#<<< this is all in reference to one of her texts

[atebyflowers]

︎ ︎ ︎ ︎ ︎ ︎ ︎ ︎ ︎ thinking about masturbating on the phone with mean ellie . . you guys weren't dating — not even close. and she was very adamant about needing her personal space and not wanting anything serious. so it was embarrassing for you, to be calling her so desperately, at such a late time in the night. you were staying with your parents away from college [and her] for the winter break, and had tried everything you could to get your release. even resorting to watching old videos of the two of you together, but nothing was working.

of course you debated it for a while, afraid she'd be mad you woke her up or interrupted a hook up between her and another girl. but you gave it a chance anyways, eventually to horny to give a fuck what she responded. "who is this?" she questioned, her tone no different than it was most of the time — causing you to let of a sigh of release, at least she wasn't sleeping. "ellie?" you said, your voice immediately hitting her ears with recognition. "oh hey it's you" she responded, you on the other end — layed underneath your sheets, desperate for something out of her. "did you need something..?" she asked, breaking you out of your minute long silence. "yea actually" you spoke, hearing a shuffling on the other end before actual words. "well? what is it, kind of busy here babe" she added. you were hesitant again, something about actually hearing her voice scared a bit of sense into you.. but not enough to erase the ache your body felt. "i... um.." you paused, hoping she'd somehow catch on. but you knew you were out of luck when she told you to speak up and stop wasting time. "i can't make myself cum" you spit out, another sigh of relief, heavier than the first one, leaving your body.

it was silent on her end fo a moment before she started to laugh to herself, "you called me because you're horny? jesus y/n.. didn't know you were this much of a whore" she responded, "well go on then, touch yourself for me baby" — the only instructions you needed before slipping your hands down to your cunt, heavy breathing being received on her end as you toued with your clit. "that's it.. let me hear her" she spoke, referring to your body as separate people. you, moving the phone lower towards your wetness, "speed up" she ordered — and you did just that, the sounds of your juices and fingers merging in harmony as you let out soft noises, careful not to be loud. "i need you s-so bad els.." you confessed pathetically, "mmm i bet huh, can't even make yourself feel good without me.. such a stupid slut" she said, getting a few more desperate whines out of you. m close els.." you told her and she hummed, "you wanna cum for me baby? let me hear how desperate you are for me" her words sent you dizzy. "y-yes- i wanna cum for you fuck, wanna-"

you were cut off by a beeping noise, the line going dead just as you were about to release.

"ellie??" confused, dizzy and egar for the orgasm you had been waiting for all week — you received no response, prompting you to sit up, opening the chat with a single shaky hand and texting her.

y/n: what happened?

you sent, and minutes went by before she responded. you — sitting sweaty and uncomfortable as you waited for something, attempting to call her back twice but receiving no answer. . until your phone finally went off.

from ellie: sorry. bedtime sweetheart. meet me when you get back to town, maybe i'll let you finish in person ;)

she responded, your mouth left agape as you read the text.

fucking bitch you whined to yourself, irritated, a few tears welling in your eyes as you were left with nothing but a cramped hand and leftover wetness still unfulfilled. you should've known it was to good to be true, how quickly she responded to your initial needs . . she really did love torturing you as much as possible.

︎ ︎ ︎ ︎ ︎ ︎ ︎ ︎ ︎

a.n: this is unedited so ignore any spelling mistakes please and ty 🙌🏼

[tainbocuailnge]

fairy tales are real, iris and bena explicitly say this multiple times and have the dreamland powers to back up the claim

the castle of dreams and the crimson troupe are similar entities according to shalem

iris’ grandmother is in the crimson troupe castle chilling like she belongs there + implicitly has gone to at least one of their performances, one of the books in iris' castle had a ticket to a crimson troupe performance being used as a bookmark

iris only knows the sanitised versions of victorian fairytales according to her profile

-> iris likely does not know the true nature of her own castle or what it means for it to be similar to the crimson troupe. her castle might even be the exact same castle as the troupe's without her knowledge, or it might essentially be a sanitised version of the same fairytale.

shalem is implicitly clairvoyant, multiple lines have him refer to seeing or envisioning the future and he knows things he has no reasonable way of knowing

shalem's profile also presents information that a HR employee would have absolutely no reasonable way of knowing and he's the only operator whose profile is not plausibly written by rhodes HR, even the corrupting heart has more empirically verifiable files. shalem's files are instead pretty blatantly written by the troupe

despite the troupe repeatedly claiming shalem has no talent and they don't want him back, both his profile and his nightmares involve the troupe urging him to go back on stage

shalem's skin is called "the fruition" and the description talks about fruit being best when it is ripe enough to fall, something only those who create get to taste.

the skin also has the text "flower of evil" and notably even in unofficial designs from cenm0 shalem is almost always wearing or carrying flowers in some way (his jacket has a flower pattern on the inside in his default look), and in both his skin and that unofficial fucked up shalem design the flowers are growing directly on him

-> the imagery all points to shalem having some manner of unfulfilled potential that he will reach in the future, whether he wants to or not, which will consume him in some way, and he is aware of this.

fairytale castles can take many forms including that of people, this is brought up in both iris and bena modules as well as implied by the dreambind castle collectible. the fairytale from bena's module, in which a boy's home castle takes on a form that looks like him to follow him around, is specifically mentioned to be from the same compilation that iris' grandmother is reading in her is2 encounter

the crimson troupe castle is all but explicitly sentient, several is2 medals as well as furniture items refer to the castle as something with its own awareness and will

both the castle of dreams and the crimson troupe castle explicitly operate outside linear time, and the crimson troupe castle in particular has multiple cases of one person existing in multiple points in time at once (big sad lock and the person whose soul was used for it, phantom hiding under a table while the blood diamond is walking around)

the soundtrack for the IS2 6th floor (hall of desires, no time) is called "silent abyss" with the same character as shalem's old name & to my understanding the characters for "silent" could also translate as "tranquil"

there is such a thing as a "castle's offspring," a “stage” and a “castle” are things that can grow and propagate

-> I have an idea for shalem's recursively inevitable future.

[homestuckreplay]

Liberty. Reason. Justice. Civility. Edification. Perfection.

(page 1116-1128)

As it turns out, there’s no such thing as a DEAPPEARIFIER. Such a machine is actually called a SENDIFICATOR, and funding for this technology drastically improves the postal service’s ability to carry out their work, as gloriously demonstrated by PM. This machine is presumably why things keep appearing, as well as disappearing, around Jade’s house (p.770).

I shed a real tear when PM successfully delivered the package – it’s only been a few hundred pages since her first mail spiel (p.894-6), but AR’s erratic shooting and the clear danger of the current situation mean this still feels like an earned victory. There is a song called ‘The Courier’ by Richard Shindell that I’ve been obsessed with for years and this is PM’s theme song to me. I’m actually so taken with this broader theme of mail and with this drive to carry information and items between people even in a world that’s not set up for it, that I want to explore other media that has this theme, and maybe even base my next D&D character around this.

Thinking about AR’s characterization, they’re mad at themself for shooting incorrectly, bonking themself on the head for it (p.1119) meaning they are not above their own laws. This doesn’t make them less dangerous, but it makes their moral code more consistent. The same is true with their attraction to PM – AR has this urge towards forbidden romance with the opposing side, but isn’t going to make a legal exception even for this carapaced hottie. AR is also extremely stubborn and doggedly convinced of things that are factually untrue – for example, they ‘don’t give a shit about’ their weapon being magazine-fed and not clip-fed (p.1101), they think of themself as a ‘crack shot’ despite not landing a single bullet (p.1119), and they think Serenity is a ‘little blinking bee’ (p.1122).

I think black and white thinking, strict ideals and no mercy for those who disrupt them, have to be more traits programmed into all chess pieces (for all its intellectual complexity, chess does not have much nuance to its lore). So this next part might be a reach and might be confirmation bias, but I wonder if these folks have similarities to the kids they command. WV was socially inept at first, prone to flights of fancy, and not great at prioritizing, which are also some of John’s flaws. PM is focused on her delivery tasks to the point of putting herself in danger, and Jade is behaving similarly as she harpoons herself across the ruins and evades Bec’s protection to deliver the time bait as per Skaia’s will. AR’s stubbornness and refusal to question their own biased perspective could fit with either Dave or Rose, but their immediate resorting to violence is a better fit for Dave – the kid who was so mad about being named ‘insufferable prick’ that he destroyed the input box (p.310).

Pretty fucked up that WV just sacrifices one of his pawns. One of his beloved citizens, martyred for the cause. Pour one out for- shit nevermind wrong phrase.

One complaint: there is no possible way WV and PM have read Sweet Bro & Hella Jeff. Even if they could access it from their command terminals – and I do NOT believe Skaia has programmed that functionality – they do not exist in the right cultural moment to appreciate the humor. When the narrative text references SBAHJ during the kids’ sections (for example, p.915) it works for me, because it’s an actual thought they might be having. It doesn’t work for me here on pages 1123-4, because the narrator’s inserting it where it wouldn’t naturally fit, using SBAHJ to distract me from the much better comic I’m currently reading.

UNLESS. I have been interpreting the scribbly pages like 1118 and 1124 (above) as Jade’s understanding of events upon waking, the way a dream that seems perfectly crisp and clear while asleep becomes vague and blurry after waking up. Again likely a reach, but I could buy that the SBAHJ is Jade editorializing on her own visions as she creates this note and draws the map for WV and PM to follow. That feels neater to me, at least.

> AR: Shoot at bass guitar to repair elevator.

[irradiatedsnakes]

MY OFFICIAL DAYSHIFT AT FREDDYS 2 REVIEW:

peter is here yay hi peter my friend peter who i'm soooo happy to seeeeee! yayayayayayayayay

so- dsaf1 was kind of nothing imo, overall, a couple funny bits and interesting in a "seeing where a creator i like has come from creatively" angle, but broadly just doesn't have much to talk about, i don't think. a liiiittle bit agonizing to play.

dsaf2, on the other hand, absolutely has meat on its bones, and overall was really enjoyable!

comedy-wise, i think it stumbled in some parts- a few bits go on Way longer than they need to (the whole candy cat thing, the inexplicable extended always sunny reference??, and the freddy space oddity bit was definitely funny but dragged on a bit) but there's a lot of stuff here that absolutely made me laugh out loud.

(a lot of those just being sprites of jack and dave in their stupid mascot suits, their weird little faces peeking out of the mouths really crack me up. great design on those two and especially on their expressions, they're very funny-lookin.)

while he doesn't have much to him that i find especially compelling, dave in general is a really funny character, absolutely helped along by his hilarious tts voice. the tts voices overall are really good

story- and writing-wise, dsaf2 has a lot more going for it and it definitely compelled me. i think the line-to-line writing when in the more storyful or emotional moments is preeeeeettty shaky. it doesn't tend to have a whole lot of character to it (and i want to avoid Excessive comparisons but like. especially when comparing to dialtown's writing, which is absolutely brimming with character. look at one-off characters like tango who show up for a tiny amount of time but still have so much individuality and charm to em for what i mean) and feels pretty utilitarian, more often than not. the written jokes also don't land a lot for me, but that's in large part owing to "it's not 2017 anymore".

(i think this game's visual humor was by far the most successful. the fucking cop, peter's Photoshop Skills and the image he made of his head on a real buff guy got me, and so did this frame of davetrap:)

but the broad emotional strokes definitely hit for me- all the stuff about the kennedys and their relationships, mainly, less so for like. fredbear and the dead children but yknow. but the stuff between jack and peter, and peter and caroline, i think that worked really well (and to a lesser extent, jack and the marionette, owing to knowing the spoiler about her identity). i suppose part of that is having already known peter as a character in dt and being really fond of him going in, but i think i'd have found it plenty compelling even if i hadn't.

the bits when jack and peter begin to actually connect, and little tidbits like peter hugging jack on his way out, that definitely got me. i was also expecting jack and peter's relationship to be a lot more adversarial- i was surprised by them really connecting like that in the good route, and i'm nothing if not an absolute sucker for a sibling relationship like that. i really like them!

also the picture on the wall of peter and bald peter. please look at it. please look at it

i'm interested to know more about jack as a character. for the most part, he does just kind of seem like. generic player character, in his dialogue, but there's parts where something interesting absolutely shines through (his immediately changing the topic after delving into peter's past for example). his change in demeanor and the purple text in the true evil route is also interesting.

one of the coolest parts, as mentioned before, is also just seeing this earlier work having already been a massive dialtown fan. there's a lot in the humor and the general style of stuff here that's like, you can really see how the writing got honed over time and eventually developed into what we see in dt today (and, hell, even comparing base dt and roger dlc you see some of that development), it's just a really neat process to watch happen! like seeing ONE's artstyle get better over the course of mob psycho 100, yknow?

(and some things here make me very grateful dt is purely a visual novel with no gameplay segements.......those fucking cake children..)

it's also fascinating seeing little tidbits that would become like, an Actual Thing in dt- jack's own narrator stands out the most to me there.

i've been told that dsaf3 is far and away the best of the trilogy, so i'm excited to get to it! (and ROGER!!!!!AHHHH) (ive also heard great things about jake in particular. excited to meet him!)

IN SUMMARY

MY OFFICIAL DAYSHIFT AT FREDDYS 1 REVIEW:

dsaf1 is a game you can play, absolutely. it has. characters, and dialogue, and most of all, gameplay. it has all of these things, for sure

i need steven to die.

[melanodis]

🗡 + Eleanor Nightingale Madam Mossytits is real...

madame mossytits... I want her to get to play space d&d so bad

[karizipan]

can anyojen hear me PLEASEEEEE

[biblically-accurate-dca]

super disorganized sketch page because i do what i want

[eegnm]

Ok, so I've been minorly (majorly) obsessed with front toward enemy by @rifle-yes the partisan au of my dreams 😪

[dungeons-and-dragon-age]

yknow despite all the cute downtime interactions and despite her trying So So Hard to pay attention to and bond with everyone, there's something oddly lonely about Ylva.. Harding's got magic powers now that make her feel alienated even though they got on well. Bellara goes to Emmrich to talk about spirit related things now even though Ylva is also a Watcher. Neve says it's fine but it's obviously not, and Ylva has let her down not once but twice now. They started a book club without her. She even had that whole talk with Harding about how people in the Inquisition would have code names, but when they hung out they were just regular people who called each other their first names. And, well. She is just Rook, all the time.

[mccleans]

i've gone to sleep angry and woken up angry every day since last saturday

[ravencromwell]

The poem evokes human greatness and human vulnerability. People are “godlike” in their courage and skill, but even the greatest mortals fall and clutch the dust between their bloody fingers. The beautiful word minunthadios , “short-lived,” is used of both Achilles and Hector, and applies to all of us. We die too soon, and there is no adequate recompense for the terrible, inevitable loss of life. Yet through poetry, the words, actions, and feelings of some long-ago brief lives may be remembered even three thousand years later.

--Emily Wilson's introduction to the Iliad

[waitingforsecretsouls]

Now why is the French translation hosted on Webtoon SO much better than the official English translation, holy shit...(I know the bar is not high, but still...Having access to such an improved alternative on Webtoon itself...)

[thewingedwolf]

they were doing “is madeleine a pedo for being attracted to claudia” discourse on twitter the other day and i would like it very much if twitter was just nuked as a website lol

[longagoitwastuesday]

So so indebted to u for posting those lovely illustrations from Cyrano <333 & even more so for yr tags!! I'm completely in love w yr analysis, please feel free to ramble as long as u wish! Browsing through yr Cyrano de Bergerac tag has given me glimpses of so many adaptations & translations I'd never heard of before! I'll be watching the Solès version next, which I have only discovered today through u ^_^ As for translations, have u read many/all of them? I've only encountered the Renauld & Burgess translations in the wild, & I was curious to hear yr translation thoughts that they might guide my decision on which one I buy first (not necessarily Renauld or Burgess ofc). Have a splendid day & sorry for the likespam! 💙

Sorry for the delay. Don't mind the likespam, I'm glad you enjoyed my tags about Cyrano, and that they could contribute a bit to a further appreciation of the play. I loved it a lot, I got obsessed with it for months. It's always nice to know other people deeply love too that which is loved haha I hope you enjoy the Solès version, it may well be my favourite one!

About translations, I'm touched you're asking me, but I don't really know whether mine is the best opinion to ask. I have read... four or five English translations iirc, the ones I could find online, and I do (and especially did, back when I was reading them) have a lot of opinions about them. However, nor English nor French are my first languages (they are third and fourth respectively, so not even close). I just read and compare translations because that's one of my favourite things to do.

The fact is that no translation is perfect, of course. I barely remember Renauld's, but I think it was quite literal; that's good for understanding the basics of the text, concepts and characters, but form is subject, and there's always something that escapes too literal translations. Thomas and Guillemard's if I recall correctly is similar to Hooker's in cadence. It had some beautiful fragments, some I preferred over Hooker's, but overall I think to recall I liked Hooker's more. If memory serves, Hooker's was the most traditionally poetic and beautiful in my opinion. Burgess' is a whole different thing, with its perks and drawbacks.

Something noticeable in the other translations is that they are too... "epic". They do well the poetic, sorrowful, grief stricken, crushed by regrets aspects of Cyrano and the play in general, but they fall quite short in the funny and even pathetic aspects, and that too is key in Cyrano, both character and play. Given the characteristics of both languages, following the cadence of the French too literally, with those long verses, makes an English version sound far too solemn at times when the French text isn't. Thus Burgess changes the very cadence of the text, adapting it more to the English language. This translation is the one that best sets the different moods in the play, and as I said before form is subject, and that too is key: after all, the poetic aspect of Cyrano is as much true as his angry facet and his goofy one. If Cyrano isn't funny he isn't Cyrano, just as he wouldn't be Cyrano without his devotion to Roxane or his insecurities; Cyrano is who he is precisely because he has all these facets, because one side covers the other, because one trait is born from another, because one facet is used as weapon to protect the others, like a game of mirrors and smoke. We see them at different points through the play, often converging. Burgess' enhances that. He plays with the language itself in form and musicality, with words and absences, with truths masking other truths, with things stated but untold, much like Cyrano does. And the stage directions, poetic and with literary value in their own right in a way that reminded me of Valle Inclán and Oscar Wilde, interact with the text at times in an almost metatextual dimension that enhances that bond Cyrano has with words, giving them a sort of liminal air and strengthening that constant in the play: that words both conceal and unveil Cyrano, that in words he hides and words give him away.

But not all is good, at all. Unlike Hooker, Burgess reads to me as not entirely understanding every facet of the characters, and as if he didn't even like the play all that much, as if he had a bit of a disdainful attitude towards it, and found it too mushy. Which I can understand, but then why do you translate it? In my opinion the Burgess' translation does well bending English to transmit the different moods the French text does, and does pretty well understanding the more solemn, cool, funny, angry, poetic aspects of Cyrano, but less so his devotion, vulnerability, insecurities and his pathetism. It doesn't seem to get Roxane at all, how similar she is to Cyrano, nor why she has so many admirers. It does a very poor job at understanding Christian and his value, and writes him off as stupid imo. While I enjoyed the language aspect of the Burgess translation, I remember being quite angry at certain points reading it because of what it did to the characters and some changes he introduces. I think he did something very questionable with Le Bret and Castel-Jaloux, and I remember being incensed because of Roxane at times (for instance, she doesn't go to Arras in his version, which is a key scene to show just how much fire Roxane has, and that establishes several parallels with Cyrano, in attitude and words, but even in act since she does a bit what Cyrano later does with the nuns in the last act), and being very angry at several choices about Christian too. While not explicitly stated, I think the McAvoy production and the musical both follow this translation, because they too introduce these changes, and they make Christian as a character, and to an extent the entire play, not make sense.

For instance, once such change is that Christian is afraid that Roxane will be cultured (McAvoy's version has that infamous "shit"/"fuck" that I detest), when in the original French it's literally the opposite. He is not afraid she will be cultured, he is afraid she won't, because he does love and appreciate and admires those aspects of her, as he appreciates and admires them in Cyrano. That's key! Just as Cyrano longs to have what Christian has, Christian wants the same! That words escape him doesn't mean he doesn't understand or appreciate them. The dynamics make no sense without this aspect, and Burgess (and the productions that directly or indirectly follow him) constantly erases this core trait of Christian.

Another key moment of Christian Burgess butchers is the scene in Arras in which Christian discovers the truth. Burgess writes their discussion masterfully in form, it's both funny and poignant, but it falls short in concept: when Cyrano tells him the whole discussion about who does Roxane love and what will happen, what they'll do, is academic because they're both going to die, Christian states that dying is his role now. This destroys entirely the thing with Christian wanting Roxane to have the right to know, and the freedom to choose, or to refuse them both. As much as Cyrano proclaims his love for truth and not mincing words even in the face of authority, Cyrano is constantly drunk on lies and mirages, masks and metaphors. It's Christian who wants it all to end, the one who wants real things, the one who wants to risk his own happiness for the chance of his friend's, as well as for the woman he loves to stop living in a lie. That is a very interesting aspect of Christian, and another aspect in which he is written as both paralleling and contrasting Cyrano. It's interesting from a moral perspective and how that works with the characters, but it's also interesting from a conceptual point of view, both in text and metatextually: what they hold most dear, what they most want, what most fulfills them, what they most fear, their different approaches to life, but also metatextually another instance of that tears/blood motif and its ramifications constant through the whole text. Erasing that climatic decision and making him just simply suicidal erases those aspects of Christian and his place in the Christian/Cyrano/Roxane dynamic, all for plain superficial angst, that perhaps hits more in the moment, but holds less meaning.

Being more literal, and more solemn, Hooker's translation (or any of the others, but Hooker's seems to love the characters and understand them) doesn't make these conceptual mistakes. Now, would I not recommend reading Burgess' translation? I can't also say that. I had a lot of fun reading it, despite the occasional anger and indignation haha Would I recommend buying it? I recommend you give an eye to it first, if you're tempted and can initially only buy one.

You can read Burgess' translation entirely in archive.com. You can also find online the complete translations of Renauld, Hooker and Thomas and Guillemard. I also found a fifth one, iirc, but I can't recall it right now (I could give a look). You could read them before choosing, or read your favourite scenes and fragments in the different translations, and choose the one in which you like them better. That's often what I do.

Edit: I've checked to make sure and Roxane does appear in Arras in the translation. It's in the introduction in which it is stated that she doesn't appear in the production for which the translation was made. The conceptualisation of Roxane I criticise and that in my opinion is constant through the text does stay, though.

[chippycore]

this may just be me but I think there's something you could argue about the image of a cut open apricot almost (almost; im stretching it i think) resembling a peacock feather, with the pit being the eye (or at least this is how i saw it from how it was drawn in the game)

[sysig]

Sick threads where’d you get ‘em (Patreon)