remember my last post? Yeah it's definitely happening

2,7,23,25,27,31,35,40,47

nfadsnfldsf I love you, too <3 [swtor asks!]

2. Who's your main?

Will Smith showoff.meme. Why, my sonboy, of course!

It's Tyr, lol. My bestest double agent son. He's who I do everything with first, generally speaking; my initial playthrough for him on Star Forge is where I currently have him at pace with the story patches, and, ofc, when I decided I was going to replay him on Satele Shan, he's... the favorite child. I'd tell you not to tell my other ocs, but I think we're all well aware he's the chosen son, lol.

7. A class you haven't played (much) of yet?

In my heart, I want to say Trooper, but technically I suppose it's really Bounty Hunter. I never actually completed BH's vanilla story on Star Forge before I started up my Satele Shan playthroughs, but I have, technically, done Trooper's 1-50 twice because I have one on each server. Then again, Len (my SS BH) is in the early chapters of KOTET, so I've actually done more content with him, but I'd probably have to pull play-time in game to give you an accurate answer.

I've not been much of a military action enthusiast, so Trooper's story, while still par for the rest of the class stories, is way more of a slog for me, so if we flip this to which one am I going to play more readily? Bounty Hunter. So, eventually, it'll likely leave Trooper here.

23. One item not in-game that you'd like to see?

Well, topically, yesterday I was poking around at the lightsaber pikes available and I could have sworn we had a Zakuul-style one available, maybe Senya's? Searching for it tells me I'm not losing my marbles, it must just be out of rotation at the moment, but I'd like to get that and maybe put together some Zakuulan armor for Rhystyl when I get him a bit further into KOTXX, since he'll be the primary face of the Alliance between him and Savosta.

And at least so far I haven't run into quite what I'm looking for, but something like the Remote Outcast's headpiece, but... just the lower face covering. Similarly - and I know this one risks clipping issues, but stick with me a moment - I've also kinda itched for a pair of goggles that sit a little higher, like Koth wears his more as a headband piece than over the eyes. Short of a helmet toggle like in FFXIV, lol, I'd like that as an option. I wanna see my character's faces usually because I love them, hence the goggles, but there's also a few looks I'd just like the more subtle covering for. I have too many Agents.

25. One species not playable that you'd love to play?

I have two thoughts, but topical to GS4 just releasing, I'd like to see more of the Selonians. They don't really fit to the whole 'more or less human with some tweaks' theme for playable races, so playing as one is probably a stretch and I bet it'd take Work, but what I've seen so far of them in-game is neat and I wanna know more.

27. Favorite companion?

I mean, probably Theron. :P My endless excited tippy-taps when I get to play Shadow of Revan are largely because that's when I get Theron back, lol.

31. Best class storyline finale?

I'm biased, absolutely, but it's Agent. And I have played all of them, lol. Like, please, I am absolutely biased, but I do also genuinely believe Agent has some of the best consistency and carry-over between chapters of all 8 classes. The multiple variances to the ending based on your previous choices, the little hazards/puzzles... I could be here for a while, but if I had to boil it down, it feels very Agent - not that the Sith stories don't know how they end, but Agent benefits from me liking the dramatic spy action movies, lol.

And it just. factors in so much of your previous experience. It genuinely feels like the ultimate of Nine's career. Everything has lead you here. Nothing is ever going to be the same. Even if you win, even if you walked away, nothing is the same. It absolutely recolors the entire rest of the game viewed through the lens of the Star Cabal. That's fucking epic.

35. Thoughts on Revan?

I don't have KOTOR context, so SWTOR Revan's all I've known. I generally skip the mid-late game flashpoints (Taral V/Maelstrom, and Boarding Party/Foundry, particularly the Foundry) after just. How much I play and how many characters I have, lol. The Foundry I avoid mostly on the grounds that HK's fight is a pain in the ass. Anyway, off-topic.

I've overall enjoyed him. I don't think he overstays his welcome in the narrative and Revan's story is definitely one I'd fall in love with. The only thing that holds me back from going to do KOTOR myself is I already have such a cranky time trying to run Dragon Age Origins, lol, and also I'm a creature of habit so I already have SWTOR, lol. I have fond, if slightly muddled, memories of doing the Republic FPs with my Jedi Consular for the first time and it being kind of big for me because Revan's struggle is so big and you get the impression that so much rode on his decisions either way, and my Consular was just like '... let me help. Let. me. help.' (He's like that.)

Anyway, I guess sorta... long story short, Shadow of Revan is one of my favorite expansions, I never fail to find it interesting regardless of which class I tackle it with. It's not necessarily all because it's Revan and I'll cede that I generally agree that Star Wars as a whole is a bit obsessed with legacies and I think sometimes that's detrimental (and sometimes completely counterproductive to all you work for, looking at things as a Cipher agent, lol - stop telling everyone I'm alive challenge @ the Imperial Military).

I will look forward to a KOTOR remake if it ever does actually come? I keep hearing rumblings about it, but the last few times I've followed game releases to the letter it's been a Process, lol. so I'm coasting on the fringes of whatever's up with that.

40. Favorite world boss?

I'd say I've never done world bosses, but there is a fun story I can share. When baby didn't know what a world boss was, I did once sneak over and poke the Lance Squadron Command on Yavin IV and, predictably, got melted in like less than a minute. So, technically, I've seen them, lol. Oh and Lucky was hanging around on Corellia that one time I was doing Dread Seed stuff and I was praying to whatever powers that were listening I'd get very lucky and would go unnoticed, ha ha, which, yes. I survived that encounter with Lucky none the wiser. Tell Acina she owes me hazard pay. Anyway. xD

Choosing on looks alone then, I like the snow kitties. I'd like to pet Snowblind if I didn't think they would nuke my flimsy little Operative ass in like a minute.

47. Your greatest moment in-game to date?

Hmmm... that's a tough one? There was this one time I was on one of my lower level characters doing Hammer Station in group finder and I totally forgot about the Rocket Boost thing to get over the gap as groups usually skip certain trash packs there, so I went plummeting to my death in front of 3 total strangers and I could NOT stop laughing because one of them made like an 'ah wayward padawan' comment and explained stealth or rocket boosts and it was. I just had a good laugh, lol.

Uhh... silly stories aside kind of though, probably @captainderyn and I having flashpoint adventures together with Era and Tyr? xD We did Kuat Drive Yards together last which I don't think either of us had ever done, so we mopped the floor of most of the dungeon and then we got to the boss lol and we had a moment trying to piece together the mechanics and then we kicked absolute ass and it was just REALLY fun to no pressure explore and learn and conquer - part of what I did enjoy about doing extreme fights in FFXIV when I did was having those moments where you all compare your mental notes and getting that aHA of figuring out the mechanic, but also we just had. a really good time about memeing on the final hallway because we had some uh... some big guy with bombs and a small army of reinforcements as our final encounter and we'd been largely two Operatives stealthing around to our objectives before but that hallway before the boss had nothing. And you just knew.

So, long story short, we joked the hallway was empty because the boss had to pull all the reinforcements back to deal with us and that they were all busy hiding in the ceiling, lol. I sadly don't have anything from inside our Kuat adventures, but I do have Tyr and Era slaying in one of the initial cutscenes.

Flashpoints are more fun with friends. xD Hoping to do a lot more silly flashpoint shenanigans in the future : D

Barry: yikes/bestest place on the earth (4x01/02)

We're back for the final season!

Cons:

When there's a show this good, I feel myself unequal to really talking about it or explaining the ways in which it's brilliant. If I had to delve into what isn't working for me so far in these first two episodes, the first thing I'd say is that Sally running home and then immediately coming back to LA was sort of odd. I guess I expected her to stay put with her awful mother for a bit longer. Would have been interesting to see how that played out.

I also think that Barry can go a little too hard on the meta stuff for my taste, and I know that's what the show is going for, I'm not saying it's bad, it's just... personal preference means that watching Cousineau play out his history with Barry in the form of a one man show felt a little more time-wasting than it did comedic to me personally.

Pros:

Over the course of the last season and now especially here, we see the way Barry has fully settled into this creepy, almost child-like serial killer persona. It's like he's just entirely shut down and is approaching everything from this place of... fun-house-mirror innocence, that I find super fascinating and very well acted. His call to Mr. Cousineau, where he asks if he's mad at him. His begging of Sally: "do you really feel safe with me Sally?" And the flashbacks we see of him as a young boy, meeting Fuches for the first time. It all creates this sense of child-like creepiness. And then you see his ruthlessness, filtered through this sense of how little he sees any choice he makes as being his own responsibility. He knows he's done bad things, and yet he's still twisting himself up to become the victim again, like when he baits a guard who was trying to be kind to him, into beating him up. And now, Barry has turned his back on Fuches's loyalty and decided to take a deal.

The scenes with Sally and her mother were chillingly awful. It made me sick to my stomach (in a good way?) to see her mother dismiss her pain and talk about how awkward it was going to be to have to explain to Sally's abuser's family about the TV show and the depiction of the abuse present in it. And her father awkwardly offering her affection and support without really being able to connect with or understand his daughter... it was really something else. The moment that sticks with me most is the mom not understanding the TV show and how it's based on Sally's experiences. "You don't have a daughter. Who wrote this?" Just like... her utter inability/unwillingness to study the piece for its emotional resonances, or maybe to examine why Sally felt like telling a story about a complicated mother/daughter relationship to begin with.

Then we've got Hank and Cristobal. I've gotta say, the scene where Hank has a bad dream that he's still locked up, made me gasp out loud and say to the screen, "oh, fuck no," because for half a second I thought maybe Hank killing everyone and rescuing his boyfriend was all a delusion, and he was still back there. And then he looks over and sees Barry and it's like "ah, okay, this is just a dream." This show plays around with perception a lot, we see it with Barry too as he imagines Sally and Cousineau there in the prison with him, but then it's Fuches who shows up, and he's the one who's real, but then we're also slipping through Barry's memories of him and Fuches in the past... it's so cool.

But back to Hank and Cristobal, I find their relationship so charmingly bizarre, and I like how they immediately want to get back into a life of crime. They just can't help themselves. Nobody who gets involved in this can ever successfully extricate themselves from it. We've also got Hank's moving and yet ultimately quite pathetic loyalty towards Barry, who probably wouldn't extend him the same courtesy. Hank wants to rescue Barry and Fuches from prison, but the minute he learns from Fuches that Barry is working with the feds, he ends the second episode declaring: "we have to kill Barry."

And we're off to the races! I already feel insane about all the stuff happening here. Fuches crying and cradling a bloodied Barry in his arms, apologizing and saying I love you? Oof. Not getting over that any time soon.

9/10

I've always tought the spn fandom was terrible with women, like the way they hate Anna Milton, Amelia Richardson. I could understand why people hated Ruby, Bela and Meg (even if I find some people overreacting) but it's funny to see how the same people love Crowley, Lucifer or Ketch. We had the same problem with Mary, I wasn't even a big fan of her but people expected her to act like a mother for her grown sons even if the last time she saw them they were very young ?!

So I actually got three separate asks kind of pertaining to the same basic subject here so I’m going to respond to all three messages here. I figure this is a bit more effective than giving three responses that are basically saying the same thing. So for reference, here’s the other two:

I can’t remember what convention it was or when it was but I definitely remember Jensen being asked a question about something -- and for the life of me, I can’t remember what the actual question was -- but Jensen gave a response that talked about the reason why there are no female characters on the main cast. He basically said that the reason that there isn’t really a female character that plays a major active role as part of TFW is that “the fandom would kill her”. Which I feel kind of sums up a lot of this fandom in a nutshell. A lot of the different factions of the fandom are constantly advocating that the female characters should be treated better in this show by the writers but at the same time, each time women do become more active players within the narrative, the fandom will complain about it and say that the show is losing track from what it originally was. So it’s like, “okay, you say you want these strong female characters but yet when you do get them, suddenly the show isn’t being true to itself anymore? What exactly is it that you do want?” The answer: A character that they or their favorite ships aren’t threatened by. And I’ll be honest here. While I enjoy seasons 1-3, I didn’t start getting obsessed with this show until season 4 started rolling around. The brother relationship is nice and all but this show really could not have sustained itself for 15 seasons on the brother relationship alone. By the time season 3 rolled around, I was getting bored with the show. The constant focus on the brothers while interesting and dynamic, it felt like that aspect of the story was losing its flame. I’m sorry, but when you have a story that’s completely about two brothers hunting monsters of the week and they spend 16 hours a day in a car working through their issues, you’re going to make far more progress in dealing with those issues and you’re quickly going to lose material to create conflict between them. And around season 3, I was starting to get the feeling that their brother relationship while still fun was just kind of stagnating, they weren’t giving me anything new to latch on to. So episodes where Bela and Ruby were around were episodes that I latched on to. And season 4 when we were introduced to this large assortment of new characters really just reinvigorated the show for me. New characters to bring in conflict was exactly what the show needed so I’m not sure why the fandom is always so against changes to the status quo. Do they want to be watching the same episode over and over again? These new characters were perfect for what the show needed to do in order to continue the brother relationship everyone loves so much.

I’m not sure if it just has to do with the majority of this fandom being comprised of females but basically every female character who could possibly be a romantic interest to any of the male characters are widely hated by a lot of the fandom. Perhaps it stems from members of the fandom projecting their own fantasies onto these male characters so any of these potential female love interests makes these members of the fandom feel threatened or they see these female characters as getting in the way of their favorite ships. But I do notice that a lot of male characters don’t receive the same level of hate which really just adds credence to my hypothesis that members of the fandom feel threatened by these female characters whether it’s them who feel personally threatened or they feel like their favorite ships are threatened because of the characters’ presence. And it’s not lost on me that Charlie is such a well-loved character not only because she’s a great example for more inclusion of LGBT characters but she also wasn’t a threat to the status quo, it was never in the realm of possibility that she would be a romantic interest for any of the members of TFW. But it’s beyond confusing that the same people screaming for more female inclusion into the story also complain about the same thing they wanted in the first place when it’s given to them. And just throwing this out here, a part of the problem is that society places such an emphasis on women needing to be these perfect creatures that the fandom is far less forgiving towards imperfect female characters despite the male characters doing far worse things than any of these females have done. For the female characters, it’s all, “how could she do such a terrible thing, that selfish bitch!” but yet when male characters make mistakes, it’s suddenly all, “look at the depth and character growth and how nuanced his character is, he’s the bestest character ever, a true role model”. And me personally, even the “evil female characters” like Anna, Ruby, Bela, or Meg I thought were all kind of fascinating and kind of undeserving of the hate they get by the fandom. In story, yes, they do a lot of bad things that you should not advocate for but should they be regarded as the show’s biggest mistakes? Should hate blogs be created specifically for them? Definitely not. Do I make excuses for the decisions any of these women make? Certainly not. Just like I don’t make any excuses for the decisions TFW makes. I go into this show looking at everything from a story perspective. Are the decisions these characters making, is their presence propelling this story in interesting and fun directions and most of the time with these female characters, yes they are. I’m more interested in what the story can do for me as opposed to what individual characters can do for me. So I like Meg, I like Bela, I like Anna, I like Lisa, I like Mary. And I think that’s the disconnect that I have sometimes with the fandom. I’m in it for the story and a lot of them are in it for what these characters can give them.

Me personally? I would love for a female character to play a more active role in TFW but the only way that could ever work is if she doesn’t threaten the status quo in the eyes of the fandom. And the biggest weakness I’ve always had with this show and particularly in season 14 when its startingly obvious is the fact that the show wants to be an ensemble-based show but yet they still don’t want to lose what the show originally was, they still want it to be about the brothers driving cross-country fighting monsters of the week. The show keeps on trying to meet in the middle and it just doesn’t work because they’re not spending enough time with these other characters to make me truly think of them as characters. Like, I really liked Mary in season 12, in fact, her and Kelly Kline in season 12 were probably my favorite parts about that season. The story surrounding Mary about her trying to figure out where she fits in a world that really doesn’t need her anymore was so interesting. And then how it delves into Mary changing from the typical role middle-age women typically have in these shows as these motherly characters and delves into her just trying to figure out who she really is was such a great move for her as a character. It gave her character depth as opposed to just being the means in which Sam and Dean came into the world. She showed that she’s more than just a mother, that she has worth that goes beyond just being a mother, particularly being a mother to people who no longer need a mother. But as we go further into season 13 and 14, it became startingly obvious that because of the show trying to do this dual format thing, Mary just lost a lot of her presence and a lot of her agency.

I’ve also heard this fan theory that supposedly Meg may have sexually assaulted Cas while he was in the asylum. And while I certainly don’t think Meg would be against such tactics in general (she is a demon, she does bad things) but I also view Meg as a pragmatist and extremely goal-oriented. Meg is on no one’s side but her own and she really only does things to further her own goals. So doing something that could break Cas any more than he already has been would seem to go against what her goals would suggest and that’s her basically using Cas as her personal bodyguard. Assaulting him wouldn’t help her in any way. And also, despite Cas “losing his marbles” as it were, his angel powers at this point in time were still relatively well intact. I find it highly unlikely he wouldn’t be able to defend himself if he felt the need to. We all know Dean is the biggest perpetrator when it comes to psychological abuse. He’s the one that withholds love and positive reinforcement after all. And often times, looking back at this show now, I can’t believe I ever felt a draw towards Destiel. I suppose it has more to do with how I joined the fandom. Despite the fact that I’ve been watching this show for the past decade, I’ve only been in the fandom for a few years. And when I first joined the fandom, I first came across a lot of good meta writing from individuals who hailed within the Destiel faction. So whereas before I joined the fandom, I never really felt any kind of pull towards any ship at all, but because I was constantly stuck in this echo chamber with a community that kept on telling me how amazing Destiel was, I just kind of fell into that trap. But eventually, as I started peeking behind the curtain, as I saw how the Destiel faction treats other factions and began to look at Destiel more objectively and away from their very narrow point of view, I saw that canon Destiel is kind of awful and that while Dean may not be an awful character objectively speaking, he is a toxic and terrible person that I wouldn’t wish anyone to have a romantic endgame with, except maybe Ketch. Ketch and Dean may have gotten hit by a cupid, I’m just saying. These days as far as Cas shipping goes, I’m all about the Megstiel and Sastiel shit. And I would love for Rachel to come back as Meg, I think that would be totally awesome. And I know she’s stated that she would love for Meg to come back and basically show that you can be this badass in a wheelchair and I would love that because Rachel is total badass and let’s have art imitate life on this one, please.

Like I said earlier, I strongly believe that Jo is a character the fandom felt threatened by. And there were times when I almost felt like she had a bit of crush on both Sam and Dean. But after season 2, she had minimal involvement in the story and she only became a player again only to be killed off. Now, I don’t know if there was such a large amount of time where Jo disappeared because the actress was doing other projects or not, but it’s not impossible to imagine that the writers kind of just pushed her to the side when they realized their audience wasn’t reacting to her positively. It probably didn’t help that she was so obviously being framed as a potential love interest, the writers weren’t being subtle at all with her. So it’s really not surprising that the fandom reacted the way they did with her. I liked Jo, I wished they had done more with her. Her and her mother’s death scene to this day still makes me cry like a baby. And it’s really not at all satisfying either. Both characters really deserved better and at the very least, have a sacrificial death scene that actually meant something in the grand scheme of things. But instead, their deaths were completely in vain and it sucks.

But anyway, I think I’ve rambled on enough about this. Sorry, it got so long. But in a nutshell, this fandom is terrible to its female characters and its not necessarily on the writers of the show. The writers have no problems writing strong female characters with active agency, it’s the fandom that’s the problem and their own personal prejudices. I mean, the writers literally brought Mary back (really unnecessarily) so they could have a chance to subvert Mary being the “woman in the refrigerator” trope. I’ve never believed the show had a problem with mistreating their female characters, while I do think the show does mistreat them, don’t get me wrong, but a lot of it stems from necessity based on how the fandom treats these characters. These characters get treated the way they do in large part because of the fandom’s own actions. It’s a beast of their own making, essentially.