#-thnx 4 the memories plays in the background-

[tirednotflirting]

(hopefully did this right? we’ll see)

i was tagged by @escapesos​, @clumsyclifford​, @lukehummingbirdz​, and @simp4calum​ to do this guy! so thnx pals <3

haven’t been online much to know who has done this yet so I’m gonna tag @kaleidoscopeminds​, @calumcest​, @mashlums​, and anybody else still wanting to give it a go :)

here’s the link to do ur own !!!

alright and now onward with my rambling :))))

1. 1989 (deluxe edition) - taylor swift: picking a taylor album was HARD and ultimately 1989 probably isn’t even my favorite taylor album but its the one with the most impact in my life i think. i have this insanely clear memory of sitting in my car the first time i heard ‘wonderland’ and ‘clean’ and just crying like a BABY. up to that point it had been the biggest leap and risk she had taken in her sound and it was just such a joy to step into the planning of a new phase of my life with this album playing in the background. i had always been a taylor fan but for some reason this was the first of her albums (likely due a lot to age but eh) that i heard myself and my experiences in.

2. meet you there tour live - 5 seconds of summer: so (perhaps?) oddly enough this was actually the 5sos album that got me here into this space online. their first two records just didn’t really end up on my radar and while i loved youngblood when it dropped earlier that year, there was something missing in the sound of it at the time to really pull me into the band and their fanbase. and then i got babylon (live) our national anthem on a discover weekly or something and just FELL IN LOVE. like listened to this album only for probably 3 months straight fell in love. 5sos has been the first band whose fanbase i’ve found a home in and quite literally the people i’ve had the opportunity to cross paths with bc of this band are some of the only ones who have made these last six months tolerable. i’m so stupid thankful to 5sos and idk i’m kinda glad that this was the record they put out that brought me in. there’s a lot of them in this live record in a different way than their studio records.

3. BADLANDS (Live at Webster Hall) - halsey: okay anybody in the club seeing this specific choice is not even the slightest bit surprised like i am literally listening to it AS I TYPE THIS. as i’ve discussed many times with miss meg aka @kaleidoscopeminds​ i miss live music so much IT PAINS ME. so for one of my favorite records of all time to be released as a live concert album last month to celebrate five years since its release is basically a DREAM. the goddess that is halsey and her debut album found me at a hilariously low point in my life and it really brought me a sense of security i’ve never really gotten from another record. it’s so dreamy and LOUD and the perfect highway driving album it was such an ESCAPE. i could talk for days about this album but i’m just on another planet w this live album like she creates such a VISION w the live show for this and you can HEAR IT. more live albums 2k20

4. melodrama - lorde: our LORDE AND SAVIOR AMIRIGHT. this is another one kinda like badlands that sends me off into like a dreamland of color and sound and escape. lorde i think is only really capable of making perfect albums (perfect places amiright??? sorry). she’s such a patient and practiced artist with the way she writes both lyrics and music and it’s an album that i know i’ll be able to turn on in 40 years and just be swept back into my soph year of uni with the blink of an eye. supercut hits particularly deep but also sober and the louvre have such a youthful energy like they’re BURSTING w it. 

5. modern vampires of the city - vampire weekend: so excluding the ones i got once i had my car bc i didn’t have an aux in that car, this was the last CD i think i bought with the intention to listen to it on a CD player (still objectively late for that it was 2013). my favorite music moment in like modern times is on this record. it’s at 2:42 in ‘hannah hunt’ and i think it’s just the most happy/sad piano melody i’ve ever heard. last summer i had the chance to see this band for the first time while they were touring their most recent record and it was at a taping for ACL Live and no one was allowed to have their phones out during the taping and i think it was one of the most perfect moments i’ve ever experienced. VW just makes such simply good and beautiful music and this record shows that especially.

6. bad ideas - tessa violet: tessa’s music says so many things but i think most importantly it says “you’re going to experience bad things and they might even be your fault for some reason or another but it’s okay because you will be okay and you will grow and be better for it”. her music is so much about accepting the way your brain works and using that knowledge to better yourself and your decision making rather than letting it tear you apart. i saw her last fall and all i could think about when i left the show was how important it felt for me to be there. like i had been told and seen something impactful on a personal level, not just because it was a damn good show. i suggest listening to this album front to back bc it tells a really specific and detailed story that way. i’ve learned a lot from miss tessa.

7. some nights - fun.: (god i pulled it up just to get in the zone for this one and jesus christ). so in 2012 my life changed a LOT. so much good and bad that its hard to pick out what was what but i DO KNOW that the music was incredible. in 2012 i met the first person who would break my heart (i think?), i started high school, i met some of my best friends at camp, my dad moved and i had to move into a really toxic environment, i had my first marching season, and i spent three months straight that summer listening to this record. i hear this record and i think of climbing up on the roof w my best friend to sing and laugh and watch the stars and make up stories of how amazing perfect high school was going to be. i don’t have those stories or even that friend anymore. but i have this album. it’s like 50 min of pure nostalgia and impossible to not include here. and OF COURSE it’s a jack antonoff project djfkalgfj

always saying too much and nothing at all amiright? a regular ashton irwin over here. if you actually read this ur a real trooper lol

[ettadunham]

A Buffy rewatch 5x11 Triangle

aka buddy comedy Buffy style

Welcome to this dailyish text post series where I will rewatch an episode of Buffy and go on an impromptu rant about it for an hour. Is it about one hyperspecific thing or twenty observations? 10 or 3k words? You don’t know! I don’t know!!! In this house we don’t know things.

And today’s episode has a bit more to it than I remember, but at its core, it’s still a classic premise of two characters at odds being forced to work together and grow and bond along the way. Well, maybe “bond” is a strong word for it. “Tolerate each other more” is probably slightly more accurate.

I have fond memories of Triangle for all of those scenes between Willow and Anya, which is why I was slightly thrown off by the fact that this episode actually has other storylines going on as well. Shocking, I know.

There’s Buffy dealing with the fallout of her break-up with Riley, and latching onto Xander and Anya’s relationship as her last hope in romance for some reason (even though Willow and Tara are also… right there). There’s Giles’ offscreen trip to England, and having Dawn overhear their discussion at the end about her being the Key. And then there’s also Spike’s whole deal.

That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy those things about the episode though. On the contrary, it’s always an unexpected treat to re-discover moments like the early scene between Joyce and her daughters, and then Dawn following Buffy into her room just to lend her an ear to talk about her feelings about the Riley departure. It was such a sweet sisterly thing to do, and I love that whole exchange - even if it somewhat clashes with the more outrageous comedic elements of the episode when it comes to portraying Buffy’s state of mind.

It should also come as no surprise that I absolutely love that we see a lot of Buffy and Tara in this episode as well. (They’re taking a class together and talking about where they’ll sit next time. Someone please link me to some quality Buffy/Tara college fics, thnx.) I also just generally love how Tara is integrated more into the group, and we see her playing a slight buffer role between Willow and Anya and then between the two and Xander too. There are unfortunately still moments though where I feel like the writers just don’t know what to do with her, like in that last fight scene, where she’s just standing around in the background.

And it hurts my soul, because I love Tara, and she’ll have many strong moments throughout the show, but imagine how much more we could’ve been given still? They wouldn’t even put Amber Benson in the credits until her very last episode, the absolute cowards.

Anyways. Willow and Anya.

I’ve been talking about Willow’s jealous streaks in the past. She appears to be especially hostile towards Xander’s love interests throughout the show, but with Bad Girls, we also see that the same type of emotions can arise when it comes to Buffy’s love interests.

(Yes, I am just going to keep calling Faith Buffy’s love interest without any quotation marks or whatnot and you can’t stop me.)

She’s even self-aware of this in Consequences. “I kind of have an issue with Faith sharing my people.” And in this episode, Anya calls out the same thing:

ANYA:  You don’t want anyone else to have [Xander].

And yet, as frustrated as Willow was in season 4 about Buffy ditching the gang for Riley, she never really took that out on Riley. Part of that must have been that she had her own stuff going on with Tara for sure, and maybe the other part is that by season 5, Buffy really wasn’t all that focused on Riley in the first place. There was no reason for Willow to feel slighted or replaced.

That’s sort of one of Willow’s core fears I believe. Being replaced or becoming less special in her friends’ lives. And maybe that fear is more potent when it comes to other women than with a male love interest, because Willow feels less threatened by those? There’s probably a lot to unpack there.

But remember too, Willow is self-aware of this about herself. So maybe that’s why she didn’t have it in for Riley, because she didn’t really have any other reason to hate him; whereas Faith betrayed Buffy and assaulted Xander right around the time she started to resent her.

Faith is probably the best case example for Willow’s jealousy, not just because it relates to both Buffy and Xander, but because we can actually see her getting along with Faith before her heel-turn. (Unlike with someone like Cordelia, who they pretty much were in a feud for all of high school apparently.)

It’s not that Willow and Faith had tons of scenes together, but they were fine with the other. And even with Bad Girls, we don’t really see Willow taking out her feelings on Faith. She’s only confronting Buffy about it in Consequences. Her being openly hostile towards Faith comes after what Faith did to Buffy and Xander in that episode.

Which is why I like the reading we get in this episode; that Willow’s main source of dislike for Anya comes from her fear of Anya eventually hurting Xander.

I still think that there’s more to it though. Willow has been making snide and cruel remarks about Anya ever since early season 4. It feels personal, not to mention that it started way before Xander and Anya’s relationship became serious enough to lead to one of them seriously hurting the other. So… the jealousy is probably still a factor.

But also, there is actually some personal history here too with Doppelgangland. Anya used Willow for a spell that ended up bringing her evil vampire alterego to their world, so there’s a whole lot of trust issues and baggage there to begin with. (And that’s without using the later metaphoric interpretation of magic from season 4. I mean… “It did get a little sexy, didn’t it?”)

We’ve also just got a classic setup of two characters with similar and opposite traits in ways that will never allow them to bond above a certain level on the show. Where Anya is blunt and forward, Willow is self-conscious and cagey. While Willow tiptoes and calculates, Anya just bulldozes through everything.

And yet as Anya points out, both of them have also been approached by D’Hoffryn to become vengeance demons, proving that they both have the potential for great destruction. They feel things very deeply, are not especially good at dealing with strong, negative emotions, and are prone to lash out with them. They will also both have a complex relationship to their power eventually.

So I like that this is the conflict that we’re still left with. They mostly resolve the part that involves Xander, but these are still two very different and yet similar characters who will continue to have trouble relating to each other. And that can be okay.

When Anya confronts Willow about her own fears, regarding how Willow might poison Xander against her, we’ve also got what I believe is our first confirmation from Willow regarding her sexuality. I’ll just bookmark that line and its exact wording (“Gay now!”), and put it away for now. I might get back to it before the end of the season. Because I don’t know what’s good for me.

One thing’s for sure, I really enjoyed the episode, and having Willow and Anya work together by the end to help Buffy to defeat Olaf.

Good job, team!

[fuanteinasekai]

Thnx 4 your reply, & I too wondered about that Natsume/Taki moment, Sensei might've tried to give it a spin. But remember this quote? "I feel like I'm chasing characters around with a sketchbook & megaphone" (1st vol) She follows their natural course. She also made sure to show Taki/Tanuma/Smol Natsume act similarly to Taki/Natsume/Kai & tied the stories, Taki: "yes! thats the field we made flower crowns" but Natsume didnt remember her or that moment. Tanuma/Natsume tho? *waves at your meta #1

Hi! I love this ask!!

First, it actually hadn’t occurred to me that the Kai story was chosen as a reference specifically because of the “faux parents” comparison. I assumed it was just because it was the only location besides Taki’s house we had any reference for. But we’ve never actually seen Tanuma fishing, and that was one of his memories, so there’s no reason Midorikawa-sensei couldn’t have made up something similar with Taki. In retrospect, it does seem a little much to be coincidental.

On the one hand it’s slightly worrisome, since Tanuma and Taki have basically negative romantic chemistry in this story, whereas Natsume/Taki was at least plausible. So it could be read as supporting Natsume/Taki through contrast. On the other hand, I’m not sure how you would reconcile that reading with the rest of the story. There’s so much implied intimacy between Tanuma and Natsume, and the cleaning cupboard is an incredibly domestic choice of location for Natsume to recognize. Like, you pretty much have to be a very close friend to be involved in the household on that level, haha. I’m still not ruling out Taki as wife—heteronormativity is a powerful force, and I’m wary of letting my guard down. But yeah.

Second, I love that you bring up her writing style, ‘cause I was literally in the middle of writing about it. I hadn’t actually read that particular author’s note yet, but it’s exactly the impression I got from reading between the lines of her other notes:

描きかた

「こういうシーンのあるこういう流れの話を描きたい」と思って、それに合う子をそこに放り込んで動いてもらう。メガホン片手に追っかけていってスケッチする、という感覚で描いている気がします。特に学生さんのお話は。

そこは右だー、左だーと指示を出しながら追っかけていって、セリフや動きは任せる感じです。なのでネーム中はかなり疲れますが、とても楽しいものでもあるのです。

“The Way I Draw”

“When I think ‘I want to draw a story with this kind of scene and this kind of flow,’ I pick a kid who fits, throw them in and put them to work. I feel like I’m drawing intuitively, as if I were trailing after them with a megaphone in one hand, sketching. Especially in stories about students.”

“I feel like I’m trailing after them while directing, ‘That goes to the riiight, that goes to the leeeft,’ but leave the dialog and labor to them. Because of this, I find the preliminary work exhausting, but really fun.”

This is pretty much exactly what I was getting at with the “Taki test” thing, just reversed. My theory with the Kai story was that she chose a setting and environment where Taki could break through romantically, then dropped her in to see what would happen. So rather than picking a character for the environment, she picked a specific environment in order to give a character an opportunity to evolve in a specific way—and then let it go when that evolution didn’t happen. That’s my theory, anyway.

This is the bit I was already working on:

Midorikawa-Sensei did not originally intend this series to have any sort of character or relationship development or emotional arc. At all.

If you read her early author’s notes, she’s fairly up front of about this. I get the impression she’s basically a folklore nerd who wanted to write stories about yōkai. So she cloned one of her male protagonists, gave him the Book of Friends to justify all his yōkai encounters, and slapped him into a shoujo manga. It was supposed to be a series of independent yōkai stories bound by a single character, much like Mushishi but with a different tone and more strongly centered on existing Japanese folklore. She flat out says this in the author’s notes for the first chapter:

可能なら読切シリーズとして描きたいと本心を担当様にお話しして描いた作品です。

“This is a work I drew while telling [the editor] that I truly wanted, if possible, to draw it as a series of stand-alones.”

*pauses to laugh hysterically*

Shigeru-san was supposed to be “like Columbo’s wife,” always alluded to and never seen. Reiko was just a device to set up the Book of Friends, not a real character. Tanuma was supposed to click with Natsume instantly, without any angst, presumably so that Natsume would have someone to explain things to. If you compare the first twenty chapters to those that followed, you can see how recurring characters used to be mostly in the background, and yōkai dominated heavily. Natori stories were disproportionately common because he (as an exorcist) was part of world-building, and because it was easy to write him and yōkai at the same time. Now these yokai-dominant stories are the exception, rather than the rule. These are all still yōkai stories, of course, but now the yōkai largely serve as vehicles for the stories and emotions of humans.

Unfortunately for Midorikawa-sensei, she’s clearly the type of writer who lets her instincts play a role in her writing. This is visible even without her direct admission. So when characters started acting in unexpected ways, she let them. And now, despite having originally planned absolutely no plot arc at all, she has at least two major ongoing plot threads: the question of Natsume’s grandfather and how it ties to the Book of Friends (possibly separable from “how to return all the names”), and The Thing with Tanuma. 

One of the interesting conclusions we can draw from this is that character-centric stories she’s “wanted to draw for a long time” are not stories she has always wanted to draw. If Reiko was originally just a plot device, then Souko must have been invented later, probably in response to some sort of plot development. *cough*Tanuma-related*cough* To a lesser extent, it’s unlikely that Ito-san was planned from the start, either. Unlike a series that was planned out and structured from the start, we can’t assume that foreshadowing or a particular theme started early. We have to be really careful about what kind of assumptions we make, and about how old our sources are. 

To me that actually makes all this more fun—trying to figure when something changed, when she gave in to a particular theme, and so on. I do think she’s been leaning into the choices her characters have made, but she’s not necessarily up front about when that started, or exactly what that means. It’s an extra challenge.