#The Cycle Here Is: I See Annoying Post I Make Comment About The Character/Ship/Concept And then I Move On

[kyliafanfiction]

Yes, Dany is the face of GOT, the main character, the most popular, has the most fans, and despite her ending, she is still just as loved. She even got a shoutout in the HOTD intro. It must hurt that the character you hate so much is a worldwide icon 😍

You overestimate how much she matters to me. Is it mildly annoying that people still stan this sociopathic monster with a messiah complex? Sure. But since I have no desire or interest to watch HoTD, and I only think about her or the show with infrequency - I may make a post or two, but that doesn't mean she occupies much of my brain beyond five minutes before and after said posts. (No, the fictional person I hate who lives rent free in my head all day is Captain "The safest hands are our own but they actually aren't because I suck" America).

Do I think her fans are (largely, though not entirely) stupid morons for stanning her so much? Yes, yes I do, but I think most people are stupid morons, so that doesn't really stand out.

So no, it doesn't hurt. I wouldn't even say I hate her, tbh, that implies she matters more to me than she does.

I really don't get this idea on tumblr that if someone makes a complaint post about something, they must be so obsessed with hating them. That's just not how it works.

Plus, for me personally, the list of things that annoy me is infinitely longer than the things that don't (I am an irritable, touchy bitch) and very few of them rank higher than 2 on a scale of 1 to 10.

Daenerys "White Savior" Targaryen is maybe a 4 on a really bad day, but the thing that will always give me a great deal of comfort is watching the scene where Dany burns King's Landing and then gets killed by her own boyfriend. Never gets old, that.

Dany is a monster and the show ended with that as the case. Live mad about it, Mr. Grey Blob. You clearly have nothing better to do with your time.

===============

The relative eloquence of your message would rate you perhaps a 4/10, but the emoji takes away one point, and you lose another two points for assuming Dany matters all that much to me. Minus another point for thinking I care about the popularity of ANYTHING (have you seen my ships?) and then minus three more points for not having the guts to go off anon. AND minus one more for thinking that anything GOT related actually is 'worldwide icon' material. You do however get one point back for not resorting to name-calling.

Final score: -3/10.

I've certainly seen worse, but you may want to try again.

#Kylia Rates Her Haters #Asked and Answered #Anti-Daenerys #Rolling My Eyes #I Really Don't Get Why People Assume That Just Because I Dislike Something And Post About It I Obsesses Over It Constantly #The Cycle Here Is: I See Annoying Post I Make Comment About The Character/Ship/Concept And then I Move On #90% Of The Time That's All It Takes Move On Because I Am A Reasonably Well Adjusted Adult #And The Remaining 10% has never included your previous white savior

[earlywrites]

there’s no place like 127.0.0.1 commentary part II: ‘keeping up’

Welcome to part two of the commentary for my fic there's no place like 127.0.0.1! Let's dive right into Sunday morning. As before, here there be spoilers for the majority of Season 3.

“[...] And, for your information, the internet exists. I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but you can find anything on there. Literally anything. Including a Keeping Up With The Kardashians fact-checker resource.” 

Keeping up with the Kontinuity Errors is a blog, currently run on the Cut, that breaks down episodes of KUWTK scene by scene, using social media and paparazzi photos to determine when each scene was actually filmed versus the date/timeframe that is claimed on the show. Here is the post on the first episode Robot and Angela watched, wherein the Kardashian-West clan et al travel to Armenia and also may or may not be in Jerusalem at any given time. I didn’t choose particular episodes for rounds two and three, but I do have a fondness for the one where Kim loses her diamond earrings in the ocean, and Kourtney goes:

“How about, the loser gets to do the dishes from last night. And this morning.”

I actually wrote this section before 3x09 came out, so this ended up being a sad piece of foreshadowing.

:(

“That’s the cholesterol,” she retorts, as she marks out new columns into her notebook. “Your diet is terrible.”

“No, Elliot’s diet is terrible,” he says, licking maple syrup off of his fingers and setting his score sheet up on his knee. It still gets a little sticky, but whatever. “I don’t get much choice in that matter. Occasionally, when I get the chance, I eat a vegetable.”

Literally how is Elliot a functioning human being. Robot brings this up in Part I, but that post was getting full, so I'm putting the discussion here, and, look. Everything about his lifestyle, his love for junk food and the fact that he probably gets 0 sleep now given Robot’s nocturnal cycle points to him being deeply, incredibly unhealthy. Having Robot making some effort to take care of their body, even as a semi-joke, is my way of somewhat justifying how Elliot is still alive, lol.

“[...] vaguely considers beating one out – because it’s been a while, and Tyrell’s snarl under the press of his hand at his throat is still tucked away in his spank bank, awaiting withdrawal [...]”

I feel like 3x09 proved unequivocally that Robot is absolutely into playing rough.

[source: @knownoshamc, x] 

“[...] I bought a few titles that looked interesting. And a few things just to mess with him - did you know there’s a game where you can date pigeons? Like, actual birds. It’s apparently very popular.”

Yes, of course I’m referring to the masterpiece of visual media and storytelling that is Hatoful Boyfriend.

He stares at her, breathing heavily, and thinks about picking up his laptop and smashing it against the smooth surface of the coffee table, watching it splinter and crack, then taking her MacBook and sending it flying across the room, shattering the glass of a window, compromising the integrity of the perfect little box she’s living in, the one she’s caged him inside. He visualizes it, until he can feel the weight of the laptop in his hands, sees in the reflection of her eyes – big, blue, steady and unwavering – how the arc of destruction plays out, walls crumbling around them, fragments spinning out in slow motion, catching the light.

Elliot and Robot are highly creative, and are shown to manipulate the world around them to fit their perspective - in that vein, from Robot’s point of view, that scene would play out similarly to Cobb and Ariadne’s first dreamsharing experience in Inception.

Then he sits down next to her.

I separated this line from the preceding paragraph because this, for me, was the biggest character moment for Robot in the fic -- rather than doing what he wants, and releasing his rage, being his usual rash and destructive self, he chooses not to, and essentially releases his anger like air slowly leaving a balloon (minus the squeaking, lol). He tried to bait Angela, to get under her skin, after she made an astute judgement about him and exposed a major vulnerability of his, but she was unwavering, meeting him eye to eye. I think this point was when he gave into trusting her, knowing that she knows his weakness -- his deeply complicated, protective, antagonistic relationship with Elliot, the fact that he doesn’t want to face that he misses him -- and allowing her to keep that secret for him.

Completing Portal 2 in co-op mode ends up taking the rest of the afternoon, only pausing for snacks – and Angela takes his blithe comment on Elliot’s nutrition seriously, because of course she fucking does, and prepares shit like carrot sticks and celery with hummus which are both incredibly bland and deeply unsatisfying, so in retaliation he spends an inordinate amount of time dicking around with the portal mechanics so her character keeps falling to its untimely end. But he quickly gets bored of that, and of Angela making empty threats to beat him over the head with her MacBook (yeah, like her noodle arms could ever manage it), and does end up working with her to beat the game. The entire concept is problem-solving and teamwork, which is genuinely engaging, even though it’s obvious Angela picked this as some kind of teambuilding exercise for the two of them — which, on paper, is annoying as hell, he’s not some fucking suit in an intern program. Still, she’s not a bad partner – they bounce off each other well, sometimes literally, and she’s the one to actually figure out the shoot-while-jumping sequence needed to get through the penultimate level. For some reason, though, her favorite characters, if you can even count them as characters, are the cubes. The cubes. She fucking loves those dumb, inanimate objects. GLaDOS would definitely take her ass in to test for whatever malfunctioning part of her cortex causes her to express affection for a cube.

Hey, look, it's a game where two characters work together to aid the agenda of an evil megalomanic who's actually manipulating them and ultimately wants them to die to serve her true purpose, while ignoring warning signs saying not to trust her. Sound familiar? ;) But yes, for those unfamiliar with the Portal series, here's a little article about the essence of the co-op game; the purpose was to directly parallel it with Robot and Angela's doomed plan under Whiterose's thumb. Totally check out the games, if you haven't already! The co-op is a lot of fun, and the penultimate level took my friend and I like an hour to figure out how to complete (whereas the last level? Total cakewalk, even if The Cake Is A Lie :P)

“And we will have to manage Darlene,” she continues, bringing several onions on a chopping board over to him. “I don’t know what her motives are in coming here to look for Elliot, but either way, we have to play it safe. I’m going to give you your phone back tomorrow and if she calls, you can answer it, but… tell her you wanted to go off the grid this weekend, or something, clear your head. You can use the fact that you’ll be at work to keep it short, just enough to keep her from looking in any further.” “That excuse won’t stretch too far – isn’t Elliot getting fired tomorrow?” he asks, peeling the skin off the first onion and starting to slice it up. 

“Yes,” Angela says. “Mid-morning at the latest, but she wouldn’t know about that, so even if she wants to meet she’ll have to wait until the end of the day – if she presses for the lunch break, you can say you’ve made prior plans with me. [...] Okay, so, you’re just going to sit tight until security escorts you out, as we discussed, and don’t make a scene [...] Once you’re out, keep your distance from the data recovery center but stay in the area in case Irving and Tyrell need assistance with the execution, in which case I will contact you directly and escort you through any E-Corp facilities, since your card access will be revoked. Otherwise, go somewhere public, so that you have an alibi that can be corroborated by at least several witnesses concerning your whereabouts at the time the building comes down – but keep a low profile, get a Starbucks, or something. Make sure not to take your laptop out of your bag unless there’s an emergency, you don’t want anyone making assumptions about what you were doing during Stage Two once the dust clears and the feds look for someone to pin it on. And, if you need to call me, ring and let it dial once, hang up, and then immediately ring again. That way I’ll know it’s you calling, and not Elliot.”

We never got to really find out what Robot & Angela’s original plan was for that day, if Elliot hadn’t taken over for the events of 3x05-06. I assumed that, after Tyrell and Robot’s altercation in 3x04, the reins had been handed over to Tyrell and the Dark Army to execute, and Robot’s job was essentially support-if-needed, Angela still acting as his handler and liaising with Irving. This is my interpretation of what the OG plan might have been like -- at the beginning of 3x05, Angela encourages Elliot to pick up his phone as it rings, and then seemingly clicks that it’s no longer Robot, but still calls out to Elliot to grab lunch later. Later, she didn’t pick up her phone when Elliot called her, which I wondered about at the time since we weren’t given an indication as to whether she knew who was actually calling, and so this is my justification for that too. 

“We’ll toss those in olive oil with the carrots and set them to roast in the oven for about twenty, and in a couple of minutes I’ll get started on the steaks [...]”

I made a few fun Matrix shoutouts in this fic, and this is another one -- Cypher eats a virtual steak dinner as he trades the crew on his ship to the Agents in exchange for insertion back into the matrix, rejecting his harsh reality for the comfort of an artificial world. The recipe I had in mind is something along the lines of this one.

His memories are a muddled patchwork, haphazard at best – the clearest ones he has are also the darkest, ones Elliot didn’t want to deal with, shoved into a box and couriered to his doorstep with DO NOT RETURN TO SENDER in big red lettering, his burden now to bear. It’s no sweat, he’s stronger than Elliot, anyhow, which is probably is the point – the nightmares of yesteryear don’t faze him much, especially now their bitch of a mother is slowly rotting away upstate.

3x07 heavily implied Robot had already emerged before Edward Alderson died, and was the alter in control when Edward collapsed at the cinema -- but, in Season One, Robot begged Elliot not to let people ‘try to get rid of [him]’ again, implying there were stretches of time in Elliot’s life when he wasn’t present. Mr. Robot’s timeline is muddled to hell thanks to Elliot’s unreliable narration anyway, but I figured that Robot’s memories would be somewhat similar to Elliot’s with more gaps in them, and more strongly feature the abuse exacted by their mother, per Robot’s role as a (deeply flawed) ‘protector’ to Elliot. Also, I’m not sure whether Magda Alderson is actually alive or dead, but ‘slowly rotting away’ can mean both physically rotting in a grave and just generally living a stagnant existence (in a nursing home, presumably), so that’s up to interpretation! 

He’s not much one for wine, but this one’s pretty good – it’s apparently a 2008 Penfolds Grange, whatever the fuck that means, and they’ve made quick work of it as the evening has wound down.

The Penfolds Grange vintage 2008 Shiraz (South Australia) scored a rare 100 points in both The Wine Advocate and the Wine Spectator, two of the world’s most influential wine journals, when it was released in 2013, and I believe was initially priced at around $600-700. Price probably gave her this bottle, so it’s a good one to crack open when intending to destroy his company.

“I guess… I’m nervous, about seeing her again,” she murmurs. “It’s been so long, and so much has changed… it’s weird, because all I’ve felt up until this point is excitement, like, this is the whole reason I’m going through with all of this, to finally destroy E-Corp and create our new world, to share it with her – and yet, now we’re here, I’m not sure if I’m ready.”

Her whole deal with Whiterose is bordering on obsession, at this point. It’s somewhat disconcerting, but then again, he supposes that’s Angela – she’s just intense like that. “Look, Angela, don’t set your expectations too high on that one,” he cautions. “I don’t think either of us are going to see Whiterose again, at least, not in the immediate future. She’s not the type to just swing by to pop off some champagne for a job well done.”

Angela looks at him, frowning slightly, and then her expression clears. “Of course,” she says, finishing up her glass. “You’re right, Whiterose has more important things to do. Maybe we’ll just have to have our own celebration.”

“Maybe,” he replies, looking at her narrowly. He has an odd feeling that she wasn’t talking about Whiterose. But then, who else would it be? Darlene? No, that doesn’t quite add up.

I mean, look, at this point, it’s very obvious to we the audience that Angela is talking about seeing her mother again, and she then makes reference to Elliot believing in the #cause once he gets to see his father just before the brownout comes in. These scenes always made me feel sad to write.

The inset on the face says 29, and the hands glint at a little after six. Early, but not quite early enough to justify a little more shuteye.

In 3x05, Elliot says the Dark Army tried to execute Stage Two at 6am. Robot waking up with a start around the time the Dark Army try to attack but being completely unaware of it happening is the beginning of the end for his usurped revolution.

So that's it, for now. If you’re still here -- thanks for reading, friend! Hope you enjoyed this self indulgent spiel -- catch you on the flipside :P

#earlyfic #dvdcommentary #TNPLH #mr robot fic