#thinkie thoughts

[amuseoffyre]

Just thinking (again) about the fact that Ed is traumatised by the night he killed his father, the night where he saw himself as a monster. And thinking again that when he has his hand wrapped around the throat of another middle-aged controlling angry white man, choking the air from him, that man whispers “there he is”.

And Ed’s next line is “I am the kraken”.

Just having feelings about it, is all.

#ofmd #our flag means death #ofmd meta #thinkie thoughts

[raccoonnutella13]

just realized the best way for a stranger to get to know me is to simply follow me on this hellsite because im too cowardly to talk about my interests and ideas irl. but all my mutuals on here know me SOOO well because it feels like a safer space to express myself.

an irl texted me earlier about some comics that i like and at first i was like WAIT HOW DID YOU KNOW IM INTERESTED IN THAT- and then i Realized. shes my tumblr moot of course she know everything about my interests. im chronically online!! /j

#thinkie thoughts #even if i do talk about my interests irl its brief and i dont go into detail #here i can post about the silliest of silly things and no one can judge!! #coon speaks

[realtacuardach]

One difference between the Lord of the Rings books and the Peter Jackson films that I find really interesting is what the hobbits find when they return to the Shire.

In the books, they return from the War, only to see that the war has not left their home untouched. Not only has it not left their home unscathed, battle and conflict is still actively ravaging the Shire. They return, weary and battle-scarred, to find a home actively wounded and in need of rescue and healing. All four launch themselves into defending their home and rousting those harming it, and eventually succeed. But their idyllic home has been damaged, and even once healed, is never quite again the Shire they set out to save.

In contrast, in the Jackson films, they return to a Shire shockingly untouched by the horrors of war. The hobbits of the Shire talk, in the Green Dragon in Fellowship of the Ring, about not getting involved with issues "beyond our borders," and it seems those issues have not invaded their sanctuary. After having been bowed to by kings, dwarves, elves, and men alike at the coronation in Gondor, their only acknowledgment upon returning home is a skeptical head shake from an older hobbit.

One of the most poignant scenes to me in Return of the King (and there are a considerable amount) is the scene where Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin are sitting in the Green Dragon. The pub patrons bustle around them, talking loudly, clapping excitedly, drinking cheerfully, just as they had in the beginning of the story. But the four hobbits sit silently, watching almost curiously at what was once familiar but is now foreign to them. Their home has not changed. But they have.

Which is the deeper hurt? To come to your home to find it irrevocably changed, despite all you did to keep it untouched and the same? Or to return home but no longer feeling at home, because it is only you that is irrevocably changed?

#lotr #frodo baggins #samwise gamgee #merry brandybuck #pippin took #book vs movies #thinky thoughts

[ao3commentoftheday]

The thing about spoilers is, I don’t actually think they spoil things for me. That momentary feeling of surprise when the big reveal happens is fun, sure, and I like trying to figure out a mystery on my own.

But I also just really love foreshadowing? Knowing what’s coming up lets me look for all the signs that the creator is laying out for me. It’s a different kind of puzzle, and one that I get just as much satisfaction out of, if not more.

If I enjoy a story, I’ll still enjoy it even if I know how it ends. The most lasting stories we have, as humans, have been spoiled for all of us before we even hear them. Famous tales become a shorthand that we use in every day life. Learning the story of the Trojan Horse actually became more interesting as a result of understanding the phrase first.

There was a time in my life when I didn’t understand people who would flip to the back of a book to read the last page before they started the story, but I think I get it now. There’s a comfort in knowing how things end and an enjoyment in taking the journey regardless.

#thinky thoughts #i don't know why I was thinking about this #but I was #so here you go I guess

[purpleminte]

Not me getting secondhand anxiety looking at the absolute chaos of this hypothetical discord user’s life based on these messages-

This person is apparently

• Travelling internationally likely very soon

• Currently having homework for an active biology class

• At least somewhat present in the moderation of a server

• Actively involved in competitive sports

• Has an engagement or event currently planned (that is understandably being ignored)

Maybe I’m lazy or something but this is enough to make me curl up and die

#random #thinky thoughts #discord #seriously this person is doing more in an afternoon than I get done in a month #sorry I’m an indoor cat #adhd is a bitch #I’m gonna go get exhausted thinking about these things

[thebibliosphere]

With hindsight, I probably should have realized I was polyamorous/ambiamorous sooner than I did. (And to be clear, I realized it pretty young. I just didn't have the terminology for it.)

Ignoring the fact that five-year-old me used to watch Signing In The Rain! on a loop and was already making up stories about Don, Cosmo, and Kathy all living together in Don's big house and *gasp* holding hands (maybe kissing), I was never any good at shipwars.

Like someone would ask me, "What's your OTP?" and I'd be like, "Well, I guess I like X/Y, but also Y/Z is good too..."

And they'd be like, "No. I mean your one TRUE pairing," and I'd just blink at them like, I'm sorry, I don't understand the question.

I'm sure they thought I was trying to stir shit or being deliberately annoying, but I just... couldn't wrap my head around it. Why did I need to pick one thing? There were multiple options with different things that made them appealing. That's like going to an all-you-can-eat buffet and just drinking water. Which is fine! If water is all you want, great. But you don't get to go to an all-you-can-eat buffet and judge people for eating different foods...

And when I eventually found out multi-shipping was a thing, I was like, "oh neat, that's what I do!" and while there was a definite feeling of having found my people, it was weird having the moral judgment from other people who seemed to think multi-shipping was a symptom of a greater moral character flaw. Like my inability to settle on just one thing meant I was more likely to cheat irl.

This wasn't helped by the fact that I... kinda already didn't care about monogamy? Not the way my friends did. I didn't mind that my then-boyfriend liked Sarah, too. What I minded was that he went behind my back and kissed her when he'd told me I couldn't kiss anyone else.

It was the betrayal of the agreement that hurt. Because we'd agreed. He'd asked me to be exclusive with him, and I did. And then he... didn't. And my friends couldn't grasp that.

It was all, "How could he kiss someone else?!" and my chief complaint was, "Why didn't he tell me first?!"

Anyway, if I could go back in time, I'd tell teenage me, you're not weird and amoral, you're just queer, polyamorous, and have ADHD, lmao.

#personal #thinky thoughts

[brightwanderer]

The more I think about hbomberguy's "Plagiarism and You(tube)" video essay the more I'm struck by a couple of his insights in particular regarding why people plagiarise - specifically, the combination of disdain for the people they steal from and entitlement to the things they steal.

Which has arranged itself into my head as: there is a kind of person who sees art - all art, including a witty one-liner or an essay on queer themes - as A Shiny Thing That You Put On Your Shelf So People Can Admire It And Compliment You On Owning it. When they see that Shiny Thing on someone else's shelf, they make a judgement on whether or not the creator deserves to have it. Is the shelf big enough? Fancy enough? Is the Shiny Thing being Properly Displayed?

And if the answer they come up with is "no"... well, then obviously it's fine to take it and Properly Display It. I mean, it's WASTED on that small-time creator who nobody knows about, right?

#plagiarism #thinky thoughts #hbomberguy

[stagefoureddiediaz]

So these pictures are gonna be an end of episode Eddie reassuring Buck that nothing will ever come between them isn’t it - it’s the I love you to the core scene.

This is the shift in things that we’ve been waiting for and need - because Buck getting jealous is gonna push him into looking at why he’s jealous.

Is it next week yet?!

#911 spoilers #Thinky thoughts #I love you to the core #911 abc #buddie #jealous Buck #eddie diaz #evan buckley

[illmetkismet]

I'm thinking about how in RE4 Ashley is pretty much the same age Leon was in RE2. I'm thinking about the contrast between these two photographs of them we see in the game, where they're both 20/21:

Leon's is taken presumably right after he got out of Raccoon City, traumatised all to hell. Ashley is smiling in her picture, before everything that's happening to her went down.

I'm thinking about Leon, so determined to save her, to be there for her in a way that no one could be there for him, when he was her age. Telling her to keep going even though she's so afraid (he was so afraid too).

He tells Ada he's changed after Raccoon City, but she doesn't think so, and I think she's right. Despite what happened to him, Leon stayed.... Kind. He empathizes with Ashley, understands the fear she feels all too well, because he's been there when he was her age, and by saving her he saves that part of himself that's been slipping away for the past six years.

[Bonus:] I think the photograph of Luis and his Dream Team was taken shortly before the Raccoon City incident too, because it's implied they worked on Nemesis, so that would make him roughly 21 also in this photo:

He helps Leon and Ashley as a way of atoning. Ashley's the same age as he was when he (boy wonder, cocky genius) did this horrible thing, and meeting her gives him the opportunity to redeem a part of his soul that's stuck back there in that picture, young and thoughtless.

So yeah. Three very different photos of three very different people who were irrevocably changed at that same point in their lives. People who came together and each, in their own way, reclaimed something they lost.

#resident evil #leon kennedy #ashley graham #luis serra #my thinky thoughts

[bearotonin-international]

Cocoa and Butter are having a real Thinky Thoughts Thursday that's for sure

#thinky thoughts thursday

[isagrimorie]

The more I dig into the Voyager rewatch, and the more I see Janeway is giving in more and more to the Valkyrie she's always inside. The more intriguing Janeway is. I already think she's great but digging deeper into Janeway is amazing.

I keep thinking of how Janeway holds on to the Starfleet regulations and it makes me think of that Doctor Who quote and how she fits the description to a tee:

"Good men don't need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many."

I feel this is Janeway -- she has rules for a reason, she's not evil but she also knows she can go very, very far.

Janeway has been through a brutal border skirmish in the conflict with the Cardassians. She downplays it but, how Kate Mulgrew, it feels like there was a lot more there.

She ranked up from Lieutenant, not because of being a Science Officer but because she's a decorated vet in a bloody siege, where they won.

As we've seen from Sige of AR-558 and the episode in Strange New Worlds ground combat is a whole different beast from ship-to-ship battle.

(Tom looks like a zombie in the last one btw)

Also, IMO, she's one of the more inventive tacticians in Starfleet-- the way she used the torpedoes in Year of Hell as a mine was amazing!

That's a great naval tactic shit. Hot girl navy.

But also, Janeway fits so much the Doctor Who, Good Man Goes to War rhyme:

Demons run when a good man goes to war. Night will fall and drown the sun, when a good man goes to war. Friendship dies and true love lies, night will fall and the dark will rise, when a good man goes to war.

It's also true of Janeway that when the three people that form the basis of Janeway's mental health died and/or became very sick, Admiral Endgame Janeway happened. And then she destroyed the Borg.

Janeway needs rules for a reason.

/edited

#star trek voyager #kathryn janeway #character thoughts #thinky thoughts

[amuseoffyre]

Some thoughts on current Who.

We have repeated reference to Susan throughout in a season replete with children who have been left behind/abandoned/lost their parents.

Specifically we have reference to Susan's presence in London in 1963 and Ruby says something along the lines of "so you have a granddaughter somewhere in my time?"

In the music episode, the Doctor says into the camera "there's always a twist at the end" and behold in the end credits - a literal Susan Twist.

4. Three people have broken the fourth wall since Ncuti took lead to speak directly to the audience (plus the Toymaker in his episode). Maestro, the Doctor and inexplicably, Mrs Flood, who lives next door to Ruby's family. And what a way to break that fourth wall.

So we have a woman living in Ruby's time who knows what a TARDIS is and who can break the fourth wall like Time Lords and the Creatures from Beyond.

A Susan twist perhaps? The one who waits is in fact the one who waited for her grandfather to come back.

#doctor who #thinkie thoughts

[nativehueofresolution]

homophobic shiv memes aside, i do think there is actually something interesting about how shiv interacts with her brothers' sexuality/implied queerness. with roman, she seized on his sexuality as potential weakness, painting him as a sexual deviant to logan and seemingly being the one to reveal to logan that roman has had sexual interactions with men as an attempt to bolster her status and gain leverage ('i mean i think it's a potential problem. there's issues, you know? everyone says that he used to get jerked off by his personal trainer, and now there's this gerri thing... it's a, it's a track record you know?'). she also later uses their father's disgust with roman to try to convince her brother to go against their dad ('rome, you know dad is never going to choose you, because he thinks there's something wrong with you' --an ambiguously worded line but one i think in the context of what had just happened prior to that scene where logan literally asked roman 'are you scared of pussy, son?' during their last conversation, this makes the most sense as a reference to his sexuality).

she also just straight up uses the fact that he Does Not Fuck to be mean when she's annoyed with roman ('you can't hide under the covers with mommy... someday you know you're gonna have to actually fuck something.' a remark that connor and arguably kendall -depending on how sincere you think his comments to shiv are - immediately clock as being over the line, while shiv plays coy and pretends to not understand why roman's upset). it's a vulnerability for her to exploit. (though it's also interesting to note her success with this tactic is limited. logan is furious with roman, but he still brushes shiv off after she outs roman. roman's queerness may disqualify him, but it doesn't change the fact shiv is a woman and so was never a real option to start with.)

the possibility of kendall's queerness, on the other hand, seems more to strike her as a threat, the most obvious example being her already infamous face during the 'you kiss guys on molly' scene. regardless of how much you want to read that as a confirmation of a relationship between kendall and stewy (and i personally am inclined to take it as such), the basic facts are that kendall is attempting to cozy up to stewy and specifically bringing up his attraction to men on molly as something that makes stewy mundane rather than an edgelord, and shiv shows visible discomfort at kendall's blasé attitude and his intimacy with stewy. the director mark mylod has pointed to the scene in particular during multiple interviews as one of the earliest signs of shiv's wobbling, because she sees upfront the closeness between kendall and stewy and how she 'could be sidelined by that relationship'.

it's interesting that this comes after the past few episodes spotlighted kendall's relationship with nate, shiv's ex and the guy who - apart from stewy and possibly the waiter - has the most gay subtext with kendall. in 4x08, the fact that kendall was close enough to nate that he would call him to double check shiv's story and that nate, either on purpose or unknowingly, revealed shiv was lying, ended up destroying her only chance of staving off the mencken call. while the scene itself has nothing to do with sexuality, shiv's goals were undermined because of an existing relationship between kendall and nate. her relationships as a sister and a lover did not give her enough sway to stop the interaction from playing out as it did. as the lone female, shiv is constantly shut out by the homosocial spaces that exist in the business world that she cannot access (we see kendall and roman do business deals in the men's room more than once). still, we have seen with nate in particular shiv is sometimes able to use her sexual appeal to try and achieve her goals (flirting with nate to try and get him to do oppo research on marcia for example), even if it is not her preferred way to deal with things. but if kendall is also able to attract men, this is another way in which he's competing with her, and one she feels poised to lose at because kendall already has access to men in a way she can't in their spheres, and she's seen over and over the bond between men prioritized above all else. she's already inclined to think kendall will sideline her for a man he wants to keep on his good side - she just lived through roman as co-ceo - and now during their meeting with stewy she sees kendall show an easy familiarity with stewy's sexual history with men that he uses to butter him up. even if she isn't taking that to mean they've personally slept together (and i think she is), she's being reminded that kendall is someone who can form intimate relationships with other men (in contrast to roman, who is kind of repressed about it) and use that to his advantage, which undercuts her already limited influence. it's just the eternal boys club taken to another level.

#like roman is a tool or a joke but kendall is a threat to her. even in this context. thinky thoughts! #succession #shiv roy #kendall roy #roman roy #kaitlin speaks

[realtacuardach]

One of my favorite takes on Frodo, and why I value him so much as a character: unlike so many central characters in fantasy, he was not a Chosen One.

Instead, he was the One who Chose, and that made all the difference.

#lotr #frodo baggins #lord of the rings #thinky thoughts #I'm a sucker for Chosen One narratives too #but there is something so beautiful about a character that makes the difficult choices and quests #not expecting victory or glory #increasingly not expecting to survive #and not even fortified by a prophecy or the like that their efforts will even be successful #instead stepping up because it is the right thing to do #here we stan Frodo

[ao3commentoftheday]

managing creative envy

Just like in other areas of our lives, it's easy to be jealous of others when we create in fandom spaces and post online - the online aspect of fandom just offers more opportunities for it. Hits, kudos, comments, reblogs. Whatever unit of measurement you look at, there's always some number out there ready to tell you who's "better" and who's "worse" at whatever creative endeavor you engage in.

Except that none of those numbers actually gauge skill or quality.

When we're jealous of those numbers, what we actually wish we had isn't bigger numbers, it's attention. Reassurance. Excitement. Community. Whether the number is 5 or 5000, that's what it represents. We want those things and that other person has more of them, and so we end up jealous.

To manage that jealousy, we need to understand what we need and then find ways to get it. It might not come from posting on AO3, but maybe it comes from a local writer's group. Maybe there's someone in your life that you wish cared a little more about your "silly stories" and took you more seriously when you spoke about writing. Maybe what's missing isn't related to writing at all and it's more about having someone who cares about you and thinks you're important.

But numbers are just one thing to be jealous of. Perhaps the envy is instead because of another person's abilities. They come up with such interest plots! They have such fun ideas! They always have the perfect words, the singing phrases. For them it's easy, and for me it's just impossible!

Whether it's easy for them or not isn't what's making us envious, though. It's not about them and their abilities at all. It's about feeling like our own skills are lacking. The envy comes in because that person has what we want and don't yet have.

If we want to get past this type of envy, we need to refocus our energy away from being sad or angry or hopeless because another person is able to do something. Focus instead on celebrating the things we already do well. Take the time to notice improvements. Identify specific things we want to do better, and figure out how to learn. Remember, asking for help is always an option - and it might even lead to that feeling of community that might be lacking too.

Emotions are information that we need to take the time to interpret. Take the time to reflect on what's causing it. Find the thing that's missing from your experience and then figure out how to fill the gap.

#thinky thoughts #I haven't quite got all my thoughts together on this one yet #but I want to put this out there #and see what experiences other folks have had #try to fill in the gaps in my own understanding

[half-bakedboy]

I just think that Buck feels like just a little guy with Tommy. He gets to be the little spoon (literally) and the tippy toe kisser (kinda) and he can hide his face in Tommy’s chest when he’s embarrassed and blushy and lean back again his boyfriend with arms around his waist and cleft chin on his shoulder and I just— 🫠🥰 He deserves to be the little guy, you know?

#just thinky thoughts on smol(er than his boyfriend) buck #bucktommy #evan buckley #tommy kinard #911 #911 on abc