when brennan lee mulligan said “everyone you love will find someone that matters more to them than you” and when sleep token said “i might break and bend to my basic need to be loved and close to somebody” and “i reach for you on faith alone and i’ll be full of the love you want no matter what forevermore” and when lorde said “in my head i do everything right” and when phoebe bridgers said “and when broken bodies are washed ashore who am I to ask for more?” and when noah kahan said “i thought i had something and that’s the same as having something who am i to complain?” and when

“hey, diluc… do you think we’re brothers in every universe?” 🍓🫐

some ragbros for the soul 🤲 they mean everything to me

(the song is “l’amore dice ciao” by armando trovajoli)

Hnnnnnng… long hair Ted

happy april fools (the only fool is me)

OKAY who wants to hear about why i think nimona challenges amatonormativity? you do! 🫵

one of the main ways this is accomplished is through ballister and ambrosius’s relationship. it’s arguable that it doesn’t necessarily fit the traditional model of romance - not only are they a queer interracial couple, and not only is their relationship ambiguous in the book, but there are certain instances, especially in the movie, that subvert traditional ideas of romance and friendship.

one instance that really stands out to me is when the director asks ambrosius what’s on his mind and he goes on his imagined rant about how arm-chopping isn’t a love language - you know the one. when he mentions ballister, he refers to him as “the man i love, my best friend.” and not just one or the other, but both! the man i love, and my best friend. he places equal emphasis on both the romantic and platonic aspects of the relationship, valuing ballister in both a romantic context and a platonic context without treating either one as more important than the other.

and even moments such as the first “i love you” and the kiss manage to subvert tradition. both of these things are generally seen as a pretty big deal, especially in fiction - if the characters are kissing or saying “i love you,” it’s usually a moment in which everything changes. a line is drawn, dividing the story into after and now. sometimes it’s dramatic and climactic, with fireworks and a swell of music, but even when it isn’t it’s still seen as a turning point of sorts. now it’s official, now it’s real. but this isn’t the case in nimona. both moments are certainly significant - they do a good job of showcasing the character development and where ballister and ambrosius are on their respective journeys, and are certainly important in terms of representation - but neither one follows the path that most fictional romance does.

another way in which nimona challenges amatonormativity would be the emphasis on friendship! in the tavern scene (in the movie) when ambrosius suggests killing nimona, ballister disagrees and says “she’s my friend.” ambrosius replies with “aren’t i more than that?”, implying he’s more important than a friend - thus upholding amatonormative ideas. ballister becomes angry at that and leaves - challenging this idea and prioritizing his platonic relationship with nimona over his romantic one with ambrosius, as nimona is the one he wants to defend.

additionally, a big part of this scene is the way ballister deliberately rejects institute values while ambrosius unintentionally upholds them. and because the story challenges homophobia and transphobia (and other forms of bigotry) through the lens of the institute, it would make sense for it to challenge amatonormativity too! it’s something that’s become incredibly normalized, to the point that lots of people don’t even know it exists, and this is reminiscent of the institute brainwashing, especially when it comes to ambrosius - he’s been manipulated his whole life and probably genuinely doesn’t understand the level to which he’s internalized institute beliefs.

ballister prioritizes nimona many times, actually. when he tells ambrosius she’s “smart, kind, and quite sophisticated,” when he’s overjoyed to see her again at the end, when he refuses to kill her and saves her instead. over and over, he proves how much he cares about her, even when this involves directly going against what ambrosius wants - which, of course, is really what the institute wants. a core tenant of amatonormativity is the false notion that romantic relationships are more important or valuable than other types of relationships, but ballister actively goes against this!

to conclude, as a story that at its core is about identity and challenging societal beliefs, nimona defies expectations and traditional ideas of what it should or shouldn’t be. it’s possible that amatonormativity wasn’t what the creators had in mind, but the story still manages to challenge it with grace and elegance. just like its main character, nimona refuses to conform to what others want it to be.

the real reason Steve brings a date to a high school basketball game for a high school he doesn’t even go to anymore is because the one time Nancy went with him the team won and his sports superstitions kicked in and he can’t just risk Lucas losing because of him not having a date, so he will take on the burden and ridicule of being the guy who graduated and drags new dates to games all in the name of not upsetting the delicate intricacies of rituals in sports

“You are important.”

“I’m really worried about you. You need to take care of yourself, because you’re not okay, we can see it. are you drinking water and eating?”

“You’re scaring me. cause I know that you’re not okay, but I can do nothing.”

“Every day I hope to find something about the eggs because I can’t stand seeing q!Bad sad anymore”

“He’s changing every day, turning into something like a ghost… I’m so worried, it’s like at any moment he could just disappear.”

“I feel powerless. I think q!Bad is suffering a lot, but he doesn't admit it. I really want to help him, I've been thinking really hard about how to help him”

“He took me around, we hang out, he helped me a lot and gave me items. He is my best friend. I don’t know what I should do…”

ough q!bagi. every time she talks about q!bad it makes my heart break, she is so kind. they’ve known each other a week, but she says with her whole chest that this is my best friend and I Will find a way to help. she is the only person q!bad has straightforwardly admitted not being ok to. I’m so….

Part 3 of rambling !

The next time we see Johnny record something it’s Raiden using the amulet given to him by Liu Kang, and he’s finally excited to film. As things start to get significantly more interesting (considering they’re about to enter another realm through a fiery portal), we’ll see him pull his phone out more. But even with all of this going on around him, you’ll notice his facial expressions still aren’t exactly ecstatic. Impressed? Absolutely. Mesmerized? Not quite yet. However, we see him look over towards Kenshi while still recording the fiery portal, implying he didn’t have the conscious thought ‘I should get Kenshis reaction to this’- rather, he knows he should be paying attention to what’s happening in front of him, but he can’t help but look at the sexy swordsman. It’s then that he smiles and makes the decision to record him, maybe wanting to have a permanent reminder of what he looked like in this moment (who could blame him?). I also wanna point out real quick that Johnnys smile isn’t smug- it’s genuine. He’s not shoving the phone in Kenshis face to be purposely obnoxious, he just really likes him- even if he knows the feeling isn’t mutual (allegedly). It’s confirmed at the end of the game that Johnnys already decided Kenshi would be a main character of one or more of his films (he offers Kenshi to play himself at the end of the campaign, and in Johnnys tower ending as he’s saying he’s going to tell a bunch of mini stories we see Kenshi as one of the protags on his slideshow), so we can safely assume he’s recording Kenshi for the sake of his films, right? WRONG! That’s too easy. We also know he’s written Kung Lao and Raiden into his films, and he doesn’t make a point to shove his phone in their faces in this scene. There’s something special about Kenshi. Something intriguing. He’s so much more stoic and mysterious than the other two earth realmers he’s with, and quite the opposite of himself. When Kenshi notices Johnnys phone, he immediately pushes his hand away, clearly upset. Outside of their initial fight, this is the first time we see the two physically interact.

Edit: I forgot to add that while Kenshis reaction is definitely partly due to the fact that he finds Johnny to be annoying and disrespectful, I also think he’s uncomfortable with the idea of being seen. Throughout the story you’ll see Kenshi being his usual quiet self and nobody else really bats an eye- and I think he prefers it this way, it’s what he’s used to. When nobody’s looking at you there aren’t any expectations. But here comes Johnny, eager to make him more open. If I were Kenshi, this would definitely add to my apprehensions about Johnny. Why does he care so much? Why can’t he just let Kenshi be Kenshi? Not only do I think he’s uncomfortable being seen, I think it’s upsetting to him when Johnny pokes at him in front of others. It’s one thing to slowly open up to someone one-on-one, but in front of a bunch of strangers who’s opinions you highly value? What would they think if he started openly associating with Johnny? Would they lose respect for him? But again, I don’t even think Johnny was doing this intentionally this time. But Kenshi doesn’t know that, and I don’t think he even cares. It’s almost like Kenshi is also equally interested in Johnny, but because their personalities are so different they express it in different ways. Johnnys used to being in the spotlight and having zero privacy, trying to hide his feelings is just a waste of time. Kenshi is used to be reserved and unseen, the thought of openly liking someone is scary, especially someone like Johnny who draws a lot of attention. I also can’t really imagine it’s easy to form connections with people when you’ve been in a gang for such a long time. Anyways y’all know that song Golden by Harry Styles?

save me slice of life cancelled s19 idea

Jashers it’s happened.

Silly Writing with Silly Guys by Foxy is now on ao3!!!

No more having to deal with large google docs :)

Please show Foxy some love!!

Go read it’s so good!!!! They’re brothers your honor I swear-

Guess who was just playing a trivia game with my family and heard the words ‘alpha Centauri’ and immediately burst into hard aggressive tears. Totally not me

I love how much Donna really lives up to the title of Most Important Woman in the Universe, no matter how unimportant she thinks she is. I mean even past the obvious demonstrated in Turn Left, the whole universe ending if she doesn’t meet the Doctor. no other companion has the kind of effect on the Doctor she has. there’s multiple people he’d tear the universe for but she’s his Best Friend, she influenced the face he took as BOTH Twelve and Fourteen, she was the home he finally settled for as Fourteen. Twelve and Fourteen come over a thousand years after Ten but Donna’s still stuck in his head. Not because he fell for her romantically but because she was just that special.

and now she remembers him and how special he was to her, she saw a glimpse of everything he’d been through since he’d seen her last. all the things he’d done, and she brought him into her home like the stray cat he is and said “here’s your family”

Ellie’s memory of the golfing scene and what it tells us about her.

🚨spoilers for tlou2🚨

I think Ellie’s flashback to Joel’s death is very telling of how she internalized the event and the meaning she applied to his death. It’s also a good demonstration of her relationship to autonomy. Let’s break down the elements that were inconsistent with the actual event:

The stairs/hallway are much longer than they were. This suggests a sense of helplessness, an inability to get there fast enough. Joel is constantly out of reach.

There is blood on the floor outside of the door. Not entirely certain on this one but my hunch is that she blames herself for not seeing more obvious signs of violence/not knowing something was wrong sooner.

The door is locked, another roadblock in her path to Joel. She can’t access him, she can’t help, he needs her and she isn’t there.

Most importantly. Joel yells “Ellie, help me” (which he didn’t in the actual scene, he just screams. He doesn’t say a word in the actual scene)

Ellie hearing Joel scream for her help, calling for her while being horribly beaten, and her being repeatedly impeded on her way to him suggests that what she took away from his death is that she wasn’t enough. They always helped each other, always had each others backs, always got up. Ellie views his death as a failure. She was too slow, too weak, not smart enough to save him. She failed him when he needed her most. She is absolutely helpless to save him, just like she was helpless to save Riley, Tess, Sam, and Jessie (and Marlene, and humanity, and and and-).

Once again, Ellie makes a decision (staying with Riley, going to the fireflies, staying with Joel, being the cure, trying to forgive Joel) and once again her autonomy and ability to find closure is ripped from her.

This is the inciting incident of tlou pt2, this is the moment where Ellie’s whole world shatters the same way Joel’s did at the start of pt1. Ellie enters into the same cycle (which I like to call the “Joel cycle” because… yeah.) that he did, and throughout pt2 she stays in the “20 years later” phase of the cycle. She is changed, she has lost her light, lost what she fought for. She lost her chance to genuinely forgive Joel and rebuild their relationship. She is stuck in a gruelling and violent world that she has no anchor in, at least not anymore. His death is so sudden and so incredibly violent that it practically gave her (and me as well, tbh) whiplash. She’s in a state of total shock.

On another devastating note, this is one of the three times in tlou that we see Ellie beg (that I remember). The first is begging Joel to get up at the university of Eastern Colorado, the second is begging him to get up and for Abby to stop, and the third is begging Abby to not kill Dina because she’s pregnant. (Two times she begs Joel to get up, one time he doesn’t. Two times she begs Abby to spare her family and one time she does. What a beautifully haunting contrast)

To wrap up, every person creates an internal narrative, a story of their life that is crafted from their context and lived experiences. The meaning we derive from those experiences doesn’t always reflect the truth, and that can sometimes bite us in the ass majorly when we experience a traumatic event. We tend to want to find someone or something to assign blame to, some reason or rationale to why it happened. We tell stories. We write them in our minds about ourselves and what happens to us and what that says about us.

But Ellie is wrong. Joel’s death happened in response to a conscious and willing choice he made. It is in no way her fault, and there was absolutely no way for her to know or to stop what was happening. I think Ellie knows that much on an intellectual level, It just doesn’t change how devastated she is over the whole event. It can’t change the fact that she FEELS as though this was all her fault, that Joel did what he did to save her, that she could have saved him. That she should have.

sometimes i remember that gojo wanted to tell geto “we’ll meet again, right?” just before he died but forced himself not to knowing it would have cursed him and then i start thinking about how kind and thoughtful gojo is as a character and how he hasn’t been able to lean on another human being since geto defected and then i want to . Scream

Generation Loss being a tv show makes so much on a meta level. Like remember how Ranboo said there’s a reason why it’s streamed on his twitch channel, and how we all thought it was because he was secretly broadcasting it? That was disproven quickly with Showfall Media publicly promoting the viewpoint and the existence of Squiggles on the broadcast.

So let’s look at the the episodes through the lens of a tv broadcast instead of a twitch stream. It becomes clear why Ranboo always gets himself into these wacky situations and miraculously survives till the end unlike his friends. Ranboo is the main character. Ranboo is the protagonist.

Compare them to another tv protagonist, like Ted Lasso. Sure other characters contribute to the story of each episode, but we as a viewer always follow the main character’s highs and lows, successes and failures, rights and wrongs. They are how the plot moves forward and conflict is created and dissolved. There’s a reason why we don’t see Sneeg’s escape attempt, Ethan Austin and Vinny being freed from the machine, Jerma’s demise; because it doesn’t matter. We don’t care. Showfall doesn’t want us to care.

Our viewpoint is Ranboolive. Who cares if a couple side characters die when the main character is about to solve the next puzzle. He is what keeps the show running, an essential cog in this beautiful machine. He will keep this broadcast rolling whether they like it or not.

Makes you wonder how many other “viewpoints” there are. Are they similar television channels, different people, sets, situations all at the press of a button? Is Showfall Media just beginning of interactive experience entertainment or is it one of hundreds of other programs following the same protocols, each baring a long list of missing persons cases that have yet to be solved? Who really was the “Founder?”

I guess we have to wait and see…

thinking about the tidestrider siblings and just how tragic they are cause like you have gillion the prophet the chosen one by his unfortunate birth right and raised by people turning him into a weapon rather than a diplomat/scholar. a boy taken away from his family to be corrupted for government need all because of the day he was born. a boy who’s life has been lie given the recent episode (110). someone who has been fighting for not the entirely right reasons. someone who is trying to undo all that has been hardwired into his head because of the family he’s formed above water. and then there’s edyn. who had to watch her younger brother be taken away. who could only visit when given permission because family means nothing. do you think when she heard the prophecy she assumed he was going to be raised different than he was? do you think the first time she visited and saw her baby brother beaten and covered in scars she knew something was wrong? do you think she was weary of the elders from the beginning but didn’t feel like she could do anything until gillion was banished? do you think she ever regrets the fact that she had to watch him grow up from a far and couldn’t spend quality time with him? do you think she left the undersea to try and do anything to get him protection from the elders? do you think maybe she works with raft to give herself and gillion protection? do you think she feels she has to do this because if the elders won’t protect him and she can’t who will? do you think she trusts in her brother to do the right thing but ultimately, knowing his training, is worried he’ll make the wrong call? do you think relief washed over her meeting chip and jay and knowing he was still able to find a family?

do you think gillion ever considers the pain he may have caused to edyn? do you think he would assume edyn to be disappointed in him not having an identity outside of the chosen one? do you think while in the black sea he remembers her letter and how she may never know what happens to him?