#dr-doomsduck

[ex0skeletal-undead]

Allow me to present to you my absolutely ancient rabbit Mo (turning 11 this year), who would very much prefer I gave her treats instead of wishing you a happy birthday!

Anyways, happy birthday!

Thank you but I hope to god he got some treats or I'm going to be so upset

[sayruq]

So, I just finished watching episode 10 of HoTD and I swear I was so bored for like 55 minutes of the whole ride, the only moment I was actually paying attention was when Aemond was on screen and the only emotion I had was me cackling at Aemond's tectonic "OH SHIT" face when Grandma Vhagar did her war crime.

I cannot believe that this is meant to be a challenger to the brilliance that is RoP, which had me at the edge of my seat from start to finish at every episode. Like, miss me with this failed Targ shit, the writers are so clearly not getting it.

Rings of Power writers care so much about their characters and they committ to the story they're telling, nothing is half assed. They want us to be attached to the characters and they work hard to make sure that we do and that hard work paid off. Look at how well received their finale is compared to this one. Ep 6 brought several characters together and not only did it feel like a big deal, the episode itself was tense, heartbreaking, dark and filled with more morally grey characters than HOTD. Adar>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Daemon. RoP was not scared to have Galadriel promise genocide nor did it ignore what that says about her. HOTD won't even let Rhaenyra express murderous intent after she was usurped and her son killed. She just stares into the camera.

I read the leaks so I knew what was coming and that usually doesn't detract from my enjoyment of a show because I love spoilers but even I was counting down the minutes to Aemond. It felt like an ordinary filler episode. Things happen without urgency or tension and not once did I feel like I couldn't wait to see how other characters will react to the new plot developments except Aemond's scene (he really is the MVP of the show). It didn't feel like the beginning of a new catastrophic war.

This show doesn't understand how to pick it's scenes. Instead of a very long miscarriage and body preparation scene, we could have spent more time on Rhaenyra's anger at being usurped, her fear of what it means for her children and her grief at her father's death because she barely reacted to that. There should have been only one Black Council scene after her coronation where we get

Team Black talking about their allies and Team Green's allies and you know strategizing

Rhaenys and Corlys slowly changing their minds about Rhaenyra (the show given reason why they chose her is very stupid because even the Greens want peace but whatever) as they watch her handle herself

Daemon trying to wrest control from Rhaenyra. You can even have him start the Council without her to show his eagerness for war. Instead of him standing around the table talking about the island's defenses, we should see him attending to that, ignoring her while she's in pain

Rhaenyra resisting it because of the prophecy which she doesn't talks about just yet. We should see people constantly pushing her to declare war and attack King's Landing and Rhaenyra standing her ground

Plans are made to send Jace and Luke to act as messengers

Instead of war, Rhaenyra plans on gaining enough allies to back the Greens into a corner without a single person dying

Then Otto Hightower comes. Instead of the dumb dragon scene, show Rhaenyra struggling to walk there but being determined because she's now queen and this is her duty but also because of the prophecy. She listens to the terms offered, trades insults with Otto, Daemon is Daemon. The page is offered, Rhaenyra cries and she decides to give her answer the following day.

Daemon thinks her attachment to Alicent is problem but she tells him about the prophecy. He strangles her. Rhaenyra spends the night thinking about how unpopular her decision is, she doesn't want to waver despite all the pressure she's facing.

Luke dies and Rhaenyra finds out right before she tells Otto her terms for peace. Instead of Emma staring at the camera, we can have the iconic line

Tell my half brother that I will have my throne, or I will have his head,” she said, sending the envoys on their way.

Now we see how Rhaenyra has been transformed by her son's death and we don't have to spend the entire last episode spinning the wheel until Aemond enters the picture.

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

Ok ok ok, but question about W*lker: if the main character had been played by Jensen Ackles, would it have been more redeeming/entertaining to watch?

(obviously it'd still be copaganda and unnerving on several levels, I'm just trying to imagine Jensen saying yes and wading into this mess. I mean, would they still have cast Gen as the wife?)

Well. Yes and no. It would have been more entertaining to watch. It would have been redeeming on a structural level. It would have been redeeming on... well, Jared’s performance.

The concept of it is just so, so bad. Cop who ~bends the rules~ and just snaps at some guy who’s taunting him. The very trite trope of ~ex convict doing a legit business and employing former criminals to give them a second chance is actually just running a drug dealing activity. I stopped watching Lucifer for that.

If it weren’t “copaganda” but it were about a guy doing a different job? Who left for eleven months to do some business in Hong Kong for his company or something? And now had to navigate his grief and relationship with his family and new colleagues? Now that would still be embarrassing because of Jared and the glowy elvish visions, but if you put Jensen and say Phil Sgriccia or Rich Speight it would be something.

Now of course you need better writers because the whole “aren’t we progressive” because of some badly written Strong Female Character lines and references to deporting undocumented immigrants being not good... it’s just so fake and performative and bad. They cast a Latina actress as Walker’s colleague and a Black actor as her boyfriend but that’s it! Oh being a Mexican American female ranger is tough. Oh my family isn’t speaking to me because I became a cop. #notallcops

It’s just so bad. Would Jensen make it better? Yes in a sense that Lucifer was not horrible to watch but if you replaced Tom Ellis with Jared it would have been the most embarrassing concept you could think of. (Sorry for the mental image.) But I couldn’t keep watching Lucifer because it was bad, no matter how good Tom Ellis was at playing the character.

To be fair Lucifer wasn’t even trying to take itself as a Cop Show too seriously - thus the main character being literally the devil and all - which earns it some points. But Walker just takes itself seriously. It’s like a parody of itself.

[biillyhargroves]

New on the block but for the Billy Hargrove headcancon: post s3 Billy who's still recovering from the flayer's possession feels inadequate in comparison to Steve. Yeah, he beat him up then, but apparently it was only round 2 for Steve who just walked it off and went for round 3 with Cthulhu himself while Billy just let the Flayer in and helplessly cried from the sidelines. Steve obviously vehemently disagrees with all of this, because Billy fought plenty and even held it off with his bare hands.

OKAY. OKAY, LISTEN.

Summer, 1985? It wrecks Billy. He feels awful. He feels guilty and weak and terrible. He thinks he should have done more, that he should have fought harder, that he could have saved Heather and her parents and all of those people if he'd just manned the fuck up. 

But that voice in his head? The one telling him that he’s a failure and a disappointment and that he’s a fuck up? That’s his father’s voice. That’s Neil telling him to be a man, Neil telling him to “cut the pussy shit” and do what needs doing. It’s years of Neil’s physical, verbal, and emotional abuse bubbling up to the surface and spilling out of Billy’s mouth. 

And it breaks Steve’s heart. 

Because he knows what really happened. He’s pieced it together from what he saw at Starcourt and what the kids told him, and he’s filled it in from everything that Billy’s said. He knows that Billy fought harder than any of them. He knows that he resisted the Mind Flayer as long as he could. He knows that Billy tried, and that try is enough for him. 

“You don’t know what you did, do you?” Steve asks, and Billy just scoffs because of course he knows what he fucking did. He’s read the obituaries; or, in some cases, the missing persons’ reports, because the scientists behind the first gate aren’t quite ready to admit that their mistakes have killed a large fraction of the population in Heart of America, Indiana. He’s learned the name of every single person he handed over to that thing and he feels like shit about it. But, “No, that’s not what fucking mean, man,” Steve says. 

And he tells him about how it started. He tells him about Will Byers and the alphabet painted on a living room wall. He tells Billy about flickering lights and a monster that crawled out of the walls. He tells him about what they were doing the first time they fought - about why Max was even there, with Steve at a stranger’s house, in the first place. He tells him about how they met the Mind Flayer and how it used Will Byers as a spy. He tells them about they tried to get it out of Will, and how it clearly got stronger - got angrier - by the time it found Billy. 

“That thing could’ve torn you to pieces,” Steve tells him. “You realize that?”

“Yeah, it almost fucking did,” says Billy.

“And you held it off!” Because Billy did. He went after that thing with his bare hands. Everyone else had weapons. Lucas had his slingshot. Nancy had guns. Steve had his bat. Eleven had her powers. But Billy? Billy touched it. Billy grabbed it. Billy held it his hands and tore it apart and he lived to tell the tale. 

And, yeah, it fucked him up. It fucked him pretty bad. It landed him in the hospital. He had months of long, hard, painful recovery ahead of him. But he survived. He won. 

And that makes him strong. It makes so fucking strong and Steve is never going to let him forget that. 

[thelegendofclarke]

dr-doomsduck replied to your post

Fun fact, in Dutch meer means lake! So, it's definitely water related (on another note the Dutch word for sea is zee, whereas the German word for lake is see, it's fairly confusing for Dutch students learning German or vice versa.

I am a mermaid... Always.

[captainpikeachu]

Can I just say that you are doing aces in this whole Ash Tyler and Pike debate thing? You've got a balanced view of where both men are coming from and how they can get to a satisfying compromise and yeah, that does not include strikes below the belt about everyone's war experience.

Thank you for saying that.

I fully believe that once next week’s episode comes, hopefully the fandom will move on from this “debate” and realize that both are good people, neither one of them is a villain no matter how any of us might feel about what either of them have said.

And hopefully the characters come away from next week having a newfound respect and friendship.

I mean, nothing like a near death shuttlepod adventure while battling robot space squids to make two people into new besties! It worked in Harry Potter didn’t it? :)

[alloverthegaf]

Started following you for lotr liveblog and then found out you were into Rooster Teeth and Achievement Hunter. It's been ages since I've seen them on my dash, so it's been great to see that! definitely stuck around for that (and all the other good content).

Thank you so much! Definitely recommend checking out the blogs I reblog RTAH content from they’re great

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

@dr-doomsduck​ replied to your ask post

Does Anon realize that swarning you liveblogging Walker doesn't change the plethora of negative reviews it got for numerous reasons

This isn’t about Walker at all, this is about little in-fandom-fighting powerplay games. They’re trying to be like “you’re bullying Jared, you Jared-hater” which is something that exists in their small fandom bubbles where Jared fans clash against Jared haters.

I’m just, you know, chatting about a tv show with my  friends online (which is the only kind of friend interaction possible during a pandemic, anyway. Hard to do much else to interact with people but lil internet things on our lil laptops).

Jared Padalecki isn’t reading my blog and crying like we’re middle schoolers mocking our classmate on tiktok.