IVs and imagine a whole group of people who cares about that and nothing else. They can't be the only people to keep Pokémon, so here it's mostly about controlling supply.

Flare: Mostly the pleasure colony and all that entails. Those that can afford leisure (gambling, drugs, sex work, alcohol) with their power can be found here when they want to have a good time. Also a hotspot for barter market places.

Aether: Focuses mainly on restoring medical supplies but also on chemical and biological warfare. For every disease they can cure they could also make everything worse for someone very quickly.

Macro Cosmos: Focuses mostly on Power/Nuclear Energy. This is to the detriment of the lower class citizens as, guess who experiences all the negative side effects/radiation poisoning? Those that can't afford to be protected of course.

All of these settlements have a complex set of interactions with each other where they're probably one bad day away from destroying everyone else, but recognize the value of each other. A very intricately balanced trade system.

Obviously none of these descriptions are 100%, every settlement has places they store their own supplies, have their own mechanics, etc. These are just specializations.

(Some of my assignments were intentional, some were just cause I knew we needed someone to handle a resource and no one else quite fit.)

Additional character notes:

-Team Skull basically are a little pocket for outcasts/burdens from various colonies. A lot of kids just left without parents to die, but Guzma wasn't having it. (So, if you're familiar with mad max lore, think the kids from the lost tribe from Thunderdome basically.) Incidentally a lot of the known protagonists in games end up here.

-Team Yell is more like a motorcycle-based nomadic scavenger group. Piers leads, showing Marnie how to survive and preparing her for when he can't be around anymore, as survival in the wasteland is never guaranteed. It's just a small group of spikey bikers doing their best and maintaining their freedom. They all escaped from the Macro Cosmos settlement to avoid radiation poisoning. They mostly survive by raiding supply convoys.

-You may be wondering where everyone's favorite train blorbo boys factor into this, and basically, when the world started going to pot, their parents were some of a group of people that went "fuck you we're going underground" and established a settlement in the subway system.

Not as creepy or dreary as it sounds, they actually managed to keep a lot of order down there. They've been surviving off a lot of low light vegetation, some gardens strategically planted under holes to the topside and Pokémon that inhabit the tunnels, as well has having their own little aquifer.

Things have been breaking down in the subway mechanisms/power supplies and since the knowledge is mostly lost the brothers are working together to get things back on track (hurr hurr). They're using Pokémon as a temporary fix until they can figure out something more permanent to provide power for the settlement they'd (accidentally) became defacto leaders of. The settlement basically is living in the cars of a train, mostly just needing to move it as a form of defense if the tunnels get breeched by anyone hostile. Just some hot little subterranean mechanics.