(no subject)

Sometimes I just really want a toasted cheese sandwich
and then I remember I can't digest cheese
and then I'm just stuck, wanting a specific sandwich.

it's not even that it's a really good sandwich
I'm thinking of one half burnt and kinda lopsided
but it would still be a cheese sandwich.

one of these days my requested shopping in the daytime will be available
and I shall go to the vegetarian foods shop
and get something that will be very little like cheese but maybe possibly work when I have a craving like this.

(no subject)

You know, I do not get the impulse in fanfic to take a villain, a proper scary cold bastard, and then explain how secretly they're a warm fuzzy teddy bear who does all these ordinary people things and would never really hurt people ever.

I mean, if you like a villain, how come you don't like them as a villain?

Plus all the actual issues about the guys, like ones mental illness and how it repeatedly wrecks his life, and the other's childhood trauma and how it makes it impossible to trust or show their feelings, those just vanish in a puff of ooc and suddenly all is baking and actual facial expressions.

I mean I'm not saying bad guys don't cook, several of them canonically cook, it's just that ... okay it's several things at once, not just. Like, cooking has to do with both their traumas, there's fire, there's childhood neglect, there's probably being in charge of that stuff for younger siblings. It should be such rich ground to find the healthier and less villainy coping mechanisms they develop. But instead it's just, like, oh hey they're secretly super normal, please ignore all prior evidence to the contrary, don't worry about the killing people, somehow it is irrelevant. Like, it would be bad enough if being in a relationship magic fixed their mental illness, but no, the fic keeps filing off the mental illness before anyone can love them.

So that's depressing and ablist.

But just, how is it that people want to write the villains as just cutely not villains, instead of exploring the specific concerns of those characters?

If they just want to play fuzzy happy puppets they could do RPF. Or pick other characters by same actors. Ones that already fit their fluffy template.

I'm just filing this along with why write older characters only when you scrub a decade or more off their age - and ffs writers (and real life people who keep mistaking me for 25 wtf) it is not that someone doesn't look forty, of course they look forty, on account of being forty. What is the compliment meant to be in that anyway, oh hey, kudos on not looking like you've done things yet?

Just if they're going to be fans of a character why are they not writing about that actual character?

Trimming someone to fit is creepy.





... and I am grumpy and not really into this pairing at the best of times but can't find more of my favourites and I'm trying to figure if I have enough headache a painkiller is worth it and I just... grump.. Grumble grump.

fictional but still annoying

"he hurt people"
he
hurt?

speaker has personally witnessed him straight up murder three people right in front of him. would have been many more, without intervention of speaker, including him aiming and firing at speaker's foster dad. we the audience saw two more cold blooded murders as this guy's introduction, and probably a whole bunch more next time he came back. two of what speaker saw you can kind of think of excuses, but one was straight up murdering a guy just to test his gun.

either this fic is secretly very much an au from before the first moment we met villain
or hero is just...
it ends up sounding epically creepy if his newly discovered lust for the guy downgrades all that to 'he hurt people'

dead isn't hurt

dead needs a different phrasing.




I mean don't get me wrong, I'm here for stories of dubiously aligned semi allies with a dark past. mixed alignment parties where the ones that call themselves heroes have to be either massive hypocrites or rethinking their whole morals just to work with the other set of people. any time the heroes interact and the one set remember the other set have personally murdered dozens of people before their latest change of heart. the ones that don't bother calling themselves heroes, or would hiss and spit at the label but are being dragged into it backwards, working simply to defend what is theirs but somehow accidentally expanding that ownership until they're protecting the while world... well, those are pretty much decades of my fannish life.

But you can't just sum that all up as 'hurt'. Sure, they hurt people. They also left a trail of corpses with really distinctive causes of death, and yet in both canon and this story, team hero is for some reason not putting them in prison for it.

if the reason why in this fic boils down to wanting to get them into bed
I just
ugh.




This pushes all the same buttons with me as rl incidents where abuse gets summed up in the most minimising words, like assault and hurt feelings can somehow share a word and a response. this sounds like news reporters about young white men. it's creepy and gross and wrong in an entirely distinct way from acknowledging the past but still giving a chance for a different future.



... I mean there's 'superheroes' on tv who should really be in prison but instead the narrative keeps handing them get out of jail free cards. this isn't just fic doing the thing. but it's creepy.

(no subject)

I'm increasingly annoyed with how this pairing is all "dating a criminal! oh no, I could lose my job!"

just skipping over the whole moral and legal issues
where they are dating and not arresting a criminal they caught doing crimes
and not in fact doing their job.

I mean, sure, their continued employment is an issue
but if it's their only issue with this situation then they've gone dark side
and as with so many other things in canon have simply not noticed it.

Humans

I finished watching Humans season one
It's intelligent, thoughtful science fiction
that made me miserable.

It doesn't help that I've got a headache that went from 'huh, maybe this is a headache' to actual out loud sweariness, and I only just took a painkiller for it, because I am not smart about pain.

But I'm pretty sure that the basic problem is that it is in fact about humans, and the things they already do to each other. ( Read more... )

I own season two, but I am in absolutely no hurry to start watching it.

It's just one of those times where a serious and adult and thoughtful register means kind of wanting to scrub your brain and hide under a blanket after watching.

for fiction

i know i ought to just make words and se if they're plausible later
but
i spend so much time looking up rules to see if dialogue is plausible.

like, if someone says they paid £4000 in inheritance tax, and inheritance tax is 40%, then that doesn't look like they inherited gigantic
but it's 40% of whatever is left over after the first £325000
so even paying a taxes at all means they inherited a lot.

also, did you know you can buy a viking ship made of wood with sails and oars, for about £325000?
I don't think they're wandering around in viking ships but I also don't think they're in super fancy age of sail pirate ships, though I suppose they could be. I haven't a clue how much they cost, it's a piece of string question.
but inheriting a portion of one could easily result in paying a bit of taxes.

if i just looked up them numbers correctly
which historically is not a great bet.



Of course that set of pricings assumes that whoever assesses for tax purposes doesn't know it's a magic ship that can sail the multiverse
at which point I think estimating a cost goes a bit binky
like, okay, you could buy wood for repairs, but you cannot buy a ship that crosses the multiverse, so it doesn't really have a basis for comparison.

it would if the government knew about such ships though.
they're not supposed to in that universe, and not just for tax reasons.

... now I'm imagining multiverse Travellers style traders getting done for tax evasion and not declaring where their goods are from in a full and informative manner. I mean countries make trade deals with each other, not each other's alternate universe versions.



I'm vaguely using GURPS rules and I'm sure there's a GURPS cost for a bunch of different ships in Low Tech, but the problem then is the multiverse travelling version is built in a high tech world, out of odd materials, and enchanted, or more specifically made a home for a spirit born of the banestorm. It has to be lined with like a faraday cage of anti banestorm materials, so the humans inside don't unexpectedly age to death, but it can't use the strongest or it'd never get into the storms to travel in the first place. so it is made with lots of hawthorn. which is not typical of ships. so that would have to be worked in over more structural stuff.



I'm bored and would quite like to sleep but it is cleaner day so i must be awake until after the cleaner. so i'm poking imaginary numbers and learning tiny amounts about taxes.

this is not magnificently helpful.

(no subject)

cleaner was here and done and gone
apparently their briefing notes still say I am in college. but I graduated in 2013. so now it's just depressing. like, so what do you do now? oh I have a busy schedule of sitting here reading stuff and maybe watching a tv.
it's fine though, i'm fine, this is all fine.

I think I will go asleep now because I have been awake since yesterday.
blergh.