Prompt 131
Okay, so first of all Dan would like to say it’s not his fault. Ellie was the one to bring some unknown object into the speeder and Jazz was the one driving. Or had Sam been driving- didn’t matter! It wasn’t his fault, he wasn’t the one shooting at them, he wasn’t the one to break whatever, he was not the one to open a stupid portal, and so it wasn’t his fault!
So why is he now like, five years old, and why is the speeder crashed in some sort of corn field. Why is everyone- except for Jazz whose now like six- also like three at most?! And- oh fuck the door just opened and… okay that’s a kid. Like, nine at most.
A kid and an adult, who he hadn’t noticed at first so again, it’s not his fault if he hissed at them and tried to hide his not-siblings behind him. It’s also not fair they’re apparently stuck to ghost speak for who knows how long, but at least they can understand the people.
“Martha, get some blankets, it’s happened again!”
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the thing about culture that's difficult for a lot of people it seems to me is that "culture" is not some ontologically coherent Blob where you can sit at the table and someone will serve it to you and you get to just sit there and Receive it. or, it's not something you can dig up and carefully extract unchanged, if you sit carefully enough at your books, and then put on your mantle to admire. i'm a motherfucker whose career is about digging things up from books so i get the appeal, and yet that's not what Culture is, because culture is what you Do. so you already have one. what food do you eat? where do you live? what rituals do you perform? do you take your shoes off when you go inside?
culture is distinct from religion and ethnicity (though obviously it's interrelated with both), and deeply related to the place you live now and its customs and foodways and norms for politeness and hospitality, and what other populations live around you in the place you live now. trying to connect to the mystical immigrant old-country past of your ancestors is unlikely to get you the results you're looking for - culture is something you do every day and i promise you already have one. and you're already doing it. which means that you can also just as easily change the things you do if you don't like them.
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A fic that looks like it’s about to be a Wangxian kid fic because WWX is seriously considering adopting A-Yuan because all of A-Yuan’s living relatives are too old or too sick to take care of him except for Wen Qing, who is an ER doctor and just simply does not have the time to do that and be a single parent of a little kid, so maybe, because A-Yuan loves you so much, Wei Ying, you could adopt him, and then what’s left of his birth family could still stay in his life…
But HERE COMES JIANG WANYIN WITH A STEEL CHAIR and a “We could get fake married and I could help you take care of A-Yuan, it’s not fair that you should have to give up your nephew just because this country has so few accommodations for single parents, I’m really good with kids (probably) I’ve always wanted to be a parent (kinda) and it’ll be a totally 100% platonic marriage because I’m DEFINITELY not secretly in love with you” and then the rest of the fic is chengqing fake relationship AU
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anyone else getting nervous about the lack of info about the book 10 title?
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If I could have any one Skill from Disco Elysium speaking in my head, guiding my hand. It would be Shivers.
Idk man. It would fix me. To feel the oncoming rain and the biting cold and know it's alive and there for me. That it loves me. To get whispers on the wind of stories happening around me, lives of others both current and long past all living in the same city. To hear her voice.
To hear her voice would fix me. The voice of a city, of humanity. She's always there and always supporting me and I am a part of her and she is a part of me and we are inextricably intertwined, as is every single other person that lives as her.
She has seen me at the precipice. And she has seen me walking away from it. She is the precipice. And she is the long walk home. And she is the dying girl. And every girl who came before her. And every witness who stood silently by. We are keeping one another on this earth. She does not wish to see me dead, and nor do I to her.
She is beyond me, and around me, and with me, and part of me. A god. The only god I could bring myself to worship with true, unwavering conviction. A god of humanity. More than any individual could ever hope to be, and yet tied inescapably and inextricably to her humanity.
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Susato Mikotoba is a fucking terrifying force of nature. Girlboss doesn't cut it. She sees it all through to the end. Her determination only wavers at an existential cost to her morals and sense of self. She tosses men twice her size, she shoots her name in arrows in the wall of her house, she says she could take down a serial killer with her bare hands, she crossdresses to stand in court, and when she realizes she's going to help take down the British judiciary...she doesn't hesitate for a minute.
Sure, she has a breakdown once, but wouldn't we all if we think we failed at the role we trained our whole lives for?
She's not fragile. She's not weak. She's a tsunami in a teenage girl's body. And she's the fucking best because of it.
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i keep feeling like. there's something parallel between rose and yaz's endings. maybe parallel isn't the right word -- but i keep wanting to draw comparisons, i think because they're two characters who really defined specific doctors and for whom it's basically confirmed the doctor returned their (romantic) feelings
(they're not the ONLY ones who fit this description, but i'm in no way qualified to talk about clara or even river, so bear with me)
it just feels. i don't know. rose never leaves on purpose. she is separated from the doctor, forcibly, every single time. the doctor sends her home, or she gets stuck in an alternate universe, or the doctor leaves her in the same alternate universe. every single time, she fights to get back to the doctor. the writers had to create a perfect happy ending for her (half-human version of her doctor who'll age along with her, in the alternate universe where her father is alive) because otherwise she wouldn't stop fighting to get back to the doctor, and the show can't have that. the show needs to move on. we need rose to fade into the past.
i haven't seen all of yaz's episodes, but her arc seems very similar from the limited amount i've seen. she keeps fighting to get back to the doctor. she's in love with the doctor, and the doctor basically confirms returning her feelings, albeit in a very stilted, hesitant, doctor-y way (compare "imagine that happening to someone you--" with "and if i was going to, believe me, it would be with you").
but when yasmin's doctor regenerates... yaz is just expected to. step away, go back to living her life, never see the doctor again. kinda like the abandonment that most companions have ever experienced -- getting dropped off once and then goodbye forever! -- except with more of the onus on her. the show has to move on from rose's era, so she gets dumped on a beach. the show has to move on from yasmin's era, so yaz has to accept that the doctor is going off to die alone. she has to make her peace with that information.
i don't know. i think yaz's ending is trying to go hand-in-hand with graham and ryan's purposeful exit -- it seems like the chibnall era tried really hard to have Not Terrible endings for companions. which is very admirable! but honestly? yasmin's ending feels crueler than most, including rose's. yaz was in love with the doctor. the doctor reciprocated those feelings. they should've gotten their equivalent of s2-era 10rose! she should've gotten a chance to stay with the doctor through their regeneration, the way other love interests have been able to (s/o to river and clara!).
i know this is because of the limitations of the show. bad ratings meant chibnall left after only one regeneration, and new incarnations of the show rarely bring in characters from other eras.
but i'm still very sad for yaz :( like yes, she wasn't just dumped on the curb without warning. but she was still expected to say goodbye to someone she loved, knowing that person was dying, and not say a word of protest. if the previous history of the show is any indication, she's never going to see the doctor again. she doesn't get a half-human version of the doctor to live out her days with, and she's not "allowed" to fight to get back to the doctor, either, due to the way the show's structured (but also the way the doctor talked about them saying goodbye). she has to live the rest of her life knowing that the doctor is out there, perfectly capable of visiting, and the only reason they won't visit is because yaz is from a specific time of their life that they've moved on from.
i know she has the companion support group. and i know she'll move on! she's yaz. she's strong and self-actualized. she'll be okay, eventually. but she has to be okay, you know? she has to learn to live without the doctor. rose never had to do that.
it just makes me sad :(
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okay, so casper and nova, right? the casper and nova game is one big metaphor for simon and betty’s relationship. and the last thing we see in it is: nova tries to sacrifice herself so casper can get what he wants, and the choices are to either go with that, or nova lives but casper forgets her. and it’s obviously meant to parallel simon and betty’s situation in come along with me after they get swallowed by golb: either betty can sacrifice herself to keep simon safe, or she doesn’t but he goes back to being ice king. (um, that is, assuming that she was correct to think they might revert to the forms they had before getting digested after exiting golb. which is not something we have any actual evidence for. it was just a possibility that occurred to her and a risk she wasn’t willing to take.)
UM. EVERY PART OF THAT WAS BECAUSE OF DECISIONS BETTY MADE INDEPENDENTLY?
betty decides to jump through the portal when simon is trying to say goodbye to her, betty decides to fix the crown and then try to find a way to cure him even after he’s told her he’d rather die than be ice king again, betty decides to fucking summon golb, betty decides to push simon out of golb before he can react at all just in case the crown goes back to its former state once it leaves and just in case there’s no way to get rid of golb without its wish magic.
IT WAS BETTYS CHOICES IT WAS BETTYS CHOICES IT WAS ALL BETTYS OWN CHOICES THAT SHE MADE IT WAS BETTY BETTY WAS THE REASON THEY WERE IN THAT SITUATION
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if dorian didn't show up, do you think louis would have shot minnie?
I do. I know some people think either he wouldn't have or he would've missed so that's why the writers had him shoot Dorian instead, but mmmmmm no, I don't personally think so. I like to think that if he had taken the shot, his shaky hands would've caused him to shoot her fatally.
Mostly because I'm already so normal about the fact that of the Ericson crew, Marlon and Louis are the only ones with a body count. Well, that we know of, but shown to us in the game, at least. Plus, we know it's Louis' first kill.
Like yeah, Clementine and AJ become part of the crew and they have bigger body counts, and if we're counting indirect kills caused by actions, then Tenn has a count... and I guess everyone has blood on their hands for blowing up the boat... but I'm talking about killed directly with a weapon like....... I lied, I'm not normal about that at all, Louis and Marlon are the ones who have killed someone in Louis' route. I'm also not normal about the fact that Louis kills Dorian and then even as he's clearly in shock, he tries to go with Clementine to get AJ, and then later on when they talk about it, he says it feels like bile but not quite and he's glad he has it in him to do it.... listen, listen, listen... I'm obsessed with that.
Anyway, so if Louis shot Minerva, I think he would've accidentally killed her and can you imagine? He's already enough of a mess after killing the woman who pinned him down and tried to cut his finger off [or succeeded] but he knew Minerva, they were friends before the twins were taken. Even Violet couldn't kill her even though that would've been the smarter thing to do, and we know thanks to meta knowledge that killing her would've saved lives, but Violet couldn't, and I don't think Louis would intentionally either.
Speaking of Violet, if Louis killed Minerva, I hate to think about what that would've done to Vi. I think she might've actually left at that point, like what was planned before it got changed to her being burned. I don't think she would've attacked Louis over it, though, like yeah she attacked Clementine in the cell but Louis? I don't know, but I don't think so just because it's Louis and he'd be a mess about it anyway.
Though if he did kill her, it would be a neat parallel to draw... y'know, because Louis forgave AJ for killing Marlon even though he was pissed and heartbroken, and Violet was annoyed with him the entire time... but could she ever forgive Louis for killing Minerva? Y'know? We already have a similar parallel with AJ shooting Tenn, but still.
If Clementine killed Minerva in that moment, though, then I could see Violet attacking her since in her eyes, Clem proved her right.
So yeah, I get why they added the Dorian kill to his route. It adds another compelling element to Louis as a character, but we also need Minerva alive for episode 4; Louis can't kill her, he can't miss, and he's not going to stay with her because we need Violet to stay on the boat and him to be on shore for all routes.
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Steph: Oh no, we need to be at [location, place] in a short window of time! How are we going to get there in time?
Cass pushing along a shopping cart: Get in.
Steph: ???
*cut to Cass running like the goddamn Flash while pushing the cart with Steph inside*
Steph, clinging on for dear life: What the fuck. What the fuck. How are you doing this??
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to me, the question of whether hera would want a body is first and foremost a question of autonomy and ability. she has an internal self-image, i think it's meaningful that the most pivotal moments in her character arc take place in spaces where she can be perceived the way she perceives herself and interact with others in a (relatively) equal and physical capacity, and that's worth considering. but i don't think it's about how she looks, or even who she is - and i think she's the same person either way; she's equally human without a body, and having a body wouldn't make her lived experience as an AI magically disappear - so much as it's about how she would want to live.
like most things with hera, i'm looking at this through a dual lens of disability and transness, both perspectives from which the body - and particularly disconnect from the body - is a concern. the body as the mechanism by which she's able to interact with the world; understanding her physical isolation as a product of her disability, the body as a disability aid. the body as it relates to disability, in constant negotiation. the body as an expression of medical transition, of self-determination, of choice. as a statement of how she wants to be seen, how she wants to navigate the world, and at the same time reckoning with the inevitable gap between an idealized self-image and a lived reality, especially after a long time spent believing that self-image could never be visible to anyone else.
it's critical to me that it should never imply hera's disability is 'fixed' by having a body, only that it enables her to interact with the world in ways she otherwise couldn't. her fears about returning to earth are about safety and ability; the form she exists in dictates the life she's allowed to lead and has allowed people to invade her privacy and make choices for her. dysphoria and disability both contribute to disembodiment - in an increasingly digitized world, the type of alienation that feels like your life can only exist in a virtual space... maybe there's something about the concept of AI embodiment, in particular as it relates to hera, that appeals to me because of what it challenges about what makes a 'real woman.' when it's about perception, about how others see her and how she might observe / be impacted by how she's treated differently, even subconsciously. it's about feeling more present in her life and interfacing with the world. but it's not in itself a becoming; it doesn't change how she's been shaped by her history or who she is as a person.
i think it comes back to the 'big picture' as a central antagonistic force in wolf 359, and how - in that context, in this story - it adds a weight to this hypothetical choice. hera is everywhere, and she's never really anywhere. she's got access to more knowledge than most people could imagine, but it's all theoretical or highly situational; she doesn't have the same life experiences as her peers. she has the capacity to understand that 'big picture' better than most people, but whatever greater portion of the universe she understands is nothing next to infinity and meaningless without connection and context. it's interesting to me that hera is one of the most self-focused and introspective people on the show. her loyalties and decisions are absolute, personal, emotionally driven. she's lonely; she always feels physically away from the others. she misremembers herself sitting at the table with the rest of the crew. she imagines what the ocean is like. there's nothing to say that hera having a body is the only solution for that, but i like what it represents, and i honestly believe it'd make her happier than the alternatives. if there's something to a symbolically narrowed focus that allows for a more solid sense of self... that maybe the way to make something of such a big, big universe is to find a tiny portion of it that's yours and hold onto it tight.
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