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*hits the joint* In the Harry Potter universe, Merlin is canonically a Hogwarts alumni and a Slytherin, which is impossible because Merlin predates the existence of Hogwarts by centuries. Of course, JK Rowling didnāt know that because she is a dumb bitch. Iām sorry. Misogynistic phrasing. She is a willfully ignorant and hateful, deeply unlikable and ill-informed, untalented and unspeakably cruelā¦..person. Seriously, how could you write a series about British wizards without truly understanding THE British wizard. Anyway, Merlin would never be able to attend any sort of organized schooling. Heās definitely self-taught in every universe because heās the most powerful wizard ever AND heād have been expelled from any institution before he stepped through the door. The only reason they havenāt escorted him away from Camelot is because he can see the future and he is kind of like the kingās dad. I was so disappointed by BBC Merlin. I turned it on and I was like āWhat the fuck is this shit, where is my perverted old man?ā
at least in english, āwizardā and āsorcererā are broadly synonymous (aside from, like, DnD classes) but in the show he is usually called either a sorcerer or a warlock (usually by the dragon; again, warlock is largely synonymous with wizard/sorcerer, outside of a DnD context)
the generally-agreed line in fiction that separates a wizard and a sorcerer is a wizard will study magic, while a sorcerer is born with (some) innate skill. bbcās merlin is repeatedly mentioned to be an immensely rare and powerful sorcerer for the fact he was born with his magic and even without studying can attempt some impressive magical feats (same goes for the character of morgana)
compare against gaius, merlinās mentor who has studied magic and very occasionally does some magic of his own, but it is 100% from study. but uther and arthur and basically everyone refers to magic practitioners generally as āsorcerersā, probably because itās gender neutral (āwizardā and āwarlockā are often assumed to refer only to men, something else jkrās lazy worldbuilding contributes to)
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the thing about media literacy is that understanding why the author chose to specify that the curtains are blue is the same skill set as understanding that the way the author characterizes all black characters as angry or all chinese characters as meek and silent is racist. it is the same skill set as being able to identify when a news source is biased or when someone is feeding you propaganda. the ability to ask "why did this person choose to present this premise in this specific way?" is a critical skill in a world full of misinformation. why are the curtains blue? maybe it's a characterization detail. maybe it's extraneous worldbuilding. why is this character written as being right all the time? maybe you're intended to disagree with them. maybe it doesn't matter. maybe you should still ask why.
i know i say this often but i cannot say it loud enough: people who comment on fics, people who reblog posts and engage with fanworks are the people who generate community and without them fandom would be nowhere, so truly thank you for your presence, you make the world go 'round <3
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alright I've got to do some quick math to explain attitudes towards AI to my boss.
we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)
please rb for larger sample size!
Question 1/3
What is your age, and do you feel AI is a net positive or net negative in our lives today?
started watching the americans and i have to say matthew rhys having a crush on his wife, murdering rapists and beating up pedophiles has made him incredibly sexy to me
given the current climate this pride especially i feel i must mention that i love my trans friends, i stand with trans people in the fight against transphobic legislation and those who would enforce it, and this blog is not a good place for you to be if you do not vibe with that
I just got described as an "ad hating commie" by someone because I said a minute of youtube ads is unpleasant. fully spent 5 minutes arguing and defending youtube ads. insane stuff
there really is something faintly embarrassing about finding a conventionally-attractive person attractive
like oh my god wow you find the hot person hot? you think the guy with the nice jawline and the kind eyes is sexy? you like a little muscle definition in the arms and shoulders? fucking groundbreaking. really forging new paths. should we throw a party? should we invite jonathan bailey?
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iāll freely admit i was a big my little pony fan in my teen years (the last episode i remember watching is the one where they go to that town where no one has a cutie mark / everyone has the same cutie mark; i was like 16 by this point and coming out of that phase) and iāll still have moments where i sit and be pulled back towards it a bit because it just has so much potential like, world-wise
like
cutie marks, okay? theyāre your talent+passion and demonstrably completely unique. so if youāre on the run for whatever reason, is your cutie mark put up on the wanted posters alongside your headshot?
what are the cultural attitudes towards tattooing your cutie mark? in crimes where someone might damage a personās face, that sense of control and robbing of identity, are cutie marks also disfigured in this way? do some ponies choose to reject their cutie marks and have them tattooed over or otherwise defaced? would some cultures consider it a crime in itself to deface your or someone elseās mark, even consensually?
and if youāre in, idk, witness protection or something, do you need to get it tattooed? are you forced to abandon your greatest talent and joy because that in itself, engaging in it, could get you recognised? what life are you left with? is it even a life worth living at all?
and in areas with lots of ponies, how does the socioeconomical aspect of a cutie mark function? how does every location seem to have every individual needed to function, like food, healthcare, education, etc?
is there some latent biological hive mind that decides āoh this village doesnāt have anyone in the agricultural sectorāwe need a couple harvester or farmer cutie marks so people can still eatā? in which case, what is the nature of free will and identity?
is the concept of a cutie mark a biological incentive to make propagating the species seem innately pleasing, like the rush of hormones after someone gives birth so the pain of childbirth is offset and they bond to the baby and theyāre more likely to go through it again, furthering humanity?
like, your genes making you truly, deeply believe that harvesting food is your special talent, and your favourite thing to do, but is that just because the local area needed some more food workers and your personality, your self, evolved to fit that niche?? what even is free will?! what is selfhood??
or if not, is there a concept of being āreassignedā to an area because hey! this city needs more teachers so weāre forcing some teacher ponies in this area with too many teacher ponies to relocate?? or are ponies whose cutie marks arenāt particularly āusefulā forced to do something as a job that isnāt their passion because elsewise they canāt pay bills? whatās the cultural consensus on NOT having a job related to your cutie mark? is it viewed negatively, or is it seen as noble? if itās negative, does that negativity fall back on the system of government forcing them into this situation, or is the individual themselves deemed as defective by denying their true self?
would hiring for a job be swayed by seeing a ponyās cutie mark and knowing how well they fit? is asking for ponies with āX-type cutie marksā allowed? is cutie-mark-discrimination a thing? is it illegal? is it even frowned upon?? or is it justified as āyou want someone who will be the best at this jobā? are you required to cover your cutie mark in job interviews?
what about those whose cutie marks arenāt easily accessible? what if yours is a creative endeavour but you canāt afford to make a career out of something so fickle as writing or singing or acting? it takes time to build up notoriety/a portfolio to the point you can live off it, so are you forced to take other jobs in the meantime? or are there ācutie grantsā where you can apply for money to pursue your cutie mark?
in that episode with starlight glimmer we get an idea of the cultural attitudes towards not living as your cutie mark indicates you should live and work as your mark indicates, but then also you have things like prince blueblood whose cutie mark (and therefore his talent and purpose) is uhhhhh being a prince?? so is the concept of an absolute monarchy just baked in to this speciesā genetics? blueblood doesnāt even rule!! what does he do? at least with bees the queen is the one giving birth to all the new bees!
what if someoneās cutie mark is just, fucking, idk, murdering other ponies?? like they get that cutie mark as a preteen-ish andā¦ are they just locked up for the rest of their lives, as a precaution? is the nature of pony society honour bound to find a way for them to explore and fulfill their purpose in some manner? and if we refer back to the biological niche theory, what would this mean? is it a sign that this area is too densely populated and the local land cannot sustain its size?
iām going to extremes here but likeā¦ the worldbuilding, guys. the implications.
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the wisdom ive learnt is that becoming part of a friend group 1) takes a long time and 2) involves a lot of feeling awkward and left out at first. thereās nothing terrible about this but if you grew up chronically lonely or have any kind of trauma relating to social isolation this likely feels Really Wrong and activates danger signals. but both fortunately and unfortunately itās just how becoming close to new people works most of the time
another thing that was not intuitive to me as someone who grew up an autistic loner: basically everyone on the planet is starved for connection all the time and almost everything people do is an attempt to reach out to another. most seemingly illogical interactions and behaviours can be explained by this. you have to take as many of these invitations as you can. even if you're wrong you still attempted to bring more warmth into the world
just gonna get it out of the way first: i hate what they did with stormfront. not to sound like a cinemasins fan, but the writers retconned BOTH soldier boy and homelander loving her; soldier boy said he hooked up with her when they founded herogasm but claimed to have loved crimson countess, and homelander was explicitly not on board with the nazi stuff because he believed HE was the only superior/master race. antony starr played homelander finding the nazi stuff as really cringey. the whole reason stormfront kills herself in season 3 is because homelander gets weirded out by her saying nazi shit and he leaves her alone.
"iT's wHaT cLaRa woULd hAvE WaNteD" fuck off. you hate him. homelander getting the v1 didn't even do anything to the overall plot, it did not alter his plan or mental state or trajectory at all, so soldier boy just sudden;y handing over the v1 didn't even make narrative sense. soldier boy gets put back on ice one episode later and has no effect on the finale. it was a plot cul-de-sac.
off the back of that, using two-thirds of the season to backdoor-pilot vought rising whenā
gen v was set up to tie into season 5 at the end of season 4
gen v would have tied in much more tidily
it required large swathes of the final season to focus on heretofore unmentioned characters
āis just phenomenally stupid writing, even if you do have someone as good-looking as jensen ackles in the cast, eric.
there was no purpose to any of the V1 stuff because once homelander got it, nothing actually changed. he didn't change, his plan didn't change. there was no increased sense of urgency directly from him getting the V1, it's not even like the V1 is what triggered his god complex. it was just a massive waste of time.
weird that they sidelined not only marie, who is claimed to be potentially powerful enough to defeat homelander, but also ryan, who is explicitly stated in this show to be the answer to homelander. weird that they had to make kimiko into the same supe-frying cannon as soldier boy.
my guess is they wanted ryan to live as a normal kid? and i don't hate that, but i do feel like they could've rejigged the series to make an antidote to V. like V is just a chemical in the blood, right? can't frenchie or sameer or someone whip up a neutraliser or inhibitor?
(sidebar, i think what would've worked better is, if they really wanted homelander to be powerless before he diedāand for what it's worth i actually really liked that!āthen they should've had soldier boy join the gang and fry him, or better yet have marie pull the V or V1 physically out of homelander's blood.)
regardless i really hate that they sidelined ryan as much as they did, especially since at the start of the season, butcher was trying to send him on a suicide mission?? if he was going to go off with MM at the end, i would've liked to see them form more of a bond, and grapple more with the idea of killing his father. especially since he was supposed to have parallels with soldier boy and homelander as this string of terrible parenting
(that said, i did like the extremely clear parallel that as soon as soldier boy was back on ice for rejecting homelander, homelander went to find ryan and tried to get him to come back. again, i wish they'd done more of that this season, instead of the Soldier Boy's Old Team No Wait Not Payback The Other One Reunion Tour)
what happened to sage? she was all over the place. in previous seasons, her emotional intelligence was part of why she was so clever. she relied on people's emotions, particularly outrage, to manipulate the masses. the bit about her grandmother was poingnant, and made a good point about how POC and women and especially WOC are not taken seriously, but i felt it was a bit weird to switch from her ostensibly "joining with homelander because then she can prove to literally the whole world just how smart she is" to "i need everyone to die and leave me alone so i can read" when she was... reading alone in her apartment when homelander first found her??
ā«āļ½”āŖ āĖā¬ ļ¾i hate kimiko's dialogue so fucking much ā«āļ½”āŖ āĖā¬ ļ¾
her getting her voice at the end of season 4 was legit really dramatically interesting, but for a character whose arc parallels sexual abuse and being sexually trafficked, and who even has literal encounters with trafficked people, why did they make every line a weird, unfunny porn joke??? in the back half of the season it was much better, except for that one line about the cigars, but the first half of the season was just painful
i understand that erin moriarty was battling some kind of serious autoimmune disease during the filming, so i get why they might have had to pare down her fight scenes, but from a writing perspective it kind of stinks that butcher gets these weird tentacles and can partially hold-off even a V1-level homelander while annie needs to 'power up' before every fight scene and routinely gets her ass handed to her by Some Fucking Guy
like that scene in the focus group room with that catgirl from teenage kix and the other guy. season 1/2 annie would've smoked them both EASY. a fight scene would be the easiest scene to swap the actress out for a stunt double because THAT'S WHAT STUNT DOUBLES ARE FOR
in the epilogue we see her fly off immedaitely with no big deal, which was almost insultingly blatant that they were nerfing her for her fight scenes.
i'm going on another tangentā
annie didn't know kevin had been rejected by the fish, so from her perspective she brought him away from a metropolitan area (full of electricity for her to power up with) and toward a large body of water (which he can control directly, i think, but certainly speak to the fish and, to her mind, get them to fight for him). then, despite the fact we have, i think, never(?) seen kevin in a hand-to-hand fight, and annie has been demonstrated to have intentionally trained in hand-to-hand, she proceeds to lose badly in a physical, no-powers fist fight, blasts him ONCE, into the water, and only "wins" because the fish do the job for her.
like, don't get me wrong, i'm glad she fought him, but i would've preferred if she had blasted him out of the window with one beam, in a dismissive "you're not worth my fucking time" kind of way, and he, like, cracked his head on the pavement. like a really unimpressive, boring death. he's-so-pathetic-he's-not-worthy-of-a-big-death kind of thing. and then annie goes and fights homelander as well because oh yeah she's been his nemesis for like three whole seasons.
i suppose you can also argue annie was trying to get through to kevin just to hammer home how he has had plenty of chances to improve but just doesn't want to, and well done for being a paragon annie, but leaving the far more important and deadly fight and putting kevin literally "in his element" was not good tactics.
also i would've liked annie and kimiko (and kimiko and ryan) to have a little more interaction, given how past seasons have characterised their dynamic(s)
kind of strange they had a whole scene where edgar was like "yeah i fully plan to be CEO again" highlighting that while homelander is the more immediate threat there's nothing to stop vought doing incredibly bad shit like this again, or even moderately bad shit in perpetuity, and then.... not do anything with that. homelander is dead but the system that made him remains fully functional and profitable. like honestly butcher's point about gassing the tower was... not entirely misplaced. now that zoe is off with her dad can't they just destroy edgar, vought and it's whole board?
you know it really seems like a good premise for a spin-off show. possibly with some younger, newer supes who aren't old enough to have had scandals... maybe they interact with singer's revitalised supe affairs bureau... they could even begin to learn about the corrupt company that treats them not even like low-level employees but assets... Oh well.
they killed the fucking dog (i know it was for a narrative sticking point; butcher is alone and his years-long vengeance quest above all else has corroded both him and his personal relationships, but it still hurt)
now: Good Stuff
i know stylistically they weren't for everyone but i really liked both ep4 (angry plant virus) and ep5 (one-shots). in ep5 i really liked getting snapshots of some of the secondary cast (especially as it really tidily rounded out firecracker's character, and the actress did a lot with it) and frankly i just really enjoyed the slice-of-life angle.
similarly, i enjoy the monster-of-the-week feel of the toxoplasmosis, and the plot leant to some great character work (it's just a shame they then undid it with soldier boy just giving homelander the v1 at the end of it all, but in isolation i liked it). if they'd rejigged it to be an intentional defence mechanism to keep the V1 from being stolen, instead of "quinn" (who i'm not ruling out will turn out to be soldier boy's brother or some shit), that would've been really cool
it was goofy as hell but i really liked jared padalecki and misha collins. they didn't overstay their welcome, it was a good bit of fun. my partner hasn't even seen supernatural and found that scene funny.
again i know some people didn't but annie's detour where she was at her dad was kind of cool? like showing resistance can be done at the smallest levels, but also, you have to recognise is goes beyond just you. calling in sick just means someone else is rounding up the Undesirables. it's a start, sure, but there is more.
daveed diggs as oh father was just a delight on screen. his voice, his gospel vibe, his perspective on being abandoned by god rather than that god doesn't exist, the musical number, he was a ton of fun. he also had a very funny death scene, and it was pretty well-set-up, too!
while he suffered especially badly from the "every line must be a sex joke" syndrome i did actually really like the legend's scenes with homelander, and the fact homelander let him go. like yeah!! he spoke to homelander like a normal fucking person! that had an effect! i wish they'd done more with that!
as mentioned above, while i don't like how it came about, i really enjoyed that homelander had to experience having no powers for the first time and any shred of his tough guy persona immediately evaporated. he really was just a cruel, pathetic, love-starved child.
don't like tomer capone but frenchie's death was actually quite good. and the bit in the finale where he tells kimiko it's not about rage is also nice. reminds me of "the point between rage and serenity" in x-men first class.
ashley stayed funny and scrappy and decent-at-her-core-just-buried-deep-down til the end. i love that. i'm sure she'll bounce back somehow. she always has before now. sorry about your husband babe.
despite my issues with sage's characterisation this season, i am glad she no longer self-harms/self-medicates with lobotomies. i wish she hadn't been so stupid as to think harry potter world was a good idea, but whatever. no consequences for creating concentration camps though??
i liked that homelander killed Legally Distinct Elon Musk. i wish someone would throw the real one into space sans-suit. and peter thiel while you're at it.
jensen ackles' delivery of "Big Juicy TITS" was incredibly funny to me
i love MM and kimiko's endings!!! i' love them so much!! i'm so glad they got to live and be happy
i actually also really like that ryan recognised butcher was not a good person! it's kind of sad they can't go back to their beginning-of-season-three dynamic but ryan is gonna do so well as part of mm's family, i'm really happy for him
hughie turning down the gory supe-hunting job and being back in his element was nice (even if i don't think it was ever established he liked working in tech? like yeah he's good at it, but is it really his passion? yeah it's good he owns the business i guess but... i dunno)
annie helping people on her terms and not being beholden to a company with shareholders or a whole formalised system is pretty good, i think!
i am never going to wedge open my pot of fancy paprika with a butter knife without thinking of That Moment ever again.
