#of a disparity between how she’s remembered and how she ‘actually’ was

[duchessofferia]

A WOMAN WHO’S JUST IN HIS HEAD

“In death, Jane became the ultimate consort; unblemished (especially in the eyes of her capricious and tyrannical husband), ever young, and the mother of a surviving son. Instead of merely being the wife who ‘died’ and in recognition of her saint-like life — which went beyond the medieval ideal of saintly queenship — Jane should actually be remembered as the wife who was (effectively) canonised.” - Aidan Norrie

[beescake]

PLEASE PLEASE MEGADUMP THE ARASOL!!! PLEAAASEE MR BEESCAKE I AM ON MY KNEES BEGGING YOU

HFHGHD GLADLY aaa i’ve been adding notes to it here and there for months but just hesitant to post it bcs im 🧍‍♂️🧍‍♂️🧍‍♂️🧍‍♂

also this is just my own takeaway of the events, it doesn’t necessarily comply to the Ultimate Truth of Canon-Alignment or represent the actual facts of what hussie intended! v sentimental smh but hopefully its still interesting to read

i love when characters inform each other by proximity, it's one of my fave things to see in media :') it feels even more significant when two characters deliberately choose to stick together, so that when one operates, you can tell the other is similarly aligned in associative solidarity.

sollux is a keystone of this trope — whoever he aligns with is a wordless statement, a nod of approval. this stood out to me bcs the main four humans were alr friends by default, but once you reach hivebent you realize the trolls can actively choose who they want to hang out with.

and as we all know, after assessing every troll's biases/loyalties, sollux is the only one who maintains his selective preference for innately Good 👍 people.

aradia is such a beautiful character honestly, she evokes such incredible feelings in me. she might not have been consistently written with care but the best parts of her character are truly stunning. i think it's easy to remember sollux as the self-sacrificing one bc he's so open about it (and his friends frequently react to his Moments) but when you compare him to aradia, it's always struck me

how much more. raw it is

to be so alone as an agent of time, having to orchestrate immeasurably harrowing events nobody understands or gives a fuck about

with your role painted in the story as one who must tend to the needs of the narrative, responsible to match every next note

because when you're given the capabilities, it becomes your duty to carry it out.

it becomes expected of you to keep experimenting and arranging the machinations to work for everyone, dusting off hundreds of necessary failures to keep going

and having to be so unwavering in your drive knowing miserably that there's no one who can help you but yourself.

or alternatively: to make things fun! so other people won't think twice about letting you go off on your own.

sure she's had some very good buds, notably thanks to Team Charge v Team Scourge antics.

and yet, at the end of the day, the one friend that kept choosing her time and time again was the friend with the highest standards.

i can see why people like to define arasol as moirails/matesprits but surprisingly i find the nondescript, unlabeled aspect of their relationship more straightforward to understand.

there's no shortage of people who would accommodate sollux. most of the surviving trolls are his oldest friends bcs he’d chosen them well. his transparency with his feelings had built him strong friendships that won’t falter or break, regardless of how much of a dick he can be. they’ve already seen and accepted him at his worst, and they still like him for who he is.

contrast that with aradia, who'd been so approachable, friendly and reliable in her exchanges it was super fun to talk to her. but the moment she became depressed, all her connections broke down.

her friends became hesitant to interact with her (until she became god tier, “happy” and amicable again) because her gloom and resignation didn’t serve them. she dealt with it alone.

there’s def something of note here abt the disparity between the way male & female characters are written+perceived in homestuck (esp parallel arasol with davejade) but i won’t go into that lmaoo

with this in mind i like to think of sollux as a gift to her, a loyal companion given to complement and commend her resolve. she's capable of doing so much alone but hussie took the time to build her and sollux's relationship as one of a unit; a set.

the ambiguity of their status does complicate things, but i do believe it makes sense with their characters. aradia's relationship with romance is a rocky one, the dubious stringalong equius had with her is a pointed reminder that her feelings of attraction are ultimately controlled by the author writing her.

unlike the other trolls who can openly address and own up to their crushes, aradia had romantic emotions forced upon her (especially when hussie implies 'she kissed equius back on her own volition'). and it seems like her character is so intrinsically neutral abt attraction that even when forced by the almighty powers above, she's unable to retain it wholly.

however, looking back to pre-game when she could actually "choose" her own feelings, she did have a crush on sollux.

their soft spots for each other were so obvious to the point where other people could see it.

taunting aside, when vriska comments on their unit as bf/gf it actually informs the audience that arasol's relationship is romantic in nature despite not aligning with the quadrant system.

even while dead, aradia could still describe her care for sollux, expressing that she would like to see him happy. if they had more time to explore their relationship on alternia, it's possible they could've settled in a quadrant once they grew older.

but going back to the lack of labels, their dynamic was affected once more when aradia became god tier.

to me, her ascension was both the perfect culmination and possible closure of her character. it's the light at the end of her journey toiling through countless of timelines where she had to actively assess and participate. that's why it's cool to see her being silly and having fun giving guidance, passively exploring and watching other people do their parts.

and yet the joy of her freedom makes it hard to explore further introspection. if we take her by her word, she'd already come to terms with the hurt she's been through and forgiven those involved.

i can't help feeling attuned to how impersonal and detached it can be, to devote and meld your identity so completely with your designated position as Maid of Time until you've become hard for your old friends (and even some readers!) to personally connect to.

idk post-canon but i assume there’s some degree of similarity to be bridged here with aradia's god tier and how the hs2 humans' Ultimate forms was described as a consolidation of all their possibilities. since aradia's classpect is inherently of service to Time, going god-tier may have elevated her beyond personhood with the "game construct" possessing her entirely. sollux doesn't realize the extent of it bcs he's still mortal, but a part of him may have subconsciously understood this.

i think there is a core aspect to aradia that was lost to the dehumanizing glory of god tier — a core aspect that may have contained an element of why sollux enjoyed talking to her in the first place.

to him, aradia hadn't just been a nice girl, she was a cool girl. despite not having much in common, he's still willing to chill next to her so she's not alone while she does what needs to get done.

back on alternia, they held a mutual and equal-level regard for each other that could've definitely settled into something permanent. but now, he's placed himself in a position where he can be kept around or left behind at will. the parameters of the relationship are largely in aradia's court, so any label she suggests to identify their relationship with he's likely to accept.

but that's why it's so difficult to label it. because god tier aradia may not necessarily Want quadrants or relationship labels. rather than the initial romantic attachment, their commitment to each other had evolved into one fundamentally of companionship.

no label? ok fine. no matter what, he still thinks she's a good soul worth latching on to. the best, actually. aradia > everyone else.

even if it gets stilted at times. there's an unexpected struggle to connect when sollux's go-to default for talking points is his feelings about things, and aradia may not want to talk about emotions all the time.

not to mention god tier aradia became an observer, especially of chaos. but sollux's avoidance of involvement comes partially from his innate pressure to get involved if something goes wrong. and he can't always tell when something goes wrong, because aradia doesn't mind if things go wrong anymore.

it's a non-negotiable preference that causes them to take the occasional time apart, a new boundary that wouldn't have existed before the game and aradia's god tier.

but just like how his friends tolerated his moods, sollux accepts aradia as she is. with no quadrants, their connection doesn't break down because there's no implicit romantic expectations to be disappointed by or resentful over.

sometimes when i see hs content that deliberately distances sollux from aradia, i assume this is the dissonance people might have felt. people might find it "easier" to be cynical about them bcs of this strange tension.

but idc lmao. grab that shit by the neck

lack of easy resolutions and cleanly tied ribbons is pretty standard of homestuck and imo it doesn't make arasol's dynamic any less incredible. with the right affection and consideration, there's still so much potential to develop the nuance of their relationship outside of the popular quadrant-based depictions.

hs has a lot of really great character compatibilities but the way aradia and sollux are in their own special orbit is why i can write this much about them in the first place. it's that frail innocence between first loves that makes it so sweet to me, two kids who grew up too fast playing guesswork without being clear where they're going.

ultimately i do think you're meant to feel a little tragedy for just how much they care for each other, even if they can't quite establish it in simple terms.

maybe they keep taking breaks to progress their own paths. maybe they remain as anchor partners while seeing other people. but even if you decide to separate them, they're still (awkwardly) texting each other updates all the while. and when they reunite it feels like coming home.

and well. more than anything, i like to believe that they do want to be exclusive.

they're just afraid. after all, they're still learning how to love, beyond the projections of the foursquare quadrant system they had inadvertently distanced themselves from since young.

they might not have everything figured out, but they'll get there eventually if you just hold them together and write them there.

optional post-canon segment:

one of the limitations of main hs is that (monogamous) relationships are often written as the go-to solution to wrap up character growth; it's an easy "patch" to imagine characters getting their happy ending because they have a partner, and those who don't end up with someone don't get that closure (most notably jade).

hs2 reaffirms this by suggesting that aradia's character cannot progress without letting sollux go, because happily settling in a relationship automatically locks your potential.

that pathetic panel of sollux staring emptily into the sky is still my fave hs2 spoiler ngl i find the impact of their parting so emotionally provoking precisely bcs they were written in original hs to be each other's forever, coming back together again and again

but now, they're subject to the decisions of the post-canon authors who might choose to deviate from that.

it's not new for them to part, but now there's an underlying worry that her dropping him off this time might be the last time. while i think the prospect of shattering their stability to make them grow separately sounds fun on paper, no amount of me desperately hoping for a good execution is gonna guarantee it

idk. i guess prediction-wise im expecting sollux in classic dramatic-hs2 fashion to tell dave to back off aradia LMAO. otherwise it's just gon be sollux and karkat pathetically watching aradia and dave from a distance swimming in their unresolved feelings for narratively-powerful time players smh obvs it sounds corny as hell but who knows its still plausible

srsly tho i hope they take the opportunity to develop arasol's relationship in a fresh direction that doesn't hurt me too badly...... and i hope they force sollux out of his comfort zone. i like watching him struggle :-)

[sailorgundam308]

Got pretty annoyed yesterday while discussing the game with a friend (don’t worry, we’re still friends lol). But truly, I got annoyed at, once more, seeing how there are wrong assumptions weaved into the community discourse - things based out of someone’s ass, apparently, that got traction and now are repeated by players as if it’s true. But, of course, if anyone stops 2 seconds to actually pay attention to the game, these ideas prove to be just wrong.

This friend, for example, was mentioning how Astarion and Karlach NEVER agree or disagree together in anything. That’s a lie. I’ve (me myself, so I KNOW firsthand) been screen shooting every time there’s an agreement between them and when there isn’t. There are much more agreements than disagreements between Astarion and Karlach. They do come across as having different alignments, but they think alike MUCH more than ‘the internet’ (or even some devs?!) tend to believe. They might justify their rationale in different ways but they do agree together and disagree together way more than they disagree with each other. So that is something I personally can attest to.

Then I heard the argument that Karlach and Astarion don’t get unique scenes between each other: again, untrue. The tiefling party scene with Karlach, for starters, is the only unique romance scene for Astarion. The only person who has back and forth with Karlach after the paladins of Tyr are defeated is Astarion. They have (out of the top of my head, at least 4 unique short banters while both are in the party - again, more than Karl with any other companion.

Then the wrong assumption Astarion can’t go to Avernus : he can and he goes, both as ascended and spawn if you’re playing origin Karl. Ascended if you’re playing him.

A lot stems, again, from simplistic and shallow interpretations of both these characters’ story arcs and personalities. Others come from prejudice, from passing judgement on their appearance instead of their “content”.

Moreover, though, there will never be as much this x that content if it’s involving Karlach (and worse for Wyll) SIMPLY BECAUSE there is LESS than A THIRD the amount of content for Karlach in ANYTHING.

For some reason writers/devs took a long while to decide to put the work into Karlach and when they did they clearly made a bet that blew in their faces - that she’d be a lesser origin character and that’d turn out alright. But she’s the second most popular character and because people like her, they are paying attention to her story - and the massive lack of work and resources dedicated to her arc. Imagine if she had received the attention in detail and the game time / in game content, say, shadowheart received? Instead of a temple Shar, we went to Avernus? In place of Shar, ZARIEL made a personal appearance? We could’ve gotten a young Karlach flashback cinematic, an extra dungeon in act 3, then a personal quest closure with Gortash instead of SH’s parents, so we’d know what the fuck happened. As someone who can’t give two shits about SH, that would’ve been incredible to play. Half of that would still have been a blast. But we get nowhere near. And I’m only bringing Karlach to attention here as an example - if you look at Wyll (who was the front page origin boy since the conception of the game), the disparity is even more shocking.

I’ve read on a writer’s twitter a while back (can’t remember who exactly so you’ll have to excuse me), that they were the writers for Durge, and for a time they got to write some stuff for Astarion for a bit, due to some task delegation changes and whatnot, and they explicitly said they “managed to put in things specific to their “main” character (durge) in Astarion’s writing” - or something in those lines. Honestly… what the fuck? Not sure if that was the intention, but to me it sounded like someone with their own precious OC, which they are obviously attached to, pushing content in to benefit their “main”. In a game where there are several “mains” and many with glaringly less content than others. Again, in my interpretation of what I read that day, this information came across as the most unprofessional shit I’ve seen - if you are tasked to write someone else’s character, you should act as that character’s writer - not a fanfic writer trying to push a personal headcanon or narrative because it pleases YOU, in detriment of other characters. It was wild at the time and I just kinda… walked away and pretended I didn’t read it. It was just shocking and not the attitude I expected from a serious professional.

Whether that’s the whole truth or not I can’t say, but what I can say is that this left me with a weird taste in my mouth and perhaps that’s why until today I couldn’t finish a single run with Durge despite trying several. There are other issues with Durge for me personally in term of the actual writing of the sentences and the way they were worded that just seems impossible to take seriously. (But I’m trying to get over it still, as I want to experience this part of the game too, so I won’t give any sort of personal final veredict).

Also, the idea that Durge was supposed to be the main character… that’s a new assumption for me and my friend also brought it up. That sounded very sus and I went to read more about it and, of course, that’s also wrong. In previous BG games, we always played a Bhaalspawn. It would make perfect sense we played one again - but the butler shit, the amnesia, the gore erotic fantasies, that wouldn’t fly for the average BG3 player - and wasn’t supposed to. When they decided to split tav to leave the “absolutely neutral protagonist” they parted with the bhaalspawn narrative that was a very big part of the previous games, so I assume they didn’t want to just toss it, but put it to another “dark tav” or whatever shit that means. And then they doubled down with the evil and edge lord of kitschy horror narrative. It’s FINE. But isn’t supposed to be the main character.

TLDR: instead of taking random assumptions about bg3 as yours, pay attention to the game itself. And think critically about it a bit. All the origins are presented AS equals but they’re nothing but. And Larian should be (yes, troubleshooting tech issues but also) trying to even out the absurd gaps they allowed to happen in integrating the narrative of, especially, Karlach and Wyll into the game. Make more and decent content for them, fix the plot holes, rewrite the shit that doesn’t make sense for them FIRST.

Tbh, I wouldn’t be complaining if Larian had owned it to their content and presented us with Karlach and Wyll as sort of Halsin or Minthara type of companion - non origin, lesser tier of companion. Then the production choices they made would be at the very least justified. And I won’t EVEN start on the fact that these two, Karl and Wyll, are the two PoC origins… the black guy and the southeast Asian woman. Because, oh, boy, things start to look VERY bad when you put THAT into this equation… 👀

[winepresswrath]

hi! i always love your MDZS/CQL takes; can i ask what are the questions you think CQL is asking, as compared to MDZS?

I haven't actually revisited either canon in ages, which is making me nervous. what questions the novel is interested in can be pretty contentious all on its own! @mikkeneko has an excellent answer in the notes here which I reccomend to everyone. My own thoughts are honestly pretty scattered- I keep on deleting things and going hm, that's not quite right.

So, for the obvious-to-me example, people reasonably zero in on the creation of innocent doctors/radish farmers who Wen Ruohan is holding hostage. In CQL it's easy to infer that Wen Qing and Wen Ning are maybe the only cultivators and almost certainly the only combatants among the Wen remnants, and their status is much more ambiguous in the novel, which I personally think is asking, essentially, "and so what? were they wrong to run, when they had a chance? Do they deserve what Jin Guangshan will do to them if they go back? Aren't they just people, actually?" Whereas the question that CQL is asking is more to the effect of "What does Wen Qing owe these people, when she is their only defence? What is she entitled to do to save them, at other people's expense? If she fucks up that moral calculus, what then? Does it matter if she's personally fond of some of the outsiders who are going to get hurt? If one of them saved her brother? Later, this question will flip to what Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng, and the parallel to Jiang Cheng's situation in particular is, I think, genuinely pretty fun. You're giving up the Wen as soldiers who've laid down their arms in exchange for Wen Qing also grappling with leadership and the question of how many horrors she can stand to look the other way on to protect her own people. one reason I keep deleting so much is that a lot cql's changes were motivated at least in part by censorship, which I think we mostly share a general and justified distaste for! but I also think that within the bounds of that censorship the creative team put a lot of work into actually doing something interesting with those changes. Or, for another example- nieyao! There's a much greater emphasis on the nmj-jgy relationship, it's unambiguously very close and they are clearly extremely important to one another, and I think that's because the cql team has a lot to say about love, trust, power, and the ways those things interact, and that reflects back on all of the other relationships in play, including Wangxian. Almost every time, when CQL chooses change a relationship they make the characters in question closer- that's true for Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji, for Wen Qing and the Yunmeng contingent, for Zixuan and Mianmian, and Huaisang and Meng Yao. It's even true for Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian, who have a close and trusting relationship in first life! CQL puts a much greater emphasis on "all right, so you care, what next?" How do you choose someone and then choose to be good to them? What if there's a massive power disparity between you? What if you seriously disagree about your priorities and morals? How do you trust someone who's betrayed you? When is it a stupid choice to trust at all? How do you have faith that you know someone well enough for that trust to be meaningful?

for legal reasons i would like to specify that it's not that mdzs isn't interested in these problems. i do remember wangxian's literal trust fall. cql is asking these questions all the time about everyone. also for legal purposes i'm not suggesting that cql lwj and jc love each other. but! they establish a three month wartime partnership looking for wwx and then jc immediately drops him on wwx's say-so despite apparently having a positive enough opinion of him to tell wwx he thinks they should make up twice. lan wangji will later tell wwx he thinks he should loop jc in on the second flautist! these are people trying to navigate some kind of relationship/shared interest/community, as opposed to a hateful void. cql wants to say hey, how do you go about this? while I'm here and rambling cql also puts a lot of emphasis on wwx's connection to yunmeng and changes things up so instead of feeling alienated right before he leaves our last glimpse of him there is happily picking lotuses and playing with a kid! in both stories the narrative is asking who do you protect? who do you leave behind? can you ever get it back? but the angles are very different.

[bestworstcase]

@alullinchaos here

on this topic, do you think Summer will follow the pattern tai and qrow have laid out and show favoritism towards Ruby between the two sisters or that she'll do something else when she's introduced (versus Raven trying really hard to not show that she cares about Yang and as far as I know truly not being that concerned w/ Ruby)

it's tricky because on the one hand, narratively summer is inextricable from ruby's character and she is a much more central figure in ruby's character arc, with clear disparities in how present she is narratively (there is no yang equivalent of RLR2 for example). plus the lopsided "leave ruby alive" versus crickets for yang. but on the other, yang was parentified and her grief is complicated and to some degree suppressed by the reality that she had to be ruby's mom after summer left. plus she remembers summer as a fantastic mom. plus salem lets--not just yang, but all of yang's friends including oscar--go after yang identifies herself as summer's daughter, so while she's never said in so many words that yang is not to be killed, actions speak louder than words.

the only other factor we have to go on is what very, very little we've seen of who summer actually was, and how that compares to how she's remembered, and this i find very interesting because literally everybody who knew summer compares her to ruby, ruby's just like her, you sound just like your mother, summer would have pressed on, like you--and then. we get this fleeting glimpse of summer herself and she's so much like yang it hurts.

like the way she talks to raven. the snap in her tone. the resentment of raven for leaving. the shoulder check. that is exactly yang. even going rogue on a secret mission to do what she felt was right--is that not exactly the same sort of judgment call that yang made when she decided that blake was right and they should tell robyn the truth instead of trying to arrest her?

her loved ones had her on this pedestal, the heroic paragon, the best huntress ever, that's the comparison cast onto ruby when people tell her she's like summer. but the truth, the real person, was (at least in this small glimpse) quite a lot more like yang.

there is also the factor of ruby's silver eyes and summer's silver eyes, and the fact that we know nothing about summer's past. i think realistically she must have felt some special concern for ruby because of her silver eyes (whether it's true or not the inner circle believes that salem systematically picks them off and ozpin seems to actively recruit them when he can find them) and that this concern must have partly motivated her to go rogue (she doesn't want this life for ruby).

but at the same time i wonder if maybe that made it easier for summer to develop just a normal bond with yang (no baggage) versus ruby (all the baggage)--similar to how tai's unresolved and complicated feelings about raven color his perception of yang. like, i think if she hadn't left she might have tended to be more protective of ruby but closer to yang and more emotionally in tune with yang bc their basic personalities more similar

[notalkingbusiness]

The Billing Situation Continued: She's Earned Her Place

So, I talked about the billing situation the other day but I want to reiterate why billing matters and why unequal billing is so troubling. 

First things first, there is no way that the current billing arrangements were accidental. It's not an honest mistake. An honest mistake is leaving a plastic water bottle on the table during shooting (à la GoT).  People signed this billing off and lots of people will have reviewed the title credits before they were approved for Tribeca. Anyone who distributes materials to clients or consumers will know that things are checked and checked again before being sent out into the world.

The order of billing can't be an honest mistake because it's tied up with professional and commercial negotiations. Your position in the billing and credits matter because it's intrinsically linked with pay and your position within the cast.  Staggered but equal billing signals that you and your co-star are equals.  AMC have rightly opted for staggered but equal billing for the other TWDU shows - Cohan and Gurira deserve to be up there with their co-stars. Why won't they put McBride's name up there with Reedus'? Why break protocol?

There is no way in which you can positively spin this billing.  It will matter to Melissa because this billing means that she's getting paid less than she's worth, and this billing will impact future pay negotiations because she's starting from a much lower level than her co-star.  No professional is okay with accepting less pay and recognition than they deserve. There's a world of difference between being happy to accept something and *having* to accept something in order to keep your job.

AMC have a track record of treating their talent badly. Remember when Lauren Cohan left TWD over pay disparity? I've seen people talk about how Melissa was behaving at Tribeca - how she seemed happy. I wasn't at Tribeca, but I think it's worth bearing in mind that panels, cons etc. are work events. We all have to put on brave faces at work events. You can't say to a client or customer, "Actually, I'm being undervalued and I'm really unhappy about it." Not if you want to keep your job. The entertainment industry runs on contacts.  If you're labelled as "difficult" because you've advocated for fair pay and recognition, then it's potentially game over for your career. That's not to say that she's not excited about aspects of Carol's journey, but I don't see how any professional actress could be happy with the current billing situation.

Like I've said before, if something feels off about this billing that's because something is off.  The same way a lot people felt something was off when they saw the title for the show. Carol is Daryl's equal - that should be reflected in the title. Melissa is Norman's equal - that should be reflected in the billing. Melissa McBride has earned her place.

If the idea of Melissa being treated as an unequal partner bothers you, please make some noise about it.  Here's hoping AMC come to their senses and do the right thing.

[anderstrevelyan]

Oh gosh, I have to ask about Viconia

Viconia DeVir, my beloved!! (answering questions about my WIPs here)

This one comes out of my early decision to play my Dark Urge as her son—the one she can have with Gorion's Ward at the end of bg2. That version of her epilogue slide also kills her off. Possibly my most surprising and dramatic game moment ever actually, when Valas made it to Baldur's Gate and was confronted with his presumed dead mother!!!

So this piece is me reconciling that: how Viconia could have gone from having fled the Underdark after refusing to sacrifice a child, to having a child of her own, to choosing to sacrifice a child's future to Shar. It's a very zoomed-out character study kind of thing.

Here's a bit of her meeting and falling in love with Valas's father, Feron:

But something about Shar spoke to Viconia’s heart. The lady of darkness and loss, for someone born in the darkness, made from it, who lost everything she’d ever had or ever hoped for.

It should have been enough, this new faith, as she fought to survive such a bright world. And it was, until she made it all the way south to sunny Amn. She wasn’t surprised, when the self-righteous saw under her cloak and decided to put her to flame—but she was angry, and fought with everything she had as they tied her to wood and shouted about the supposed evils of the drow. That’s when Viconia saw him: gray eyes meeting hers across the crowd, black hair past his chin, and a face she remembered, a little, from the stories and from the siege. He spilled blood that day, that Bhaalspawn, but not before trying to talk her tormentors down, and not for the endless thirst of the god who made him—but for her. For what’s right, he’d told her later, after inviting her to join his disparate camp. I know what it’s like, for people to assume the worst from you on sight. She tried not to trust him, too, this surfacer, this stranger, this male—this Feron. Did her best to keep him away, with sharp glares and a sharper tongue, but he’d stayed curious. Calm. Persistent, in his honest words, even when hurt clouded his face. So she’d sat with him, by campfire’s light or in tavern’s corner, and told him about her life, all the things she’d never given voice, until candor turned to longing, to lust, to understanding—and trust began to grow despite herself. He called it love, the feeling that beat in her heart and clouded her mind when she looked into his face. She called it weakness, the ache that swallowed all else when he wasn't at her side. Yet somehow, somewhere between the night she spent merely wrapped in his arms—breathing, satisfied, safe—and the day he spurned the chance to become a god, she started to call it love, too.

[onehundredandeleventropicalfish]

About your last meta, since TV series Dream is going through his character development more rapidly(changing Gault into a dream, admitting he was wrong and apologizing to both Gault and Lucienne, saying that he will try to listen more) do you think he'll survive his tragic fate? I'm desperately hoping he does

honestly, i've almost written so many metas on this, and never ended up posting any, because the short answer is i just don't know

but if you want my evidence either way...

reasons the ending may change

everything is kinder in the tv show. the world it's working towards is just a better place. john not killing rosemary, unity and desire's relationship being consensual and meaningful, the changes in tone to sound of her wings, the fact that dream seems actually open to calliope's suggestion of reconnecting rather than just outright saying no, the corinthian actually taking care of jed rather than just stuffing him in the trunk of his car, i'm sure there's more i can't think of right now, but this adaptation is astoundingly accurate, most of the scenes are taken from the comics word for word. whenever a scene isn't lifted directly from the comics, i invariably find it's more hopeful than what was originally there

when neil was asked why john didn't kill rosemary, one of the things he said was that he didn't want comic fans to think they always know what's going to happen

as you mentioned, the entire gault plotline. dream's entire problem is that he doesn't believe he's capable of change. by making him realise that one of his nightmares is, that's certainly setting some kind of precedent! (and, while i'm not assuming neil won't pull a bait and switch here given the disparity between what lucifer's actually planning to do to dream and what it sounds like they are, "a new age" is certainly a Choice of line if you're planning on killing dream five years later)

rose and lyta. first off, rose is allowed to remember what happened to her, which immediately gives her a lot more agency over the plot. and she knows lyta a lot better, which means that lyta has a support system in the show that she did not have in the comics. if daniel goes missing, in the show, rose knows the entire story, and she's gonna take that straight to dream, if she can. i am sure the "if you have the power to destroy the world, then you have the power to destroy him!" "i don't want to destroy him" line is going to be relevant in the future

reasons it may not:

daniel's still a character. one way or another, i don't think morpheus is going to make it through this and remain dream of the endless

there's no changes made to desire and dream's last scene, where dream talks (in vague terms) about how that was a murder attempt desire just did, killing family will bring the kindly ones down on his head, like desire vowed to do way back when (and given one particular mason interview where they talked about looking forward to the audience understanding all the backstory behind that conversation, i believe this line is still foreshadowing, dream will still have to kill orpheus and lyta will harness the kindly ones against him)

i think the addition of matthew to the scenes in hell adds a lot to later comic scenes (see: this post for more on that)

tragedies are a specific form of storytelling with their own rules, they're not the same as "regular story, but you made the characters lose at the end". sandman, as a story, follows the rules of a tragedy. and as much as i would also like good things for dream, in order to tell this as a story with a happy ending, a lot would have to change right from the start. which, just personally, i don't really want it to, because a lot of the scenes i really like and find the most meaningful of this story would probably have to get cut or heavily modified to support that new story

and further on that, just from a writing perspective - in a story with a happy ending, tension is created by placing obstacles between the characters and what they want, things they have to surpass and fight for. in a tragedy, getting what the character wants has to be so easy, if they were anyone else in the story. tension is created through the fact that everyone involved can see the exit out of the tragedy, it's right there, but the qualities that fundamentally make the character who they are are the same qualities that keep them from acting.

the conflict in this story is undoubtedly between dream and himself. his need to abandon this burden that is far too heavy, vs his inability to take any action that runs counter to his duty. and it's made interesting by who he's placed in opposition to. what is the point of lucifer as a character, of destruction, if dream could listen to them? if watching someone change for the better could actually change him, then what's the rest of the story? he's already learned that from gault, you could cut it right here. and sure you could test that a few more times, but if we were writing a story about an immortal being who learns they're not beholden to their universe given duty, who has to overcome millenia of responsibility and feeling like they're not really a person in order to realise they're in control of their own life and can live how they choose - that's already lucifer's story. and destruction's. why aren't we writing about them, instead?

one of the big questions we ask in storywriting is why here, why now, why this person? and what makes dream unique is his utter unyielding dedication to the rules and to his responsibilities. and that means that, despite every other character in this story pointing out the glaring neon exit sign from the tragedy, he could never have done anything other than what he did

and you could do it, don't get me wrong. if you wanted to write sandman as a story with a happy ending, you could take dream down a path of learning to be someone else, to change enough that he's no longer the character that gets grabbed by the tragedy (though it'll still be a tragedy for lyta). and if we were gonna do that, and do it well, season one has been a good setup for it. but that's a different story, that will require different challenges, ones that actually make him learn, rather than making the situation progressively worse with every challenge he ignores. and it really comes down to i don't know how much neil is willing to entirely rewrite his masterpiece like that

i think s2 will tell, one way or another, because season of mists is where the tragedy properly starts. as much as i ended up writing a longer thing under reasons why not, that's just because they were more complicated concepts to explain, i genuinely cannot predict what neil is gonna do here. every time i think about this i feel like my opinion falls on a different side. but like i said, whether you're aiming for tragedy or a happy ending, you have to sow those seeds early on, or it's gonna leave the audience feeling betrayed, no matter which you choose. preludes and doll's house, they're early enough and unconnected enough they could fall on either side. but i think season of mists is gonna make it evidently clear

[lokisasylum]

Report Accounts on twitter aren't responding to me and I've been trying to send this information to them since FACE came out. But if you can, I need you guys to go on youtube and Report a channel called "Dee Sparta", she's an alleged tarot reader, I used to watch her videos in the beginning for entertainment but I've noticed since before FACE era that she keeps heavily pushing the narrative that there is "hatred" between Jimin and his father. That his father is an "addict", that he's leeching off Jimin's fame and creating a nonexistent financial crisis, ect.

I remember she even went so far as to state that Jimin's father saw him as a "disappointment" due to how Jimin presented his solo debut; that he was "against it" and "threatened to disown" Jimin if he dared to go through with it. And that possibly the songs were dedicated to him, hence the "disappointment".

And yet we saw & heard Jimin himself say that his father had actually cried the first time he heard the album and called him to say that "as a father it hurt him to know that Jimin had gone through those hardships alone without telling him" (dealing with heavy depression and having such dark thoughts).

But as I mentioned this channel just keeps bringing up the bs narrative of the alleged "hate" between them over and over again (its gotten worse since J/K's debut since she is biased & low-key a shipper), especially when she does GROUP READINGS, and you can see in the comments that youtube armys BELIEVE this to be "true".

So please if you can, report this channel. She's already lost manny followers in the past for her disparities in readings.

[r-osehips]

And now is when I must posit a question that has been weighing on me greatly: Is it possible we’re wrong about Lottie being the Antler Queen? We deduced as much after she was framed by antlers in a shot in season one and then later actually donned a crown made from them. But is this genuine confirmation? Could our real Antler Queen be Shauna? Something about the way the Antler Queen gestures for the others to eat the flesh in the show’s pilot does echo the way Shauna grants permission to feast on Jackie in “Edible Complex.” Could Lottie’s ascension to a cult leader in her adulthood not be an attempt to reclaim the position she had in the woods but rather a position that she was denied and feels she is owed? Or is Lottie indeed the Antler Queen and Shauna is something like her war general? After all, we don’t see the Antler Queen do any of the hunting or slaying herself; it’s easy to assume Shauna’s holding the knife when a girl’s throat is slashed to drain her blood in the pilot. Adult Lottie, on the surface, seems more nefarious than Adult Shauna, but doesn’t that hinge on the exact assumptions I’m talking about when I say these dangerous men in the chop shop don’t see Shauna as just as dangerous as them? Shauna might not have an army of followers, but she’s like a sleeper agent, performing a boring by-the-numbers life while harboring a hunger for violence, for murder! This monologue makes her sound extremely hungry for murder! She would never cry over dead bees like Lottie.

[…] A common narrative about serial killers is that they can often live very normal lives, with spouses, kids, quaint little homes tucked into quiet neighborhoods. And they can often go through long stretches of not killing, too. How many people has Shauna killed? The way she talks here, I think it’s much more than just Adam. I think stabbing Adam, which she also did so easily and without any remorse despite having a long sexual affair with him, reanimated something dormant in her. I don’t think Shauna has been secretly serial killing for the past 25 years, but I do think she has killed more than we think and isn’t just capable of violence but actively courts it.

And that brings me back to a subtle but ultimately very meaningful parallel I noticed between the two Shaunas in this episode. Remember those bolded words from above that Shauna says to Jeff? She said she liked the affair with Adam, because she felt like she didn’t know what was going to happen. Later, Teen Shauna says the following to Lottie in the cabin, still reckoning with the Jackie feast from the night before and clearly rattled by it:

“I’m scared, Lottie. Everything just feels out of control, like I don’t know what’s gonna happen next. What if I—”

Lottie interrupts her to say she won’t hurt the baby. And there’s a lot packed into this short conversation between them, so it’d be easy to miss this echoing of words, especially since it’s not perfectly verbatim. But this can’t be a coincidence, right? Teen Shauna is terrified by the prospect of not knowing what’s going to happen next. But as an adult, Shauna craves that uncertainty. Her fear has alchemized into desire. The Shaunas express these sentiments in different contexts, and Sophie Nélisse and Melanie Lynskey imbue the words with tonally disparate emotions, but it feels very significant in both moments. What if Shauna’s response to feeling out of control is ultimately to embrace it? To flirt with chaos the way we see her do as an adult? Sometimes the only way to conquer what we’re scared of is to turn it into something pleasurable, as fucked-up as that can sometimes feel. Teen Shauna and Adult Shauna both have talked about feeling fucked-up this season, Adult Shauna in the premiere and Teen Shauna here in “Digestif.”

I do doubt Adult Taissa and Adult Nat would be so trusting of Adult Shauna the way they are in season one if she had been some sadistic ruler in the wilderness, but I also think Shauna is sometimes good at pinning things on others, the way she convinced the group to isolate Jackie from the cabin even though she was the one who had so greatly betrayed Jackie. It’s possible she could have done worse in the woods but been able to scapegoat Lottie or otherwise manipulate those around her. Shauna’s not good at lying, but she does have a tendency to get away with shit. And this moment in the chop shop makes it clear that violence isn’t just a means to an end for her; it’s something that actively excites her.

-Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya in the Autostraddle recap of Yellowjackets 2x03, “Digestif”

[thefinalwitness]

i love "baby's first non-starter job" stories. i was level ~45 summoner when i saw someone in my party casting spells AND using a sword and, being a big baby sprout, i excitedly asked "are you a mage with a sword??!" and they said "yeah i'm a red mage! :D" and i gushed at them about how cool and fun it looked and i was so excited to try it at 50.

this lv 50 shift from smn to rdm is also canon for l'aiha now; she's an arcanist up until she loses the ability to manipulate external aether when midgardsormr nullifies hydaelyn's blessing and it fucks up l'aiha's aether and body more than it's supposed to (due to the fact she's ALIVE because hydaelyn resurrected her—oops!). fortunately, she and alisaie are in the middle of the coils raids, so alisaie introduces l'aiha to her teacher x'rhun tia, because red magic is all about balancing internal aether. :3c

to this day, l'aiha mostly can't summon familiars, an important component of being an arcanist. she Sort Of regains the ability with azem's crystal, but by then she's lost her ability to do magic ENTIRELY as a long-term effect of the light corruption. in fact, i think the very earliest she could've effectively resumed being an arcanist would've been at the end of the aitiascope dungeon in 6.0, but i like to think her (in character) level disparity between arcanist (50) and red mage (89-90) sorta means it'd be ridiculous trying to close that gap, especially because it took her 4 years to go from 50 to 90 as rdm. :'D

i like turning my out of character job transitions into in character transitions for l'aiha. fun fact! when i very first rolled the version of her that stuck (i had a very low level arcanist vers of her, but wanted to remake her to level with a friend), i made her a lancer so she could start in gridania with my friend's conjurer! so l'aiha canonically has about 15 levels in lancer (the minimum level you can be before the msq lets you get to limsa, where i swapped her to arcanist), which is explained as:

upon waking with no memories, she's taken in by an L tribe clan who secretly intends to sell her off to the empire as a conscript. they pretend she's always lived with them and encourage her to uncover her own memories; they can see from her physique she's a combatant, but they don't actually know anything about her, so they pretend they won't just 'tell her' who she is or what her skills were because it could 'affect her ability to naturally remember'. so when it comes to how she used to fight, she's left to figure that out for herself.

she ends up choosing a lance from the rack of weapons they show her, because it DOES ring a vague bell; what she doesn't know is the echo memory she has (her echo manifests like aether vision, meaning she can't fully see these visions) was of herself learning how to wield a rapier from her mother, not a lance. so she's a lancer for a while, until she gets to limsa and picks up arcanist instead. :'3c

[zoobus]

You said to ask how you felt about Kato in Green Hornet so I'm doing just that

Keep in mind I haven't seen this movie in like ten years so the mental essaypost I made has faded and become inaccurate with time

Green Hornet (2011) was a fun movie overall, a surprisingly not-bad January release. Pretty funny, quick action, looked cool.

Again, I am ten years removed from the essays I loved to read examining and analyzing racial depictions in Hollywood, but I'd say the desexualization of Asian men is fairly well known? You'd see an Asian man in a leading role and a hot girl in the hot girl role (you know how it is, plz excuse the implied misogyny) and somehow they would never end up together for some strange reason. I know there's a long list of Romoe-Must-Die type movies out there (because I read it that list 10+ years ago):

I've seen plenty of action movies and seeing some tragic shit has never stopped the impenetrable force of stupid action movie romantic hook-ups, ever.

Anyway, Green Hornet spent most of its time looking like it would transcend the stereotype of weirdly cockblocking their rare Asian male lead - it's made abundantly clear that Kato (Jay Chou) is 100000% cooler, smarter, sexier than the Hornet (Seth Rogan). (Side note, I think this was the first movie I ever saw of Seth Rogan and how come no one's ever commented on the fact that he sounds like Grover Monster from Sesame Street? I thought he was doing a bit for the first third of the movie). Kato is slick, manipulative in a badass way. After he and Hornet meet Cameron Diaz' character, not only is their romantic tension between them, it's obvious they hook up. Kato was not going to this woman's house at night for actual "piano lessons," come on.

So hey, representation, we finally got a Hollywood movie where the Asian guy wins right? Wrong. Kato and Hornet get in some stupid boy-fight near the end of the movie and Kato, clearly in the heat of the moment, vulgarly says he fucked Cameron Diaz' character, knowing Hornet will seethe will jealousy over it. And seethe he does! Mr. tattletale runs crying to her and repeats all the stuff his friend said, Diaz gets mad and insists they never did anything together, he's lying (she's lying), and...their relationship is over I guess. She kind of forgives him, but it's over.

You could read that as empowering since hey, how many times have we seen a male lead insult and degrade the trophy romantic girl for minor plot conflict, only for her to quickly forgive him before the story wraps up? For once we have a woman stand up for herself and cut that toxicity out of her life. She's not dating either of them by the movie's end - uncommon for an action movie!

I just couldn't help but note that the rare moment of no one winning the girl coincides with the rare moment an Asian dude had a genuine chance of doing so.

I could never find it now but I saw The Green Hornet right after I saw another movie that I don't remember the title of but I'll call "Russian movie about a magical car that is somehow a ripoff of Spider-man (2002) you'll have to trust me on this." At one point in that movie not!peterparker publicly slutshames not!maryjane for like...no reason. he was mad about his magic car and takes his fury out by degrading his girl to her face, in front of their peers, in class while she gawks at him. Nothing she did prompted this, he just uses her as a punching bag. And at the end? She forgives him. They get back together. The end.

It's not hollywood, but made me think about how common less extreme versions of that are and highlighted the disparities. Kato's outburst is, again, vulgar, but it felt like a heat of the moment thing, a private tantrum that his character would regret after calming down regardless, a personal moment that should have stayed between friends. IMO it came across like oh, asian lead? I'm a feminist now. We gotta give women agency, we have to let women know men aren't ENTITLED to their bodies, and we have to send that message right now, before there's a chance of this guy emasculating a white man.

but hey maybe it was a coincidence

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Jazmin Evans had been waiting for a new kidney for four years when her hospital revealed shocking news: She should have been put on the transplant list in 2015 instead of 2019 — and a racially biased organ test was to blame.

As upsetting as that notification was, it also was part of an unprecedented move to mitigate the racial inequity. Evans is among more than 14,000 Black kidney transplant candidates so far given credit for lost waiting time, moving them up the priority list for their transplant.

“I remember just reading that letter over and over again,” said Evans, 29, of Philadelphia, who shared the notice in a TikTok video to educate other patients. “How could this happen?”

At issue is a once widely used test that overestimated how well Black people’s kidneys were functioning, making them look healthier than they really were — all because of an automated formula that calculated results for Black and non-Black patients differently. That race-based equation could delay diagnosis of organ failure and evaluation for a transplant, exacerbating other disparities that already make Black patients more at risk of needing a new kidney but less likely to get one.

A few years ago, the National Kidney Foundation and American Society of Nephrology prodded laboratories to switch to race-free equations in calculating kidney function. Then the U.S. organ transplant network ordered hospitals to use only race-neutral test results in adding new patients to the kidney waiting list.

“The immediate question came up: What about the people on the list right now? You can’t just leave them behind,” said Dr. Martha Pavlakis of Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and former chair of the network’s kidney committee.

Pavlakis calls what happened next an attempt at restorative justice: The transplant network gave hospitals a year to uncover which Black kidney candidates could have qualified for a new kidney sooner if not for the race-based test — and adjust their waiting time to make up for it. That lookback continues for each newly listed Black patient to see if they, too, should have been referred sooner.

Between January 2023 and mid-March, more than 14,300 Black kidney transplant candidates have had their wait times modified, by an average of two years, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which runs the transplant system. So far more than 2,800 of them, including Evans, have received a transplant.

But it’s just one example of a larger problem permeating health care. Numerous formulas or “algorithms” used in medical decisions — treatment guidelines, diagnostic tests, risk calculators — adjust the answers according to race or ethnicity in a way that puts people of color at disadvantage.

Given how embedded these equations are in medical software and electronic records, even doctors may not realize how widely they impact care decisions.

“Health equity scholars have been raising alarm bells about the way race has been misused in clinical algorithms for decades,” said Dr. Michelle Morse, New York City’s chief medical officer.

Change is beginning, slowly. No longer are obstetricians supposed to include race in determining the risk of a pregnant woman attempting vaginal birth after a prior C-section. The American Heart Association just removed race from a commonly used calculator of people’s heart disease risk. The American Thoracic Society has urged replacing race-based lung function evaluation.

The kidney saga is unique because of the effort to remedy a past wrong.

“Lots of time when we see health inequities, we just assume there’s nothing we can do about it,” Morse said. “We can make changes to restore faith in the health system and to actually address the unfair and avoidable outcomes that Black people and other people of color face.”

Black Americans are over three times more likely than white people to experience kidney failure. Of the roughly 89,000 people currently on the waiting list for a new kidney, about 30% are Black.

Race isn’t a biological factor like age, sex or weight — it’s a social construct. So how did it make its way into calculations of kidney function?

The eGFR, or estimated glomerular filtration rate, evaluates kidney health based on how quickly a waste compound called creatinine gets filtered from blood. In 1999, an equation used to calculate eGFR was modified to adjust Black people’s results compared to everyone else’s, based on some studies with small numbers of Black patients and a long-ago false theory about differences in creatinine levels. Until recently that meant many lab reports would list two results — one calculated for non-Black patients and another for Black patients that could overestimate kidney function by as much as 16%.

Not every Black kidney candidate was affected. Some may have had kidney failure diagnosed without that test. For others to have a chance at benefitting from UNOS’ mandated lookback, transplant center staff-turned-detectives often worked after hours and weekends, hunting years-old records for a test that, recalculated without the race adjustment, might make the difference.

“You’re reaching out to the nephrologist, their primary care doctors, the dialysis units to get those records,” said Dr. Pooja Singh of Jefferson Health’s transplant institute in Philadelphia, where Evans received her new kidney. “That first patient getting transplanted for us was such a great moment for our program that the work didn’t feel like work after that.”

A high school sports physical first spotted Evans’ kidney disease at age 17. While finishing her master’s degree and beginning to earn her Ph.D. at Temple University, she started dialysis — for nine hours a night while she slept — and was placed on the transplant list.

How long it takes to get a kidney transplant depends on patients’ blood type, medical urgency and a mix of other factors — including how long they’ve spent on the waiting list. Evans was first listed in April 2019. When the Jefferson transplant center unearthed her old lab tests, they found she should have qualified in September 2015.

“Just for context, when I was still an undergrad I should have been on the list,” she said, recalling the anger she felt as she read the letter. What she called “a mind-blowing” credit of 3½ more years waiting also provided “a glimmer of hope” that she’d be offered a matching kidney soon.

Evans got a new kidney on July 4 and is healthy again, and grateful the policy change came in time for her.

“You don’t know if people would be alive today” if it had been enacted earlier, she said. Still, that extra step of “making amends to fix the situation for those that we can — I feel like it’s very important and it’s very necessary if you’re truly wanting to bring more equity and equality into the medical field.”

[spiribia]

FOR ME gw2 is strongest in its open-endedness and movement systems, its rewarding of exploration. I do have a lot of fun with its linear story, but I feel like some of its narrative issues arise from the disparate existences of a focused narrative localized in a story journal & missable major character interaction or lore tidbits that exist in the open world in random real time events or journal entries tucked away in niches, sometimes taking place in between chapters of the main story without certainty of if you’re even at the point of the plot for it yet. and because of the freedoms the game wants to grant you, there is no way for them to guarantee you experience, not core plot stuff per se, but specific ambient things that pad out story that might otherwise feel oddly brief, abrupt, or empty if you just beeline the story they do guide you on, and yet the main story is written to assume you did all that. I think every player has had a moment of at least minor disorientation, a “who is this npc and what are they doing here”, a “wait, when did this character show up”. SOTO spoilers under cut.

it doesn’t particularly help in some cases that there is a certain detached brevity to some emotional beats. while characters have so much dialogue space to banter, there’s a lot of characters outright telling you how they felt about things you didn’t actually get to experience. here’s what zojja says after you kill an npc that as far as I know merely exists for you as a one-off possessed enemy you come across in a room of an instance.

what am I supposed to do with this information, and how am I meant to parse it emotionally? I didn’t even know that npc at all. She is not brought up before this or after.

I’ve seen a lot of people say they felt distant from mabon’s death. You are kind of just listening to zojja TELL you why this death is devastating to her and what Mabon meant to her basically anew.

Can you think of a single memorable moment off the top of your head between Mabon and Zojja before he died? That isn’t a rhetorical question, & I don’t mean to say that you can’t - but for me, I couldn’t.

When I was first starting out the game, I remember seeing player complaints about the storyline that all the characters do is talk and talk about their FEELINGS, and I thought, that’s a silly thing to hate about a story! Don’t you want to care about these characters and what they’re going through emotionally? But I think that has become part of the problem for me in time – that these characters TELL me what they’re feeling all the time and yet somehow it doesn’t mean anything to me emotionally. A heart-to-heart does make sense – there is sometimes just no other way to hear a character parse out to you specifics of what is going on inside of them – but in many cases I don’t even have the context for the situation to be more than a character all but saying ‘this loss has affected me deeply for these reasons, and I will now undergo character development.’ This isn’t an issue exclusive to SOTO to me, to be clear – there are many times in the broader story when the emotional impact of something has been more told to me than felt.

I understand that they are on a limited runtime storywise in things like a game, but it’s not that I feel like there’s not even dialogue – I feel like there is SO much dialogue and yet major beats in the story don’t feel properly fleshed out to me sometimes. I don’t know how much I can articulate this without textwalling everyone. But I love the game, I actually do. I say this because there have been definitely profound singular moments too.

[hebuiltfive]

On TAG ages: I always felt the show took place over at least 2 years, possibly 3? Pls enjoy my attempts to squash a timeline together based on ~vibes~

First season headcanon ages: (approx)

Scott = 30

Virgil = 28

John = 26

Gordon = 22

Alan = 16

Kayo = 20

Brains = 35

Penelope = 26

Now that’s a p big age gap down to Alan sure but the disparity between what he remembers of their parents and what his brothers do is just too big imo. Also these ages mean that if Jeff vanishes 8 years before the first episode the eldest 3 are just about old enough to manage running it by themselves (22, 20, and 18 respectively) also might explain why John is Good at monitor duty and Less Good at practical astronauting - Jeff didn’t have time to teach him everything

I think Penelope probably got involved with IR through her father, who probably knew Jeff, and since the Hood is all up in corporate espionage and subterfuge, I don’t think it’s implausible that the creighton-ward’s as a whole seemingly charitably focused family wouldn’t be keen to make sure he wasn’t interfering with the organisation they support. Maybe it was more practical for a young penny to do the snooping as she could play the slightly shallow lady of leisure and let her father maintain the pretence of not interfering

I hope that all makes a little sense - I’ve written it all out and now can’t remember how well it lines up with what you said!

It does make sense, Anon! Thank you!

My math is terrible but I think that would make the difference between Scott and Alan 14 years? Which could be seen as crazy BUT also does make sense? I'm not sure how much is fanon and how much is canon but I've always assumed Alan saw Scott as a father figure just as much as a big brother, so the bigger age gap would aid that.

As for Penny and her family, I never thought of your point before. That would also make sense, and clears up some of her age discrepancy.

I think Scott is definitely at least near his 30s at the start of the series, (which I've started to question as to whether they meant the 2060s rather than actual 2060? Thus starting the series in '62?) and the more I think about it, I imagine Scott, Virgil and John being closer in age to each other than they are to Gordon, and Gordon is to Alan, if that makes sense? Jeff being busy with the business, then space and Mars, then IR (after Lucy's death but not too soon after I always imagine). Alan especially, but maybe also Gordon, being born in between all this chaos?

Continuity is definitely the source of most of the confusion I think. At this point I think we'd be safe to assume even the creators of TAG don't know the exact ages. (I'd like to believe that Gerry had some idea for the original series, even if they still aren't 100% accurate/make sense).

You've added some more food for thought, Anon. Thank you! 🥰

[thessalian]

Astrid vs a Return to Fort Gobbo

Back at the goblin camp, where everyone now hates them

Astarion: And how are we getting through this, if I may ask?

Astrid: I have a few contingencies. Gale?

Gale: This is where we pay attention to what you're handing me, right. Um ... Hold Person, Speak With Dead-- Have we ever used those?

Astrid: I have a necklace that lets me do so and I ... kind of haven't. Anyway, keep going.

Gale: Oh. ...Oh! Well, this will be useful!

Astrid: You're getting my drift now, yay! Now, everybody get ready for ranged.

Gale: *reads from scroll*

Sleet Storm: *covers the entire area of the gate in ice*

Astrid: *pulls out lute; singing* "So we're not / Made mind flayers / We'll become / Goblin slayers / You'll slip and you'll slide / And soon you'll have died / Walking in a winter wonderland..."

Stabnation: *ensues, mostly at range*

While exploring a bit more

Astrid: How did these guys sleep through the noise we made down there?

Gale: From the smell of them, they drank the best part of a distillery.

Astrid: ...I feel better about that, actually. At least they're anaesthetised. *stealths and starts one-shotting the sleeping bugbears and goblins with arrows, one by one*

Astarion: Aww ... look at our little assassin. I think I'm actually proud. *grins at Shadowheart* And you could see it as her giving your Lady Shar Her due...

Shadowheart: Shut. Up.

And somewhere between goblin massacres

Shadowheart: Um. Look, you were talking about friendship and trust and everything, and ... I don't remember much, but I do remember that Shar devotees saved my life when I was young and I kind of owe them forthat.

Astrid: ... *all the hugs*

Shadowheart: I am covered in bugbear.

Astrid: That's okay; we're all covered in bugbear. Astarion got overenthusiastic.

Astarion: Sometimes you hit the carotid artery as collateral damage, alright? You compromise that one, and it's quite the gusher. Call it an occupational hazard and move on, already.

Now inside the Shattered Sanctum

Astrid: Hmm. The Underdark would be down, so maybe those pits are a good place to start?

Astarion: Oh, very well. *picks lock on cage door*

Giant Spiders: Oooh, DoorDash!

Astrid: ...Yes, and we brought you nicely compliant meals of fresh-killed goblin, with a side of bugbear.

Giant Spiders: Hrm. Fair. Best tip we can give you is letting you loot the place.

Astrid: Much obliged! Oh, you haven't seen a gateway to the Underdark down there, have you?

Giant Spiders: Not so much, no.

Astrid: Okay; thanks anyway. Have a nice day!

Giant Spiders: *go to feast*

Gale; Astarion; Shadowheart: *staaaaare at Astrid*

Astrid: ...What? The goblins are already dead. What will the giant spiders do; make them deader?

Gale: I'm honestly just astounded that you can manage to talk your way out of everything.

Astrid: Ah, if only I were a tiefling, and could call myself a silver-tongued devil and still be at least half literal about it. Anyway, I guess we keep looking.

In High Priestess Gut's quarters

Ogre: You don't belong in here!

Astrid: ...High Priestess Gut has a handmaiden? Well, I guess that explains the hair--

Ogre: Wut.

Astrid: You don't expect goblins with coiffures, okay? You did a wonderful job given the size disparities! Anyway, we just want to have a quick look around; you won't even know we're--

Ogre: HEY. YOU. YOU STEAING. YOU STOP THAT NOW!

Gale: *book in hands* ...sorry. Reflex. Just can I finish this chapter--?

Ogre: *raises club* YOU GO SPLAT.

Astrid: *Vicious Mockery resonance* I LIED; HIGH PRIESTESS GUT LOOKED LIKE SHE GOT HER HAIR DONE BY A HURRICANE WITH TREACLE ON ITS FINGERS AND HER JEWELLERY CLASHED WITH HER OUTFIT! IT TAKES A SPECIAL KIND OF FUCK-UP TO CLASH BONES WITH LEATHER, BY THE WAY!

Ogre: *growls in pain and anger; turns on Astrid*

Astrid: *uses Flourish; actually knocks the ogre down*

Shadowheart: *uses Bramble Shield to Entangle ogre prone on floor*

Astrid: Okay ... that should hold her until we find what we're looking for and--

Astarion: *FEEDS*

Astrid: ...What is it with you and helpless women?!?

Astarion: You were in no way 'helpless', and anyway, I don't know what's to hunt in the Underdark so I'm getting a feed in now.

Ogre: *breaks free from Entangle through sheer aggravation*

Astrid: Ooooooor we kill the now very angry ogre so we don't have to worry about her, and then we have a long talk about you all stepping on my cue lines.

Gale: Sorry...

Astarion: Oh, fine.

Astrid: Oh, not you, Shadowheart; you did great.

Shadowheart: *littlesmile*

Astarion: You really had better get a move on before you lose the cinnamon roll, you know.

Gale: Shut. UP.

Astarion: Or were you only cosying up to our bard to make your ex jealous?

Gale: ...............IGNIS!

Astarion: *reflexively ducks*

Fire Bolt: *was thankfully aimed at the ogre, who is now very, very dead*

Astarion: ...I suppose thanks are in order for you not aiming that at me.

Gale: I would never. Not when you're standing that close to a bookshelf, anyway.

Astarion:*eyeroll* Thanks.

And, after a lot of looting

Shadowheart: Looks like we have to move these panels on the floor into the right positions. Didn't that note we saw on the ritual table outside say something about--?

Astrid: Or we could pull that lever, at least after we do something about it being locked in place.

Astarion: *produces lockpicking tools* Anything to avoid running around the floor like idiots for the next half-hour.

Door: *opens onto some glowy fungi and a very long ladder*

Astrid: Okay ... one for you and one for you and one for you and one for me.

Gale: What are-- Wait, you made Potions of Feather Fall?

Astrid: I still don't have the spell, and given how long this ladder is, we'll have plenty of time to chug those during any fall that would kill us. And if we don't need them, well, maybe they'll come in handy later. Come on! Let's see what wonders the Underdark has for us!

Astarion: She is unbearably cheerful.

Astrid: If it'll appeal to you at all, did you ever wonder what drow blood tastes like?

Astarion: If it's anything like their worship, I assume deep dark shadows and other people's pain, with a touch of venom for kick. ...That sounds remarkably appealing and your powers of persuasion are frustratingly good. All right, let's go.