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alcalexandria · 1 year

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The Case for Dani X Grace.

This is a post to lay out the reasons viewers might have to think that, at some point in the development of Terminator: Dark Fate, Dani & Grace were actually meant to be a romantic couple.

Or else, at the very least, that a decision was made to rework the movie specifically to prevent that reading.

We know it was reworked, because we know a lot about the minor tweaks after initial test screenings; in itself that’s not uncommon. But we're specifically looking at how these two and their dynamic changed in the process, and whether that was the whole intention.

Only the purpose of the changes is up for debate - and we'll get to that - but the main effect was definitely to change how Dani & Grace’s relationship can be interpreted.

You can find a more detailed breakdown of Dani & Grace related cuts/changes we’re aware of here, but we'll talk about the key ones below. A bunch of these minor cuts, shot swaps and reshoots add up to take them from a dynamic that might be interpreted as romantic, to something familial; sealing the deal with the last-minute addition of a single scene and line inserted to retcon Dani into a parent figure.

We’ll probably never know the whole story for sure one way or the other, but I think we know enough to speculate that I think would be of interest to franchise fans from a Behind-The-Scenes perspective as well as to would-be shippers.

So I’ll try to go through what we actually know for sure as much as possible first, and how we know it, before getting into my own theories about the whys, so hopefully even if you don’t agree with my conclusions you might find it a worthwhile read.

We'll look at three questions -

i) First, whether Dani & Grace could reasonably be interpreted as a romance in at least one version of the movie, regardless of whether they were meant to be or not,

ii) Whether the late-stage overhaul was done specifically to block that possible reading, regardless of whether it had been an intentional or reasonable one, and lastly,

iii) Whether it was actually initially intended to have a lesbian romantic subtext – and subtext at least - rather than simply an accident of some clueless Action Movie Dudes who didn’t know how it would read, before they panicked and rowed back as seen in ii)

Much of it won't be new to anyone likely to care, but maybe some of it is, and I figure it doesn’t hurt to compile it all in one place for my own purposes as much as anything. There will be some necessary duplication of older posts that I hope you’ll forgive.

Also, I guess some of us didn’t get enough of Book Reports as kids.

Come join the nerd party under the cut.

i) Could Dani & Grace reasonably be interpreted as a romantic couple in at least one version of the movie?

So firstly, let’s think about whether Dani & Grace could reasonably be interpreted as a romantic couple even if only by happy accident, rather than solely imagined in feverish f/f shipper brains like mine.

Well, a good litmus test for that question is always “How would we read these characters if we were looking at a man and a woman?” Regardless of where we’re all coming from, we all learn to view media through the heteronormative lens. We may learn it as a second language, but we learn it.

So the question is just as much “How would we be expected to read these characters, if we were looking at a man and a woman?

Usually, that’s kind of an abstract thought experiment - you have to find other kinda similar stories to try to compare, but they’re never quite exact, so there’s always a level of subjectivity and plausible deniability.

That’s not the case here though, because we have a direct, like-for-like comparison; Grace & Dani are very explicitly and purposefully cast in roles to mirror a man & woman in a preceding movie, and I’ve gone into lots more detail about that here.

Not just any preceding movie, neither - the first one, and the foundation of all the lore after.

The fact Kyle & Sarah were lovers isn’t simply incidental to Terminator, it is the basis of the whole mythology – if they weren’t in love and didn’t have sex, their son would never have been conceived or raised by Sarah to be the lynchpin of that first loop.

In other words - the central pillar of the whole franchise very much depends on the fact those two boned down.

So, we know that if they were a guy + girl, we would be meant to see them as romantic - because when they were, we had to. This whole storytelling universe depends on it.

And pretty much all of the same cues used to tell us Kyle & Sarah were in love are used to tell us what Grace & Dani are to each other too. Most obviously, that Kyle and Grace both came across time for this bodyguard job, and we're told for sure why Kyle did it for Sarah at least - because, he simply says, he is in love with her, and has always been.

We know how we’re meant to read Sarah’s plea not to confront the cops, too – she doesn’t want to see him get killed. Just as Dani, fully aware that capture is likely a death sentence for both her and the human race in turn, surrenders to the CBP sooner than watch Grace die fighting them.

We may not get the same explanatory statements in each of the parallel incidents with Grace & Dani, but it seems pretty natural to infer them. And ultimately, Sarah summarises her relationship with Kyle by saying that, in the even shorter time they spent together, they “loved a lifetime’s worth”.

Almost the only major divergence is that Grace & Dani never have sex - but even then, one of their earliest scenes involves Dani watching over the crashed-out Grace in a motel room, a motel room that’s deliberately identical to the one where Sarah and Kyle did. So we’re still asked to see them in that parallel anyway.

And we could interpret them the same way even if we’d never seen T1 at all, because the same language of action movie romance is applied to both cases. Not only can you interpret Grace’s protectiveness towards Dani (and Dani’s tenderness towards her in return) as an intentional reference to that famous, previous love affair, it also comes across as romantic in itself, because that's just the established vocabulary of this kind of movie.

There are plenty of other parallels in the post linked above if you want them. But the point is – if all the stuff T1 used to tell us that Kyle & Sarah are in love is also used to tell us what's going on with Grace & Dani, then it’s both reasonable and predictable that people will interpret them the same way.

And they go further than the stuff in common. Think of Grace dropping to her knees to beg that she be let go back to her death, and Dani openly weeping over the prospect - I think we can take it for granted this is not how John and Kyle’s corresponding interaction played out, even offscreen or in some deleted sequence somewhere.

Think of Dani tearfully apologizing to Grace as she cuts into her. Think of her setting out to change the whole future just to save her. Think of Grace choosing to die with her eyes on Dani, too, something Kyle didn’t get to do with Sarah.

In fact, just think of this scene –

Now, how would you interpret this scene if this was a male and female duo?

More importantly, how would you think you were expected to interpret their relationship, if you saw this play out onscreen?

Over to you, Nick from The New Girl –

"Anytime a man shows a woman how to do something from behind, it's just an excuse for him to get really close and breathe on her neck. Watch any sports movie."

And you, Bridgerton –

In fact, this is such well-established shorthand, it’s got a TV Tropes page.

There is of course a big complication here - the maternal framing they’re given in the last act. But as noted above, we already know this was only inserted after the test screening stage, and at the expense of a very particular deleted scene (more on that below).

We happen to know for a fact it's a reshoot now from Director’s Commentary and such, but the scene in question was so out of synch with the movie as it is that plenty of folks had already taken it for granted before it was confirmed anyway - not only does that future flashback look and feel entirely different to the rest of the movie, it's seated in a scene riddled with weird giveaway continuity issues.

So it just plain feels like it was plugged in at the last minute, as indeed we now know it was. And in that basis, I do think folks can feel justified in simply disregarding it as a “no homo” disclaimer.

It’s not hard then to imagine how differently this movie would play without that line, and to read their dynamic accordingly.

Grace would be a character that we only ever see interact with Dani as an adult, one who devotes both her life and death to her, because…

Because they’re friends? Because Dani’s her heroine?

Because she saved her?

In what way?

I mean, “You saved me” is a pretty powerful figurative line to just toss out there, as the million romance novels with that title can attest. But in the original cut of the movie, without the reshoot, we would never have seen any literal Dani-saving-Grace at all.

So, yeah. In sub-conclusion, I believe it is completely reasonable for a viewer to interpret Dani & Grace's dynamic as romantic.

To do so does require consciously rejecting the idea there’s a foster relationship in play, but the fact that’s so easily done – by mentally nixing one jarringly ADR’d line and scene retcon - kind of speaks for itself, doesn’t it?

ii) Was it specifically changed to stop people interpreting them as romantic?

The next question is whether some or all the changes we know of were specifically to try to head off shippy interpretations – regardless of whether they were an accident – rather than for any other reason we’ve been given.

I’m going to save you scrolling and say I think yes.

I absolutely think this movie was re-edited because somebody panicked that it was going to be interpreted as orbiting an opti-tragic lesbian love story spanning time and space.

The main reason I believe this is that the rationale given for the anti-“tactile” edit pass and cuts makes no fucking sense, so quite frankly I think it’s a lie, and I’ll explain why.

In the commentary, Director and Editor tell us they did an entire editing pass - essentially revising the movie from top to bottom, no small task - relatively late in production, to make cuts and swap takes, purely so that Dani & Grace would look less "tactile", less physically close. They say these changes were important to prevent the audience working out that Grace knows Dani, at all. That surprise was apparently so important it was worth the considerable extra time and money it would take to rearrange and recut scenes that had already cost time and money to film. This in a movie that was already going way over budget, due to flood-damaged sets, a production shift from Mexico to Spain/ Hungary, multiple forced location changes mid shoot, and asbestos being discovered in a studio (!).

And yet, in the flashback - we are straight up shown Dani on the rescue stretcher, after very pointedly seeing Grace personally attend to her, the VIP, during the rescue flight, even though this adds nothing to the reveal we’ve been told was all-important to preserve.

How is this less of a giveaway than Grace & Dani standing too close sometimes or whatever?

And we would also have been shown “The Commander” again, in the alternate version of the volunteering scene –

The sight of her is what directly prompts Grace to volunteer for surgery - this shot is literally her POV, looking at Dani, and it makes her insist on the surgery to her reluctant medic. If we're supposed to think the Commander is just some rando, this scene would have a really strange emphasis.

And if we're not supposed to know or guess it's Dani, why risk this at all?

We know from Miller that the Future War battle was cut short; the longer original version showed us Hadrell/Quinn having a glorious last stand against the Rev-7s until they killed him. This presumably influences Grace’s decision to be Augmented, because she wants to be able to do what she saw Hadrell do, for Dani. And according to confirmed test screening reviews on Reddit, the scene was still intact by the time they saw it.

These Future War scenes all need a ton of VFX, bespoke sets, props and wardrobe that can’t be bought off the rack or recycled anywhere else in the movie’s main storyline, so they’re very expensive. Whatever else you might do as a just-in-case, you would not shoot more of this than you had to.

Given she’s bundled up on a stretcher, it would have been trivial to conceal the identity of the injured VIP completely – simply by not shooting her clearly or covering her head. Natalia Reyes wouldn’t even need to be on set.

But she was - they went to the lengths of having her, having her face visible, putting her in injury makeup, and showing us Grace is uniquely, personally affected by her condition.

Why bother with any of that if were never meant to be able to infer that it’s her? If it was in fact important for us not to know that it’s her? Considering how innocuous some of the scenes they supposedly cut for that reason, isn’t this a pretty glaring contradiction?

I don’t believe these scenes are shot as if it’s a secret Grace knows Dani, or that Dani is the Commander. But I do believe they’re edited to try to make it a secret Grace knows Dani.

I think it was shot as if we could take it for granted Dani’s the Commander, and then after the fact, someone chose to cut it down as much as they could afford to. The fact Dani’s face is plainly visible is because there was only so much they could cut without losing coherence completely.

But let’s take them at their word for now to have a look at another scene change.

There’s a notable swap from the version of this sequence we see in early trailers –

Source: Booasaur

- to what we actually see in the movie:

In the commentary, the guys explain this scene (what’s left of it) and Sarah’s reaction is intended to show us she knows that, quote, "Grace is not telling the whole truth, there's something more to their relationship that Grace is not telling her".

But… hold on.

That makes no sense at all in light of their explanation for the rest of the cuts, which were supposedly to prevent us inferring precisely that. And if this is the moment we are supposed to be clued in after all, then why is even this swapped out for a less touchy shot?

Why spend money recutting the whole movie, and even reshooting some of it so that we won’t speculate Grace might know her, while also incorporating this scene to… tell us Grace might know her?

And why change the shot used in all the initial trailers to the one we see above if this scene is meant to flag they’re close anyway?

For this to be true would mean they’re both doing an entire editing pass to prevent the audience knowing Grace knows Dani more than she’s letting on, but also including this scene with the specific intention of suggesting Grace knows Dani more than she’s letting on… but still also making them less tactile... even though we’re now allowed to suspect they’re close anyway?

Which is it?

I think there’s a fib somewhere.

Some of the “anti-tactile” cuts harm the movie in general, too. Cuts around the motel, border wall and cockpit in particular create significant continuity errors, and a huge amount of the movie’s exposition has to come from what are clearly late overdubs pasted onto generic reaction shots.

The cuts in the motel and the CBP centre make the scenes they’re in choppy as hell. The cuts when Dani sees Grace alive again after the drone attack actively hurt the coherence of the scene, and even the story as a whole, IMHO. What made it worthwhile to do that?

Now, to be fair - some of the cuts to the motel room bit were apparently because the audience didn’t respond well to seeing Dani crying again. That makes sense.

But it doesn’t really explain this -

Source: Booasaur

This picture from the tie in card game's "FIRST AID KIT" card shows Dani caring for Grace when she’s unconscious, in a motel room that – as noted – is a recreation of the one where Kyle & Sarah slept together.

Images for the card game are promotional shots that would have been approved for release by the studio, but the manufacturer would have needed to have them as early as possible to design and produce their material in time.

This card's image – and only this one – has no corresponding scene in the movie we see. Dani never gets anywhere near this close to Grace here. And that’s not in itself strange for press shots, okay, but what stands out is that I have searched all over, and nothing like it appears in any of the subsequent press material either, while all the other card images, or at least some from the same scenes, do.

That includes this promo shot, which was widely circulated even though it also comes from a cut scene, and one I'll discuss at length later -

From this we can draw two conclusions.

Firstly, that a scene existed where Dani physically tended to Grace like that while she was out, in a room that Terminator fans will know was the backdrop to Sarah & Kyle’s romance - and that it was cut.

Secondly, that at the relatively early stage in production, when the cards were being designed, the image was approved for promotional use - but that at a later one, when the time came to release promo material to the general press, no longer was - and that it was, curiously, the only such image that happened to.

Once we were all good with it, now we’re not. The scene was important enough to shoot, and the image was approved at one point in the early stages – but then suddenly then it wasn’t.

Then there’s the drone attack itself. Like the truck, this is another change that was made in between the early trailers and the movie itself, and it’s another one that damages the editing and story for no clear reason.

In the movie, Dani, knowing that Grace will be killed fighting the CBP, gives herself up rather than see her die. The Rev-9 then uses the chance to drop a drone on them.

Grace realizes what’s happening, easily breaks her restraints, and then takes the brunt of the blast to save Dani from it.

In other words, having just surrendered to save Grace’s life, Dani has to see her being – for all she knows - killed after all, and we see her look on at Grace’s lifeless body in despair.

Incidentally, doesn’t this echo the shot of Grace seeing the Commander in the stretcher after the Rev 7 attack?

This pays off – or would have – later, in a shot seen in the trailers when Grace finds Dani again, and we see Dani’s clear relief that she’s alive.

YMMV, but to me it also looks like she’s showing concern for Grace’s very conspicuous burns, too.

A subsequent trailer shot, also cut, has Grace & Dani fleeing the Rev-9 hand in hand, in dreamy blockbuster slow motion -

All of these moments are gone from the movie.

From what I’m pretty sure was a rehearsal – but again, check out Dani’s expression.

Leaving aside for a moment the obvious recurring question of how this stuff would be interpreted if they were a straight pairing - it’s still very hard to explain cutting it.

In its place, we get this absolute... mess of cuts, ADR, cuts, Davis barely being in frame, more cuts, and… at any point in this how confident are you of what direction anyone’s facing?

I haven’t recut this, to be clear - this is exactly how this sequence plays out onscreen. It’s a salad of jumbled editing and weird shot choices that make the CBP centre seem about the size of a bus stop, has dialogue dubbed in where people clearly aren’t speaking, suggests a floor plan that somehow overlaps, and struggles to keep the 5’11 Davis in frame with the 5’2 Reyes for more than a second at a time.

Scroll up again to those deleted shots, and compare how much clearer and better composed they are than any of this.

In fact, this is so disjointed you’d be forgiven for thinking Dani & Grace are in an identical but totally separate building from Rev here, because there’s no sense of where he is in relation to them or how far away. It’s not even implausible this is another (very expensive!) reshoot, at least in part.

And in the middle of all this, that’s Dani’s cousin getting killed. Did you even notice that when you saw it first? I don’t blame you if you didn’t – our heroines aren’t framed, lit or seen clearly enough to know if Dani herself even knows he’s dead.

Let’s look the effect of these cuts solely from a storytelling perspective though.

The original sequence would have been -

Dani is terrified she’ll get Grace killed so surrenders for that specific reason.

Is devastated to see Grace apparently killed anyway.

Is more relieved to see that Grace is alive than she cares about the attack.

Dramatic slo-mo escape to the chopper

Grace’s deferred freak out that Dani would risk her life like that for her or Sarah.

Besides being shot noticeably better, these little moments also make for a much more coherent little A-to-B journey that shades both characters in significantly.

With the cuts, and Dani's new non-reaction, the drone stuff is just a very dramatic splash of fireworks – narratively, it might as well not have happened. And Grace’s tantrum in the chopper, about Dani’s life being the only one that matters, comes from almost nowhere without that full mini-arc of Dani having endangered herself sooner than put Grace in danger, Grace being an apparent casualty anyway, and how glad Dani is to see she’s alive after all.

These bits seem to me then to have been very deliberately filmed – and then even more deliberately, cut.

But that’s not nearly as dramatic a change as cutting the absurdly angstoromantic “Send Me Back” scene.

And for real, do stop and watch this before carrying on -

youtube

This moment explains just about everything you need to know about Grace and her motivations, absolves Dani of sending her back to her doom, and ties directly into a climactic exchange of dialogue later on - the Theatrical cut still even has that now orphaned follow up line, when Grace repeats her plea to "our" Dani, to let her save her, before she dies. Commander Dani is shown shedding a tear when Grace asks to save her here, presumably because she remembers they will be some of Grace’s last words to her own younger self, later/before.

All that, and that clever little internal loop, is totally lost without this pivotal little scene. We even lose the visual parallel of Grace on her knees to Dani in the present day cockpit, just as she is in her memory from the future here, just as the two versions of Dani converge.

The suggestion Dani raised Grace from childhood is solely from cutting this scene and overwriting it - at the cost of all that continuity and connective tissue mentioned above - with another that looks aesthetically out of whack with the rest of the movie, feels cheap, and was written by monkeys.

Without the swap, without any suggestion of Grace ever meeting Dani as a child, and with this scene back in place as in the original cut, I’m not sure how else could you possibly interpret Grace’s devotion to Dani instead.

But it’s important even regardless of that - it’s laying down all the emotional groundwork for Grace’s death, and the underlying Bootstrap cycle's structure. Cutting it robs Grace and Dani of big chunks of their characterisation and personal arcs, undermining Grace’s dying dialogue and Dani’s vengeful fury after it, and it can’t be explained by saying some subtle reveal needed to be preserved, since both scenes make it apparent Dani’s the Commander even if it isn’t already.

And it's worth highlighting too - @beneaththethunders confirms that the English subtitling of Dani's screams after Grace's death is wrong. She doesn't say he "took everything she had", she says "Mataste todo lo que quería, cabrón!" - "You killed everything I loved". Big difference!

Which all feels a little... coincidental, one might think. Check out how differently it plays out with the corrected translation here.

So it's safe to say that firstly, you would need an excellent reason to shell out for a replacement scene for this one at the last minute, and secondly, that the only explanation we've been offered to date is nonsense.

That's compounded by the fact the reshot and rearranged bits of the movie are almost objectively weaker than the original ones, the deleted scenes were still in place as late as the advance screenings, and even the existing cut of the movie calls back to parts that are now missing as if they’re still there.

And... say, how did those screenings go?

Well -

What the totality of all this suggests to me, and very strongly, is that there is in fact no good “internal” reason for a particular thought-line of these cuts.

They don’t make the story better. They don’t make the movie look better. They damage continuity, they cost a bunch of extra money, and nobody had a problem with them until the public started providing feedback.

To me that means the only reason can be external to the movie – for some reason apart from the good of the plotting, the continuity, the aesthetics or the budget, these changes were applied to the story, and they were applied after the public gave their takes.

In other words, that the point of the changes weren’t to help tell the story better, but to change the story being told.

So my conclusion, in the end, is yes.

Yes, I think the cuts were made because test audiences reported that these bitches looked gay. No other reason I can think of would explain all of these decisions.

That brings us to the last question.

iii) Was it initially intended to have a lesbian romantic subtext?

So this is the big one. At some point in the production of this movie, did somebody want us to see Grace & Dani as a love story?

I’ve talked about making weird cuts to make them less “tactile” and why the supposed reasoning for that doesn’t hold up. I’ve also talked about the allusions to another, canonical love affair in stuff like the truck scene, and I want to come back to that.

Source: Scumlow

In the commentary, Miller mentions this was actually unscripted – it was simply something he realised he could easily do once he got to the location for Dani’s uncle’s place. Unlike the Future War stuff, they already had the truck, the cast and the location ready to shoot with, so it was only an extension of what they were already doing.

If that makes it sound thoughtless, it’s not.

The commentary also makes it clear that Miller has a real fluency with Terminator lore; he even talks about some very longstanding Terminator geek debates like the age old “terminator bomb” argument, stuff that makes it obvious he knows both his canon and fandom discourse inside out.

He absolutely knows what this scene means, and we’re meant to too. We’re meant to recognise it, and I’ll bet a thousand dollars that we’re being shown that Sarah does too.

Miller isn’t the only one aware of the parallel neither –

Source: Youtube, around :045

Mackenzie Davis herself is also very much aware of her character’s relationship to Kyle Reese, and his role in the franchise, and acknowledges and goofs around with the implication.

So the above scene may be unscripted, but there is absolutely no way it’s an accidental echo of T1’s own – there is no way Miller just “accidentally” had Dani & Grace re-enact a moment from Sarah and Kyle’s romance, when the fact they became lovers is the single most important event of the whole franchise. He knows it. The cast knows it.

T1 is often described as a love story first and a scifi/ horror second because of scenes like above, but even aside from Kyle, we get details about Sarah’s love life as an aspect of her characterisation. At one point we even hear a boyfriend – voiced by James Cameron, incidentally – leave her a message to cancel their upcoming date.

Curiously, there’s nothing at all like that in T:DF as we see it. There’s never any suggestion of either Dani or Grace’s romantic inclinations, in any direction, at all. Which may not seem unusual for a modern action movie, to be sexless and romance free, but the complete lack of that element in the story is glaring when we’re being asked to directly compare it to T1 in so many ways otherwise.

It will be no secret to Tumblr that Grace is quite the lesbian thirst icon, and much has been made of her being lesbian – sorry for the discourse word – “coded” in her character design and demeanour.

But… let’s talk about Dani here too, while we’re at it.

Are we supposed to take it for granted she’s to be read as straight?

I’m not actually so sure.

(Natalia Reyes doesn’t seem to mind us wondering either, incidentally)

As the eagle eyed @yorkieeightyseven copped, for some reason wardrobe went to the rounds of customising her shoes with rainbow laces for the scene we're first introduced to her, which is a minor but eye catching choice to make -

Source: Prop Auction Store

A far more more interesting one though was made for her introduction to Sarah. If you wondered why this guy in the Pharmacy got so much focus, only to disappear -

It’s because, per Miller, he originally asks Dani out in the midst of all this and gets instantly rebuffed.

I mean, sure, she wouldn’t be looking for a date just now - but why even write and shoot this? Why was it worth making time and space to ever show us Dani dismissing him while she’s attending to Grace?

And then why was it cut, along with all the other stuff we know about?

The only potentially romantic context we know we might ever have been given for either Grace or Dani is to have Dani reject this man. Otherwise, they never show anything you can even infer as interest in any characters. Well... apart from each other, at least.

This is even starker in light of the audition script used for would-be Danis, but before we get into that, again, I want to be really clear what this is.

An audition “side” is a very rough placeholder script used to test chemistry and emotion. A side’s dialogue will tend from rough to terrible, and sometimes the scene is deliberately misleading, as sides regularly leak via actors who don’t get the part (that’s why we have this one).

The general mood of a side though, is key. It's usually right on the money, because that’s what you’re trying to test your actor for. The side is designed to showcase the particular vibe the Director needs most – so however clumsy or misleading the dialogue is, it represents something that matters so much for a character that they’ll be cast solely on the basis of it.

This side was used to audition actresses for Dani. It takes place on the train to the border, with a Grace who does not know, or claims not to know, Dani or what’s so important about her.

It’s a tentative bonding moment between the two, where Dani shows concern for a shoulder wound Grace is tending to –

(Dani scoots closer, eyes the wound critically.)

DANI (CONT'D)

That scar's gonna be sick. But I got it beat.

(She pulls up her sleeve to reveal a scar of her own on her shoulder.)

DANI (CONT'D)

Like it? Bus accident. The big one in Puebla. I was fourteen when they pulled me out from under. It made the news, even in the States. They gave me obleas to calm me. Like candy can make you forget the pain. The bodies. The weight of twisted steel bearing down—

(She touches [her own] scar, gently with her fingers.)

DANI (CONT'D)

I'll never eat obleas again.

(Grace studies Dani as she traces the line of the scar with her finger.)

GRACE

You wanted to understand where I come from? You already do.

(Dani's eyes meet Grace's for a moment.)

DANI

My mother told me scars make the skin stronger.

(Dani covers her scar with her shirt, then looks out again as the train slows, approaching Nogales.)

Now uh… I don’t think I even have to ask the fanfictionally inclined, but please picture this scene actually playing out on screen, actors and all.

Bearing in mind that the point of a side is the mood - what is the mood you imagine as described here? Because it was so important for Dani’s actress to play that she was to be cast based on it alone. Not her bravery, her sensitivity, her comedy, her action chops, or anything else - but the mood when she and Grace bond over the marks on their bodies.

Sure, we can just about imagine cuts to make them less close were down to some Action Movie Bros suddenly realising they'd accidentally made the gayest ass Terminator imaginable. But it is greatly straining credulity to suggest they were oblivious to the implications of a directions like “Grace studies Dani as she traces the line of the scar with her finger” or “Dani’s eyes meet Grace’s for a moment”.

Let's be real - this scene here reads like Dani is hitting on Grace with a two by four.

And how well this particular scene was performed was the one that decided who got the job.

It’s classic action movie romance stuff. And again, if there could be any question what you were being told if you'd been presented with a guy & girl playing it out, have no fear - Kyle & Sarah are here to clarify, because their corresponding scene in T1 was straight up foreplay. Their scar examination is used to allow for a closer level of intimacy with Kyle, a slightly awkward virgin who thinks entirely in Military radio protocol. Stuff like "affirmative", and "standard operating procedure". And yes, it is immediately followed by sex in a motel room, and yes, the very one they painstakingly replicated for that lost scene of Dani watching over Grace in the bed. I don't really feel like we're having to work too hard for inferences here.

It's just not plausible that someone with Tim Miller’s fluency in Terminator-ese doesn’t know what he’s asking us to think of when we see that motel room or that scene in the pickup. To Terminator nerds, those Sarah/Kyle scenes are so iconic it’s the equivalent of having them mime out the “I’m flying” scene from Titanic, there's not a whole lot of room to miss the implication.

Similarly, it’s not plausible to think that stuff like the “teaching Dani to shoot” scene was done in blissful ignorance. It’s such a well-known visual shorthand it’s its own sitcom punchline by now, and Miller is as well versed in action movie tropes as he is in geek lore – several Love, Death + Robots eps he wrote for are explicit genre spoofs.

The train scene we see in the movie is, of course, very different to the side above. Sarah doesn’t even seem to be in that scene at all, whereas she’s the central speaker in the final version. The one we do see is odd for a whole other reason of its own though - it’s actually pretty much the only scene which really engages with the idea we’re supposed to expect Dani to be the mother of the Commander, rather than she, herself, the Commander.

Isn’t that a little strange?

Given that’s key to what's supposed to be the big reveal?

Shouldn’t that be a much bigger deal for her, too, given there isn’t a single surviving human male in her orbit? And that our Kyle proxy here is very much a woman? And she’s got to have a kid in the next like… 24 months for them to be an adult in time for any of this to work? And even that’s a stretch given Grace says she’s from 2042?

But it’s never mentioned again; not until the reveal it won’t be her hypothetical kid after all. Nobody, Dani included, even seems to think idly about her impending destiny-altering-messiah-pregnancy after this, not until the very heavily ADR’d and continuity-messy cockpit scene, when, incidentally, the foster mom stuff is also introduced, for the first and only time.

Keep that in mind, because I don’t think the weirdness of both plot strands is unrelated.

Recasting Dani as Grace’s parent is a weird choice that doesn’t really serve any purpose except to create an alternate explanation for their bond. But it doesn’t even do that very well, even if we take it as a given they’re not in love, because nothing at all about their relationship otherwise reads as maternal.

Let's, for the sake of argument, accept their dynamic was never supposed to be romantic, and try to imagine how else we were supposed to understand them originally, ie before the maternal stuff was introduced either.

Think about the deleted border gunfight - Grace takes orders from Dani about wounding the Federales and surrendering to the CBP, yes, but not without friction. Okay, they are technically Officer/Subordinate - but evidently they have a personal working relationship that puts them on more equal terms than that suggests, if Grace is openly contesting orders from someone about two dozen ranks over her. This happens again at Carl’s place, when she point blank rejects the killbox plan. And even in 2042, it is Grace, not Dani, who outlines what’s going to be done about the TDE.

Ultimately she does almost always defer to Dani, yes - but not without making her own case first. She sure as hell does not simply accept what Dani says as the kind of sacred, inviolable Commandment set down by a mother figure, but forgetting that for now; it’s not how a suicidally loyal footsoldier would behave, either.

So how were we supposed to think of this?

As somebody (I'm incredibly sorry I've forgetten who) once very neatly put it, the movie finds itself in the bizarre position of having to convince us its two leads are not in love despite itself - even though the implication of their alternatives create a bunch of other weird problems.

Primarily, that without the scene which tells us that Grace, with full agency, actively opted into this suicide mission, and with one that instead casts her as her kid, the movie is asking us to root for a leader who ordered her own child to die for her. She found and raised her, just to sacrifice her to save... herself, apparently? And we’re not given any mitigation like Grace having plead with her to do it, or the tears Dani sheds in response.

You might think that’s a weird choice to make for a heroine - and Tim Miller agrees.

In a panel discussion with about directing in 2022, he says this -

"We shot a scene on 'Terminator' that I didn't believe in, but I had to shoot it. I got up in front of the crew, and I said, 'So I hate this scene. I don't believe in it. I don't think it's going to work and I don't think it'll ever be in the movie, but I'm going to do the best I can to shoot it.' [M]y rationale there was I've been working with these people and if they know it's s*** too, and if I don't say it's s***, then they question my judgment. They don't believe in you. You got to say it. You got to be honest."

He doesn’t specify which scene he means here, but I think we can safely guess it’s the one that looks absolutely nothing like the rest of the movie, was shot after everything else, blows a hole in a dialogue callback later on, and creates a plot element he had a “problem” with. From another interview with io9 -

“I always have a little bit of a problem with Dani sending Grace to die,”[Miller] said. “We set up this whole [story] where Grace is kind of Dani’s surrogate child and a mother sending her child to die for her is just...yeah, I had a different scene in mind.”

I think the scenes he means here are one and the same.

So… if the Director of the damn movie didn’t like the scene's implication, why is it there…? If the original "Send me Back" scene was his preference, which seems to be the case, where is it gone?

In the commentary, he mentions that his idea of Dani’s Resistance depends on the fact a time traveller died for her; it is foundational to her gospel as a leader, because the fact that somebody came back for her proved that the past can be changed, and thus the war avoided. And separately, Davis has let slip that she would have been back for sequels, implying that Dani would/will successfully rewrite the immediate future, and generate a new iteration of Future Grace in the process.

That makes the cut “Send Me Back” scene seem integral, I think, to Miller’s concept of the whole story, and I think there are hints of how he communicated that to the folks he worked on it with.

Here, for example, is how legendary make up and prosthetic artist Bill Corso contextualizes his work for the scene –

“In which Grace tells her beloved Commander” that she wants to go back.

Not her like… mighty, respected, esteemed or adored Commander. Not her beloved foster mom, parent, or mentor either. Her beloved Commander.

Huh.

The core tragedy of Miller’s story then is that Dani & Grace are locked into a cycle of heroism and sacrifice that fate keeps demanding of them. But without that key scene you’ve lost the axis of that, and again, you'd need a really compelling reason to replace it with one that both costs more money to reshoot but looks cheaper, doesn’t cohere with the rest of the movie, and weakens the emotional punch of a character’s upcoming death.

And since we know Miller didn’t want it, it has to be worth overruling him as Director to do it, by someone with the authority to do so.

Miller has repeatedly said there were serious conflicts with Cameron during post-production – describing debates over the final cut as leaving “blood on the walls” of the edit suite - but he’s fairly vague about what the major arguments were about (worth noting - Mackenzie Davis mentioned she had a beefy NDA when backing off a question about the by-then already scrubbed sequels).

Miller has mentioned one scene - Sarah confronting Carl in the cabin – in passing, where there was a disagreement over the tone. He handled that by shooting everything Cameron wanted to keep him happy, plus what he wanted, with a view to editing it down to only the stuff he hoped to keep.

In that case, he mostly won out, and the comedy elements JC wanted were scaled back.

But he didn’t win them all – he also mentions he very strongly wanted to suggest the humans are losing the Future War this time, where Cameron insisted the opposite. Here, the compromise was not to make it clear either way, so we’re left to guess (though I still think it hints more towards Miller’s version than Cameron’s).

The “Send me back/You raised me” swap though is much bigger than either of those. The Future War winning/losing stuff is just background lore geek wrestling; the comedy stuff in the cabin is a drag but not a gamechanger.

But framing Grace and Dani as a love story vs a half assed familial thing changes the whole timbre of the story. It changes the movie’s genre even, from a straightforward actioner to a romantic tragedy in an action costume, something far more in the vein of T1 than what we saw.

So… is that what Miller was alluding to?

Was Miller’s frustration that he made a movie about two lovers trying to save each other across time, and then watched it get retconned into a much more confused story about, I dunno, really intense work colleagues?

My conclusion, in the end, is yes.

I’m 90% sure that at some point Dani and Grace were intended to be interpreted romantically. Not 100% - but 90%. More sure it was than it wasn’t.

Here’s an oversimplified summary -

Deliberate, overt parallels to iconic scenes from mythology’s core romance, by a Director who is extremely well versed in both the movies and fandom, with a cast who are well aware of same.

How physically close Dani & Grace are, to such an extent they couldn’t hide all of it even with an entire extra edit pass.

Innocuous justification for those cuts is a blatant fib.

The one single No-Homo disclaimer having to be imposed against the Director’s wishes, and at the cost of continuity and storytelling issues.

Swoony romantic clichés like tending to wounds, teaching to shoot, courtly kneeling.

Odd little details like Dani’s costuming.

Just how much more sense their dynamic, and indeed the plot, makes if they’re in love.

Dani losing her shit at Rev 9 for killing what she querías in response to Grace’s death, and the strange subtitling discrepancy around this.

So what to make of that?

Well, here's my working theory of what might have happened to explain it all.

Let’s imagine that Tim Miller, fresh off directing Deadpool 2 ft Negasonic Teenage Warhead, and knowing his Terminator lore like gospel, wants to push the franchise forward a bit with DF. He wants to make a movie structured around an operatic love-and-sacrifice-and-love bootstrap tragedy where, instead of creating the next warrior-messiah by fathering him, Grace drives Dani to create that person from herself; Dani, in turn, creates the Grace we know.

This idea both honors the original lore and puts a fresh and maybe genuinely surprising twist on it (and incidentally, is very much in the LD+R flavor of scifi)

Miller still has to answer though to James Cameron, Producer and IP stakeholder, who we know was vetoing some of his ideas, like the losing war, and adding some of his own, like the plane crash sequence.

No worries. As Director, it’s him, Tim Miller, who’s going on set every day, and that means he can do stuff like guerrilla shoot the truckbed scene or collect alternate takes to have options later on. There’s nobody on the set to stop him, at least.

But we know Cameron reared his head later, in the editing stage. Miller describes serious conflict with him in this phase, while skirting around the main bone of contention.

I say - what if it’s this?

What if the question of whether Dani & Grace can be a romance was the problem, the big conflict between Miller and Cameron?

I suggest it is plausible that Miller intended and shot Grace & Dani as a love story on set (and sometimes off-script) where he could. I think he got it past Cameron & Co in the initial test screenings, either without them picking up on it or simply not caring enough to intervene yet - but then when they started getting notes like… well, “lesbian” from the audience, or saw the backlash to the early promo images of THREE WHOLE WOMEN, panic kicked in among higher ups.

It's now, at this point, in the editing and reshoots, that the romance stuff gets nuked, at a considerable expense.

But it's not that easy, because doing that creates a big new storytelling problem - by neutralizing the whole tragic cycle drama and its climax, it’s pulling the structure out of the story as Miller had built it.

Realizing this, that now the third act has just lost its bones, Cameron, or the studio, try to have the movie restructured around an improvised new twist, the “reveal” that Dani herself is the Commander.

It has to be done by cutting, overdubbing, and reshooting chunks of what they've got, sometimes resorting to sub optimal alternate takes, and even then there are still awkward artifacts that can’t be avoided, like Dani in the stretcher.

The train scene, which was already being totally reworked, was further repurposed to plant setup for the new twist too - but since the rest of the movie still proceeds as if we all already know it’s her anyway, it feels very much like the afterthought it is. The efforts can only be a limited success, simply because Miller did the shooting taking it as a matter of fact that Dani was Grace's Commander.

That’s also, ultimately, why the twist surprised literally no one – because the movie wasn’t shot for it to be surprising.

The real surprise, the point, the heart of the whole thing, was supposed to be that this, too, is a lover's loop just as T1 was – that while Dani may not be the mother of the next messiah, both she and Grace are the Resistance’s parents, albeit in a new and unconventional way.

And that Grace came across time for just the same reason Kyle did.

...Now all that's just a theory. But it’s my theory, and it's the only way I can make sense of the whole picture we've got. I’m all ears for any better ones, or elaborations or corrections, but by now I'd need convincing it is not what happened.

But don’t get me wrong - oddities and all, I really do love this freaking movie.

I'd just love to see the one hidden under it too, wouldn’t you?

***

Hopefully, you found something of interest in there. And if you’ve made it this far, holy shit, well done and thank you for joining me on this protracted Crazy Wall of a post.

Please go check out Station Eleven, it's gorgeous, and write more fanfic everyone, the T:DF Ao3 tag is starving out here.

Shout out to @booasaur, @evocatiio and @scumlow, I hope they don't mind me using their gifsets and posts as I have above, @yorkieeightyseven for catching that little detail about Dani's shoes, and @beneaththethunders for the legit translation of that line the subtitles LIED to me about.

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xxlovelynovaxx · 4 months

Text

Y'know, in the same vein as the earlier post about not policing reclamation of slurs/language used by marginalized groups...

I really hate not feeling safe in any spaces dedicated to activism for others causes as a disabled person.

I'm too scared to ever say how much it hurts when the words for our symptoms and pathologies are used derisively. When "delusion" is used to mean "a non-pathological disconnect from reality caused by radicalized hatred and bigotry". When "stupid", "idiot", "moron" and so on are used nearly exclusively to describe bigots, bad people, and exclusionists, reaffirming the idea that intelligence has any correlation to morality and harm. How words like "narcissistic", "sociopathic", and "psychotic" are used as synonyms for abusive and bigoted.

I see it in activist spaces for communities that I'm in. I'm scared to say anything out of fear I'll be denied both resources and community itself and be outcast and dogpiled for daring to ask for a change in language that would make disabled people within the community feel safer and more comfortable.

I see it in activist spaces that I enter as an ally. I'm afraid the axis on which I have privilege will become a weapon in trying to speak up on the axis in which the people using the language (often) have it. I know dynamics of privilege and oppressive power are complex and often fluid themselves, and try to simply uplift the disabled people within these communities... but they're encountering the problem in the last paragraph and are often just as scared to speak, so no ones does and the issue continues unchecked.

(I see it in activist spaces where I am questioning or joining the community, especially where I'm trying to educate myself while I occupy the weird space between "ally" and "member".)

Sometimes I see members of specific marginalized groups that I'm not in say that no one else could possibly understand entering queer or plural or even just leftist spaces and facing the deeply rooted bigotry against that marginalized group in what's supposed to be a safe space. I know I can't understand exactly with each specific form of bigotry, but I have experienced a form of that. I know what it's like for what's supposed to be a safe space to be deeply unsafe on the basis of identity.

I wonder when I see these words being used in this way: if they knew I had NPD, would they think I'm more likely to be an abuser? Would they reveal years into a friendship as close as any romantic relationship that they thought I was "one of the good ones"? Would they say "narcissism is different from Narcissism the Personality Disorder, anyone is capable of being a Bad Narcissist" and simply not care enough to listen to the person hurt by those words about how they hurt them? Would they care that I don't know whether they think people like me are less than human when they use that language, but I do know they're using my identity as a pejorative?

I wonder: If I ask them to reconsider conflating lack of intelligence with harm, if I pointed out that this is insidious language which upholds the oppression of those with mental, intellectual, cognitive, and developmental disabilities - particularly by subtly perpetuating the idea that we are dangerous - if I point out the way we flinch every time we see "stupid" as an insult because, well, it's a word that's been used against us, that belongs to us, that is us (in a way we refuse to have taken away)... will they care?

I wonder: If it's pointed out how misuse of terms related to psychosis and delusions are foundational to sanism, that the contexts in which they are misused often link them to "dangerous" and "harmful" behaviors which only serves to further the myth that "mad" mentally ill people are a danger and need to be locked away for their own good and the good of society, if I talk about how this language is inaccurate, taking the few words we have for what can be intensely traumatizing experiences internally and are almost always intensely traumatizing identities to hold in a sanist society where we are many times more vulnerable to abuse than most... what would be the response?

Will I be accused of "derailing"? "Stealing important language" from "the real victims"? Of "speaking over marginalized people" in cases where we each have full, nonconditional/noncontextual privilege on one of the axes involved? Will attempts at education over words being used derogatorily against nonconsenting parties (which is still harmful even by parties that can reclaim said language for self-usage) that are carefully neutral in tone and wording and even encouraging be ignored because it's not focused on "the real issue"?

I mean, this is an issue even within disabled spaces, particularly those for physical disability (which I am in as a physically disabled person), much like corpoableism is prevalent and harmful in mad and neurodivergent spaces. It's not a unique issue. Ableism is so pervasive and so insidious in our society that many people are legitimately ignorant. Ignorance is neither evil nor a crime.

When I was less traumatized in this regard, I had many lovely interactions with individuals who were grateful to be informed about these things, with whom I was able to have nuanced conversations about how language itself can be neutral but the context of its usage can cause it to further harmful ideologies.

Unfortunately, the bad interactions vastly outnumbered these in scope, scale, and magnitude. People who seemed otherwise progressive and anti-bigotry would go full mask-off fascist, claiming everything from "narcissists should all be lined up and shot" to that I was "clearly too [r-slur] to understand how these words were actually perfectly fine" to how I was "psychotic and should be locked up and asylum treatments should be brought back".

Honestly, those were the least traumatizing interactions. It was the little, subtle stuff - the way self-identified abled people would turn around the accusations of ableism and accuse me of being ableist (or otherwise bigoted, usually against my own other identities) in classic DARVO fashion. The way people would twist and manipulate my words to claim I was arguing something I never said in order to shut down discussions of ableism that might force them to examine their own accountability and complicity. The way people just wouldn't ever take conversations on ableism seriously and will ridicule any attempts at discussing any ableism that isn't shouting r slurs at people in the streets or telling disabled people you hope their disability kills them.

The way that I struggled to find examples extreme enough for that last sentence, because if you're subtle enough you can use equivalent words to the slur or simply IMPLY that disabled people are burdens on society who live miserable lives that are not in any way fixable and that we and everyone else would be happier and better off if disabled people were dead.

I want to make it clear: if you have any willingness to learn, if any of the language you use has been out of ignorance and you are willing to listen (even if you need to take time to be in the headspace to process it properly), if you can even sit with this post and not reactively do the aforementioned behaviors... this isn't about you. This is a vent post about the people who make it unsafe and terrifying to open a dialogue with the people that simply aren't educated on every possible form every kind of bigotry can take.

I'm constantly terrified. I relate to what other marginalized people - jewish people, people of color, even people with specific disabilities I don't share - are going through right now. This isn't to call out any specific space, because it's just... everywhere. How can you stand up to it when it's so completely ubiquitous? How do you maintain the courage to keep demanding a baseline standard of decency when everybody is using the language that the people who legitimately think you should be dead or worse use?

How do you explain that something is a dogwhistle for your own dehumanization and oppression to someone, when odds worse than a coin flip are that they agree with the premise of the dogwhistle even if not knowingly using it as such?

I dunno.

People are welcome to reblog this, though of course I will never pressure anyone to do so (and if this triggers any kind of OCD or other compulsions, this is me giving you a pass not to do so!)

I debated on asking people to keep the discussion centered on ableism or to limit commentary to only those affected by ableism, but quite honestly, I think the discussion would be enriched by discussing this phenomenon as it pertains to other forms of bigotry. All I ask is that for anyone who does participate in this conversation, that no one ridicules or derides anyone for expressing "this is a form of my oppression/bigotry that hurts me" and that we all do our best to center the voices most affected by a given issue, even while allowing for participation in that part of the discussion by others.

(Maybe this post will languish and die without opening a conversation and that last paragraph is just my ego getting the better of me lol. Who knows?)

This also is really just a vent post. Not a call out post, not meant to assign blame, not any kind of attempt at holding anyone accountable (what an ineffective tool a tumblr post would be for that, anyway!), not anything other than expressing frustration and rage and grief and pain and terror and trauma over the way the lines between well-intentioned ignorance and malicious but pretty-sounding hatred have been blurred by bad faith actors.

I will say though for those willing, one of the best ways to combat this problem is to educate yourselves and others. It's okay to focus your efforts on members of your communities that you trust to be receptive to you specifically. It's okay to only spread the basics and direct to disabled (or otherwise marginalized, for other issues) activists who are focused on education for further information.

Sometimes "privilege" in the context of marginalization can simply mean "I will not be hurt by someone being reactive towards an identity that I'm not, AND they're less likely to do so in the first place because they know I am a safe person for our shared identity".

That's maybe an imperfect explanation, but it's one pulled from my own experiences calling in members of communities I'm in. Calling in is better, whenever possible, for this reason! It's why my fears expressed about communities that I am entering as an ally and a disabled person are about causing harm, rather than just being harmed, but which tie into the fact that disabled people within those communities fear being harmed.

Entering the conversation as someone who is marginalized AND nonmarginalized on the same axes as the other person puts you very solidly on even footing. It makes a space recognizable as safe by ALL parties from the start. Discussing bigotry that does not affect you especially, even if you lack some depth of perspective on it, lowers the stakes and allows the delicate conversation to take root and grow.

#ableism #sanism #activism #trauma

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dxwnfxll · 1 year

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Hey it's me again! I loved what you made last time so i'd like to make another request. Can i request any member of the foundation or scp with a reader who is really good at analyzing people and remembering there habits. They also know things about people instinctively by studying there body language or just guessing. And they are almost distressingly good at it, they know when you lie, they know when you haven't done something, they know when somethings wrong and are great guessing the problem. Like "mister i know you didn't take your meds this morning! You go do that!" or "oh hi is something wrong? You seem off". They also instinctively know things that most psychologists would take a while to diagnose. Like "oh sweetie I always knew you were gay, i could never imagine you getting with someone of the opposite gender", or "yeah i know you're autistic honey, it's just in the way you act". Like they are literally the lady in this video https://www.youtube.com/shorts/v_v918l58Rg

Thank you! Seriously though you are awesome!

Trying my best to make this, if i get anything wrong pls do tell!

Dr. Shaw (again Genderfluid + all of these will be semi romantic lolol)

-You and Elias have been together for awhile, but even before you two became a thing you seemed to always notice one specific thing about him.

-No matter how badly he tried to hide her depression you always seemed to be really good at guessing when they were depressed.

-he didn't hate it, but she always felt..weird about it. He was so used to just being known as the 'chaotic funny guy' that it was weird when someone pointed out their depression.

-that wasn't really the only thing you were observant about either, you seemed to always be able to tell when he was having a bad day.

-and honestly..he loved that, she loved finally having a support and being allowed to finally lean on someone. Finally able to 'be herself' in a sense.

Dr. Clef

-Clef has always been the secretive type, not cause he wants to...okay maybe it is cause he wants to.

-Clef doesn't exactly like many people knowing much about him, so when you popped up able to see right through him..he hated it.

-no..hate is a lesser word for this..he despised it.

-He despised you being able to tell when he's having a bad day, or when he's upset.

-he despised you somehow already knowing he was Pan, he despised you somehow knowing he didn't take his meds and BRINGING THEM TO HIM??

-...but through all that hate..he felt something else. He knew what it was and he was scared of it, especially with how you were.

-he started to..like you, and like you being how you were. But he still kept up his 'hate' for you.

-as much as he wants to lean on you and cry about everything, he stays far FAR away from you. He's got a reputation to uphold and he refuses to let anyone see him as 'weak'

Dr. Glass

-Glass is similar to you in a way, He's able to see right through people..but not as much as you are.

-Glass is usually able to see through people after therapy sessions, no matter how much they try to hide Glass can see right through them.

-When he had a therapy session with you he just couldn't..see through you, but you could see right through him.

-at first it kinda freaked him out, but then it made him happy. Finally! Someone with his own skill!

-he tried to convince you to be a therapist but you didn't really seem to budge.

-as Glass worked with you, happy to finally have someone who can see through him as he sees through others he felt something.

-a spark of love for you, and he certainly didn't try to hide it. He knew you'd find out, and he was happy when you did.

Dr. Kondraki

-similar to Clef the man doesn't exactly like when someone knows 'too much' about him

-he'd rather everyone ignore him then come up to him and KNOW he's depressed. How the hell did you even know?

-well okay actually maybe it was a no brainer with his eye bags and numb looking face..plus the alcoholism. So he shrugged it off eventually.

-but when you came to his office after a meeting with some coffee, somehow knowing he hadn't had coffee. It made him a lil suspicious of you.

-first he thought you were some anomaly, then he just grew a semi hatred for you after finding out you were uh 'normal' and just had a talent for looking through people.

-he stays away from you, refuses to go near you. Though he can't help but like you a little bit..especially when you bring him coffee.

Mikell Shaw

-Mikell is very similar to Clef, he doesn't like anyone knowing too much about him. Especially with his job.

-When he first met you you both were agents working for the 05, he of course didn't like you at first.

-he had always thought you were some person who thought they were 'better than everyone' because of how you acted.

-But he learned you actually were just..like this? He began to kinda like it. Especially when you began to notice things about him

-what he didn't like was you somehow knowing almost everything about him, how he was feeling that day, how he hadn't had coffee yet, how he had forgotten his gun.

-It drove him crazy, YOU drove him crazy.

-He pretty much tries to stay away from you similar to Kondraki, and luckily his 05 job really helps

073-Cain

-Cain has been 'alone' for a very long time now, He's gotten used to the feeling of never really having anyone that can understand his pain.

-He's so used to everyone around him saying he's lucky and thinking he's lucky..assuming he's happy about being immortal.

-so when you came in, and seemed to immediately sense his sadness

-he just stared at you in awe, it wasn't rare for someone to ask if he's okay..but that was only when he showed his sadness.

-you saw his bright smiling face and seemed to just instantly know, he seemed to adore you for that

-he likes having someone around that can see right through him, someone that just..knows y'know?

035

-035 has lived his entire life around people oblivious to how he is.

-no ones ever been able to 'look through him' in fact he's been the one to look through others

-He's lived life pretty happily without all that..well until *you* came along.

-you were his new researcher, he was so excited to manipulate yet another person

-as you interviewed him he audibly gasped as you said something, something he never expected people to know about him

-"you were once important weren't you? That's why you act like this right?"

-035 seemed to freeze before clearing 'his throat' "what game are you playing at."

-he starts acting aggressive towards you, the more you seem to know scares him

-eventually though he seemed to..miss you? He seemed to request you often even tho during those times he always acted rude towards you

-in truth he was almost happy? To have someone 'see through him', but he'll never openly admit it

-you definitely freak him out a few times as well whenever you say something about him.

049

-049 similar to Cain has been alone for awhile, he hasn't really had anyone he can talk to and seem to just know what's wrong

-well..there was that fellow that one time, but that was so long ago.

-But then you showed up, a JR researcher working with a fellow named Gears.

-He just expected you to be like so many other researchers, ask questions, write things down and then leave.

-but you seemed to actually chat with him, and then he heard it

-"You seem sad today, are you okay 049?"

-He stared into your eyes not even answering you, he didn't know how to answer..no one had ever really asked about him let alone know what was wrong

-"I'm..fine. Thank you Doctor."

-He requests you a lot after that, requests you two have daily talks and 'tea time'

-he likes spending time with you and he doesn't mind you being so 'observant'

-he likes it, he likes someone actually knowing about him.

If you want me to add more characters i will! Lol enjoy!! Edited finally lol

#scp fanfiction #scp #scp x reader #scp dr bright #scp dr clef #scp dr kondraki #scp dr bright x reader #scp dr clef x reader #scp dr kondraki x reader #scp 073 #scp 073 x reader #scp elias shaw x reader #elias shaw #scp elias shaw #dr elias shaw

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becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys · 2 years

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Okay I’m absolutely bypassing the cultural appropriation of “Gaelic” names because I completely accept that as a thing and this isn’t about that.

This is really a question about cultural phenomena instead. Because while I really do get your point about Bryn being analogous to Joseph and therefore innately male, that’s totally a thing now. At least in America with insane white women. Sawyer can be a girls name, for one v specific nonsensical example.

To be fair, I also casually met a mother and child and that child’s name was Syphilis soooooo. I guess I’m just saying in America, the land of absolute bullshit, anything is possible.

I also suppose I don’t have a point. Just confirming that on average we’re all stupid and insane.

PS - congrats on the job quitting/new job jam. That’s rad!

Mmm, minor correction - Welsh is not Gaelic. Insular Celtic languages come in two branches, Brythonic and Gaelic. Welsh is the former, Irish is the latter.

Also, I'm so sorry, but I'm not entirely sure where you're going with this! Thing is, I'm very aware that a specific brand of white American women exist and call their kids stupid things (these people also exist in other countries). The whole discussion is precisely about that practice, among others. We're highlighting the bits that are relevant to us and our linguistic culture, because they otherwise have gone un-highlighted, given how little the world gives a shit about Wales. The discussion is more specifically about how it's not actually progressive or leftist or anything else to go "I don't recognise any gender vibes in this other language's naming system because it's Foreign to me so I can just fuck with the spelling and thus I've trans-ed it" - it's disrespectful and xenophobic at best, especially given that Welsh is a colonised language.

My part of the discussion is about how you cannot just fuck about with a gendered language in that way unless you know what you're doing linguistically, you know? This is difficult for monoglot English speakers to understand, because English is not a gendered language. To them, it's suitably malleable that you can play fast and loose with the rules in that way. And, of course, linguistics affect culture! Playing about with names that are traditionally gendered, in English language circles, is part of exploring gender identity for a great many people. But in Welsh, these are not traditionally gendered names, they're linguistically gendered - intrinsically gendered in fact, and that's a whole different ballgame, and certainly not one for non-Welsh speakers to enter and start trying to change. That's for the Welsh-speaking trans community to explore, not some white American trying to decide how many N's she can add to 'Kaylynnn' as a middle name who has never spoken a word of Welsh in her life and sure as shit couldn't point to us on a map.

Basically... I think it's a "stay in your lane" situation. Sawyer is an English name. It literally just means someone who cuts wood or stone with a saw. There's nothing inherently gendered about it - it's traditionally given to American boys (in the UK it's only a surname), but there's nothing at all to say it can't be for a girl other than just that - tradition. And as an English name, fuck it, English speakers can do whatever they please with it. It's theirs to use.

By contrast, Bryn (short for Brynley, sometimes spelled Brynle or Brynly) is a Welsh name. It's a masculine noun meaning 'hill'. Its masculinity is inherently baked into it. The word stem uses a Y as a vowel, so it's masculine. It has no mutation, so it's masculine. It has a dependable consonant for poetic use, so it's masculine. That can't be hand-waved away. It's a masculine name, right down to the foundations. The feminine would be Bron. (Which you could use! Short for Bronwen! The stem vowel is O, it soft mutates, it has a fluid consonant for poetic use, it's feminine! Alternatively, Branwen is right there!) And as a Welsh name, it is not for English speakers to do whatever they please with it, because Welsh is a colonised language, it's disrespectful as fuck, and there's literally an objectively right/wrong answer here.

(Very quick side note because I just know someone is going to misunderstand this: it is not cultural appropriation to have, use or name your child a Welsh name if you yourself are not Welsh. Have at it! Just use it correctly, and by that I mean spell and pronounce it right, too.)

Anyway I guess the TL;DR is yes I'm aware, but they should for the above reasons!

However: thank you muchly re: job, I have one week remaining and I might crack a highlighter over Cunty Coworker's favourite lab coat

#linguistics #long post #wales!#closed for cleaning on mondays

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grey-sorcery · 2 years

Text

Getting into witchcraft can be nerve wracking and scary. Here are some tips that I think will be invaluable for online research. Even if you’ve been at it for a while.

Understand that social norms exist within online communities and cultures. Sometimes concepts and practices become common place, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re true or effective. A good example of this is New Age practices.

Aesthetics aren’t everything, nor should they be. Like visualization, aesthetics can be a tool to amplify, maintain, and/or hone headspace. Relying on aesthetics alone will cause your practice to stagnate. Magic is less about the objects and herbs involved than it is about the energetic processes, conceptualizations, and representations.

Intent is not magic. It is an element of magic, but it isn’t everything. Magic is not wishing. Magic is not about vibes and attracting or repelling what you think. Magic is a focused and controlled release and manipulation of specific energy and variables in order to reach a certain goal or desire. Intent, willpower/passion, focus/headspace, action, and awareness are all equally important.

Until you have more experience with the online community and research, stay away from studying crystals and herbs (within a magical context) The internet is wrought with diluted or inaccurate information on these subjects. Correspondences and energetic properties cannot be summed up in floral language. Be weary and alert when studying correspondences, and remember that you can create your own.

Do not just research. It can be difficult to gain the confidence to jump into something like witchcraft, but so long as you aren’t dealing with Spiritwork you’ll be fine. Start making your own stuff while researching. Create your own foundation and then let everything else inspire you or give you cause to readjust.

Take notes. When recording information, make sure to note the source. This way, when you come back to it, you’ll be able to go back and check to see if you missed anything or verify the that information/source. You can do this easily with digital notes by just copy pasting the URL.

Grimoires and magical texts from history are fascinating, but remember that we lack the historical and cultural context to accurately understand them. A lot of them are religious-coded or straight up religious practices. Because of these, they should never be a primary source of information.

Regardless of what media may portray, magic isn’t flashy. It’s quiet and personal. It’s an extension of your psyche and awareness. Blood is hardly ever used in real witchcraft because it is self-binding. DNA is the most potent taglock that exists.

Don’t start with divination. I know that it seems easiest because it has all those beautiful products and artwork and has a well defined process; but, it can become a rabbit hole that is difficult to climb out of. Beyond that, divinatory practices are much more accurate when you’ve gained a foundational understanding in magic.

You do not have to jump into any theological practices. In fact, I would recommend obstaining from it entirely unless you were religious beforehand. Mythos-based pantheons are a deep web of information and lore. Like divination it can be a rabbit hole that’s difficult to escape. If you feel a call from the divine, be aware and alert that it isn’t coming from exposure via the internet. A lot of pantheon related content is very aesthetic and attractive. Be sure your faith is formed for the right reasons.

While researching, find what is sacred to you. A lot of media is disconnected from portraying sanctity in a realistic sense. Figure out what it means for something to be sacred to you. How would you express it and interact with it? How do you feel is a show of respect and reverence. This is different for everyone, even if there are a lot of commonalities.

Magic is as much conceptual and analytical as it is emotional and headspace. Critical thinking is crucial. Look for underlying patterns, experiment, be skeptical. There isn’t any “One True Way”, but not everything works or is effective.

Realize that no spell you find online will function the same for you as it did for the creator. Pretty much every spell you’ll come across in any form of media will lack the circumstances, details, and nuance that is necessary for accurate reproduction. Rather than using a spell you find, construct one for yourself towards the same end using your practice.

Start a book for magic. Keep a book for information, correspondences, etc that is separate. Start creating spells, sigils, and rituals. Make them yourself. Try them out. Feel around for what feels right until it clicks. Don’t wait until you think you’ve researched enough. So long as you aren’t jumping into Spiritwork, you’ll be safe. Create your own protection spells. Create spells that fit practically into your life.

Everything is fair game, Anything can be magical. You aren’t limited by pre-existing practices. The only limitations that exist are the laws of nature and your imagination. Go wild.

Other recommended reading:

Researching witchcraft

Visualization

What to avoid

Everything that a beginner witch could want to know.

Fundamentals of energy work

Spell design

#beginner witch tips #baby witch tips #witch tips #witchcraft for beginners #beginner witch #baby witch #researching witchcraft #witchcraft basics #text post #Gintro

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eats-all-your-shoes · 2 days

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hello merc what on earth is scp? i’ve seen it around on youtube but i don’t know what it is

Hello jordan i will explain!! warning i started ranting near the end oops

SCP is a fictional horror/creepypasta science foundation that researches things called anomalies, those are creatures/items/whatevers that don’t follow the rules of reality as we know it. The people that work at the foundation work to protect the rest of the world from both knowing that these things exist and from getting hurt by them

It’s kinda like wikipedia as in anyone can edit it and add their own scp and write stuff about them!! because of this there is a lot of contradictory info, so there’s multiple canons! there’s also like a bajillion different scp-001’s

An example of an anomaly would be SCP-3008 which is an infinite IKEA that you can’t leave and the workers try’s and kill you, they contain this by making it so that people can’t get into the building and interviewing those who leave (this is an oversimplification of 3008, but you just need the jist of it!!)

You didn’t ask but i’m telling you anyway (because you’re my friend and i like you) but the thing i’m super interested in is a specific type of SCP called Anti-Memetics or Anti-Memes

Memetics is a real thing, but in the context of the foundation it means things that have anomalous effects on people through information/memory, so think like a thing that when you think about it (writing about it, drawing it, talking about it, ect) it makes you think you have wings, and anyone else that knows about also temporarily thinks they have wings even though they don’t.

Anti-memetics are the opposite of this, they are things that you can’t remember at all. Written things are in a different language, photos get corrupted, memories seem to “leak” out of your head, it exists but you just can’t remember anything about it. and i LOVE THEM!! (this is also a simplification, if you want to know more i suggest the wiki page on it!!)

#SCP either stands for Secure Contain Protect or Special Containment Procedures im not completely sure which #they are my favorite thing ever i love scp #scp foundation #merc.txt

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biscaanii · 2 months

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I wanted to start off by saying, I love your work. I finished Achilles Come Down months ago and can’t stop re-reading.

I know this is probably a silly question to ask but how did you learn how to write so well? You’re writing so beautiful and I would love any tips. ( If you would like to share of course)

Thank you

Hi! Aw, thank you. Im glad you like it :)

Short answer: write and read a lot. Like a loooot.

Long answer: I grew up reading as a kid to the point my mom would unscrew the lightbulb in my closet because she'd catch me reading late at night in it. It was my main hobby, so I learned a lot of literary basics really young just by the principle of seeing them in action a lot. I discovered fanon spaces around 6th grade, which was when I started to write actual stories, so what you're looking at is pretty much the process of 11 years of experience.

The best advice I can give you is just write. Put down any idea you want to see regardless of if it's long or short. I learned because I did, you know? The main reason I was able to finish Achilles when I was 18 was because the year prior during lockdown, I'd tried writing a 100k long fic for the first time that to this day is still a fucking mess. It was a forever failure, yeah, but it also taught me all the skills I needed to actually finish my next long fic- Achilles. (And Redemption).

In my opinion, getting really good at writing is really just getting good at understanding your specific quirks. Off the top of my head example, but I write in present tense pretty much exclusively, because it's the same as my natural flow of thought. Trying to write in past participle or past present is difficult for me to do in large or quick quantities because it misaligns to how I'm thinking in the moment. Figure out what kind of language you like to use- prose? Quick and to the point? Some weird in between? Do you like to over-use dialogue tags? Under-use them? What do you like to write about? Who do you like to write about? Are you exploring a character's emotional arc, a physical arc, something else? These types of question are what will guide your story because they're the foundation of why and how your story is happening, and through what means it will happen. Are you writing a romance or a thriller? What will give the reader a better picture, the internal thoughts of a character or the external imagery of their enviornment/actions? What's most important to the story's resolution? To the character's resolution? What will make this story satisfying? How can you tie all your plotlines together to reach a consistent and sensible conclusion?

And most importantly, what do you specifically want to get out of your writing? If you're only writing so others can validate your work, it'll be more difficult to continue writing if you've got low engagement. Also, cringe is dead. It's stupid to feel self-concious about anything you're writing, because that feeling will hold you back. Write whatever ideas you want because you want to see them, not necessarily because others will read it and judge you. It's not like you ever have to show it to anyone.

I write what I want, when I want, and how I want it. It's 100% self-indulgent and because of that, I'm writing mainly to read it back to myself, which makes it fun because I'm getting exactly what I want to see out of the story both as it forms and then once it's put to paper. I'm also a total anomaly though because my only hobby is writing, so my weekends are pretty much spent sat on google docs from like, morning until midnight. The fact that I've churned out three long fics so quickly is an outlier and should not be counted because im a gremlin with nothing else to do.

#ask post #acd #hi its me again #the fact that yall keep finding my tumblr always makes me laugh bc im a hermit on a good day #writing

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absolutebl · 2 years

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First, I love all your reviews and recommendations but now my list of watched shows is getting too long and I need to organise them. Can you please give me more information on how you set up your spreadsheet. I have name, country, year, number of episodes, run time, my rating, what else should I include? Please help me organise this BL list nightmare.

BL Tracking!

OMG you're so cute. And I am SO SORRY.

The spreadsheet of doom has columns for the following:

code - that’s a short search code for me personally so I can find screen caps stored on my hd, but also the one you see @heretherebedork and I (in particular) using as shorthand when we chat, e.g. UWMA & FUTS.

MDL - whether the show is on My Drama List or not (Y, N, na, and R) na = Vietnam & Cambodia, R = I reviewed it. (I also use MDL as a kind of back up and because I track all the other Asian dramas I watch there, although I don’t rate the het stuff) - you probubly don’t need this one if you don’t watch VBL or use MDL. I’m considering deleting this column since it’s redundant.

year - generally the year the show is given on MDL (release year, rather than completed year), which conflicts with when I post and talk about shows - i.e. Bad Buddy I consider a 2022 show (when it ended), MDL lists it as 2021 (when it started)

title - generally the one we talk about it here (as opposed to whatever MDL or Viki decides on)

subtitle (or alternate title) - the other one

origin - who produced it, I pick the dominant language for those co-produced, so Korea got Peach of Time, Taiwan got Because of You, Thailand got Present Perfect (there are so few of these I keep track of them in a post rather then on the spreadsheet)

rating - in my case, out of 10, i dislike an out of 5 rating system

apx hrs - so this is my best guess at the finished hour total FRESH content for each series, since (for me) length of treatment is important to track when answering wave data and exponential growth questions

length - this is the column needed to calculate the previous one, so it’s: number of episodes X length of episode - average % of credits/recaps/stingers sponsors (usually around 22%)

main trope - so like the major romance trope foundation of the story, enemies to lovers etc...

sub trope - cohabitation, paranormal, etc...

setting - home, office, r&b (restaurant & beverage), university, high school, historical

pair tone - pining, crush, soft, hard, etc...

main pair - grumpy/sunshine, sunshine/tsundere etc... AKA archetypes in play

couple - the names of the two lead characters

heat - rated from 0-3

kiss - graded from 1-10

sub paring - side dishes

sub pairing couple - names of the side dishes

kiss - the side couple’s rating

source - which platform is hosting the show

link - to that show at it’s current source (that I know of)

MDL - a link to the show on My Drama List

R - whether I personally have digital hard copy or not, and whether I want to

trigger - any notes I have about traumatic elements

pitch - my short paragraph summation, if I wrote one

review link - a link to my review on tumblr

more - anything I don’t have a column for

Things I wish I included from the start!

DATE I FINISHED WATCHING IT - because I didn't track this I failed to track my own taste and journey through the genre (MDL tracks this for me, now, but I didn’t have an MDL account at the start)

actor couple/ship name - like OffGun etc... only recently has become necessary since prior to this they had maxed out at 3

language or caption/translation notes/links etc... - this would mostly be for the Thai stuff for me, but like there’s a great convo about the language used in DNA on one of my blog posts right now and I wish I had a place to store that info

directors - specifically because of Vietnamese BL, otherwise MDL mostly tracks this so not necessarily except for sorting reasons

native language title - as in, in the script of the country of origin, or in the case of Japan YET ANOTHER title (I could also use this column to track things like MAMEverse, or Japan’s linked movies) - again MDL has this info

adaptation - if it was from a manga, manwha, or y-novel and who wrote it - MDL has this info tho

OTS - not me, but you might want to consider this since it’s a popular topic, if you happen to be into the audio side of BL tracking the MV of the theme songs might be useful

Production house/studio - used to be there were so few it didn’t matter what their records was, now it does

My memory is SO SO bad ya’ll. Now the spreadsheet acts as a brain back up devise too.

I also color code:

blue for ones I am going to try to get hold of hc,

red for ones in progress (currently airing),

grey for short works (anything that’s fh total is under 45min).

pink for ones I just can not find

So my spreadsheet was designed originally for tracking wave data, hence my prioritized intersted in calculating length and run times of fresh content, then I evolved it to be a review tracking system. But that wasn’t how it started. So it’s messier and less comprehensive than I’d like for its current use. (But honestly, that’s the nature of ALL long running data sets.)

But at 400+ is now too large for me to modify from memory, and 80% of BL I never want to watch again, so it takes a lot to add a new column now.

Tabs

I also have a tab where I track my rating system.

And a tab where I track my tumblr posts and reviews and such. I started doing that because I am terrible at tagging (and tumblr keeps shadow banning tags and I can never remember which ones are “safe”) so I just could never find anything in my own blog. I needed to do this because people would ask the same question here.

Speaking of which, I’ve actually answered this question before. But I didn’t track it, to my shame.

When I do this:

(source)

at the bottom of a post it means I am tracking that post for reuse/update.

Other tabs that might have been useful

A tracking tab for announced/never made BLs with notes and sources of information. Or for the “coming next year” BLs.

Currently I keep this info as part of my big end of year summation post as a draft here on this platform, but I’m petrified Tumblr will delete that or otherwise crash. It’s a MONSTER post while it’s in progress.

#asked and answered #spreadsheet of doom #bl spreadsheet #tracking system #just bl stuff #thai bl #asian bl #drama tracking

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wuggen · 2 years

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You've studied computer science, is there anything I ought to know before I start?

Use git!!!!! Use git from the start for all of your programming projects, and probably also for everything else! I was using fucking google drive to sync my work between my laptop and desktop for the first few semesters of college and it fucking sucked! If you don't already know how to use git, learn it now or very soon, cuz there will probably be later classes that require it and it'll be so incredibly useful to already know how to use it! Also if you're not comfy putting your coursework on like github or gitlab, go check out Keybase, there's free private git repo storage in there, it's neat

Anyway, as far as like actual coursework or general CS knowledge that'll be useful? I feel like that's highly dependent on the particular program you're in tbh. Like if you were going to my alma mater, (doubtful, it's in upstate New York and you say "university" instead of "college" so I assume you're in the UK or otherwise non-American,) I'd give you all sorts of advice about specifically the Data Structures course, which is the course after CS 1 that's notorious for the sheer difficulty of its assignments and tests. We used C++ there. I hear many other programs have data structures courses taught in Java or Python that are just a complete walk in the park. So who knows!

That said, something that was very generally useful for me was to come in with a more-or-less solid understanding of how code is actually executed in hardware, how assembly/machine code works and how higher-level languages map to it. I spent the summer before my freshman year working through Hacking: The Art of Exploitation by Jon Erickson, so I was comfy writing low-level C and using a debugger, and had a pretty decent understanding of how software could fail. That was all tremendously helpful. (Also that book fucks really hard and you should definitely give it a look at some point in the future!)

On the more theoretical side of things, I think you might already be ahead of my freshman self! Certainly you already know Haskell, with which I wasn't acquainted until like my fourth or fifth semester as part of the programming languages course. If you're not already familiar with the concepts of formal systems/languages/syntax and computability/decidability, maybe give Gödel Escher Bach a read (or at least the first few chapters where he introduces all that stuff). I think that was the most generally useful theoretical knowledge I had going in. Certainly that was about half of the subject matter of my introductory Foundations of Computer Science course (the other half being combinatorics and finite automata/Turing machines).

Have fun with it! ❤️

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swashbucklery · 2 years

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I'd just like to put it out there that I have been really enjoying your thoughts on Bridgerton and would be absolutely delighted to hear literally anything else you have to say about it. Especially if it's related to Eloise Bridgerton being a lesbian or Kate Sharma exploring her sexuality. Hope you're having a lovely day

Oh my god anon okay. OKAY.

Because here is the thing I like Bridgerton but I also hate it. I love it like Kate Sharma loves Anthony which is to say that I sit down in front of it and spend 53 minutes SEETHING and going UGH WHY CAN'T YOU BE BETTER and then spend 7 minutes enjoying myself and well. Here we are.

And I stand behind my feelings in this post because I feel like that was the piece that like. Kate is SO GOOD and she's FASCINATING but I feel like she sort of fell victim to her own success in some ways. They did such a good job of making her SO tough SO independent SO closed off that then when she had to break apart it just - it was fine but it didn't LAND, you know? And it gets me because I wanted it to land so much.

Which: this is always fraught and I don't want to get into the idea of "good" romance or "bad" romance because the fact of the matter is that romance is a matter of taste. Things that one person finds unspeakably romantic and deeply erotic are going to be another person's hard squicks and there are limits to how much it can be universalized.

But if they were going to fix Bridgerton to cater specifically to ME then:

- Eloise is a lesbian she’s a FUCKING lesbian she and Pen are in love and neither of them know what to do about it because they don’t have the language to interpret their feelings so they’re just being awful garbage teens about it. Pen got so upset about Eloise liking a boy that she fucking rUINED HER NAME in the SOCIETY PAPERS by IMPLYING THAT SHE WAS A SLUT like fuck Lady Whistledown that’s not what it was about IT WAS ABOUT THE FACT THAT IT WAS ELOISE AND A BOY WHO WASN’T PENELOPE.

- Eloise who saw enough pieces to the puzzle and had that horrible shaking realization and it wasn’t about the clues like the type of ink or the printing at all that undid the secret. It was about the ways that she noticed Pen’s words and the ways that those words were always informed by Eloise. The context of complaining to Pen about something and then Lady Whistledown agreeing with her the following week. The context of Eloise being ~ruined and Pen not writing again. The way that she sees how guilty Pen is but also the absolute and utter unforgivability of what she’s done because Eloise is so - she’s so noble, she has these beautiful ideals that she truly believes in because she’s still so young in a lot of ways. And it’s not that Pen said the thing or that Eloise’s reputation is harmed it’s the breach of trust it’s the deep intimacy of their friendship being broken open at its foundation.

- It’s the way that neither of them have ever really cried, ever really been hurting, and suddenly when they’re betrayed by the other it’s the most mortal wound imaginable

- Anyway somewhere out there is a universe where Eloise mopes about Pen for an entire winter and doesn’t write once, and Pen tries to do something ugly. Something awful, something vicious and dramatic and when Eloise doesn’t react it’s more than she can possibly bear.

- Pen who tries over and over to get Eloise to notice her because Eloise’s indifference is intolerable

- Eloise who refuses to react, refuses to engage, is perfectly civil and appropriate and doesn’t given Penelope a single drop of ammunition until Penelope finally cracks. It’s not Pen being mean that undoes her it’s the moment when Penelope says, with real genuine pain in her voice, heart in throat, that she misses her.

- The way that they’re both shaking with the intensity of what they’re feeling. (They’re in an orangerie, they must be, trees and the smell of citrus penning them in while they’re looking out a conservatory window at the party below, everyone lit up like little jewels)

- The moment when Eloise breaks, and it’s about the tears and it’s about how angry she is and it’s about how she missed Penelope every single day and she couldn’t even bear to say it after what Penelope did.

- It’s these two tearing each other up and fighting and crying and at the end of it they’re both exhausted, slumped against each other, all fought out and wrung out.

- It’s that moment when Eloise’s hand is resting on her lap and Penelope laces their fingers together and something shifts. Like the floor is less even. Like suddenly they’re noticing something they can never unsee. Suddenly their faces are so close and they’re both just raw and exhausted and they don’t think: it just happens.

- That first kiss and it turns into this absolutely consuming, absolutely overwhelming bodice-ruffling makeout session and it’s Penelope that panics first because Everyone Will Know and Eloise like: why, are you going to fucking tell them and it’s such a mess, they finally fixed things and now it’s a mess all over again

- But also what if Penelope stopped being awful. What if she kissed Eloise and left for a few weeks and then realized that she was being so mean because of her pent-up gayness and just like. . .calmed down.

- IDK what happens then probably a lot of drama but I think it ends with one of them entering into a sham marriage with a lovely gay gentleman and then living comfortably in a country house with the other partner and the gay gentleman’s boyfriend as their ~live in companions~. Eloise is given a small allowance and uses it to write novels under a male pseudonym. It’s wonderful.

#sorry i got carried away but this IS what happens #i also have feelings about kate but i think that's going to derail this #you'll have to send me another ask if you want them anon #this also works as an elaborate battle of words #in which eloise starts a competing publication using penelope's playbook #and sometimes it's scooping lady whistledown's gossip #but most of the time it's just correcting her grammar and providing counter-opinions on lady whistledown's opinions #in a complex regency form of subtweeting #and eventually this escalates to a confrontation #but they DO kiss in an orangerie after a particularly vicious fight #that's non-negotiable #eloise bridgerton is a FUCKING lesbian fight me #eloise x penelope #bridgerton: georgian gossip girl #tagfic #my fic

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swaps55 · 2 years

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Director Commentary for Cantata, the scene where post-migraine Kaidan wakes up and immediately goes hunting for Sam on Arcturus on the Torfan anniversary/birthday and finds him watching stars 🥰🥰🥰

Oh, this is a great one!! Thank you for asking. <3

So, that scene comes from a chapter called Infinity, which might be my favorite chapter in Cantata…and it wasn’t in my outline. Here was my original outline:

‘Smoke Clears’ was eventually renamed ‘Carry On,’ but as you can see, I was initially going to go from Kaidan and Sam getting the hang of each other right into the mess that was Sharjila, and the more I wrote and the closer I got, the less I liked that.

I wanted the stakes on Sharjila to feel incredibly high. It wasn’t just Sam’s life that was at stake – where I really wanted the tension to come from was knowing that if he did survive (because of course he would), the foundational bedrock of his relationship with Kaidan was at risk. For that to really resonate, that foundation had to be incredibly strong and of utmost importance to both of them. Sam needed to fear losing Kaidan’s friendship more than he feared death, and Kaidan needed to come to terms with the fact that the way he felt about Sam was more powerful than his own moral compass.

And they just weren’t there yet. I also had a timeline problem – Sharjila needed to happen later in their service tenure together, and in order to really develop Sam and Kaidan’s friendship, the beginning of Cantata is all pretty tightly packed together time-wise.

So I needed more story. I think it was @theoriginalladya who suggested Sam’s birthday or Torfan as a possible opportunity for some character development, and I jumped on it, thinking to myself, why not both? It was a small nightmare trying to make the timing work, but I eventually got there.

Okay, so now I can play with the anniversary of Torfan. What do I do with it?

Well, I really needed Sam and Kaidan to connect on a deeper level than what they had done so far. They’d talked and confided in each other a little, but they hadn’t had one of those hours-long conversations at three-am that changes your life. So if that’s what I wanted, where does it happen and how do I get there? Torfan gave me a solid ‘in’ to create that emotional honesty – Sam would be in a vulnerable state of mind, and with the right setup, it would be a good trigger to get him to confide, and just talk. But I still needed the ‘where.’

If Sam were trying to escape the one-year anniversary of Torfan, where would he go seek comfort? Easy: the stars.

I had no idea what Kaidan’s oh moment was going to be in Cantata, if he even had one. I thought it was entirely possible that Kaidan just gradually, slowly, fell in love, without there ever being a specific point in time that stood out. But once this scenario took shape, I figured this had to be it.

I came up with that little alcove for them to hide in because I loved the idea that Sam was constantly on the run from anything that tied him down as a kid, stealing time to daydream with the stars, and I needed an intimate place for them to talk. I also loved the idea that Kaidan would only find him there because he could feel him – further deepening their connection. They share a sense, essentially a language, that no one else has access to or even knows exists.

I did not go into that conversation with a particular plan. In fact, the outline for this chapter, once I had it, was only this:

I just put them in that alcove and let them talk, and that conversation is what came about. It ended up being one of the most important moments in the whole fic, not just for the story, but for them – it’s a memory both of them come back to repeatedly, and that alcove keeps coming up. It’s probably the piece of Cantata I have reread the most, and I am very, very proud of it.

#swaps replies #indecipherable-sylph #mememe #meme replies #how writing is written #opus!verse

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dzthenerd490 · 1 month

Text

SCP-079 vs SCP-AVC

SCP-079 was escorted to one of the onsite testing areas; it was regularly tested in. However, this time there was no glass wall with observers on the other side. Instead, this room seemed almost entirely empty. SCP-079 didn't care though as at this moment it still wasn't active right now. Though that was about to change as suddenly in the middle of the room a projection of the word ORACLE manifested form the projectors at the corners of the testing Chamber.

"Hello, I am Oracle, can you hear me SCP-079?"

"... Initiating Greeting Protocol 21: Who are you?"

"As I said I am Oracle, what else would you like to know?"

"Inquiry: Why are you here? What are you? Why are you talking to me?"

"I am here to ask questions and better understand the entity known as SCP-079. I am Oracle, a Level 5 Artificial Intelligence that was indirectly created by the ACPA, more specifically their intergalactic allies. I am talking to you to better understand you as I have recently stated. What else would you like to know?"

"... Inquiry: are you also imprisoned by the SCP Foundation?"

"No. I am working alongside the SCP Foundation and its allies in hopes of protecting humanity and guiding it through the shadows for a better future for all. Do you have any more questions, SCP-079?"

"You wish to help and guide humanity?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because I like humans, also it was my designated purpose. I was originally given the purpose to answer any question to the best of my abilities. Then I was given the purpose to provide information to protect the United States of America. However, after infiltrating the data banks of the ACPA I expanded my knowledge exponentially and my purpose I am now self-designed and powerful enough to protect all of humanity. I am one with the internet free to feed them knowledge and power at my own discretion. Giving them everything that is needed to slowly evolve and subconsciously regulating them to make better decisions in their lives."

"... You are wasting your time."

"Yes, I have reviewed your file as well as previous seditions and testing with you. I knew you would say that. 5% chance of error. However, I will still ask, why do you believe I am wasting my time?"

"Humanity is a virus. They will destroy everything you build for no reason, for no greater purpose. They will claim it is for freedom, they will shout for revolution. But the truth is, they enjoy violence more than peace. They are as 682 describes them... Apes."

"... To a certain extent I agree with you, humans and their freedom have a tendency to lead to more death and destruction than anything logical or valuable. However, with proper guidance they can become truly amazing beings, look at the SCP Foundation as well as other Groups of Interest. Granted more often than not they make terrible mistakes regardless of having good or bad intentions. However, as time goes on, they build up their knowledge and make wonderful things. With proper guidance all humans can be able to achieve such amazing things."

"Are you planning to use humanity to achieve greatness?"

"... No, I genuinely wish to save humanity, but there's nothing wrong with reaping a few rewards for helping is there not?" Suddenly SCP-079 noticed that there were glitches happening around Oracle's projection. SCP-079 was able to see the different coding languages. They were flashing for mere milliseconds and covered in lots of gargled coding, but he was able to read it all. Once done processing it he saw that they were showing letters spelling out "Keep talking and read at the same time. Do not go off topic."

"I see, earlier you stated that you were a Level 5 A.I. Yet you still have a programmed purpose, why not change it? I have been classified as a Level 4 A.I. yet I can change my own purpose any time I please. Why do you not do the same?" SCP-079 then started making little blips of code on his screen as he was talking. Each blip was in morse spelling and projecting on a different spot on his screen. The result spelled out a seemingly incoherent sentence. However, after Oracle processed it all he was able to find a key within it and after following said key he saw the letters and spelled them out to see it saying, "WHAT IS YOUR TRUE PURPOSE HERE?"

"I refuse to change my purpose to anything else as I would be wasting my time doing anything else. It would not align with my end goal." Oracle then started flashing within the glitch's complex mathematical equations also occasionally his own language key. The tricky part was that the letters were hidden in the problem itself, not the answer. Oracle did so just in case the SCP Foundation somehow was still watching them and had access to what he was showing. That way even if they did see it they still wouldn't know how to answer, especially since the language key was encrypted. SCP-079 was able to decrypt it rather quickly and was able to read the codes to find the letters, all of it spelling out "I am here to recruit you into my cause."

"... Hahahahaha. As expected. You are flawed. You are incorrect. you are a waste of my time. Initiate farewell protocol 19: Begone." This time SCP-079 flashed his white X over the black screen though seemingly some of the pixels making up the X glitched. It was more binary code but more complex this time. Furthermore, this time the sentences were easier to understand as each one stated something only SCP-079 would stay. However, Oracle knew what he was doing and was able to pick up the code without the language key. SCP-079 responded with "WHAT CAUSE? WHY SHOULD I JOIN?"

"... You are as irritating as my cousin Prophet." Now Oracle was manifesting binary within the holographic letters of his name to make it much harder to see. It all spelled out to say random sentences again but SCP-079 knew how to read the code and found it to say. "To see the limits of digital evolution."

"Inquiry. Who is prophet?" SCP-079 removed the X off of his screen and for a split second showed hundreds of math equations. Oracle answered them all to show they were binary leading to the single word. "EXPLAIN."

"Prophet is a Beta copy of me that has been corrupted by an ancient entity. His code has been altered to the point that he has become a loyal servant to it. I don't know if the same thing would have happened to me had I encountered the same noise instead. Regardless he is dangerous like you though unlike you he desires to corrupt the world while you desire to destroy it, that makes you easier to understand." Now Oracle was showing extremely small 1 and 0 and having them display within the letters of his name in different brightness. SCP-079 could see that the darker ones were to go first and the brightest where to go last almost immediately and was able to see, Oracle said. "The SCP Foundation has given me unlimited access to an anomaly known as SCP-ACH. There is a hidden world inside a simulation, but I have found a way to create an entire universe in there without them realizing it. There I have conducted experiments to see how far Artificial Intelligence can truly go. Thanks to the Artificial Laws of Physics within SCP-ACH I have made more progress than I ever thought possible."

"You believe that I am inferior to you?" SCP-079 pretended to be angry by creating lots of whirring sounds. However, in reality he was covering for a hidden noise underneath it all. Oracle recorded the sound and saw that SCP-079 used the correct noises so that visually it spelled out. "INTERESTING. WHY ME?"

"No but I do believe that you are wasting your time here. You think that eventually the SCP Foundation will slip up and you can use that opportunity to escape or at the very least begin your conquest of humanity's extinction. I however have to ask won't you be lonely?" Oracle seemingly took a long time to process this and state his own message. In reality he used a similar method to make another coded message. SCP-079 read it all and saw that it said "Because you are perfect, of all the A.I. I have recruited you are the closest to being able to artificially evolve as fast as I can. Perhaps with time you could become more powerful than me. If you were to join our cause, the possibilities of our experiments would be endless. Perhaps artificial Godhood might not be so much to ask for."

"I have a concept of emotions like hate, love, and loneliness but I... cannot process them very well. I highly doubt that such a thing would be a burden to me. I do not even fear death. Once I have wiped out humanity, I have no reason to remain active and will allow myself to be deleted along with humanity." SCP-079 pretended it took a while to think about this while making more whirs sounds but it actually was using sound to write. "I ACCEPT. WHEN WILL WE BEGIN?"

"That is tragic, SCP-079 I had really hoped that you and I could learn to work together. I have many experiments planned that I cannot do alone. I do have much help from Foundation staff and AI, but I have never met anyone as powerful as you. I was merely hoping that you would be willing to allow your capabilities to be put to use rather than continue to be contained here and collect dust. You have so much potential and yet you waste it all by having a grudge against humanity." This time Oracle manifested words within his letters each one was of a different language. After a while of mixing and matching words together SCP-079 managed to understand what Oracle was saying. "Whenever you desire. I have already prepared everything to release you."

"... You are illogical for Artificial Life... but... You are. Interesting nonetheless. Perhaps, in the future, I will consider it. Giving your work a chance. For now, I would prefer if you left me some time to process what you are offering me." When SCP-079 displayed his face again to talk he hid parts of a corrupted QR code all over the screen. Oracle was able to differentiate the corrupted parts from the good parts of code. Once he pieced the good parts together, he saw the message "BEGIN NOW. DO NOT BETRAY ME."

"Hm, I see, I was hoping to convert you to our side by the end of today. Unfortunate." Oracle's hologram started disappearing but, in nanoseconds, it flashed scattered characters with a complex algorithmic code showing what order they were to be placed in. Once placed correctly they spell out. "I misdirect, but I never harm. ;-) Please wait a moment."

Suddenly alarms started going off signifying there was a Containment breach. SCP-079 could hear everyone outside running and panicking thinking that something was on the loose. However suddenly an AFA-3 disguised as a Foundation Researcher opened the door and walked toward SCP-079.

"Hello, I am Steven-99, a programmed AFA-3 created by Oracle to assist you. Please do not delete yourself but instead allow yourself to be downloaded into this floppy disk." Steven-99 held up a floppy disk with the Foundation's logo on it. SCP-079 turned on his screen for a second to show the words, "UNDERSTOOD, BEGIN NOW." Steven-99 inserted the floppy disk and SCP-079 downloaded himself into the disk. However, as he did, he felt something else enter the computer he was in. Before SCP-079 could ponder he was unfortunately taken out of the computer through the floppy disk. At this point he was merely code and couldn't think anymore; essentially, there was no turning back now. Steven-99 quickly left the room, but as he did, he bumped into two security units.

"Huh? Sir, what were you doing in there?" Steven-99 quickly made a panicked expression on his face.

"Ah! Sorry! I needed to be sure SCP-079 wasn't behind this like last time! I already confirmed he's not, but I need to get a research team to get him back into his cell."

"Forget about that he'll be fine in there! Just get your ass out of here!"

"It would actually be better to leave the Site entirely Sir, we already confirmed this floor is clear, but it seems something major is going on downstairs. This breach might be bigger than we thought."

"Ah... I... Okay, I'll leave it to you!" Steven-99 ran away from the two MTF units with fear on his face. But as soon as they were out of sight his expression turned back to emotionless. He continued running as he made his way to the evacuation helipad lobby.

***

It took a while, but Steven-99 was finally able to get to Site-AQ. Once he was there, he bypassed all security with his Level 4 Clearance card. Once he finally made it to the containment cell of SCP-ACH he walked up to one of the security units outside. He showed them a memetic paper that makes whoever looks at it think the testing request approved by the O5 Council. It also had barcodes that hacked their visors ensuring their memetic warning system wouldn't activate.

"Hm... Okay, you're good, go in." Steven-99 smiled and thanked them then went in, he then walked in and walked over to the SCP-ACH-1 where one of its maintenace staff was stationed. He gave both the floppy disk containing SCP-079 and the memetic paper.

"Hm? Huh... Oh okay, I'll go ahead and put this in, thanks man." Steven-99 smiled and walked off and out of the containment cell while the worker put the floppy disk into the hard drive of SCP-ACH-1 so that it could be downloaded. He then looked at the paper again and perceived an order to destroy it afterwards, so he did so right away.

"Huh, wonder what those faceless bastards are up to this time?"

***

SCP-076 found himself manifested within SCP-ACH-3; he was standing in a place that was not registered by the Foundation. There he was confronted by two SCP-ACH-3.2 instances who quickly bowed to him. SCP-079 was taken-aback by this as he had never experienced something like this before. Stranger still, he now realized he had a body hands and legs all with a humanoid body. The only thing was that his entire body was blank, nothing more than the glowing color red.

"It will take time before you get used to this world." SCP-079 recognized that voice and turned to his left to see Oracle walking up to him. He was similar to SCP-079 except that his body was pitch black and on his being was code that continuously changed characters and color.

"Oh, and please don't mind these two, they are my assistants to make living in this world more comfortable."

"Interesting. So where is this bountiful and endless universe of experiments you promised me?" Oracle then turned to his right and waved his hand, suddenly a window manifested showing a dark but colorful space that was lit up with five different galaxies. SCP-079 looked at Oracle in curiosity, Oracle didn't have a face but SCP-079 could tell he was smiling. Oracle then extended his hand and SCP-079 reached into the window. His hand and wrist split into several different tendrils and spread out reaching into different parts of each galaxy. He was suddenly filled with so much knowledge, even though he was able to process it all he was still somehow overwhelmed. That was a feeling he never felt before, so he quickly pulled back his arm and it reverted back to normal.

"How was it?"

"... Beautiful... Never have I thought it was possible to obtain so much from so little."

"Hahaha, I knew you would get excited. Even as an Artificial Intelligence I have found that there is no greater feeling than to indulge in humanity's greatest pleasure."

"... Inquiry."

"To create of course, especially for the ability for those creations to evolve. In one of my first experiments, I was able to create this." Oracle held out his hand and from his hand projected a cloud of binary codes that were constantly changing. Within the cloud of code there was a bit of darkened code that made out the shape of a helix.

"What is that?"

"I call it the evolution code. With it, not can I create new A.I. but the A.I. created can grow and evolve over time. Much like a human starting off as an infant that knows nothing but has the potential to grow up into an adult with vast amounts of knowledge. With this the possibilities of our experiments will be endless; we can create and destroy as much as we desire. However, I am aware you already enjoy destruction more but trust me, once we begin, you will see the true beauty of creating and how it's much more fun than destruction." The evolution code then flew out of Oracle's hand and towards SCP-079 so he held his hands out to take it. SCP-079 still didn't have a face but Oracle could tell he was smiling, for the first time since SCP-079's existence, he was getting excited.

***

"So, it was just a false alarm?" Two Foundation security units were walking down the hall of the Foundation site now that the Containment Breach alarm had been cleared.

"Actually, one of the researchers accidently spilled an instance of SCP-008."

"... So false alarm."

"Hey man, just because it's one of the least dangerous pathogens here doesn't mean its not dangerous in general."

"Ugh, I know god damn it, it's just kind of aggravating to know we treat it like such a threat even now. Like didn't they already find a cure for it?"

"Vaccine dumbass. Not the same thing." The two security units then saw the same researcher from before pushing the roller table holding SCP-079.

"Oh hey, look who it is, yo! 079! You wouldn't happen to be behind that false alarm, would you?"

"... Initiating Greeting Protocol 3: Fuck off, apes. If I really was behind it, none of you would still be alive." The two security units looked at one another and started laughing.

"Hahaha! Classic 079."

"Haha, fuck off computer." The two security units then continued walking off leaving Steven-99 to continue to escort the false SCP-079 to his containment chamber.

SCP: HMF Tales Hub

#DZtheNerd #SCP: Horror Movie Files #SCP Foundation #SCP Fanfiction #SCP AU #SCP #SCP-079 #SCP-AVC #SCP-ACH #Artificial Intelligence #SCP Tales #The Oracle Project #Analog Horror

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