i think the reason i like AU's and alt timelines and all that is that I enjoy the idea of fate. I enjoy the literary device that is a person's predetermined path, for good or bad. Things in this universe are different from the things in this one, but the end results are the same for the character. They can't escape the inevitable. They were always going to end up there eventually.

Especially with romance. I understand there's a certain distaste for a lack of agency in characters but the way I think of it is that this isn't the characters not being able to make their own decisions. Its more cosmic; the character, no matter what beginning or form or circumstance, will always make these decisions to meet someone. That no matter what, these paths will crossed and they will converge to become one.

They are doomed to love each other and doomed to be with each other. It's inevitable. Inescapable.

I have loved you. I will love you. I will always love you. In every timeline. In every universe. In every lifetime.

We will find each other and we will know each other and I will choose you every time. Not because I had no other options, but because they could never measure up to the one with me and you.

original thief series basso & garrett :)

ngl, it's about quality over quantity for me. an npc can have a total of three minutes of screen time, but if they have a cool name, they can live rent free in my head and I'll spend several hours trying to decipher drawable features from a blurry screenshot of pixels

there is a vague hint of a story here, and that's because every time I try to play thi4f, I get incredibly frustrated with how Not Fun the game play is. like, is the story good? well. but it has a PLAGUE. that should've given it instant 'I'll replay this once a year' status in my heart, but the game play sucks so bad that I've never finished it. I can't believe Not Fun gameplay beat out my obsession with narrative plagues.

anyway, the idea is basically if the original era had a game with a plague centric narrative and some other stuff I liked out of thi4f thrown into a narrative blender, with a heavy dash of horror thrown in because some parts of the thief games were scarier to me than entire dedicated horror genre games.

⭐ places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app

not arguing w a dude that has big brown eyes. whatever u say beautiful

(I’m only on ch 29 no spoilers pls!!!!) go wild with spoilers I am now done the book and am extremely mentally unwell

god i do still think it’s so interesting that most wizards (and even gale itself at times) talk about magic as though it’s an exact science, like, fantasy equivalent of being a STEM major, but during the weave scene gale explicitly compares it more to music and art and poetry, like!!

i know he has a thing for the dramatics but this is fascinating!!!

it's been a bit funny to me the couple of times i've seen people suggest that grantaire actually did do what he was assigned in 4.1.6, bc after all we only see enjolras's perspective on it for like a minute. theoretically that's plausible but come on let's be serious for a moment

all I knew going in was that the movie was called "Godzilla Minus One" and I was like "haha you mean there's no Godzilla in this? less than one Godzilla?" wrong, there was indeed a Godzilla. 11/10 movie

I started watching the show assuming (from pictures and such) that Sydney and C*rmy are the main couple. I didn't even know Richie existed.

But having finished the second season just now, I can't feel anything romantic between Syd and C*rmy. I expected to like them together, even to ship them at least a little. But I just don't.

Syd and Richie on the other hand? Wow.

In season 1, where they absolutely hate each other most of the time, their interactions are already so meaningful:

- The first time that we as viewers see Richie be vulnerable, Syd sees it too.

- His worry whether she is okay after the gunshots. Should be normal between colleagues, but... they used to dislike each other so much...

- When Syd resolves the fight between the gangsters, Richie looks at her in irritation, but also almost... awe? It also makes him actively change at this point already, actively change himself and how he sees certain things.

It's really a testament to the writing of this show, to the complexity of its characters that Richie is such a scumbag in season 1, in some ways saying exactly what you'd expect a guy like him to say, yet he could have been so much worse. He never crosses a certain line. And then in season 2, he becomes so much better.

Their interactions kind of hit me like a freight train - completely unexpected, raw, realistic, extremely emotional, almost forceful.

Thematically, too. The very new one and one of the oldest. At the beginning: always at each other's throats. Fighting, pulling, pushing. Is it possible that they might find peace with each other? Find even more?

The structure of season 2 had the main cast interact less, and since Syd and C*rmy were the ones working most closely together, I was sure that the strange vibes I got between her and Richie would disappear in favour of Syd/C*rmy. But except for the table scene (which I just didn’t read as romantic, more a continuation of Syd's personal arc), there were very few meaningful scenes between Syd and C*rmy.

There weren't many big scenes between Syd and Richie either, but... nobody really expected them to. However, we did get two scenes of weird awkwardness, like they didn’t know how to behave around each other without fighting. (her jumping away when nearly bumping into him! Their weird interaction when she's seeing him in a suit for the first time! "You smell good"?! Wtf? Ultimately it probably means nothing but I can't stop thinking about it!!) And of course the one scene in the last episode, when they are more than amicable colleagues - they are the perfect team without ever training together, same focus, same drive to make things exactly as they should be, helping each other, supporting each other and being impressed by each other.

It's just so weird how Sydrichie completely surprised me. I wouldn't even call it only "chemistry" or something. It's their entire dynamic, the way they made each other madly, almost exaggeratedly emotional in season 1, then went on parallel paths apart from each other - did some soul searching, improved themselves - and ended up as this weirdly perfect force together. I never expected it. I've never seen anything like it.

Right now, I think there's a 50:50 chance that in canon nobody of The Be*r's staff gets romantically involved, or that Syd gets together with M*rcus. No other option is realistic. But I'll be thinking about her with Richie for a good long while.

with all due affection i am taking the word "twink" away from the Captain Laserhawk fandom until it can be used responsibly

This is for @bluepeachstudios ‘s Ghost in a Shell. It’s really good you should read it.

I looked at exactly one picture of Jupiter Jim and went “yeah this should be enough to draw him.” I will not be answering if it actually was

Have some bonus content under the cut!

And sketches

(I love any character who can say “I don’t want to go back to prison” it’s like the funniest thing to me)

I feel weirdly compelled by this

rotating henry emily in my mind

[primal fear 1996 ending spoilers]

been thinking about primal fear a lot again lately and it’s led me to think about the way people engage with it online and the most fascinating phenomenon to me is people who like it but hate the ending because i get where they’re coming from! when i first watched it, i identified a lot with aaron, and the ending twist made me suddenly very uncomfortable! but i took some time to analyze that discomfort and guys, i think it’s genius.

like: by the time you get to the twist you know the score. and like veneable said, she would’ve done it too! anyone would’ve done it! the twist isn’t that aaron did or didn’t do it — once we get to roy we know on some level he did — but the twist is that he didn’t feel bad about it. and he doesn’t need to! aaron stampler is a “villain” because he is not a sympathetic enough victim anymore. he had something bad happen to him and he responded. he’s able to construct himself as the perfect victim, something vail both pities and is all too ready to exploit (trying to “draw out” roy etc) and vail is shattered because he was tricked. because he supported someone who should’ve been supported, but wouldn’t have if he knew was more complicated than the easy, digestible version of a victim he was willing to support

when people make “aaron actually has DID” or “roy is real” aus so he can be demure and happy and vail can be his dad you are continuing the thought that caused aaron to do what he did, that aaron would’ve needed to be helpless, unaware, more pitiable to have been worth sympathy. but he’s not! he’s not a necessarily good person. and i have a great sympathy and love for him because of that, not despite that. what he did is material, and that’s what makes it defensible, not how he thought of it or his true personal feelings behind it. i can relate more to a “bad victim” than i can to the fake version of aaron stampler that he created to force people who don’t actually care about victims to accept due to a complete lack of complexity. but he’s a complex guy. and i love that for him ❤️

something really gets to me about eiffel and hera talking to themselves while addressing each other - in am i alone now? and the watchtower in particular. i can't say this to you, but you're still the person i want to tell it to. i know there's no way you can hear me, but if you can...

eiffel talks to himself a lot, and he is very used to being alone with no one paying much attention to the things he says, so i'm not sure he ever realized exactly how much until he was on the hephaestus. in the early days of the mission, i imagine hera responded to a lot of eiffel's asides and sort of embarrassed them both. and then that sort of... shifted. their relationship shifted, they got comfortable being around each other, and eiffel's conversations with himself started including hera, too. i like the idea of that as an establishing moment: that, at some point, there was a first time eiffel said something in an empty room, and hera was so used to him talking to himself that she didn't realize it was meant for her, and he asked her, "hera? are you there?"

i imagine hera still talked to eiffel, too, when they all thought he was dead. with each day increasingly longer and more difficult, that she would vent her frustrations to the empty comms room the same way he would've encouraged her to when he was there. she can't talk to anyone the way she can talk to him, and they just... keep talking to each other, even when they can't. they are so much a part of each other, the voice of encouragement and comfort in each other's heads. for so long, all they can really do for each other is talk, and they maintain that connection even in absence. they ask each other "are you there?" like reaching for each other's hands in the dark.

shh that was the last post I’ll ever delete on my blog because I’m sleep deprived and took a sleeping pill and my thoughts are cloudy and then I read my posts in the morning like ?? and I’m not all about embarrassing myself like that so

we’re all just gonna collectively turn a blind eye on that

Dean is such a paradox for me because on the one hand, I have been actively triggered by him in the show, there are moments where, intentionally or not, the writers managed to create a portrayal of manipulation and abuse and control issues that it sets off actual alarms for me. And on the other hand, I would not have him any other way. There is something — not comforting, that’s too soft a word — about knowing where Dean’s actions stem from, having seen and learned all that we do about his childhood neglect and parentification and the trauma he goes through repeatedly in the show, and that he doesn’t come out clean. He comes out a goddamn mess who ends up hurting the people around him in reaction to his own pain!

There’s a reality there that’s. Almost nice, actually. Distressing to watch, but it is a fucking mess, it’s a good mess! He’s got zero healthy coping skills and a healthy relationship with say, his brother, is terrifying because it leaves him open to abandonment!

I’m not sure I’m wording this correctly. There is a way to be a good abuse victim. Take the pain, martyr yourself on it, and then, even if you have no support or idea how to, then you have to become a Good Person who never hurts anyone the way you have been learning to your entire life. Simply toss everything that shaped you out the door and emerge a saint with a tragic backstory. And Dean is not that. And that’s so fucking good. Everything that he has gone through continues to effect the way he treats the people around him, and he can’t fight the behaviors he might recognize as harmful because he also sees them as protecting him (or protecting Sam by keeping Sam with him.)

And sometimes, idk. It feels good to see a guy who didn’t heal the “right way.” Who mostly didn’t heal at all, just keeps the wound open because it’s easier that way.

someone who is good at psychology help me understand why i adore jegulus with all my heart but don't like drarry outside of very specific aus

please my family is dying (my ability to read jegulus lives aus is heavily compromised)