#(am I truly surprised? NO)

[egophiliac]

Do you have any final theories/desires for Book 7 Part 12?

(slamming fists on table) I DEMAND MORE CHE'NYA

[vaguely-concerned]

on the one hand I think inner demons could stand to have a bit more romanced rook specific content, but on the other hand the underlying in-built implication that 'yours is the one true voice of comfort and safety in my inner world' is a sentiment and intimacy so way beyond the romantic or the platonic or any secret third thing you could care to name that it makes me lose my entire poor little mind a bit. it's so big and fundamental — near-existential — that in that exact moment at least the distinctions kind of seem irrelevant.

all the people lucanis' mind conjures up along the way are relationships he has that are unavoidably mixed and fraught in some ways even when they're also full of love (they are fraught BECAUSE they're full of love) — the good in them inseparable from things that hurt him at the same time. (it's about: the basic disorganized attachment patterns this poor guy is dragging around with him. careful with those, they're dellamorte heirlooms. what you love also inevitably hurts you and you won't be allowed to have one without the other, you have to surrender parts of your soul to hold on to what little you have left: this is the story up until now.) and the idea that rook isn't that to him — that beneath the fear of wanting them when romanced (which is more its own separate thing because within this psychology, actively wanting something and not just clinging on for dear life to even a meager status quo lest you lose it is in itself dangerous bordering on catastrophic), this is a relationship where there isn't resentment, or guilt, or shame, or dread, or rage, or self-hate, or any of the other emotions that keep him paralyzed, unable to move this way or that. no debts, nothing owed of yourself and your soul's substance except what you can freely and safely and happily give. love and freedom don't coexist — but, I mean, you're almost starting to make me think........... unless...👀👀👀. the unconditional and undramatic 'you are here and I am here with you, you can be exactly how you are right now with me and it's safe for us both even though you're afraid it won't be, I'm not going anywhere' acceptance rook shows him here that he returns to them in the big romance scene, when it's rook who needs it. the way he's just. standing there in the center of it all, like a child desperately helplessly waiting to be found, hiding in the place he hopes you'll know to look first. (rook does know. it's one of the first things they say in there.)

in short the most important room in his little mind palace for the romance is the very first room — the one where rook isn't. where, in fact, rook cannot be, because they disprove the entire structure of the place with their existence and presence in his life. with everyone else he's putting words in their mouths about what they think of him, and rook is the one who actually gets to come in to speak their own words to him — and have him listen. ('he'll listen to you, he always listens to you', 'your voice is a comfort'.) of course rook isn't present anywhere else in there — at the risk of stating the obvious to a tedious degree, they aren't one of the locks, they're bringing the key. in the very finest 'the messenger and the message' sort of way.

[lilybug-02]

[thebramblewood]

EIGHTIES, Part I Requested by @papermint-airplane Starring Caleb and Lilith Vatore

I think this was a good decade for them. Most people thought the goths might be vampires anyway, so they blended right in.

Only Caleb was requested, but we all know they come as a package deal, and I must admit I was already working on these looks anyway. I initially had Caleb in more punk attire (e.g. patched leather jacket and Mohawk), but it just didn't feel like him. I got suggested this hair, and it all fell together then. I imagine this is when he first discovered that buttoning up shirts is an unnecessary expenditure of energy. I'm not sure if it reads as quintessentially '80s, but I think it's perfect for him. This might be my favorite version of them I've done so far, and I have some story plans brewing for this era that could involve crowd participation, so keep your eyes peeled. 👀

[cator99]

out of curiosity, would you consider yourself butch?

used to be a blonde underweight twink and now I'm a based jock still got the chanel bag and the sick albeit matured mind of a suckpig to prove it so I'm gonna let you decide whether you wanna call me that word just cuz I got a pussy and short hair. I promise you that there have been enough advancements made in the art of lesbian sexual dynamics in the past 50 years to broaden the vocabulary used to describe the plethora of types of masculine females.

[rin-sith]

Every time I see Odysseus described as any of the following:

"Simp" (God forbid men actually healthily love their family and wife a completely reasonable amount.)

"Wet Cat" (What does that even mean exactly?? But whatever it means the vibe does not match up at all.)

"Bottom" (This man honestly has more top energy than literally every other character in this musical including the gods.)

"Homeless man" (He did not spend 20 years trying to go to the home that he has and that wants him back just to be denied his belonging there.)

"Monster/Villain/Evil" (He calls himself that enough. Can we please stop with the Odysseus demonization I am literally begging as hard as Poseidon did in 600 Strike.)

I lose a piece of my sanity.

Obviously I'm not personally attacking anyone btw. I'm just venting. Joking around is one thing but why do I see so many people treat these as canon traits? Am I in some weird corner of this fandom that I shouldn't be in?

[bromcommie]

so I was digging through the Vast Legally Grey Junkyards of the Internet in search of better quality footage from AoU for my edits, specifically the scene with the CA FASCIST grafitti in Sokovia—which I unfortunately didn't find, but what I DID find was a bunch of deleted/expanded scenes that I didn't know/didn't care enough to pay attention to before. Which is fine. Most of it is techno babble and rushed plot setup. However. This stupid-ass ten second clip makes me literally insane. It makes me. Want to kill and maim and chew on the bars of my enclosure. And not in the sense that the contents make me oh-so-emotional, but because the potential of them could. Because what do you mean.

What do you mean those four and a half lines were cut for pacing/time when it's a ten second difference and the rest of the scene is in the film anyway. What do you mean you cut it because it didn't fit the narrative. It's literally couched in two minutes of plot it could've been so easy to slip it in there. A passing reference that would add at least a smidgen of depth to both the (already fucking incomprehensible) plot + politics of the antagonists, and to one of the main fucking characters. Like you were SO close what do you mean you cut every feeble attempt that was made to scratch the surface of Steve's character outside the whole nightmare scene we're supposed to feel so bad about what do you MEAN.

The fact that this minimal exchange—paired with that graffiti scene where Steve is confronted with the actual legacy of Captain America and what he's come to mean to people around the world and then quite physically discards the identity + him still circling back to the mantle at the end of the film anyway because he doesn't know how to do or be anything else, feels like he's too changed for this idea of a normal life that stems from before the war and the ice and doesn't know how to live without carrying that, without being useful in this one specific way—has more meat on its bones in the whole lead up to Civil War and ultimately Endgame than half of this movie's sledgehammer-over-the-head lines about home and family with Barton's kids laughing in the background or whatever like some fucked up C list hallmark movie is downright infuriating to me because like. You clearly thought about it. It passed through your head. You wrote some version of it into the scene. You shot it and edited it and watched it a few times and then you went "nah off it goes to the cutting room floor, we have enough of that. Add those seven and a half seconds to the 20-minute long, entirely CGI Hulk sequence, that we need more of. Surely that will fix the pacing issue".

Side note: this is me not even getting into the fact that, at this point in the franchise, this would have been one of the few lines we'd get of Maria actually saying something or interacting with anyone in a way that is even marginally removed (which this barely is) from simply delivering plot information. This is the only time we kinda get her view on something or even an inkling that she used to be a goddamn intelligence agent. And how that history informs her view of the situation and how it could possibly clash with Steve's own. And that woman is in every fucking movie. (Not to mention the fact that the two of them were just in a movie together, for Christ's sake, and going through something together you could pretty fairly characterize as traumatic and bond-inspiring to boot—and in AoU we can barely tell they even know each other. I mean the bar is so low and they still managed to limbo right under it.)

[coldmail750]

I'm not too late to make this joke, am I?

[willowser]

just to make sure we are all on the same page in this corner of the internet, i want to be explicitly clear about my stance/feelings on some things:

if i come across "content"/fic in this niche that i absolutely do not like, do not vibe with, am not interested in, that icks me out completely and totally—i scroll past it as quickly as i can and i move on with my day.

in the case that it's "content"/fic that really bothers or triggers me in any way, i make sure that i have blacklisted/blocked certain tags and keywords so that in the future i may not come across those things again.

i also understand that there is a variety of tags used throughout the internet and that websites are not perfect/things slip through the cracks. people are also human, and mistakes are also made.

in the event i am exposed to something that i do not want to see, point blank, i would never and will never believe it is my right to harass and terrorize the person writing said thing/s, and if i witness this kind of behavior being celebrated among the people around me, whoever you are, i will be removing you from my space.

to be perfectly and abundantly clear: i will always be a supporter of dark content, and its right to be written. even if i don't understand it, even if it "disgusts" me, even if i never want to read it.

please understand that i do not say this with hostility, nor do i mean it as a threat or to be confrontational. you should protect the space that you are in; this is me doing that, this is me making sure that you do that, even if it's against me.

[cowchickenbeefpork]

It is fascinating to me that Edward nygma is the only man who has someone in love with them kill their lover and justify it. Every time this happens to a character besides from Ed it happens to a female character. The fact his own desperation to not face responsibility for doing that action toward a woman makes this more tragic

[loveinstreams]

so many gomens fans worrying about the show’s ending being bad. rip to you but I’m over here ready for any eventuality. you wouldn’t last a day in the asylum bbc sherlock raised me

[i-cast-zone-of-truth]

idk guys like zhao yuanzhou trolling zhuo yichen and wen xiao and everyone is funny and for sure he is just doing it for fun sometimes and to create safe distance other times but definitely a good chunk of the time he is genuinely like being vulnerable or trying to connect and being met with of course skepticism or some other refusal and then haha of course he was acting, he was just messing with them. Like he makes things jokes that didn’t start out as jokes. Right? Like even on day 1 when he was generally trying to be sinister and confusing like he was so happy to see wen xiao as happy as he could be about anything in that headspace anyway and really tried to tell her about his promise to protect the wilderness and then even after she scoffed and he decided to make it a joke, the “if even you don’t believe me—“ that part too came from something real, that is a real desperation that he is tamping down, and i think so many times pre-ep-17 wen xiao or zhuo yichen giving him that look, like ‘wait that seemed maybe real, or is he fucking with me again’ it’s not just because they’re naive, he’s really not so much more worldly than they are, i think it’s because they feel or see for a second that this isn’t a joke, and then either they decide no it cant be real that would be too— (too sad, too absurd, too much right now) or he decides first and either way haha what a good actor what a tricky demon. Can’t believe he got me again!

[frittercrittern]

I am feeling entirely normal and nothing is going on at ALL in my brain about this triangle and his horrible awful dimension he is from

[ducktracy]

been watching too much Duck Dodgers lately and am impressed at not only Joe Alaskey picking up on the subtleties of Daffy’s Yiddishisms (per Mel Blanc’s own admission, claiming that the only difference between Daffy and Sylvester’s voices—aside from pitch—is that Daffy is Jewish and that is thusly reflected in his voice), but that they also somehow managed to sneak in a circumcision joke

[jesncin]

New devastating insult: You're not being the Aminah the world needs right now.

OUCH BRUTAL! Be the sunshine butch you want to see in the world!!

[throwback to some old Aminah sketches, before we even drew Lunar Boy! I think we were still scripting at this point]

[lemedy]

My verdict on Wicked Part 1: actually pretty bloody good. Does not/could not take the stage version's place in my heart, but I've quietly retreated my crankiness over the splitting into two movies.