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samcaarter · 2 months
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@pscentral event 21: growth Peter x Oliva in Fringe (2008-2013) in/sp
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samcaarter · 2 months
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curiosity poll #2
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samcaarter · 4 months
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Dutch + Outfits (37/ ∞)
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samcaarter · 8 months
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samcaarter · 8 months
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A lot of people focus on saying how strong you are. And they mean well. And sometimes it’s the reminder we need.
But sometimes… it’s the exact opposite of what we need to hear.
So, here’s a reminder if you need it. It’s okay to be weak. It’s okay to need to take a break. It’s okay to be tired. It’s okay to crumble. Your worth does not change. It’s okay if you don’t want to be strong. You are worthy whether you’re weak or strong.
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samcaarter · 8 months
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IT'S TEAL'C TIME, BABY!
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This took me forever. Mostly pleased with how it turned out. I tried out some new techniques for the highlights with mixed results.
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samcaarter · 8 months
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samcaarter · 8 months
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I lost my friend to cancer yesterday.
I’d really like to tell you about her.
We meet people throughout our lives who change it, in big ways and small ways, and ways we will never forget. Sara/ @dearophelia was one of those people for me.
I met her here, on tumblr, about 10 years ago. I wish I could remember what piece of writing I stumbled onto first, but she was such a gifted writer that I immediately wanted to see more. I somehow wound up following her live blog of a road trip, which was full of uproariously snarky jokes about Ohio. I had the courage to reach out and tell her how funny I thought she was, and how great her username was to this fellow Mass Effect fan who lived right down the road in Kentucky and got all the Ohio jokes.
We talked. We chatted. I introduced her to a group of people I played Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer with. She grew from a level one first-timer to a total badass who could carry a team and taught other people how to do the same thing.
And then my life fell apart.
Everything fell apart for me. Turning to my family wound up being a catastrophe, and I didn’t have local “real world” friends I could turn to.
So I texted Sara. Told her I needed somewhere to go, and asked if I could stay with her that weekend.
She texted back, “Yes.” Sent me her address, and said to ping me when I got there. She didn’t hesitate. She didn’t ask why. She just gave me shelter. So I showed up on her doorstep, and she listened while I told her everything. She didn’t judge me. She didn’t think I was insane. She had every right to think both things. Instead, she gave me safe harbor at a time when I had no control over my life and didn’t know what was going to happen to me.
For the next several months, I made frequent trips up I-75 to Ohio. She kept an air mattress out for me. We played multiplayer. We talked about Mass Effect. We talked about life. We bitched about all the people who hated on one of our favorite characters. She introduced me to Babylon 5. I have so many memories of sitting on the couch in her apartment, with her cat Odo crawling around behind my head. When I eventually pieced myself together enough to leave Kentucky and start the work of starting over, it meant leaving behind that sanctuary with her in her apartment, and it was something I had to grieve along with everything else.
And now I am grieving it again, and so much more. I am so lucky I was able to fly back to Ohio a few weeks ago while I had the chance. Hugging someone goodbye, knowing it’s the last hug you’re going to get….well, it sucks.
But I got that hug.
Sara was so many things. She was a gifted storyteller with entire worlds in her head. One of the weekends I stayed with her, she had recreated the Mass Effect galaxy map on her wall with notecards and string to help her tell a story. She could create a character and make you fall in love with them in a matter of sentences. Because of her stories, I binge watched all ten seasons of Stargate SG-1.
She was also not afraid to unapologetically be herself. I had a lot of things to learn and unlearn about the world, feminism, gender, and sexuality, especially in those days. Listening to her fight for her space in the world and refuse to be told she was anything less than who she wanted to be helped me learn some of the things I needed to learn, and embrace the things I discovered about myself.   
She loved music. She made the best fucking playlists. She taped inspirational notes around her condo. She sent me a set of coasters that say, “Fuck It,” and “Nah,” and I use them every single day. Her smile was gorgeous. She lit up a room.  
And now she’s gone. I won’t see her in my tumblr notes anymore. I won’t see her on my dash. I won’t get pinged with new Odo photos. She won’t get to hear the new music I listen to that shows up in our Spotify blend. I won’t get to talk about the next Mass Effect game with her. I won’t get any more Ao3 updates in my inbox.
I wanted you to know about her – this pocket friend of mine who impacted my life in ways that I won’t ever forget.
I hope you will read her stories. Listen to her playlists. She was a brilliant human being. She should still be here. She isn’t.
And I miss her.  
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samcaarter · 8 months
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Stargate Atlantis "Broken Ties"
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samcaarter · 8 months
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We had one scene together and it was immediately like, “oh, [Elodie Blomfield]’s brilliant and this is special.”
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samcaarter · 8 months
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It appears my training is failing me. I don’t want to die alone.
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samcaarter · 9 months
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@pscentral event 17: vibrance ⤷ I thought we had decided not to fall in love. That we’d be forced to live a lie and that it would destroy our lives. (insp.)
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samcaarter · 9 months
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Kids are funny.
I just had a random memory of a friends’ kid when she was about six or seven, when she cornered a couple of us at a get-together and says “wanna know what my dad had for lunch?”
We figured this was, while unusual, a pretty straight-forward conversation starter. “Sure”, we said.
We were NOT prepared. She went on this EPIC storytelling monologue about the restaurant and Italy and the art on the walls and some dramatic story she made up ABOUT the art on the walls. We were enraptured. No idea what was going on but by god we were hooked. At no point does she mention food.
The next week, similar get-together with the same people. Same friend I’m talking to. Same child walks up. “Wanna know what my dad had for lunch?”
But NOW we’re prepared, we’re excited. We’re about to hear some SHIT. We grin in anticipation. “Sure!”
“A salad.”
She walks off, seemingly unaware she just set up the funniest fucking week-long joke my friend and I had ever heard
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samcaarter · 9 months
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Say hi to Sam for me.
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samcaarter · 9 months
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Oh no, I've been thinking.
Okay, I can't stop thinking about something ending-related. I don't know this for certain, but based on previous statements and such, it feels like the writers were always aiming for a bittersweet ending. Like, no matter what else happened or how the story evolved, come hell (lol) or high water, that ending couldn't just be happy. For reasons. I guess.
Now, I don't mind a bittersweet ending ... if it makes sense for the ending to be bittersweet.
I critique stories for a living. I'm literally taking a break from the developmental edit of someone's novel to write this post. And the persistent thought that bugs me about the Rory setup is that it is so artificial. Time travel is a pain in the narrative ass. Time travel suddenly introduced in the sixth season of a show that has never touched on time travel? As an editor, I probably would've pointed out that time travel for the purpose of angst, especially time travel without rules that make sense ("I don't know anything about time travel! Except I do know you have to take the most painful path!"), seemingly introduced as a final ploy to make that bittersweet ending work ... well, to me, it breaks the narrative contract they established with the audience. Your audience is going to be confused. An editor's job is to alert the writer to any potential confusion so it can be fixed before the story goes to print, etc. Confused audiences get mad, annoyed, frustrated. They feel hurt. They put down the book and don't pick it up again. Usually, writers don't want that. But they're so close to their work that they need a completely outside perspective to say, "Hey, I'm not sure you realize this, but..."
I mean, I keep referring to Rory as "deus ex daughter" because in literary terms, she is a blatant deus ex machina. Rory is the god in the machine of the Bittersweet Ending.
Now, I loved a lot of S6. I did. My overall feeling about the season is not negative. But ... I can't stop thinking about why the things I didn't like REALLY didn't work for me.
I loved the emotional growth we saw in Lucifer and Chloe facilitated by the question of parenting and parental love. I did. And I would have loved to see a lot of those notes hit not with an angel kid out of nowhere ... but with the daughter already in the picture. Especially because it would have circumvented the icky idea that a child has to be one's flesh and blood to induce such feelings. I also understand that coronavirus and Scarlett's age and schedule made this difficult. But I just can't swallow that the only way to wrap up the story of this show--a show about found family, non-traditional family, friendship, connection, FREE WILL, love in all its many shapes and forms and colors ... was to introduce a brand new character via a device (time travel) that fails to make sense almost every time it's used, no matter the medium. (And then had only that brand new character be there when her mother died. Don't even get me started. Ugh.)
If time travel was always going to be on the table, couldn't we have found a more plausible way to use it with the characters we already knew, loved, and had spent four or five seasons with? A time-travelling older Trixie, say? If you're going to use the impossible device, just ... twist it another way to make it work.
Okay. Okay. So, leaving Trixie aside for now just like the show did, let's say we leave everything about the season the same, even Rory. Do you know what ending makes more narrative sense?
Future Rory sacrificing herself by NOT forcing Lucifer to make a cruel and impossible "choice" so the baby that might have been her grows up with a family that loves her. Chloe's already pregnant. That's not going to be undone. And this nonsense of a "closed time loop" falls apart if you side-eye it for even a few seconds. The Rory who came from the future never exists except in the memories of those she met when she came back from that future. Chloe and Lucifer lose that daughter even as they gain the new one whose existence is not a tool of unrelenting fate because wow this show has always been about free will what the heck happened there yikes. And a choice made under the duress Chloe and Lucifer were under, forced out of them, and forcing them to "choose" a life apart for *handwave* Reasons has nothing to do with free will. A "choice" made at gunpoint is not a real choice. Future Rory basically bullied them into ensuring she got to exist--something, quite frankly, neither her parents would have done.
Instead, how much more appropriately bittersweet is it if Chloe and Lucifer lose that child while gaining one who, because of that angry time-travelling version, will never suffer as she did.
Also as an editor: the groundwork for my version is already laid, by the way. It should have been Rory learning about the importance of free will over fate. The importance of personal sacrifice. The importance of not thinking your young self knows best ... because experience and therapy will help rid you of that self-centered world view. That's the contract the writers made with us with this show. And Chloe and Lucifer have already BEEN THERE AND DONE THAT. (See: the end of S4.)
Furthermore, this season finally HAD Chloe and Lucifer DEAL WITH the only thing that actually would have contributed to a narrative, characterization-based reason for Lucifer to disappear: His history of running and his putting Chloe on a pedestal. Once they really talked that out, his "disappearance" became a Rory-induced trauma of inexplicable fate that flies in the face of all the progress Lucifer made over six seasons. (I would rather have had more of that and less of mysterious disappearing oh no plot.)
And I'm sorry, the "Once you get to Hell you're going to work 24/7" excuse given for why Lucifer won't be around and why he can't make time for Chloe until she's DEAD(????!???) is ... it's lame. If AMENADIEL AS GOD can make time for his kid's birthday party, I refuse to believe Lucifer can't work out some Hell/Earth-work/life balance. Never mind that in the show about partnerships, the Bittersweet Ending just ... destroyed it. Chloe was planning on being God's consultant; she could have helped Lucifer solve Hell's Trauma Mysteries (it's what she did with Jimmy, setting up that yeah, Lucifer could do it alone like he accidentally did with Lee, but doing it with HIS TRUTHSEEKING PARTNER would be more effective). Just as Lucifer could have continued helping HER solve some of the problems within "that corrupt little organization" of hers.
tl;dr: I think the writers fixated so completely on their version of Bittersweet that they missed all the foreshadowing, groundwork, and clues that were right there, already built into the story, poised for a different kind of ending than the one they once imagined. That's why so many parts of it feel almost-but-not-quite right and why these aspects are so off-putting. That's why it's just not ... organic. It's something squeezed into a box it grew out of ages ago.
Ironically, certain elements of this season involved the writers insisting on the FATE they decided long ago instead of letting the story and the characters have the FREE WILL to choose a different, more fitting, more organic ending--one that had long-since evolved past that original flavor of Bittersweet.
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samcaarter · 9 months
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see you at midnight.
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samcaarter · 9 months
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Older adult seeing you for the first time in a while: "wow! Hey! I hate your hair and clothing choices! How are you doing?"
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