#i know ive made this similar post before but like i still see this criticism in 2024 and i just have to laugh now

[spacedlexi]

people who think clem surviving makes no sense are so funny. "they were literally foreshadowing her death the entire season" let me introduce you to the concept of a red herring. she tells lilly she isnt lee and shes right. the narrative was forcing her down that path, a path she saw as an inevitable fate waiting to take her too, but its a narrative broken by aj, who is also his own person and not S1 clem

"it happened to lee, and itll happen to you" lilly tells clem she'll die protecting aj from some mistake he makes, when in reality his defiance of her will is what saves her life after she had already accepted her fate. he breaks clem free from the lee cycle and they get their relatively happy ending. good for them

[scooby-art-by-tyne]

I know i havent posted for a while but i have to get this off my chest, towards people who have similar intrests.

HBOS NEW VELMA SHOW AND THE HATE TOWARDS IT

Ive seen so much hate about the new velma show THAT HASNT EVEN CAME OUT YET. To the point where it seems compelatly unfair. The show hasnt even come out yet i dont feel like its fair for people to be judging so harshly already and getting upset at it.

This is what reboots and remakes of series do. They switch stuff around, they add new things, they change stuff up. And if you want to like movies and tv, you are going to have to suck it up and get used to that. But people are unfairly judging the show without even seeing it yet

Examples of comments off of JUST ONE POST

(Source @ scooby_news on instagrams post of leaked screenshots from episode 5 https://instagram.com/scooby_news?igshid=OGQ2MjdiOTE= )

Like just tell me you hate diversity already? I know straight up thats why you dont want to watch the show if your talking like that 🙄

I think this series has serious potential. If executed correctly it could be really good. And i am really excited to see the show.

(Altho i am worried about the fact its intended for an adult audience and im worried that based on what ive seen (the leaks with the shower scene) that it will be sexualizing minors, (the scooby gang are litterly minors in 90% of the series' they are in) which seems really creepy to me, hopefully there isnt much of that in it)

And in my personal opinion ive felt disappointed with the quality of the past couple movies (everything after shaggys showdown) because personally i feel like most of those movies were stuffed to the brim with content that was irrelevant to the main plot and had too much going on and was aimed at a much younger audience with a lower attention span.

Whilst the scooby content before (shaggys showdown and everything before that) was aimed towards an audience of the whole family. So the whole family could sit and enjoy.

But seeing as the age raiting is higher for this show im hoping it will be less like that.

Conclusion:

Im have my worries about seeing the show in the fears that it has the chance it could be bad (like any upcoming movie or show could be) but aleast im excited and greatful that we are getting more scooby content and not automatically going "THIS ISNT THE SAME AND I HATE IT." Without actually seeing the show, like many of the 'critics' that ares preading hate about it are doing. Because you have to understand that they have to change and adapt stuff in the film industry every once in a while to keep people entertained and thars how it works. Whiether you like it or not, thats how keeping franchises alive and not going broke works in the film and tv industry. I think this series has potential, and im hoping its good. But if not thats fine, i still intend to be respectful to the all of the creators and people who made this show. And be thankful they are still putting out scooby-doo content.

If anyone actually read that, thank you, i don't actuallg expect people to read this, but just know if you do i appreciate it <3

-ty

[nabnab-official]

my initial thoughts/observations on chapter 3/deep sleep

this is gonna be a long post. and i mean really long. !!SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT!!

opening thoughts

so, after a long and deserved wait, chapter 3 has finally released. i was very excited, and i wasn't disappointed. this one still follows the formula of gameplay chaper 2 established, but is far longer and far more scary.

as much as i enjoyed chapter 2, it was not scary at all. the only tense moments were during the games, and even then its not scary scary. they failed to build up that atmosphere of dread that a lot of horror games strive to have. chapter 3 delivered. home sweet home in particular, and the red gas hallucination scenes were scary. i still have a quarrel with poppy over their scripted scares, but this chapter was much better about that than chapter 2.

this chapter has a much different, darker vibe than chapter 2, and im glad. i hope they keep going in this direction, and i suspect they will, especially with the morbid story they want to tell with this game.

i was glad we also got to see the majority of the playcare, even if im a bit bummed out that we didn't get to go in the toystore. the playcare itself is a really good environment, it looks cozy but its also so obviously fake, reminding me of those little miniature towns in trainsets. I did not expect it to be inside a dome. my favourite area in the whole chapter had to be the playhouse.

the new hands were also a great addition, and made the puzzles much more fun and varied. changing up the mechanics like that was a great idea to keep people from getting bored of the same puzzle and gameplay every single time.

the school section was fun. miss delight was kept a secret and that was the best choice, because she was a good surprise. the weeping angel chase sequence is great, if a bit complicated. still, its nice to have an actual active threat.

we got a lot of answers in this chapter, including specifics on what the hour of joy was. it seems that the game is being much more open about its dark lore, and im happy about that. im tired of games being theory bait in the sense they make the story next to impossible to figure out to bait theorists. i just want to understand whats going on.

criticisms.

one thing ive always had an issue with about poppy is the scripted scares. in some places its ok, like the huggy tv scene. but i wish there was more of an active, ambient threat. like in the playhouse for example, having to use the flare gun to keep them away. part of the scare is knowing something is out to get you. it helps build up tension and fear.

on that topic, catnap is definitely underutilized, as are the other smiling critters. catnap is good when he shows up, hes got a great design and im really glad they kept him mostly silent. but i wish he showed up more. tying this point to the above one, it would've been cool if he was lurking around in home sweet home. it would be the same way he does in the office towards the end of the game, and you have to fend him off in a similar manner.

the smiling critters in general are underutilized. dogday only appears for a short amount of time, and while his appearance is very good, i wish we got more. we didn't even get to see what the other bigger body critters looked like, or even have them mentioned other than once or twice.

they could have been a sort of resistance group against catnap, or even have been additional threats. picky piggy is a cannibal and craftycorn wants to paint with your blood. something could've been done with that. they couldve even taken the role that ollie filled. though i think ollie is probably important so probably not.

i didnt like the catnap boss fight. i dont know, it just felt weird. i also didn't like the weird nightmare form he transformed into. i much prefer him in his normal state, hes creepy enough as is.

last critique. kissy died. thats it, thats the complaint. look we've done this before in batim when they killed boris. we're gonna have to wait until chapter 4 comes to see if shes alive or not and shes likely gonna be dead in some horrific violent way. this is more of a petty thing than anything but im still sad about it.

deep sleep

so, the ost for the game isn't out yet [once it is i might post about it if i notice anything interesting]

but one thing i did notice is the main [possibly] leitmotif is actually a song from all the way back in chapter 1, titled deep sleep, which likely not a coincidence. i dont know if they had this planned all along, or decided later, but its cool either way.

you can hear it here when you enter the playcare for the first time, and in the menu theme [at the very end before it cuts off]. im unsure when else it plays but it probably does play elsewhere, similar to how the thousand year melody is also a common leitmotif

lots of death [and huggys death]

so, huggy is confirmed dead, by poppys word. im kind of sad about that. i think it wouldve been cool if he had come back, covered in blood and all messed up from his fall, hungry for revenge. at first he just wanted to eat you but now its personal.

but alas we can't always have what we want. PJ is also possibly dead, but im not sure. its confirmed that he doesnt die in chapter 2, as mommy doesn't kill him like she does bunzo and the wuggies. but in chapter 3, it looks like PJ is on catnaps shrine. but until hes confirmed dead im holding out on saying he is. it also seems like huggy is haunting the player, in a way. he appears in their nightmare hallucination, and then again as a cutout later almost tauntingly.

poppy is right, we have killed a LOT of people. we killed huggy, mommy, miss delight, and helped kill catnap. we indirectly caused bunzo and the wuggies to die [mommy killed them, but if we hadn't won the game she would not have done that, so we are involved regardless]. and now, we have to kill the prototype. i did not expect this much death in this chapter, but i enjoyed it.

catnap

out of all the main antagonists, catnap is by far my favorite. in the long wait leading up to chapter 3, the anticipation to his reveal was a lot of fun. theorizing with other fans, making fan interpretations of what he would look like. originally i thought he would be a bat

his actual design is fantastic. i didnt expect him to be so skinny, but it really works in his favor. him being on all fours also sets him apart from the other antagonists. i wont go into detail about his design here

his actual character is really good and is what makes him my favorite. those who followed the arg that led up to chapter 3 know catnaps full story, about how the prototype saved his life. im not gonna talk about that here because im gonna talk about that and his death in a different post. but catnaps religious devotion to the prototype makes him really interesting. hes so obsessed with him he builds shrines, and is even willing to kill all the other smiling critters for being heretics the choice to keep him mostly silent also really elevates his character. i think it wouldve been much different were he talkative like mommy long legs.

i do think he was underutilized though, especially with how much he was teased

prototype

i was kind of hoping to see at least a little bit more of the prototype's body, but we got a voice reveal so thats good enough. the prototype is a very interesting character, and im really excited to see what he looks like in the future. he must be huge, if he took catnaps body to presumably use on himself. the prototype interests me, because im trying to figure out what his deal is. poppy seems to think hes pure evil, but we never actually see him being evil. the only truly evil thing we know he has done is enact the hour of joy. does he kill other toys all the time? what else does he do thats so evil? we dont really know yet i guess he saved theodores life and sacrificed his freedom for it. right now he is morally grey. he also killed catnap, but im not sure why he did that. was it a mercy kill? did he simply not tolerate that failure? its hard to tell with a silent scene.

either way, the prototype intrigues me. some people think he is elliot ludwig, but i dont think so. i think he will just be nobody in particular, ideally. hes good enough on his own as a character

elliot ludwig and ollie

during the hallucination sequence in the home sweet home, its said that they found the body of a young boy in an upstairs room in elliot ludwig's house, a body which was missing organs and bones. this was after ludwig had died, and playtime co seems to want to fight the allegations. so either ludwig killed that kid or someone was framing him. either way, its not looking good for him. its been speculated for a long time whether or not elliot ludwig knew about the sinister happenings at playtime co, or if it happened after his death and leith pierre took over. this might be our answer. now whos body was that? so, i have a weird hypothesis. its said in his backstory that elliot had someone die in his family, which caused him and his wife to split. people first speculated this was his daughter, who became poppy. i think maybe, with this revelation, it was a son. and maybe, like the poppy theory, that son became something else. maybe hes ollie. maybe hes the prototype. who knows. it would explain why the body was there, and parts were missing. maybe those parts were used to make a bigger body. it has a lot of holes, but thats why its a hypothesis

on the topic of ollie, who are they? i definitely think they're a toy, possibly a bigger body, which is why they're hiding their appearance from us. theres also no way its been 10 years and theres still kids here. they either would have died or grown up by now. i dont completely trust them, or poppy for that matter. people have theorized ollie might be the prototype, since the prototype can change his voice to sound like a variety of things. heres my crack theory, which i know is not true but it would be funny: ollie is boxy boo. listen. ok. the phone is first seen in project playtime, which is boxy boo's debut game, and reveals all his lore, like how he was the first bigger body created. the phone also resembles him in appearance. obviously this probably isnt true but its funny to consider.

speaking of him, im really glad boxy boo was in this chapter. i hope he appears physically in the next one, because i like him a lot. make fun of the name all you want but hes my special guy.

kissy and poppy

kissy is my favorite character so im very glad she was here. though i wish she was there a bit more, beggars cant be choosers. im also glad poppy got more spotlight. when she first appeared in chapter 2, she just felt like circus baby 2.0. but chapter 3 expands on her character a lot more and makes her feel more unique and alive, and like an actual character. which im glad for because shes the namesake of the game and is obviously very important she hates the prototype because he locked her in that case, and killed all those people. but obviously she cant kill him herself, shes so small. so we have to do it. ill be honest, i still dont completely trust her. like the prototype doesnt seem THAT evil to me. we havent seen him do a lot of things. imagine if theres a huge plottwist at the end where poppy is actually evil and the prototype is good. no way thats gonna happen but whatever.

the players identity

before chapter 3 released i thought the player was maybe a past orphan who worked at the factory later in life only to return years later to end things. people theorize that they're the head of innovation. now it just seems to make sense that they're rich. i mean why would we be constantly hearing about this guy who seemingly is just another employee. the player also seems to have done bad things, or at least known about them, because the game constantly references their guilty conscience.

chapter 4

its quite possible chapter 4 will be the last chapter. poppy said that catnap was the final obstacle the prototype had set out before us. and now we have the clear goal of killing the prototype.

in the next chapter, we will probably go down to the labs mentioned time and time again, and uncover the final secrets. as we go deeper down and progress through each chapter, things become more grim and dark. this will probably be the darkest chapter yet. if we go down to the lab, with the goal to finally kill the prototype, we are going to be in his domain, his kingdom. we will probably see new monsters, maybe even scrapped toys like daisy.

anyways i will make smaller posts for other stuff like catnaps death, and other things i find deserve their own posts. thanks for reading if you have made it this far

[xythlia]

something else ive noticed every few months when tumblr does this will they won't they shut down thing is it always, always makes all these fresh posts pop up about how you just absolutely have to spend money on this site and need to stop being openly critical of the way this place is run & that's just not true. you can love tumblr as a platform but also remain vocal about the numerous failures of its staff

a vast majority of this site isn't so staunchly anti-monitization for no reason. over the last year alone the censorship by staff of trans individuals on this site is at a point where u can't say it's not rooted in bigotry. why are a majority of only trans people being told their posts are inherently nsfw when it's just... them literally posting the way everyone else does? staff has whipped out never used before content moderation tools for the sole goal of nuking anyone who ever says hey this is weird as fuck in regards to that behavior/the people on staff who are just blatant terfs & freaks.

you can't go scorched earth on people and just expect them to go oh but we'll still buy the silly billy crab badge <3. not to mention it's in poor taste to rip jokes made by others on this site, turn them into profit makers, and then offer absolutely no credit to the person who's shit they're using to generate revenue.

it's been years that people have been asking them to address the issue of nazis running rampant on here. that's literally never been addressed even though they've shown they do have the tools to address that in at least some capacity, they just have zero interest in doing so.

they'd rather use those tools to suppress tags for palestinian support then go oopsie woopsie the site did a lil fucky wucky. you cannot do that shit again and again and again & just expect people to fall for it over and over. staff thinks very little of their userbase if that wasn't already clear, they think we're stupid. there's people on here who've talked before about how tumblr did similar shit when the protests in ferguson were happening years ago, they terminated blogs belonging to black activists & then started that absolute bullshit line about russian psyop accounts. there were no fuckin psyops they were blatantly going after black activists.

I mean jesus christ you cannot expect people to kiss your ass & throw their money at your website when it has a mind boggling track record of piss poor treatment towards its users and an unbelievable preference for shielding people who are fucking vile and hateful freaks. sure a lot of that stuff occurred not under the people who own tumblr now, but clearly they inherited the playbook from those who owned this site previously because they just do the same shit then are so flabbergasted when we all can't stand them & are not exactly shy in showing how much we dislike them.

two things can be true at once you can absolutely be fond of this site but you can also go hey a lot of the shit you're pulling here is beyond weird and hostile towards certain parts of the userbase only... why the fuck is that? for a lot of people it's about withholding monetary support until things like that are addressed, which they haven't been so sorry im not going to be lining up to buy fucking premium and whatever stupid little vanity badge from the people who do nothing when non white people & trans people get harassed and have their safety threatened because staff is either too pussy to do anything or at worst actively involved in that behavior so they pretend they don't see.

I think they'd have an easier time of implementing monetized features if they didn't treat users like dogshit & blatantly treat us all like we're fucking idiots but hey what do I know

[terminated-baeddel9]

I know she made the joke in order to hurt people because she tagged it as transandrophobia, hoping that trans men she didn't like would see it and react negetively. This is what she said when people responded, and when she had a somewhat civil conversation with perfectlynormalhumanbeing about it. I don't agree with transandrophobia-collection's tags on your post, but I think you were being cruel in your justification for what she said. I think the most helpful response is acknowledging that she lashed out and said something extremely cruel, and not dismissing the people who she hurt outright. I hope she is okay, I truly do. Though I don't necessarily think her tumblr was something necessarily aiding her mental health, since she said she made that post in order to self harm by poking at other people's pain enough that they push it back on her. I feel comfortable making some of these assumptions because it is based on what she said at the time, it showed up in my tumblr explore and I saw her responses to it.

Additionally, I apologize for making assumptions about yours or her opinions of trans men, but as I see that you know now from your other reblogs, you are using a moniker adopted by a group of separatists who made claims that trans men were the most oppressive and untrustworthy group of people because we "chose" manhood, that our dysphoria and choice to get gender affirming care was rubbing what trans women didn't have in their faces, and that cis men were more trustworthy than us because they had the potential to become women. These same women regularly implied that our transition was an act of fetishization of innocent gay men as well. So I associate that label with those ideas—your comment about us avoiding being in community with gay men resembled that to me as well. And the dogwhistles I've been seeing people engaging with a great deal with lately also come from people who are elevating the voices of gender critical "trans exclusionary homosexual males" who have similar ideas. If I have any reservations about engaging with broader communities of cis gay men, it is because those types of people call me conversion therapy on legs or a rapist when I am just trying to live my life.

Trans men and trans women are both experiencing a great deal of abuse and it makes me feel incredibly isolated. I don't understand why we would direct the same kind of abuse cis people direct at us at each other.

ok, i believe you.

she still deserved better, but this is the world we live in.. we all deserve better, and as we move thru the muck of trauma and pain, we link arms in struggle against transphobia.

the baddel stuff.. i honestly think of as over hyped and seen as a static coherent thing when it wasnt it was just a word tgirls found and researched, found out the history through etymological investigations into old english and its uses by clergy that relates to effeminate gay men, intersex people, what might be called transfeminine people (history ios hard to apply sucha term).

that history shouldnt be over shaddowed by people w bad analysis - but at the same time, the whole reason its such a big deal is because of the hypervisibility ofd trans woman and the demand to be perfect.

that demand, to be a perfect behaved trans woman is something that really resonates with the baeddel stuff, coz its like, no im not perfect, i will fuck up im hyper visible because of my transfeminity and before i claimed mbaeddel, i would be accuse of being a baeddel every time i would advocate for trans women or mention transmisogyny - it was weaponised and used as a way to silence me and others - the terf of trans women, the bad trans woman, the trans woman who is militant.

ive coem across a translesep baeddel and they have the most vile opinions, but i wouldnt abandon baeddel or being a baedling because of bad apples, the same way iu wouldnt abandon feminism because terfs are feminists.

i really wish you well. i hope that somehow some way, that you and i find ourselves linking arms in the struggle in person and not even know its eachother, but that we are in that place doing what we do because we need to protect and make gains for our rights. sorry im getting sappy its just.. yaknow we talking struggle and weh.... ahhh. please be ok.

[1990jeevas]

I know you posted it days ago but you said something about wanting to rant about either karl or his fanbase and its been itching at my brain. Ive no clue whats happening or what is happening at all cause no one seems to be making clear points?? Or explaining anything?

Obviously you do NOT have to talk about it im sure it might be a sore point to rant because people can get SO needlessly rude to others over it. But if you want to idk explain? Just rant? Im definetly curious what it was over or about.

The "you dont need to talk about this" is amplified by the fact i am DAYS late and you are probably over it by now.

okay hi yes im happy to talk about this but i think i should preface with two things:

1) even tho it may seem like im biased towards him or being very defensive of him im actually a super casual karl viewer and the only reason i am super defensive of him sometimes is bc we act a lot alike irl and that is mainly because of our neurodivegency. when i say a lot i mean we share traits like "annoying" stimming (jumping around, making loud noises, repeating the same phrases until everyone is sick of hearing them), the difficulty reading situations, the very obvious issues with volume control and not just bouncing from subject to subject to subject as we fucking please. basically anything you've seen karl do on stream that is Very Neurodivergent ive done the same in my own way which is why i get defensive when i see people calling him annoying or saying they dont like him, usually for these types of reasons. that being said, when i say im a very casual karl viewer, i fucking mean it. i usually only watch him when he's streaming with other ccs i like or when he's doing chill alt streams bc even with the annoying donos, he's pretty relaxing and comforting when he's just fucking around by himself and he isnt trying to get as hype as he would on a main channel stream. so yeah, it may seem like im biased and sure, i guess i am on some level, but it's not coming from a place of me hyperfixating on him or me even loving him as a cc, it's coming from me being a neurodivergent who likes him just enough to get upset when i see people basically being casually ableist towards him.

2) i dont have all the facts or even a great understanding on what the fuck has been happening recently with his "drama"...mostly bc he talked about it on his priv, which im not on, and people are gatekeeping the tweets, as they always do, and basically making you "dm to see them" (which is already a problem in and of itself bc apparently in these tweets he said he didnt want them being ss and shared, yet they are being shared thru dms over and over and over again like. at that point just stop withholding the information and post the fucking shit, you clearly dont care that he said "dont share"). additionally, most of the threads ive seen on this situation havent actually explained the initial issue, just talked about his apology (a lot of people have said "it's bad" but havent said why and with no screenshots ((i havent asked for someone to dm me them and i still havent seen them posted, which is mildly surprising, but incredibly frustrating at this point)), i only have a few basic details i can actually assess it on) or they talked about the initial issue in very vague details so um. excuse me trying to explain this now, but ill try and make it make sense with how little ive actually pieced together.

(oh, also, here's my first rant about the ableism in this fandom which is way more broad. this is a pretty different rant from that one, but they're both pretty big reasons why i hate this fandoms treatment of karl)

so basically the problems started with mr beast being apart of a charity stream that donated either to autism speaks or to a similar company, im unsure on that part. im also unsure on if the people participating in the stream actually knew of this or not bc, from what i remember, the money was being donated to a separate organization that was like. under the bad company or some shit like that, idk how stuff like that works and also i read about this shit months ago bc this originally happened months ago and just sorta came to a head recently.

anyways, i think karl was supposed to be apart of this stream but pulled out of it right before (that or these were two separate streams and karl was supposed to participate in the first but pulled out while mr beast did both?? idk. regardless karl did not actually participate, just mr beast). from there people started doing the guilt from association bullshit they always do, this was also doubled by the fact that the chris being racist stuff came out sometime around then and basically he got dragged all over twitter for "being ableist" and "supporting racists" and i cant remember if he actually apologized when this originally happened or not. i vaguely remember him apologizing about something back then but i genuinely dont know if it was this or something else.

basically that died down eventually, a good chunk of people unstanned him but him and honktwt didnt end up getting the lovely lil technotwt treatment and they still havent yet, surprisingly. good for them honestly ajsksk

but now we get to the past few weeks and apparently something happened with him "laughing at someone saying the r slur" (it was mizkif, i believe), specifically when it was directed at other people, which is a big yikes, obviously, but when karl was called out for this a lot of people kind of. made this into a situation that it wasnt bc um. basically karl didnt laugh at it, he gave a few nervous giggles, as people often do when in a situation like that (and karl specifically said he does this in the one part of his apology tweet which i did stumble upon, although it wasnt the important part of the apology thread bc why would it be) and people fucking crucified him for it. they quite literally dragged a neurodivergent man for supposedly "laughing at the r slur" when he can literally reclaim it and also he was just nervous laughing.

and this is where the situation just gets really bad because they. basically forced him to admit that he was autistic on his priv to apologize for this. i havent seen the screenshots of him saying this, but i saw people discussing it and i am frankly so fucking pissed about this because sure, it was a bad situation, and i understand people wanting an explanation, but an apology? for a neurodivergent man nervous laughing at a slur he can reclaim? and then forcing the man to admit something he literally said in that tweet he didnt want people to know which is why people were being so gatekeepy about it while also LOUDLY discussing the situation, as if that wouldnt drive MORE PEOPLE to look for screenshots and ways to get ahold of this information? and then people had the audacity to call it a "bad apology" when they had quite literally just violated his privacy by forcing him to admit something that he shouldnt have needed to share in the first place if he didnt want to, which he didnt.

and this is why im so pissed off. karl is already constantly picked at and made fun of and called annoying for his neurodivergent traits, things which he literally cant help, things which are generally harmless, and now he was forced into a situation where he can now be further picked at and made fun of and called annoying bc they forced him to admit something private instead of just understanding and accepting that he had been nervous laughing at someone using a slur he has definetly been called for his neurodivergency.

tldr of my thoughts: yes i think karl needed to address this situation, it definetly looked bad, but twitter stans have this sense of entitlement with their ccs and because of that, they consistently take it way too far and harm the people they claim to care about so dearly. we've seen it happen time and time again with dream, but this is the first time ive seen them basically force someone to out themselves to make their apology "valid" and most of them still seem to not want to accept it anyways, which just makes me feel bad for him bc now that info is out their and people are just disregarding it to continue "holding him accountable".

anyways, i think that's all i can really say on this topic rn tbh, if anyone else knows this situation better please feel free to lmk clarifications and ill add them in since, like i said, i know fuck all thanks to twitter being so goddamn hush hush about the important details while simultaneously being the loudest mfers about how much they hate karl now instead of just fucking unfollowing and moving on.

thanks for the ask and im sorry if this is confusing!! i just think this is one of those weird situations where like. i think karl deserved some criticism for what happened and how he handled it or at least he shouldve been asked to address it but that just. isnt what happened, at all. he was harrassed. karl got harrassed and because of that he handled this situation even more sloppily than he probably wouldve and exposed private info about himself that he didnt feel comfortable doing and it just. fucking sucks tbh.

[aegialia]

self-indulgent reflection on being on tumblr

so i recently hit 1000 followers on here and this blog has existed for almost exactly 8 years, so i wanted to ramble about tumblr and my experience of it for awhile. under the cut so definitely feel free to ignore this.

i started this blog right around when i was fourteen and had just started high school. at that point, i was out to my parents (and no one else) as bi, i had an inkling i was Struggling with something but i had no idea what and felt like i couldnt actually acknowledge it, and i had left leaning but very vague politics. tumblr definitely has shaped my journey around sexuality/gender/mental health/politics, both for good and for ill. 

for good: 

seeing other ppl talk about being lesbians helped me realize i could be a lesbian w/o being a traitor to the concept of bisexuality. hearing trans ppl talk about their experiences and explaining non-binary stuff and dysphoria helped me understand what i was going through 

i don’t like talking about my mental health stuff in detail on here, but suffice to say, i was Going Through it in high school. i’m still going through it now, but i am in a much better place (thank you medication and 7 years of therapy!). seeing ppl talk about the weird, dumb, awful parts of mental illness let me acknowledge that i was going through those things too, that i wasnt like evil for feeling like that, that i could change. people talking about adhd/autism was particularly helpful---being able to identify why i’d always felt like my brain just didn’t work right is the first step in the (ongoing) process of not hating myself for the way my brain works

politics is definitely the area where i think tumblr was the best for me. i got exposed to so many opinions i definitely wasn’t hearing in school, from intelligent, well-read people who could articulate theory in ways i could understand. tumblr didn’t give me my politics and i didn’t learn everything i know about theory from it, but the communities of people i was around pointed me in the right directions. tumblr was also a good place to learn how to react to criticism. this doesn’t seem to be most people’s experience, but getting called out over minor things on tumblr genuinely helped me learn how to take a step back, look at my behavior, apologize, and try to change, which, as it turns out, is a helpful skill irl as well

for ill:

wrt sexuality and gender, it’s probably pretty obvious someone who’s journey is ‘cis bi girl -> cis with a million different microlabels -> nb w a million different microlabels for both sexuality and gender -> nb butch lesbian who’s not super into romance’ would have some bad times on tumblr. the bi circles i was in made being a lesbian seem like an immoral choice, the ‘’’mogai’’’ (or whatever u wanna call them) circles made me feel like i had to divy up and perfectly label every aspect of myself in a way that really wasn’t helpful for me, the lesbian circles i was in made me feel like being a lesbian was about ending up in a monogamous butch/femme cottagecore relationship and that there was something wrong with me for not really wanting that. to be clear i think microlabels can be very helpful for people/a monogamous butch/femme relationship is a perfectly fine thing to want, they just didn’t work for me. im very very glad ive reached a point in my life where i dont feel the need to stay up to date on the latest discourse and am more focused on finding a way to exist that is comfortable for me and supporting my community irl. 10/10 would recommend to everyone

not going to get deep into it, but social media is. not good for my brain in general. i still enjoy using tumblr, but these days im pretty careful to step back from it frequently and treat it as an occasional hobby. 

the cons of political stuff on tumblr are probably also very obvious. there are some just awful discussions on here and the culture surrounding the way we handle bad behavior and justice and accountability and working to become a better person and make up for the harm you’ve caused has historically been fucking awful and trying to unlearn it and find new ways to engage with this stuff is exhausting. 

for all that i’ve changed over the course of having this blog, this blog has stayed pretty fucking static. i started out being super into diana wynne jones and the iliad and those are still two of my biggest interests and things i talk about the most on here. there are definitely specific things that have petered away (i started this blog almost entirely to keep up with good omens fan stuff and i pretty much haven’t touched it since the miniseries came out, i haven’t sought out pacific rim/supernatural/elementary/mcu content in years), but im still pretty much interested in the same things. i like relatively small fandoms, i like weird side characters, i like to be a grumpy child playing with my toys in the corner. when a fandom im in gets popular, i tend to stop engaging with it entirely (hello rqg/tma/good omens/enola holmes!). i dont think its a pretentious ‘i liked it before it was cool’ thing so much as a ‘people get Weird and awful when a fandom hits a certain level of popularity and there’s too much content and i really, really hate the bad faith arguments larger fandoms tend to spawn’ thing. i’ll consume content from big fandoms, but i pretty much refuse to actually engage with them at this point.

one of the stranger parts of my experience of tumblr is the social side. i’ve never really known how people make friends online---how do you go from liking each other’s posts and occasionally replying to them to actually being friends who communicate off social media? i’ve had conversations with ppl on tumblr and i’ve had sort-of friendships that are contained to tumblr where i’d like to get to know them better, but i’ve never figured out how to do that. my best friend’s job is pretty much to make friends/connections on the internet (she’s an activist and artist), my dad knows people everywhere in the world from twitter, and i’m just sitting here like a little old grandpa who doesn’t understand how you can have internet friends. 

at this point in my life, i’m fine with this, but this has made me feel real fucking bad in the past---like, if everyone online, even the ppl who say they’re weird and brainbad in a similar way to me, can make friends on the internet, what’s wrong with me? particularly in high school and my first year of college, when i was just horribly lonely all the time, it made me feel super disconnected and like there was something fundamentally bad about me. these days, i’m a lot chiller about it. i use social media to engage with stuff i enjoy and share my thoughts about it. it’s okay that my social difficulties extend to me not knowing how to use the internet to socialize.

on a somewhat related topic, it’s wild that i have 1000 followers. obviously, that’s not an actually super large number and a huge number of them are probably bots or inactive. if you post consistently for eight years and follow lots of people, like i do, it’s not a surprise to end up with this many followers. it is also, thankfully, the sort of followers that are not fans. probably most ppl following this blog dont remember why they followed and dont know anything about me or my interests. this sounds like its meant to be depressing but it’s not. i like that my way of engaging w the internet lets me do pretty much whatever i want and no one will care. the mere concept of being. like. tumblr famous in any capacity, even just in one community/fandom, is viscerally horrifying to me. 

i really enjoy the space i’ve created for myself on here. on one hand, going back through my blog is obviously embarrassing and full of hating my past self. on the other hand, i now have a very nice collection of things i enjoy in this blog. i like seeing what i’ve been interested in and (when i’m in a good mental health place) i like to be able to remember how i thought and talked about the things i loved when i was younger. im not at the place in my life where i can love a younger version of myself, but sometimes i can laugh at zir with a level of fondness. 

i’ve always been paranoid about sharing details about my life on here (and the fact that my parents have always been able to see it certainly contributed), so the version of jack on here is a carefully curated version, who’s super enthusiastic about the things they love, was very conscientious about apologizing and trying to do better when ze messed up, and tried to be polite to others. that’s a younger version of myself that i’m closer to being able to have compassion for than the version i find in essays and poems and memories. 

i’m starting grad school in ten days and i’m still using the blog i started when i began high school. tumblr has helped me in a lot of ways and hurt me in a lot of ways, but i still have to admit that it’s been a significant factor in shaping me. i’d be incredibly embarrassed to admit that irl, but it’s true. other than my family and like one friend, this blog is one of the only things that’s ‘known’ me since i started high school. i’ve changed so much in that time and im glad to have this weird little record of myself throughout those changes, even if i’d probably warn my younger self away from tumblr if i could go back in time.

tl;dr i have had a mixed experience on tumblr and i have mixed feelings about that experience. no idea if anyone read any of this very long, very rambling internet memoir

p.s. fun facts about this blog:

i’ve never changed my icon or blog title

i recently got a second version of the poster i got my blog title from. i chose my blog title by looking at what was hanging on the wall directly in front of me. 

my original url was gloomthkin. this was not, as you’d probably assume, an otherkin thing. i had literally no idea what otherkin was at that point. i’d just learned the word gloomth from a bill bryson book and thought it would be cool n edgy to be the child of the quality of gloom. i changed my url after i learned what otherkin was and realized everyone probably assumed something about me that wasn’t true which i hated (not bc i had an issue w otherkin, just bc i don’t like ppl thinking untrue things about me)

during my good omens days, i once sent a tumblr ask to nail guyman which, in retrospect, was kinda rude. i stand by the content but id never send an ask like that now. he replied to it privately in a way that so deeply embarrassed and shamed 15 year old me that i’ve never gotten over it. i still get nervous and embarrassed when i see anything about him or his books

[villainsunoo]

my heart wants you, i want your love more

its that sungki fic ive talked about (part 1 of ??? bc im not done w it but i wanted to post some of it) just listen to stray kids mixtape: oh the entire time thats my explaination

tagging @many-gay-magpies @honeyseungz @given-taken bc i think you guys might wanna see it 👉🏽👈🏽

In the glow of the afternoon light shining through the sheer white curtains, he seemed unreachable. There was a soft glow all around him, like a halo surrounding him, and it stopped Riki in his tracks. As if going any closer would burn him, as if touching him would be sacrilege.

He stood there for a while, long enough that he was sure Sunghoon must have noticed, just staring at him in awe. Then, as abruptly as he had stopped, he walked on past the older vampire, crossing the room to leave. Thoughts of wanting Sunghoon to reach out and stop him from leaving did nothing to slow his brisk pace.

Still, his head turned to look at the elder on instinct. The man in question seemed to have not even glanced at Riki, but there was a small smile gracing Sunghoon's face, one that definitely hadn't been there before, and suddenly Riki felt like a child. He whipped his head back around, tips of his ears turning red— and found the couch much closer than he remembered it being. With his head too muddled for his otherworldly reflexes to kick in, he rammed his knee against the side of the couch. No matter how deadpan his face was, his red ears and neck gave him away. Sunghoon, who Riki assumed still wasn't looking, would know anyway, having known Riki for centuries now. He was too embarrassed to even steal one last glimpse of Sunghoon before he teleported out of the room.

It was a different room, made obvious by the lack of furniture and of Sunghoon, but it looked similar. The soft sunshine filtering in through the white curtains caught his eye once again. He walked closer, taking the fabric between his fingers. It wasn't the curtains themselves that fascinated him, though. It was the way the light shone down on Sunghoon through it, the way it highlighted the sharp edges of his features and softened the curved lines, the way it made his skin glow. Riki's grip on the curtain tightened, feeling a warmth rise slowly in his chest again. His breath caught in his throat as he recalled the way the sun shone into Sunghoon's red eyes, bringing out the colour that contrasted his pale skin, the same way his lips did. Riki shook his head, as if doing so would get rid of his thoughts somehow.

How long had he been harbouring these feelings? Years, decades, maybe even centuries. No matter how long it had been, it always felt new. The way his slow heartbeat would pick up its pace at the sight of the older vampire, the way his train of thought would halt, replaced by thoughts of how it would be like to have his feelings reciprocated. He would always end up like this, alone after embarrassing himself in front of the man he adored, daydreaming like a teenager. He did get turned as a teenager, so maybe he was doomed to be like this forever.

He could barely recall his earlier days, when he first became a vampire. He knew he still looked about as young as he did back then, just a little taller and with wider shoulders. His face looked a little more mature too, hardened with the experience of many centuries. Maybe that meant he did change a lot. Sunghoon, however, liked to still insinuate that he hadn’t grown much, that he was still a child. It was a little insulting, and if he had an ego, it would certainly be bruised. But he'd been alive for so long now, gone through so much; ego was a long forgotten concept. Still, it made him think a little too hard.

Was it that he was still childish and immature? Was it because he still looked so young? Worse even, would Riki having grown and matured change anything, if Sunghoon still thought of him as a kid regardless? Would it be off-putting for Sunghoon to find out what Riki really feels about him? Maybe he already knew and he was being polite by not saying anything about it, subtly rejecting Riki in that way?

He rested his against the window, the curtain being the only thing protecting his hair from burning. His deadpan expression melted into one of frustration, lips forming a frown, a deep sigh escaping. Being in front of Sunghoon did make him feel younger. Like he was still a hard-headed, clumsy teenager. No matter how eloquent his speech had become over the years, his tongue felt like lead in his mouth whenever he tried to speak to Sunghoon. In the end, he always sounded like his 15-year-old self that Sunghoon liked to reminisce about; all jumbled sentences and words that don’t fit quite right in the context. Maybe it should be enough that Sunghoon would get a fond look in his eyes whenever that happened.

Maybe a confession was in order. If only to get it off his chest, get it out there, so he could get closure, so he could move on with his eternal life. Maybe then he could find someone else to pine over, someone who won't make his heart feel like it was blooming one second and breaking the next. A stable love. Something that sounded increasingly hopeless with Sunghoon. Then, maybe, when that emotional rollercoaster is over, he could go back to normal around Sunghoon.

But he couldn't help but feel like it would be pointless, like his heart would go back to Sunghoon anyway. Like his love for Sunghoon gained sentience and would return his heart to the elder no matter how hard Riki would try to escape it. Another sigh escaped him, louder and more dramatic, as he fumbled with the curtain slumping against the window sill. Maybe it wasn't a stable love he wanted, anyway. Just Sunghoon's. Whatever kind of love it may be. His heart seemed to only want whatever kind of love Sunghoon would have to offer to him. If Sunghoon even wanted to, that is.

"And if he doesn't? What would you do then?" And now he was criticizing his feelings like he was scolding a child. Yes, what then? What then, Riki? You'll just keep giving him your heart anyway, that's what. And so, a new problem arose. Confess now to get it out there, so that Sunghoon could decide what to do from there, or keep it to himself, forever pining after someone he deemed impossible to reach. Literally forever.

He would die of heartbreak instead of living many more centuries like he would have been able to if he hadn't developed these feelings for Sunghoon. His lips pushed into a pout, brows furrowing more and more the more he thought about it. Why did he have to go and complicate things for himself by catching feelings?

[misssquidtracy]

SOS Part 3

So I grabbed the whump bat last night, took aim at my boi’s head, then proceeded to wallop him into the exosphere like the kickass cricket player I’m most certainly not. If you happen to see a moving star tonight, chances are it’ll be Gordon completing his first orbit, not a wayward satellite.   

-x-

‘Gordon, you’ve activated your emergency code….Gordon? Gordon!’

Gordon stirred feebly, his head screaming in protest when he tried to raise it to follow his brother’s voice. He could hear movement outside what remained of Thunderbird Four, but knew he was in no condition to investigate the source.

Everything hurt so much.

Cracking an eye open, he spied Fuse retreating back to the Chaos Cruiser, Braman in his arms. Underwater distance distortion made separating one fuzzy shape from another hard, but the aquanaut possessed just enough visual strength to make out Havoc staring down at him from the safety of the cockpit.

She was smirking at him.

The coldness behind those blue eyes, so different yet so similar to Alan and Scott’s, filled Gordon with hopelessness. He was critically injured and had never so much as raised an eyebrow at Havoc or her brother, yet knew neither of them were going to lift a finger to help him.

Hopelessness turned to quiet despair when the Chaos Cruiser turned and began to make its way toward the surface. Using every ounce of willpower he possessed, Gordon managed to crack his eye open again, only to be met with pitch blackness. With the Chaos Cruiser’s spotlights gone, he was reminded of exactly how dark and isolated the seafloor really was.

He hoped he’d get to see his brother’s faces again. The way Scott frowned at him in concern if he left for a rescue without eating breakfast. The way Virgil smiled indulgently at him whenever he tested out a new joke. The way John sighed and shook his head at him when he asked if denial was a nice river in Egypt. The way Alan gawped at him in silent adoration every time he pulled a successful prank on one of their older brothers.  

It would be nice to see Brains, Kayo, Penelope and Grandma again as well. Despite bearing no relation to the first three, Gordon considered them family and had fond memories attached to all of them. The way Brains chastised him every time he brought a pod or Thunderbird Four back in less than mint condition. The way Kayo smartassed him if he ever made tasteless jokes about her being Scott’s girlfriend. The way Penelope tutted at him whenever he requested iced tea instead of ‘proper’ tea. The way Grandma fussed over him on his rare down days.

Yes, he’d like to see them all again.

-x-

A familiar voice roused Gordon from the depths of unconsciousness.

If possible, everything hurt even worse than before. He was vaguely aware of water entering the demolished remains of Thunderbird Four’s cockpit and gave himself a mental pat on the back for having the forethought to put his helmet on. At least drowning wasn’t a threat.

The unbearable pain in his head, neck, left arm and right leg definitely was, though. His suit didn’t feel like it was torn anywhere, but he was fairly certain he'd broken at least two major bones.

Opening his eyes was far too much effort. Plus, doing so would confirm his worst fear; that he was still trapped in the dark, cold, terrifying carcass of his beloved yellow submarine.

Maybe his brothers hadn’t picked up his SOS. Thunderbird Four’s systems were damaged beyond recognition, and his comm device was equally redundant.

“Gordon? This is your brother, John. I need you to sit tight, help is on the way.”

Gordon stirred in response to the voice that had dragged him back to a state of semi-consciousness. He tried to say his brother’s name, but lacked the strength. The pain in his neck was starting to make him feel sick.

“Virgil, Scott and Alan have just left Tracy Island. Their ETA is approximately six and a half minutes. I’m going to stay with you until they arrive, okay? You don’t have to answer, but know that you’re not alone anymore.”

A stray tear leaked out of an eye that still refused to open.

“I’m not getting any vitals from your suit, so can’t say for certain what shape you’re in,” John continued, his voice calm and soothing, “But I promise that we’ll get you out in one piece. I’m half hoping we’ll have to shave your head, then maybe I can be the one making fun of you for a change.”

Another tear leaked out.

“Hey, do you remember that donkey mom adopted?” John gave a laugh that sounded genuine and forced at the same time, “You were very young, so may not remember. We called him Brandy because of the way he weaved like a drunk whenever he came to the gate. He was a working animal from a neighbouring farm who ended up at the local auction house when he couldn’t plough in straight lines anymore. His owners couldn’t afford basic farm machinery and were ineligible for a government grant, so were in no position to get him veterinary treatment. Mom felt sorry for him, so bid on him as a companion for Apollo, who was dad’s horse at the time. Mom used to sit you on him and lead you around the paddock. Well, I say lead…poor Brandy was so wonky he usually just ended up dragging mom diagonally across the field, but you loved it. He died of a colic complication right before Alan was born, but we told you he’d gone to live with a wild donkey herd on Carrot Mountain instead.”

Two more tears managed to escape before John’s voice faded and nothingness descended once again.

“It’s okay, Gordon. I’m here.”

-x-

His head was resting on something soft and sweet-smelling.

“Hurry, Parker! Please.”

Penelope reminded him of a swan; beautiful yet dangerous. He wondered if she liked the colour yellow as much as he did.

More nothingness.

-x-

Gordon’s next brush with consciousness wasn’t pleasant.

He was being carried, which meant he wasn’t underwater anymore. Whoever was carrying him smelt familiar and was cradling him in a firm yet gentle grip. He hoped it was Penelope, but knew it was probably Scott or Virgil.

“…multiple broken bones, severe whiplash, moderate head trauma.”

John was around as well, though Gordon couldn’t tell if his presence was physical or holographic. The voices he could hear were hurting his ears.

“….Chaos Cruiser sighted three miles northwest. I recommend immediate evasion.”

Gordon suddenly saw Havoc’s cold smirk imprinted on the inside of his eyelids.

She’d wanted him dead.

Even after all the lives he’d saved, someone had wanted (and presumably still wanted) him dead.

The thought terrified him.

“Whoa, Gordon!” Scott cried, tightening his hold when the aquanaut suddenly began to thrash in fear, “Easy! You’re safe now!”

Gordon didn’t think he’d ever feel safe again. Ignoring the agony brought on by his shredded muscles and shattered bones, he began to spasm and jerk in Scott’s arms, his caramel eyes wide his fear.

“Virgil!” Scott yelled, swearing loudly when he almost dropped his crippled brother onto the floor, “A little help!”

Two sets of hands were suddenly restraining him. One yanked his helmet off so that he could breathe unencumbered, but the rush of cool air to the face only served to worsen his frenzied writhing. A bolt of unimaginable pain shot up his spine and exploded at the base of his skull, making his vision swim.

Hurk, hurk.

“Virg, you need to back off,” Scott suddenly instructed, his tone offering no room for negotiation as he lowered Gordon’s lower half onto the floor and propped his torso up against his knee, “He’s going to be sick.”

“Won’t he choke?” came Alan’s frightened voice.

“Not so long as he’s sat upright,” Scott replied, patting Gordon gently on the back when the aquanaut began to hyperventilate, “I’m more worried about what he’s doing to his existing injuries in this state. We need to calm him down somehow.”

“There are handcuffs and some olanzapine in the first aid kit,” Virgil yelled from Thunderbird Two’s cockpit, “Restrain him and give him a 10mg intramuscular shot after his stomach has settled. That should calm him down.”

Poor Scott was powerless to do anything as his second youngest brother proceeded to puke all over him. Granted, he’d had people throw up on him before (they all had), but this time was different. Gordon’s condition made movement impossible and Scott was acutely aware that the stress of vomiting was making the aquanaut’s pulse erratic.

“I’ve got you,” Scott reassured, rubbing his brother’s back, only to recoil in horror when his hand travelled too far north, the resultant pressure causing Gordon to scream in agony.

The next ten seconds passed in a blur of pain glazed stupor. Scott yelled something at Virgil. Virgil yelled something at Alan. Alan panicked and began to cry. John yelled something at Virgil. Virgil swore and abandoned his post in Thunderbird Two’s cockpit to fetch something from the medical bay. Scott took whatever Virgil had found and stabbed it through Gordon’s suit and into his bicep, apologising quietly as he depressed the plunger.

In the background, a familiar British accent cut through the mayhem.

“Oh, Gordon.”

-x-

Gordon’s eyes fluttered open.

White. Everywhere was white.

His left arm was shrouded by a sling.

The floor was white.

His right leg was encased in a cast.

The curtains were white.

His head was concealed by bandages.

The walls were white.

His right arm was hooked to an IV.

The lab coat on the kind looking lady studying his heartrate monitor was white.

White had always been Gordon’s least favourite colour, but not anymore. He had a sudden newfound hatred for the colour purple.

Specifically, the shade of Havoc’s armour.

Luckily, the flowers on his bedside table were yellow.

-x-

Gordon’s first week in intensive care was not smooth.

Nightmares plagued him every time sleep beckoned, images of dark water, purple armour and cold smirks tormenting him as he sought relief from the pain of his battered body.

Scott rarely left his side and asked the nurses to take shifts so that one was always in the room. They’d been happy to oblige, but had been less happy with Scott’s habit of falling asleep next to his brother’s bed.

Virgil took over the running of International Rescue while Scott stayed in the hospital. John answered distress calls that necessitated the use of Thunderbird One and Alan covered space monitor duty when his redheaded brother was earthbound. Sally channelled her worry into cooking and freezing enough homecooked dinners to fill Thunderbird Three’s cargo bay, while Kayo took out her fury on her kickboxing dummy.  

Scott was strict on visitors, mainly because Gordon tended to get emotional when he received them. Virgil visited every day with supplies for Scott. John came in every second day with bags full of Gordon’s favourite snacks. Penelope visited whenever her schedule permitted (which was quite often) and offered Sherbert as a form of pet therapy. Kayo and Sally took their turns after Virgil departed, their arms laden with homecooked culinary disasters and bunches of fresh hibiscus flowers from Tracy Island’s beach.

Alan wasn’t allowed to visit. His first proper time seeing Gordon had been three days after the aquanaut had been admitted. He’d landed the Helipod in the hospital’s car park, retrieved the stack of magazines he knew Gordon enjoyed reading from the backseat, asked a nice nurse for directions, found the correct room and pushed open the door, only to be met with the sight of his usually cheery brother having a full blown panic attack.

“OUT!” Scott had bellowed, releasing his hold on Gordon’s forearms to shove Alan back into the hallway. In the temporary absence of his oldest brother, it had taken the combined effort of two nurses to keep Gordon in bed.

Scott’s insistence that Alan not see Gordon for a bit was an exercise in futility, considering Alan had seen and heard everything in his brief six second visit. The youngest had received a tongue-lashing that was both unfair and unjustified, but he’d given Scott a free pass. The eldest Tracy was under a considerable amount of stress, which was further compounded by the late night vigils he held in a bid to alleviate Gordon’s night terrors.

It was two weeks before Alan learnt, second-hand from Virgil, about Gordon’s newfound fear of the Chaos Crew, specifically Havoc.

Unfortunately, it was another four weeks before Gordon recovered enough to tell them the reason for his fear.

Rage was an incredibly rare emotion to witness in the aquanaut, but when it happened, the world and his wife knew about it.

A common misconception outside of International Rescue was that it’s youngest operatives relied on their older brothers for protection. While Gordon wasn’t adverse to Scott or Virgil defending his honour, he could be quite the formidable foe when sufficiently provoked.

As Havoc would soon find out.

[midnightactual]

Critical Analysis & Tactics IV (CAT-4): Yoruichi vs. Soifon Part A

How strong is Yoruichi? That’s actually a very involved question. I’ve decided to create a series of articles detailing my thoughts on the matter by looking at military incidents and confrontations involving her. This is the fourth, and you may consult the others at your leisure:

CAT-1: The Hollowfication Incident

CAT-2: The Central 46 Trial Breakout

CAT-3: Yoruichi vs. Byakuya

CAT-5: Yoruichi & Soifon vs. Aizen

CAT-6: Yoruichi vs. Yammy

CAT-7: Yoruichi, Kisuke, & Isshin vs. Aizen

CAT-8: Yoruichi & Co. vs. Yhwach

CAT-9: Yoruichi vs. Askin

I’ve obliquely talked about this fight before (here) as it relates to Yoruichi’s disinclination to use her zanpakutō, but not in great detail. It says quite a lot about their respective powers and abilities, but to an even greater extent it reveals the exact nature of their relationship prior to Yoruichi’s departure from the Seireitei. These are all matters which I feel there are points of confusion and misunderstanding on by others. Given that, I’m going to give my own perspective on all these issues.

Since the is a long post, let me as usual put the basic conclusion here up front: this fight wasn’t particularly serious in terms of physical danger, as Yoruichi was hardly trying and Soifon radically underestimated her abilities. This fight is far more about psychology and mutual understanding of one another.

01. I’ve discussed this in the past (here), yet it bears not just repeating but additional emphasis: Yoruichi is at her absolute weakest ever during the Soul Society arc, as she herself alludes to in chapter 119:

She drops Ichigo like a sack of potatoes despite him being injured and slumps against the wall because she’s so winded, and openly comments on the fact that she’s wildly out of shape. It’s abundantly clear that she isn’t performing at anywhere near her previous or future maximum abilities during this arc.

02. Yoruichi’s attire also bears some scrutiny. Notice how she’s dressed above. She has on her stretchy pants, and we know from earlier scenes with Ichigo in chapter 116 that she’s wearing a turtleneck (plus you can see the sleeves poking out of her jacket). Also notice her footwear. All throughout Ichigo’s bankai training, Yoruichi is wearing shoes with integrated greaves. These appear to be flats based on the shoes she wore as a Taichō (and which Soifon still wears as one) but modified to suit her preferences. By the time she fights Soifon, however, her outfit has notably changed, as seen here in chapter 157:

The turtleneck has been replaced by the keisen shōzoku-inspired top, as she later reveals and which even here is evident from the lack of sleeves. The shoes have also been replaced with boots instead (which are capable of dispensing anken). She has cloth wrapped around her arms, and her shins are wrapped in gaiters. She only wears this variation on her outfit when fighting Soifon. (As seen in CAT-6, when she later fights Yammy, she’s wearing an outfit identical to when she trained Ichigo.)

In reality, gaiters largely exist to protect against scratching, puncture, or friction. The wraps on her arms are similar to puttees, and serve a similar function, while the remainder of her scarf functions like a neck gaiter. One might ask why she’d discard hard greaves for soft gaiters, and the answer is that their protective power is actually likely superior.

As noted in CAT-3, in chapter 117, Yoruichi completely halted Byakuya’s release of Senbonzakura using a cloth ribbon, and as noted in CAT-5, in chapter 177, did similar to Aizen. I would suggest that that cloth ribbon is special, and that her arm wraps, gaiters, and neck gaiter are made of the same material. I would also suggest so is her hair wrap, given it repeatedly survives Shunkō, to include her Raiju Senkei form where electrical Kidō is literally running through her hair. What this cloth material is and what its exact properties are remains unknown, but it seems incredibly durable. (Given it appears to be a tan color, it might not be related to the Ginpaku Kazahana no Uzuginu of Byakuya’s scarf, but it could be the same material but processed or treated differently, possibly explaining the immense value of that scarf beyond mere rarity.)

This assertion is supported by the fact that during the actual fight, in chapter 157, Yoruichi both takes and deals several blows to areas protected by these garments, suggesting they were made specifically for fighting with Hakuda:

A question becomes apparent at this point, which is: where did Yoruichi get this stuff? More than likely from the storage depot above the study chamber, which is likely where she also got the first outfit she used for this mission (since she obviously didn’t bring it with her to Soul Society given she came as a cat). In other words, I think it’s very clear that Yoruichi specifically equipped herself to fight against Soifon, knowing she would likely be dealing with Hakuda and might have to use Shunkō and dressing to compensate for her own weakness.

03. Yoruichi and Soifon’s reunion is very telling regarding how truly familiar they are with one another. Here’s how it starts:

I want you to pay attention to how close Yoruichi is before Soifon notices her approach. Part of this is due to Yoruichi’s speed, but remember: she’s not flash stepping at anywhere near her optimum, and would be conserving her energy heading into battle. Part of this is due to Yoruichi’s stealth, but remember: Yoruichi felt Renji’s ambient reiatsu approaching even at a notable distance through solid matter. Soifon doesn’t notice Yoruichi until the very instant before she’s tackled off of Kiyone. (The closing-in panel at top-left suggests the bottom panel is indeed Yoruichi’s own perspective, as she hits Soifon in the very next panel.)

But I want to make a point regarding reiatsu detection before proceeding: Shinigami who are very familiar with each other will naturally detect one another’s reiatsu at distances at which other, more powerful Shinigami won’t. An example of this is Rukia detecting Ichigo’s approach before Byakuya does in chapter 581, presumably due to the nature of Ichigo and Rukia’s bond:

And another example is Yoruichi and Yūshirō detecting one another at a great distance in the Soul King’s Palace in chapter 628, while not noting anyone else on either end, presumably because they’re related:

In other words, people with strong bonds should have a distinct advantage in identifying one another even if one part is moving quickly or attempting to conceal themselves. This suggests that Yoruichi and Soifon do not actually share such a bond, a point which will repeatedly be made over the course of their fight, but especially two pages later back in chapter 153:

Stop and think about their situation. Soifon can see the eyes and skin color of Yoruichi at this range, and likely also feel her reiatsu... and she still doesn’t recognize her. How many dark-skinned, gold-eyed people are there in the Seireitei who wear orange jackets and move quickly and stealthily? It’s worse than the translation here lets on, by the way:

The original Japanese here at the bottom-left is, “何者だ貴様!!” which translates to Romaji as “Nanimonoda kisama!!” Yes, that kisama. The literal translation would be something like, “Who are you, you bastard!!” I think Soifon calling Yoruichi “kisama” is all the proof you need to firmly establish she has no idea who this is, and doesn’t recognize it as Yoruichi until she hears her voice. I also think that reaction panel firmly dispels any idea that Soifon is acting and doing this just to insult Yoruichi, because this is a face of shock:

It’s very obvious that Soifon is surprised by the fact that she’s seeing Yoruichi again, despite all those visual indicators, which is... strange, and perhaps suggests something about Soifon’s powers of observation. Regardless, this can be taken in contrast with the next page, and Yoruichi’s reveal:

Which is surprisingly playful. Yoruichi isn’t stressed at all here, and remains fairly upbeat and comparatively unperturbed for the first section of the fight until Soifon tears the (breakaway?) sleeves off of her uniform. It’s pretty clear that Yoruichi doesn’t go into this fight expecting a hard slog, even if she took precautions with her outfit. Indeed, I would say she expected it to be merely a performance review.

The point remains: Soifon didn’t identify Yoruichi until well after they’d made contact, and past the point when it should’ve been obvious who was accosting her.

04. Starting in chapter 154, we’re treated to repeated scenes presenting Yoruichi and Soifon as equals:

This first panel makes it very clear visually, and that sets the tone for what follows.

It’s also echoed in the way that they trash-talk each other.

And also reflected in the visual framing of their exchanges; these panels are clearly designed to kind of ‘reflect’ one another. Take notice here of Soifon’s further trash-talking: she’s asserting that she was a better warrior than Yoruichi even when Yoruichi was her Taichō! How’s that for confidence? And it should tell you a lot about how Soifon looks back upon Yoruichi’s tenure, which we’ll get into later.

This apparent equity is also reflected in them trading hits. Yoruichi’s injury seems more grievous, given she’s coughing up blood, but Soifon doesn’t seem to regard it as a more notable injury than she herself suffered, nor does it actually impact Yoruichi’s performance any more than Soifon’s does her. (Nor will Soifon’s strikes with Suzumebachi seemingly do anything to slow Yoruichi down as the fight goes on.)

This sense of equity will persist right up until after Soifon reveals her shikai and starts to speed up, at which point she will reveal that she’s been “going easy” on Yoruichi and that (in her mind) they’re not equals.

I think it’s because of this rather thorough visual symbolism (and Yoruichi’s reactions of surprise as Soifon’s performance) that many people walk away with the impression that Soifon and Yoruichi are equal in performance, not just in this fight and this arc, but throughout Bleach. We already know, however, from (01), that that simply isn’t true: Soifon here at her maximum output can only just rival Yoruichi at her weakest.

This is emphasized by the fact that Soifon will go on to fail to score two consecutive hits with Suzumebachi on Yoruichi, and by the fact that we know (from her escape from Byakuya with Ichigo) that Yoruichi isn’t going all out with her flash steps here either. This is not only Yoruichi at her weakest, this is also Yoruichi fighting in a very conservative fashion. And Soifon still can’t take her out despite earnestly trying.

05. The motivations of both parties are rather plainly established. Soifon’s motivations are revealed by the panels above with her, “Which of us... is the better warrior?!” and, “Now do you see? I’m better than you!” remarks. This further emphasized by a panel in chapter 158:

Soifon is obsessed with proving she’s better than Yoruichi, and rubbing Yoruichi’s face in the fact.

Yoruichi, meanwhile, rather obviously turned up to see where Soifon was at in terms of her progression, as chapter 154 alludes to:

Yoruichi is there to see whether Soifon has filled her proverbial shoes. This shouldn’t be surprising as we know from Soifon’s flashbacks in chapter 159 that:

Yoruichi added Soifon to her bodyguard unit in the first place because she “[admired her] skills” and was “expecting great things from [her].”

In other words, Yoruichi showed up to see how Soifon had been getting on in terms of her skills for all this time, and seemed to largely expect a fairly casual encounter (although she was prepared for it to escalate). She wasn’t anticipating Soifon’s mindset and drive to actually try and kill her. Soifon, meanwhile, is resolute in her determination to punish Yoruichi for what she regards as having been abandoned.

Click here for Part B!

[sage-nebula]

Why did you not want to play the LGPE games? I have no opinion since I don't even know what LGPE is, but my curiosity is piqued

LGPE is the acronym commonly given to the Let’s Go games, Let’s Go: Pikachu and Let’s Go: Eevee. As for why I refused to buy them and don’t want to play them . . . that’s a bit of a story. I will keep this as concise as I can.

So. It all starts with the current head of Game Freak, Masuda Junichi.

Masuda has worked on the Pokémon games since the very beginning. In fact, he was one of the founders of Game Freak. For the first two gens his primary role was composer, but starting with Gen III he began to direct the games as well, and now he’s one of the top directors at Game Freak and responsible for many of the directions the Pokémon games have taken in recent years. And while there have been some good things to come out of the past decade, there have also been things that haven’t been so great (to put it lightly), and most of them have been Masuda’s doing.

For instance, the first big warning signs came with the release of Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire in Gen VI. Don’t get me wrong, those were great games. I loved them. However, the Battle Frontier—a feature that premiered in Emerald—wasn’t included, much to the shock, confusion, and consternation of fans. When asked about this, Masuda said that he chose not to include it because kids only really like mobile games nowadays, so he didn’t think they’d have the attention span necessary for something like the Battle Frontier. Now, anyone who knows a child knows that’s absolute nonsense, but Masuda believed it and, as a result, the Battle Frontier was not included in the Gen III remakes.

Now, you could say that was just one bad decision, and I would agree. But Masuda’s bad decisions didn’t stop there. Gen VII as a whole has ended up being my least favorite gen of all the Pokémon games because there is not a single main series game in that gen that I can say I truly enjoy and would ever want to play again. Even Gen IV has HeartGold and SoulSilver, and Gen VI has the aforementioned Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, but Gen VII? Story aside (because I don’t think he actually wrote the story, though I could be wrong on that) the gameplay was atrocious, absolutely catering to Masuda’s beliefs that children don’t want challenges anymore and will give up very easily if presented with one. This is especially noticeable in the remakes, where the Battle Tree—the only challenge in the original Sun and Moon games—was reworked to be far, far easier than it was originally, thus making it boring, too. But as bad as the Alola games were, they were not the worst that Gen VII had to offer.

Enter the Let’s Go games.

Let’s Go: Pikachu and Let’s Go: Eevee were the first Pokémon games developed for the Nintendo Switch. They were “remakes” of Yellow (they had enough noticeable changes in the story to not be direct remakes), and if that was the only disappointing thing about them, I probably would have gotten them. After all, I had purchased every single core Pokémon title up until that point, and despite what so many wanted to claim, the Let’s Go titles were core titles. Masuda said it himself when the games were announced. But unfortunately, being yet another set of Kanto remakes was not the worst they had to offer.

You see, the Let’s Go games were made to bring the Pokémon Go gameplay into the core titles. This meant that there would be no battling against wild pokémon to capture them. You would need to shove candies down their throats in order to raise them. EV training was cut out. There was no breeding, so IV breeding was out as well. Only pokémon originally obtainable in the Kanto games would be available, even post-game, something no other game had done before (but which definitely foreshadowed the Dex cuts to come in Gen VIII). To cap it all off, it would be impossible to turn off motion controls and necessary to use them, so people with mobility issues would be unable to play—i.e., Game Freak made the game inaccessible to those with disabilities.

Now, a good chunk of these things made the game extremely unappealing to me already, and in fact have stopped me ever seeking out a used copy. I hate the candy system in Go, I hate having so many features removed, I hate having to rely on RNG to catch pokémon. I mean, there’s always an element of RNG, but you can tilt the RNG in your favor with battling in most of the games, and you can’t do that in Let’s Go. It’s like an entire game’s worth of the Safari Zone (which iirc was also cut in Let’s Go), and I don’t have the time nor the patience for that nonsense. So although the Let’s Go games had some features that appealed to me (following pokémon, riding pokémon), on the whole they were just really unappealing, and that was even before we got into the character changes that were really distasteful to me.

But the thing that I could not let rest and could not forgive—and the thing that caused me to urge everyone to not buy the Let’s Go games, to the point where I lost a friendship because he didn’t like that I criticized them on Facebook so much—was the fact that, on top of saying that the Let’s Go games were to be considered core titles, Masuda said that if they sold well, they would determine the next 20 years of the franchise. What this meant was that, if the Let’s Go games did well, the features implemented in the Let’s Go games—for example, not battling in wild encounters, not having EV training, etc—would be removed in future titles, and instead future games would play like Let’s Go plays. And that’s just something I can’t abide by. If they want to make quirky Kanto remakes like this, fine, but I don’t want brand new games going that route. It’s the exact opposite of what I wanted. So I did the only thing I could: I refused to give my money to Game Freak (which would show them I liked these changes), and urged everyone else to do the same, to buy used if they had to buy at all.

Well . . . pretty much no one listened. As expected, Let’s Go made bank, and I felt that was the end.

I don’t quite feel that way anymore. For the most part, Sword and Shield were unaffected. I’m not sure if this was due to production times not giving Game Freak enough time to implement Let’s Go’s features or not, but nonetheless, Sword and Shield still had wild battles, EV training, IV breeding, etc, so for the most part they were unaffected. There are EXP candies and raids (both similar to Go), but they’re bonuses, not something necessary to raise your pokémon. The only thing that seems consistent with Let’s Go was the Dex Cut (which, funnily enough, was another Masuda decision, casually slipped in by him during the Treehouse demo shortly after everyone was excited about the announcement at E3), but I strongly suspect that’s more to do with Game Freak not having more than a year to develop each game rather than the popularity of Let’s Go.

Regardless, the TL;DR is: I refused to buy Let’s Go (new, at least) because I didn’t want to tell Game Freak that I wanted future games to play like Let’s Go, and I still won’t play it now because so much of it is unappealing to me that, even when I consider getting a used copy, I remember the aspects I don’t like (e.g. no wild battles, no EV training, character and story changes), grimace, and go play something else instead. No hate to anyone who likes them, there are some features in that I think would be fun, but they’re just really not for me.

[bigskydreaming]

Thank you again and still for all the help and support! I really truly can not imagine making it through the past couple days without it, considering I spent most of it awake and in the bathroom puking from the constant migraines that come with your head not being happy about its bones not being in the right place. Stress aggravates them, or at least my awareness of them, and because of how little work there is currently and how expensive being broke and disabled in LA is, let’s just say, there’s been stress, lol.

I’m feeling a bit better today, or at least I’m making myself pretend that and act like that since I’ve got another appointment at that clinic where I get my juicy and tasty IV bags of nutrients pumped into me since I barely even CAN eat, physically, which combined with the lack of sleep and the nausea, like, also not a great combination.

So, I mean it when I say your donations and support have absolutely been invaluable, everything from a couple dollars to an anonymous message, like, its all amazing and appreciated and invaluable. Yeah. I already said that, whoops, anyway, BUT I DIGRESS.

That’s about all of an update I have there, lol, so in other news, I should be around more today since like I said, I’m feeling a bit better and have possibly plateau-ed on this latest pain level. (My super-annoying superpower....ever since I was a kid I’ve been able to adapt to increases in pain like a pro. As in, being able to manage/function despite it. Course, I still feel it, but give me a day or two to adjust to a new norm in how much my body hates me currently, and then I can power through).

So, like I said, I should be around more today, and I’ll probably be random as hell. Like I’ve mentioned before, my blog is where I spew literally everything from inane thoughts to fandom feels, since its like.....my only social outlet these past couple years and the only way I get to interact with people who aren’t doctors. Expect no pattern in topics until I find whatever sticks and keeps me focused on it enough to serve as a distraction from, y’know, the broke body and broke bank account.

SO! Absolutely feel free to hit me up about anything and everything. ESPECIALLY if you’ve made a donation or sent me something. Like, I know some people who have sent money don’t even follow me or know me at all and are just generous spirits who saw my post somewhere, but for any of you who have sent any kind of support just cuz you like, like me and my rambles, lol, totally feel free to drop into my messages even on anon and say what kind of posts or content from me you really engage with and would love to see more of. I can’t make any promises or guarantees, unfortunately, given I didn’t expect or plan on crashing so hard these last couple days, bleh, and just....literally, like, writing more of the kind of stuff or posts people who have helped me stay alive is pretty much the only way I have of kinda giving at least something back, so I mean, I am happy to pounce on anything in that direction. 

Again, just can’t make any guarantees given how unpredictable my life is and depending on how many people send requests or prompts or messages, etc, but I don’t delete anything of that nature and I usually get back around to stuff EVENTUALLY. For instance, I’m REALLY hoping to finish up two one-shots today, one that’s focused on Duke, Dick and Cass from that prompt you sent me a couple weeks ago, @zee-gee, and the other uh.....that umm, TW/X-Men fusion you commissioned way longer ago than my pride will allow me to admit in public @camelotpark, lol. And like, those posts you see me making to @russianspacegeckosexparty about the changelings project I talk about a lot, like.....Adam basically just sends me random thoughts and prompts about it all the time, and its like a running thread that’s easy for me to pick back up and sink into whenever I see a new one in my inbox and I’ve got enough spoons at the moment to dig in.

Also have a couple other things I want to respond to today while I have the energy and a destined-to-be-longer-than-it-needs-to-be meta about Dick’s positioning in narratives with various other characters and WHY I think it so usually works out that way, and I’m aiming to keep that more like....musing-esque than rant-errific, but uh, let’s see how that actually goes, lmfao.

Anyway, that’s what I have in mind for today, aside from my going to get my IV buffet at ten and emailing and calling people from listings about rooms to rent, but tbh, I might just end up being even more random and sporadic than usual, if I can’t focus on any of those long enough to stay sufficiently distracted today. (Like, my other annoying superpower as long-time followers have heard before, is my ridiculously fast metabolism. I know, “oh no, I’m so skinny, poor me,” but like....its never been about weight gain or loss for me, its about how fast my body processes various medications, meaning pretty much every painkiller I’ve ever tried is largely useless to me, or at most wears off in a couple hours.....whereas my ADHD meds actually provide me MORE relief from the pain than any of them. Basically, they let me actually focus on something OTHER than pain and not get interrupted/distracted by the occasional pain spike that likes to remind me its there and wants my attention......so I mean, I still feel everything that comes with my head being physically out of whack, but for the hours vyvanse is working for me, coupled with some heavy duty pain meds, I can like.....just sorta....not care about it for awhile. Like, it hasn’t gone away but its more shoved to the back of my mind at least. And all of that, I’m happy to stuff in a closet whenever I can, lol).

And that’s enough rambles for this post, I think. LOLOLOL, as if I have a quota. But yeah. Just wanted to express how much your support has meant and continues to mean, and like.....I’m still here and alive and crossing fingers that I’ll hear about an actual surgery date soon, but in the meanwhile like......I’m kinda stuck in a perpetual Limbo, one that’s largely confined to whatever is in hobbling distance from my bed of the day, and as much as donations help me physically, in remaining able to at least stay that way, just, any and all interactions on here help by keeping me engaged with the world on at least some level, and make it so I have stuff to think or talk about beyond my own situation and how I’m not a super huge fan of that.

(Okay, I shouldn’t say any and ALL interactions are appreciated, since I have my fun little runs of anon hate in my inbox, but I mean, all of the above is why they’re not really a big deal to me and never have been. Its like, dude, my own body has been trying to take me out for the past three years, and you think a few insults from an anonymous stranger are gonna do the trick? LOLOL, please. Tbh, the only real negative effect anon hate has on me is that it makes me a bit more snappish and quick to assume the worst than I’d like, when people @ me in a way that I misread as aggressive or in bad faith. I’m aware that my day-to-day temperment is a lot more irritable and open to fights than I usually like to be, as self-control is kinda a big deal to me, and my situation and stress and other shit kinda keep me constantly operating at a level best described as itchy, and none of that is an excuse for any times I read an interaction wrong and go for the throat. I just mean like.....I’m a very blunt and straight-forward person, and I do appreciate when people take a similar approach to me as it really helps keep those misreads to a minimum. Any time someone wants to engage with me in some way, I promise I am SO much easier to talk to if you just....put it out there, whatever it is. Its the games people play online (and in real life) that just frustrate the hell out of me and...yeah. Again, I’m not saying any of that as an excuse or a request for a free pass any time I fuck up an interaction or cross a line, I’m just saying, if anyone’s held back on interacting with me because they think I might snap at them or mistake it for them trying to start a fight, like......just be direct with me. Honestly, thats just....always gonna be more productive when it comes to me.)

But yeah. So that’s the current state of me and all that jazz. Again, I so appreciate everything everyone’s done to support me, not just these past couple days but over the course of these past three years as well. I notice and remember all of it, and its why even though I rant and complain and am critical about so much in society and fandoms and all that.....I really truly am a believer in the idea that there’s more good in people and the world than bad, and the bad just tends to be louder is all. It was especially loud for me the last couple days, the volume got way jacked up, but the goodwill from you guys has been more than enough to drown it out and give me some reprieve.

Alright, shutting up now. All done. The end.

[movedthechangingman]

(1) I am watching atla for the first time and I know why zuko redemption worked while other’s (kylo, catara) failed, Zuko always has honor and was shown to care and make good decisions and be a good person even at his lowest points, like when he cared about his crew or tried to help and save a little kid even though the family and the kid ended up rejecting him, he never did something outrageous and he had time to learn and sort out his feelings before making a turn around and join the gang

putting this under a cut!

(2) azuko always acted upon what he believed was the right thing, once he was exposed to the outer world he learned how awful the fire nation was and the chain of abuse he was living in, he by himself made the decision and has 2 season in order to redeem himself while characters like Cassandra (tangled) and Catra had seasons of upping the stakes and acting more and more awful each time and only one season where the narrative are like “they were under someone else control and they were abused” (3) “so they nice blonde best friend who acts more like their sister and who they were abusing and victim blaming has to forgive them for everything bad they did because they were uwu abused too” and it seems many people like that which fine, if this was characterized as a delicate situation, where it could turns bad, which could turn to be even toxic, I wouldn’t have a problem with, but it is framed as beautiful and as good and as “true love!” (4) without the main aggressors Catra and Cassandra putting as much in their relationship as their blonde counterpart Adora and Raps who are forced to act as a matyr till they get fed up with their friends abuse and toxicity and put their foot down yet they always end up forgiving their abuser’s transgressions by the end somehow, it seems like the classic tale of “if he pulls your hair or means he likes you” which it’s most similar to (5) To the honeymoon or the reconciliation stage of an abusive relationship cycle’s, nothing assures you that the abuse won’t continue on but they sell it out as this wonderful and beautiful love story which it’s plain wrong, and I feel that it doesn’t receives as muy flack because it’s F/F but in reality in a relationship one has to be consistently good and reliable and as a bisexual women I feel like they are doing a disservice and it’s worse because it’s directed towards kids (5) and lastly both Wlw parings were being either outright mentioned or hinted at by the show or crew as this characters having a “sister bound” with Cassandra and Rapunzel Being outright being described as sisters in the show and Catara and Adora being described as that by the crew and with them growing having the same motherly figure and having a clear case of golden and scapegoat child, which coupled with the abuse they suffered at hands of their paternal figure and at each other hands makes the situation very gross

i have never seen ATLA outside of the first 3 eps but that is the general consensus ive heard. i have also never seen rapunzel TAS but i watched/read a bunch of spoiler stuff for it but i think my understanding is still loose. i also heard that he wasnt a villain very long idk how true that is though. but youre right from what im reading! i think it is important for your character to have an appropriate amount of time to make up for their actions... its also important with these redemption stories for the character to address the things they did, like not a “sorry for the things or whatever” but “i am sorry i did x , x, and x” etc IMO and there needs to be work put into making things right. and the victim should not necessarily be the one pushing them through that...

like i can say for certain if c*tra was a dude there would be a HUGE discourse about the fact that yeah, she really is that “mean because they have a crush on you” BS and whats most horrifying is that it seems like noelle saw NO problem with how she portrayed that relationship and all the guilt and suffering adra went through bc of ctra was really supposed to be romantic. fcking insane. like if it was just a fandom ship w.e.... ppl always gonna ship characters if they hate eachohter... but the actual creators saying its romantic is SO WTF abuse isnt negated by it being el gee bee tee rep and whats awful is i think people REALLY believe it is. not to mention uh your WLW love interest being an physically + emotionally volatile fascist who canonically does not care that she goes out to her way to aid violent takeover of innocents for a dictatorship is already like. huh.

(i mentioned also like even seagawk and mermista - her constant “uuuugh youre so annoying” about him is supposed to be cute apparently.... like noelle posted a pic of her in a shirt that says “im with stupid” pointing at seahawk and... like... that would be funny if they had healthy communication and she didnt seriously treat him like he was an idiot 24/7... but if this was reversed it would be a huge problem and everyone would flip out.)

i never thought catra and adora were written very sisterly since its undeniable that there was a clear attraction between them in the early part of the show but holy fck if the crew did say that.... ugh... although i agree it is really skeevy that their plot revolves around an abusive mother which i feel inforces the “adoptive siblings arent real siblings” pseudo incest trope as much as i think the interactions between catra and adora were not sisterly in how they were written. if that makes sense

i hate to bring up SU but i think it covers this topic really well w spinel - whos so toxic she literally poisoned people - while steven does set her on her path, he does not make himself responsible for her redemption. we get a snippet of that later ofc - where we see that she is trying to become better while also helping the other abusive characters through their change (which we also see is still ongoing - those behaviors havent been fully unlearned - nothing can be fixed that quickly). and most notably the victim (steven) while tolerating them through their attempts at change and encouraging them, does not forgive them and makes an open effort to distance himself even while his abusers still want him to help them 24/7.

whats bothering me the most is not that ppl enjoy these ships bc no matter what people will and you cant stop them but rather that ppl refuse to admit that something they like is abusive - either bc they want to save face as a unproblematic fandom blogger or bc they are 100% unwilling to take critique on something they like, to the point where now ppl wont accept any criticism on she ra at all as a show even if it has nothing to do w the awful excuse for romance.

[81scorp]

Constructive criticism: The Superman film series

(An editorial originally posted on Deviantart Mar 26 2015)

Superman, created in 1938 by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. A popular character that has remained popular through the years and is considered an american cultural icon. He has appeared on the radio, animated shows and live action TV. Then someone thought "Wouldn`t it be neat to see the man of tomorrow on the big screen?". Because of the special effects they had back then, portraying Ol` Supes most well known and iconic power: flying, was hard to pull of without making it look a tad bit silly. From what I`ve heard they were, at one point, thinking about taking it in a direction similar to the campy Adam West Batman universe. But Richard Donner (to my knowledge at least, correct me if I`m wrong) wanted it to be a movie that people could take more seriously. So, with a more serious script, good casting, acting, well made flying effects and the music of John Williams you would`ve believed a man could fly. It was a critical and financial success, and with financial success comes sequels. Superman II was a little more tongue in cheek than it`s predecessor but was still considered good and did well at the box office. Then came Superman III... and after it came Superman IV... Both were not that good. Let us, in my very subjective editorial, take a look at were they went wrong and how it could have been improved. Truth, justice and SPOILERS Superman Not really much to mention about the first movie. It is, for it`s time at least, an almost perfect superhero-movie. The score by John Williams fits perfectly with the tone and story and, this is probably just me but, the space scenes have a bit of a 2001: A space odyssey feel to them. There is of course one thing that makes it end up on this list. Reversing time by reversing Earth`s rotation/traveling backwards in time                                                                                                                   In a way it`s an admirable gesture that shows that he is willing to move heaven and earth for Lois and the scene before it is a powerful one where he holds her body in his arms. But still. If he somehow made the planet spin the other way it wouldn`t affect time, the sun would just rise in the west and set in the east. Assuming that the planet and it`s inhabitans would survive the change. Some say that he didn`t actually change the rotation, that it was just a way to illustrate that he actually travelled backwards through time. It would make more sense if he used a wormhole to time-travel. But if he time-travelled, wouldn`t there be two Supermen? The time-travelling one and the one from that time-period? Oh my, I`ve gone cross-eyed! But to be honest, I wouldn`t like that either, I feel it makes him too powerful. Don`t get me wrong, I want Superman to be powerful. But there should be limits. Instead: He`s holding her body in his arms. Superman: "Lois... please... don`t be dead..." (He COULD try to bring her back with CPR. But maybe he`ll accidentally crush her chest with his superstrength or destroy her lungs with his breath? You could argue that he has learned to control his power and hold it back. Yes, but in this scene he`s in a very emotional state. Is he stable enough to control himself that much?) There is silence for a moment... Then: ba-bump! He hears her heartbeat! she`s alive! She regains consciousness and he takes her to the nearest hospital. This shows that despite his god-likeness there are limits to what he can do. Maybe not perfect, maybe it lacks something, but at least it makes sense. Superman II Donner had a different vision of Superman 2 than the one that ended up on the big screen. However, due to off-screen problems between Donner and the producers over shooting schedule and final cut privileges, Donner (who had shot roughly 75% of the movie) was replaced by Richard Lester (who had to shoot 51% of the film in order to get directors credit). I still like the film but I have to admit it lacks a little of what could have made it great in some areas. Zod being amazed by so many things on Earth. I know, Earth and Krypton are two different planets, but still. He could understand what some things are even if they are different from Krypton. Like when he lands in a lake and goes: "strange surface". What? You don`t have lakes on Krypton? Then again, from what I saw of Krypton I don`t remember seeing any, so maybe they don`t. But at one point in Krypton`s history they must`ve had lakes and oceans, right? Not to mention that he`s confused that humans don`t have superpowers. Less of scenes like these. Zod`s telekinesis powers Not poor writing, just a personal opinion of mine. I like it better if all Kryptonians`s powers are limited to the ones Superman usually has. So away with it. That stupid STUPID kid at niagara falls Now this is poor writing. I know that it`s necessary for Superman to save someone so that Lois can get suspicious, but does it have to be in such a stupid way? The kid could have been leaning to get a glimpse of/trying to photograph something and lost his balance, and he could have been on the right side of the rails! (I assume they`re called rails,correct me if I´m wrong, english is my second language.) Not perfect but at least it makes him look like less of a Darwin-award nominee. Real kids are smarter than him... I hope. That female Daily Planet employee Remember the woman who said that the other ones were just as strong as superman? The way she said it made me think she was gonna turn out to be Nelson Muntz in disguise who mocks Lois for rooting on the losing team. She could have said it like: "Oh my god... The other ones are just as strong as Superman!" As if she`s aware that if Supes loses, everyone on Earth is doomed... including her. I know, it`s a small scene, but still. The unnecessarily thrown-in "comedic" moments during the big fight The producers seemed to have thought "this is based on a comic, as in comical. Let`s force in some comedy!" You know scenes like when the man eats an ice cream and it blows away, and the man who tries to make a phonecall and still stays on the phone even when the phonebooth he`s in gets obliterated. Away with scenes like those! Superman throwing the giant "S"-shield and the holographic doubles People think of the "S"-shield thing as another Superpower, but it doesn`t have to be, it could have been a thing that he had prepared. However, since we never find out if it was a power or not and it didn`t really change much, I`d say: loose it. The holographic doubles: From what I remember (correct me if I`m wrong) this is supposed to be a superpower. Why didn`t he use this in other scenes? I would change it to: Supes and Zod and the others fighting each other by moving around quickly with super-speed. The amnesia kiss Added superpower and lazy writing. Instead of Supes erasing Lois`s memory because she can`t handle that Clark is Superman, how about: She feels that having this knowledge is hard, but she can handle it. It would be more mature that way than to reset everything to status qou. Good performance by Margot Kidder though. Superman III Richard Donner was not involved in the making of this movie. Richard Lester was the one in the director`s chair, and the small seeds that hinted the direction of where this franchise was going in the second movie had blossomed to their full potential in this one. (If you can call it "potential".) In this case I don`t feel that it`s enough to list a few points like the previous ones. I`d change most of the plot. Bad guy Since Superman fought a computer in the climax I`d pick Brainiac as the villain. Since it came out 1983 I`d go with the pre-crisis version of him. Plot Earth is visited by an extra terrestrial A.I. that comes in peace, to gather information about us and then leave to continue it`s fact-finding mission (yes, I know, it`s a lot like that episode from that animated series). The A.I. (Brainiac) exposes Supes to a radiation that makes him evil. Some of Earth`s population put their trust in Brainiac since Supes has lost it. Eventually Supes manage to defeat his bad side in a junkyard (I liked that scene so I`m keeping it) and goes to battle Brainiac who, after being defeated, flees back into space. Subplot Since Lois was mostly absent from the third movie she`ll get more screen time in my version. She thinks it`s a bit much to be Supes girlfriend so she leaves Clark to date a more earthbound man. (But she has no trouble keeping his secret though, just so you know.) There could be some scenes where the three meet that could be a little funny but also a litte sad. However, in the end Lois realizes that she still loves Clark and goes back to him. Superman IV: The Quest for Peace This movie was not directed by Richard Lester or produced by Ilya and Alexander Salkind. It didn`t make it any better though. I still kinda liked this movie more than III though. Partly because of it`s so bad it`s goodness but also because it felt more like a Superman movie than a Richard Pryor movie. Still bad though. First... NO CHINESE WALL RESTORING VISION! Nuff said. Lenny Luthor Remove most, if not all of his goofiness or replace him with miss Teschmacher or come up some other assistant of Lex. Lex breaking out of prison Instead of Luthor being freed because the two guards wanted to see what it was like to sit in an expensive car: Have Lenny/miss Teschmacher/new character come flying in with a jetpack, give Lex an extra jetpack that he/she was carrying and have them both fly away together. Badguy Since Nuclear Man was a clone of Superman I`d use Bizarro. The thing with Bizarro though is that he`s not much of a villain. Wether he`s evil or (trying to be) good he`s always mentally slow. Therefore he could be like Frankensteins monster. He may not be as threatening as Nuclear man, but at least he`s 3-dimensional. So technically, the biggest villain in this scenario would still be Lex. Bizarro would just be an obstacle. Also: He wouldn`t be solar powered. Subplots Clark`s mom would be very old but Lana could be helping her take care of the farm. So that scene where a man wants to buy Clark`s farm but he refuses because he only wants to sell to a real farmer wouldn`t be necessary. Since Lois remembers Clarks secret identity in this hypothetical movie and they`ve gotten back together there`s no point in having that scene with the "double date" with her, Clark/Superman and Lacy. This would give more room to Lois`s conflict with David Warfield over what he`s done to Daily Planet, and in some cases she`d have to have this conflict with Lacy Warfield. Plot After Lex escapes from prison he and Lenny/miss Teschmacher/new character gets a hair sample from Supes just like they did in the movie. But they create him in a lab in Lex`s HQ (no rockets in the sun). Lex fills the clone`s head with knowledge through a subliminal "teaching-helmet". The clone is at first a perfect duplicate of Supes but then turns all Bizarro-y. Lex calls him "bizarre" and adds "Oh!" as in "Oh. What the hell am I gonna do with it now!?" But realizes he can still have use for him. Bizarro causes disasters, fights Supes and wins the first round (Beginners luck?). Supes manages got get a piece of Bizarro`s hair during the fight. He gives it to Prof: Phineas Potter (a friend of Supes in the silver age comics) to analyze. Later Bizarro slowly developes a conscience. Round 2: Supes wears a protection suit and tries to use a bit of kryptonite on Bizarro. (It`s the rock that Lex used in the first movie.) Supes gave it to scientists to use against him if he turns evil again like in the third movie (Continuity!). It doesn`t work on Bizarro, they fight. Their battle puts people in danger, Supes has to temporarily incapacitate Bizarro and help them. Bizarro sees how Supes cares about others and then leaves. It ends in a draw. Round 3: Prof Potter has, by comparing Bizarro`s dna with Supes and analyzing how ordinary kryptonite affects Supe`s dna, created blue Kryptonite. Supes uses it against Bizarro. In their fight, civilians are put in danger. Supes try to keep them safe. Bizarro, even though he`s weakened, helps him. They see that they are not enemies and Bizarro turns on Lex who tries to destroy him and sends him to an ambiguous death. In the climax Lex puts on a super-armor-suit, battles Supes, loses and goes back to jail. It is hinted that Bizarro is still alive and travelling the world, trying to do good. In my version there`s no "Supes gets rid of nuclear weapons", but I hope the subplot with Bizarro`s inner journey is enough to make it feel that there are enough plot-lines. Superman Returns After being absent from the big screen for 19 years, Superman (much like the title says) returned to a world with new actors, a bigger budget and digital effects. Directed by Bryan Singer, it completely ignored the last two movies and was a big love letter to Richard Donner`s Superman movies. And it wasn`t very successful. People were not very keen on Supes having a kid with Lois (based on a scene from Richard Donner`s cut of Superman II where Supes and Lois have some nekkid action after he`s given up his powers). Plus Lex`s evil plan was pretty much the same plan he had in the first movie, except with more kryptonite. Lots and lots and lots of kryptonite. How I would have done it.

Plot Supes returns to Earth after having been out in space for a few years, searching for the leftovers of Krypton. His mom is now dead and the farm (like in the last movie) is being taken care of by Lana. She`s glad that he`s back and thinks that he should take care of the farm now because she has plans for her own life and she`s engaged to Pete Ross. Since Supes never found what he hoped to find in space Lana thinks he should try to focus on his life on Earth. Lois is dating a guy (and if there has to be a kid in this movie he/she should be the child of the guy that Lois is dating) and Lex is out of prison. I`d keep the part about Lois writing the "Why the world doesn`t need Superman" article and the part where Supes prevents the plane from crashing. When Supes travelled in space an alien being noticed him and tracked him to earth. Early in the movie Lex seems to be the main bad guy, but then it turns out to be the alien that followed Supes to Earth, and it should be... Mongul! You may ask: "Why not Darkseid?" For the same reason the Avengers didn`t fight Thanos in their first movie, he should come later. Supes fights Mongul and gets unexpected help from Lex who uses his high-tech weapons against the threat. Mongul is defeated and Supes and Lex are celebrated as heroes. Supes however doesn`t believe that Lex has changed, that the heroic act is just for show (and he`s right). Lois leaves the guy she`s dating but doesn`t go back to Supes (at least not yet). Meanwhile: elsewhere, a man is watching the celebration on a big computer-screen (he`s seen from behind and the computer-screen is the only light source in the room). There`s a butler standing next to him. They`re in a cave. With bats. (Sequel-bait!) And those are my ideas. They`re not perfect but I hope they`re not bad.        

Have to go now. I have to fight a giant metal spider for some reason.

[fatphrodite]

you’re not an advice blog or anything but i just like the vibe you give off so maybe you’ll understand my problem? i’m a fat girl who feels like i’m not “correctly” fat, you know? like, my face is fat and my hands are chubby and our bodies are similar but you’re just a million times more beautiful than i am. do you ever feel that way, or do you know what i mean? my body just naturally IS this way and i don’t know how to feel better about it.

I wish I could respond to asks like this with something obvious and concise that could fit on a bumper sticker, but I feel compelled to touch on the weird messy tangled super tangential psychology which results in these kind of feelings, maybe in an attempt to help people who feel this way also get to the root causes and deconstruct them. I want to be thorough and wholly understood, and candid about my own experience! but i’ll spare mobile users by putting everything under a cut.

i rarely feel the sensation of seeing someone who looks like me, thinking theyre beautiful, while thinking i am not, anymore, and that has a lot to do with rewiring my brain over the years. instead i see someone who looks like me and I think theyre hot then my brain’s response is “if (theyreHot) {me=Hot;}" BEEP BOOP

I do still sometimes feel “incorrectly” fat because...…. im covered in old stretchmarks, my boobs sag, my belly sags, even my arms sag, im riddled with cellulite, my face is chubby and I have a double chin. the feeling of being “incorrectly” fat is absolutely the result of a definite beauty standard even in spaces that have an alternative ideal to our overall society’s beauty standard. we’ve all been poisoned aight, standards are being reinforced everywhere, like even the actual chunky/fat plus size models, who aren't just straight-sized models with padding, don't have double chins. even though youd be hard pressed to find an average person their size without one. popular plus sized Instagram models have the “acceptable” amount of cellulite, do NOT have fat faces, tend to be the “acceptable” hour glass shape naturally and/or get liposuction to be “idealized plus size” in the body and in the face. so how do you accept your body when youre unconsciously consuming constant reinforcement that it has “flaws” and have consumed that reinforcement for decades?

I think the answer is going to vary from person to person, and for me it varies even moment to moment. There are moments where the only way to cease those thoughts is remembering that this vessel DOES NOT EXIST for visual consumption, it DOES EXIST for piloting me thru Disney world + experiencing the tastiest of foods, and as long as I can do that, nothing else matters. which is you know, objectively true,  but I also do very much have a strong desire to FEEL pretty, to FEEL acceptable, to FIT IN THE BEAUTY STANDARD, because of so many years of being punched down and made to feel inherently ugly/unacceptable. It’s hard to feel pretty and accepted not only because mainstream society sees your body as inherently ugly, but also you simultaneously feel like youre not even ideal in the realm where youre “supposed” to be ideal (such as fat admiration communities). 

So these are the things which continue to help me accept myself, my perceived “flaws”, and feel good about myself -- 

 : focusing on surrounding myself with imagery of beautiful fat people who share the traits that fall outside of the existing plus size beauty standard. I intentionally avoid reblogging too many irl plus sized people with thin faces, super perky rounded fat, smooth hourglass shapes, minimal cellulite, flat tummies, because I don't want to reinforce those toxic ideals for my followers OR my own subconscious. as a side note, I also enjoy makeup and makeup videos and I gravitate towards makeup youtubers with rounder faces and plus sized bodies, like smokey glow and rawbeautykristi, like damn i can be glamorous with a beat face AND have a double chin! it also helps that theyre both entertaining AF to watch and listen to.  

 : involving myself in an FA/fat positive community. whether that's posting pictures of myself or dating or otherwise engaging with people in the community. as ive said before you should not hinge self esteem on other peoples opinions of you, but when you believe you as a whole or some trait you have is inherently ugly or unacceptable, having verifiable proof to the contrary, in the form of other peoples opinions, can aid in rewiring your brain to think more positively about yourself. I personally can assure everytime *I* see a double chin or chubby hands (among several other specific traits) it makes my heart flutter because of the cuteness. no matter what shape, fat distribution, whatever your vessel exists in, there are hundreds and thousands of people who will genuinely, wholeheartedly remind you how lovely it is, and many more out there who look like you who want to be able to see themselves represented as a figure of beauty (if that at all makes sense). Parts of me that were once difficult to accept or I used to overly-criticize have become either things that no longer even cross my mind or things that are specifically viewed as attractive/positive traits because of community involvement. and on that note, straight up I would never date like, a normie, and by that I mean someone who doesn't love fat bodies. special, positive, loving attention towards the parts you've been conditioned to think are wrong or conditioned to be ashamed of, is healing. I could not be with someone who liked/was attracted to me despite my body.

 : therapy. this solution may not apply to you at ALL or you may not realize that it applies to you. it depends on the degree to which you struggle with self image. you might not even know you have something like body dysmorphic disorder (which will cause things like hyperfocus on perceived traits) or you might not realize youre committing self harm (mentally bullying yourself, scrolling through Instagram/social media to torture yourself, starving yourself/overexercise, obsessive mirror checking and self-criticizing, among other behavior). the things ive already said can also aid you in stopping these types of self harm (personal experience: unfollowing/blocking any social media that i used to torture myself, fat positive/FA communities helped me to stop exercising myself to death, wg/eating kinks helped with eating disorders) and i know there are quite a few other people who have healed from doing similar things. 

something specific id like to note about my experience with therapy and the concept of self acceptance. a piece of advice given out by a LOT of fat bloggers to aid self confidence is “fake it til you make it” right. and that's also like, a version of a real thing I learned in real therapy. shutting out negative thoughts and replacing them with a contrary, positive mantra until your brain rewires, until you believe it. its a tool you can use in accepting the parts you struggle to accept, and beyond the neutral implication of that, glorifying them. the human brain has an interesting reaction to repetition. the more you repeat something the more you believe it. whether that's something negative or something positive. its a lesson to keep in mind even if therapy isn't something you want or need. 

[possiblyimbiassed]

When did Sherlock actually OD?

The idea that we’re in Sherlock’s head in S4 has been discussed extensively before, at first by the brilliant people who came up with the EMP theory, later by me (X, X, X, X, X) and by a lot of others. But this interesting post from @the-signs-of-two providing new clues that "Sherlock is in his mind palace throughout S4 while overdosing”, with additions from @sarahthecoat and @gosherlocked, among others, made me want to focus a bit more on Sherlock’s overdose on drugs and some thoughts around that. This meta is not about the multiple mirrors, metaphors, codes and symbolism we see in BBC Sherlock (which have been discussed even more extensively), but rather about what plausible explanations there might be for the increasing absurdity of it.

Messed-up timeline and lack of logics

First of all, I think the timeline of this show is warped, at the very least from HLV and onwards. And actually, there seems to be some hints about this as well, for example these words by Mr and Mrs Welsborough in TST:

And of course, if the events in S4 only happened inside Sherlock’s head, there literally never was such a time. At least not in the order that the events are presented to us. Some big chunks of this story seems to be missing, while others have switched places with each other in time, making a complete, absurd mess of it all. (And I do believe this is all done intentionally by the screen-writers, to distract the audience from what’s actually going on.) After TSoT the narrative is no longer presented in a comprehensible order. But this would also mean that some apparently absurd things we see in S4 might have actually happened before that, albeit in another, more logical, context. And maybe they weren’t even presented to us that way, right? My point is: some things that appear as non sequiturs in S4 just might make more sense in another time frame. So let’s explore that.

An example of the first case, with important, missing time chunks: We’re not privy to what happened after Sherlock nearly died for the second time in HLV, when his heart stopped after the “Watson domestic scene” in 221B. 

We only see him show up at his parents’ house at Christmas, supposedly after several months of recovery in hospital. As if the dying protagonist’s condition in between these time windows wasn’t even important. And ‘Mary’, who nearly killed Sherlock the first time and then threatened to finish the job, is now invited to celebrate Christmas with Sherlock’s family as if nothing, apparently meant to reconcile with John. But these scenes are mixed up in time with the domestic quarrel and the scenes where Sherlock sets up a trap to reveal ‘Mary’s true intentions to John. This confusion of timelines makes us totally miss the moment when we should have thought “wait a minute - what happened with the murder attempt against the show’s main character?” It was, of course, never logical, as @gosherlocked pointed out in this addition, that Sherlock was now defending ’Mary’s murder attempt, claiming instead that it was life-saving. 

We never get to see how and when Sherlock came to this absurd conclusion, though, we merely see some confusing ‘deductions’ about how a gun-shot can be “surgery” because it’s not a head-shot, or about who must have called the ambulance. These ‘deductions’ have logical errors like causal fallacies and the “slippery slope fallacy”. I once wrote a meta about Sherlock’s lack of logics in HLV and onwards. Something seems to have been blocking his usually brilliant thought process - was it the IV-morphine against the pain in his chest wound? But it had already worn off, hadn’t it?

And neither was it logical, I’d say, that John’s wife had suddenly turned into someone like The Spider of TBB; a facade-climbing ninja committing murders in high buildings. Or that a critically wounded and newly operated Sherlock would be capable of climbing out of his hospital window, stealing the wheelchair and IV-drip on his way and setting up a trap for ’Mary’ in another part of town. And, in the mean time, even place a perfume bottle as a hint to John in 221B. Is he Superman or what?

Another example of missing chunks of time is between TLD and TFP, where we never get to know what actually happened after Eurus shot John in the face. 

A smoking gun, followed by nothing, and in TFP we then learn that apparently the shooting was just done with a tranquilizer. Why? We’re never told.

And yet another: When did Sherlock manage to get out of his heavy drug abuse in TLD? 221B was turned into a meth lab and Sherlock was so addicted that he had to inject right before talking to the kids in a hospital. His friends had to take turns babysitting him, but apparently he could just snap out of it off-screen? We never got to know how this worked, that part is also missing. 

The thing is, from HLV and onwards, neither Sherlock or John seems to have any normal human limitations. They go through fatal situations, where any real person would be bound to either die or be hospitalised, but afterwards they just carry on as if nothing, and any time frame containing real concern about the consequences to their life and health is simply left out.

Time inconsistencies in Sherlock Holmes is nothing new, though; already some of ACD’s canon stories have them (which would be of no surprise, considering that he wrote those stories during several decades, so I imagine it must have been difficult to recall all former events in a perfectly logical order). But ACD’s inconsistencies are minor, I’d say. BBC Sherlock, on the other hand, displays an increasing level of absurdity, at least from TEH. 

So - when did it happen?

I think many of us feel pretty convinced that S4 happens inside Sherlock’s head, since this would explain all the logical problems mentioned above. But it’s still difficult to pinpoint exactly when he was actually trapped in there - the “point of no return” - since there are weird elements in this show already from ASiP. That’s why I think we’re seeing the show from Sherlock’s perspective from start; we’re in his head, and whenever it get’s a bit too weird it’s because he’s fantasizing things, reconstructing scenarios on his Mind Stage. This is how Sherlock Holmes’s puzzle solving usually works; it’s his MO. But there’s a difference between Sherlock recalling and dramatizing events in his head - while reading John’s blog - that have actually happened, and Sherlock making stuff up entirely inside his head. Events that aren’t confirmed by anyone else.

In TAB we’re outright told that the Victorian scenes we see were happening inside Sherlock’s Mind Palace: 

A fantasy, thus. But we’re also told that the Victorian scenes are the product of Sherlock having overdosed on a cocktail of drugs, within the five minutes it took for the plane to take off and then land again:

But this time frame doesn’t make sense, as John points out:

OK Mycroft, fine, but was there even a plane? And if Sherlock was kept imprisoned and isolated before this supposed plane ride, when could he have got the opportunity to take the drugs? As I said in an addition to @the-signs-of-two‘s post, I don’t believe Sherlock’s OD actually happened in TAB, because TAB isn’t ’real’ and never was. It’s all taking place in Sherlock’s head, even the modern scene on the plane above, which is eventually followed by Sherlock, Mycroft and Greg witnessing a skeleton coming to life, and immediately after that scene this:

And I also highly doubt there ever was any ’deportation’ of Sherlock to Eastern Europe after having murdered Magnussen, because that scenario is absurd in and off itself. It would be much more likely to be part of a drug-induced dream separated from reality. Just think about it: would Sherlock Holmes shoot someone in the head rather than try to solve the problem? And would he do this to protect someone who had shot and almost killed him? And Mycroft, who is ’constantly worried’ about his brother’s welfare and drug addiction, would he send him off to a certain death rather than prison? No - just no; none of those things makes an iota of sense, and nor have they any similarity to ACD canon.

But knowing that Sherlock is indeed a drug-addict (like in canon) and probably also heart-broken after John’s wedding, I think it’s still likely that he actually did OD at some point. The drugs could well have lead to him being comatose and locked inside his own mind for a much longer time than his usual MP visits. The question is when he did it, though. Because if HLV and TAB are too weird to actually have happened, if they represent Sherlock’s drug-induced dream scenarios, then when did he actually overdose? Well, I think Mycroft has the answer:

If there never was any week of imprisonment in HLV, because HLV is all Mind Palace, when is this ‘solitary confinement’ most likely to have occurred? 

Well, John’s honeymoon is rather likely to have lasted about a week, isn’t it? On the very final comments on the blog we see how desperately lonely Sherlock feels when John is on “sex holiday” with ‘Mary’:

In other words: he’s spending a week of solitary confinement in 221B. A week when Sherlock could have resorted to drug abuse, turning his own flat into a drug den. But this is also pretty much exactly what we see in TLD, isn’t it? When John has stopped visiting or even talking to him, Sherlock is isolating himself in 221B, high as a kite, preparing drugs in the kitchen, reciting Shakespeare, shooting pictures of Culverton Smith and believing he’s walking on the wall: 

What if similar things to these actually did happen, but in another time frame, right after the wedding, resulting in an overdose? Far more logical and likely than the weird narrative of TLD, in my opinion.

After the wedding in TSoT, the next time we see Sherlock (HLV) John finds him in a drug den - with green tiles like 221B’s kitchen. We learn from Kate, Isaac Whitney’s mother, that this is a place where people “shoot up”. John asks for the exact address, but we never get to know it... And even if Sherlock claims that he’s there for a case (Magnussen), later in 221B he admits that he is indeed high.

But the main reason I believe that the OD happened right after the wedding is that this was exactly when John’s blog stopped updating. Since the blog is an external factor, written by John, it simply can’t be reflecting Sherlock’s version of the events. Until he hacks it and takes over the blog after the wedding. I think this symbolizes that Sherlock has now completely taken over the narrative (which is also manifested in S4, with John typing things on a jpg file in TST which we never see published, and people believing it’s Sherlock’s blog in TLD). 

Up to this point, the narrative has been - broadly speaking - consistent with John’s version on the blog. But then Sherlock takes over and the blog stops updating. Which might mean that John is having far more pressing issues on his mind than writing on his blog - the issue of waiting by a comatose Sherlock’s hospital bed. 

In the mean time, the weirdness takes absurd proportions, because the story is no longer reflecting ’real’ events described by the blog. The ’new’ things that happen are rather parts of drug-induced dream scenarios after Sherlock’s OD I believe, as literally shown in TAB. I think these dream scenarios are made up by a mix of re-cycled elements from Sherlock’s own memories of actual events, mostly from his adult life in episode 1-8, and Sherlock’s imagination of places where he’s never been. But I also believe that the ’real’ Sherlock is hospitalized and comatose after his OD, which sometimes bleeds through in HLV, TAB and S4. So the number one thing I expect to see happen in S5 is Sherlock finally waking up to reality instead of being trapped in his own variant of Dystopia; a reality where he finally gets the opportunity to face the truth about him and John.

Tagging some people who might be interested: @the-signs-of-two @sarahthecoat @ebaeschnbliah @sagestreet @raggedyblue @gosherlocked @elldotsee @spenglernot @loveismyrevolution