#it feels like natural progression

[cherrysnax]

I love Peter Parker right? kill him. Kill him to death. let him be dead fr there is no point in continuing his story if they’re just gonna disrespect his character like this over and over again

[throwthisawayplease]

i firmly believe that if hannibal was made in a post ofmd society will and hannibal would’ve been riding each other bare back on prime time tv…

[caffeinatedopossum]

I actually find it really bizarre and counter intuitive that clinically speaking, you cannot legally be diagnosed with a personality disorder until you're at least 18. The reason given for this is because "the personality has not fully developed before this age" like ???

Ah yes, my favorite strategy. Not diagnosing the problem until it's already been virtually cemented into your brain for life! Wouldn't it be easier (and more painless) to address the problem before it's fully developed?

[canisalbus]

Hello! I hope I won't sour your mood with this ask but I have been thinking a lot about your gay dogs this month especially.

I'll just try to keep the context short but in general I'm someone that has accepted being romantically undesireable. It was hard but in the end I have built my life just around me, my humble family and at this point in time I don't even think I have the time for a partner. And considering that it's the love month and a lot of people are preparing to celebrate it with their SOs I assumed that, actually, this is a thing that I sort of have in common with Machete.

From the miscellaneous lore on your profile I see Machete as someone that also has kind of rejected love. That also has built his life around his job, possibly hobbies, his family or mentors (depending if we're talking about canon or modern au). Who kind of forgot that relationships are a thing and that people bond with others in that way. Well, at least he did until meeting Vasco.

I just love thinking about their awkward beginnings. Machete being 100% sure that Vasco is just joking, maybe even sometimes teasing him (in a friendly banter type way) or just explaining to himself that all that kindness and interest is just him being a very considerate friend. And then we have Vasco that just tries to be subtle, as if he was trying to pass a fawn without it noticing and running away, but also with time gains confidence and tries more risque moves. Vasco being all smug and Machete being flustered when their hands or shoulders or tails brush in passing. And then when both are sure of their feelings we have Machete who has to choose between God and his love. Who, at first, unwillingly accepts that divine wrath will be worth their brief love.

I just love your boys. I swear they are all the love supply one might possibly need

Thank you for such a long and thoughtful message! I don't know why you thought you might accidentally sour my mood, I'm utterly delighted whenever I hear that someone has been pondering my little guys (rotating them in their head, as they say), and when they go through the trouble of sharing their findings and conclusions I'm so happy I could crawl up a wall.

I think you deciphered Machete's inner workings very well, especially those of the original canon version. The concept of love is of course prominent in Christianity, so even as a kid being raised in a religious environment that discouraged overt displays of affection and close personal bonds, Machete wasn't completely alienated from it. But it has always been a nebulous, unperceivable and unattainable thing for him. When he was old enough to lock down his career choice he readily accepted he'd never have romantic relationships, spouse or a family, and I think he must've been too young and socially inexperienced to think of it as a significant loss. Either he consciously blocked out the need for companionship by studying and working like his life depended on it, or he didn't really consider that being genuinely befriended, appreciated and loved as a person instead of a respectable and competent authority figure was even an option for him, at least not until Vasco came along.

[steppesliver]

true detective: the long bright dark / disco elysium: jamais vu (derealization)

[koetjingwarrd]

You're my baby, say it to me...

[six-of-cringe]

"haha wylan walks in on jesper kissing the wrong guy" yes funny but moving on, have you ever wondered why Wylan was up there in the first place. Because the last he'd seen of Jesper was him being yelled at by Colm to explain what was going on or Colm would "tan your hide so bad you won't be able to sit down for two weeks". Everyone else finds Jesper getting full government-named very funny, but to Wylan this threat would not seem empty - that is just what happens when sons make mistakes. Consider that he wanted to check on Jesper, to see if he was alright, because though it's not really addressed directly, the story gives us several moments of Wylan not trusting Colm and trying to "protect" Jesper from him. Wylan had been isolated to the point where he only knew one father-son relationship, or even one relationship at all, which was between him and Van Eck. Why would he trust Colm? Maybe he just wandered into the room for a silly plot convenience, but I think he was there to assess the damage and be there for Jesper in case the thing that happens between fathers and their sons happened to him.

[talesfromthebandgeekmafia]

Every time Aabria Iyengar steps into the dome she creates something that makes me fall in love with the wonder and possibility of ttrpgs all over again

[werepires]

Sometimes I forget Misha got eyelid surgery done but then there’s a con and I’m like why is he staring at me like that

[kuruk]

I love people I think I've been one for a very long time or perhaps the opposite

[fantasmagoriam]

Ready for a new adventure!

[kareenvorbarra]

upset about arnheid vinlandsaga again today so i reread some of her scenes and i'm still marveling at how well her storyline was executed. i have literally no complaints about how the author handles her situation; even her death doesn't feel like she was done wrong by the narrative (though i would be more invested if she was still alive). she has real interiority and complex motivations and she's written with such delicasy and sympathy that you can tell that the author understands her. basically every other character in this arc can be judged by how they treat arnheid - thorfinn and einar's ride-or-die solidarity for a fellow slave who has treated them both with kindness, snake clearly seeing her as a person despite his respect for the status quo and anger over the deaths of his men, the petty cruelty of ketil's wife (which could never escalate to the level of what ketil is capable of), ketil treating her relatively well as long as she dedicates herself entirely to his pleasure and then beating her to death in a rage when she tries to escape with another man

lots of characters judge her harshly for her actions (to ketil's wife she's ungrateful, to snake's men she's spoiled and selfish, to ketil she's a traitor) but the protagonists never do. thorfinn respects her resilience and pragmatism in the face of suffering, understands on some level the violence she's endured. einar values her friendship, he asks her what she wants and does everything he can to help her with whatever she chooses to do. they refuse to leave her behind in a war zone when she might be dying. they steal her from a man who will surely hurt her again if she lives. she's an ordinary woman, suffering a very brutal but mundane kind of violence, and for a little while she's the most important character in this story.

[creative-hanyou-girl]

I love the fact that Inukag is an enemies-> (best) friends-> lovers kind of ship.

Just enemies-> lovers ships simply don't hit right most of the time.

[obsessivefangirl]

"Stan favors Mabel and Ford Dipper" WRONG!!!

[timetheatre]

the way loki makes it clear to everyone except sylvie that he cares for her is getting to be more than a little frustrating. he talks so much to anyone who will listen about finding sylvie and then when he does all he talks about is his mission - which is important, obviously, but how do you go from "i just want you to be okay" to... this

[cookinguptales]

And now here’s the hard one... *sighs* Nandor and Freddie.

Nandor’s always been a tough nut to crack, but even for him, 4.09 was a lot.

I think we can all agree that he has some reasons for going after Freddie that he does not care to examine (and likely never will) but... yeah, pinning those down is harder. I don’t believe he would have given Freddie a second thought if he had not currently been dating Guillermo, but beyond that...

I wanna start with that game of charades they were playing and the way that Nandor was using Guillermo’s watch to time the Freddies. Or rather... he used Guillermo’s wrist, which was wearing the watch. He could have removed the watch or used Guillermo’s phone or something, but he instead chose to take possession of Guillermo’s actual physical body during a game that involved reading each other’s body language. (And Guillermo, of course, was so distracted and so used to Nandor manhandling him that he didn’t really react much to this.)

The most obvious (and fun) reading of this was Nandor subconsciously staking a claim on Guillermo’s physical body. I think you actually see this several times throughout the episode, but it’s definitely at its most obvious here. Nandor was practically peeing on him with that casual use of Guillermo’s arm.

What I think is more interesting, though, was how little Nandor thought of what he was doing, and how little Guillermo reacted. It was almost as if he were looking at a watch on his own arm. And I think that’s really the key to understanding what was going on in this episode. Nandor, to some degree, has come to see Guillermo as an extension of himself. A part of him that is his to use and manipulate just like he might his own limbs. He really has come to see Guillermo as his literal right hand.

And then Guillermo shows up with this man whom Nandor has never met. The annoying British embodiment of the life that Guillermo still insists on having outside of Nandor’s purview. The life that Nandor has been shown to be getting more and more resentful of throughout the season.

He immediately tries to put himself between the two of them, both physically and through his words, and like... of course he misreads his jealousy as wanting Freddie. Of course he does.

But in other ways, it’s not really a misreading at all. Guillermo is a part of him that Nandor feels entitled to and Nandor is greedy for all the things in Guillermo’s life. He hates the lines that still divide the two of them. Nandor is frustrated that Guillermo won’t tell him about his family or the things that he does. Nandor tries to monopolize all of Guillermo’s time so he can sort of take that life from him. And then he takes Freddie, too.

I think the truth here is that Nandor wanted Freddie because Guillermo wanted Freddie. Some of it was a power thing, wanting to prove that he was “better” than Guillermo and could steal this person away from him, and some of it was that... well, Nandor values what Guillermo values. Guillermo likes this person, therefore he must be great, therefore Nandor wants him as well. It was literally the act of Guillermo loving him that made him valuable to Nandor. (And I noticed that as soon as Guillermo rejected Freddie 2, Nandor ditched him.) It was literally the act of Guillermo having him that made Nandor want to have him as well. And it was Guillermo loving something else at all that made Nandor want to steal him.

Nandor didn’t ask for the Djinn to give him a version of Freddie that wasn’t dating Guillermo because he needed to prove to himself that he could steal him. He needed to prove that in this, he and Guillermo were the same. Were equal. That he could make Freddie love him, too. He could make this man a part of his life, too. He could take away this embodiment of the life that Guillermo lived outside of him and make it his own.

I think that Guillermo realized this immediately, actually. I’m not sure if he picked up on the jealousy, exactly, but he definitely realized that Nandor was being invasive here. He wanted to force Guillermo to share all aspects of his life with him, including his new boyfriend. Nandor very literally was not allowing Guillermo to have “one thing of [his] own”.

Like... Guillermo did not come at this from the angle of “you wanted to hurt me” or “you wanted to steal someone’s boyfriend” or “you actually like Freddie”. He realized that this was about Nandor wanting to have everything that Guillermo has, every single part of his life, as a way of claiming him. Weirdly, Nandor dating Guillermo’s boyfriend was another way of him showing possession of Guillermo.

I think that Guillermo is consciously registering this as Nandor’s ego, as needing to be the center of attention at all times, and that’s probably true, too! But... yeah, Guillermo, Nandor is doing this because he wants to crawl inside your fucking skin.

What’s most fascinating to me, though, is that Guillermo and Nandor react to Freddie the same way. Like, Freddie is not a fucking catch. He’s narcissistic, he’s self-involved, and his niceness is not the same thing as kindness or genuine interest in others’ feelings. But that bland sort of niceness that he has about him is something that both Guillermo and Nandor latch onto because it’s something they’re so unused to receiving themselves. Sure, they both love each other and exchange kindnesses, but... It’s not the same as someone just straight-up telling you you’re a good boy, if you get me.

And Freddie, he doesn’t care. Those compliments mean nothing to him. But they mean everything to both Guillermo and Nandor. There’s an easiness to being with Freddie that doesn’t force either of them to confront their own issues. It’s not a thorny, obsessive love like what they share for each other. He’s pablum, but there’s a reason why pablum’s always been easy to digest.

So I think... the worst part, perhaps, of Nandor’s behavior in this episode is that, y’know, okay. He’s obsessive, he’s egocentric, he’s prone to a lil bit of pillaging, either of ancestral villages or his best friend’s boyfriend. But he’s also lonely. Like really, desperately lonely, and for something that he can’t quite seem to articulate. (It’s Guillermo, you fucking dumbass, it’s always been Guillermo.) 

And he keeps trying to fill that loneliness with increasingly fucked-up relationships (like genuinely, every single one gets worse) but it never works because he’s approaching it from the wrong angle and then... he sees Guillermo. And Guillermo seems so happy. And that hurts, but he can’t figure out why. All he knows is that he wants that. He wants to feel the way this relationship makes Guillermo feel. He wants to have that normal, easy, simple love. He wants someone to laugh with him and compliment him and bring him flowers.

And... he thinks that Freddie is the key. That Freddie is the part of this equation he’s been needing. That Freddie is some magical loneliness cure. And again, he gives up all the good things he has in the service of something he’s convinced will be better. (Nandor, as always, is the type to think the grass is greener on the other side without bothering to water his own lawn.) He gives up Marwa, and that’s easy for him. But he sacrifices his relationship with Guillermo, too, and he realizes immediately that’s not something he’s willing to trade.

I think the actual key point to Nandor’s actions in this episode is when he offers Freddie to Guillermo. It’s... a little unclear if he wanted Guillermo to have him or if he wanted to share him, but I think that’s what makes it really obvious here that this was never about Freddie. He doesn’t really seem to care about giving Freddie up here or how Freddie might care about the situation. He only cares about making Guillermo stop being so damn sad.

(And, moreover, he wants Guillermo to stop making him feel so guilty. “Stop saying things I have done!” indeed, Nandor.)

And in the end, he gives Freddie up so Guillermo will stop being upset with him. Not because he really has come to true realizations about Marwa or Freddie or why he’s doing any of this. But because Guillermo made him feel bad and he doesn’t want to feel bad and he doesn’t want to make Guillermo feel bad, either. He gave up his Freddie with the intention that Guillermo would keep his own Freddie and only one of them would have a Freddie. He was surrendering that part of Guillermo’s life back to him.

Of course, it didn’t turn out that way, but... Nandor was willing to sacrifice a little bit of his own possessiveness so Guillermo could actually be happy. He was willing to give up at least one of his dumbass happiness schemes, even though it kind of was making him happy, because his happiness was coming at the expense of Guillermo’s own. And when Guillermo was unhappy, so was he.

It’s... not exactly real emotional fluency, but it’s getting closer. It was an oddly kind thing for him to do, even if he still doesn’t fully understand his own motivations and in the end it just made things worse. It felt, at least to him, like he was doing something selfless. We know that it was largely for selfish reasons, but there was kernel of truth to that. Nandor was willing to give up some of his own happiness so Guillermo could be happy, too, and while that was partially because Nandor’s happiness is inextricably tied to Guillermo’s now, it’s also because he genuinely wanted to make him feel better.

I think to the very end he still didn’t understand how he fucked up or why, but he did get that he hurt Guillermo... and he didn’t like that. He fixed it poorly, but he did try to fix it. And even that much of an admission is more than we got when he destroyed Nadja’s village or let Guillermo go serve Celeste. Both of those times, he obviously kind of got that he fucked up but either never admitted it or did so only under duress. This time he made the direct choice to go back on a decision because it hurt someone he loved, and he did it without his hand being forced.

It’s... a step, I suppose. I don’t know if Guillermo will see it that way. But it’s a step.

(*kneads temples* someone save me from stupid fucking vampires.)