#ep. critical mass

[dr-futbol-blog]

Allies, Pt. 15

McKay joins Sheppard in watching the wraith queen sashay away, and we see that he is holding his own hand possibly in an attempt to soothe his nervousness, a self-soothing gesture rising not just from the wraith making him feel uncomfortable but because he has something to say to Sheppard that he knows the other man is not going to like hearing. He is taking comfort in clasping his hands together but also in coming to stand close to Sheppard, taking his place next to him now that not just the queen but also the guards trailing her are taking away. Note that the hive that Sheppard had just made go "boom" on the screen behind them forms like a burning arrow first between the two of them and then behind McKay, McKay occupying its space. McKay squints as they watch the queen leave together, looking unsettled and vaguely disgusted. We then see his entire demeanour change as soon as Sheppard engages him, as he cracks a joke to lighten the mood.

Sheppard: What's a girl like her do for fun? McKay: Hmm. I should be on that hive when we do this. Weir: Excuse me?

Sheppard calls the queen a "girl," the sarcasm evident in his tone. Not only is the wraith queen not very girly to the point of coming across mannish with her tall stature and deep voice, but she is not even human. We never learn what Sheppard thinks of drag queens but dressed in white leather, she seems like a reversal or the opposite of Sheppard's kink or preference for partners, revealed later on in The Game (S03E15), of hypermasculine balding leather daddies -- and it is not a coincidence that we later also get McKay clad in black leather. This is actually lampshaded in This Mortal Coil (S04E10) where they have McKay himself remark on his new black leather uniform:

Regardless, even though Sheppard's comment makes it sound as though he is thinking about the wraith queen in the context of sex, that he were interested in knowing what passes as recreation among the wraith, it is unlikely that he is actually thinking about how the wraith get down. The implication is there but both Sheppard and McKay probably feel that what the wraith do for fun is best not to think about, Sheppard having been disgusted enough to have learned about the humans who have chosen to willingly serve the wraith. Neither of them say it out loud but what a "girl like her" does for fun probably makes the Hellraiser films seem like a church potluck, probably involving babies and puppies. He really does not want to know.

Note that when McKay steps up to Sheppard, he steps right into Sheppard's space. And Sheppard not only allows but welcomes him there, his murmured comment as McKay approaches him inviting McKay into his intimate space, into his confidence. With the comment Sheppard is not just sharing his thoughts with McKay in this moment -- and Sheppard is a very private person, he does not do this often or with just everyone -- but he is drawing McKay to him, to share in himself. Note also that Sheppard can tell that McKay has approached him without looking at him. Sheppard is watching the queen leave, his eyes fixed on her but he still knows where McKay is in the room and he knows precisely the volume to use as McKay comes near him, aware of his physical presence.

Make no mistake: even though Weir is in the room, this is a private moment between Sheppard and McKay, and note that although we are shown it only after the fact, when Sheppard makes the comment Weir has her back turned to them which had created a pocket of privacy for the two of them. This might be the reason Sheppard feels like it is intimate enough for him to make the private comment to McKay even though they are not truly alone. But let us note that this is also an example of Weir being an ally, of Sheppard trusting her following her facilitating their 'honeymoon" that he allows her to overhear this. But regardless of whether she can overhear them or not, this is not a comment for her. This is guy talk, "locker room talk," the kind of comment he would never make to her not only because she is his superior but also because they do not have that kind of a relationship, they are not that intimate. He is saying this to McKay to relieve his own tension and to make McKay feel better but also to make him laugh, to amuse him, to elicit a reaction out of him. He is making a comment to the boy that he loves hoping that he will like it and will like him, this is a moment for them to bond over, to re-establish their connection. Although they are not in private, this is nonetheless a private exchange. And note that although McKay does not speak in words, this is very much an exchange.

McKay responds to Sheppard with a soft hum that might seem noncommittal to an outside observer but which Sheppard likely can interpret with no difficulty. Sheppard is commenting on a woman here and we have noted many times before that McKay does not like Sheppard paying attention to women. McKay has had full-blown jealous snits over Sheppard seeming to pay attention to women and while more often than not it has been the women pursuing Sheppard rather than the other way around, just the thought that Sheppard might find a woman attractive is enough to raise his heckles. We had seen this happen with a wraith previously in Aurora (S02E09), when a wraith had taken the visage of a beautiful Ancient woman and McKay was suspicious of why Sheppard had revealed secrets to her. While it never seemed like Sheppard was particularly interested in her, McKay believed that he was, which had caused him to comment on her being hot, seriously hot later. While McKay likewise never found her attractive (gleefully commenting "Not so hot now!" about the wraith later), he had confessed to Sheppard that he disgusted himself sometimes, thinking about the wraith in sexual terms. This was in effort to elicit jealousy in Sheppard.

We had also seen Sheppard trying very hard to elicit jealousy in McKay in Inferno (S02E19), but that is not what this is -- neither here thinks that the queen is even remotely attractive, the comment isn't about that. If anything, Sheppard is implying that the opposite is true. Not for the first time the two of them are being the "mean girls", talking about others behind their back as a way of bonding. But it is also important that McKay's reaction tells us that he is not feeling that reflexive jealousy over Sheppard paying attention to someone else here which suggests that the two of them have discussed the topic of women and boundaries during their weeks alone together. McKay had made the remark "Let's talk about it for a long time, that'll help for sure" earlier, indicating that they had talked some things over so thoroughly, so exhaustively, that he was tired of talking about it. Sheppard and the women may well have been among the things they had talked about, and McKay's reaction to his comment here may betray a better understanding on McKay's part for where Sheppard is coming from.

Also important to note here is that McKay does not seem to have a compulsive need to talk, to fill the silence with Sheppard. McKay is a verbose fellow who has a very obvious need to be heard and to reclaim space by making himself heard, but it seems that with Sheppard he is comfortable also being quiet. He does not need to talk with him. I have noted many times that they seem have this ability to communicate without using words, this unsettling ability to look at the other man and to know their thoughts, and while we have seen several times that Sheppard has communicated without words to McKay (most prominently in Trinity (S02E06), where they have a whole conversation where Sheppard says not a word), Sheppard is also able to read McKay's thoughts, to know what he is thinking just by looking at his face.

We have seen both of them do it, both communicate thoughts wordlessly and read the other's thoughts from looking at the other's face. And this seems to form an important channel for their communication, Sheppard needing to see McKay's face especially when something is going down, in intense situations. Another example of where it is Sheppard talking to McKay and McKay responding wordlessly is in Critical Mass (S02E13), where we catch a glimpse of a private moment between them, Sheppard musing on taking the weekend off and McKay responding merely through a chuckle. They can both read the other's expressions and interpret their different grunts and moans, which just evinces this intimacy between them, betrays the fact that they know each other very, very well. And this is precisely why McKay seemed apprehensive saying what he felt like he needed to say, to tell Sheppard what he had decided to do. He already knows how Sheppard is going to feel about it.

Sheppard: Really? McKay: I know it's uncharacteristically brave, but I've hacked a lot of their systems under the guise of repairing them. I've convinced them that I should be there to supervise their systems if anything goes wrong. Weir: And they agreed to this? McKay: Yes.

While Sheppard manages to say only a single word, his tone is incredulous. Although McKay describes what he had intended to do as "uncharacteristically brave" -- where, in fact, it is right on brand for him, Sheppard certainly thinking McKay is brave beyond the telling of it -- McKay (and undoubtedly a portion of the audience as well) may well interpret his "Really?" as communicating dubiety, that Sheppard has doubts about McKay taking on such a daunting task. But that is not what is bewildering Sheppard. Everything in Sheppard, from the tips of his hair to the toes on his feet, is against this plan. He does not want McKay to do what he is proposing to do. Sheppard's gut reaction is to shut that down and tell McKay no, to forbid him, to order him not to go.

Sheppard does not think it is uncharacteristically brave of McKay, he thinks that McKay is the bravest man he has ever met. He is a much braver man than Sheppard could ever be because this, just the thought that McKay is placing himself in danger, is putting his own life on the line for the greater good fills Sheppard with dread. It is Weir who sounds incredulous with her "Excuse me?!" Sheppard is afraid. After his first visceral reaction we see that he stops to look at McKay, that he is looking at him mutely and unable to say anything, unable to look away. McKay may be talking to both Sheppard and Weir, trying to make a case for why he needs to go -- probably still trying to convince himself that it is a good idea at this point. But for Sheppard, the whole rest of the world had ceased to exist when McKay dropped the bomb. McKay is having a conversation with Weir where Sheppard seems to just be silently pleading for McKay to tell him it isn't true, that it was a mistake.

Their hands are very close to begin with and we see McKay do the self-soothing fist-pumping thing he often does when he is feeling nervous. He lifts his hand to start gesticulating and it is possible that if he had not drawn his hand away that Sheppard would have grabbed it, that he was close to grabbing McKay's hand even though they are not in private. It is possible that both of them felt the need to take the other's hand and hence McKay draws his hand up, removes the opportunity and temptation. But this is how close they are standing here, how close McKay had come to stand to Sheppard to say what he needed to say.

Sheppard continues standing with his hands hanging limply at his sides watching McKay with a sad, miserable look on his face but he does not say anything. He and McKay seem to have had ample opportunity to discuss the things that had been respectively bothering them, that had grown into a wall between them, and Sheppard had made the decision to try to live up to what ever promises they had made to each other during their time on the Orion. They had managed to hammer out a fragile peace between them, and because through all the adversity and after all the pain and sorrow they had finally arrived at a place where they were more or less good, he was not willing to jeopardize that. And so Sheppard was trying. He was trying very hard to be the supportive, loving man that he knows McKay deserves and he wishes he could be. But we can still see that it is bothering him. It is whole-body bothering him.

McKay: Plus, now we can freely beam stuff on and off their ships... I've written a programme that will immediately beam me out of there the second I activate this emergency transponder. Weir: You're sure you wanna do this? McKay: Of course I don't wanna do it! I just... I think it should be done.

Sheppard looks at Weir when she keeps hounding McKay about whether this is such a good idea, possibly hoping that she will do what he feels like he cannot do at the moment, which is to put a stop to this. Sheppard does trust that Weir has McKay's bests interests at heart, and he appreciates that. But it seems like McKay has actually thought this through and is able to convince her, and if it was a question of rational decision-making to Sheppard, maybe he could see it their way. But it is not. Sheppard folds his arms defensively and almost seems to hug himself, needing to comfort himself in the situation.

But not only is McKay aware of how difficult this must be for Sheppard -- he too very much does not want to place himself in jeopardy. He does not want to be hurt or die, and certainly not at the hands of the wraith, and so he has taken precautions for safeguarding his own life. Seeming able to anticipate Sheppard's objections, he produces a thingamajig that is supposed to beam him out of the hive the moment he is in trouble -- and something interesting happens then. Sheppard folding his arms defensively and turning his face away from McKay like an aggrieved, put upon spouse is telling. But even more curious is the way his eyes follow the movement of McKay's hand pointing at the transponder, almost like he is hypnotized by McKay's hands. He has watched those hands do many things. Those hands have done many things to him and for him. McKay has the hands of a magician and Sheppard is watching him like he is about to do a trick. It is a Pavlovian reaction in Sheppard to pay attention to what ever McKay is calling attention to.

Sheppard: Ronon goes along. McKay: Wouldn't have it any other way. Weir: And I'd like you on the Daedalus. Sheppard: No place I'd rather be. Weir: OK, good. Let's get this done. I'm about ready for our house guests to leave.

At last we get confirmation for the fact that it had been out of Sheppard's behest that Ronon had accompanied McKay on the hive previously because here, just as it must have been the first time, his one stipulation is that Ronon is there to protect him, to look over him. He is not letting McKay go there alone and he trusts that Ronon will be able to protect him because that was the whole point of him having recruited Ronon in the first place, that had been Sheppard's intention from the get-go. Ronon had become a valued member of his team over the course of their time together as a team but it had never been for himself or for Atlantis that Sheppard had needed Ronon, it had been for McKay. Sheppard did not need a bodyguard for himself, even though Ronon seemed to have gladly taken on that task for himself -- he needed a bodyguard for McKay. And while he wished that McKay would never have to face a situation such as this, it was precisely for this kind of thing that had made Ronon a Godsend.

Since they are both compromising here, McKay assents to Sheppard's stipulation even though he does not exactly seem thrilled about it. But in order to have a relationship, they both have to give and take, and they both have to let go of control like Heightmeyer had suggested in Duet (S02E04). Their dialogue here is significant in that the way they pronounce these phrases very much sounds like they are quoting something to each other, like they are making intentional references. McKay says "I wouldn't have it any other way" in a tone that brooks dissent, like he would rather have it some other way but because they had made an agreement, they were both trying to compromise and be accommodating, were trying to be considerate of the other man's feelings, then he was willing to do this for Sheppard. But he is making it known that it is for Sheppard that he agrees to take Ronon with him.

It is not that he does not think that he could use security or that he does not feel safer with Ronon there -- for the most part -- but having witnessed what he had before, he is also concerned about him. Some part of him is worried that Conan and his brawn-before-brains ways are going to get him kn trouble. He likes to believe that a cerebral approach is going to keep him out of trouble, keeps him from needing muscle to protect him when that is manifestly not true. But the way he says it here sounds like he is making an ironic reference to sappy love song lyrics, and while we know next to nothing about his particular taste in music, it has to be in reference to something that the both of them would know, a shared cultural artifact. One alternative is Wouldn’t Want It Any Other Way by Tim McGraw which seems not just to hold meaning for Sheppard and McKay's relationship (we may recall McKay's comment in Letters from Pegasus (S01E17) about having a friendly face to come home to) but which connects to this particular scene with the tender touching they finish off with:

Without me, maybe you'd find somebody else A little wiser, with a lot more wealth [for Sheppard, the wealth is not monetary but wealth of character] And without you, it's true I'd be free To go chasing all my dreams, without any strings But I wouldn't want it any other way Having you to come home to at the end of every day Your tender touch puts a smile back on my face Wouldn't want it any other way Hard times may never let up on us And maybe all we'll ever have will barely be enough And babe you know how cold the wind can blow Love's never let us down when we needed it the most

But it is not just McKay who seems to be quoting song lyrics, it is also Sheppard. Weir tells him that she wants him on the Daedalus and his response is not just to Weir but also to McKay. He tells Weir that there is no place he would rather be, and that does not seem to be exactly true. There are many places he would rather be, the chief among them the Orion and specifically the bed within its captain's quarters. But at the same time, he does very much want to be on the Daedalus if McKay is going to go ahead with this and get on the hive because on the Daedalus he is going to be as close to McKay as possible, he will be near McKay in case he needs him. Sheppard is thankful to Weir for suggesting this, for easing his worry just a little bit.

There is a similar scene later on in Be All My Sins Remember'd (S04E11) when they have all gathered to plan their attack on the Replicator home-world and Larrin asks Sheppard to take command of the Ancient warship the Travelers had commandeered, for the duration of the battle. They have the following exchange:

Larrin: I could use you in my Chair, Sheppard. We have an arsenal of drones but none of my guys can fire them quite like you can. Sheppard: No place I'd rather be.

While the scene is similar, even the face Sheppard pulls is similar, it is not the same. When Sheppard tells her that there is no place he would rather be, he means the exact opposite. He would rather be almost anywhere else but it is because it needs doing, it is because for McKay's plan to work they need to keep the Replicators occupied, that he agrees to do something that literally seems to make his skin crawl. The situation is similar in that he is asked to do something that goes against everything he holds dear. He is asked again to allow McKay to do something very dangerous, to go down to the replicator home-world on his own to plant their destruction. It is also similar in that Sheppard insists that Ronon goes with McKay -- along with a squad of marines. Sheppard does the same as in here, only more. He is even more worried than he is here. And it is possible that he is remembering this precise moment as he reluctantly gives his assent to her then.

It is not just the fact that Sheppard seems to be saying this in response to what McKay had just said to him that suggests this is in reference to a song lyric but also the way McKay looks at him, like he just caught on to something Sheppard was doing. Like he caught the reference. So what song is Sheppard referring to? There are a bunch of songs with the phrase as a title but most of them are either later than the episode or otherwise not well-known enough to be the kind of cultural artifacts that allow for the making of references. However, the phrase is used prominently in the song For the Love of You by the Isley Brothers from 1975 that is the kind of sappy love song that would be fitting for the occasion and that they both might know. It goes:

Drifting on a memory, ain't no place I'd rather be Than with you, yeah, loving you Day will make a way for night, all we'll need is candle lights And a song, yeah, soft and long Glad to be here alone with a lover unlike no other Sad to see a new horizon slowly coming into view, yeah I wanna be living for the love of you All that I'm giving is for the love of you Lovely as a ray of sun that touches me when the morning comes Feels good to me, my love and me Smoother than a gentle breeze, flowing through my mind with ease Soft as can be, when you're loving me Love to be right in the waves of your love enchanted with a touch and it seems to me we could sail together, in and out of mystery Paradise I have within, can't feel insecure again You're the key, well, and this I see Now and then I lose my way Using words that try to say what I feel Yeah, love is real

This song seems to be like a soundtrack to what ever had happened when they had been on the Orion alone together -- perhaps in a very literal sense of them having played this song, soft and long, while physically reconnecting.

Later on in Search and Rescue (S05E01) we see Sheppard hallucinate a scene in which he is having a candlelit dinner with Teyla where they both confess to enjoying the time they have alone together, and which the end of the episode shows is not at all true for Sheppard and Teyla because they both seem very uncomfortable having to spend time with each other alone together. The scene that Sheppard had hallucinated seemed to be a memory of time that Sheppard had spent together with McKay, one of the best memories of his life, and his mind had transplanted McKay with Teyla because he believed that their attempt at rescuing Teyla had just killed McKay and he seemed to be unable to deal with this thought. I have written about the scene before and I will return to it again; important here is that Sheppard and McKay seem to have enjoyed time together that we never got to witness during which they had dinner, wine, candle light, the whole romantic nine yards of it -- and their "honeymoon" on the Orion is one of the times that this could have taken place.

The song seems to clarify some of Sheppard's motivation, of why he is behaving the way he is here. He is trying very hard to trust that McKay will be able to take care of himself, to not let his fears get the better of him and destroy this thing that is so very important to him, the best thing that has ever happened to him. He is trying to be a better man for the man that he loves. When Sheppard says that there is no place he would rather be, he means McKay. The reason he wants to be on the Daedalus is to be near McKay.

McKay leaves and we see him patting Sheppard's arm as he goes, again a moment that has been giffed countless of times. While we do not get many touches between Sheppard and McKay, this is the third one to take place at the end of this season. And let us be clear: this touch is completely unnecessary. There is no reason for McKay to touch him beyond wanting to do it, beyond needing to do it. It seemed like McKay was about to grab Sheppard's hand earlier, he had been holding his own hand because he needed to touch and now that he leaves, he is about to embark on a dangerous mission, he has to take comfort in touching Sheppard and also to give his comfort, knowing that this cannot be easy for Sheppard. I have discussed before how McKay does not seem to touch Sheppard without his consent and here we see the way he is cautious in approaching him. While the soldiers had gone with the queen they are still in public and they are in the presence of Weir, so this is a pretty bold thing to do, all things considered.

What is interesting about the touch is that people seem to see different things in it, depending on how they view the characters and their relationship, their dynamic and interaction. I have seen Sheppard's look described as "suspicious," like he has suspicions of McKay's motivations to touch him, and I have seen it described as "confusion," like Sheppard does not understand why McKay touches him. What seems incontrovertible is that Sheppard has two separate reactions: one oblivious and one cognizant, one is just his body reacting before he has had time to think about anything and the other is after he realizes what had just happened. And the thing is, he certainly does not seem displeased at first, he seems to think nothing of it. It is a natural occurrence. It is only after he has time to formulate a thought that he frowns, first looking at the place where McKay had touched him and then presumably looking at McKay as he was making his way out of the room.

The upper arm is a perfectly socially acceptable place to touch a friend, even when both friends are male:

It is not where McKay touches him that confuses Sheppard because we had seen McKay touch him in the exact same spot in Coup d'État (S02E17), in the context of communicating during a mission, and again in Inferno (S02E19) for no reason at all. We have seen Sheppard touch McKay much more intimately, for example in Coup d'État and The Lost Boys (S02E10) where the intimacy did not come so much from where Sheppard touched him but from how long he maintained the contact. We had also seen Sheppard yank himself away from Beckett in The Tower (S02E15), and given that Beckett is his primary care Physician, it suggests that Sheppard is not comfortable with other people touching him, McKay is the exception. More likely than anything is that it is the touch happening right in front of Weir that causes Sheppard to frown because he is still unsure of how much he can trust her with. Only a few weeks ago he had told her that he did not pay attention to guys (Sorry!), and now he was thankful that she had enough understanding to allow him to accompany McKay on this mission by putting him on the Daedalus.

Touching Sheppard where anyone can see them, even in a socially accepted way between men through a pat on the upper arm, betrays the fact that they have been touching each other more than usually lately. McKay seems to have trouble adjusting to living the lie again, returning to the life where they are not allowed to share casual touches or to be seen touching each other. And we see the same being true of Sheppard because it seems to take him a beat to recognize that something is off. Like the touch was so natural that his brain takes a moment to catch up to the fact that they are not supposed to be doing this in public. The initial reaction from Sheppard is being pleased, of seeing the touch as perfectly natural. It is only after his brain has caught up with him that he frowns, seeming slightly confused. At first Sheppard seems to nod and mouth the word "Yeah," like he very much approves of McKay doing this but as McKay takes off he seems to scan the open space outside of the meeting room to check whether anyone had seen them. He also looks after McKay as he leaves, possibly wondering whether that had been an invitation to follow him.

Continued in Pt. 16

[pocketgalaxies]

they absolutely incorrectly input their heroes' feast hp as temp hp instead of max hp and it's killing me.

[bbiniluv]

ok now that it's been a full day since the last ep of top form... i need to rant.

i genuinely loved this series so much . i feel like a lot of thai bl's are becoming super mass produced and unoriginal with bland acting , stiff chemistry , and nothing but sex scenes to bring viewers in . ofc not all bl but a lot of the popular ones that circulate around... i honestly stopped taking them seriously and only watched for fun , something brain-numbing that i can escape to for a few hours a day . whenever people made serious vids about certain bls i would think "wait... people actually took this show seriously???" i started to realize that i was never truly hooked . but this show HAD. ME. HOOKED.

ok ik ik it's honestly not the BEST bl ever made.. it definitely has it's flaws (cough cough johnny's whole character) but the plot , the cinematography , the acting , THE CHEMISTRY , was so perfect to me that i will not take any criticism for this series . smartboom did an incredible job and i hope they will stay a pairing bc the type of chemistry they have is something you don't see everyday . the nc scenes were done so beautifully that they genuinely felt like two people making love other than soft porn . jin and akin's story line is so beautifully done i genuinely have no complaints .

so gmmtv... domundi... watch your crown bc if wetv keeps releasing bangers like top form... well.... 🤷‍♀️

[julandran]

casting Fanservice at sixth level

[Aimee is trying to decide on a command for her Mass Suggestion spell, which has affected both Dorian and Dariax.] . Robbie: ("helping") Just say 'Kiss'. group: *laughs* Aabria: It would make the fans SO happy! Aimee: (gesturing) Make out. Make out. As a bonus action, Make out. Aabria: I cast AO3 at ninth level! Matt: (feigning dread) Oh, you've summoned them now. Aabria: (ominously) They were already here. . Critical Role — campaign 3, ep.93 'Bittersweet Reunions' (youtu.be/HNvfma0wTVw)

[black-arcana]

IN THIS MOMENT's New Album Is 'Just About Done': 'We Only Have About Two More Songs Left' To Record

In a new interview with The Mistress Carrie Podcast, IN THIS MOMENT singer Maria Brink and guitarist Chris Howorth spoke about the progress of the songwriting and recording sessions for the follow-up to the band's 2023 album "Godmode". Maria said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "We're working on the [new] album. It's just about done. We only probably have, like, two songs left. We thought we were done, and then we kind of had to step away and look back, and it just feels like it needs a little bit more. But we're still gonna actually be releasing a new song soon."

Brink continued: "We wanna get new music out. When you tour for a living and you're out there and you're doing things, you wanna play new music, you wanna bring new energy to the crowds and to everybody. So we will be dropping a new song very soon with a guest vocalist that we can't announce yet, but it's somebody I love and have been inspired by recently. So we're excited for everyone to hear something coming very soon. And yeah, the album is pretty much done. We only have about two more songs left. So we're trying to get it all dialed in. And we don't wanna rush it. We wanna make it the best it can be. And we'll just release songs until the album's ready, 'cause we want it to really be something we're proud of."

Added Chris: "Yeah, we're excited too, because we're on Better Noise [Music] now and they're kind of doing all of our songs and all of our planning and how we roll things out. So we will be releasing songs until the album is ready, which is something kind of new for us, just kind of releasing standalone songs like that."

Howorth went on to call the upcoming IN THIS MOMENT single "a face melter", with Brink saying: "We feel really good and strong about the first [track that we will be putting out]. And so that's what we wanted to lead with. It's really heavy. We wanted to come out with a lot of electricity and make it insane. And then we'll figure out what comes next."

Earlier this week, IN THIS MOMENT announced the 2025 "Black Mass Tour" featuring special guests DAYSEEKER on select dates, THE FUNERAL PORTRAIT and DED. The 23-city trek kicks off on Thursday, September 18 at 1st Summit Arena in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, making stops across the U.S. before wrapping up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania at Wind Creek Events Center on Friday, October 24. IN THIS MOMENT is also gearing up to release new music via Better Noise Music this summer.

Formed in 2005, IN THIS MOMENT's current lineup includes Brink, Howorth, bassist Travis Johnson, guitarist Randy Weitzel and drummer Kent Diimmel.

To date, in addition to the gold-selling album "Blood" (2012),the quintet has garnered six gold and platinum singles, followed by a trifecta of Top 25 entries on the Billboard 200 with "Black Widow" (2014) and "Ritual" (2017). With a total stream tally well past 200 million as of 2020, "Ritual" elevated them to new creative and critical peaks as well. Between selling out headline tours coast to coast, the group performed in arenas everywhere alongside DISTURBED and appeared at countless festivals from Lollapalooza to Sonic Temple. Along the way, they assembled their seventh full-length, the aptly titled "Mother" (Roadrunner Records) with longtime trusted collaborator Kevin Churko (OZZY OSBOURNE, FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH). Whereas "Ritual" hinted at a bluesy sonic sorcery, "Mother" breathes the activating mantra of an unbreakable spell, commenced on first single "The In-Between".

In 2022, the band released "Blood 1983" (BMG),a reimagined EP commemorating the tenth anniversary of "Blood". Then in 2023, the longtime staples of heavy music released their eighth studio album "Godmode" (BMG),a 10-song record featuring the powerful lead single "The Purge", the band's stunning cover of Björk's "Army Of Me", the collaborative track "Damaged" which features Spencer Charnas of ICE NINE KILLS, and "I Would Die For You", which appears on the soundtrack for "John Wick: Chapter 4".

Photo credit: Joe Cotela

[vivlily]

Watching through mygo!!!!!

My exposure so far has been really good fanart and the occasional post that makes it on my feed. Luckily, my memory is pretty faulty.

Only up to ep 3 rn since i have to go hunt for subs that actually translate the songs, too.

As of right now, I really like tomori, I find her kinda super relatable. And by extension, i now am also a taki fan. Everyone else is a little scary, if im honest.

If tomori isn't happy by the end of this, im gonna lose it. Also, episode 3 alone is reaching critical mass for desu wa~'s. (Good)

[ludarklina-fan-spot]

Alina, I want to love you but .....

Alina's choices add complexity to her character .... Ummmm ...... No, Genya's, Sasha's and even Luda's do. Alina's choices aren't that complex until ep 3 or 5 of s 1 when she hasn't got an arse to stick her head up but most of the time her choices are just made to suit the status quo.

It's not complex, it's heart breaking because it would seem two different characters emerge in the silver grey robe when she is forced to advocate for herself even though Genya makes it clear she didn't have to and during the winter fete when she is with Grisha, being Grisha and Sasha celebrating her coming into herself

Some fans of Alina argue that both versions of Alina are hated. I don't hate Alina, either of them, in some ways I can relate to Jessie's version, these are personal and not pretty, I liked the fact that sometimes book Alina could behave less like the insipid brats I went to school with and more like a soldier. Though, those moments were precious few. This is her tragedy. I think , not assume, others can relate too.

One of the best things about being an adult is independence of thought and critical analysis. Alina and to be fair this is mainly via no fault of her own does not possess these skills. Mal, Anya, the loss of her parents are partially to blame.

Even so ....

However!

Here's the thing. Let go of Peter Pan's hand Wendy!

I hate the choices adult Alina makes because they lack logic and consideration for the greater good. For herself. For Ravka and Grisha. I hate it when she doesn't behave like a soldier rather she behaves like a "hopes and dreams" brat.

Being young doesn't mean anything in warfare. Aleksander and the other Grisha know this and I do believe what with being born in a war torn country and having lost so much already Alina would have had that childishness schooled out of her by the time she was an adult.

Sadly no, her parasitic naivety remains with her just like her need to be abused and walk away from independence, community and duty..

Another mass thank you goes to @lilu787788 for the long talk and insightful remarks. I am hoping to extend on this and make it a proper blog rather then a grumble. EG., does Alina treat Grisha better in the end of series 2, what does Alina get out of letting Ivan, Baghra and Mal abusing her? What would her apology to Sasha sound like it were to be sincere? Was she using Genya to hurt Sasha in series 2 and is Alina capable of being Baghra the sequel?

Thanks for reading my ramble. Again, this is just a ramble. Not an attack. I do not hate Alina and I would respectfully follow Jessie Mei Li to anywhere but the loo if I were rich enough to go to the cons she attends. Alas. No. This is just a ramble about how heartbreaking Alina's story is and how she can never escape her addictions. We all see Alina in different ways. No one is the same. Please keep your pearls out of your hands and ride your morality shetlands into the sunset.

@ladylrbloom

Gifs, @ladylrbloom

[caducityclay]

My problem with the latest ep of critical Role Is that I just can't take this battle against Ludinus seriously... I am not invested because: 1) Ludinus could kill them all in max 3 rounds no problem he Is just avoiding multi-kill spells (es. Chain lighting, Fire storm, black star, BreAk ReAliTy, phantasma killer (Mass)) HE DID NOT CAST TIME STOP OR FIREBALL ONCE C'MON 2) THEY STILL DON'T KNOW WHY THE FUCK THEY ARE THERE, THEY SEEM TO AGREE WITH LUDINUS, WITH A LITTLE TWIST (except orym bless him). I have a vibe that all the people Who died fighting,all the sacrificies, Just mean nothing to bells hells. 3) Not an Epic fight at all

[thepringlesofblood]

bonus content for those who read the taz: the 11th hour graphic novel and haven’t listened to the podcast arc

disclaimer: so. I lost my book about 1/4 of the way into this post. so the rest of it is just from memory (I did finish reading it several times, I just no longer have it to refer to). I wanted to post this before the next one comes out though, so here we are. If I find my book, I will attempt to finish up the details for the rest of the book. I cover some basic big things from memory, but nowhere near as detailed as the stuff I wrote down when I had the book to refer to. but in the meantime...let’s go!

by god they’ve done it again. 11th hr is a Lot and definitely the most plot-heavy book so far, PLUS they had to include the first lunar interlude where the boys had individual scenes. the result is frankly beautiful. we’re really hitting critical mass now.

as a result a lot more stuff got compressed, cut, changed, or skipped. i’m going to try to at least point out each difference, though there’s no way I could summarize EVERYTHING that got cut in one post. I’m going to be linking relevant episodes (& transcripts thank u tazscripts) instead, for things that are Just Too Much to include.

as always, this post is intended to be Fun and Cool Bonus Content for people who haven’t listened to the podcast, not a manifesto of stuff they “should have” included or a list of flaws. they had 11+ hours of content to squish into one graphic novel, that happened over a period of months. of course stuff got cut. and it’s stuff that was recorded in 2016. that’s eight years ago. of course some things are going to change.

tl;dr - I liked the dang book. you can be sad something wasn’t in the novel while still understanding why it isn’t. here is a list of the stuff that was changed, skipped, compressed, or cut, presented as cool facts & extra info for gn fans who haven’t listened to the podcast.

spoilers ahoy for the 11th hour, but I’ll try to keep spoilers for the rest of the series to a minimum or at least mark them clearly. At the very end I’m going to put a section of series-spoiler theories and observations, very clearly marked

Before getting into the nitty-gritty, there are a few MAJOR changes from the podcast I want to get out of the way first. This list also includes “stuff I remember but don’t have the book to refer back to on”

Several characters and a whole section of the map were cut.

I think this is the first time that any named, plot-relevant characters have been completely cut. The closest we’ve come so far was the bugbears, but they at least had a cameo in the photo in Lucas’ quarters. Luca, Redmond, and Stonefruit Farms fully don’t exist in the GN series.

the boys meet Redmond in ep 46, pt 6 of the 11th hr arc, having met his brother Luca at the end of the previous episode.

long story short, Redmond was the leader of the purple-kerchiefed ruffians and the brains behind the bank robbery, which The Boys had to go through with so that Redmond would help his lowkey-estranged brother Luca raise the temple of Istus from its decrepit state, as they were both devout priests of Istus. The whole key being in the vault thing is GN-only.

Also, Luca is a skeleton bc he was in the temple when it got rapidly old-ified, but dw he’s fine he’s just a skeleton. he gets better.

Redmond’s motivation for robbing the bank is that as a priest of Istus, lady of fate, he follows his gut feelings and intuition, and he had a strong feeling that whatever was in the vault would be the key to taking down the bubble.

they basically took all of the plot-necessary elements from Luca & Redmond and gave them to Ren. In the podcast, Ren actually blasts some of the purple-kerchiefed ruffians out of her bar after they get too rowdy. She isn’t involved with the robbery in the slightest.

Merle’s Temporal Chalice scene

in the podcast, it’s his arm being chopped off. or more specifically, grabbing a crystal that exploded and made him have to get his arm chopped off. 

Him running out on his kids is played kind of for laughs at first in the podcast. Merle is a heel for a lot longer there, bc the funniest improv is usually not the most ethical improv. They do talk about his life and the fact that he has a family, but the offer made by the chalice is for him to have his arm back

frankly, I think they made the right move in the GN. We get very little of Hecuba in the podcast, and I really liked seeing more of that conflict.

Roswell, my beloved

so, in 2016 when they did the podcast, the McElroys were at, let’s say a different place in their journey of learning about the queer community. which is to say that in the podcast Roswell’s pronouns were wildly inconsistent, in part due to them being a clay construct, in part due to them not being introduced with any pronoun in particular [though Griffin clarifies that he intends for Roswell to use they/them a little later on in the arc], and in part bc the boys just weren’t really familiar with the singular they. they tended vacillate between they/them, it/its, and he/him. we all learn and grow. 

in the book, thankfully, Roswell is 100% they/them. fuck yeah. related. The Boys are significantly worse people to Roswell in the podcast. like, significantly. we’ll get into it as it comes up more, I just want to signpost it here. 

e.g. Taako giving Roswell control of themselves and their command word is a GN original, in the podcast The Boys kind of “junebug” them around for large swaths of the last few episodes. also, a significant number of earlier loops involve them basically negging Roswell into believing that Isaak hired outside help (The Boys) with security bc they weren’t cutting it anymore (rude). I much prefer the geologists gambit they go with in the GN.

Diamonds

Paloma’s prophecies cost money in the podcast, so a lot of The Boys’ shenanigans (and a significant number of loops) are in pursuit of getting cash. which, in Refuge, is diamonds. Some examples: 

Before figuring out that you can’t take objects with you, the boys do straight up take some diamonds from the bank post-robbery. 

Taako gets Ren and a patron of her bar, Ash, to sign up and pay for a seminar/magic lesson he’ll be giving tomorrow (one of my all-time fav scenes). This leads to a touching scene at the end when the bubble finally comes down where Taako gives Ren a little certificate that says “first graduate of Taako’s Amazing School of Magic.”

Magnus tries to armwrestle a guy for cash (Merle’s idea), and though he rolls a 27 Strength check, the Goliath barbarian he’s rolling against gets a 28.

Paloma offers 1 diamond for a small prophecy, 10 for a big one. in the GN they aren’t differentiated, and one small prophecy just doesn’t show up as it’s not needed.

the taz fandom wiki has a handy list of all the prophecies she gives in the podcast

ok! let’s go!

Prologue (the bit before ch 1)

this isn’t in the 11th hour podcast.

the information we get about The Visitor in the 11th hour (from The Boys asking various Refuge residents) is that

Jack and June brought them to Refuge

or, they brought Jack and June to Refuge. We hear both things at different times.

they’re depicted in the statue as having a Red Robe and being kinda broad-shouldered.

Roswell never met them. At first they refer to The Visitor with he/him pronouns, but then mention “I say ‘he’, I didn’t know them”

they tended to keep their face hidden (maybe?)

that’s pretty much it

we learn about this interaction much much much much much later in the podcast, not as a scene that is played out, but abstractly as an event that happened, after we find out who The Visitor is. 

that said, I LOVE this scene’s inclusion and expansion. it makes total sense to me.

Jack is never described as having a sketchbook or being an artist. this will come back later. 

the final scene of the arc in the podcast is instead June giving Magnus some previous designs for the statue of Jack, June, & a Red Robe/The Visitor in the middle of town, with a version where the hood of the robe is down and the face of the Red Robe/The Visitor is visible.

Ch. 1

this is where the podcast starts at episode 1 of the 11th hr. 

boyland’s funeral is very accurate. his comically large family of 400 sons (mentioned in CK podcast) is why the Voidfish lights up like that.

the only real differences I could find were:

in the podcast what is erased is basically boyland’s personnel file. like, a report or write-up of who he is and his work for the BoB. johann writing songs about boyland’s life is new.

the only pronouns ever used for the voidfish in the podcast are they/them, it/its, and occasionally he/him. past taz graphic novels have used they/them. on pg 13 of 11th hr, both Johann and Merle use she/her for the voidfish.

I do not like this, but I have a suspicion as to why, and I don’t like that either. see spoiler-y observations at the end for more.

they merged this scene with a scene from the skipped lunar interlude before CK, where The Boys take cpt. cpt. bane’s “file” to the voidfish to be eaten.

 I described this in my other posts, but the two things relevant here are Magnus putting his hand up on the glass and vibing w the voidfish, and this exhange b/w Johann and The Boys:

Johann: When I, um, can I ask you guys a question?

Magnus: Sure.

Taako: Of course, Johann.

Johann: Are you guys really okay with, with this part of the deal?

Magnus: That we get forgot?

Taako: Which part?

Johann: Yeah, are you cool with like, if you beef it down there, the world just forgets about you?

Magnus: Well, I’m not planning on ever dying.

in the podcast, bc Avi isn’t there, Angus operates the cannons (Avi showed him how before he left). he is extremely nervous about it and about killing them on accident. once they’re in the orb taako casts stoneskin on himself “just in case”, but everything works out totally fine, though avi mentions when The Boys land that the stoneskin should’ve thrown off the trajectory.

the gn keeps the spirit of taako trusting no one without the angus psychological damage by having him just cast a better version of the spell angus cast, and I am a fan.

the leveling up stats aren’t right in the book, as I’m sure every dnd 5e nerd has already tweeted about.

they’re all level 10, so magnus should be a level 8 fighter and a level 2 rogue bc 2+8=10, while the other two boys are still just a level 10 cleric and a level 10 wizard bc they didn’t multiclass.

fantasy costco-wise: aside from the stuff they have in the book (all things they do own in the podcast, though hole-thrower and the feather-weight cuirass were from the fantasy gachapon), merle picks up matthias the living grimoire, magnus gets the magnetic charge and the tarantula bracelet, and taako gets the arcane trickster’s glove (no wiki page rip it just gives you some arcane trickster powers) and mockingbird gum.

they beat up the baby worms more before letting them go, it’s a full battle

Ch. 2

in the podcast, when they go through the barrier, they find themselves in an empty white space where they see an old woman holding the cup. she says “It’s you!” with recognition upon seeing them, and then says “find me” before they wake up.

important: every time the boys die in the podcast, they go back to this space briefly before waking up.

sometimes the woman gives a cryptic message, sometimes not, and in their later loops, the woman collapses, breathing heavily.

we find out in the end that this woman is June - she has a whole extended de-aging sequence later that they probably cut so poor Carey didn’t have to do a bajillion character models for June at different ages just for a few panels of dramatic effect.

pg 36 - to head off any dnd 5e nitpickers, Magnus does not have proficiency in rustic hospitality, since that’s not a skill. Magnus does have a character feat called “Rustic Hospitality” that he chose at level 1.

claiming to have proficiency in things you can’t possibly have proficiency in is a longstanding goof both in taz and among people who play dnd 5e in general, because it’s funny.

in the book, they intercut each loop with a scene from lunar interlude 3, and it works really really well. we’ll get to those scenes as they come up.

Is this the first time someone uses he/him for The Red Robe in the gn series? (Roswell says ‘his’)

in the podcast Roswell mentions having never met the visitor, and comments “I say “he”, but I don’t know.”

in the GN, when The Boys tell the director about The Red Robe in CK they use they/them pronouns and so does the director, but after this, even @ the end of the book after Taako guesses that The Red Robe they’ve been talking to isn’t the same Red Robe from Refuge, he and the other boys continue to use he/him for The Red Robe.

“Mystic Analysis”

he just did an arcana check in the podcast, I don’t think Taako had Identify as a spell, which is what the DND equivalent would be. 

they also don’t figure out that Roswell has a command word until much later, during the Diary Of Sheriff Isaak scene.

Griffin basically says “[they’re] an earth elemental, with a bird on [them], and earth elementals don’t generally have birds on them, so maybe it was just nearby when the spell was cast and got caught up in it”

Cassidy

in the podcast, she’s in jail for blowing up the temple of Istus, which she didn’t do.

GN Ren mentions later on that the temple got “un-built” which references how in the podcast the temple suddenly aged a matter of centuries in seconds, so from the outside it looked kind of explode-y. and cassidy is known for blowing shit up, so she was blamed. she also theorizes that it might be racism due to her half-orc heritage.

in the GN, cassidy’s arrested for trespassing on the closed mines, which she absolutely has done. it makes more sense, and eliminates a major plot point they cut from the book

she is otherwise pretty much the same, I love her very much

Paloma pretty much stays in her cottage in the podcast rather than sneaking around.

the fantastic exchange of “you guys have been here 45 minutes, what the fuck did you bring with you?!” “you should see what we can do in an hour!” is 100% verbatim from the podcast.

in the podcast, Ren is dead the first bank fire (and in most subsequent bank fires). she also wasn’t one of the bandits, or involved with the bank robbery at all

in fact, in the loop where The Boys were doing the bank robbery, she unexpectedly came in, recognized Taako, and almost blew their cover.

With so little time left on the clock, Taako cast Banishment on her to keep her safe and out of the way, but she made her saving throw - so it didn’t work, but she knew Taako tried to cast some spell on her, and there was a somber moment of her falling backwards trying to get away from him, tears in her eyes.

look it’s a good lil character moment

I can’t emphasize enough how brutal the first description of the bank fire and subsequent world-ending is. Griffin pulled 0 punches.

Magnus rushes in and he describes the scene like “you see a guy, who looks like this. they’re dead. you see two guards. they’re dead. you see a woman holding a tray of diamonds. she’s dead. you see this person, also dead. you see a dwarven bank teller. she might be alive, but it’s hard to tell, and if she was she is on the brink of death”

I think the boys, brogden, and maybe one of the purple-kerchief ruffians (which is how they are described in the podcast) survived the first one, and everyone else died in that bank. it felt so brutal listening to it the first time because you (and the boys) didn’t know about the loop yet, so it was just. horrifying.

I love how they pulled in off in the GN!!! the clock hands are just *chef kiss*

just before Griffin describes the destruction of Refuge, Travis interjects, “Ditto, did you base this on Majora’s Mask?”

while Griffin does not respond in the moment, he later confirms that Travis is correct.

Griffin’s description of the fiery deaths of The Boys: “And you’re being crushed by the shattered earth as it compresses down into the ground. And you hear an anguished scream come from something massive and furious, and all three of you have died…And there’s something about the dying that feels familiar.”

“and then you wake up.” hardcut to end of episode music. v epic.

Ch. 3 (i s2g they’re not all going to be this detailed the major plot differences are mostly out of the way now)

as mentioned, the scenes between each loop in the gn happen in Lunar Interlude III (transcript) (episode) - each of The Boys got to choose a scene to have in between arcs and Justin chose to have Taako give Angus magic lessons.

they’re all more abstract in the eps (Taako establishes a recurring time and place to give Angus lessons, and we get scenes from earlier vs later lessons, various shenanigans, etc.) but the major points are actually pretty much the same, just condensed into one scene in the book.

also taako giving magic lessons in his quarters makes 100% sense, but in the podcast they did it in the cafeteria, and that’s where the LUP is burned into the wall. significant? potentially.

in the podcast angus had made some macarons for taako but forgot to flavor them (he nailed the texture though which is hard to do in a macaron) so he asked taako to prestidigitate them better and then scorching ray happened and blasted em to shreds.

LUP. dude. I thought it was an acronym when I first heard it, bc in the podcast, Griffin says “So your staff, you lost control of it and you blasted the letters “L-U-P” into the wall.” Seeing it in cursive, all gorgeous and capitalized like a proper noun? knocked me the fuck out.

another dnd 5e tiny detail: in the gn, the description for Angus’ first wand says “wonderful stocking stuffer for the young sorcerer in your life”

i could have a whole conspiracy board about this.

skip this if you’re not super into dnd 5e mechanics

the difference (in dnd 5e) b/w a wizard, a warlock, and a sorcerer is:

wizard: gets magic from study and practice - taako is a wizard bc he studied spellcraft and learned how to do it.

warlock: gets magic from making a deal with something/someone far more magical than themselves - garfield is a warlock, so his magic stems from a deal he made with something (the devil??)

sorcerer: has innate magic within them.

this could come from a myriad of places, but usually from heritage or bloodline - maybe your great-grandfather was a god or a dragon or a demon or a djinn or something, or maybe your mom touched a weird rock as a kid and got magic powers that she passed onto you when she had you.

in the podcast, angus is only ever referred to as a wizard. makes sense - regular boy + magic training from taako = wizard boy.

but if he’s a sorcerer, the magic really was in him all along. is taako teaching him to channel it? does he know?

this also fits with a weirdly popular headcanon the taz community had for a while about angus secretly being a silver dragon (in dnd, color = different abilities, diff personality, etc, and silver ones like to shapeshift and pretend to be humans sometimes).

“draconic bloodline” is one of the most common sorcerer backgrounds - it basically just means ‘a dragon got involved at some point in this family tree, so now you can cast ray of frost’.

hmmmmmmm

end conspiracy theory

It is at this point that I lost my damn book. so. I’m just gonna post this bc the next graphic novel is coming out soon and I want to post it before then. If i find my book I’ll finish it up. If you have post-chapter 3 differences you noticed that aren’t already covered, feel free to reply/reblog with them!

Spoiler-y Observations Below!

CAUTION: contains spoilers for the rest of taz balance!

*voidfish speculation: my suspicion is that they’re using ‘she’ for the voidfish to foreshadow that they have a baby, so that makes them a “mother”? i call bullshit, but i’ve heard it used before as a justification for misgendering an enby who gives birth. obvs the voidfish is not a human being, people can have multiple pronouns, it’s not a 1:1 comparison, but i for one (as an enby myself) really liked the voidfish using they/them and feel oddly betrayed at them suddenly changing the pronouns. fingers crossed that there’s a different reason.

"what am statue” is low-key foreshadowing since magnus says it

merle knowing what relativistic time dilation is

LUP was burnt into the wall in the cafeteria in the podcast - lucretia would’ve seen it for sure. so they put it in taako’s room this time...

aw no ‘sorry about the cookies little man’

In 5 or however many years when gn series ends, someone should do a poll of people who only read the graphic novels and see if any of them pronounce “Lup” weird since they’ve only ever seen it written down.

hero wreathed in flames 0.0 I hope Joaquin is still there in the finale but I like the duality here

BATTLEAXEPROFICIENCYEASTEREGG

SNEAK PEEK AT THE HUNGER SNEAK PEEK AT THE STARBLASTER AAAAAAAA

257 - ‘I know him better than you could ever imagine’ because he created you? Oof ouch ow my bones. also....the magnus that made the cup was a very different person from magnus now. it’s not what Julia would want - the cup never met julia, obvs, and does not know the ways she changed him for the better.

Bottom of 327 - sweet Angus boy are you drawing something on that orb?

Istus is like you’ve been serving me your whole lives without knowing it in the podcast - maybe a bit too much foreshadowing for the GN

[nakamatoo]

Everything about X men 97 has been absolutely perfect but the one criticism I have with the newest ep was how Captain America just felt so out of character and how realistically he should have been 100 percent on board with Rouge trying to find the people who caused a mass genocide on mutant kind. This is the same guy who started a whole civil war over the super hero registration act in the comics because it infringed on the privacy and rights on the super hero community and put too much government oversight on super heroes overall. And his movie counterpart was even more against the registration act because he didn't want government over reach with super hero and knew how corrupt and ineffective they can be.

Him being a government cop just seems kinda lame to because what makes him so interesting is the fact that he doesn't need permission from anyone to do the right thing. Even more so when he should be on the side of the mutants and knows that his overall goal of an American Dream is for the equality and safety of all regardless of who they are.

[sister-juniper]

Cheater? (Terzo x Reader)

Angst with a happy ending :)

Summary: due to Terzo’s recent change in behavior, you assume the worst, but your assumption couldn’t be further from the truth

< Word count: 2359 >

my AO3

my Wattpad

—————————————

The past few weeks you have been noticing things being off. More specifically, things have been seeming off about your partner Terzo.

It all began when one night Terzo was 2 hours late arriving back to your shared quarters after his daily duties as Papa. He apologized, and you didn't think much of it, but it started to happen more and more frequently that he would be late.

You first brushed it off as Sister Imperator keeping him busy with extra work, as you knew that woman was a bit of a hardass when it came to Clergy business. However, this pattern continued for several weeks.

As the days passed, you grew more and more suspicious of what was actually going on.

You would question "Terzo, you keep coming home late. What is keeping you late almost daily??"

And he would respond "Mi dispiace amore, Imperator has been preparing me for the upcoming tour"

you nodded, and hoped he was telling the truth. After all, he was right. Him and the ghouls were going to be heading off on tour in a few months which did require extensive preparations.

It would be one thing if this was the only thing that was different with him, but this was not the case.

He started becoming more secretive. When you suddenly would enter into rooms he was in alone, you would notice him scramble a bit to hide whatever he was doing on his phone. Now this was incredibly suspicious.

You would shoot him a puzzled look and he would just shrug as if he had no idea what you were on about. It was driving you almost insane that he was acting like there was nothing different, even though there clearly was.

Things got to such an extent that the two of you stopped spending as much time together as usual. Terzo always seemed a little anxious around you, and that paired with the fact he was always "working" late didn't help.

After the second week passed with these things going on, you noticed fellow Siblings of Sin acting a bit weird around you too.

Whenever you would walk past a group of them, or into a room, it seemed that all eyes were on you. They would smirk and whisper to each other. You couldn't hear anything that they were saying, but your brain always assumed the worst.

How could you not assume the worst? How could stares, smirks, and whispers ever mean something good??

It seemed like almost the entire congregation knew something you didn't, and it drove you insane.

Was it something to do with Terzo? You prayed to Satan that it had nothing to do with him.

You and Terzo had been together for quite some time, over two years to be exact.

He had taken a liking to you ever since you had set foot into the Ministry. He had been there on your initiation day, he was there for your first black mass, and he had made efforts to take any chance he could to speak with you at various Clergy events.

His feelings all became clear the day he pulled you aside, took your hands in his, and asked you out on a date. That was two months after you joined the Ministry.

You were like two peas in a pod, completing each other. His extrovertedness balanced out your introvertedness, and the other way around.

The two of you could make hours of conversation, you both had so many things in common. You were both musical, both singers, and he taught you what he knew on guitar and piano.

He would place his hands over yours and teach you simple but beautiful songs on the piano. He would even pitch to you his song lyrics for Ghost, and ask for your opinions and criticisms.

You were with him throughout the recording and release of the "Popestar" EP, and you even had a part in writing the lyrics for their hit song, "Square Hammer".

You loved him dearly, and he loved you even more. He would tell you this multiple times each day. He would wake you up every morning with a kiss and asking you how you slept.

Before he left every day he would say "ti amo" and kiss you as deeply as he could before having to leave you each day. His kisses showed the desperation and sadness that he felt having to leave you every day, it was obvious he cherished you deeply.

Terzo was also amazing at planning dates. He would surprise you with your favorite bouquet of flowers, and take you to do various fun activities of all categories.

Some dates would be more casual and playful, such as the amusement park or bowling alley. Or they would be more formal such as a fine dining restaurant or wine tasting event. Both of these types you loved equally.

Your relationship was perfect, no fighting, and whenever the two of you had disagreements they would always be resolved peacefully. There was no lying nor yelling. You respected and loved each other.

All of this is why Terzo's current antics made you incredibly anxious and also upset. You feared the absolute worst, you feared he was losing interest in you, or even worse, cheating on you.

Before the two of you had become an item, you knew he had a promiscuous reputation. He was constantly sleeping around with Siblings of Sin. You were told the love he had for you was incredibly rare, and he hardly ever saw anything special in the people he took to bed.

It made you incredibly elated when you realized that you were the exception, that he saw something special in you. You had crushed on him ever since you arrived, but had absolutely zero hope he felt the same. He did however feel the same, but now you were wondering if that was ever true at all.

You would have consistent nervous breakdowns. Crying in the bed you shared while he was out "working" became a common occurance. It drove you insane with the thought he could be being unfaithful. You would sob and sob and hope that his change in behavior was all just some weird dream. You hoped you would wake up and everything would be back to normal.

You were confused on what to do. You didn't know if you should talk with him about it or not. You were worried that if you did, he would leave you.

You know you shouldn't be with a cheater, but you couldn't bare to lose him either. You'd rather stay with him being unfaithful than completely be without him.

After all, it would still hurt to walk the Ministry halls and probably see him with whatever new Sibling of Sin he chose to be his partner. It would crush your soul to a billion pieces.

After another week of consistent meltdowns, and contemplating, you decided to make the hard decision and just ask him about it. Maybe it could all be a misunderstanding? But you knew that was the best case scenario. What other explanation could there be for all of this weird behavior from both Terzo and your mutual friends?

You were sitting in the big bed in your shared quarters, awaiting his arrival at the end of the day. Your eyes were red from crying, but this time you made no effort to hide your tears. You wanted him to ask you what was wrong. You wanted him to see the pain he had caused you.

At 9:00 pm, two hours after he was scheduled to be finished with his Papal duties, you heard the key turn in the door.

Terzo opened the door with a smile on his face "Amore! I am back!!"

You said nothing, and just looked up at him with tears streaming down your face. His face fell when he saw your facial expression, and he immediately rushed over to the bed where you were sitting.

"Amorina... what is the matter? Is everything okay??"

You shook your head

"Okay... do you want to talk about it?"

Your lips started to tremble and more tears streamed down your face.

Terzo took your hands in his "It's okay, I am here now. I can do my best to help you cara mia..."

You took a deep breath before speaking "T-Terzo... what is up with you lately??"

He looked at you panicked but confused "What do you mean?"

"What do I mean?? Do you not notice how weird you have been acting??"

"No... can you go into more detail?"

It angered you how he was essentially playing dumb. "Oh you know, how you have been late almost every day for the past three weeks"

Terzo opened his mouth to speak but you cut him off. "Or how you hide your phone from me constantly, or how Siblings of Sin smirk at me and whisper whenever I'm around them" you spat out.

"Amore..."

"What is the meaning of all of this?? What could this possibly mean??" You yelled while tears streamed down your face

"Amore I-"

"Am I not enough for you? I love you so much Terzo... what is happening??"

"Cara just listen please..."

You took a deep breath trying to calm yourself before you got too angry. "Okay.."

"There is a good reason for all of this.. you will find out soon but I cannot tell you right now"

You shot him a perplexed look "what do you mean you can't tell me right now??"

"I'm sorry amore but I just can't, you need to trust me on this"

More tears began to prick at your eyes "what possible explaination could there be?? Why can't you just tell me now??" You shout at him while standing up

He follows your actions and also stands "Cara mia.. it's nothing bad please.."

"How the fuck should I believe that Terzo?" You shouted at him while turning to look at him

Your face was emotionless and cold, with a mix of exhaustion. You had been dealing this for too long, and you still couldn't get an explanation.

"I cry in here almost every day about this and you still won't tell me??"

Terzo's heart broke hearing those words. "Cara.. you cry every day? Why didn't you say anything until now??”

"Because I don't want you to leave me!!"

"Amorina... now why would I do that?"

"There is someone else isn't there??"

Terzo stared at your with total confusion and heartbreak. "What do you mean?"

"What do I mean?? Terzo, you have been acting incredibly suspicious. All the signs point to you being unfaithful..."

"But I would never! I promise you, that is so far from the truth"

You sigh angrily "okay so, if that is not the truth, then what is?? What is the possible explanation??"

Terzo sighs and tries to take your hands in his again, but you pull away from him. "Cara mia wh-"

"Tell me right now Terzo. What the fuck have you been up to?" You say coldly

Terzo realizes he can't hide it from you anymore, he has to tell you. No matter how much he wants to keep it secret, you need to know. It was clearly killing you to not know the truth.

He sighs deeply before speaking "Amorina... the reason I have been acting like this is because I have been planning to propose to you.."

Your face changes from anger to shock in a split second "W-What?"

"Yes, that is the reason."

"B-but, how does it make sense?"

Terzo chuckles "Well.. I have been so late because I have been spending my time after work planning the proposal"

"Oh..."

"And the reason I have been secretive with my phone is because I have been searching for engagement rings"

"But what about the Siblings? Why are they whispering?"

"It is because most of them already know my plans, they all figured it out by now"

Now you can't help but feel extremely guilty. He had been planning a proposal, but your immediate assumption was that he was cheating.

Tears prick at your eyes once again, and you start sobbing heavily.

"Amore, are you okay? What is the matter now??" He says as he rushes to hug you

"I'm sorry Terzo, I'm so so sorry" you choke out through sobs

"No no amore, it is me who should be sorry, I am horrible at hiding these things"

"I can't believe I just assumed that, but you were planning to propose this whole time..."

"It's okay, it's okay. I was acting quite suspicious" he says with a light chuckle "I'm quite bad at hiding things"

You sniffle and look up at him "I love you Terzo"

He smiles warmly and looks into your eyes "I love you too amore, so so much"

He kisses you deeply and you melt into his touch. Your heart slowly starts to return to a normal beat as the relief washes over your body. He isn't cheating on you, he just wanted to propose. Wait... he wants to propose??

The realization hits you and you immediately pull back from him. "W-wait, you want to... propose?"

Terzo smiles warmly "Yes, that is what I am planning"

"Oh my gosh Terzo... you want me to marry you??"

"Why yes of course, who else would I marry?"

A huge smile crosses your face and you squeal in excitement while embracing him in a big hug. You squeeze him tightly and he laughs at your sudden burst of excitement.

"Of course I would marry you Terzo!! Oh my gosh!!"

"Well I'm glad you say yes, I guess the surprise proposal won't be super necessary now huh?"

You kiss him lightly and chuckle "you can still do it, I'm a sucker for a fancy proposal"

He sighs with some relief "good, good. I'm a sucker for those too"

To say the least, you are incredibly relieved and also elated at the thought of marrying Terzo. Your suspicions were the absolute opposite from the truth, and it made so much more sense.

—————————————

[dr-futbol-blog]

No Man's Land, Pt. 2

The scene that follows then seems to contain all of the issues that plague the third season, all rolled into one. The scene contains a flashback that retroactively inserts a scene that is supposed to have happened during the previous season, meant to explain something relevant for this moment but at the same time to explain away something that had taken place before, to fill in one of those unaccounted for pockets in the narrative where subtext had lived. As I have mentioned previously, we get very few scenes where Sheppard and McKay are alone together, and usually they are accompanied by some circumstance that disallows them from acting the way they would routinely. The moments we see are the exceptions, not the rule. We do not know how they are when they are alone together because we do not get to see them, we are forced to reconstruct their dynamic from glimpses and to extrapolate from how they are around other people. And this particular scene seems to seek to give the mainstream viewer the opportunity to explain away one of the most intimate scenes we have seen between them so far.

Sheppard: OK. Can't sit here forever. Hit them while they're in hyperspace. They'll never know what happened. Is that even possible?

The first thing to note is what Sheppard is actually doing here. He is doing the same thing that McKay had just been doing within his cocoon inside the hive, which is to ask the question What Would McKay Do? and let it guide him through the trouble he is in. Both men seem to have constructed an internal model of the other, and we see that both of them have a tendency to talk to themselves when they are alone -- to talk to themselves through the proxy of talking to the other man, to be specific.

We have seen Sheppard in a very similar situation at the end of The Lost Boys (S02E10) when he had been forced to fly a wraith dart souped up by McKay with a human interface into a hive and the navi computer had asked him to rematerialize his cargo with a Yes/No option. And during this flight he seemed similarly to be talking to McKay through the interface he had set up for him, his only link to McKay at the time. Sheppard is talking to himself, yes, and the reason they show him doing this is because watching someone sitting in silence is not very riveting television and it allows us to see something of what is going on inside the heads of the characters. But in character, it evinces Sheppard's need to communicate and to maintain his connection to McKay in particular. This is something that both of them do. In fact in Inferno (S02E19), it seemed like McKay had been talking to Sheppard in his head to an extent that he thought he had actually already told Sheppard something he had not, in fact, told him yet.

And so we find Sheppard here, alone in a cockpit with a wing and prayer, unsure of what to do in this situation and likely more than a little frightened. He had the idea of doing something, as he so often does, but McKay is not around to tell him whether it is feasible or even possible to implement his plan. And because Sheppard seems to file away most things that McKay tells him into his permanent memory, he is able to immediately recall a time when McKay had been talking about this very thing. Even though the scene attempts to imply the opposite, what it actually shows is that Sheppard remembers everything that McKay has said, even if he had only been listening with half an ear, and that he is able to access these memories instantaneously.

What we then get is a flashback, which is a narrative technique that the show has not used very often (flashbacks are featured in 38 Minutes, Before I Sleep and The Intruder), and previously always to explain something that had happened before the beginning of the episode in which it had been used, between two episodes -- and not to rewrite something that had happened in previous episodes, in the previous season, and never from a character's point of view. This is the first flashback on the show that features someone's memory, meaning that it is not just showing us something that had happened previously but is showing us their interpretation of it, not giving us the unfiltered event as it happened but someone's spin on the event. This is what Sheppard remembers of what had happened, not what had happened -- and there is a difference. Memories are notoriously unreliable and coloured by circumstance.

To let the cat out of the bag, the scene features a beautiful woman and Sheppard seemingly paying more attention to the woman than he does to McKay. The comedic beat of the scene comes from the assumption that there was something important that Sheppard wanted to recall but was having trouble remembering what had been said because he had been paying more attention to the attractive female scientist than he had on the two men having a conversation right in front of him. This is the maintext reading -- Sheppard loves the ladies and ladies love Sheppard in return, if the bashful smile of the female scientist as he glances back at him is anything to go by. Mainstream Sheppard is Kirk of popular culture, who is always first and foremost looking to get his dick wet -- but only with the women. He is a space mack, going from port to port in search of transitory connections, loving them and leaving them, never settling down with one woman. This seems to be especially how male sci-fi nerds want to read his character, with more than a little wish-fulfillment sprinkled in.

There is nothing strange about noticing a breathtakingly beautiful woman, especially one that is making eye contact coyly and smiling shyly (although, let it be on record that McKay does not seem to notice her, nor does he generally pay any attention to the exceptionally attractive women working under him), and sometimes people are just so attractive that they seem to tilt a man's brain. Sheppard is clearly zoning out in the scene, and he is admitting it to himself. Bisexuality has been described as the "no man's land" between heterosexuality and homosexuality, and even though Sheppard seems to be looking for that "maximum thrust" in his sexual partners, he does have a pair of eyes on his head. The real question is, when did this happen? Because that necessarily affects our reading of the scene.

McKay: There is no reason to believe that their hyperspace field is any different than ours... and we can't launch 302s from the Daedalus while in hyperspace. Zelenka: I'm simply talking about manoeuvring within the field, not passing through it. What do you think? Colonel?

In the scene Sheppard appears to be having lunch (deduced through their triangle sandwiches), seated at the end of a table occupied by McKay and Zelenka, who seem to be engaged in conversation pertaining to wraith darts and the hyperspace field created by the wraith hives, something relevant to his current predicament. Sheppard is holding one of his arms across his chest suggesting that he is defensively holding his arms as a barrier between himself and (likely) McKay, using the other hand to eat -- and while he may not be trying to be seductive about it, the way he is eating his morsel of food is sensual. It seems as though his eye is caught by a beautiful brunette who is either occupying the end of their table or another table further out, it is unclear. The camera work makes it seem as though she is sitting at the same table as they are, only she is eating alone and may or may not have been listening in on their conversation. It looks as though she is meeting Sheppard's gaze, that they had made eye contact and she bashfully turns away while smiling, indicating her interest. What ever Sheppard thinks of her, she seems approachable to at least one of the men in the table. The implication is that she holds Sheppard's attention while the two men right in front of him do not.

This woman is wearing the blue shirt of the science corps which is also what McKay is wearing in the scene, and while it is unclear how far she is sitting from them, she is seated behind McKay from Sheppard -- and this is something that we see the show do a lot from hereon out. There is a beautiful woman that is made the focus of the shot so that the mainstream viewer is invited to interpret the scene in a heteronormative context when McKay is actually sitting in Sheppard's line of sight, meaning that he could actually be looking at either one or both of them. It is implied that he is looking at her, it is far from certain and requires an active reading of the scene. an interpretation. Sheppard being distracted by a beautiful woman is an interpretation.

Another interpretation of the scene is that she is indeed looking at him, trying to get his attention, but he is actually looking at what is right in front of him, which is McKay, the man who seems to have been the focus of his attention for the past two years. Third option is that he is looking at her, that he had noticed her, but that she was actually looking at McKay, who is likewise sitting smack in their middle and in her line of sight, where the main thing directing the viewer away from this interpretation is the belief that McKay is awful with women, that as a self-insert proxy for the sci-fi nerds McKay never gets the hot women that instead go for Sheppard, even though in truth many ridiculously attractive women seem to find McKay worth pursuing, especially when he is in his element, as he is here, talking about science. The woman is, furthermore, working under McKay. We had seen in Inferno (S02E19) that watching McKay in his element can be more appealing to women than Sheppard's rakish good looks.

The fourth, more unlikely, option is that we are shown McKay through Sheppard's eyes, that this breathtakingly beautiful woman is a representation of what Sheppard sees when he looks at McKay -- and we do later learn that he sees McKay through severely rose-coloured glasses, that as a man in love Sheppard sees McKay as much more attractive than people who are not hopelessly, helplessly in love with him do. I am not advocating for this interpretation even though she is precisely in McKay's colours and has a gap in her hair where his receding hairline would be, because the details on her tray do not match his (and Sheppard seems to view McKay more as a Chris Evans in his Human Torch era type).

But on some level she and McKay are being paralleled here, the implication being that for a bisexual fellow like Sheppard this woman and McKay are both equally appealing, that he is getting a double whammy here. He might even be thinking of a threesome -- not for the last time -- as he is clearly distracted by what he is seeing, he is having thoughts about what he is looking at. That much is obvious. The point is that what we are expecting to see will affect the way we interpret the scene and where, in an attempt at attracting more and specifically more mainstream general viewers during this time, they are holding the hand of the heteronormative viewer, they are still leaving that little bit of ambiguity for the subtext. They are not spelling it out. This is not a no homo even though it can certainly be received as such.

Sheppard: Hmm? What? Yes. McKay: He's not listening. Sheppard: I've got to pay more attention to those guys.

Sheppard explicitly mentions having to pay more attention to "those guys," and this is an important line. On the one hand, it seems to counter what Sheppard had told Weir in Inferno when she had asked his opinion on what the leader of the Taranans had been like: "He's a guy. Didn't pay much attention. Sorry!" Now he is saying that he has to start paying more attention to guys. However, this is actually reinforcing what he had told Weir then because the implication here is that he had not been paying attention to what the guys were talking about because he does not pay attention to guys because he only pays attention to girls.

Again this seems to retroactively remove some ambiguity of the Inferno scene which had been a masterclass in show vs. tell -- Sheppard saying one thing and then spending the entire rest of the episode showing the opposite. And while Sheppard may tell himself that he needs to pay more attention to those guys, even in this episode the fact of the matter is that there is no one in two whole galaxies that he pays more attention to than he does to McKay. Even in this very scene, we are shown that the opposite is true -- that he is able to recall a conversation that had happened months ago where McKay had mentioned something that he needed to remember now. However, by suggesting that he needs to pay more attention to these guys Sheppard is also inviting the viewer to pay more attention to these guys, so let us look at them in more detail.

I mentioned that when this scene is supposed to have happened affects our reading of it. It is easy to assume that it had been recent, especially as the viewer cannot be expected to remember what had happened during the previous season in any great detail, especially when this was coming out on network television once a week with months between the seasons. McKay and Zelenka are talking about the wraith so the immediate association the viewer makes is going to be to the previous episode, the season finale where they had received a lot of new information about the wraith and data pertaining to their technology and particularly to the hives. This is further reinforced by McKay just having mentioned downloading this data in the previous scene. However, when we look at the details, that seems an unlikely time for this to have occurred. In the context of their relationship, it seems as though they had very recently patched things up between them and it would hardly make sense for Sheppard to have been checking out other people. In fact, we saw Sheppard completely oblivious to an obvious pass by a beautiful scientist in the previous episode, and we had seen McKay not notice other people either -- but this is neither here nor there if one does not recognize the subtext. Contextually, it would not make sense for this to have been a recent event but much more importantly, the details do not support this interpretation either.

When we look at them, we see that McKay has the pad that he had been using in the commissary as he was eating alone during Michael (S02E18), who is of course also featured in this episode, and so this scene could be a callback to McKay's solitary lunch with an attempt at explaining it away -- McKay had not been eating alone after all, he had just stayed back after the others had gone. McKay had been studying wraith rematerializer schematics at the time, his wraith studies relevant to the scene, which would offer a connection between the scenes. Only, he has no red jello on his tray like he had at the end of his lunch then, so it does not fit. He had also been wearing a dark grey shirt, which is what he had worn for most of the second season. He had further used the pad prominently in Inferno but he seems to carry it with him frequently enough that it's presence in the scene gives us no anchor.

The only real contextual clue we have is in Zelenka calling Sheppard "Colonel," which does at least place this scene in the second season, during their second tour, with this female scientist probably a new arrival rather than one of the original crew we had simply never seen before. But Sheppard had invited us to pay more attention to these guys so we may note that McKay is wearing his blue t-shirt, Zelenka is wearing a jacket and Sheppard is wearing a long-sleeved black shirt. This means that this scene had happened around a time when Zelenka had been on an off-world mission, when McKay had been wearing the blue shirt he has largely abandoned now and Sheppard was wearing a long-sleeved shirt. And while we have seen them in these sets of attire in different episodes, there is only one episode that fulfills all of this criteria at once -- Trinity (S02E06).

The one problem with this is that Zelenka had been wearing the yellow science corps jacket at the time but the only other times that he had been wearing the grey jacket for a mission, in The Lost Boys (S02E10), Grace Under Pressure (S02E14) and Critical Mass (S02E15), do not match in details, would not have entailed an occasion for the three of them to lunch together. The jacket even looks a little big on Zelenka, so it may not even be his own but regardless, the combination of Sheppard in long sleeves and McKay in short blue sleeves is rare, and Trinity seems like the best match, seems like what they had been going for here. Because this is intended to offer an explanation for one of the weirdest scenes in the entire show, to recontextualize it.

Since all three of them seem to be in good spirits, this lunch must have taken place before they lost a man on the planet of the Ancient weapons platform and had to inform their next of kin on Earth. The topic of discussion is fitting because they had been talking about wraith and their technological capacity in the episode, and it is even possible that this would have taken place before the meeting where we heard McKay tell Sheppard "I said I wanted to do all the talking." It is obvious they had talked about what to say to the others before their meeting with Weir and Caldwell where Zelenka was also present, so it would have presented an opportunity for them to have had this conversation. Sheppard having been distracted during this discussion might also explain why McKay had thought that they had agreed on something that Sheppard did not.

However, this is not intended to explain their meeting with Weir and his cryptic remark, but instead what had happened later when Sheppard had turned McKay away from his door. Without the aid of subtext, Sheppard comes across as a dick for no reason, turning away a friend in need who is clearly suffering. So this scene retroactively offers the explanation that the reason Sheppard had turned McKay away from his door had been because he had been hooking up. This had been an explanation that many people had given the scene even at the time because it was strange enough to require an explanation. Mainstream viewers did not know what to make of this scene and it made many of them uncomfortable.

So what difference does it make? We have to look at the context of their relationship. As mentioned, Sheppard making doe eyes at a woman post Inferno makes no sense. What Sheppard is remembering here is not recent and he is not reminiscing about this woman but is trying to recall something McKay had said that might save his life now. But in the early part of the second season they were having a lot of problems. It seems like Sheppard had moved out of McKay's quarters following their return from Earth in The Intruder (S02E02) when McKay had needed "a little more time." The whole early part of the season we saw the two of them sniping at each other for seemingly no reason and their relationship was most definitely on a break, their relationship in the no man's land between being with each other and being broken up. McKay seemed to be feeling so miserable about it all that it appears like they had "an accident" following Duet (S02E04) when it had initially been Sheppard trying to get into McKay's quarters and had been turned away, and come Condemned (S02E05) Sheppard seemed to really want McKay, was looking forward to having another accident. He was starting to think that maybe they could patch things up.

The sandwich is a connecting factor here because it is quite possibly the remains of a sandwich Sheppard is eating here and McKay had offered to make Sheppard a sandwich, albeit sarcastically, in the episode while Sheppard had been looking at McKay like he wanted to eat him instead. We had further learned that Sheppard had a tendency to look at McKay like Doctor Vogel looks at pastries, and the way that we see Sheppard looking at either McKay or the female scientist here is not too dissimilar to how we actually see Sheppard looking at McKay in Instinct (S02E07). Which ever of them Sheppard is looking at in this flashback scene, he has looked at McKay the same way in the past.

In Trinity, Sheppard turns McKay away from his door because he was afraid that something was going to happen and something could not happen when Caldwell was around. Caldwell seemed to be looking for an excuse to have his command removed and he was not going to give it to him. Furthermore, McKay seemed damned sour the next day again for no apparent reason, telling the "Colonel" that he would not make the same mistake again -- of offering himself to Sheppard. So if we insert this scene there retroactively and assume that Sheppard had hooked up with the pretty scientist, someone working under McKay, when he was still in shock over having lost one of his scientists and clearly suffering, clearly looking for Sheppard to comfort him, it makes a difference.

Hooking up with a woman and hooking up with the colleague of your former lover when another one of his colleagues has just died and he is blaming himself for it are very different ballgames. It would mean that Sheppard had not done it just because his dick had an itch like the mainstream audience seems to view him but because he wanted to hurt himself. He was suffering too, he was not allowed to take comfort in McKay for a variety of reasons, so hooking up with a woman who had clearly wanted him, was available and convenient, and who probably reminded him of McKay more than a little given how they are paralleled, just to not hurt for one damn moment might have seen like a good idea at the time. It is pretty tragic, all things considered.

So did McKay know that something had happened? McKay seems to know when Sheppard has been with women, has a sixth sense for these things. In Trinity we had watched McKay basically reading Sheppard's thoughts so he might have caught up to something even though Sheppard had come to his door fully dressed. McKay is able to read Sheppard's mind even in this scene, able to tell Zelenka that Sheppard is not listening because he is the world's most renown Sheppard-whisperer just like Sheppard is the best McKay-whisperer. They know each other, they have that bond that is deeper than words.

Following that scene, of being turned away from his door, McKay seemed bitter and upset, and this scene seems to offer a convenient explanation for their inexplicable behaviour toward each other in the episode. But it makes a difference. Sheppard hooking up with a woman once (or twice, given the one time he seemed to have sex with Teer) when they were on a break is very different from making eyes at a woman when they are meant to be together, as they are here, as they were following Inferno, with a fragile peace between them.

But even in this scene they are playing with the difference between showing and telling. McKay says that Sheppard is not listening when clearly he had been listening, he was able to recall what had been said months after the fact. He had not been paying attention at the time but he had been listening because he is always listening to McKay. Sheppard seems to recall things that McKay has said better than he can remember them himself. He also tells himself that he has to pay more attention to these guys like he does not pay attention to McKay like a student cramming for his finals, this scene trying and failing to obscure the fact Sheppard is sitting there in the cockpit of a fighter-interceptor willing to sacrifice his life for McKay and that he spends the rest of the episode trying to find him like this scene, like McKay's mentioning of pornography, does anything to erase the romance of it all.

However, even though they seem to be offering this opportunity for recotextualizing the scene from the previous season for people who felt uncomfortable with the ambiguity, no viewer is required to do it. The scenes between them are inexplicable only if one does not recognize the underlying subtext but recognizing that the two of them have had a sexual relationship, nothing in the scene seems out of place. As mentioned, some people interpreted the scene like this had been the reason for Sheppard's behaviour even originally but all things considered, it would have been a terrible time for him to have a hook-up with some random woman. A man had just died, their hopes had been crushed and it was obvious that McKay was in a lot of pain. At the end of the day it becomes a question of how big of an asshole you think Sheppard is, and I personally do not read him like that. There is only one person that Sheppard looks at like Doctor Vogel looks at pastries, and a beautiful woman smiling at him does nothing to change that. Sheppard had told us that he never sees it coming with women and we have no reason not to take his word on that. And him saying that he needs to pay more attention to McKay talking with Zelenka does nothing to hide how much attention he pays to McKay all the time. It is obvious that Sheppard is zoning out in the scene but we get a scene later on in this episode that makes it pretty clear who he was zoning out over, and it was not one of McKay's minions.

Addendum based on a comment by @deansaddiction: We should also consider the possibility that Sheppard does exchange a glance with this woman but the look they share is motivated by both of them having been observing McKay from their vantage points, the woman working under McKay listening in on their conversation whereas Sheppard had just been looking at him while zoning out, listening to their to them talking but not really paying attention to what they were talking about and struggling now to remember the words that had been said. Sheppard is not zoning out watching the woman but is instead sitting back and enjoying the show before him and just happens to catch the woman glancing at him, amused by the fact that he had been so obviously looking at McKay with this dopey look on his face. The woman definitely seems amused by something, and given that she would have known how McKay and Zelenka are on the regular, the likely source of amusement is them and their never-ending debate. What is more, as she very likely works in McKay's lab, she would know that Sheppard is a regular visitor there, which we had been confirmed only in the previous episode, and there is not one person who gets to observe him and McKay for any length of time that does not soon catch up to what is going on between the two of them.

I will return to this with the upcoming episodes but the thing we need to understand here is that the whole early part of the season is trying to establish the fact that McKay is distracting Sheppard, McKay is a distraction to him, that McKay without even meaning to holds so much of his attention that it is making Sheppard reckless to the point of becoming irresponsible. This may even have been meant as the first indication of what becomes a bigger and bigger problem over time until it all comes crashing down in Sunday (S03E17). When he is with McKay Sheppard is barely able to pay attention to anything else, even noticing a ridiculously beautiful woman for only the briefest of moments.

Continued in Pt. 3

[bendableclown]

What’s up with Francis Censordoll? Theory stuff:

* Not against genital mutilation???? (Ep 1 S1) Even though she herself was a victim of it?

* Nesting is life / hunting is death

* Doesn’t want to eat unlaid eggs but also doesn’t celebrate her birthday because “why would [she] celebrate the emergence of [her] unclad body out of such an unsavory passage as [her] mother’s womb.”

* Is she pro life or not???

* With her campaign she sounds super pro life but also “little babies are the devil’s scabies.” So….

* What did she do with those fertilized eggs?????? Certainly nothing good

* Doesn’t go to church, only appears at Easter mass (appears walking into the building in another episode, but is not seen in the interior shot. Coincidentally, it is the sermon for “be fruitful and multiply.” She might have left since it doesn’t apply to her.)

* Never praises god, even criticizes him once or twice.

* Has no issues making out with a married man in public

* Supposedly exchanges her nudes for illegal eggs

* Might be practicing witchcraft? Doesn’t deny Clay’s accusation, just says “you flatter me.”

* The library HAD a necronomicon, she WAS going to burn it (but maybe she was just trying to burn the evidence??)

* Is seen drinking at the bar with Danielle (exchanging information about Clay? About witchcraft? Perhaps she borrowed the necronomicon from Danielle?)

* mouths the words Clay says before he shoots Orel in Clay’s dream

[downwithpeople]

x-files roundup

travelers: GOOD. i love delta green's alt-history so anything that plays around in that space gets an upvote from me. this is a very slight retcon on the origin of the x-files but it's far from the stupidest thing the show has tried to retcon - in this season alone, no less! extremely strong guest performances but i'd like to give a special shoutout to david moreland's roy cohn; moreland plays cohn with the perfect level of fruity menace for mccarthy's closeted hatchetman. the special effects are completely gnarly. it's also very funny that duchovny kept his wedding ring on for shits and giggles.

mind's eye: GOOD. it goes without saying that 'blind person with superpowers' is a dodgy, worn-out trope. that aside, extremely good episode. lili taylor does a great job as marty, the abrasive blind woman who keeps getting telepathic livestreams of her crook father's horrible murders. this is a strong mulder episode, showing an empathic side to him that just feels like the right dimension to add to the character. my main criticism is that after doing her perfunctory skeptic routine, scully just disappears from the episode. i guess they just couldn't think of anything for her to do! my other criticism is that mulder arrives at the completely bonkers and also completely correct explanation for how marty's powers work with almost no prompting. also is wilmington delaware just such a fucked up place you can abduct and murder a woman in broad daylight?

all souls: GOOD. this is the best catholic scully episode so far. anderson acts her ass off to portray scully as simultaneously struggling with her newfound faith and the surprise death of her surprise daughter. this is the first episode where the emily stuff worked on any level for me. mulder puts on the skeptic hat this time but this is also the best it's ever worked because it feels like it comes from an atheist distrust of religion instead of kneejerk contrarianism - when scully seems like she's getting emotionally involved in the case, he treats her with a degree of tenderness he lacks too often. the girls with their eyes burned out of their sockets is a powerful image, as well as the 90s special effects seraph that appears before scully. i know it's just kind of his face but jody racicot looks so reptillian i thought for sure they were gonna play the evil satanic priest as a straight putt. i thought the music was bad and i hope we don't see any emily stuff ever again.

the pine bluff variant: BAD. it's just kind of boring! double agent mulder in the terrorist cell is like, just not enough for me. maybe this kind of thing hit harder in a world of pre-9/11 TV programming where there wasn't entire shows just about the plot of this one ep. the ep doesn't really try to convince you that he's gone rogue, but it tries a little and it falls flat on its face cause i know they're not gonna do it. i like the monster mask bank heist and the theatre full of melted bodies, but the rest of the episode just doesn't really hit the spot. i'm also sick to bastard death of these bargain bin bioweapons plots where the US government can only test things by mass murdering people in the midwest. that one bank teller who was trying to hit the alarm button deserved to die i don't care.

[black-arcana]

IN THIS MOMENT Announces Fall 2025 'Black Mass Tour' With DAYSEEKER, THE FUNERAL PORTRAIT And DED

American rock band IN THIS MOMENT has announced the 2025 "Black Mass Tour" featuring special guests DAYSEEKER on select dates, THE FUNERAL PORTRAIT and DED. The 23-city trek kicks off on Thursday, September 18 at 1st Summit Arena in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, making stops across the U.S. before wrapping up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania at Wind Creek Events Center on Friday, October 24. IN THIS MOMENT is also gearing up to release new music via Better Noise Music this summer.

A special BLABBERMOUTH.NET presale will begin on Wednesday, June 25 at 2:00 p.m. ET and end on Thursday, June 26 at 10:00 p.m. local time. When prompted, type in the presale code "ITMBBM25" to access tickets before the general public. Check back here on Wednesday for ticketing links to individual shows. General on-sale will be Friday, June 27 at 10 a.m. local time.

IN THIS MOMENT's "Black Mass Tour" dates:

Sep. 18 - Johnstown, PA - 1st Summit Arena Sep. 20 - Johnson City, TN - Freedom Hall Civic Center# Sep. 21 - Louisville, KY - Louder Than Life Festival Sep. 23 - Dallas, TX - South Side Ballroom^ Sep. 24 - Houston, TX - Bayou Music Center Sep. 25 - San Antonio, TX - Boeing Center at Tech Port Sep. 27 - El Paso, TX - Speaking Rock Entertainment Center Sep. 28 - Albuquerque, NM - Revel^ Oct. 01 - Los Angeles, CA - Hollywood Palladium Oct. 02 - Las Vegas, NV - Pearl Concert Theater at Palms Casino Resort Oct. 03 - Paso Robles, CA - Vina Robles Amphitheatre Oct. 04 - Sacramento, CA - Aftershock Festival Oct. 07 - Garden City, ID - Revolution Concert House & Event Center^ Oct. 08 - Spokane, WA - The Podium Oct. 10 - Idaho Falls, ID - Mountain America Center Oct. 11 - Casper, WY - Casper Events Center Oct. 12 - Colorado Springs, CO - Ford Amphitheater Oct. 14 - Kansas City, MO - The Midland Theatre Oct. 16 - Waukee, IA - Vibrant Music Hall^ Oct. 18 - Milwaukee, WI - Eagles Ballroom Oct. 21 - Atlanta, GA - Coca Cola Roxy Oct. 23 - Greensboro, NC - Greensboro Special Events Center Oct. 24 - Bethlehem, PA - Wind Creek Events Center

^ Without DAYSEEKER # Without THE FUNERAL PORTRAIT

Since coming to life in 2005, the Grammy Award-nominated act IN THIS MOMENT has presided over a diehard fan base under the watch of "mother" figure and frontwoman Maria Brink — joined by co-founder and lead guitarist Chris Howorth, bassist Travis Johnson, guitarist Randy Weitzel and drummer Kent Diimmel. As millions convened upon the group's otherworldly and unforgettable concerts, they quietly emerged as one of the most influential and impactful bands of the 21st century.

To date, in addition to the gold-selling album "Blood" (2012),the quintet has garnered six gold and platinum singles, followed by a trifecta of Top 25 entries on the Billboard 200 with "Black Widow" (2014) and "Ritual" (2017). With a total stream tally well past 200 million as of 2020, "Ritual" elevated them to new creative and critical peaks as well. Between selling out headline tours coast to coast, the group performed in arenas everywhere alongside DISTURBED and appeared at countless festivals from Lollapalooza to Sonic Temple. Along the way, they assembled their seventh full-length, the aptly titled "Mother" (Roadrunner Records) with longtime trusted collaborator Kevin Churko (OZZY OSBOURNE, FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH). Whereas "Ritual" hinted at a bluesy sonic sorcery, "Mother" breathes the activating mantra of an unbreakable spell, commenced on first single "The In-Between".

In 2022, the band released "Blood 1983" (BMG),a reimagined EP commemorating the tenth anniversary of "Blood". Then in 2023, the longtime staples of heavy music released their eighth studio album "Godmode" (BMG),a 10-song record featuring the powerful lead single "The Purge", the band's stunning cover of Björk's "Army Of Me", the collaborative track "Damaged" which features Spencer Charnas of ICE NINE KILLS, and "I Would Die For You", which appears on the soundtrack for "John Wick: Chapter 4".

Photo credit: Joe Cotela

[sky-scribbles]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Spread the self-love ❤️

This is such a lovely ask, thank you so much! I'll choose:

Gravity, and all that's born within - Critical Role, shadowgast, 163k. Caleb and Essek embark on their promised trip to Aeor, only to find that part of Aeor is awake once more. I... kinda of have to put this at #1. It was a three-year labour of love, and I loved every moment of taking these two wizards through the steps they needed to finally come together. Plus, a subplot about a robot.

funeral - Mass Effect, ~1000 words, some shenko but it's not the focus. Shepard arranges a funeral for her clone, and confronts questions about her own selfhood along the way. God, I wish the game went more into the questions of personhood it raises with Shepard's whole story. So I guess I'll do it. And people's tags on this fic reminded me why I write fic at all. <3

And let me speak to th'yet unknowing world - Critical Role, EXU: Calamity, ~2k. The final scene of Calamity, converted into Shakespearean verse, because I am a nerd. Y'all, I fucking loved writing this. It was so much fun. I'm still reeling from the fact that Aabria tweeted about this dumbass thing. This was a lesson to me that I should always do the passion project that I don't expect anyone to read.

An image of my brokenness - Baldur's Gate 3, Gale/Tav, ~3k. A chance question from a student leaves Gale reflecting on just how much Mystra took from him. I jsut have a soft spot for this one. I want to see Gale get some closure, y'know? And if he can't have that, I at least want him to be told that he's enough.

The scars that silence carved on me - Critical Role, ~9k. Five things that change in Essek Thelyss after the Nein learn the truth about him, and one thing that doesn't. A study of Essek's character development while the Nein are absent from his life between eps 99 and 124. I'm just so proud of his growth! Every time I think about how much he worked on changing while the Nein weren't around, I want to cry!!

I'll tag... @saturdaysky, @essektheylyss, @ariadne-mouse, @greyias and @mllekurtz! <3