#the type of shit that can be disproved just by knowing very basic historical facts. is what gets me

[cruelsister-moved2]

can we talk about revival religions i want to talk about it... i like cant stress enough how concerning it is that people cant tell the difference between a closed practice that you need to belong to a certain community to understand vs. a revival invented by hobbyists for fun based on the texts of a dead (or...made up) tradition that everyone has equal access to & say things like “percy jackson is problematic because there are people who worship apollo” & get taken in by racists and nationalists bc they say shit like “we need to reclaim our marginalised indigenous heritage”. if u think thatbeing born in a nation state thats landmass roughly corresponds with the collection of ancient city-states that produced some of the most widely-disseminated literature in the world somehow puts you in the same position as an indigenous person begging white neopagans to stop burning white sage you really really need to unpack that... 

[dissonantdreamer]

How did you become a paranormal investigator??? And what usually happen on the job?? if you don’t mind answering that is!

oh? i’m kinda surprised anyone is interested in this haha. I don’t mind answering at all! More than happy to talk about it :D I did it somewhat seriously for about 2.5-3 years a while ago. I have a friend who believes in ghosts and will take me ghost hunting every once in a while. But those adventures are far looser than what I used to do and our dynamic is very much buzzfeed unsolved because I don’t have to pretend I’m a professional.

This got long here’s a cut:

Basically, when you end up in a bumfuck nowhere town you either hang out in the corn and fuck with people or you get into some weird hobby like ghost hunting or making weird grunts to arouse the local bigfoot into being so horny it shows up and it’s really not a hard choice to make. Hiding in the corn and fucking with people led to me meeting a few cool dudes who were trying to get a paranormal investigation business going it never took off into a full time thing but it was still fun to get to do. This was before there was a real boom in those type of shows, Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures were the big two.

One of my friends worked with the local historical society as a tour guide for the area. At night he would run “haunted tours”, which honestly amounts to leading around a group of people, sharing stories of supposed hauntings. It’s fun but ultimately harmless entertainment. He managed to get numbers from people who were having problems at home and myself and four others would go investigate.

Shows on TV play it up to be this really intense deal, but most of the time it really is boring. It’s so much research before you get to the case and then literal hours of watching footage and listening to tapes when you get back. The actual fun part is really a group of assholes yelling at the dark and hoping to all fuck someone doesn’t say hello back (because that means you aren’t alone in a real world this person or animal could hurt you situation). There were a few times where we did encounter something we had no explanation for or found some sort of EVP that didn’t make sense, but the goal was always to disprove so we’d present those findings with out priming the person to hear or see what we thought it was.

On an average gig we’d go in and figure out why things were spooky, most of the time it was stuff like the doors weren’t installed properly, poor insulation, old wiring shot to fuck, and so, so much mold. Those were hard because most of the time someone had lost a loved one and it was a balancing act to give them closure without totally dismissing their want for it to be more than the house falling apart. Though as we’ve learned you can present as many facts as you want to someone and if they want to believe they’ll believe. Those people who still needed closure we had connections with a priest and a rabbi who, depending on who was requested, would go in and bless the house which surprise surprise would calm gramps’ ghost right on down.

The a worse gig we got hired to work with a “Psychic” who told people they didn’t know anything about the building despite getting paid to lead a tour of the building for three nights in a row. Nobody on the tour liked being told it wasn’t ghosts and without evidence just feeling she “disproved” everything we brought up. (side bar psychics are fucking monsters who willingly prey on people at their lowest for personal and monetary gain. never go to one they should all die out)

We did a few bigger investigations of institutions that had a long history of being haunted and in those, there was some shit that was hard to explain away. One example, we spent a night in an old women’s jail and I was the only one who id’d as one (at the time) We we’re locked in over night and it was off the main road a ways. There was a call and response of singing that we literally tore through dozens of cells trying to find the source on. Couldn’t find a damn thing and it was creepy as fuck.

The real scary shit was real people, we did a case where we went into an old church for the guy who bought the property and was fixing it up. He reported screams and odd noises, his tools would be moved around on gone completely. He called us after he found the stuff he kept in his locked office on the floor. We caught the man who had been living in it’s walls, he had been squatting for sometime we found out after, he had an alcove tucked away in a hard to find crawlspace all set up and he’d go out at night because no one was around. nearly stabbed me with a needle and tried to bite my friends face. We managed to subdue him and have the cops handle him. Way scarier than any “ghost”.

At one point we stared working with another paranormal group that was filming a pilot with Travel TV that ended up getting dropped, but a few of the team got to go to the Ohio State Penitentiary and while I didn’t get to go I got to go through the findings and there was some weird moments. 

But yeah that’s some stuff that happened and while I’m a skeptic it is a lot of fun to go yell at the darkness.

Thanks for the ask, anon. It was nice to get to talk about something outside of TLoU that I enjoy. Hope you have a good day :)

[margridarnauds]

for the ship thing: wash/mira, ronan/laz, solene/olympe, ivanova/talia, domona/elisa

Wash/Mira 

The TN pairing we deserved. Like, we’ve talked about that “Still doing Taylor’s dirty work?” for ages and you did such a good job discussing it in your answer, but it’s just....SO IMPORTANT. Especially given that we get so little of a personal life for either of them. Like, Mira does NOT like Wash’s position with Taylor and obviously thinks she could do better. I know what the writers probably were going for (bitchy comment by female rival, probably out of jealousy) but....it didn’t work, especially because the look on Mira’s face is rather...irritated? Tired? Pissed? Like, this is not just a casual comment. Mira thinks Wash could do better than Taylor, and if she ever decided to leave Taylor for the Sixers, they would be a damn good power couple. And then that Wash does know exactly where Mira’s old quarters are....like, I’m sure Wash knows where everyone on the colony is, but you can’t tell me they didn’t bang in that house. (Which would have made it more painful when the Shannons moved in because it was one more reminder that she’s Gone and things are never going back to normal.) And, really, we don’t really get how much of a personal BETRAYAL what the Sixers did was, even though you know that personal bonds would have formed. Like, for me, they missed out on a lot of potential by not deepening this bond (and instead giving us an Unfortunate Taylor Bondage Ep), not just as far as giving both of them development, but also on a broader level as far as increasing the emotional stakes (and giving you more vid editing potential because I NEED THAT GAY SHIT IN MY LIFE). 

Ronan/Laz 

Definitely not the ship that I jumped onto 1789 for, but definitely the one that I stayed on it for. I think it’s very versatile, as far as the number of dynamics that you can work with, and the fact that both pairs (Matthieu Carnot/Louis Delort and Ryuu Masaki/Seijou Kaito) had better chemistry with each other than Olympe certainly helped. Obviously, it’s an inherently unequal pairing on multiple levels; I don’t hold any ill will towards anyone who ships it as such, but personally I find it more fun to reverse it so that Laz is a total gay mess who is totally whipped by his boyfriend even though neither party really notices. Personally, I think if we’re going to have Laz represent “the order and rigidity of the Ancien Regime” and Ronan representing the common man’s hopes for the Revolution, there has to be a point where they meet up and reconcile, given that, historically, there did come a point where both sides were pretty damned burned out. (Which is why I go SO HARD for the French version having them embrace each other at the finale, though I’m also enough of a slut for angst that Zuka!Laz turning his back on Ronan at the end also owns my soul.) 

And, in both the versions that are currently available (I’m steeling myself for the Toho with the knowledge that we’re going to get a much more...aggressive Laz this time around), there are so many queerbaiting signs that there’s...something that extends past hatred. Like, you’ve got French!Laz SWITCHING THE FUCKING “YOU”S DURING MANIAQUE (Going from over politeness to an extent that really would NOT be necessary with a man so below his station to using the informal “you”....after the half-naked homo-erotic dance number. Gee, I wonder what they could have done to merit the switch), you’ve got Laz jealously lingering in the background during La Rue Nous Appartient, you’ve got Olympe’s nightmare having the words “Monsieur de Peyrol, he’s yours now. Do whatever you wish with him” (Which....Olympe knows.) And...again....the FUCKING HUG DURING POUR LA PEINE. And this is post-Father Killing, not including the Almost Kiss. And then the Zuka version just.....ramps it up. From the entirety of Maniaque to Laz IMMEDIATELY AFTERWARDS trying to get Ronan away from the Revolutionaries, to Ronan actually calling out his friends the next time he sees them (if he really hated Peyrol that much, why the Hell would he give a damn what he thought about his friends, AKA the people who gave him a job when he staggered into the print shop?), the way Laz steps up from behind Ronan when he talks about “being able to make the ones we love happy,” and then...the finale, where Ronan gets shot in the cross-fire, Laz IMMEDIATELY gives the Bastille up, and Ronan reaches out to him before falling on the ground. And that’s not even touching on things that can be strung together like The Coat Theory. 

Basically, they banged on the printing press. It’s canon. And Ronan wanted to save his boyfriend and his boyfriend wanted to save him but, at some point, they just...barely missed one another. It’s so nice they end up in the Cretaceous together. 

Solene/Olympe 

The age old joke with me: 

Me: Oh, Peyronan is my OTP; I have so many ideas I want to work with them! 

Me: I want to do some writing! *Writes Solympe fanfic*

*Starts sweating*Me: I have no idea where that came from, I swear it just--

*Three more Solympe fanfics crawl out of my Notes application*

Me: .....Fuck. 

Still a very odd ship for me, because it’s so damn hard to work with what we’ve got in canon and keep a continuity going. I ship it to Hell and back, since it gives me an opportunity to work with two characters who never got the chance to meet up, as well as really touch on a lot of things that we never really got in canon. (Also, I’ve lowkey considered doing a straight-up self-indulgent role reversal where Solene is arrested and sent to the Bastille, where she meets up with Olympe, who is following in her father’s footsteps.) In many ways, I think they do work as a more functional version of L/R, having to make many of the same decisions and choices (though I’d argue that Solene parallels Laz more than her own brother and, in some ways, Olympe mirrors Ronan.) In many ways, I can’t really...conceive of writing one without the other, in the sense that I think they’re very much two sides of the same coin? I don’t know; one day I’ll actually type out how these two ships mirror and contrast one another, but suffice it to say I do try to tie the two of them together SOME WAY even if it’s not always exactly...clear to me. Solene has definitely gone through some hard knocks, and it’s a lot more obvious in the way she carries herself and goes about relationships, whereas Olympe has never really taken a fall like that. She’s obviously experienced pain (especially post-canon), but she’s still had a somewhat rose-tinted childhood, with a loving, middle-class aristocratic family deeply entrenched in Enlightenment ideals. I think in some ways that it’d be hard for Solene to really trust Olympe in a relationship, given how many people she’s loved have betrayed her. (Personally, one thing I really try damn hard to do is to build them up so that, if and when Solene decides to leave her profession to be with Olympe, it’s not so much “Let me take you away from this” cliche for sex work and more...Solene weighing her possible decisions based off of where she is and taking a risk.)

It’s a bit hard because I tend to write them a bit more....pure than I usually like writing, in the sense that so much of their dynamic comes from healing one another. Which is good (obviously, it’s more the relationship ideal that you want to aspire to IRL) but also is very odd to me. Like, with Ronan and Peyrol, I tend to write them as helping one another as well, but they also have so much baggage to get through whereas Olympe and Solene don’t...have that, as much. There are differences, obviously, but it isn’t AS WIDE as I’m used to dealing with. One thing that’s going to be interesting with Pour la Peine is dealing with some of the political differences between the two of them, though I know that tbh it’s not going to last. 

Ivanova/Talia

Obviously, I’m still fairly new to B5, but there is SO MUCH tension here and I really, really appreciate that they’ve built it up like an actual RELATIONSHIP? Complete with fighting over PsiCorps, THE WATER SCENE, etc. Like, it isn’t an insta-love situation, it isn’t just SOFT GIRLS IN LOVE, it has a lot of...weight given to it, and the dynamic isn’t something we get all that much with WLW TO THIS DAY in media. Like, I know that referencing the DS9/B5 Schism is a dangerous game (I love both dearly, so when I speak, I speak as a fan of both), but compared to the cop-out they did with Dax, where we got a kiss, the relationship being due to Dax being (heterosexually) married to the host in another life, and then the love interest being shuttled off, not to be seen again because of a Trill law there was NO sign of in TNG, this feels like a more solid relationship as a whole, even with the knowledge of...what’s going to happen. It wasn’t something that was done lightly or as a stunt, it was a relationship built from the ground up. Which SHOULDN’T be praise in the Year of Our Lord 2018, but here we are. I’m fully expecting this ship to crush my soul. 

Demona/Elisa Maza

Outstanding chemistry in the battle scenes we got, a lot of potential, though it’d be hard to work it into a complete arc with how DEEPLY entrenched Demona’s anti-human attitude is. It would take a long, long arc to do something like that, but goddamit Gargoyles I WANTED it. Also, so much of Demona’s attitude, aside from her own unwillingness to take blame, comes from this sort of need to pull the trigger before someone else betrays her, so it’d be interesting to see how that dynamic would work in a relationship. Like, we got a hint of it with the Thailog/Macbeth situation, where she showed that she STILL could be trusting in a relationship, but Thailog is...odd in the sense that he’s a clone of her ex. Being with someone else, especially a human post-Macbeth...that would be interesting for her. And we do have Weisman saying that Elisa, “also proves or rather disproves Demona's theory that all humans are evil destroyers of the Gargoyle race. Demona's semi-fragile -- or at least ultra-calcified -- psyche can abide that thought.” Obviously, he’s using it to explain why Demona HATES Elisa so much, but...hatred’s a funny thing, and no matter what, Elisa does challenge Demona’s point of view. (Which...again, the last time we really saw that was with Macbeth, which, even though it’s not a ship of mine, still has a lot of romantic tension. And she has the same level of absolutely blinding hatred for him that she has for Elisa. My girl’s even worse than me at dealing with this sort of thing.)

I do like that this is a good, solid enemies to lovers type of ship (or, alternatively, just hatefucking), which is SO RARE to get solid examples of in femslash. And, on many levels, Elisa and Demona are really toe for toe. There wouldn’t really be one of them that’s “weaker” or “more innocent” than the other, and I think Elisa could give as well as she could take, which...being with someone like Demona, would have to be a necessity, and I think that’d extend as well into calling her out on her shit. (We’ve seen repeatedly that she’s not afraid to call Goliath out openly, even in front of the Clan.) Basically, I think it’d be a long arc, it’d be tricky to pull off with anything more than just hatefucking, especially given how often Demona does hurt people around Elisa (with a body count post-City of Stone that at least ranges into dozens of people smashed in a non-fun way), but I think it’d be a fascinating one. And even though I like Goliath, obviously, I never really felt the chemistry between him and Elisa (I know, I know, fandom heresy), and I think Demona/Elisa could yield a LOT more. (Pls Greg Weisman don’t kill me.)