#series: desperate measures

[renegadesstuff]

From watching her dance to dancing with her 🥺❤️

[ginaporterr]

RICKY & GINA IN EVERY EPISODE ✿ 1x04: Blocking

[raayllum]

like i have not spent ages thinking about how far i can push rayllum to be borderline unhealthy while also giving them room to walk back from the brink and still have a healthy relationship with each other to Not be excited the show is exploring the exact same thing - Could you please explain the above with regards to your fic? Like maybe some scenarios we can expect? Especially around the whole unhealthy relationship traits :) Love messy relationships in stories :)

re: this post

So one of my favourite things about TDP is that they emphasize, time and time again, that you can deeply love someone and they can deeply love you, and yet that doesn't mean 1) the relationship can't be or cannot become unhealthy and 2) that genuine love can be precisely what destroys the relationship / the people in it anyway. Ex: Harrow and Viren's entire decades long fuckery, Rayla and Runaan (re: he loved her too much to see she wasn't fit to be an assassin), Harrow's love for Sarai being so warped he does something she would never want or approve of to assuage his own rage and grief/guilt (and Viren pushing Harrow to take revenge for similar reasons), even Callum and Claudia to a degree, etc. Even the healthiest of relationships have periods or patterns of unhealthiness and in a series all about breaking harmful cycles, it’s particularly apt, tragic, and interesting

I always figured we saw the beginnings of this in TTM / that Rayla's tendency to go off on her own (and self-sacrifice) was going to be, in many ways, their biggest hurdle to face. Callum also has self destructive tendencies when it comes to magical desperation (2x04 and 2x07) but he also has self-preservation and optimism, even as he verges closer to where Rayla stands in S4.

Basically: the fundamental misunderstanding of TTM, in which Rayla chooses Callum by leaving, and Callum views her as choosing the mission over him by staying away, is undeniably tragic with both of them being right and both of them being wrong, and we see that follow through into S4 (Callum asking Rayla to kill him and thinking it's something she would viably do in the first place). This relationship between love as transformation (positive change), salvation (life), and destruction (death) and the razor's edge between all of them is something I've thought a lot about within Rayllum's bond in general, since it's also a big theme in the show that we come back to time and time again, and theirs is the relationship it probably manifests in the most every season:

Will this thing help me or hurt me? Will it save me or kill me?

“Wow. So they look identical, but they might kill you or they might save you,” Callum said.

“Exactly. Just like me…” Rayla smiled.

It's a level of symbolic and interpersonal intensity I just can't get enough, as well as the inherent risk in it: Callum, reckless, driven, relentless, barreling towards what might be his own destruction because he just can't resist. Rayla, more cautious and more aware, so scared of pulling others down with her and cognizant that she'll go down with the ship (Callum's ship) to the very end. This was all present to me and one of my favourite ideas to explore pre-S4's release, so I think it's very unsurprising that the "I need you to kill me" scene from 4x07 ended up being my favourite scene in the season, because it's thematically richer than beyond anything I ever dreamed of going in.

"Desperate Measures," now firmly canon divergent, focuses on Rayla going undercover in a Xadian dark mage guild when Callum stumbles across her and gets entwined in the lie, as he refuses to just leave her there. The emotional toll of the increasingly unethical and awful things they have to do, the anger and hurt and love they still hold for one another that they can't reveal to anyone else, and their increasing resentment towards one another (Rayla is trying to spare him, Callum is trying to keep her safe at expense to himself) understandably pushes them to their limits and makes them resort to, well, some desperate measures in order to keep the other person Safe, if deeply unhappy.

This includes having to 1) downplay their connection and history together, omitting massive chunks of it, 2) going along on some dark magic hunts and both participating in ingredient collection, 3) increasingly losing a sense of self, etc. Again, all things we see little peeks of in S4, in terms of Rayla being far more jaded, both of them being pretty lost without the other, not talking about their relationship as much because of everything going on, being frustrated and hurt but refusing to / being unable to walk away from each other or let go.

However, one of my favourite things about pushing an otherwise healthy relationship to that extreme is keeping it together enough that it can be healthy again, and what that journey would look like. So it's a pretty bleak fic, I think, but not devoid of hope and affection - just a lot of anguish, too.

Overall I think this line sums up the analysis and the fic quite well:

“I can’t!” Callum burst, his chest heaving. “I can’t stop caring—I don’t fucking hate you―that’s the problem!”

When you love someone so much they destroy you, just a little (or a lot)? Yeah

[rapha-reads]

Classic Who: The Rescue part 2

Hey, Vicki laying down some truths so early in the show's running! Interesting.

"I've been here a long time, I know what it's like here! You've just arrived and you're going to ruin things!"

So, Doctor. Ever since the beginning, people have warned you against running around thinking you understand the situation you found yourself in when you only have part of the whole thing under your eyes...

"You haven't got the sort of face that kills things"

Uuuuuh. Yeah, Vicki, I'm taking off a character point here.

Doesn't Vicki become a companion too? Or am I mixing up my companion names?

[msfbgraves]

"The Hatchet" vs "Yellowjackets"

I don't know how accurate Gary Paulsen is in his "Hatchet" series but, well, none of the Yellowjackets have read it.

I understand the whole horror trope but that is because they're not even trying to actually forage or hunt or fish apparently.

What I've learned from Paulsen:

Is any one of them even trying to trap small game? Sure, I don't know how to construct a trap but they have books in that cabin on precisely those things.

Mushrooms and berries aren't the only thing you can forage. Nuts seldom kill you. Try observing the squirrels for them, find edible roots.

You killed game! Great job. D'you know that innards serve as great bait for fish?

Don't roast the meat. Boiling the meat will give you broth. Broth has nutrients. Pretty sure blood has nutrients, but if not: bait. And even the Wannsee in the middle of Berlin has mussels, clams, cockles.

Again why is no one fishing in any way, jesus.

Hides can keep people warm in a pinch. Clean well burn off excess hair on the inside.

Hides make good sleds too, for when you scavenge. Wolves are pretty good hunters. Observe them. Cut away their leftovers. They can't move carcasses we can.

They have shelter heat and water. They have weapons. Why are they not learning. You can eat tree bark and maggots if things get bad enough.

Going by Paulsen, even in winter they have rabbits and ptarmigan.

Observed from life and death situation survivors: relationship drama becomes pretty irrelevant pretty soon.

Why aren't they going back to that plane for raw materials? You waste nothing. Anything can be repurposed into something that could help you survive. Metal from the plane seats, whatever. Rip open the cushions rework the filling into blankets.

The only thing you need are kindling, wood and food, why do you not get on it? Coach can tend the fire and keep you stocked with kindling.

Groups of their size have survived ice ages in caves, gals and guys, you could do better.

[luvkuvi]

me holding the urge to spoil my own smau:

[belial-ex-tenebrae]

“I think we’ve established that my fascination with you has prodded me to learn all number of things.”

She picks up her fork and considers me.

“You say fascination, but if I wasn’t attracted to you, it would border on terrifying.”

--Jasmin, Desperate Measures

[k1rishiki]

i wish all depop sellers who list their eva stuff as FUCKING GUNDAM die and go to hell no matter what

[seesgood]

special talents include:  adding niche characters from books no one has read to my multi as test muses in the hopes that some one will read the same book and write the other character(s) with me and we can just talk about the book(s) and characters and ships forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and --- 

[renegadesstuff]

They love looking at each other across a crowded room 🥹🥰

[callaeidae3]

Whumptober 2022 Day 14: Die a hero or live long enough to become the villain

Desperate Measures | Failed escape | “I’ll be right behind you.”

Recovering after being shot in the arm three times (enough to shatter it), and after an urgent surgery to remove his arm before the damage could bring on sepsis.

İt'll take a while to process what happened.

[Scene from The Case of Kindall, K.]

[mable-stitchpunk]

Fanfiction link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13998534/41/Going-Home-in-a-Box

[chawarin-panich]

I know that taking a break from Not Me on ep. 11 is psychotic unhinged behavior but you have to understand that this is me about SeanBlack:

[steveloxton]

9.100 Desperate Measures