hard carry ꕤ 240101

"I have no sister." The words were knives. What do you know of my heart, priestess? What do you know of my sister? | Jon VI

--metaphorical knives at feigning neutrality regarding his sister

Jon fell to his knees. He found the dagger's hilt and wrenched it free. In the cold night air the wound was smoking. "Ghost," he whispered. Pain washed over him. Stick them with the pointy end. When the third dagger took him between the shoulder blades, he gave a grunt and fell face-first into the snow. He never felt the fourth knife. Only the cold... | Jon XIII

--literal knives from breaking that neutrality to save her

the way some of you are awfully quick to throw around accusations of biphobia and queerphobia just because someone is not 100% in love with every bit of the last episode and ready to join the buck/tommy rapture? well i think it's gross.

There's a lot of Voy Crew & DS9 Crew crossovers for good reason but what about Voy Crew meets the TNG Crew so they can confuse and alarm them at every turn? Most Normal Crew Ever vs Most Fucked Up Weirdos Ever - let's go!

We're strangers who met by chance.

y'all can all cancel me (again) for this, but if there's even a SHRED of 'who should I pick?' from Penelope in season 3, I am tuning out SO fast because like. . .sorry not sorry, there IS no choice. Debling is some crusty OC suitor she barely even knows and Colin is a man who she has been so supposedly in love with to the point where she'd ruin her entire family's reputation to have a potential love story with him. Penelope and Colin have background, years of knowing each other, intimacy that few people in the Ton can boast of having (letters, conversations about purpose, fights and arguments and makeups) and her and Debling have. . .a dance or two at a ball because he's a rebound for Penelope's broken heart. he means nothing. he has no nuance, he has no weight to the story, he is such an afterthought to me. either I wanna see Penelope going 'you know what? I don't even LIKE this dude. he's. . .fine, but I don't care about him even a shred as much as I care about Colin' or the INSTANT Colin's like 'you know what? we should get married' if it's not an immediate 'say less, you're already my husband, try returning me without the receipt, Debling whomst?' then I don't want it!

like. . .it's just so frustrating to see all the 'I hope Debling sweeps her off her feet and she rejects Colin's proposal and she makes him work for it and and and-' nonsense from the fandom and it's always tagged and no matter how many times I block it, it just keeps popping up. I go into the Polin tag for POLIN. I don't give a SHIT about a male love interest other than Colin. Not one. Not a shred. Not an iota.

and also. . .Debling has the 'benefit' of not having depth, or character traits, or HISTORY, so peeps can project onto him however they want, but I'm calling it now, there is NOTHING he could do or be that would make me like him more than Colin. Colin will always hit different, and I will always love him more. and if Pen's not on that same page? lol bye

you want me to believe Penelope and Colin are soulmates and it's romance for her to hem and haw about how difficult a decision it is for her to marry a stranger who knows barely anything about her. . .

when Marina was out here dropping banger lines like 'You were the only man with which I could see myself being happy' and 'I do not care about any of these men, where is Colin?'? like hello??? and she wasn't even fully in love with him!!!! but we'll demonize her until the cows come home in our fandom and make her the villain in Polin's love story for DARING to get in between Polin, yet Debling, a white man, is a darling dear perfect prince for getting in between Polin? existing in our fandom solely so Penelope can be like 'lol, Colin ain't shit, let me entertain any and everyone else'?

if that's the direction it goes then, ten toes down and on my mama, she doesn't deserve Colin and she can move because I'm on my way to court him my damn self

and that's that on that

favorite yasha/jester moments: C2E69

The two contestants are nearly tied and... what’s this?? IN COMES GRIMORA WITH THE STEEL CHAIRRRRRR

Anyway vote Grimora

Gege rly said "I never felt a woman's touch and now I'm going to make it everyone's problem"

if I think too long about how cdream spent the majority of his time on the smp being misunderstood and then in the end the one thing that really got through to him was someone pausing and saying "I think I understand you." I will freak the fuck out

Suddenly got the craziest fucking idea I've thought of yet:

Zane was originally going to be made to help the elemental alliance in the serpentine wars, per the alliance requesting Julien for something so technologically advanced it'll end the war.

and so Julien started working on Zane during the conflict, and with the elemental alliance providing him with the necessary recourses to create Zane. (metal, wires, screws, schematics and blueprints and other small supplies, a suspiciously powerful and most definitely magical power source, etc).

But the war ends, and the serpentine are sealed away.

So now Julien is left with a half finished robot that wouldn't even have a purpose if it were to be alive, but Julien decides he's going to give it a new purpose.

"If it's not going to be a weapon of war, than it's going to be a weapon of peace."

So he stars reprogramming Zane, from "Mostly human machine designed to fight." to "Almost human machine made to protect those who cannot protect themselves".

He starts adding in extra features for Zane, stuff like breathing, blinking, eating, so he comes off as more human.

he codes in what would be the nindroid equivalent of someone developing a new hobby and getting good at it.

Such as cooking, or perhaps making ice sculptures or even learning how to ride a snowboard considering how he lives in a frozen forest (last one was from Quest For the Lost Powers book).

But he also adds in other stuff to help Zane out in his purpose of protecting, such as a battle ram mode to bust down doors, a lamp head mode to help light out dark areas, being able to shoot out cold air from his hands to cool stuff down without the usage of ice powers (last one was from the start of season 3).

And eventually, he gets so attached to this project of his, that he starts viewing it as more than a machine made to prolong the peace, and by the time he actives Zane for the first time ever, he can't feel but view Zane as a son.

Zane was Julien's life work, "Machine" doesn't do the nindroid enough justice, it doesn't feel right, and it isn't right.

So, even his plans of making Zane a weapon of peace change, and now he views Zane as a son, and as his own person.

Look, I don't care if this headcanon/idea breaks Canon, fuck if I care, but the opportunity is too great, it would would give us an answer to a good number of questions.

one of them being: What was Zane's old power source?

bcs i'm aware of how i automatically percieve people, i earnestly try to give the benefit of the doubt a lot. i tend to believe people are Actually Just That Dumb™ when they're joking about something, so i try to get ahead of that & tell myself people are joking when they say something stupid, so that i don't look stupid

all i've learnt in doing that, is most of the time, people aren't joking. they actually did mean what they say, & i made the situation 10× worse by laughing at what they said.

not only does it reinforce the idea in my head that people are Dumb so i need to take the reins on literally Everything, but it also leads people to believe i'm making fun of them for saying something silly & talking to me less, when, if i knew it were a genuine thing they thought, i would have gladly explained it without judgement

but i don't really know how to stop treating them as jokes, because what if they ARE joking so they laugh at me for how Stupid i am for taking the bait? i can't handle being made a fool of, i think i'd rather die

when jane's powers return in season four (and because they were regained by her confronting and accepting her past, rather than being retraumatised with it!) they're stronger than they ever were. when she starts getting a handle back on them, she very quickly comes to realise not only have they affected her, but her mother, too. one of the biggest losses that came about with her losing them was the fact that she could no longer visit terry in the void; while there was no real communication there, it did allow jane to sit with her, and gain a little more connection than she could in the real world. when she first visits the void after their return, it takes her three hours to find terry, something that is both unexpected and incredibly worrying. but when she does, it's something of a miracle. jane's increased strength and control over the void actually wakes terry up from her catatonic state, but only in the void. there's no way to help her mother physically, but she does do so (unbeknownst to her) mentally. terry is reborn in jane's newfound control over the vale of shadows; she becomes the woman she once was, and while her body remains frozen in a "good dream", her mind connected to jane's own allows her some freedom. jane is able to speak to her mother in the void, is able to be held by her, and while it's still unfair and jane cannot stay in there forever, it's something. this only lasts for about eight months, as each visit slowly begins deteriorating terry's physical and mental state, and jane's health begins declining after spending hours upon hours in the void each and every day.

when jane finds out these visits are actually killing her mother on the outside, she deems to stop, but terry expresses the importance of them being able to speak, that she'd prefer to die on the outside, if it meant she could have just a few months with her daughter like this. terry and jane's connection was always so strong, which ultimately led to terry "waking up" in the void, but even jane's newfound strength cannot save her from the harsh realities. each visit nearing the end of those eight months, terry fades more and more, becomes weaker in the void, and her real body eventually gives up. jane's in the void when her mother eventually passes on, and physically feels their connection weaken, like some part of her suddenly becomes lost in the shadows, a part she'll never find again. jane falls into a depressive state for weeks after her mother's death, given she's technically lost her a second time, but soon comes to realise she was lucky to have even shared those eight months together. it was better than nothing at all. there is a proper burial and funeral, (and when jane dies, she's buried next to her mother) which allows jane some sense of closure. she never fully recovers from losing terry, nor from the fact that she never had a proper relationship with her, but she does eventually find some peace with it all.

... surprising amount of belos and vlad (pre-AGIT) parallels.

OKAY LOOK LISTEN i know belos is worse than vlad, okay. i am aware, vlad is a silly guy. it's just like. the surface level stuff that made me laugh.

- kinda old.

- unimaginable beef with their respective plucky protagonist. who is a child.

- extremely rich and arguably powerful with a commitment to the old-timey aesthetic.

- living in the past. consumed by it even to a degree that their obsession becomes what defines who they are and how they perceive themselves.

- suffered some kind of body modification against their will — one not their fault, the other absolutely definitely their fault, phillip, spit that palisman out right now i swear to god — that gave them their powers. not coping well and projecting it onto everyone but themselves.

- conducted several Questionable Experiments involving clone children with failed past attempts that leave frankly slightly terrifying implications if you think about it too hard and also are still terrifying if you don't. manipulative bastard.

- old (again).

- red magic.

- they both have long hair.

man they would hate each other even at peak villainy. at least vlad might get therapy. and is significantly less terrifying.

Every now and again I'm reminded of how fundamentally different ttrpg liveplays are as a storytelling medium from literally any other and it drives me a little bit bonkers. So much comes down to chance; you can plan and strategize and have some absolutely wild modifiers, but if you roll a nat 1 you still roll a nat 1. It doesn’t matter how important a character is to the narrative and how many plans the players have for them, they can still die at any time and be inevitably lost because the dice told you, sorry, resurrection didn’t work this time. And then we build the narrative around that, an echoing hole that can never be mended, because we have no other choice but to move one.

You never know if a risky choice will be rewarded or punished. You can go into what looks like an easy fight and lose bitterly due to bad luck, or into what should be an impossible one and still win. You will never be reassured by the knowledge that it’s a prewritten, planned out story where some things are bound to happen for maximum narrative impact.

But neither will moments feel cheapened by the knowledge that it was always bound to happen. A character comes back to life in a movie and, well, you know it’s because the narrative needed them and they were never truly at risk; they come back in the game and you know just how easily the dice could have landed on a different number and it wouldn’t have mattered how needed they were.

It can, if we allow it, remind us that purpose and meaning in real life has nothing to do with inevitability or fate; it’s all about what we make it, the choices that arise out of chance, the consequences that come from choice. We create our own narrative out of inherent meaninglessness and chaos and it is beautiful.

listen. LISTEN. I knoooowwwwwwwww that August has never been important enough for canon to ever bother expanding upon issues like this. I know, but...

In the pilot, we KNOW that Emma is lonely. We know this because she’s sat in her apartment, alone, celebrating her birthday by herself. It’s well established that Emma had no one she considered her family and has had extreme trouble connecting with people over the years (Neal, Lily and Ingrid as fleeting exceptions).

But August? Canon gives us NOTHING. We know almost NOTHING about his past in the Land Without Magic. We’re given the name of one (1) character (Isra) that he has a connection with (someone who is clearly not THAT important to him, as she’s never mentioned again ever) and that’s IT.

Emma stays in Storybrooke to begin with because of Henry, yes. But it’s not a particularly tough decision for her because, well...she has nothing to go back to anyway. And I can’t help but wonder how true that was for August as well? Like....??? did he bother to contact ANYONE when he thought he was dying???

August is a genuinely intelligent and charismatic character (albeit, a little obnoxious). I have no doubt that he has made friends + friendly acquaintances over the years. But close friends? People he can open up to about his past with and who won’t think he’s losing his mind? HIGHLY doubtful.

I know that the show didn’t really explore their friendship very much or expand on it in any meaningful way, but Emma and August’s relationship is sooooooooooo *chef’s kiss* to me. Yeah, they have genuine chemistry and a fun dynamic, yeah the ‘I can always tell when someone is lying to me’ character interacting with a character that is literally Pinocchio is funny af and surprisingly poetic. But also!!! These are two lonely, emotionally closed off characters that were essentially orphaned by their parents for 28 years that have both had shitty childhoods and have connected so genuinely with one another and I don’t know where I was even going with this but I love both of them so much and they both deserve this friendship and WHY WASN’T AUGUST AT EMMA’S WEDDING I’M STILL MAD ABOUT THIS OKAY