@tvvigjuice Like This One

While I get people's desire to draw parallels within the final four of Secret Life, I really feel like a lot of fanon attempts to juxtapose Gem killing Scott with Scar sparing Pearl are unfair to either Gem or Scott.

I see people imply that either Scott or Gem did something wrong in some way- either Scott unfairly pressured Gem into killing him or Gem devalued her ally by agreeing- and attribute this as the reason they lost in the end while Scar and Pearl- Pearl being 'less pushy' and Scar 'caring more' about his allies- won. The thesis seems to be that Gem made the 'wrong' choice, Scar made the 'right' one, and that's why Scar won over Gem.

Which. No.

The truth is that there was no 'choice' to be made.

At the point where Gem killed Scott, both Pearl and Scar individually had more hearts than Gem and Scott did combined (this is not an exaggeration. gem had 6 hearts, scott had 2.5, pearl had 15, and scar had 17), Scott was an easy one-shot for whoever took the first swing at him, and he had no way to regenerate health at that point. Scar chose to spare Pearl, yes, but Gem didn't "choose" to kill Scott, there was no real choice in the matter. Scott was, practically, already dead, and Gem was close enough if she didn't take the final swing (honestly, even the hearts from scott probably never would have been enough to save her).

I've said this before, but I genuinely believe that Gem and The Scotts were doomed, probably starting from the fight with Grian (who took a frankly shocking amount of health from them all things considered). That fight just spread them too thin, took too much of their health. Impulse died shortly after, and what health Gem and Scott did have was whittled away fighting a team twice their size. Gem and The Scotts were a powerful and competent team with ample resources, but they took a hit the mechanics of the game wouldn't let them recover from, and everything from that point was them desperately fighting against the odds trying to get one of them to the end, even if they must have known how bleak those odds were.

People have called it poetic. 'Gem lost because she didn't value her ally enough, Gem ironically died to a 2v1 after killing the one who would have fought beside her, funny that she's so bitter about the 2v1 when she 'chose' to kill her teammate while Scott didn't, etc. '

And it drives me insane because Gem didn't choose to kill Scott out of some callous desire for an advantage, Gem killed Scott because the latter half of their finale was a slow steadily worsening case study in helplessness and Scott gave Gem everything as an act of love, in the desperate hope that she could find a way despite the odds, (only for it all to be wasted, because it was two against one, and they didn't give gem the chance, and of course that left her bitter)

I'm just so insane about this.

Random linguistic worldbuilding: A language with six sets of pronouns, which are set by one's current state of existence. There's a separate pronoun for people who are alive, people who are dead, and potential future people who are yet to be born, and the ambiguous ones of "may or may not be alive or aleady dead", "may or may not have even been born yet", and the ultimate general/ambiguous all-covering one that covers all ambiguous states.

The culture has a specific defined term for that tragic span of time when a widow keeps accidentally referring to their spouse with living pronouns. New parents-to-be dropping the happy surprise news of a pregnancy by referring to their future child with the "is yet to be born" pronoun instead of a more ambiguous one and waiting for the "wait what did you just say?" reactions.

Someone jokingly referring to themselves with the dead person pronouns just to highlight how horrible their current hangover is. A notorious aspiring ladies' man who keeps trying to pursue women in their 20s despite of approaching middle age fails to notice the insult when someone asks him when he's planning to get married, and uses the pronoun that implies that his ideal future bride may not even be born yet.

A mother whose young adult child just moved away from home for the first time, who continues to dramatically refer to their child with "may or may not be already dead" until the aforementioned child replies to her on facebook like "ma stop telling people I'm dead" and having her respond with "well how could I possibly know that when you don't even write to us? >:,C"

Hold on okay I’m making a post about this

I’m just gonna more or less copy-past what I sent in discord

but

I’ve got a theory abt the whole invisibility thing tying into watcher/canary lore

He’s not the canary anymore bc he’s mastered the ability to go unseen by Them this season.

But he’s always had the ability. He’s just gotten better at it.

They’ve actually been targeting him, making him the canary, BECAUSE of that power. They wanted to give him less time to realize or use it. They hate those They can’t control.

Let me tie it into last life.

Last life was his second season; he knew how bad the first one went and didn’t wanna go through it again. He didn’t want to be targeted and out first again. So he tried to go unseen; maybe using powers he didn’t realize he had. Got overlooked by his whole team, never got a life when he started with two, no one even realized that bc they overlooked him. They didn’t even realize they were overlooking him until he acted out, confused on why even his allies weren’t helping him. They just… forgot he was there, and he didn’t realize he was causing it

Double Life, he didn’t use his power, bc he had tango and he didn’t want to be overlooked or invisible. He had a great time with his rancher, but the watchers were able to target him and cause very unlucky deaths

Limited, he was still figuring things out. Maybe he started to catch onto it when it came to Grian’s afk session, idk, you could probably do something with that. But he also didn’t really use the power much, resigned to his fate

Secret life he started testing it out again, mostly as a yellow. He wanted to be able to watch people without them noticing him, and the power started to get activated slightly. Watchers were already pulled thin with fighting the listeners; him unknowingly activating his power allowed him to slip through the cracks completely as things started going down

They were quick to rectify that.

But this season? He knows what’s going on. He knows how to use his power to hide from Them without hiding from his friends. Maybe he learned in Real Life, where Their eyes didn’t track him and everyone could mess around with their abilities without Their interference. Either way, he knows, now. He can start to *do* something about it. He can hide from them (and occasionally slip in a prayer or two, so they don’t get too suspicious of his absence. Oh, he’s still there. They’re listening to his prayers like, he thinks he can convince Them to leave him alone; how cute. Meanwhile he’s hiding in plain sight, distracting Them with prayers that are just an act)

And this session gives him invisibility and it just feels right, and Jimmy realizes just how useful it is to not be Watched.

NO YOU AREN’T. THIS IS NOT OPINION, THIS IS FACT!

Admitting my star sign was a mistake.

i was going to do a rant about this before seeing this tweet but imma just leave this here

So, something I learnt the other day. So, you know how dinosaurs supposedly can't see you if you stand still? Well that myth is based on real-life lizards/etc and how eyes in general work. So, once my dad starts infodumping, here comes some other cool information. We, humans, can in fact, also not see something unless it's moving. We fixed this by having our eyes constantly shake. And then our brain compensates for us, so we don't have to have shaky vision.

What if aliens don't have this? Like. What if they find out when one of us was looking at something in the distance, and they walk around this thing that's in front of them, and the alien is confused so they bob their head and oh, there's a thing there, but how did the human know that, and then we explain and they're like, horrified.

Humans are apex predators. They can hunt in packs. They can hunt in pairs. They can hunt on their own. They're persistance predators, which is unheard of. They get stronger when they're mad or scared. They have this thing called 'body language' which acts like a type of hivemind, even if they'll claim it isn't. And. They can see you. When you're not moving. They can still see you. If you ever find yourself in a fight against a human, for whatever reason? Run. Run as fast as you can. And hope, pray if you have a religion, that they won't follow.

choose your (secret) fighter

Illustrations for my fic, Oh, brother!, in which Gem visits her brother Etho for the first time in a while. Oh, and she's also meeting his new partner, and doesn't quite know how to feel about that.

Or, a look at Gem and Etho through the years.

The secret reason that men wear tuxedos at formal events but women wear sleeveless/ thin strap dresses is because if men showed their shoulders it would be too distracting for the women