desperate to live my life but unfortunately my brain says no

Got an email to fill out a survey on the concept of tumblr Premium and related features, and while I'm assuming that I'm not supposed to talk about it too specifically in case some things mentioned in the survey aren't fully implemented, the features listed as possibilities sound pretty solid. Limit increases, monthly benefits (both for the user and as gifts for others), special badges and decorations, etc.

There were no features listed that are already available for free, so they're genuinely looking at offering new features for paid users rather than following in Xitter's footsteps and locking existing features behind a paywall. Likewise, nothing listed would be obtrusive to the current tumblr experience or unfairly favor a paid user over a free user any more than dropping a few bucks on a Blaze already "favors" the person being Blazed. (Which is up for debate, since that whole feature is literally "LOOK AT MY POST, BOY" and is one of the most tumblr things that tumblr has ever done.)

I was extremely leery going into the survey, because "premium" features these days are generally not premium at all, but I'm feeling very positive about the upcoming features now. Overall—and I say this as someone who has worked in webdev and digital marketing, used to pay for icons on LiveJournal for multiple RP accounts, currently pays for ad-free here, and has been doing beta testing for so long I once had the personal email addresses of both the founders of deviantART—it sounds genuinely good! Nothing anyone can't live without, but a good number of fun things that would actually be of interest to the tumblr userbase.

Now I'm just waiting to see how many of the features floated in the survey wind up in the final package, and how much that package is going to cost.

i dont know what to feel about today

...😭

There is something about having the power to make someone feel okay, and someone having the power to make you feel okay.

Cupping someone’s face and kissing their forehead and watching the tension in them dissipate and the simple relief of being touched, and held, and cared for.

Crawling into someone’s arms and just feeling yourself melt. A caress of your face so tender it’s as if it smoothed all the sharp and painful feelings in you.

I’ve had someone drive across town to me at one in the morning just to sit with me while I cried.

And even though it was a night that I felt horrible, the memory of it is kept in the same place as my happy memories, because I remember feeling so warm, and so taken care of, it was like the rest could just melt away after that.

I’ve tended to someone while they were bedridden, cheered them up when they felt so shitty physically, spent every day with them, cooked all their meals, all so that they would be okay, and feel okay, and I would do it a hundred times over.

those last words ouch ouch ouch

sometimes a piece of queer media is very obviously cheap and also bad and outdated in ways that aren't even particularly interesting, but it's just so obviously from The Before Times that it's painfully difficult not to be charmed by it anyway

i feel like im not actually connected to the world anymore like i used to be and i lost whatever i had

wait. hold up. hang on. you guys relentlessly invade my dash and my mind with (as my beloved mutual calls it) the wee woo show. I try to avoid it as much as possible in fear of potential spoilers, all I know is that Gay Firefighter Shenanigans Happen. but I am intrigued. I have lots of work that needs procrastinating and no self control. I watch the pilot. I black out and awaken two days later having binged three seasons straight. the second eddie steps on that screen the fireworks are going OFF between him and buck. they act literally married within a couple of episodes. buck becomes christopher's father figure instantly and never back down. they have more domestic and sexually charged chemistry than most canonically together couples on TV. I see what all the hype was about. I am tortured by the fact that apparently it will take till season 7 for them to get together but at least I know it's coming, right? then I log back on tumblr dot com dot hell and, what's that? the couple you've been throwing on my dash wasn't eddie and buck? there's a tommy? a tommy is coming? there's a third guy, and we're not even getting a happy polycule out of it? the season 7 big gay plot isn't about these two idiots that I've already imprinted on? why would you do this to me, oh cruel fate, why have you forsaken me so?

me: man my shoulder/neck have been hurting for weeks, i'm gonna sit with the heat pack on them to see if that helps

my body: oh that's cute, guess what's that gonna get ya? mild heat rash HAVE FUN

me: okay well at least they don't hurt anymore, right?

my body: INCORRECT

me: okayyyy well nothing ELSE hurts at least?

my body: FOOT PAIN

me: _(: 」∠)_

actually ascension needs its own post since that's the one with the most details to speculate over and im starved for soho talk so i will talk to myself if need be

First the cover again, because I kinda can't get over it:

my only thing is that I had been hoping we might get Lizbeth on a cover again since she's never been on one of the boxsets before, despite being the 2nd person credited on all 4 of them (even if that's just alphabetical, still, she's the only one of the four main characters who never makes the cover)

But letting that go...

I know we already kinda knew the brief for this one but damn I didn't expect it to go quite this hard. Maybe that's just because the Parasite & Ashenden covers were (comparatively) similarish to each other and I was so pleased with Unbegotten's, and then got so used to it as the placeholder for Ascension while they kept postponing it, I wasn't expecting anything this colorful or detailed or with what I can't help but register as Fun New Outfits even though these are still like, pretty damn basic as far as costumes go. Still, it's a different vibe from everyone in suits and trenchcoats on every cover, technically. (Oh the woes of being an audio fan such that two characters owning sweaters actually does qualify as new information)

On top of just being visually delightful though, I know we knew religion was gonna be a fairly big part of this one, but I didn't actually expect to get quite this much of it - though I'm glad of it for a number of reasons. The BF twitter already made the ineffable joke so I don't have to, but also yeah I did very much spend all of season 2 episode 4 of good omens half convinced Samuel Barnett & Dervla Kirwan were about to pop up around any given corner (if you will go around being gay supernatural and horrible at your messy bureaucratic jobs in midcentury soho then I'm sorry, this is where my brain's gonna go) - so, fuel to that fire. But in terms of actual important things, at least one of my Soho wishes looks to be being granted because we have a Rev Edward Folgate on the cast list, which must mean we're finally meeting Norton's father, even if his mother & brother don't appear (which they could, technically, I've definitely seen BF not list all the doublings on their cast tabs before). Religion, domesticity, and the nuclear family are all things that absolutely fascinate me when it comes to Norton's character, so getting any amount of story involving his father & his church is something I've been actively hoping for for a long time now.

(I will say I'm a tiny bit bummed Saffron Coomber isn't on the cast list to play Mia again, but I kinda figured she wasn't going to be since Greg Austin's Armitage, who's making his first recurring appearance after originating in Unbegotten, was listed ever since the boxset was announced - presumably if she was also returning, that would've been handled in the same way. But since Unbegotten ended with Lizbeth and Mia going on a date, I still held out hope. Who knows though, maybe things did go well for them and Lizbeth just has a better work/life balance than Norton so she can date someone without them getting dragged into every scifi plot. I know that's not a very common accomplishment for any Torchwood agent, but a gal can hope)

At this point I know I'm completely in the realm of speculation & even wishful thinking, but I'm really really hoping we get some more clues as to Norton's overall timeline in this one, and I have a feeling that even if there's nothing as direct as dates given, the events of a plot like this one are going to heavily influence my personal interpretation of it.

To say that life & death are major themes for the soho crew feels wildly reductive, but even by Torchwood's standards and taking into account its origins as a piece of media with Jack Harkness & his newfound immortality at the heart of it, the living/dead status of this bunch has always been fantastically up in the air to me. Obviously Ghost Mission introduced Norton as kind of a ghost before revealing more obvious ghostly characters later on to which the title might have been referring, but his being from the past did beg the question of his survival into Torchwood's present era all the same, which Outbreak later alludes to much more directly, and his habit of showing up via hologram in multiple stories only further obfuscates any certainty we might have about where & when he definitely can be said to be alive and well. Then you've got Lizbeth and Gideon both being effectively 'brought back to life' via paradoxes that prevented them ever having died in the first place. Again, they are very very far from being the only Torcwhood characters this happens to (for a sprawling EU, it's really rather impressive how often & in how many different ways Torchwood as a whole manages to circle back to being about like. chaotic undead queers at the end of every day. though I suppose that consistency is part of why I keep falling in love with its different iterations again and again). That's without even getting into the question of Norton's dubious fate in God Among Us - and I say dubious because I know some people take that to be his ultimate death, but I personally think that reading something as vague as that as having any kind of finality rather goes against the spirit of this whole world/series, not just because I want him to live. (There are obviously other ways to make him survive/reappear, but I don't see this as a River Song scenario where we can safely assume one of his earlier-released adventures had to happen at the end of his personal timeline). But wherever God Among Us falls for him, he does very much meet God in it - or at least, a god, since the sentinel in Unbegotten is also described as a god of sorts, and even if he doesn't ultimately have the status of the god Jacqueline King is playing there, Unbegotten is still full to bursting with ghosts/undead/came back wrong/echo characters to continue underscoring that life/afterlife theme.

So all things considered, even allowing for the fact that we know Norton's twin hobbies are lying about himself and abusing time travel to suit his own ends/ever-shifting alliances, I find it difficult to believe we could get through a whole 6-part boxset about religion & death without something providing some kind of compelling evidence about where this adventure fits in among his other run-ins with apocalypses and gods and ghosts and dead-but-still-here characters/creatures, so I'm very much looking forward to any further exploration on that front.

And lastly, and least intellectually, I really want to know what the hell 20th-century Torchwood's obsession with Reginalds is. Reading through the cast list, I had to do two separate doubletakes over the character 'Sir Reginald Peebles' - firstly, because I had Reginald Rigsby on the brain, this being Soho (and the other Troughton brother being so active on BF's releases for this same month) - and secondly, because reading this in conjunction with the announcement for the July monthly adventure in which the new main Torchwood guy of the 20s is apparently called Sir Reginald Dellafield, there was a brief moment where I took that monthly release to be a tie-in with Ascension. I don't expect it to be, but damn. was it really so popular a name?

anyways, catch me thinking about those stained glass windows for the next couple months I guess (and knowing Torchwood Soho, for a long long time after it comes out as well lol)

I made it one hour into the testing and then my brain shorted out and I have a massive headache. So now I’m taking a break in a nice room with a couch. This is amazing …. I change my mind. This part feels like a test and not an assessment.. pls send me cute ghoul thoughts for later when I leave here to go cry in my car

here are my thoughts on the new exo music video for ‘let me in’ (2023)

i liked the part where jongin hugged the dog

truly lmao 2024 lambda literary award finalist wynnstannery

looming thunder rumbling