Hello?? Twitter??

Does it understand what it’s doing? They are the same!!!

ok but that kid Mobius couldn’t prune was Loki right. like, that was Loki right. The brothers at the dock. That was Loki and Thor right. It was Loki

Mobius couldn’t kill Loki, chose his burden, and dedicated his life to him instead.

Mobius’s story started and ended with Loki. It had to be Loki.

The way they have me LOSING MY MIND. Yes, I know he was not only talking about Mobius. But I also know that Mobius is the only person from that group that Loki has called a friend. And we know how Loki is with admitting feelings, he's not the best at that.

Loki cannonigally wants Mobius. I'm fine, tho. I'm great.

crowley perhaps did the bravest thing in his 6000 years of existence and was greeted with his worst nightmare in return. i’m sooo incredibly normal

something new about aziraphale that i’m getting emotional over on this fine night (no one is shocked): i cannot stop thinking about the first scene of season 2. specifically i cannot stop thinking about the fact that even then, in a moment where both he and crowley even looked younger due to their innocence / lack of doubt or questioning just yet, aziraphale is already doing somersaults to worry for those around him. he doesn’t even KNOW this angel, and the idea that crowley could get in trouble for asking questions shouldn’t occur to him yet, but he’s still so burdened by anxieties and doubts for other peoples’ well-being and conditioned to protect others at his own expense (not to mention eerily close to seeing through Heaven for what it is). aziraphale is so fundamentally good, worrying about other people and caring about them before the very idea that bad things could happen to a fellow angel SHOULD have ever crossed his mind in the first place. and to me that disproves all notions that aziraphale is naive, because he’s been tragically aware since before the Beginning— and before crowley. which makes moments like the post-Job “what does that make me” scene even sadder because by all accounts, if aziraphale was familiar with what it’s like to doubt and worry before the Fall even happened, before he ever should have known what those things were, then he should have been one of the angels to fall, right? Wondering and doubting and worrying about things leads to a Fall, right? Only he didn’t. In a world in which there’s a line dividing doubtless, brainwashed, “happy” angels from doubtful, too-curious-for-their-own-good demons, aziraphale might just be the loneliest being in existence. he’s quite literally the sole person (that we know of) who stayed an angel but is forced to carry a burden that never should have been his, that NOBODY around him in Heaven has to carry. and he can’t ask about it because now he knows for sure where asking questions leads you, but he probably doesn’t understand why he has to carry that burden in the first place. the one he’s been carrying it since before Earth was even created.

will and mike when they first met: i’m not the only one who’s lonely

will and mike in season 1: i’m not the only freak

will and mike in season 2: i’m not the only one who feels crazy

will and mike in season 3: i’m not the only one struggling to survive puberty and figure out who i am if i’m not a kid anymore

will and mike in season 4: i’m not the only one who’s afraid to be honest with people about my feelings

will and mike in season 5: i’m not the only one who’s gay and in love with my best friend???!?

no but fr tho

I'M NOT OKAY

In conclusion : fml

community that has only seen themselves represented in a small handful of romance stories that aren’t explicitly about their real-world oppression, watching a new show or movie where they are represented in a romantic story that isn’t explicitly about their real-world oppression: getting a lot of “that other show with a queer romance that isn’t explicitly about real-world homophobia” vibes from this

"Moiraine, please..."

New article with more details (from Jason Schreier who first broke the story). If you can't see it, I'll copy the whole text under read more.

About 100 employees were laid off in total (8%) and one of the main reasons listed is "underperformance," "sharp drop in popularity" and "poor reception of Lightfall."

So you know when for the last year and a half content creators have been shitting and pissing on the game as a full-time job and the amount of negativity and ragebait content became the only thing to make content about for them? Well they certainly won't take the blame, but I will let it be known. These people either don't understand the influence they have or they do and they're doing it on purpose, and I don't know which of these two options is worse, but I am 100% confident that their campaign of rage and hate contributed to this.

You don't base your entire community around constantly hating everything about the only game you play (despite clearly not enjoying it anymore) and somehow avoid galvanising thousands and thousands of people into perceiving the game negatively. Imagine being employees who have barely worked there for 2 years and the only community reception they've seen is 24/7 hate train for their work and then they get fired because of "poor reception" and "drop in popularity." How can they not take that personally? I am absolutely devastated for these people who delievered a banger product and who were met with an unrelenting barrage of toxic gamer children which ended up having more sway over their boss than them.

Which brings me to the next bit and that's FUCK THE CEO. He is now my mortal enemy #1. I am projecting psychic blasts directly into his brain. What an absolute spineless coward who is more willing to bow down to fucking gamers than to protect his own employees. This is absolutely rage inducing because this has happened before. From the article from 2021 about the toxic culture at Bungie:

Reading this shit from the new article absolutely fucking sent me into blind rage because I immediately remembered this. Another instance of employees suffering because of comments on reddit. And because of toxic players. And proof that leadership is not protecting employees and is instead siding with players.

Match made in heaven. Asshole gamer content creators and asshole CEOs, all of whom sit at home on piles of money made from someone else's labour. I hope they all explode. None of the people that worked on this game deserve this.

Another article with an infuriating comment from the CEO:

In an internal town hall meeting addressing a Monday round of layoffs that impacted multiple departments, Bungie CEO Pete Parsons allegedly told remaining employees that the company had kept “the right people” to continue work on Destiny 2.

"Kept the right people." Really. Veteran composers weren't the right people? Die!

Bloomberg article in full:

Bungie’s decision to cut an estimated 100 jobs from its staff of about 1,200 followed dire management warnings earlier this month of a sharp drop in the popularity of its flagship video game Destiny 2. Just two weeks ago, executives at the Sony-owned game developer told employees that revenue was running 45% below projections for the year, according to people who attended the meeting. Chief Executive Officer Pete Parsons pinned the big miss on weak player retention for Destiny 2, which has faced a poor reception since the release of its latest expansion, Lightfall. The next expansion, The Final Shape, was getting good — not great feedback — and management told those present that they planned to push back the release to June 2024 from February, according the people, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The additional time would give developers a chance to improve the product. In the meantime, Parsons told staff Bungie would be cutting costs, such as for travel, as well as implementing salary and hiring freezes, the people said. Everyone would have to work together to weather the storm, he said, leaving employees feeling determined to do whatever was needed to get revenue back up. But on Monday morning the news got worse: Dozens of staffers woke up to mysterious 15-minute meetings that had been placed on their calendars, which they soon learned were part of a mass layoff. Bungie laid off around 8% of its employees, according to documentation reviewed by Bloomberg. Bungie didn’t respond to requests for comment. Employees who were let go will receive at least three months of severance and three months of Bungie-paid COBRA health insurance, although other benefits, such as expense reimbursements, ended Monday, sending some staff racing to submit their receipts. Laid-off staffers will also receive prorated bonuses, although those who were on a vesting schedule following Sony Group Corp.’s acquisition of Bungie in January 2022 will lose any shares that weren’t vested as of next month. The layoffs are part of a larger money-saving initiative at Sony’s PlayStation unit, which has also cut employees at studios such as Naughty Dog, Media Molecule and its San Mateo office. TD Cowen analyst Doug Creutz wrote in a report Monday that “events over the last few days lead us to believe that PlayStation is undergoing a restructuring.” PlayStation president Jim Ryan announced last month that he plans to resign. Many of the layoffs at Bungie affected the company’s support departments, such as community management and publishing. Remaining Bungie staff were informed that some of those areas will be outsourced moving forward.

The amount of joy those two bring into my life is getting ridiculous 🦇🦇

IT’S THE KIPO SCENE IN REVERSE I’M DEAD

i wanted to draw bea ( gustafa & tris's kid ) before i finished up year 2, i'm gonna miss her being this small. i just hope she'll still be happy as a little kid... 😭

Ok, now that I’m rested and calmer…

Criticizing a character for their behavior and flaws is very different from deciding a character is the sum total of those flaws and is therefore Problematic.

Stede is shown as a deeply flawed man. Some of it is a result of how the world and some individuals treat him, some about social expectations of being a man that he can’t fulfill, and some is his psychological makeup that’s a whole combination of outer and inner influences and narratives. He’s selfish and he’s easily swayed by attention. He badly wants approval and he sometimes doesn’t care how he gets it. He thinks a man is supposed to be a certain way and he knows that he’s not that, so he tries (and fails) to be that.

But it is a huge error to take those flaws and insecurities and decide that those make the total of who he is, or even that those flaws are what guide him and shape him throughout both seasons.

Stede is absolutely a victim of toxic masculinity and he is capable of being toxic. We see that in the pub/art opening/bedtime sequence in Season 1 and in the scenes at Jackie’z etc. in Season 2.

The pub scene and the scenes in "Man on Fire" are absolutely mirrors of each other, with the escalation of the fact that Stede truly does want to be accepted as a pirate and his behavior at Jackie'z is absolutely expected and lauded in piracy. But they are NOT WHAT STEDE IS. They are not representative of Stede becoming or wanting to become “traditionally masculine," or of him showing his true self, and they are not the places where Stede ends the narrative.

Those scenes are about him shaping and suppressing his true self to fit in. They both end with him miserable, drunk, and alone, then nearly murdered by a woman who has more to lose than he does. (There's a reason Mary is so shocked during the art exhibition and makes the choice to kill him that night. She has been married to him for years and it is quite obvious that to her his behavior is Not Normal.) What we see in those scenes is not who Stede intrinsically is, but who he has the potential to become.

And he doesn’t become those things. At the end of the pub sequence, Stede actually talks to Mary, and the next scenes are him and her united to fix what he has broken. At the end of the "Man on Fire" sequence, Stede shifts back to his caring self with Zheng and they help each other fight the English. In both, Stede saves his crew and returns to Ed.

Stede chooses to not become the toxic man he has the potential to be (and that every man has the potential to be). That is not ending the season in a bad place for him; that’s him making a conscious decision to be the good man he already is.

Part of the point of Stede is that he presents an alternative to the toxicity and abuse around him—that he is a good, kind man who combines feminine and masculine traits—but also that he can indeed be destroyed by it and has to make a choice not to be. He is strong because he resists all that toxicity, even when he’s pulled in by it.

Stede leaves piracy at the end not because he’s being self sacrificing but because he’s letting go of the same things he was letting go of when he left home for the second time. He needs to be who he truly is, and he needs to do that with Ed. He is as certain about that at the end of Season 2 as he was certain about returning to sea at the end of Season 1.

Stede does not think, in the end, that he has to be a big tough pirate to be loved. He knows he’s loved for being kind and resourceful and clever. It is a massive error to see him being pulled into a toxic role that he then rejects, and say that’s who he wants to be.