ask to distract you 💕

(forgive me if this was discussed in the extra content, I still haven’t gotten around to read it all)

A little bit ago, because of how he picked college courses, I started wondering if Neil actually ever got to go to school while on the run or if Mary had to teach him what she thought would be useful in their day to day life (I imagine she would not be a particularly patient teacher…)

And if this is the case I am laughing at how extra awkward he must have been in that one year of high school: did boy know how to write essays, how to find the area of a circle, that mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell???

And if he did go to school every once in a while on the run, rip trying to make sense of anything considering that class programs vary so much between schools, let alone in different countries…

imagining neil having to do homework cracks me up for some reason. do you think mary would've went to parent-teacher meetings if she was alive when he was in school?

"Christopher is a well mannered young man but is quite distracted in class..." "Ah, he's a daydreamer!" [he was thinking about his father cutting off a mans head]

like would she have gotten pissed at a bad report card or like... did they have more important things to worry about? "mom i don't know how to do quadratic equations" "nathaniel i don't give a shit im trying not to bleed out rn"

Re your update news. Plz sleep and hydrate and take care of yourself. Just feel better soon! Your story can wait and health comes first.

I hope you're able to relax and just like sleep.

Ah, doing my best to sleep and hydrate a bit today. Unfortunately this is midterms week and I really wanna avoid having to reschedule all of them like I did last semester, that was a pain.

And I really really wanna post the next chapters :( but I'm only halfway through ch. 2 and ch. 3 deserves so much love and attention to really give it the impact I'm aiming for- ah, it's unfortunate.

But thank you anon <3

thinking a lot about how fatal flaws are misconstrued as being moral failings when actually hamartia is a moral neutral.

the best kind of fatal flaw, in my opinion, is one that’s both a character’s greatest strength and biggest weakness at the same time. it needs to be their biggest weakness intertwined like vines with what makes them admirable. it’s their very virtues that bring them to ruin!!! it’s something they can be lauded for that spells their death!!

it’s macbeth’s ambition. it’s oedipus’s loyalty to his state and unending thirst for truth and justice. it’s hamlet’s obsessive contemplation and wish to make sure his every decision is the right one. it’s being loyal to the point of blindness or confident to the point of hubris.

in any other story they could succeed because of these traits, but they aren’t in any other story, and in theirs it’s exactly what damns them.

grief is like a really ugly couch

I think grief is like a really ugly couch. It never goes away. You can decorate around it; you can slap a doily on top of it; you can push it to the corner of the room—but eventually, you learn to live with it. ― Jodi Picoult, Leaving Time

Me> [struggling to unravel a very annoying UI bug]

My brain, entirely unprompted> H E Y. IF JAHEIRA HAD USED SOME MORE MINOR VERSION OF THAT RITE OF THE TIMELESS BODY ON RASAAD TO EXTEND HIS LIFESPAN, IT WOULD RESOLVE THE MORE FINICKY TIMELINE ISSUES ABOUT RION BEING THEIR KID.

Me> ...ok? I didn't ask right now but thank you for working that out I guess.

That scene between Tuvok and B'Elanna from 'Resistance' wrecks me actually... It's such a great moment for both characters (and actors, Tim Russ is SO underrated ugh) which highlights the differences between the two of them so well- yet, ultimately shows that under certain circumstances (in this case, torture) the distinctions between people... don't really matter. In an episode full of political violence, this moment is so significant, and I don't even really think I have the smarts to articulate why but I'll try lol.

TORRES: We told you already. We don't know anything about the Resistance.  AUGRIS: I've heard that many times, from many people. Take him.  (The forcefield is lowered, and Torres grabs the guard that steps through.)  TUVOK: Lieutenant, stop! That will not help either of us.  AUGRIS: He's right.

Everything about the way this scene (and the final shot where she's shoved back into her seat) is framed makes B'Elanna appear small, helpless- and embarrassed at her own helplessness- in that cell. We see her fidgeting, unable to sit down, constantly trying to break out or improvise her way out of the situation (she gets electrocuted earlier while trying to tamper with the circuitry)- it makes me wonder whether Tuvok was chosen to be tortured not because they believed he was more likely to have information, but because B'Elanna was more likely to be demoralised watching helplessly as he's dragged off. Augris's line implies that he's "broken" a great many people in the past; a tactic to instil fear and a helpless sense of inevitability in them both (torture doesn't work as a reliable way of extracting information; this is stated in dialogue in other Trek episodes such as 'Chain of Command' so the assertion here is at least not that- but what it does do is demoralise the public involved in resistances like this one.)

Later, B'Elanna is still trying to escape (do the guards know she's doing this? Are they just not intervening?) and she hears him screaming. Tuvok is someone who considers letting others witness him lose control over his exterior a huge (indecent, violating, humiliating) vulnerability, and the fact that he's the one being tortured is Not Insignificant in this context but like- it could've been the other way round. And B'Elanna knows that. It could've been her, and perhaps a small, scared part of her is relieved that it wasn't her, which is an awful way to feel (and if there's one thing B'Elanna hates, it's feeling like a coward). Also- the sheer violation of this, for B'Elanna to have witnessed him in this state, against her will- to later see him bloodied and weakened and flung in a cell, to have heard him screaming in pain- without his consent, knowing she can never un-witness it, knowing it wasn't her fault but still being put in such a situation where she has now played that role... Does this experience forcibly rewrite their respective conceptualisations of each other? Was Tuvok even thinking of her- somewhere outside, listening, worrying, blaming herself, fearing for herself, feeling ashamed, feeling so aware of him and her and the shared humiliation of this- when he was in there? Did seeing her upon coming back out change things? Could it ever change things? Did her presence, even as an outsider, whose memories of this event will always be (visually, at least) the constructs of her imagination- somehow make what happened in there real? Does her role as witness- and her memory thereby carrying some sort of legitimisation of what happened to him now, however warped and coloured by her own perspective and fears and embarrassment- make things better for Tuvok? Does it make things worse? Would he rather have endured this in secret? Would it have been better if she were a total stranger? Would it have been worse? And does any of this even matter when, for a moment, your life (your personhood, your goals, your presence) was completely reduced to what you "must endure"?

AUGRIS: We don't have to ask your friend any more questions, if you give us the answers.  TORRES: I told you I don't.  (Torres stops herself from hitting Augris, who leaves.)  TORRES: I'm sorry. I guess I always assumed that Vulcans didn't feel pain like the rest of us. That you were able to block it out somehow. Until I heard. Was that you I heard?

And the way B'Elanna's voice breaks when she asks this, as if she was still somehow hoping the answer would be no... There are complexities to this which again I don't feel like I'm smart enough to articulate, but like- yes, B'Elanna would like to hear that it wasn't him because that would mean her friend wasn't tortured "that badly", he wasn't put through "enough pain" to scream that way, and it's easier and more comfortable to think of violence (and violation) as something you can rank on a scale, and the lower on it Tuvok's experience ranks, the better! the more easy it will be for them to "move past" this! - but also, there's this element of "I want the answer to be no because that would mean I would not have been a participant in your humiliation, just some stranger's whose voice I don't have a face to put to, which is much better than having to know what you (my friend, my colleague, my respected senior officer, someone I will have to see every day on the bridge, someone I know prefers to keep vulnerabilities hidden even deeper than anyone else I know) sound like when you scream. But also... it doesn't really matter, does it...? Whatever he says, there always was still a moment- however brief- where B'Elanna heard a man screaming in agony, and thought it could've been Tuvok. And in that moment, that possibility was created. Now, it will always exist. That moment will always have happened. It will always have done something to her. It will always exist between them; an ugly, uncomfortable bond.

And this is getting into even more things I'm not smart enough to articulate, but like- it's pretty significant to me that B'Elanna is one of the few characters who never actually tries to poke Tuvok into Doing An Emotion, even normally. She doesn't consider trying to get him to crack an entertaining pastime, unlike others (and I'm sure her experiences of feeling like an outsider- always- feeling Very Visible As Klingon, play a role in this- "all they ever saw was my forehead" does not lend itself so kindly to "let's see if we can get Mr. Vulcan to smile", "why, Tuvok, it seems you've been corrupted by Human (read: default) rituals after all!"- it's a light-hearted joke for many, sure, but what if Tuvok genuinely considers the idea of smiling in the presence of others reflective of a humiliating loss of control and deeply debasing?) I think it's pretty clear from canon that he's just being himself; he's not trying to be a killjoy or trying to be mean, he's just Vulcan. And this is one of the few moments in Trek I can think of when a Vulcan's perceived "control" over their emotions is not connected with their reluctance to laugh or cry or say something sentimental, but... this. B'Elanna is shocked, she's horrified, she demands an explanation as to how he can possibly go through something like this and not feel the desire to "fight back" in a way she understands- and the way she cannot grant him the pretence of not having witnessed, here, the way she can't just shove this in a box, pretend she never heard, because she's just so fundamentally honest- and Tuvok (who is also so fundamentally honest), in a painful moment of openness, tells her exactly what his reasoning is. He lets her see. He lets her hear; on his own terms. He wants for her to understand (for her to witness?) his (very Vulcan) distinction between resistance and endurance; his understanding of endurance as its own form of resistance. Idk it's such a quietly powerful and like- devastating- moment for me... So many people try, over and over, thoughout the show, to get Tuvok to break his Vulcansona- try to make him smile, make him say tender things, make him get irritated- just to see if they can do it. Just to see if he'll ever crack. I bet B'Elanna wishes she never had.

thinking about how jackie taylor’s biggest flaw is that she‘a a teenage girl

I saw that screenshot of Friede's head being in the clouds and that clicked for me. When I watched the episodes, it felt like a running gag that he apparently forgot to tell stuff to Liko, and his crew gives this 'really? again?' reaction, which gives me the impression that this has happened multiple times.

He seemed distracted, forgetful but having his head in the clouds is a better way to explain it thematic wise. He gives me Ash vibes in that sense; whenever Ash gets super into something, that's all he'll think about and he'll just do it. He also has that Ash recklessness, which his crew also appeared to be used to. Yet he's got a protective streak, stepping in to fight Amethio multiple times. It's refreshing to see an adult character stepping in to fight battles for the teenage protagonist instead of the protagonist fighting the battles themselves. Makes it feel like he's at heart a dependable person to rely on.

Apologies for rambling like this but I love thinking about his potential character from his screentime thus far! I just want to see more interactions between him and the people around him.

NO NO DONT APOLOGIZE THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I WANT TO TALK ABOUT!!

Like yes, from a doylist perspective his forgetting to tell people things is a funny running joke—but it implies interesting things about his character! It clearly isn’t that he doesn’t care enough to tell people things—he clearly cares about liko (beyond just that he’s getting paid to be her bodyguard) and the rest of his crew, too; like Liko said, the crew put her emotions and Sprigatito’s safety above just getting her home with the pendant—and I don’t even think it’s that he’s a particularly forgetful person with most things. He couldn’t be both a professor and a ship captain (or… first mate? considering pikachu is the captain? 🤣) if he was truly just… very forgetful. There’s a lot of things to pay attention to on a ship. I think that the joke of him not telling people things has to stem from his mind just sort of… being elsewhere. He’s thinking about other things. (Cough, adhd. He’s just like me fr fr) Not that he’s completely distracted and ungrounded; he doesn’t usually act like that, and he’s demonstrably practical (holding Liko back from charging in to face Amethio and coming up with a plan for the two of them, being honest about the fact that yeah, they can’t go adventuring without money) most of the time. But the bit that gets me is his speech about the Volteccer’s goals: to solve the mysteries of pokemon, to solve the mysteries of the world. It’s lofty. He’s clearly a dreamer. I feel like the sort of person who can casually say “oh, me and my team? Yeah we’re trying to solve all the mysteries of the world!” necessarily has their head in the clouds—and quite literally for the crew of an airship.

Then of course, there’s the fact that he was introduced by the pokemon company as professor friede, though the only indication we have of anything like that so far in the show is the pokemon seminar bits—he doesn’t introduce himself as a professor, and no one on the ship refers to him that way. We’ve seen very little so far, of course, but we haven’t seen him do lab work the way every other professor in the series does. He’s not tied down to a place of research, and his goals are much broader than most of the professors we’ve met in the past 25 years. He doesn’t say he’s researching the mysteries of pokemon, he says he wants to solve them. All this to say, to be a professor and the (sort-of) captain of a traveling airship makes me imagine that he was originally a researcher, but became tired of being… well, on the ground. (I’ve said it before, but a researcher myself, 100% I’d leave it all behind to go on a grand airship adventure and solve all the mysteries of the world—so this part is a little bit… projection.) I mean, hopefully we’ll at least get some information about his past, and how the crew came together and everything… but I wanna know nowwwwww 🤣

As for recklessness and traits that he shares with Ash—I honestly (so far, with the limited information we have) wouldn’t call him very reckless. A bit cocky, yes. Dramatic, absolutely. Mouthy, for sure. And I even think he would fancy himself a little bit reckless; but everything even slightly dangerous that he’s done so far has still been… well thought-out. He clearly doesn’t rush in without a plan in place (and I’d bet a couple of backup plans, but that’s speculation again) and he definitely doesn’t do anything to put anyone else in danger. His heroic entrances, his battling style, his dramatic-ass backwards fall off the building and onto Charizard’s back—everything he does seems less like recklessness and more like a concerted effort to bring the attention onto him. I mean, so far, most of his tactical advantages have come from taunting Amethio, not risky maneuvers to beat him. He doesn’t risk himself, his pokemon, or his crew in order to achieve his goals. (Whereas Ash will very much risk himself immediately, ie all the times he’s jumped off of a cliff or building without a plan on how he’s going to land.)

As for dependability—yes, absolutely. His crew obviously trusts and looks up to him (literally; the way he was sitting up above everyone else in the scene where Liko tells them she’s decided to trust them) and he’s demonstrated so far that he’d do a lot to keep them all safe and happy. He’s good at making plans and using his opponents weak points to his advantage (realizing immediately that he can get a rise out of Amethio by taunting him and questioning his skills). He seems to be a good captain, a good trainer, and a good person overall. And hopefully he has some more hidden sides that we’ll get to see later 👀👀

AND I WANT MORE EPISODES SO I CAN KNOW MORE ABOUT HIM RIGHT NOW IMMEDIATELY 😭

What worse take did you see

nay...... i shant say......

reaffirming the idea that yes, I can do anything. and everything. perhaps even all at the same time

thinking abt the time our middle school science teacher made us write superhero fanfic for a genetics project

OhMyGodMyRoomIsFinallyClean

like actually

symptoms disorder is causing symptoms of a disorder to me once more. shocking and tragic. who could have predicted this

haha tomorrow I have to present a really shitty essay I wrote and I already discovered multiple mistakes

These anti arguments are so tired 😐 It's like we have to use baby gloves every time we decide to engage with them. Billy isn't like anyone else in this show, he's literally so isolated from everyone that you can't compare him to anyone else. He had no one to turn to at any point, he had himself and his actions just prove that. It's subconscious self defense

literally

and the way they always try to backtrack by bringing up a completely different point whenever the shitty argument they’ve used is inevitably taken apart.. it’s honestly embarrassing

people don’t seem to understand that this 17-18 year old literally had nothing

he had no one on his side

no close friends

no parental figures supporting him

no one to turn to

and why would he let people in, anyway?

when the one person he clearly trusted left him with his abuser as a child

and then on top of that is the ‘i can’t be ‘nice’ because ‘nice’ is soft and soft is how you get hurt’ aspect of it all..

it’s really not that hard to understand

especially for those who’ve been in the same position as him

but people don’t want to admit all that

because then they’d have to accept that things aren’t all black and white

and that thinking solely in terms of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ doesn’t help anyone

idk i would just love to know how they think they’d act in his position