#just thinkiing thinky thoughts

[moonsidesong]

u kno i really enjoyed watching hfjone with my friends and they loved it too but part of me is just a little sad they didnt get to watch the early first season with the added context of having grown up on object shows. like. obviously i made them watch bfdi first so they’d understand the point of it being a subversion but, like. having watched so many of these silly little competition shows as a kid it really adds to the Discomfort of those early episodes. like all the pieces of the competitions youve always known are there but it feels Wrong. its just a little sad they didnt get to experience that part like i did lol

[half-bakedboy]

I just think that Buck feels like just a little guy with Tommy. He gets to be the little spoon (literally) and the tippy toe kisser (kinda) and he can hide his face in Tommy’s chest when he’s embarrassed and blushy and lean back again his boyfriend with arms around his waist and cleft chin on his shoulder and I just— 🫠🥰 He deserves to be the little guy, you know?

[ao3commentoftheday]

There have been times when I've created something in order to please other people. I had various reasons for doing that, but invariably that meant that I had to get most of my happiness from how those people reacted to what I'd made.

There have also been times when I've made something completely self-indulgent. When I've found an idea that is absolutely delightful to me, and I've turned that idea into something I can enjoy again and again. In those instances, I got my happiness from both the process of creation and from returning to the finished product to enjoy the result.

In some extremely fortunate cases, the things that I have made for myself have also prompted other people to respond to my creations, and that is when my happiness has verged on ecstasy: a wild rush of joy that carried me through dark times and propelled me to further acts of creation that I never would have achieved otherwise.

I can't expect that third scenario to be my default. There's no telling what other people will and won't enjoy, and honestly I don't always want to share the things I create. What I can control is how I spend my free time and what I do with my creative energy.

Sometimes I'll create for others. Sometimes I'll create for just me. And sometimes, when I'm lucky, the stars will align and those two audiences will want the same thing.

[isagrimorie]

Because the whole Tuvix wank is rearing its head every week on Trek forums, I finally decided to rewatch this episode. I mostly avoided it because I am So Tired of the wank and how it's been relitigated for YEARS.

I was over it when it first popped up and I was even more over it with the way it's used as a bludgeon to promote 'psycho Janeway'.

But what's left out in the discussions is Kes's part in all of this, from the jump, Kes was troubled with the merging of Neelix and Tuvok, and anytime Tuvix tried to make advances, she just kept getting more uncomfortable.

(When Tuvix unconsciously touched Kes's shoulder, it looked like she had to consciously not flinch.)

To Tuvix's credit, he did give Kes space and respected her wishes but she was not happy with the whole merge because her relationship with Neelix and Tuvok is different.

We don't see the other people grieve but we see Kes's grief and confusion, which was shared by Janeway. But also, the moment the EMH had a solution to separate the two people in Tuvix, Harry jumped at the chance.

And he's already spent weeks with Tuvix.

The irony is that Janeway was coming around to thinking of Tuvix as an individual but the cure presented itself, but also as the Ship's Captain she has an obligation to care for her crew and absent or not that meant advocating for the two voices who couldn't speak up: Tuvok and Neelix.

Kes was the deciding factor. Kes made her plea to separate Neelix and Tuvok.

Kes was the biggest reason why Janeway decided to separate Tuvok from Neelix.

It was such a cop-out from the Doctor that he refused to do the procedure he made and pioneered. And forced Janeway to execute it instead.

Janeway is clearly not happy about the decision and she's caught between a rock and a hard place.

In Nothing Human Janeway verbalizes it.

"Any consequences of this decision will be my responsibility. Dismissed."

Janeway's constantly put into a wheelhouse of trolley problems, as the only high-ranking Starfleet officer, she is the final authority. In Nothing Human everyone is locked in an endless debate about the morality of using the Cardassians' methods to save B'Elanna's life. Meanwhile, the clock was running down to zero and B'Elanna could have died more.

(Honestly, the story should have been more B'Elanna, Doctor, and Janeway-centric than it was. Nothing Human is a weird episode. Especially since Seven was barely in it and seems to be the Acting Chief Engineer -- amusingly enough because the writers thought they killed Joe Carey between s2 and 3. Alas, poor Vorik, he's not getting any promotions either).

TLDR: Janeway is constantly living through what the Doctor of Doctor Who is living through. Or as the 12th Doctor once said: "Sometimes the only choices you have are bad ones, but you still have to choose."

[enquiringangel]

Thinking random thoughts about the filmmakers’ decision not to give any of the vampires explicit backstories in The Lost Boys and the show vs. tell element of storytelling:

- They wanted the viewer to be drawn in by the vampires but to ultimately not root for them. A futle endeavour of course, but that was the intent imho. Joel Schumacher went out of his way to add the beach massacre because he thought audiences would like the vampires too much - AND HE WAS CORRECT lol

- They also wanted to keep up the mystery. The way the film is shot during the attack scenes through vampire POV is intended to keep a distance and build suspense. The vampires are meant to be something Other, and knowing too much about them would go against this.

Marko and Paul have barely any dialogue. The only reason people know Dwayne’s name is because of the credits. Joel himself points out that David has the least amount of dialogue of the three main characters (which he considered as Michael, Star and David, despite the meagre size of Star’s role). This is again, done deliberately for the cool guy mystique

- We do get glimpses of backstory and characterisation through costuming, setpieces and (less so) through dialogue. David implying that he was familiar with the hotel before the 1906 earthquake is about as subtle as a brick to the face.

So yes, deliberate storytelling decisions there. I quite like it, it gives a lot of creative freedom. But I do understand the frustration too. As I always say:

This is why we have fanfic.

[tavina-writes]

love how every time I finish up a major wip I'm always like "I'm done! I've did my best! I wrote the best thing that I've ever written!" and then I wake up the next day and it's like "oh yeah actually I have more to say" and when I do finish the next work it's a better work than the one that came before it.

And that's nice because sometimes I'm like, "what if I have said all I have to say about a beloved ship/trope/fandom/whatever" and you know what that's the devil speaking because in the past I've always found something else to say.

anyway! if you're down in the dumps like me today about "have I actually peaked?" the answer is no you haven't. You're just getting started.

[thebibliosphere]

I got an ask over the weekend, which I now can't find (sorry), but it related to this post talking about book comps in mainstream publishing and how I think trad-pub would describe Phangs.

Fortunately, I didn't have to think about it too hard because I already talked about this with one of my editors when that post went around. Gently rolling our eyes at trad-pub as we concluded that I'd most likely be marketed as "Twilight meets Fifty Shades" at worst and "Gail Carriger meets... probably Fifty Shades" at a hopeful best.

(Which... I mean. Yeah, I could see the Carriger association. Fifty Shades, however, nope, nope. Absolutely not.)

And I think we can all agree if I got marketed as Twilight meets Fifty Shades, you'd have a lot of disappointed people.

Not to mention the people who would enjoy Phangs wouldn't pick it up because Phangs, as it has been described by the actual fans, is the queer goth love child of Terry Pratchett meets Jane Austen, replete with vampires, werewolves, [REDACTED BEINGS], tongue-in-cheek social observations, multiple depictions of disability representation and a burgeoning dom/sub dynamic that expands into a happy open throuple in the second book after several bouts of vigorous communication.

Yet the industry would latch on to the vampire-werewolf dynamics, try to sell the polyamory as a love triangle, then lump the dom/sub elements into the horrific kink rep that is 50 Shades of Yikes because that's all it knows.

It knows "these are the things that made a profit; therefore, we must find ways to compare them, or we cannot market them," because they will not take a risk.

It's sad.

And also why, unless I'm offered obscene amounts of money, I'll be staying in my indie-self-pub lane. Trad-pub wouldn't know what to do with my disabled queer monsters.

They already demonstrated that when I did shop the novel around and I was asked to "tone down" the disability and also to turn the polyamory into a love triangle. So just, y'know, the core essence of the entire series 🙃.

[minecraftbookshelf]

Traffic Life: Widows Alliance

some minor secret life spoilers below.

The Widows' Alliance name drop in the most recent session has me being extremely normal about everything.

I just love that alliance so much. It is, as far as I can think, the only alliance in the entire traffic series that has survived all five seasons now without a single betrayal and the only murder has been consensual.

Third Life was the setup, they didn't get to actively team together so much but they had their deal and their plans, Cleo just died before they had the chance to see them through, and Scott followed not long after.

Last Life, the infamous Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss teamup my beloveds. Cleo was a semi-latecomer to the trio but it was never in question and they both stuck with it through to the end.

Double Life, The Official Team, when they turned on Pearl and still stuck by each other, to the point that they axe crit each other to emphasize to their government assigned soulmates that they didn't need them, they had each other. (Pearl's powdered snow came after the axe crits i will scream about this until i am hoarse, she retaliated with lesser damage to an injustice and cruelty done towards her first.)

Limited Life, Scott took refuge with the Clockers multiple times when the entire rest of the server was hunting him and Cleo gave him shelter without question each and every time. I think he set his spawn in their base more often then he did in his own. He also gifted multiple of his lives to them, Cleo especially, and traded a couple more.

And now Secret Life. When they tried to avoid teaming up and yet...and yet.

[breadandblankets]

ya know the thing is Bruce could try and pull his patented "in worried about you and instead of expressing that I'm going to pull you off of vigilante work" on Duke and it Would Not Work.

Bruce could pull him off the outsiders sure but 100% Bruce could not make Duke stop patrolling

Duke, staring Bruce's lil bat peepers down, with the power of gd and anime on his side: you could call Superman to sit on me and it Still wouldn't keep me from going out

[amagicbeyond]

okay confession time: I watched Good Omens when it first came out, and had a perfectly lovely time. It was fun and David and Michael are spectacular to watch and they were clearly having the time of their lives playing these characters together. I saw the love there and like, fully supported the ship in theory but could not for the life of me fathom how these two, who'd been dancing around each other for six thousand years or more, could possibly ever move out of the subtext and the dancing into something more explicitly romantic. I couldn't conceive of it, it didn't seem feasible. They seemed, to me, perfectly content to continue on as they always had, as the single most important person in each other's lives and the person each most enjoyed spending their time with, perhaps just a little more ready to stop pretending that wasn't the case. I didn't buy the holding-hands-on-the-bus thing. I couldn't read fic about them, no matter how brilliant or well-written! None of it seemed plausible to me. I couldn't see the pathway, the journey they still needed to take to get there. Not without another couple of thousand years to do it.

(I want you to know that I write this with full respect and admiration for those who've actively shipped it from the start - I'm just working through my own experiences as a viewer who wanted to ship it whole-heartedly but just couldn't manage it, and could never quite put my finger on why.)

When the heart shaped started popping up on all the promo materials for season 2, I thought oh no. He's gonna do it. How on earth is he gonna make me buy in?

Well.

I get it now. This is the angel and the demon who love humanity the most, who have made Earth their home, who have learned to revel in Earthly pleasures like food and drink and music and books and cars, not all at once but over time. It makes perfect sense for them, with the evident changes in their relationship in the years since we've last seen them, to finally endeavor into human touch, and to explore it together. Dancing. Human expressions of comfort, and love. Reaching out, a simple touch on the shoulder, or chest. A kiss, all wrong, for all the wrong reasons. A kiss, eventually, all right, made even more exquisite by the knowledge of the wrong one, and the journey they took to get there. Maybe someday more.

I know none of this is groundbreaking or new and everyone else saw it a long time ago. But I get it! I see the vision! I understand.

What was the point? The point is the best of humanity. They get to have it too, and to express it and wonder at it and learn it together. The point is love.

And I am fully on board.

[heartbreakprincewille]

I was watching the scene where Wille points the gun at August and it's such a brilliant scene for many reasons but the one that hit me the most is that Simon got to see the degree to which Wille was affected by the video.

In the Music Room fight that went down between them in the last episode, Simon basically says that Wille had it easy in terms of facing the repercussions of the video as compared to Simon. And Wille is rightfully offended because Simon fails to understand that just because the manner in which they both suffered was different, it doesn't mean that the suffering itself was any less for Wilhelm.

Like, when Wilhelm points the gun at August, the anger that flashes on his face is not some sort of a "quarrel" between the Royals, it's Wilhelm's pain resurfacing in the form of sheer anger, all the sleepless nights and tears bubbling and making their way into his voice. It's so evident in that scene, how Wilhelm was deeply affected by everything that went down and now that Simon had a chance to bring some justice to both of them, August snooped in and took that chance away from them. Like, Simon must have finally understood that the game is not rigged just for him, but Wilhelm is as much of a victim as Simon is. That Wilhelm's hurt ran so deep that he was ready to blow off his own cousin's head. And it could be one of the realizations that helped Simon understand that it's not him vs Wille, they both were equally devastated by August's actions and even more so, Wille's loyalty will always lie with what's right, and with Simon.

[stagefoureddiediaz]

Thinking about step 9 and the whole concept of forgiveness of one’s self and others and it bringing healing and how bobby and Eddie have been paralleled a fair amount and the idea that Eddie started this process back at the end of s5 with his forgiveness and acceptance of his father but how he hasn’t yet gone anywhere near his mother and their relationship .

How his catholic guilt storyline seems more likely to play on his reltionship with his mother than his father (if his father wasn’t around that much it would’ve been Helena taking him to church etc each week) so the idea of an Eddie - Helena storyline that plays on catholic guilt and potentially his queerness in relation to that has me chewing on glass - it could be so epically good

[once-in-a-blood-moon]

Solomon who’s lived for so long he can’t remember most of the things he’s done so most things feel new to him 🤝 Me who has the worst memory known to man that things I’ve already done also feel brand new

[jadefyre]

Thinking about how, in the Imperial Radch books, Justice of Toren explains that when a ship doesn't like an officer, it does the bare minimum, and the officer might only notice when she's assigned to another ship and suddenly her life is a lot easier. But when a ship does like an officer or its captain, it will bend over backwards for her.

Thinking about how, in the Murderbot Diaries, Murderbot details how certain privacy-violating data it has gathered about clients it likes can 'accidentally disappear' during a system purge.

Thinking about how treating other beings with kindness is never the incorrect choice.

Just... thinking.

[queermania]

i really do mean it when i say that i think you should headcanon dean's sexuality in whatever way brings you the most joy but i also find it kind of baffling when people say that erasing dean's attraction to women is the same as erasing dean's attraction to men because like... 1. that's not what's happening and 2. it's like comparing apples to oranges. there is a very solid, real world reason for why a man would "perform" attraction to women despite not actually experiencing that attraction and that reason does not apply in the opposite direction. and that's not really erasing anything. that's interpreting what is happening in a very real and lived in way. saying that dean just never gave a single flying fuck about any of the women he had physical relationships with (most notably cassie and lisa) would be erasing something, but that is a totally different scenario. dean can be bisexual if that's what makes the most sense to you, but it's not inherently biphobic to view him as gay.

[sigmastolen]

shower thought: for blue mutants like beast, nightcrawler, mystique, is that blue from pigment? or is it structural? like, there are only a handful of animals that produce an actual blue pigment and iirc they're all butterflies; any blue animal "with a backbone," as NPR put it, uses structural coloration

so if their blue is structural, is it pretty stable, like a macaw or a blue jay? or does it change from different angles, like a morpho butterfly or a hummingbird's gorget?

specifically: what if kurt has been iridescent this whole time ???