myfandomrambles

[myfandomrambles]

just realised yet another one parallel in arcane

what caught my attention is this moment where jinx plays a little makeover with isha and dyes her hair

jinx wishes she had moments like this with her sister and in the next episode we see her painting her face to look almost the same as vi’s tattoo (ofc the writing itself is more in jinx’s style but still)

she’s just a girl who wanted to be like her older sis when she was little – the same way isha now wants to be like jinx

DONT TALK TO ME MY HEART IS BROKEN

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OMG. Somebody said it out loud.

Disney is absolutely not the only studio doing this though.

It seems to have become standard practice across movies and series everywhere.

Anything that doesn't do it is like a breath of sunlight and fresh air inside a dank musty cave.

It's part of the 'fix it in post-production' epidemic sweeping through the studios. Fix it in post is often used as a time/money-saving measure - and is absolutely part of the same mess that the WGA is fighting against currently.

Rather than fixing things on-set - audio, lighting, something in-frame that shouldn't be, etc. (which is all handled by unionized crew) - they leave it for the CG folks (not unionized) to edit later.

(on ridiculously tight schedules that leave them scrambling, cutting corners, and working inhumane hours)

See also: that part where scripts aren't finished, because the studio won't fully staff the writers room, and won't pay to have writers on-set for day-of-filming script questions and fixes (which could resolve issues such as 'what kind of lighting do we need here?')

Anyway, all this shit we, as audiences, keep complaining about - bad lighting, bad sound, wonky visual effects, over-usage of not-great CGI, stilted acting on green-screen sets, scripts that seem not-quite-finished, costumes that look like they're cheap and flimsy, terrible hair and makeup, films and series that aren't as polished as they could be...

Plus the complaints we have about streaming services and their shenanigans...

All of that is enmeshed in the extreme capitalism that has taken over everything, including entertainment, to the point that studios are abusing their workforce and churning out material that - at best just doesn't live up to its potential - at worst, is just unwatchable shit.

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"I'd destroy the world to protect you" but it's a parent/child relationship

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sometimes ‘unreliable narrator/pov protagonist’ is just ‘narrator/pov protagonist that is suffering from mental illness’. hill house reread and i’m thinking yeah, nell is unreliable to an extent, sure, because the house has chosen to fuck with her specifically as a scapegoat/‘fear condenser’ (crude, i’m aware. i’m not writing academically right now, sorry) for the others, but also this is just. eerily close to how a person with severe social anxiety experiences the world around them and social (friendly) interactions through the lens of their disorder, even without the irresistible influence of vile and deranged architecture. speaking from experience. it’s the same with merricat and ocd but i’ve already talked about that i think and plus she is the actual narrator

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Putting all tabletop players into a college level ethics class and forcing them to turn in a paper on moral philosophy before buying a new book

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Ambessa is so so abusive to Mel precisely because she thinks that this is what good parenting is. She is embodying hyperrealization of cultural standard that is fundamentally messed up and built on violence and conquest, partially because these are the things that come naturally to her. They are the parts of herself that bring her alive, and that she finds to come naturally to her. How do you raise a daughter so deeply unlike you, when your way is the only way you know to stay alive, especially in Noxus?

Because Ambessa loves her daughter! Deeply! Stupidly! And that love does not point her to kindness or adoration the way so many of Arcane's other parents are pointed - it points her to fear and violence, because to Ambessa, that is what love is. Her voice lines in the game literally indicate this - she considers motherhood and battle to be two sides of the same thing, conflated into one cohesive whole. How can her mothering be anything but a fight against their nature, to ensure they will survive anything she fears?

And the Black Rose is then the embodiment of those fears made flesh. There is actually something after her, her family, her children. There is something that has killed her son. There is something that has taken her daughter. What kind of mother would she be, if she did not fight for them?

Nevermind that this was an enemy she delivered to their doorstep. Nevermind the ways her own politicking have places Mel under risk. Nevermind that Ambessa has herself triggered actions that placed her daughter directly under a gun. This is the way to ensure her family will be safe.

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*hitting you with a stick* no benoit blanc movies should not interact. they should not lead up to something. you need to detox from the marvel/sherlock bbc poisoning. they should be completely independent movies (maybe w some cameos/little references for fun) and go on for as long as there are stories rian johnson wants to tell in this universe. i do not want an overarching plot i do not want a team up i dont want a benoit-focused prequel i want some good old fashioned episodic murder mysteries that have nothing to do with each other!!!!!!!!!!! also rian johnson has literally said he's not gonna do a prequel and he wants the movies to all stand on their own

addendum 1: by "marvel/sherlock bbc poisoning" i dont mean that those caused this over-serialization, but i think they are partially responsible for why audiences are expecting it. learn to engage w murder mysteries on the genre's own terms

addendum 2: idc what headcanons you have. i actively encourage you to write fanfic about marta and helen solving crime if you wanna. that is literally what fanfiction is for my guy! if you want to know how phillip and benoit met THAT IS WHY FANFIC EXISTS

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Today I want to talk to fic writers about Louis. I want to talk about a striking and exasperating trend I’ve seen amongst many of you lately.

I want to talk about this influx of writers, specifically, non Black writers, writing Louis either so angry or so repressed he’s not only unlikeable, he’s unrecognizable and often insufferable. He’s completely devoid of charm, reason, tenderness or affection and frankly I’m sorry to that man but I don’t know him.

This man? 👇🏾 This man contains multitudes of charm. So much so that he is our guide to and through the story. He aims to seduce us with his tale and we are happy to let him. Some of y’all are writing a character I couldn’t be in a room five minutes with. When you’re sitting down to write try to remember this👇🏾is who you’re writing about. This isn’t the whole of him but it’s a core piece.

I won’t deny that Louis is angry, often righteously, but Louis’ anger is cold. It’s withholding and petty. He gets it from his mama. That’s what makes fire as his medium so compelling. Louis is fire and ice. That’s what makes his moments of savagery so bone chilling and spellbinding. That’s the place Lestat is always pushing for because it’s rare.

Because like a seduction it has to build until he’s overtaken.

I’ve been reading fic after fic where Louis’ anger is so constant and all consuming, he can barely form sentences. Please cut that shit out. It’s annoying and it says the quiet part out loud. You’re showing the internal biases that you’ll swear you don’t have.

Additionally, why are so many of you writing show Louis so repressed he spirals at a single touch? Why is he so painfully guilt ridden that eye contact sends him into a rosary clinging crisis? Do y’all not see what a flirt Louis is?

Did you forget he brought Lestat home to mama multiple times? LOOK AT HIM. Look at this face. That’s his man and he’s sticking by him.

Louis is no blushing bride. He isn’t so consumed with Catholic guilt that he’s forgotten how to hold a conversation. He isn’t so devout that the idea of touching him sends him into a pearl clutching frenzy! LOOK. AT. HIM.

I keep seeing folks saying that writing from his POV is so much easier but often it seems to be because writers strip him at the chop shop and use him for parts. He becomes a vessel for Lestat or simply a catalyst to move the story beats from place to place. It’s exhausting. It’s a waste of one of the first truly complex Black characters in the genre and it’s a waste of the opportunity for remarkable storytelling.

I love writers and I want to enjoy your work. Help me won’t you?

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I would add saving Gallifrey & Trenzalor actually matter here. DOTD he realizes he can save people if he lets Clara's sad eyes and determination drive him. He helps save the zygons he saves all the children on galifrey.

And trenzalor is the highest most not running anymore. He stays for hundreds of years to protect the town because they are worth it. He sends the TARDIS away so he can't leave. Because he cares he's stopped running as much as he did because these people deserve it.

I think there is obviously the Donna connection but I think not remembering one of his longest times staying still doesn't give 11 or 12 their due. The face reminds him to try and save people yes, we know that from TGWD but 11 did stay and save people as 11 he wouldn't have known to remind himself of his promise if 11 hadn't remembered "never cruel never cowardly never give up never give in" when he died.

My dad sends me. Doctor Who character analysis sometimes and here's his latest:

11, more than any other Doctor, is the reason that River says, "Never let the Doctor see you get older." Rose, Martha, Amelia, Clara, Billie, Ryan, and Yaz are all young, all full of a sense of wonder for the things that the Doctor shows them. Donna is an adult. She first decided to become a companion because she was in a rut and wanted to run away from that. So 10 thought she would be like the the others. On their first trip, 9 showed Rose the end of the Earth. When she assumes that he is going to save the Earth, he corrected her. Stating that this is an unchangeable event. From the beginning, he trains her not to question his judgement on what he says cannot be changed. Donna was too old to fall for that and pushes back constantly. Okay, so you can't save everyone in Pompeii, then just save one person. It isn't an all or nothing proposition. He learned from that and tried to do better. Until he got too arrogant and tried to save someone he really should have let die. But then he became 11, the Doctor who forgets. The one who keeps running away more than any other. 200 years running away from Lake Silence. Years in a cloud over Victorian London. Years spent in a monastary.

If he can't save everyone, then fine. He won't save anyone.

Then he became 12, with a face to remind him of Donna's lesson.

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Theoretically, if he had disinherited Rhaenyra and placed it on his new son the dance could be Voided. The lords wouldn't have problems swearing to this new son as it's legal for a king to name a new heir, and being the king's first-born son it would be normal.

Rhaenyra would have no legal claim and likely no support should she vie for the throne when her father dies. Especially if Aegon is named on his second name day before her marriage to Leanor. Then likely there would be very few houses willing to go to war if they swore to Aegon in the normal way for very historically precedented reasons years before Viserys dies.

And Rhaenyra might hate Viserys but it could maybe prevent the dance.

people will always blame alicent and rhaenyra or even daemon for sparking the start of the civil war but at the end of the day it will always come back to viserys and his cowardly decisions. as soon as he allowed himself to be bullied to remarry and to have more kids again, he officially sewed the seeds together for future conflict after his death no matter who he married. like if he had married laena instead of alicent and had sons with her, would the outcome have been so different? do you think rhaenys and corlys would have stood on the sidelines and watched their grandson get passed over? especially after rhaenyra had illegitimate sons that weren't even laenors? that they wouldn't have petitioned their own dance? the snake will always eat its own tail for power, and viserys doomed rhaenyra to her death with his own

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DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: HONOR AMONG THIEVES 2023, dir. Jonathan Goldstein & John Francis Dale

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Twelve might not always know how to verbally communicate affection but this is like an amazing act of care. She might not know it's him but honestly this is an act of love! She's his friends! Because loves a promise and an action we know this is what twelve believes! And he just continues to show that promise he fails in the end but it's not for lack of loving bill.

I think it's such a great way of showing how much he grew to care for her! Especially with showing his friendship with Missy as well. The season has so much about his love for his friends coming in contact with his depression/PTSD and the way tragedy follows the doctor like a shadow.

And of course without witness and without reward

thinking about bill telling 12 that there aren't many photos of her birth mother so he goes back in time and gives her the best christmas gift possible — a whole box of photos. i love 12 and bill because theyre friends for months, maybe even a year? before they start traveling together, which i absolutely love. its a switch up from the constant 'meet the doctor and immediately run away' thing.

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eclectic taste (not to be confused with good taste) is the only thing you actually need to be a good artist. i don't care if you like the right things, i literally only care abt the multitude of experiences and practices you have ingested.

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I like this diagram a lot!

Because of dissociation and trauma, I've struggled a lot to identify what I'm feeling, both emotionally and physically. Lists like this can be really helpful. I've found lots of lists with emotion words before but not as much when it comes to body sensations. Wanted to share it.

Here's a grounding exercise for anyone reading this: try going through the list and pick out which words fit what you're feeling in this moment.

______________

[Image Description: A free resource from Carolyn Spring. It shows the figure of a person surrounded by a list of words. Here is what it says:

Body Sensation Words

Achy, Airy, Bloated, Blocked, Boiling, Breathless, Bruised, Bubbly, Burning, Bursting, Butterflies, Buzzy, Calm, Clenched, Closed, Cloudy, Cold, Comfortable, Congested, Constricted, Contracted, Cool, Dark, Dehydrated, Disconnected, Dizzy, Drained, Dry-mouthed, Dull, Empty, Energetic, Energised, Exhausted, Expanded, Expansive, Faint, Flexible, Floating, Floaty, Floppy, Fluid, Fluttery, Frozen, Full, Giddy, Grounded, Headachey, Heavy, Hollow, Hot, Hungry, Hurting, Icy, Itchy, Jabbing, Jittery, Jumpy, Knotted, Light, Lightheaded, Limp, Nauseous, Nervy, Numb, Open, Parched, Pounding, Pressure, Prickly, Pulsing, Queasy, Quivering, Radiating, Ravenous, Raw, Relaxed, Released, Rigid, Saggy, Satiated, Satisfied, Sensitive, Shaky, Shivery, Short, Short of breath, Shuddering, Sick, Sore, Spacey, Spacious, Spongy, Squashed, Squirmy, Stabbing, Stinging, Stretchy, Stuffed, Suffocated, Sweaty, Tall, Tout, Tearful, Teary, Tense, Thick-headed, Throbbing, Tickly, Tight, Tingling, Tingly, Tired, Trembly, Twitchy, Uncomfortable, Vibrating, Warm, Wet, Wobbly, Woozy

End ID.]

[myfandomrambles]

idt we talk enough about how a song of ice and fire is also the song of incest and cannibalism. i mean, sure, obviously both of those subjects are noted as present, but the saga feels much more known for its incest, which idt is fair or accurate to the later materiel. iirc, jaime fucking cersei next to their dead firstborn is the last instance of onpage incest happening in present tl, and after that it's all about the cannibals, baby.

in fact pretty much all the active incest during the present tl happens in those first 3 books:

the twincest as a major plot point ofc, kicking action off when bran saw them fucking in a tower

and viserys creeping on dany and twisting her nipple

craster still being alive to rape and impregnate his own daughters (resulting in dozens of forced incestuous relationships)

and theon unknowingly groping his own sister while she (knowingly) groped him in return

jaime's early pov recalled how he shut up cersei with kissing when they fought after bran refused to die

the aforementioned sept twincest next to joffrey's corpse

cersei's failed attempt to seduce jaime in wst, pulling out his dick for either a bj or hj until her talk of tyrion's death made him lose his boner

while incest is not exactly absent from the text after that, it seems to exist in the feastdance only in hypotheticals or past memories:

aeron's trauma flashbacks of his (implied only in published text) csa by euron

jaime still feeling lust when seeing cersei nude

and her fond reminiscing about them fucking behind robert's back/brief dream of them as a married couple before her walk of shame

jaime's recollection of them fucking at darry next to robert as he was passed out drunk before cersei sent him to hunt arya (which would have happened back in agot and the point of this scene is more his failed hunt for a child just to make cersei happy)

the aborted marital match of aegon/young griff to his purported aunt dany

illyrio saying (the now dead) viserys tried to rape dany the night before her wedding to drogo (another event from agot concerning a guy we already knew was into incest)

and tyrion once saying he wanted to rape as well as murder cersei

conversely, the cannibalism in the earlier books is most often only unproven hypotheticals alluded to as possible cannibalism:

old nan saying the others fed their dead servants the flesh of human children (which we have not yet seen with any wights so far, whether or not one counts walking undead eating human flesh as straight-up cannibalism)

the mystery meat in flea bottom's bowls o' brown which may or may not contain symon silver tongue after tyrion had him killed

renly's recollection that cressen kept stannis from catapulting their old master-at-arms by saying they may need to eat him later (which did not come to pass thanks to davos)

joffrey telling his people to eat their own dead (with no way of knowing if any actually did)

lady hornwood eating her own fingers (though bran's pov only notes them being chewed on, not swallowed. it's only in adwd that people talk of her eating the fingers.)

the mentions of the ice river clans being the cannibals beyond the wall (who are def not among the free folk jon snow gets to know onpage, making it just background detail)

bran's (possibly mythical) story of the rat cook

and biter chewing on people he attacked and other corpses (which seems to be just a side hobby connected to his killing method moreso constituting a snack than a full meal from a person butchered for meat)

while the feastdance feels much more in your face with cannibalism, having not only more total mentions of the practice but also more actual cannibalism (as opposed to the ambiguity of each and every bowl o' brown), for those who know how to look at the evidence:

jaime learned that the mountain aka his father's mad dog fed parts of vargo hoat to all his prisoners (including vargo himself)

and euron bragged about pulling a similar trick with the warlocks he captured (the only twist being that the warlocks knew what they were being forced to eat, which vargo hoat and wylis manderly etc at harrenhal didn't)

the elder brother of the quiet isle told of biter eating all of a woman's breasts after she'd been raped and killed

bran and co. ate "pig" supplied by coldhands which had to be long pig aka human meat

brienne felt her face being eaten by biter in her own pov (which is so much worse than him chewing others in the background of the weasel soup scene)

theon was told that two ironmen at moat cailin were found eating their dead comrades

the astapori were said to eat their own dead while under siege

and then were said to do so again in refugee camps outside meereen

khrazz the pit fighter cut the hearts from his defeated foes to eat them

cotter pyke's last letter to jon snow said the wildlings were eating their own dead at hardhome

4 of stannis's men were executed by burning for butchering and eating other men (with asha wondering how many others had done so without being caught)

and ofc the frey pies with wyman manderly having his 3 former guests killed and serving their meat to their own kin and the other guests at ramsay's wedding while eating some himself too

two of these examples (involving gregor clegane and euron greyjoy) must have actually happened during the course of asos, but grrm chose to give us the gruesome details in affc, which was brand new information about men we already were villains but did not know were into that fucked-up shit specifically, unlike being reminded that agot-era jaime and viserys wanted to fuck their sisters. (just like adwd has multiple characters saying lady hornwood ate her own fingers as opposed to bran's acok pov just saying she chewed on them.) it's as if after craster was killed and jc effectively broke up grrm decided cannibalism was the taboo subject matter he would fill the later books with, so we'd really feel the increasing danger of starvation-induced cannibalism with winter's arrival (and have no trouble believing rickon's new home of skagos really is a cannibal island). however, in-universe it feels like there's some sort of environmental balance connection so that the decrease in one formerly common behaviorial abomination just allows another such abomination to fill in the gap with a sharp increase in activity, like deer overpopulation resulting from lack of predators as if all the active incest somehow stopped more people from eating themselves or other people.

[myfandomrambles]

my favorite louis trait is his eye for the future.

I can't get enough of how visionary he is.

this is a man who can look at his surroundings, no matter how dodgy or hopless they may look like, and see opportunity. See the upcoming change. See the potential. And he BELIEVES in that potential, fully, betting on it, believing in it, investing in it. And he's always RIGHT.

"My business could be bigger and just as successful if my girls co-optly own the whorehouse". And it works.

"Yesterday I saw a girl in an old, five year old dress, putting on a new lipstick". And he decides to believe in Paris.

"I'm not an artist, but I know what's good. I'm going to invest in little-known art and real estate, then re-sell it". And he becomes a millionaire doing that.

"This little nervous dude who's interviewing me is kind of an idiot, but I can see that he has potential. I'm going to give him a lifeline and the sheer will to keep working". And he changes Daniel's life.

He's such a hopeful person with an unwavering, profoundly generous kind of intuition. He doesnt HAVE to give back to his employees. He doesnt HAVE TO save Daniel. He sees things nobody else sees. He loves to see things grow.

To call him the first vampire capitalist is fair, but he's so much more than that...to me he's the first vampire since Lestat in the 1700s to be like: this life could be more than we're allowing it to be.

And people call him arrogant and too much because he's black, obviously, but he's SUCH an unflinching innovator and he sees SO MUCH. What arrogance? He's always looking at something beyond himself! Always looking forward! It's an instinct he had while alive, and now he has the time, the respect and the means to MAKE IT REAL.

I really love Louis so much. The first hopeful vampire.

[myfandomrambles]

Overview of some topics when it comes to drawing characters who are burn survivors.

DISCLAIMER. Please keep in mind that this is an introductory overview for drawing some burn scars and has a lot of generalizations in it, so not every “X is Z” statement will be true for Actual People. I'm calling this introductory because I hope to get people to actually do their own research before drawing disabled & visibly different characters rather than just making stuff up. Think of it as a starting point and take it with a grain of salt (especially if you have a very different art style from mine).

Talking about research and learning... don't make your burn survivor characters evil. Burn survivors are normal people and don't deserve to be constantly portrayed in such a way.

👍