Thinking about the mess with Lois almost marrying Lex Luthor at the end of season one in Lois & Clark, and how it makes sense for her character as she is in season one (her ambition and confidence as a journalist, and the endless praise she gets for that - which, in this case, turn against her and her better judgment), when you take the time to think about it and not just yell for 90 minutes straight.

I love when sci-fi/fantasy writers throw in a random fact about a fictional species that actually has big repercussions for that species' biology.

Like, there is a species in Star Trek called Saurians who are adorable dinosauroid looking dudes. They've had very little revealed about them despite having been mentioned as early as the original series by way of "Saurian brandy" — a drink that is so strong it can put a Klingon on their ass in one swig.

Other than that, most of what we know about them comes from snippets involving a reoccuring character on Discovery named Linus, who is mostly a comic relief character. Now the reason I bring them up is that in one episode there's a scene where Linus is eating bamboo of all things, and I'm not sure the writers realized how telling this is about Saurian biology.

Bamboo is a damn hard food to eat, and us humans can only eat the shoots of a few species. Even then, raw consumption of shoots can lead to cyanide poisoning if you aren't careful. We still don't know how exactly a lot of animals that eat a lot of bamboo (bamboo lemurs, red pandas, bamboo rats, elephants, gorillas) are able to digest so much of it without getting cyanide poisoning. There is some sort of neutralization process in giant pandas involving the rhodanese enzyme that turns cyanide into the non-toxic thiocyanate that they just pee out, but the process is still poorly understood in other species.

Bamboo is also hard to digest for the same reason all grasses are; their plant wall cellulose is hard as hell to break down. Like, your choices are:

a) you do a poor job of digesting it and just spend all day eating (giant panda, red panda, bamboo lemur)

b) you grow really big and have a big gut (elephants, gorillas)

c) you only eat the parts of the plant that are easier to digest (bamboo rats)

On top of that, bamboo is loaded with silica phytoliths that are like microscopic bits of glass. These evolved to make their tissues even harder to chew and metabolize.

It's hard to make out in the scene, but it looks like Linus is eating raw bamboo leaves. Just picking them up with his fingers and munching on them like it's nothing. That means his teeth and/or jaws would need to be very powerful (maybe hypsodont? or maybe tooth batteries?) AND, because he's eating it raw, he'd have to be immune to the cyanide in some way.

One explanation could be in the Star Trek Adventures TTRPG, where Saurians are said to have an ability called "Enhanced Metabolism" where they recover from toxins faster than other species (my guess is this was meant to reference their brandy being so strong). BUT, that's not the same thing as the immunity real bamboo eating animals seem to have. My head canon is that Saurians have a diet similar to red pandas, where bamboo-like plants are their main diet on their homeworld, but they'll eat other stuff too when it's available, AND they've evolved some way to convert cyanide into a harmless chemical they excrete, like a giant panda.

All of these whacky biology shenanigans stem (hehe) from the casual writing decision to make a supporting alien character seem weird by eating a weird thing.

What parts of canon do you find the most frustrating/that you are dissatisfied with/wished that was handled better/explored more? Mine is the inconsistency of Voldemort as a character. How he is described as being perhaps the most talented student that Hogwarts has ever seen and so powerful and intelligent but regularly made such dumb decisions e.g. in the final battle where he still uses Avada Kedavra despite seeing it not work before. I like the explanation that Horcruxes rotted his brain

thank you very much for the ask, @sarafina-sincerity!

the parts of canon which i find the least satisfying all have the same thing in common: their morality is individualist.

the harry potter series has - at its core - a really profound and very black-and-white belief that good and evil not only exist but are rooted in the individual. and while i understand why this is the case - the later books in the series are governed by the genre conventions of folkloric epic and, especially, of christian folkloric epic, which means that the whole seven-book narrative arc ending in a battle between christ and satan after which all is well is only to be expected - i don't like it.

so here we are... ten things i hate about canon, for fanfic writers to win my heart by interrogating in their work...

i hate the series' insistence that everything is fine once voldemort is dead

the middle books in the series - especially goblet of fire - do a really interesting job at hinting at the endemic rot in the ministry of magic, and the ways that the state and its enforcers perpetuated harm during the first war that was indistinct from that perpetuated by the death eaters - above all the use of internment without trial for suspected death eaters [which is a reference to something the british state actually did in the 1970s!].

they show how widespread blood-supremacy and magic-supremacy is, even among people who don't openly support voldemort; how the wizarding population is kept deliberately ignorant by what appears to be state-controlled media; and how no serious efforts have been made to eradicate the conditions which enabled voldemort to attain such power.

this is then forgotten completely in deathly hallows, where the fact that almost the entire civil service keeps working for a government which is committing genocide is hand-waved away with "oh, people are scared", and both the epilogue and jkr's post-series writing take the view that kingsley manages, as minister, to preside over a government which easily sheds all its old prejudices and starts working properly.

i don't like this! i think it's just much more interesting for corruption to be impossible to fully eradicate from the government, for blood-supremacy to have long-standing causes which actually take a lot of very hard work to untangled [especially the fact that the wizarding world not appearing to have a welfare state means that those whose lives are poor or unstable are prime targets for radicalisation], and for kingsley to have the same capacity for leaning on the prophet and worrying about his polling numbers as any other politician...

i hate that the series changes how the death eaters are written between half-blood prince and deathly hallows

connected to this shift from the series hinting at the broader issues in the wizarding world to a flat battle between good and evil is that the death eaters, their aims, and their modus operandi are written very different between half-blood prince and deathly hallows. in the former, the death eaters can be situated very easily as anti-state sectarian terrorists who have all sorts of complex analogies within british history and politics. in the latter, they're just caricatures of pure evil - which is why the death eaters introduced from the latter stages of half-blood prince onwards, especially the carrows, are considerably less interesting as characters than those, such as lucius malfoy, barty crouch jr. and bellatrix lestrange, who are introduced earlier.

it's also why the voldemort of deathly hallows feels so uninteresting. i don't like the fanon that the horcruxes render him insane at all - when he's shown outside of the epic battle between good and evil in that book, he's shown to be as lucid and cunning as always - but he ends up having to flop because his only purpose in the overarching narrative is to be killed. in the earlier books, in which he's a paramilitary kingpin poisoning and corrupting a society which was designed to exclude him because of the fact of his birth in revenge for its treatment of him, rather than satan and hitler's lovechild, he is so much more interesting.

i hate the series' belief that slavery is fine

obviously, one of the biggest examples of state malevolence in the series is that wizards own slaves. like many readers, i loathe that the house elf plotline ends up being reduced from its potential for radicalism in chamber of secrets - in which dobby mentions whisper-networks of elves who decry their treatment at wizards' hands - to what we see from goblet of fire onwards - in which elves love being enslaved and think that any attempts to free them from their subjugation is cruel.

i also hate that elves' freedom is then hand-waved away as part of the general race towards "all was well" with the implication that hermione found it easy to undo what appears to be centuries of state-sanctioned oppression without any pushback at all.

the house elf plotline is one of the clearest distillations of the series' individualistic morality. harry abhors the treatment of dobby at the malfoys' hands entirely and only because he doesn't like the malfoys. he abhors voldemort's treatment of kreacher, but sees absolutely no issue with sirius' because he likes sirius - and he clearly sees no issue at all with his own legal mastery of kreacher, seeing as, literally minutes after the end of a war in which the good guys fought for the rights of muggles and muggleborns to be seen as fully human... he is considering ordering his slave to make him a sandwich.

i hate that the series doesn't show the realities of resistance

the reason i think the whole "why does voldemort keep using avada kedavra, isn't he supposed to be clever?" question arises is because the series is incredibly resistant to the idea that the good guys must have to kill as well, which makes it look like it's only the death eaters using it while the order use lots of clever magic that the stupid terrorists are too thick to think of.

this is idiotic - not only because the killing curse is canonically flawless unless the thing you're blasting is your own horcrux and so the order would use it for efficiency's sake alone, but because the reality of being a resistance fighter is that, even if you're on the "right" side, you are going to have kill people or they will kill you.

lupin is completely right in deathly hallows that harry is breathtakingly naive to avoid shooting to kill and that - without the protection of genre conventions allowing him to be preternaturally merciful - his resistance to killing is going to result in him being destroyed by the enemy. it is inconceivable that the rest of the order don't using the killing curse - and the question of what this does to their souls [is it murder if you believe yourself to be justified in your actions?] and their senses of self post-war is so interesting to think about - and i wish we were shown this in the text.

especially because molly absolutely blasted bellatrix with it.

but i also hate that the series thinks that violence is fine when the good guys do it

this is primarily another example of the black-and-white "this is fine because harry's good" theme which runs through the series, which we see in things like harry using sectumsempra on draco malfoy in half-blood prince or the cruciatus curse on amycus carrow in deathly hallows. harry's overarching response to committing attempted murder is to sulk that the incredibly minor punishment he receives is reducing the time he could spend hitting on ginny, and his response to torturing amycus is "lol. lmao."

the series thinks - again and again - that cruelty and violence are completely fine when the person they are perpetuated against "deserves" it, and it does not bang.

and that the series allows the good guys more complexity in characterisation

the role played by the house system in the story - and, above all, the fact that our heroes are all connected to one particular house with straightforwardly admirable associated characteristics - means that the villains receive less opportunity to also have positive traits intermingled with their negative ones - and, therefore, complex and interesting personalities.

i also dislike that when non-gryffindor characters - especially slytherins - do reveal themselves to be brave and loyal etc., instead of recognising that this is because bravery can be multi-faceted the series suggests that they should be recategorised as "belonging" to a "good" house.

or, in other words, me and dumbledore's "i think we sort too soon" line in deathly hallows are enemies for life.

i hate that the series blames merope gaunt for dying

and - of course - the main way a villain isn't allowed as much complexity as a hero is that the series never examines the impact of voldemort's childhood on his adult self. while we see hints throughout canon of just how profoundly affected he is by his institutionalised childhood and the weight of his grief over his parents [his mother especially] - such as him learning as a baby never to cry for attention because it's futile - this is hand-waved away throughout the series by dumbledore-as-the-voice-of-god as irrelevant. the eleven-year-old tom riddle is straightforwardly evil, that he grows up in an orphanage is used as nothing more than narrative colour to underline how creepy he is, and dumbledore's spectacular mishandling of their relationship is viewed by the series as undeniably correct right up to the very last moment [when harry imitates dumbledore by - and we should call it what it is - deadnaming voldemort in their final confrontation].

but the most egregious thing that dumbledore does when discussing the course voldemort's life takes is blame merope gaunt for her own death in childbirth, by implying that witches are immune to one of the most common causes of death throughout human history if they just try hard enough and then saying that a nineteen-year-old girl whose life appears to have been nothing more than unrelenting abuse and misery [perpetuated both against her and by her] lacked the moral fibre to try hard enough.

and this infuriates me.

i hate how the series treats female characters who don't fit its narrow spectrum of "correct" womanhood

merope is but one victim of the series' general issues with treating women who aren't its heroes - all of whom are exactly feminine and beautiful and clever and talented enough that we know they're good people, but not any of these things in an extreme which could make them vapid or arrogant or defiant of social norms or so on.

the series takes a very low view of women who exist outside of narrow boxes - whether they are interested in a hyper-feminine aesthetic [lavender brown, rita skeeter] or a more masculine one [marge dursley]; conform to stereotypes about being bitchy, flighty, or vapid [pansy parkinson, romilda vane] or refuse to adhere to social expectations to be polite, meek, and demure [fleur delacour]; are unmarried, are not inherently maternal, and/or are cruel to children [bellatrix lestrange; petunia dursley; dolores umbridge]; are unrestrained emotionally [cho chang; moaning myrtle] and so on. and i don't like it.

and i also hate that - connected to this - the series uses physical appearance - especially weight - as a shorthand for [female] characters we're supposed to dislike.

what it says on the tin, really - if the series doesn't like a character, especially if the character is a woman, you can almost guarantee that they will either be fat or be unusually thin.

and finally...

i hate that the series prioritises one form of love - love as suffering and as sacrifice - over all others

part of the series' march towards the epic two-person showdown between good and evil is that harry is made to endure trial after trial - including his death for the salvation of mankind - in the name of love. obviously this is because he becomes, by the end of deathly hallows an allegory for christ, but it also fits into the series' view - articulated most frequently by dumbledore - that love, suffering, and sacrifice are all synonyms.

the acts of love the series foregrounds - snape's willingness to endure anything because of his love for lily; sirius' willingness to rot in azkaban and caves and grimmauld place because of his love for james and harry; harry giving up a love that's like "someone else's life" with ginny so he can go die - are all sacrificial, and the series generally takes a dull view of love that is fluffy, silly, carnal, selfish, soothing, transformational and so on. lavender and bellatrix's open adoration of their lovers is mocked; dumbledore's sexual desire for grindelwald is punished by his sister's death; tonks and lupin's uncomplicated happiness in the birth of their son is not to last.

but happy endings and silly jokes and forehead kisses are love too. and the hill i will die on is that they have even more potential to bring about the salvation of the world than constant suffering and abiding.

You know what pisses me off about this all PheeJin stuff. It's taken over.

No matter what happens having TaCopper be such a huge part of the anticipation, them being promoted so heavily as a ship with this series was a mistake.

About 50% of all the comments under the BTS videos and reddit posts are about PheeJin.

Either that they love the ship, or the actors, or they are mad the writers "ruined" Jin by confirming he was the one that leaked the video.

Side note: Everyone seems to be pretty much treating the confession as confirmation. So do I. It would be a stupid as fuck writing decision to have Jin be not the person that realeased the video and confess to it anyway.

Instead of focusing on the show's themes like this excellent post outlines by @syrena-del-mar or even the topics of sex and voyerism like this post by @shannankle or another post I can't find discussing the way the show subverts the tipical way sex is punished in horror. EDIT: @shannankle found the post and linked it in the notes it was from @brifrischu with addition from @lurkingshan. Or even just enjoying the theorizing like this post by @mikuni14 or this one by @tbhimnoteasyonmyself. Most of the fans (again other places I am not looking at the tag here on tumblr) are mostly discussing Jin, PheeJin and whining that Tan is a killer and lost his mind.

Also not saying anything about the Jin fans on Tumblr I am not going in the tag for a reasons. But a lot of PheeJin shippers and Jin fans on other sites are using words I fucking hate to describing New and it's starting to low-key piss me off. All the: he lost his mind, he is derenged (i also saw lost his mind like his brother - which you know ew) it's getting on my last nerve and I would appriciate if we could be a little lighter with that kind of language please.

It sucks that such a great show now wrote itself into this conrner where it only has two options: Stick to the genre and revenge plot, have team masked killer win (and kill Jin and Phee if he is indeed a traitor); everyone is dead, depressing ending no one is happy; or Phee and Jin succed in bringing down "crazy" killer New, we get some nice violence is not the answear after school message and Phee and Jin live happly ever after.

The first two will make the fans crazy, and we know the BOC shipper fans are on all other level of insane. And the third will leave the rest of us with a show that detroyed his own message for the sake of a ship, AGAIN (might I add, ofts fans will know the struggle). Leaving the show bad reviews and claim outrage because TaCopper wasn't endgame and they got ruined.

And let me very clear, If I have too see the well-off/rich character all alive while the poor characters all die and get called crazy because they dared take revenge and be angry at their mistreatment. I will actually consider this the worse BL ending ever. That will piss me off more then the Last Twilight ending ever did.

not enough | joseph quinn x fem!reader

summary joseph quinn watches writer!reader work on the smut scene for her secret book

warnings +18 fingering, cum play, pet names

a/n this is my first work, feedback and reblogs are appreciated. if you want more about writer!reader let me know

wc 1.2k

inspired on this moodboard i made

The idea was simple, finishing the chapter and going to sleep to proofread in the morning. You have it all planned, your secret book was loved by a few of your friends, you were still trying to get to write another fantasy book to publish.

This chapter was out of control, the sex scene you were writing was inspired by a dream you had with your boyfriend, you weren’t close sexually, but a part of you always wanted to. The shyness takes over you every time you are about to tell him, you know he isn't going to judge you but getting the words out of your mouth is tricky. You wish he could just read your thoughts.

As you were writing on your computer, fingers pressing down the letter keys making a clicking sound, the music loud in your room. Whenever you were alone, without your roomie in the apartment, you loved to use the speakers in your house, it was loud but relaxing, and you were too concentrated to notice your boyfriend was right behind you. Squeezing his eyes and reading the words that you were typing, he knew about your hobbies but this is the first time he looks over something you write in the famous secret book.

"He curls his finger inside" Joseph shakes his head as he reads "really? do you think one is enough for her? poor girl"

You swallow hard, shutting down your computer fast as the embarrassment grows red on your cheeks. Joseph catches your gaze with his big brown eyes and a big soft grin on his mouth. "What? don't go all shy on me i've been behind you like… ten minutes "

"I didn't hear you come in" your lips tremble, and your eyes never stopped looking at his.

"I used the key you gave me, very bad decision if you ask me" the smile on his face grew bigger, and acknowledging you had those kinds of thoughts made him excited. Joseph's hand rested on your cheek, softly caressing your skin with his fingers and kisses all over your face.

Enjoying the moment of silence he removes the strands of hair falling down your forehead and hiding the features of your perfect face.

"It's enough" you whisper, he furrows his brows in amusement.

"What do you mean, baby?"

"One finger is enough… or that's what i think"

Joseph watched your face turn red, he was delighted, he couldn’t even speak. Your teeth caught your bottom lip, you decided to hold on to that thought and bite it until he noticed you were nervous, you always give it away by biting your lip.

"Wanna try?” Now it was his turn to whisper, making your lips tickle thanks to how close he was to your lips. The air in the room turns hot, your clothes start to feel small, like they’re squeezing you.

‘Try’ is it a good idea? you don't even know, but that's all you have been thinking about.

"Please" you nodded "Please, i do" He placed a hand on your thigh, slowly moving upwards down your pink silk shorts. Your hand moves quickly to his wrist trying to stop him, it was a spontaneous move.

"It’s okay, I will take care of you princess" taking a deep breath you let him get closer to you and touch you.

His hand stops as his fingers find the wet spot on your panties, his mouth waters immediately and he presses over the spot making you flinch in your seat. He looked at you for a moment and then started to rub your clit with two fingers. The touch was slow and gentle but it was the first time someone touched you like this, not even you dared to try something before, it was a new feeling, a very good new feeling.

Your hips start to grind against his hand as your wetness comes to be more noticeable, you realize a feeling such as a knot in your stomach, you try to fix it by letting out a deep breath. Your boyfriend took that sign to go even further. He stops rubbing your clit and moves the fabric of your panties to the side, touching your wetness with his bare fingers, playing around with your wetness..

"Bet you taste like fucking heaven, princess”

"Joe-" you moaned, grinding your hips again.

Your boyfriend puts his fingers back under your shorts to touch your wet pussy and starts to tease your entrance making your lips form a pout, he found the protest irresistible and decided to slide it inside your pussy. He was touching the walls of it with a slow pace, your head fall back as he moved his finger in and out making you moan his name for the first time.

"Joe, baby pleas-" helpless and needy, your lips let out his name in a soft whisper.

"You were saying? one finger is enough?" His ego bursts into the room, his free hand resting on the back of your neck trying to hold you.

"No- no… i need mo- more" you said, crying out loud. It felt so good you couldn’t get enough of it.

"Anything for you, princess" two more fingers got inside you without a warning, and he moved them just like before but this time faster "Here goes your favorite part" he curls his fingers inside you making your legs close trapping his hand inside.

He continues with his work, focused, making you feel good at the same time sweet nothings fell from your mouth. Of course he had experience on this, he was a total master, but he didn’t want to give it away until you were ready. Always such a gentleman.

"You look even more beautiful when i'm fucking you with my fingers, darling" he said, his thumb rubbing over your clit, earning a pornographic scream from you "look at you, all sweet and needy"

This time you nodded, your mind was all blurry and your body was being filled with waves of hot pleasure. You felt the luckiest girl alive.

"I think i'm going to-" you say, in an effort to get your voice back but it got lost in your moans.

"You are about to cum, darling" he warned you, not stopping his movements for a second, he took a deep look into your eyes, pupils dilated and tears of pleasure threatening to spill out. He presses his lips against yours, savoring the taste of your chapstick and letting your moans drown in his mouth.

Your legs tense up as you started to cum around his fingers, the slow burn on your throat made you swallow hard, trying to ease your breath as your legs relaxed and started to shake. Releasing all you had inside, Joseph takes as much as he could with his fingers, getting them out of your pussy slowly and licking them clean.

You watched as he finished cleaning his fingers with his own tongue, hypnotizing you with the show. You look at him and between his legs, his tight jeans were soaked in cum.

"You like what you see? C'mon, you need to clean your mess" he grabs your chin so you lock eyes with him "Maybe you can write about this too"

It's going to be a long, long night.

—

as i said before, this is my first work be gentle with me!!! i love this british man so darn much

to be fair i don’t think ozzie kept his relationship with fizz on the dl bc he’s an imp (he doesn’t seem concerned that people know they up have sex), but because of the whole lust/love thing. which is stupid, but it’s also vivziepop writing so whatchu gonna do 🙃

ozzie does seem to be one of the “better�� upper class members in terms of how he treats other species (imps are allowed in his clubs, he regularly interacts with succubi/imp hybrids, everyone at his workplaces seem pretty happy and unlike stella and andre, he doesn’t seem particularly discriminatory or callous), but he still calls moxxie “little imp” (granted he is literally little and an imp and its a performance) and his imp boyfriend “froggy” which with the fire toad slur kinda raises eyebrows? this could also just be vivziepop Not Thinking but. hmm.

even bee who is shown partying and dating hellhounds, said to be even lower than imps, still runs the abusive adoption pound and signs her name on every adoption paper. she can cover it up with honey and a smile all she wants but she’s 1000% complicit in their oppression. like how does tex feel about that??? it reminds me of corporations who do all this virtue signaling for social justice but give billions to horrible causes. but i don’t think vivziepop understands that because again. rich background. “bee was nice to loona so its ok!!! deeper implications? what’s that?”

speaking of which, every time viv likes a tweet about how striker deserves nothing and is a toxic masculinity homophobe makes my blood boil. i don’t particularly like striker and i lost any interest in him after western energy but he and crim are really evidence that viv thinks “STOP BEING POOR” is a valid argument. also wasnt he flirting with blitzo in his first ep???? so like? huh???

i will say one reason i ship blitzstriker is because they seem to have similar views in regards to class (at least pre oops…) and i can totally see them staking it out on the run together. i can’t see fizz doing that, he flaunts his wealth and even tho he says “it’s nice being out of the spotlight” i cannot see this man surviving without luxury items for over a day loo. even in the circus, he always had the best clothes and was the main breadwinner and while the circus is said to be struggling, he never seems to be. i think that’s another reason i personally never got fizz’s insecurities, because he’s been the ace his whole life???? like as someone who has struggled a lot for ANY recognition or love it just makes him seem spoiled to be like “ozzie no luv me bc im not perfect :(“ i think your manipulator idea would make more sense.

anyway this turned into a ted talk. you dont have to answer everything. im realizing i actually hate what helluva boss is but i love the fanworks and the potential it had. sigh.

Isn’t it so funny how we have to pick which flaws are on purpose and which are just…Viv being a bad writer. Like we have to accommodate her forgetting or not caring enough to put the work in and review it after.

Paragraph 1: I definitely agree 100%, I like the part where the imp and succubi are his patrons, equal, including the butler who stolas abuses. Which feels like a very purposeful decision to contrast him with Stolas specifically. But there’s still the fact that Ozzies is so overpriced and exclusive and yet, rich folk like stolas can just waltz in without any reservation for free, by threatening the bouncer with…something. Violence? Imprisonment? Ruining his life? Honestly I wish we could have seen Jesse tell Stolas to fuck off, before he notifies the big man of what he just tried to do.

Paragraph 2: He is one thousand percent better, and he respected his employees who in turn liked him and weren’t scared of him. However he’s a better monarch, but still a monarchby and at the end of the episode he betrays his employees trust and uses intimidation and the threat of violence to silence them. Also froggy??? Really? Really? And got every time he says it the cringe levels are intense, it feels deeply deeply ooc.

Back to paragraph 1 again: the secrecy…it’s about the inexplicable anti love thing, but I’m just saying I think fizz feels that way. Like in that article I keep referencing they say things like “heart hoarded by an imp?!” Which I suppose is equivalent to anti imp racism in hell. Stereotypes of them being untrustworthy selfish beings. Which is also the fuel for Stolas’ fetish. It just really pissed me off the way Asmodeus said “still getting your kink on with that feisty imp?” And stolas says “this imp has a business he runs” I was wayyyy to charitable to Asmodeus in the past and regret it so so much.

Paragraph 3: Many people point this out about Bee and I really hope her nice persona vanishes fast because it’s just ridiculous given her status and what she’s done. Why are your hellborn the most downtrodden of them all if you’re ohh so nice miss Beelzebub? And how the F could Loona not know who Beelzebub is??? Do her and Blitzø not realise who signed off on the adoption certificate? (Confirmed on Vivs patron that it was in fact Bee) why is Tex working as a bodyguard for verosika who calls him “my new hellhound” and yells at him, he also says he’s not paid enough to care about her issues. Sooo….why is he still in such a shitty position despite being with Bee. You’d think he’d at least be working because he wants to work but he doesn’t even seem

Paragraph 4: LITERALLY!!! Viv is such a privileged rich girl that her villains are poor. While she’s going on a world tour but raging at Twitter people criticising her pet character. She’s literally Stella and a Mammon: “Can you imagine not having money ahahhahh” — Viv describing why striker is so evil

Paragraph 5: another question is why would Blitzø being jealous of Fizz be such a bad thing? He didn’t want to cause the accident. But why would him hating how bad he is at making people laugh,,,make him bad? That’s why I love their arguments because neither is completely wrong or right. His father literally loves him more than his own son and as you said, he gets pampered the most and loved the most. He can’t stand someone not liking him for even five seconds which should be a character flaw, not endearing. But, Fizz doesn’t have a father at all, so he’s not completely wrong. And if his parents did abandon him and nobody would adopt him, that explains why he doesn’t feel good enough to be loved and why he needs audience approval. Viv just forgot to write that FUNDAMENTAL part into the f**king episode.

I love a good fish out of water story and seeing fizz slowly learn to fight beside his friend proving that their differences are compatible was great. By the end, Fizz seemed almost happier and freer by Blitzos side than by Ozzies side, but the goldfish is just put back in the bowl, which sucks.

Your last line made me almost laugh cry tbh because there’s enough lost potential to fill a fountain. The episode had such a strong start then around the breakdown things went south and it stopped being good. The status quo isn’t different at all and fizz just slightly shifted his destructive needs for affirmation onto a different royal.

Do you think it was a cop out that Damon didn't know Elena was sired from the get go? Can't one argue that he had plenty of experience to draw from considering he'd sired someone else before and had front row seats to a sired Tyler? Furthermore he has this moments on the show where he is able to put two-n-two together but when it comes to the SB that's where he draws the line?

I suppose the response to that would be that Damon wanted it to be real so so badly that he was just so blinded by his happiness and his love for Elena that he just couldn't put two and two together because poor woobie Damon 🙄

But the whole thing with the sire bond is that the reason for its existence is to make Elena act OOC. I keep bringing this up because the writing for it is inherently awful, because they needed to go against Elena's character, they needed to go against seasons of writing for Stefan and Elena,

The bottom line is that Elena as a human made a very, very, very clear choice that she would love Stefan always and forever,” she says. “But then her entire life turned upside down, and any feelings she originally had for Damon were still there, and of course magnified. There was always going to be a little bit of a confusion there for her — but not enough confusion for her to be over Stefan. It would take a lot to rip Elena away from loving Stefan. It would take years and seasons. We’d be eighty, if we followed the natural progression of that relationship.”

and they didn't want Elena to look bad going from Stefan to Damon

"She can't just break up with Stefan and hop into bed with Damon, even though part of America would like that very much. That just doesn't feel right, vampire or no vampire."

so they created a bond that emotionally enslaves her to Damon

because that's the only way the two of them can get together and they didn't think it through

As Plec says, the sire bond was a way of explaining that Elena's emotions were heightened, even more so than a normal vampire's would've been. In the aftermath of that decision, however, Plec admits, "We then had to do a lot of work to untangle the fact that they had sex while she was technically under the effects of some supernatural link."

Julie literally says that she didn't know what agency meant before this plot line

so we have a person who couldn't quite grasp what agency is paired with a person who was only thinking of the plot line in relation to how it would provide drama for Delena

"I don't know that we could pull that off today," Dries says. "I don't remember exactly why we did it, but when you have 22, 23 episodes of something, you just have to complicate it. You want people to be happy for a second, but then you just have to keep knotting it up over and over and over until it's super-complicated."

so it doesn't surprise me that when these two plus the writers room came together to untangle the consent issues of that plot line, it became Damon doesn't know about it so they can have sex and it's not like he's taking advantage of her (even though he still does but anyway) because he just didn't know and let's add some angst in there by showing that Damon has had someone sired to him before and he couldn't unsire her so omg how is Elena going to get unsired? DRAMAAAAAA. And no one thought about the contradictions and the holes in these decisions or admitted that they wrote a really weak ship that needed this in the first place.

So, basically, it's all terrible.

from what i understand, if you're playing as astarion, he very much remembers the kidnappings, and has narration describing his memories of the event when he meets gandrel. and also, if you talk to gandrel peacefully without astarion in the party, gandrel mentions the missing children, and then... you still have no option to really ask astarion about it. it is a very "the writers were all white and didn't think this through" type of moment, imo.

he also gets super sad about sebastian when you find him, but his response to the imprisoned gur children is to make a shitty joke like "well, at least i just jumped them in an alley and kidnapped them!! i wasn't luring them with candy or anything :)" which comes off to me like he is quite deeply racist.

i think in early access astarion had a more overtly racist tone to his character, in that his whole thing was that he was human trafficking gur people to cazador as a severely corrupt magistrate, the gur beat him to death as revenge, and then cazador turned him. which is interesting, but i am glad they didn't go with that for final release... having the discourse of "excuse me, that is my poor meow meow's emotional support racism, he did that because he was sad 🥺" would have killed me irl. particularly with the way that the gur are clearly paralleled with romani people, and astarion is notably the palest elf with the poshest accent...

anyway i don't mean to harsh your fic writing vibes or anything! it's just my unsolicited ted talk. i do like astarion, but i feel like people skim over this aspect of his writing because it's very un-sexy and not charming at all, just banally evil.

Yeah I agree, even if the writing is good for the most part, it's deeply inconsistent in others. It really is a question of "Did you overlook this? Or did you decide not to look into it at all because it would say something about your fave that you didn't want to be said?"

In terms of Avatar Astarion vs Companion Astarion, I think they're also slightly different characters just because of the player being a new factor introduced in the story. Like, Player!Astarion could happily rescue the grove and the Nightsong and be a hero and that'd be canonically what Player!Astarion does, while Companion!Astarion would hate that shit.

So Companion!Astarion being aware of the Gur kids would make him deeply unlikable, so it makes sense that he doesn't, so the player doesn't despise his ass instantly. Him suspecting Gandrel was sent by Cazador also gives the player a decent enough reason to agree to killing Gandrel. However, Player!Astarion needs to have this background information in order to make a more informed decision and understand the character they're playing as. Having the context of who Gandrel is and why he's actually there helps the player decide their next course of action, be it sparing Gandrel because he's a good guy, or killing him to protect themselves.

Obviously this might just be a major cope on my part, but that's how I see it, at least. Honestly, I do wish Larian left kids alone in general. It seems they include them mostly for shock value and to raise the stakes for the player. Like they thought maybe too many players would willingly sacrifice 7000 adults for Astarion, so better put some kids in there to make sure they know it's the bad choice. How does it tie back to Astarion? Um. He kidnapped them. And they also specifically belong to a group of people he's racist against. Because that means ... Something?

Cool. Thanks.

Next up! Scrum!

So... this may be a controversial post... I swear, no listen, I SWEAR that is not on purpose nor is it a goal. I hate that nonsense, but I wanted to give you a heads up. If people start talks in the replies or the reposts, be kind. Read the entire post, and their answers and consider their context before engaging in a constructive manner, or decide you have nothing to say that will improve things. And remember the hermeneutics of generosity. (Basically, assume the writer means well, and is just not good at getting their point across) https://nerdfighteria.info/v/ovrzKCQ2JTM/

I say this because entire books have been written about how to do scrum... which I personally consider somewhat insane. And it is my opinion that a lot of this is just the business management consulting scammers that again have taken perfectly good systems, concepts and words and abused them to the point of meaninglessness.

Because scrum is SIMPLE. And great BECAUSE it is simple. A bit harder than agile, but then, usually the way to the goal IS harder than defining the goal, so that checks out. So just like my post on agile, let us start with what problem is scrum trying to solve.

Basically, a company wants to be more agile. But just bursting open a door, pointing to some random developers while yelling "BE AGILE" proved a somewhat ineffective strategy (except for Steve, who immediately did a full split). To be agile you want the development team to decide how they want to do development... so what do you do when they don't know themselves? You do scrum!

Scrum (Named after the "All players grab each-others shoulders and listen to a super quick message by the coach" thing in sportsball) is a plan for how to plan development, analyze how you are doing development, and improve it. It centers around a team of developers (Usually between 4-8) and a constant time period called a sprint. This is usually 1-3 weeks. Then you do these steps: 1: Make a plan for the next sprint. Take the tasks that needs doing, break them down into clear tasks, and hand them out to people. Try to get the amount of work given to each developer as close to the amount of time they have to work on it in the sprint. Write these things down, however you want. 2: Do the sprint! Basically, do development. Each day, have a super short meeting where each developer explains what they did yesterday, and what they plan to do today. With focus on decisions they have made. Each person talks for 1-3 min. If you need to talk more, do it with the specific people you need AFTER this meeting. 3: When the sprint is over, evaluate how the sprint went. This is the most important part, and the one that should be spend the most time and effort on. Because this is the real core of SCRUM. Did everyone manage to do their tasks? Did some run out of things to do? Was certain tasks harder than expected? Why? What things we did could be improved? What things we did should be done differently, or not at all?

You write down your hypotheses, and start again at step 1 with making a plan for the next sprint, this time, with changes you want to test.

If you just realized that this is the very well known "fuck around and find out" or "The scientific method" as some nerds call it, then congratulations! You now understand Scrum at a deeper level than 90% of companies!

Now. There are 2 extra roles in the development team to make sure this method... you know, actually works 1: A scrum master. This is essentially just the poor sucker who makes sure that the team actually follows the plan, and remembers the steps that was agreed upon. They note down interesting things said during the daily meetings, the plan during the planning and the ideas and thoughts during the retrospective meeting. They are NOT a leader or manager. They do NOT dictate anything. Usually they are just a developer who have the magical skill "Being able to take notes and participate in the meeting at the same time" (I am a bit in awe of that skill).

2: A product owner. Sadly, developers have to actually make stuff, not just have fun. And the product owner is there to make sure that everything still centers around the correct goal. "To make great software for whoever wanted to software". If the team is developing software for a costumer outside the firm, then this is a representative of that firm. Ideally the specific person who ordered it. If they are making software based on orders by a manager or a marketing leader, then the product owner is that person. Only the person who wants the software knows what the software should be like. And humans are terrible at communicating so you do not want a game of telephone going on or the futile game of "Just have the costumer write down what they want the software to do, and then we make it". Because the product owner is often busy and so it is ok for them to only show up at the planning and retrospective meetings and it is ok for them to video call in, but their participation is MANDATORY. They MUST be an active part of the meetings or none of this will work.

We want the team to make changes to how they develop, and what they develop on the fly (The developers decide how, they product owners what). And if you do that without a constant line to the product owner, the project will go off the rail very quickly and fail with almost 100% certainty. It is also a great help because not only will the developers be able to get questions answered quickly, the product owner will also get a good insight into how the thing they want are actually being made and make better decisions. Wrong assumptions will be caught early, and misunderstandings minimized. Maybe a thing they want is really hard to do. If they want it enough, then maybe the hard work is worth it. Maybe not. You find out by TALKING.

That is it. That is Scrum. Now, you may already have spottet why so many people get confused on what scrum is, or how specific or expansive it is. Because what scrum is, is a super simple setup, designed to mutate, and test if those mutations are good. Meaning after a while, a team may only have the short meetings every other day. Or have tasks given to sub-teams of 2-3 developers. Or drop the daily meeting and have Sprints that last half a week. Or have moved some of their developers to teams that fits them better, and gotten developers that like the way THIS team works. Or maybe they have a extra meeting in every sprint with a select group of people outside the team that are experienced in working with what the team is currently working on. Or maybe a team does not want to do any part of basic scrum.

And none of these are right or wrong . The ONLY thing that matters is "Does it work for THIS team?".

You may think "But you just described a structure with rules that seem rather strict...". Correct! That is the STARTING point. Meaning very few teams will be running exactly like that, because most teams (hopefully) did not just recently start existing.

But sometimes you also want a reset. A team may not be working well anymore. Maybe some key team members have left the company or gotten other jobs. And it is decided that it is easier to go back to basic scrum and start inventing a new way to do things for the current team. Maybe the team think they might be a bit too used to a current way of doing things to come up with a new one. Maybe the team is dissolved, and its members put into other teams, and a new team is created in its stead to start from basic scrum with individuals from other teams that wants to try new ways of doing things. It is perfect scrum to have a team of veteran developers who have not changed how they develop things in several years because they by now know what they want.

You can easily see why this works, and why it is good. Because if a part is not efficient or the team hates it? Then get rid of it. And it is easy to see why Scrum helps a company become agile. It is a tool that facilitates the worker empowerment and grassroots decisions that agile set as a goal.

You can also see why many companies HATES this. It makes a lot of middle managers unnecessary. It empowers workers to want things, and trains them on how to get them. It stops managers from coming up with "brilliant" new ways to develop software and then force that method onto the developers. Managers who come up with ideas for products will have to explain themselves to the developers, and risk looking silly. In front of the pleb workers!!!. Dear god, costumers will get to see the greasy reality of how the software they want is made! And management have to knowledge that developers are the best at... developing.... And will have to... trust their workers...

A thing you will often hear in defense of not letting teams decide on how to develop, is that if everyone develops in different ways, then nothing will be standardized. Each team may use different tools, languages and architectures! It will be a massive mess!

Which is true... if you completely miss the point. Again, the developers should be free to choose HOW to develop. Not WHAT to develop. The product owner is the major force in deciding what features and products is developed, and standards like code format or use of profiling tools can still be required by management (Which is entirely reasonable).

But the teams get to choose HOW they develop those. A simple example, many people like placing brackets like this: void MyFunction(){ // some code }

But my team prefer doing void MyFunction() { // some code } The idea in scrum, is NOT to allow a team to go "We write however we want!". The idea is "WE decide how we get to the required form". I have worked in a team that simply had a auto-formater build into each of the team members command line tools, so when they pushed to the remote git repo, the code format followed the standard, and when THEY looked at it, it looked how the team preferred it to look. I have seen teams that wanted to work in a different language, so they used a Source-to-source compiler in much the same way.

That is scrum. It is a simple, yet powerful idea.

Jottings: Season 7, episode 6. A woman is... possibility

Contrary to what I usually do in here, just jotting down spontaneous impressions of the episodes, with no great pretension to anything, I had to re-watch Where The Waters Meet three times over last week. And it was all my fault, because this is truly a good and dense episode, that could have very well ended this half-season.

It also becomes more and more clear that my decision of not reading these damn books was a very poor choice. Probably because the storyline seems cramped, at times, I find myself gliding through moments and scenes with the very unpalatable sensation of bagging a munro without the right equipment. Not a good picture, I know. But bear in mind I just started Drums of Autumn and it already reads like a root canal intervention - sorry for the book purists. I should, however, hope to somehow catch up before part B of the season: no promises, though. If, by any stretch of my vivid imagination, I start to hear Herself's screechy voice in my head while reading, it immediately goes down the drain, despite my best intentions & effort.

But I digress. While Fort Ticonderoga is being evacuated with the help of the friendly Cherokees and their lightweight canoes, in Lallybroch there is a bit of fussing over Jemmy's cursing in Gaelic at school. Which leads to Roger being invited to give a wee lecture on the topic by a very enthusiastic Headmaster and yet another (Lord in heaven and all His cherubs) constipated domestic conversation with SS. The only cheerful thing about her is that self-assertive fringe, so 80s I could cry (I hate the Eighties with the passion I worship the Sixties, heh). And her grabbing me by the sleeve (Hello, people! Lookie here! I can haz acting! I am acting! ) every single time she has more than three lines on air is distracting and, again, annoying.

Walter Woodcock's demise instantly took me to Season 1, when that proud Scot was killed by the boar and Claire helped give him the good death he deserved. Not surprising at all, since the whole OL dynamic is a pendulum between loves, timelines and worlds.

The new Rollo dog looks less direwolfish than Rollo 1. #GoT, stopped watching upon Khaleesi's arrival at King's Landing. Never looked back.

Rob Cameron, you antagonist, you. That new acquaintance you instantly find too pushy not to feel suspicious about, and yet you can't afford to be irrationally rude to. Also, with no SS in sight, RR is pulling off his scenes quite fine & dandy, and with ease. What is that woman's dark secret? How can that be? Court is still in session, on this one. But give me more Hunters and less #Broger, dear God. I would take it any day, any way you see fit. I will be nice to everyone and take my vitamins. I will even consider jogging. But get them off my back, for Christ's sake!

Vandervaart. Consistent. Present. Owns his game. Elegant. Loved every single moment (Your servant, Madam - especially and for obvious reasons). A very, very good cast honoring both J and LJG. I can only fawn and paeans are not really my specialty. But I continue to be impressed and confident and I see great things for this talented kid.

Spoiler: I said yes, Claire. And just like that, with the click of the rifle's hammer, he tells her their whole world is yet again thrown upside down. Theirs is a dense scene, clearly dominated by S, whose mastery of voice and expression is once again flawless and thoroughly appreciated. She follows, at a - by now - completely symbiotic pace, but make no mistake: he gives her the cues. And I would take that subtle, unspeakable tenderness any day, gladly, if the writer's final choice was not to insist on what might be - perhaps unjustly - construed by some as geriatric porn. He still looks at her like that.

For that only, if not for all the rest, I will continue to watch it until the end. Because I feel you morally lose the right to criticize the moment you throw the towel and your opinion suddenly turns into bitching. Something I will most probably never do, as far as OL is concerned.

Onwards to Dreaded Seven. Let's see if I can be properly disgusted by poor acting yet again.

Credit given to @flllk. B&W is a great idea - the right kind of depth

The Continuing Saga of Les Misérables and Censorship

"Continuing" in that I continue to find out more about this one specific instance that took place in Philadelphia in the late 1890's. To recap, Miss Dalcourt, a French teacher at an all girl's high school, proposed an abridged version of Les Misérables as part of her curriculum. However, the majority of the school board voted that it should be banned, as the topic of "grisettes" was inappropriate. The story was picked up (and mocked) around the country, including in the Vestkusten and the Abendblatt (newspapers for Swedish and German immigrants, respectively.) [See here for the full saga.] @sherbertilluminated had previously translated an article for me from the Abendblatt, which told how Les Misérables was ultimately allowed in Miss Dalcourt's classroom and asked me to keep an eye out for any other German language articles on the subject. And so today Sheb and I (but mostly Sherb) bring you this opinionated piece from the Abendblatt, published the 13th of October 1897:

The decision of a committee of the Philadelphia School Board not to recommend Victor Hugo’s moral novel “The Poor and the Miserable” [Les Miserables] as a French text for the public high school for girls has aroused scrutiny and consistently suffered derogatory judgment. Superintendent Rover’s proposal to use the book in a girl’s school for instruction in the French language may appear conspicuous and could rather have deserved censure. One can find the goal of the author to introduce the reader into the lives of the lowest classes meritorious, and nevertheless need not consider the filth uncovered there to be a suitable intellectual nourishment for immature daughters. One does not lead the youth into those classes in real life, why should one then do so in school? The task of the school is to enrich the youth with knowledge, not with things whose acquaintance has a very dubious worth also for [those of] mature age. Novels will be written in order to create the largest possible draft; there the moral aim is least determinative and will be most highly followed, incidentally. And then the moral aim is not to make the uncorrupted youth acquainted with the blights of human society, but to make attentive toward suppressing these blights those who can work toward such. A teenage girl [“baked fish,” apparently a slang term?], seated at school, cannot do this. Certainly Hugo did not write the novel for school. That Victor Hugo’s books are found in our public library has long proven nothing. In our public library are found quite many books which were not designed for youth, as in our Art Institute are found quite many statues before which a chaste maiden need not linger in critical observation. One does not suit himself for all, neither in the visual arts nor in the scriptural. There are parents who would never ever, if they knew it, foist such reading material onto their children, but there are also parents who would, and those who would never ever, if they knew that Victor’s work “Les Miserables” also visited the [children] of the High School, would put it in their hands. We must thus defer to the committee. In any case, the judgment of a whole delegation, according to the trials put before them, is greater than the judgment of an individual who only admires the language in the work. The pupils of the Philadelphia High School are in any case not so advanced that they cannot know to differentiate between a work of Hugo’s and [that] of another of the better French writers. On this point we can be assured. Full respect to Hugo’s spirit and his creations, but also full respect to the discrimination of the Philadelphian committee, who, itself in danger of exposing itself to the accusation of prudery, has the courage to refuse the youth a dish which they still are incapable of digesting.

The bold parts are just me highlighting the parts I found most entertaining. Also, the whole second paragraph, where the author says that the goal of Les Mis is to effect change and that high school girls can't effect change....wow rude. I do love to read an opinionated article though, even if the opinion is not one I agree with. Anyways, thanks again to Sherb for sharing this with me! There are so many different archives online with materials in different languages, I would encourage anyone who is interested to check them out. When you find something really cool, an old article that probably hasn't been read in decades, it's an awesome feeling.

The season 2 finale of The Gilded Age brought many of the show's central conflicts to a head, including whether or not The Academy or the Met would win the opera war, who the Duke of Buckingham (Ben Lamb) would choose, whether Armstrong (Debra Monk) would ever stop being a pill — and most importantly, if Larry Russell (Harry Richardson) and Marian Brook (Louisa Jacobson) would ever get together.

The moment finally arrived in the season's final scenes, and it wasn't a mere chaste brush of a gloved hand either. Standing on the doorstep of the Van Rhijn household, Larry walked Marian home from a night at the opera in the early light of dawn. She promised that even with a move on the horizon, she would keep in touch with Larry. Larry's response was to kiss her, drawing a shy, pleased smile from Marian.

Executive producer and writer Sonja Warfield tells EW that the romantic moment came after she directly solicited creator Julian Fellowes. "Julian had long game plans to get them together," she says. "Back then everything was very chaste. You didn't really kiss somebody; you shook hands or something like that. So, I really did want Marian and Larry to kiss and asked Julian if they could please kiss at the end of the season. He granted me my wish."

Though Warfield warns that if they do secure a season 3 (HBO has yet to order more of The Gilded Age), it won't just be smooth sailing through the tunnel of love. Even if Marian will now have a newly empowered Ada (Cynthia Nixon) on her side against what will no doubt be objections from Agnes (Christine Baranski). "Relationships had their challenges in 1884, and they do today," she says. "The modern challenges aren't that different from those challenges. Yes, we're rooting for them. But everything will be complicated."

EW got Warfield to break down more of the finale, including Peggy's (Denée Benton) decision to leave the paper, Ada's sudden new wealth and its implications, and the possibility that Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon) has sold her daughter, Gladys (Taissa Farmiga), to a duke solely to win a society war with Mrs. Astor (Donna Murphy).

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You all brought Ada some romance this year, only to immediately kill off poor Luke (Robert Sean Leonard). So, I have to ask, why are you so mean?

SONJA WARFIELD: Because that's drama. And back then, most of the time when people had an ache or a pain, it did mean death. I wanted to disrupt the status quo with Ada. I just adore Cynthia Nixon, and her performance was mesmerizing to me, so I wanted her to be empowered to have a love. Agnes is oppressive, and so, I wanted for her to have love and to feel loved and to understand how that helped her in the world. The heart of the show, it's about the warring classes and Ada and Agnes represent that old money, and so, they need to remain intact. That's why he couldn't stay. 

Peggy decides to leave the Fortune (Sullivan Jones) paper. What will that mean for her future? She talks about a novel, but being a journalist seems like such a core part of her identity right now. 

In that time period, a lot of women were writing serialized stories for newspapers, so Peggy's done some of that too. There's versatility in her writing and in her work. Listen, Fortune is great, but he's a bad influence. He drinks a little bit; he's married. Peggy has a whole future ahead of her anywhere she wants to be. So I'm excited for her.

Will she be able to stay away though?

We shall see. He is pretty cute.

Watson (Michael Cerveris) gets this happy ending where he's going to actually go and have a life with his daughter. Will we continue to follow him and how that develops in the future? Or once he leaves the Russell household, will we not really check in with him?

Now, he's going to be living as a gentleman. We've already seen Turner (Kelley Curran) cross over. Anything's possible in America at that time.

Speaking of Turner, we learn in the climax of the finale that both Bertha and George did her dirty behind the scenes, both with the opera box and learning that Bertha wrote Mrs. Astor to get the new Mrs. Winterton kicked out of the Academy. If there is a season 3, how might that come back to bite them?

 Listen, she'll be conniving to take Bertha down. Turner, or Mrs. Winterton, will be in her orbit. There are crimes of opportunity that Turner will be looking out for wherever she can catch Bertha out. And remember, she was the maid and the maids know everything. 

One has to assume she already is blaming the Russells for everything.

Oh, absolutely. She's a smart cookie. She knows what's going on.

Season 1 ended with this very short-lived triumph for Bertha with her party coming off. But it wasn't enough. If there is a season 3, would that be similar? She won this battle. Are there more battles for her to win? 

The thing about power is that it's unquenchable. You get a taste of it, and you thirst for more. Bertha has her sights set on conquering American society.

There is a heavy implication that Bertha won the Duke of Buckingham by selling out her own daughter. Is that a fair reading of that scenario?

I think you're a smart woman and that's an astute reading. Sadly.

George also looks quite concerned with whatever might be happening with the Duke. And we did see him early in the season pledge that he was supportive of Gladys marrying someone she actually loves. So is he also suspicious? Is he still determined to stand firm to that promise?

That's something that will be tested, and we'll have to see where George and Bertha land. This season was great because we saw them, probably for the first time with their marriage, in some real jeopardy that they had not experienced before. What I loved about that is that they still emerged as this power couple, and so we'll see if they can sustain that and how much their marriage can take. Parents often want different things for their children and that can be challenging. 

We've really seen the servants branch out a lot more this season, whether that be going to the opera or this overarching plot line with the alarm clock. Are we trending toward a situation conceivably where servants are leaving their profession or their power dynamic is in flux?

That's the difference between America and the U.K. You're born into a position there, but in America it's supposedly the land of opportunity. Turner married up; we'll have to see what happens with Jack and how he fits into this new world, or if he gravitates back to his old world and what really happens with it. Businesses go bust, anything's possible. 

We've pretty much exclusively seen Larry interested in architecture to this point. So what would going into the alarm clock business potentially look like for him? 

Money. He's young and he gets to explore a lot of things because his father's a mogul.

In the final moment, Ada warns Agnes that things might be a little different. Historically, Ada is pretty good natured. So her being in charge, what do you conceive that looking like? I feel like we're gearing up for the battle of the century between these two sisters. 

Here's the thing, fighting with a sibling is so different than fighting with somebody else. You can go in and you can go deep and you can go back. It's so charged and it's so conflict ridden. At the same time, you can be at each other's throats and then the next minute, you can hug it out. What I love is that Ada didn't just get a lot of money. She was really empowered to be independent with Luke in that relationship. So the power dynamics, it'll be fun to watch what happens.

Does she hold any resentment toward Agnes for how domineering she was that we could see come out?

Listen, Agnes pushes people. Even if you were forgiving and didn't have resentment, she might stir it up again.

This cast is known for its stellar lineup of Broadway talent. Who would be your dream to join the cast next season?

Sutton Foster. That would be big fun.

do you think fi has a chance of appearing in totk or does zelda team hate robot girls

i think she might appear in the form of a voice from the sword but i honestly think it would be a poor writing decision on their part to pull her out of the sword again. As previously mentioned, any game that relies extensively on plot points from other games (that it's not directly a sequel to) for its own story to function is going to very quickly become inaccessible to new players. it's not a secret that a ton of people entered the loz fandom via botw and haven't picked up any other games. you could argue that sksw HD makes sksw more accessible to these people, but from a purely marketing standpoint there's still likely to be a ton of people who don't know or care who fi is going into this game. pulling her out of the sword and making her a character again would require either explaining the entire plot of sksw to the player in-game somehow, or the writers just assuming that everyone already knows who she is, and either way that's gonna feel clunky and break up the flow of the story. if they keep her in the sword, though, they have the benefit of a preestablished "voice in the sword" concept from botw, so less explanation is needed, and they can easily throw in easter eggs for the sksw fans like her voice clips without having to explain everything about her to new players.

strong girl nam soon ep3

Putting this under the cut because it's kind of salty. Dont read it if it's not your thing, please.

I'm starting to think kdrama land needs a writers strike too because this is the third show I'm watching in a few weeks where the plot is ????????? and the characters make dumb decisions for no damn reason. It is not that hard to make a coherent plot line?

How come her family's vast wealth and connections didnt manage to find Nam Soon in over 10 years when one random cop did it in 2 days? Her mother literally has the power to get information on a top secret government police force but the only thing she could do to find her missing kid is host a sport competition? It becomes even more stupid when according to them there were only FOUR missing people in Mongolia who fit Nam Soon's description. Hire a PI and have him go look around the place where she disappeared! Or something!

Also yes let's donate an obscene amount of money to a random organization after doing one (1) google search about it.

"If I mistreat someone else, then another person will mistreat Nam Soon" is all fine and dandy as a belief but I feel like it becomes useless and dangerous when you're talking about someone who is actively scamming you by faking being your daughter. If they try to do the whole omg she was just a poor thing down on her luck and now she wants to be part of a family uwu I will claw my fucking face off.

Random cop calls you to say he has your daughter but he wont take her to you because "she needs to rest" just what normal characters do in normal situations sure sure sure.

Slow-mo reunion in the middle of a fire - also another very normal reaction to have. Like ok. I get what they're going for BUT consider that you can have dramatic emotional moments WITHOUT making your characters dumb as hell.

The homeless couple plot line seems so tone deaf like they're trying to play it off as cutesy romcom-y moment at the end but it's not?

Hello! Just wanted to say that i love the posts youve been doing on Lore Olympus so far. I personally havent fully read through the whole thing yet but ive noticed that there are a lot of webtoons that have uhh how should i say.. poor writing? (a certain other popular webtoon comes to mind) That gets really popular for some reason or other. I tend to stay away from them for the most part but these analyses have me kind of interested, maybe ill try reading lore olympus (more for a reference to improve my writing than anything)

Webtoons has a lot of stuff with very bad writing. But hey, the world is filled with stuff with terrible writing because, despite what it seems, writing a story isn't easy. It looks easy because eh, what's so complicated? You just have to come up with an idea, then put it down and voilà, masterpiece. But as a writer yourself, you know it's not as easy as it seems.

The worst that could happen is when a story with shitty writing pretends to be taken seriously or to be the new icon of whatever. I appreciate much more a story with awful writing that makes fun of itself or makes stupid decision after stupid decision, to the point it exits the realm of writing and enters in the realm of absurd.

For example, Marry My Husband, another webcomic I read: that story was such a soap opera it went beyond the mere definition. It went from "bitchy friend steals my man" to "my friend is a fucking psychopath who commits murder like nothing". It went from "stereotypical serious sexy guy likes me" to "my angelic father with his heavenly taxi saves this guy because he's the right one". How am I supposed to take this stuff seriously? Of course I take it as a joke and I was even invested in this shit because it's so absurd, I want to see how far it will go!

And, honestly, I love stories that are so bad, that they become good. Lore Olympus has almost reached that point: I stopped considering the character Greek gods (because they're not), but just characters. And if you detach them from mythology, the whole story is much less infuriating and more entertaining.

Sure, it's entertaining for the wrong reason, but still: at least, it helps you understand what you should NOT do, if you want to be taken seriously XD

I should have been clearer on Nettles. Yes she's is part of the dragonseed and has Valyrian blood but she doesn't look like Valyrian, which is part of why Rhaenyra hates her so much. It's not just because Daemon likes her cause Daemon liked Mysaria too but Nettles just looks like an ordinary black girl, something rare in Westeros and she acquires this ability to bond with a dragon.

There's been discourse on Twitter saying she's not necessary to the plot cause the Velaryons are black as well as the conversation about her being Daemon's daughter.

Oh, yes, absolutely, Rhaenyra's language in regards to Nettles holds racist (and classist) undertones - she straight up calls her a "low creature" and that "You need only look at her to know she has no drop of dragon’s blood in her", i.e. Valyrians can't have her skin colour.

Nettles' story presents an interesting opportunity for a storyteller, because not only is she a WOC, but, unlike the Velaryons, she is also poor and of the commonfolk. So there is intersectionality at play there in the conversation between good and evil and the difficult moral choices that come with acquiring so much power. HOTD is notorious for only focusing on the nobility, so this would be a perfect avenue to interrogate how the war is affecting regular people.

In addition, yes, I believe Nettles being a dragonseed herself was tantamount to her being able to access dragon riding as an ability, but just having the right blood is no guarantee the dragon will accept her, so her being resourceful and clever and using livestock to befriend Sheepstealer is also very important and relevant to her character. But, you know, it is also a decision to transcend and infringe upon the boundaries of humanity, of course with the naiveté and boldness and hope typical of youth, but nevertheless taking hold of that violent capacity for destruction. And I think that fans tend to gloss over that thematic thread for Nettles because they are so fond of her and, thus, are reluctant to view her as anything other than morally uncompromised.

So, in a way, beyond the implication that she might actually be Daemon's daughter who nonetheless gets a grooming narrative, I see Nettles' story as something like hope corrupted, a betterment narrative gone wrong perhaps, in the sense of thinking that this is an opportunity for you to prove your worth to the entire world, that you are more than this fragile flesh or the unlucky circumstances of your birth, making that one wrong decision out of desperation and not realising that you ended up trading your soul instead.

Which is why I think a talented writer could explore many compelling themes with Nettles' character if they were so inclined (hopefully they will be).