Me: *hears about Dominik being in Shadow and Bone season2*

Brain: Don't get your hopes up, it's propably random character they named that because they couldn't think of any slavic name that wasn't already in the books, like with Dima.

Me: He's in two episodes, and played by Louis Boyer.

Brain: *instantly recognizes the name from Insta stories Paddy Gibson posted during filming* *and they are still pals*

Brain: ...Imposs- IMPROPABLE!

Me: OH MY GOD!!! THEY DID IT!!! THEY'RE ADDING NIKOLAIIIIII'S BACKSTORYYYYY!!!

HALMHEND!!! sobbing in the mud! the key characterisation moment for Nikolai! that defines who he is and why he does what he does!

I'm dead. I died. This is heaven.

yes i'm rooting for m*leven breakup because byler is neat but mostly? i'm rooting for m*leven breakup for the sake of el and mike.

to me, their romance was always a puppy love born out of a combination of social pressures, naïve curiosity, and a lack of true understanding regarding intimacy and romantic love and what it really is. it was real in that they do truly, deeply care about each other and they are close friends, maybe even shared an attraction, but a maturing romance is so much more than that. they've grown up and out of being boyfriend/girlfriend, and that's okay! i think television/film needs to show more often that most of us don't have definite "soulmates" or first childhood loves that we spend our whole lives with. it doesn't mean these relationships meant nothing and didn't impact us, it just means they've run their course and that something else is in the cards, and this is part of life!

i've always felt el was at her best and most confident self when broken up with mike, discovering who she was and what she liked alongside another girl her age instead of just relying on mike for mentorship on how to live in the real world. she deserves more of an opportunity to find herself, her autonomy, and her independence, and to love who she is, and she's made it clear she's felt insecure in the relationship with mike because she isn't being loved and understood the way she wants, needs, and deserves from someone who is her partner.

also, it's okay if mike doesn't love her in "the way he should". he is not obligated to love her romantically and stay in a relationship with her just because she's a girl, because she "needed someone", or because he cares about her a lot. he shouldn't be pressured into a romance if it's not truly coming from his heart. he deserves freedom to find out and honour who he is, too, instead of just staying in his non-functional first relationship — one he got into as a child, essentially — and defining himself that way because it's what's expected when a boy and a girl are close. he loves her in some way, yes, but it's okay if he doesn't feel comfortable or secure being her boyfriend anymore, for whatever reason that is. he's felt insecure too, and that's valid and it matters.

they are their own people and are steadily growing and changing every day. they need time to figure out who those people are, and it's become clear (at least in my opinion) that those people aren't meant to be a couple at this stage.

they deserve freedom. they deserve to grow up and be authentic to themselves and not feel like they need to lie for the sake of a relationship. they deserve to move on from this version of their relationship that isn't making them happy and rekindle the best part of their bond: their strong, beautiful friendship. they don't have to be a couple if it doesn't make them stronger and better and happier people.

i think it would be healthy and wonderful for a show, especially one consumed frequently by young adults, to show a relationship starting, progressing, and ending on good terms in this way. sometimes things don't work out, and that is okay.

fuck you, Max. I'm gonna love these characters better than you ever could.

I really appreciate that, in Charles' wrap-up of "the pennies dropped" he specifically uses the word "murdered" in reference to Niko. Because she was murdered. She didn't sponteously die. She wasn't killed by accident. She was murdered. It was intentional. Esther threw that bolt with the intention to kill whoever it hit. It doesn't matter that it was meant for Crystal.

Words are powerful. Words have meaning.

And of course he would use the right word. After all, both he and Edwin were murdered. Maybe the boys who murdered them didn't have that exact intention, but their intentions were no less lethal and no less malicious.

the borgias is my favorite show and i think it's the best show ever made and all. however, there's just this one aspect that is genuinely hilarious to me and i mostly criticize the show for. the writers suddenly trying to make the viewers massively despise juan by turning against him and disingenuously writing him in his final moments so the watchers won't miss him or sympathize with him by making him a walking danger as an excuse to kill him off and prop up cesare's character. they wanted the audience to root for cesare at juan's expense and make his death seem necessary lol. they truly thought they served with this one, like maybe juan's character was shamefully abandoned by the writers (as well as his family except for rodrigo) but david oakes had many people sold with the way he played him to perfection, improvising and making juan remarkable, tremendous, and humane. the show is obviously a classic masterpiece, but in my opinion about the juan part, simply rushing the writing of a tragic dying character on a show for weak reasons is pure disrespect.

So far it seems like RTD's approach to this era of this Doctor Who is "I'm gonna have as much fun with this as humanly possible" and honestly? I respect it. Hell yeah let's have a kiki of a show!!

thoughts currently making me go bananas: the pool scene? the red bathing suit scene? the scene the duffers are so damn hot for that they directly reference it three goddamn times? the original scene in fast times? It's a fucking fantasy sequence.

It is literally a masturbatory fantasy of Brad's about Linda. That's not the real her! It 👏 is 👏 imaginary 👏!

Now do a think there's a snowball's chance in hell that the duffers did that on purpose to indicate that the Billy at the pool is performing and the version of him that exists there is not the real him and is in fact intentionally a sexual fantasy?

No, of course not... But he is! That is exactly what is happening!

people who say zutara can't be canon because "they only became friends in the last five episodes!" irritate me so much like my dude are we watching the same show? zuko and katara’s arcs mirror each other from book 1, they share parallel after parallel and have layers upon layers of symbolism, their backgrounds and personalities and morals are so similar that we the audience can see how compatible they are and how well they would understand each other even without explicit interaction between them, so that by the time the southern raiders rolls around, it simply serves as proof of what we already know about zutara.

tsr, eip and sozin's comet are, narratively speaking, the culmination of zuko and katara’s arc together, not the beginning! they're the fruit that’s borne from the seeds that were sowed since the very first season, and naturally viewers would pick up on that! of course people who love these two characters would see the connection between them and the similarities they share and the thematic significance of their relationship, and then the show itself validates this audience interpretation in the catacombs, in tsr, in the finale! that’s what zk shippers mean when we say that zuko and katara were meant to be together, because their relationship is threaded so deeply into their own personal narratives and that of the show overall that they don’t even need a lot of screentime together for the audience to know that a) they would be a good couple and b) the direction of the story was naturally leading to a romance between them.

zuko and katara’s relationship extends above and beyond their moments of direct interaction, so that their scenes together after they become friends are really just the payoff for the buildup of the past three seasons - because the narrative foundation for zutara was laid all the way back in book 1, not in the southern raiders or any of the episodes that followed.

I can't see how the writers still think Skystar's a good person. Like, twelve year old me liked him and thought he was interesting, but I was like twelve. And even I knew he was an irredeemable asshole after Moth Flight's Vision. If a twelve year old can figure this stuff out I have no idea what these grown ass writers were doing.

DOTC has a thesis, stated in The First Battle, that really explains everything.

"Fear and Greed" is just a fake-deep way to reinvent a Good and Evil dichotomy. Because Clear Sky's abuse comes from a place of fear, it means it's not malicious, unlike a "greedy" cat.

He can be "soothed," ergo, he's a fundamentally good person.

Post-First Battle, the books are focusing constantly on his feelings, how sad it makes him to not be trusted, how happy he is when people are on his side. All while he continues to screech at people who tell him what to do, manipulate and mistreat his son, and even still beats and mauls those who offend him.

But because it's "fear," that doesn't matter. That's a justification, an excuse. The writers don't seem to believe in good and bad actions as much as they do good and bad people. True 'evil' comes from a person who hurts others for the wrong reasons, like 'revenge' or malice.

It's abuse apologia. Plain and simple.

The truth is that abusers don't think of themselves as evil people, and everyone, even you and me, is capable of being toxic or abusive. Talk to those who have been abused and we'll tell you; we often stayed because we "saw the good," or even felt responsible for them. Abuse can be passed down through generations because the kids come to believe the way they were treated was normal and okay.

If you go through life thinking that abuse only comes from evil/greedy people, you won't see it when it happens right in front of you. Fundamental good and evil is childish. Abuse comes from fear all the time.

Abuse is about power and control. Fear of rejection, of losing someone, of pain, those are all very common motivators as the abuser tries to stop them from happening before they even begin. It doesn't MATTER that your abuser is in pain too, you NEVER "deserved" what they did in an attempt to break your legs so you wouldn't run.

But... we can all change. Even the worst of us. It's never too late to stop hurting others, move on to a better life, but some people never will. Skystar loves his power, and he keeps that power no matter how many times he misuses it.

He has no reason to change as long as his cruelty rewards him with status and authority.

But the writers are incapable of recognizing that, because for this entire arc, they were stuck in an absurd view of the world in terms of Fear and Greed. Abuse can be excused if he did it for the "right reason," and that makes him "fundamentally different" from the truly evil villains, Slash and One Eye.

Hopefully, it now makes more sense to you.

After reading the tags on your latest post I was wondering if it would be possible for you to make a brief overview of the iffy tropes/details your sensitivity reader helped you pick up on? Of course it wouldn't replace doing research ourselves, but I'd love to hear about it regardless!

Have not run it by them yet because it is in no fit state for human consumption at this point; the tropes are just from reading their blog + others on Tumblr + general Internet research including the excellent "blind people walk you through normal activities from their perspective" videos on YouTube. But off the top of my head:

Face touching. Where the blind person gropes someone's face to see? Sighted people made that up. I rewrote a chapter in Towards the Sun when I realized that one. Which makes sense, because why would a blind person be any more inclined to run their hands all up in your facial juices. Eww.

Negating blindness with magic and pretty much ignoring the blindness henceforth. Which is why Zuko isn't going to learn to see with firebending. There are very interesting discussions on how Toph herself fits and doesn't fit into this trope; finding them is left as an exercise for the reader.

Token blind character, AKA only having one blind person in the narrative who represents All Blind People. Going to have a few blind NPCs running around, with various levels of sight and accommodations, to thoroughly negate this one.

Being Depressed and/or Overly Inspirational about the blindness. AKA character devotes a large chunk of the story to bemoaning their blindness, with bonus inspirational "overcoming" at the end. Think about how it would feel if the majority of characters like you spent vast word counts hating the thing that makes them like you. And then solving it, in a way you can't, so they don't have to have the tragic fate of Being Like You. ...So Zuko is not getting cured, and he's also not wasting much time wallowing in an angst puddle.

Etc.

Basically, I want this to be a story that low vision folks can read and go "that was fun and less offensive than 70% of actual media representations", and sighted people can go "that was fun and hopefully I internalized some positive things that will make me less likely to grab a blind person's arm and forcibly Help Them Cross The Road, Try To Pet Their Dog (and Get Huffy When Asked to Please Not), or Call People Out On Not Being Blind Because They Don't Fit The Stereotypes".

It's a side-mission that I don't think many end up doing, at least from the lack of talking about it I see, but still. The figurines. If you succeed a check in the pawn shop, you can take a figurine of a headless soldier on a horse. If you've done that, when you inspect the stained glass Dolores Dei you can get the task to give her any and all figurines you can find. Perhaps you can one day. Even when you get this task, though, it feels odd- it confuses your Logic because Dei has long since passed, but... Maybe you can give her these gifts somehow? You can find another figurine in the unplayable Wirral expansion pack (I only found it bc I didn't know you couldn't play Wirral w Kim). There are only these 2, according to the wiki, and I have not found more.

This task is another moment where the writers really manage to emulate that feeling of not only loss, but lost-ness that you get a few times in the game. When I did this task I thought it would be something extraordinary, maybe vaguely supernatural as there are a few things confirmed to be unexplainable happening with and around Harry, y'know? I had hope and intrigue and didn't even realize how strange and rare it must be to get this task on accident bc after typing it out I realized the starting parameters were VERY specific and easy to miss, actually. And I was so excited to find who to give it to, maybe a lost shrine, or someone reaching through a spot of pale and time, maybe when I found 3 or 5 I could lay them at her shattered feet and look behind the glass, something odd and unexplainable.

Then I met her in the dream. And just before it ended I was reminded that I'm supposed to give Dei the figurines. And that's when it dawned on me what Harry had forgotten, and I knew what he'd done to his memory of Dora by combining the two, and... It was so sobering and desolate. It felt the same way the end of a party feels, when you're the last to leave. The balloons are still up, but there's streamers on the floor, crumbs on the plates, bowls of snacks emptied, walls that held and echoed laughter are silent. The after image of something amazing, left only with the memory and the knowledge that that moment will never, ever happen the same way again.

You fulfill this task by giving all found figurines to Dora in the final dream.

And it does nothing. It doesn't work. Nothing will work. She would have liked them once, but like Dei, that Dora is dead. She died years ago and the Dora that remains is far, far away now.

Just like when I had no idea the carriage was Harry's until Kim spelled it out for us 2 hours later after chatting and whistling and relaxing; the figurines made what Harry was feeling and going through dawn on me so personally. I can't explain it in words well enough. I was so disappointed the figurines weren't some greater purpose, I was sad this was all we were holding onto them for, I was disappointed in Harry for trying to use trinkets to win her back, I was upset that they didn't do anything good, she didn't even want them; and I knew that's what Harry felt in that moment, too.

It's a level of "Show, don't tell," that not many writers set themselves up to be able to achieve. Even in this game there are only a handful of moments that are able to put you into Harry's headspace so precisely, and all of them are very specific and rely heavily on context given or lost on the player. It's impressive. I think about those figurines a lot.

did u read the good omens book? if so, what are your thoughts on it compared to the tv series?

i followed u for the steddie posts but fell in love with ur meta too 💜

I did, but honestly they're separate entities unless I want to steal something specific for a fic. They're both good, for different reasons and in different ways. They are written by different men, literally and figuratively, about different subject matters, for different reasons. You can compare an apple to an apple blossom, but even though one became the other, and came from the same tree, doesn't mean they are the same thing anymore, nor does it mean one is better than the other.

That being said, I've only read the book once, and I've watched the show over a dozen times, most likely because I saw the show first and read the book second. I enjoyed the book, but I think it was probably a better read in its day, by people who were the target audience at the time, and who didn't just read about or know the context, but understood and lived it. I can't be that, I can't go back in time and read the book before the series, I can't go back and read it in a time where it would have meant what it was intended to mean to the world it was born into.

I need a website that's dedicated to recommendations based on concepts you enjoyed, but with different executions. like "IF YOU HATED [X] BUT LOVED THE CONCEPT, TRY [Y]"

can't believe i'm actually writing a long fic

haven't done that in years

i have no plan, i barely have ideas and clichés

i go with the vibe and feeling

dbh fandom, be scared, i'm arriving

Like I do think River and the Doctor's romance was built up poorly. However. You see. I like her.