overweight sexually broken loser

not worth it, trust me

[sycophantastic]

My therapist is the only person to whom I'm disclosing anything significant/overwhelming ever again.

No longer will I corner anyone with my trauma dumping, not if they aren't being paid to listen.

I wasn't equipped to deal with it when it happened to me. I had to say "please stop".

No one else in my life is equipped either. And that's not their fault.

I'm not entitled to therapist friends or family.

Shouldn't expect anything of the sort.

[the-reading-lemon]

Re: Good Omens "Season" 3:

Listen. Listen folks.

I know. We're upset. We have every right to be upset. He-who-won't-be-mentioned fucked this up for all of us: the fans, the cast, the crew.

BUT there are still two people involved in this project whom I trust to make this right for us:

Rob Wilkins, who says of himself that his job is to be Sir Terry's representative on earth, and Michael Sheen, the OG Good Omens Fan.

Look me in the eye and tell me you don't believe Michael Sheen would fight Amazon execs in an ASDA parking lot if they told him he wasn't allowed to kiss David Tennant on the mouth in front of a rolling camera. Or that you don't believe David would follow his lead.

I trust in the cast and crew to somehow steer this ship and to give us 90 minutes that feel like a satisfactory ending for this show that means so much to so many of us.

Did I wish for more than 90 minutes for them to pull it off? Absolutely.

But I won't lie, folks: I am SO. INCREDIBLY. RELIEVED.

I honestly thought they were just going to cancel it. They could have done. And the fact that they didn't is 100% down to us being a huge fandom with (let's be real here) a lot of purchasing power and the ability to kick off a ginormous shitstorm all over social media. I bet there were whole entire meetings dedicated to figuring out if cancelling the show and washing their hands off this entire mess was worth the cost - and then they decided it wasn't.

That's down to us.

So we'll take these 90 minutes and we will squeeze every last molecule of dopamine out of them because Michael and David and the rest of the crew and Rob will make sure that there will be plenty for us to enjoy.

And then we'll continue doing what we've always done: write fanfic and make art and love these characters. We don't need him-who-won't-be-mentioned or Amazon for any of that.

[sycophantastic]

For me, personally, there's not a lot to look forward to these days, but at least for a while, I could confidently tell myself "hey, HEY, Good Omens season 3 is locked in, it's definitely gonna happen, I can safely expect a 'satisfactory' resolution to this epic queer love story, so c'mon, stick around for it."

No unrealistic expectations, though: I don't need an epic ~we're doing it right this time~ kiss, or a big dramatic exchange of I love you's, or a triumphant reunion wherein they gasp and laugh and cry and launch into each other's arms and clutch so desperately that the tips of their fingers turn white and then pull apart only enough to maintain absurdly intense eye contact and then incrementally gravitate back together until they're breathing the same air while still maintaining eye contact somehow what the fuck... or even just hold hands one more time. So long as SOMEONE at least MENTIONS the South Downs cottage, I'm good.

Don't get me wrong, I 💯% WANT all those other things, but there are levels of queer media survival I'm willing to accept.

....................

But then.

...........

Yeah.

I was fucking crushed. On multiple levels.

And I couldn't even count on the comfort of picturing how it would all go down, on the off-chance I found the perfect ending in a fanfic somewhere. I'd never be able to envision it. Like, I literally cannot "see" mental images due to aphantasia, soooooo if I wanted to know what any kind of resolution between these characters might look like, it'd have to be filmed, but production was """paused""".

Heard that one before. It's such a cowardly way of saying "we're quietly cutting our losses and leaving it to rot".

Therefore I resigned myself to yet another disappointing lack of closure in the queer media I love. Our Flag Means Death never got to film the third and final season that they had fully written and ready to go. The Yuri On Ice movie is officially scrapped after years and years of production delays. I never even got to start A League of Their Own before it was sent to an early grave after just eight episodes. And we all know why Dead Boy Detectives was cancelled.

It was over. All hope was lost.

.................................

BUT THEN!!!

YEAH!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!

I literally cried when I heard the news.

It is in fact SUCH. AN INCREDIBLE. RELIEF. Am I upset at the same time? Yes, absolutely, but: something is better than nothing.

If it's somehow not better than nothing? Fandom will fix it. Plus, I'll get visuals to work with, even if I end up rejecting canon. THAT I can guarantee is better than nothing.

And I get to reclaim my giddy anticipation. This is happening. Amazon wouldn't dare dangle this "compromise" in front of our noses just to let us down AGAIN. The cost/benefit analysis has definitively spoken.

So c'mon. Stick around for it.

[def-not-enjolras]

crazy how fanfic authors drop the most beautiful and gorgeous pieces of work ever, leaving you speechless and sobbing at three in the morning as you quietly contemplate the masterpiece you just read

and they don’t get paid for it they just do it because they’re having fun and they want to share their joy with you

like I would literally die for all of you fanfic authors out there reblog to swear your allegiance to fanfic authors

[surplus-of-sarcasm]

Thank you to everyone who has written a fanfic I have enjoyed < 3

[askfordoodles]

btw, just putting it out there that my hope for the Helluva Boss endgame is Stolas abdicating his Royal title and privileges and going to live with Blitzø and working for IMP as their accountant.

Clearly, they have a lot of paperwork that they currently push onto one of their assassins (Full Moon) and Stolas has been established as a nerd who loves reading loads of boring paperwork (Oops).

It would also tie in nicely with the conversation they had as kids (The Circus), and make it serve as very cute if on-the-nose foreshadowing.

[sycophantastic]

That's the dream, at least mine, but it'll be so damn hard to stick the landing.

I love Stolas to bits & pieces, but he is completely out of touch with how life works for those of "lesser" social standing, and he needs to figure it out REALLY FUCKIN FAST if he's to abdicate his title and live/work among the "low class".

Like, Stolas, babe, you don't care that Blitzø is "of lower station" than you? You'd better start to fucking care, my sweet sad gay owl, because as much as you ARE sweet, you're also painfully naive and often incredibly classist (albeit not in an overtly malicious manner, but I could write an entire essay on what you've done, how you've condescended and belittled, what you've missed, what you don't understand, and why your privilege of indifference regarding class status is just that - a privilege afforded to very few).

Blitzø has never been good enough not just for his family, not just for the circus audience who sneered at him when he was forced into child labor, not just for the other hellborn species who chastise their children for using imp-specific slurs within earshot rather than using them at all, not just for the daughter he loves unconditionally (a daughter who, by no fault of her own, doesn't know how to form safe and healthy attachments), but ultimately for himself.

He obliterates his existence from photographic record, even an image from when he was practically a baby and was feeding a horse for the first time. He looks at the most innocent version of himself, a tiny child who couldn't possibly have done anything to deserve being blotted out of existence, and thinks "that child deserves to be erased anyway," because no matter how hard he's always tried to do better, he's """fundamentally""" wrong, poisonous, worthless, inconsequential, BAD.

He's turning images of himself into empty voids because that's the only way he's capable of understanding himself - not as a self at all, but as a blight on the hell realm, a black hole of misery and pain that sucks the joy and the life out of everyone around him, despite his profound desperation to find platonic and intimate connection with others, a desperation he's not (at this point) entirely consciously aware he actually feels.

So Stolas? I know you have unspeakable trauma to work through as well. Believe me, I've given your trauma just as much thought as Blitzø's. And yet! I still say you have a lot of blind spots, a lot of ignorance, a lot of "high society" brainwashing to overcome.

This isn't to imply that Stolas should've been capable of overcoming his trauma/brainwashing and approaching everything in Full Moon from a healthy, well-adjusted, productive headspace. Of course he needs to learn to read the room, of course he needs a crash course in life & survival among the various social strata "beneath" him, of course he needs to unlearn his classist behaviors and biases, but it's unreasonable for anyone to expect him to have done that in the moment.

Just like Blitzø couldn't unlearn his self-loathing and self-doubt, couldn't shut off his self-deprecating intrusive thoughts, couldn't pull any semblance of self-worth out of his deep muddy ocean of trauma, couldn't convince himself of even the barest possibility that someone could care for him without strings attached, without conditions or an eventual price, without any other ulterior motives. Not in the moment.

Anyway. I hope they work their shit out, both individually and together, and this can become a workplace romance, as cheesy as that sounds. I'm absolutely fucking fine with cheesy.

[spiky-imp-teeth]

the thing about the miscommunication trope is that it truly can be SO good when it's done well

[sycophantastic]

Hey look, it's the same frame I redrew.

And yeah this whole thing fuckin killed me

[onthemeander]

Part 1 >>>> Part 2

"Am I not like F---King you good enough, because I can always do better."

That line has been living rent-free in my head for days. Love to know my favorite characters are going through the same issues I have a therapist for. Blitzø babe, it's time to go back and see your therapist love.

[chronicbitchsyndrome]

so: masking: good, unequivocally. please mask and please educate others on why they should mask to make the world safer for immune compromised people to participate in.

however: masking is not my policy focus and it shouldn't be yours, either. masking is a very good mitigation against droplet-born illnesses and a slightly less effective (but still very good) mitigation against airborne illnesses, but its place in the pyramid of mitigation demands is pretty low, for several reasons:

it's an individual mitigation, not a systemic one. the best mitigations to make public life more accessible affect everyone without distributing the majority of the effort among individuals (who may not be able to comply, may not have access to education on how to comply, or may be actively malicious).

it's a post-hoc mitigation, or to put it another way, it's a band-aid over the underlying problem. even if it was possible to enforce, universal masking still wouldn't address the underlying problem that it is dangerous for sick people and immune compromised people to be in the same public locations to begin with. this is a solvable problem! we have created the societal conditions for this problem!

here are my policy focuses:

upgraded air filtration and ventilation systems for all public buildings. appropriate ventilation should be just as bog-standard as appropriately clean running water. an indoor venue without a ventilation system capable of performing 5 complete air changes per hour should be like encountering a public restroom without any sinks or hand sanitizer stations whatsoever.

enforced paid sick leave for all employees until 3-5 days without symptoms. the vast majority of respiratory and food-borne illnesses circulate through industry sectors where employees come into work while experiencing symptoms. a taco bell worker should never be making food while experiencing strep throat symptoms, even without a strep diagnosis.

enforced virtual schooling options for sick students. the other vast majority of respiratory and food-borne illnesses circulate through schools. the proximity of so many kids and teenagers together indoors (with little to no proper ventilation and high levels of physical activity) means that if even one person comes to school sick, hundreds will be infected in the following few days. those students will most likely infect their parents as well. allowing students to complete all readings and coursework through sites like blackboard or compass while sick will cut down massively on disease transmission.

accessible testing for everyone. not just for COVID; if there's a test for any contagious illness capable of being performed outside of lab conditions, there should be a regulated option for performing that test at home (similar to COVID rapid tests). if a test can only be performed under lab conditions, there should be a government-subsidized program to provide free of charge testing to anyone who needs it, through urgent cares and pharmacies.

the last thing to note is that these things stack; upgraded ventilation systems in all public buildings mean that students and employees get sick less often to begin with, making it less burdensome for students and employees to be absent due to sickness, and making it more likely that sick individuals will choose to stay home themselves (since it's not so costly for them).

masking is great! keep masking! please use masking as a rhetorical "this is what we can do as individuals to make public life safer while we're pushing for drastic policy changes," and don't get complacent in either direction--don't assume that masking is all you need to do or an acceptable forever-solution, and equally, don't fall prey to thinking that pushing for policy change "makes up" for not masking in public. it's not a game with scores and sides; masking is a material thing you can do to help the individual people you interact with one by one, and policy changes are what's going to make the entirety of public life safer for all immune compromised people.

[crispynosferatu]

Oh my dear supernatural fandom people, Y'all would love hazbin hotel and helluva boss

[ladyeternal178]

1000% can confirm, right @sycophantastic ?

[sycophantastic]

CONFIRM

✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅

[camilleflyingrotten]

Glorious Purpose

[pinktwingirl]

When you realize that the Loki series writers hate Loki so much that they brought him back from the dead just to give him a fate that’s literally worse than death

[tomshiddles]

Most purpose is more burden than glory. You just choose your burden. And trust me, you never wanna be the guy who avoids it ’cause you can’t live with the burden.

[sycophantastic]

Like

I fucking

said

(the night this episode dropped, I cried so hard I gave myself a migraine, and I still feel like angry-crying every time I think about it)

[trashcora]

I am Loki of Asgard, and I am burdened with glorious purpose. LOKI — 02x06 “Glorious Purpose”

[sycophantastic]

I will never ever ever ever understand how this can be viewed as a happy ending. An ending of noble sacrifice, indicative of immense personal growth, yes, but not an ending of happiness.

He's in solitary confinement for eternity. His deepest, darkest, most existentially horrifying fear. Being alone. And he's stuck in it.

FOR ALL TIME ALWAYS

idk man, screams "tragic" to me

(but what do i know, everyone else seems to love it, so like fuck this loki in particular i guess, hooray, well done, 10/10 would permanently isolate this beloved character again)

[chewbacca]

[archetank]

Poison into positivity.

Sometimes therapy looks like manically sketching your emotional support pirate.

aka Izzy Cramped Hands

[sycophantastic]

Goddamnit David Jenkins, you stupid muppet, you pulled it off, you made me feel affection for this angry little rat man. Because he's not an angry rat anymore (still "little" as in short, but DAMN, not when it comes to pure muscle, fuckin congratulations Con O'Neill wow). You made him endearing. You gave him empathy and compassion. You let him truly find and accept himself and his family.

GODDAMNIT DAVID JENKINS.

I never ever ever thought I would be saying this, but I'm really proud of how Izzy changed, and I'm honestly gonna miss him like crazy.

This artwork is just fucking perfect, and I actually spent 40 minutes looking for this after I saw it briefly on my dash and then Tumblr refreshed without my permission.

Bless fanartists. BLESS THEM. I can't believe I got something like this, that's so beautiful and made me cry, for free, because someone loved the character enough to put their time and talent into sharing their love with the world.

Thank you 🥹🥰

[crowley-anthony]

Ed + Stede's Journey so far [S1-S2]

[sycophantastic]

I think I'm losing my grip on the Ed/Stede chemistry, and their chance at a solid rom-com ending.

The true happy ending, I think, would be Ed and Stede winding up together somewhere in the middle of the lives they escaped, but at this point they've shot right past each other into the extremes where they each started, except in reverse.

See, they had very similar struggles at the beginning of the series, just under very different circumstances. They both had external expectations weighing them down. They both had practically zero opportunity for self-determination. They were both discontent and trapped in lives they felt powerless to change or leave.

They did eventually leave, but they just... like I said, they each went TOO HARD in the opposite direction of their initial circumstances instead of meeting in the middle.

As of s2e7, Ed's trying to force himself into a mundane life that he won't find truly fulfilling because it'll turn out as dull and repetitive as piracy became. He's making his life small & slow, trying to hide himself away, denying himself the things he actually wants, just like Stede did before going to the sea.

As of s2e7, Stede is actively cultivating a reputation, a persona. He's building up recognition, hero worship, fear, etc. He's popular and "important". He's immersing himself in the exact same thing Ed has desperately been trying to escape this whole time.

They need to find their way back to some sort of middle. Maybe they really do open an Inn By The Sea, so Stede can sail off and have adventures every now and again, and Ed can learn to be the friendly jailer he described in his "gravy basket" vision. Some of the crew may even want to stay and help. (Probably not Izzy, though; I'm guessing he won't ever stop pirating)

They can't and won't find their way to that place when they're still just as clueless about how to navigate an adult romantic relationship (a functional one, not like Anne & Mary's "adult" relationship) as they were before. This season, as far as I knew, was supposed to lead them to a more mature place as middle-age men in love, but that suuuuuper didn't happen.

They still don't/won't say everything that needs to be said.

Stede hasn't explained the psychological torture he was forced to endure at the business end of Chauncey's pistol, the way all his deepest fears and insecurities were used to bludgeon his psyche into pulp, right before he bore witness to ANOTHER accidental right-through-the-eye Badminton death. He hasn't explained that he wanted to save Ed from the plague, the curse, of Stede Bonnet. He hasn't explained that he couldn't conceive of a reality where Ed didn't eventually either succumb to the poison of Stede's mere proximity, or come to the same conclusion as Chauncey.

Ed hasn't explained that after laying his heart at Stede's feet, and then being abandoned/betrayed, his heart wound up shattered. He hasn't explained that he'd almost let himself waste away before Lucius convinced him to start gluing his heart back together, only to have the fragile broken pieces pulverized into dust by Izzy's threat. He hasn't explained that he lost touch with reality, did a lot of things he regrets, things he finds sickening, things that nearly took everyone down with him. He hasn't explained that he fears Stede will leave him again, which is why he wants to "take it slow," because he's scared to truly start anything; if it never starts, it can't ever end.

And we have 30 minutes to resolve all this, plus MUCH more?!?

I don't see how one final 30 minute episode can resolve... I mean, much of anything, really. Because that's all we're guaranteed at this point. There's not been even a whisper of renewal from HBO, and 30 minutes isn't nearly enough time to stick the landing firmly in rom-com territory.

[dubiousculturalartifact]

This is probably gonna start Some Shit, but here we go:

I watched the first two episodes of S2 & then had to take a break because I was getting really triggered & stuff.

But:

-remember when S1 ended & everyone was writing fanfic, and there were all these fics that painted ed as completely unhinged and vicious and suicidal and deliberately sadistic, and izzy as the noble victim/voice of reason trying to ‘save’ ed from himself, & all the crew were taking izzy’s side

-And there was a bunch of really well articulated critiques of how those narrative framings often seemed a tad racist and way too enthusiastic about labelling ed as a toxic brute while totally brushing off everything that izzy did in S1 and the fact that he betrayed him & gleefully threatened/goaded ed into acting like that, etc? and that the rest of the crew absolutely hated izzy and would in no way go out of their way to help him or be on his side? Etc etc etc?

-so genuine question: why have i seen barely even a whisper of that kind of criticism when they wrote basically those exact tropes into the show