#And the show does it sooo well

[chicago-geniza]

One of my favorite things about the IWTV adaptation is that while it acknowledges the overall significance of Catholicism for Anne Rice's worldbuilding and its outsized significance to characters like Louis and Lestat, it expresses the meaning-making matrix of shame and monstrous desire, the Vampire Chronicles Secret Sauce, in ways that don't necessarily reduce to Christianity like they do in the books. With Armand especially, Daniel secondarily, and I'm excited to see how that plays out in later seasons. (Claudia was always one of the most interesting characters because she never considered herself in Christian allegorical/homiletic terms or held herself to Christian moral ideals.)

[turtleblogatlast]

I think a lot about Leo standing up for his brothers in the things that really matter to them.

Like- Leo is the one who immediately pushes Mikey and Donnie into finding Raph the second it’s clear that their oldest brother is missing because he knows Raph can’t handle being separated like that.

Leo is the one who stands up for Mikey when Mikey wants to go on a solo mission, actively vouching for him and being the one to convince Raph into letting Mikey go, because being independent and proving himself just as capable of standing on his own two feet as everyone else means so much to Mikey.

And Leo defends Donnie’s honor in particular when his brothers’ intelligence is insulted because Leo is well aware of how important Donnie’s smarts are to him - and how important having those smarts valued and acknowledged is as well.

All this goes right into just how well Leo knows his brothers. For as much as he’ll tease or fight with them, he knows them, and he loves them.

[hauntingofhouses]

(concept art of young taigen - source ; art credit: @abigaillarson)

i cannot get over this concept art of young taigen. god.

just look at this angry bratty boy, too many feelings that he doesnt know what to do with! an abused 9 year old kid in poverty always playing with sticks in the dirt, obsessed with greatness and dreaming to escape his decrepit village—and he does!

he does escape. he runs away. this angry little boy, all claws and teeth and biting words uttered with a lisp, going on the run into a world he's never seen before until he makes his way to kyoto. and knowing him he probably forced his way in to be accepted by the dojo, growling and kicking even as he's thrown out, back into the streets, too stubborn to take no for an answer and never knowing when to give up.

taigen calls mizu a dog, weak, an orphan, a scrawny street urchin. but i can't help but think that he feels so bold to use those words because he had them spat at him too.

because taigen had the idea of "this is how the world is" beat into him from birth. he learned quickly that if you couldn't beat the world you could join it. but that meant losing your way, your values, your principles. and isn't that what true honour is? not just titles and status and glory?

we don't get to see what taigen, as a child surrounded by peers encouraging and goading him on, would've actually done if that meteor hadn't fallen right in front of them at that very moment. would he have really tried to throw that stone on mizu, killing her? we don't know.

but we do see what taigen (his true self, with no one around) does, when presented with the same opportunity. when mizu passes out in front of him, unconscious and near death, vulnerable, the path to restoring his honour lays itself out for him on a silver platter. and he wants to take it, wants to kill mizu, to claim what is his and return to kyoto and get back everything he'd worked tooth and nail for. he feels like it's what he should do. but he doesn't.

and later, again he is presented with the chance to betray mizu, likely offered by heiji shindo to get his rank reinstated within the shindo dojo. and again, taigen doesn't take it. he refuses. "stupidly loyal," fowler calls him later. loyal, like a dog.

because now, pulled away from the sneering looks and jeering words of people around him, telling him that this is what the world is, taigen had met ringo and mizu, two outcasts who refuse to follow a predetermined path to greatness. and so inside something blooms in him. something like hope. a chance to live in a world that doesn't kick you down every chance it gets, to live in a world where genuine kindness and and love and friendship and even weakness is possible, allowed to simply exist without fear.

because he'd been running away from the very idea of it the whole time. when he ran from kohama, he never looked back, never wanted to remember what it was like to be a child, afraid and hungry and angry and hurting, without the words to make sense of it, desperately wishing for something. something more. he doesn't know what. but he hears stories of great swordsmen and decides, yes, this must be it. this is what i want: glory, greatness. the twisted seed gets planted and thrives in this barren land.

and when he returns to kohama with mizu and ringo, he at last is forced to stop running. he must face the child within him again, and he tells that child to put down the stones in his hand, tells him to stop barking at anything that moves or looks at him wrong.

the child drops the stone, and taigen buys dumplings instead, gives them to mizu. the child within him, wide-eyed at the prospect of friendship, moves him to pick up a hammer and toss it to mizu. he's smiling inside even as he does it; giggling like a kid hiding a silly prank. as soon as mizu drops the hammer after him, he leaps at her, tackling her to the ground and they wrestle and laugh unbridled like two children playing while the adults aren't around to barge in and yell at them.

and then his gaze catches on mizu's lips, he stares into mizu's eyes, a sparkling blue, inviting like the open sea in good weather.

it's a man's desire that takes hold then, the child in him sinking away again, and he curses himself for it, because it ruins the moment.

everything goes to shit from there, and then it's back to being a man, back to putting on his grown-up's armour to play hero.

it fails. the shogun dies. fowler's beatings reopen all the wounds left by heiji shindo's torture. "honour is meaningless," mizu tells him. "nothing comes from being a samurai but death."

the words follow him, and he follows the words.

as everything burns down, he runs, leaving the fire behind him, and sees akemi, as well as the verdure of spring behind her, calling him. he does not hesitate then to hold his hand out to her, inviting her to come with him. "i don't want to be great," he says. "i just want to be happy."

what is happiness to him? perhaps he doesn't know it yet, or perhaps he does. but really, i believe happiness is what the child in him always wanted but never received. happiness is a home.

[marcmorrigan]

@fenglianweek day 6: memories/growing up

the best thing thats ever been mine

[luck-of-the-drawings]

OOH YEAH BABY! PARTY TIME BABY! MUSIC! DRINKS! SOCIAL PRESSURE & A PSYCHEDELIC BREAK DOWN! WELCOME TO VAMPIRE SOCIETY MOTHERFUCKER! ARE YOU SCARED? DO YOU UNDERSTAND YET? ITS OKAY IF NOT. FIRE DISSOLVED IT! ITS ALL GONE NOW. HAVE FUN!

[worstloki]

Loki probably had to deal with Frigga's 'subtle' attempts to get him to apologise and reintegrate into the family through the entire jail time :/

[mapsofnonexistentplaces]

because we got top 5 freddy facts can we get top 5 cuntress facts

OF COURSE

1 she is literally just transgender. like textually. stanley and i have joked about how its kind of written in the "cowards way" in that shes just a reincarnation that is basically a cis woman but considering this show came out in 2016 and the fact that there's like never any weird jokes about her gender i think this is like the best possible outcome. she has a few moments where she brings up like her old life and never really seems to think much of her weird little trans circumstances. casually talks about women she loved and theres never any jokes like "AHAAA but i am a girl nowww" or whatever. someone once wrote an entire article about her and this whole thing much to my surprise (same person picks up on tchaikovsky's trans implications as well but i forget if thats in this article or another one on this site. i digress) its great

for some reason her being trans made her also become blonde. its funny putting the two designs side by side

2 this is my favorite screenshot of her

3 shes got a job as a pianist for a local bar or something of the sort. kind of just implied she does random gigs i think? anyway theres some cute art of her playing the piano about it

theres a few instances where shes shown playing in the show and i think each time they use piano renditions of actual franz liszt pieces so she's literally just playing her own songs for people without them really knowing.... very very cute little detail

tangentially she's also shown to have a bit of a thing for alcohol which is a trait really only shared with schubert (her orange friend) and it never comes up in the show but GOD i wish they had a little scene of them getting blasted together i know they would.

thinking about it this actually comes up with tchaikovsky who's not allowed to drink on account of being like 15 and the way she prevents her from drinking is simply by stealing any drinks from her and chugging them

she rules

4 ive made the comparison before of white woman isel but she literally. just is. she has an entire motif about love and romance and gets excited when people's relationships are weird and complicated in a very like. "oh i am here to observe a story that will entertain me" way. very much has a penchant for the theatrics. and all of this is kind of surface level so the fact i bring to the table is that each time she has a fun little fancy outfit she always corresponds it to like. some kind of stereotypical archetypal fictional setting. her magical girl outfit is pirate themed and there's an entire episode about her literally constructing a fake cowboy au of all her roommates in her mind where she's a badass sheriff who made a pact with the literal devil. charms me A LOT that she kind of terraces around schlocky fiction that's all about drama. it's a cute little parallel to freddy's own dependencies on creating dogshit comics

5 this is not so much a fact as much as it is simply an earnest recommendation but she has an entire episode about challenging a guy to a piano duel where she spends all her prep time just working out. i cannot say any more about it because its genuinely just better experienced outright. if youve got like 20 minutes to waste just dip into season 2 episode 10 its probably the best episode in the show from an objective point of view and its all about her and its all you need to see

[antilovett]

me watching my 2025 doc fill up with trips after i promised it would be the year i travel less

[pvffinsdaisies]

Scotland: I will fight the next person to insult my boyfriend

Norway: I hate myself

Scotland: alright, cutie, square up

[carefulfears]

what do you think mulder thinks of diana fowley after biogenesis through amor fati? i don't think we really see anything on screen/in text (though i think it says a lot that he didn't have much of a reaction when scully came to his apartment & instead focuses on scully & their relationship lol)

yeah there’s basically NOTHING in the text but tbh i think finding out for certain that she was working with CSM really kindaaaa snapped him out of some things…mulder doesn’t give a fuck what people do to him, obviously, but it’s a different thing entirely to find out that your ex is involved in something like that. like there are MILES from “my partner makes me feel like shit and is maybe pretty abusive” and “my partner is like 3rd on the call list of a eugenics group that treats women like test subjects”

like, scully was right, diana was monitoring MUFON women and collecting data on them. she was heading up the tests on cassandra. she probably knew the truth about samantha the whole time. just nasty nasty shit.

she’s the villain in the amor fati dream: the dismissive symbol of abandonment that offers another path.

one of the most interesting scenes of diana’s character to me, is in the sixth extinction, when she comes to see mulder in the hospital. and she knows what the effects of the artifact are, that he can hear what she’s thinking. that, therefore, he knows who she works for and what she’s doing. (imagine your ex-husband/wannabe boyfriend/obsession finds out you’re lying to him because he can read your mind….shit is crazy!)

and she tells him that she knows he knows. but that he also knows that she loves him.

and she does love him. there’s no reason to lie about that then, she knows he would be able to tell.

scully knows it without hearing it, that’s how she gets diana to save mulder’s life, ultimately. she comes to her and begs. tells her to please just think of him, who he is, who he was when she met him, who he is now. in the end, because of scully weaponizing how diana feels, diana can’t go through with it. she gives her life to help him.

diana seems to be one of those influences on mulder that’s only really all that significant when she’s close by. it’s like how all the tension in the beginning builds up to him getting in her car when she tells him to, leaving scully, when diana is there instructing him.

i think being able to know who she truly was and her true intentions and allegiances, prior to her death, really goes a long way in the way he responds to losing her.

don’t get me wrong, i think he’s upset. you can kind of see the shock cross his face when scully tells him. but he stays focused on his goal, which is to express to scully how important she is to him, in the wake of how discarded diana always made her feel.

mulder loved diana and grieves that she was killed, he doesn’t have it in him not to, but mostly he…wanted something from her, right? he wanted that approval and “affection” and to please her. he wanted her to believe him. the first thing that she says to disarm him (in the end) when she can tell he’s uneasy, is, “hey. i’m on your side.”

learning who she really is, it’s easier not to crave her approval so badly.

(this is the crux of amor fati’s “last temptation.” it’s diana saying: you’re childish. you are going to fail. your path is not your own. “you have to let go, fox.” and it’s scully countering: we need you. this is who you are.)

(it’s why he responds in the end by telling scully that it’s her that’s the voice of truth.)

and then in death, diana’s not…there for him to want anything from!! so it’s like, again, yeah he obviously feels the loss, this was someone who meant a lot to him for over a decade. but also it’s likeeeeee freeing in a way? it makes things simpler in a way? (he’s able to communicate all of that to scully instantly after hearing diana is gone, after over a year of the tension hanging around it)

if you asked him about diana now, or even a year later, i think he’d be like…damn that’s crazy! 😭😭 mulder doesn’t have an awful lot of object permanence you guys sjdjsjfj

when scully comes to tell mulder that diana was killed, and he says to her, “you were my friend, and you told me the truth,” the language matters so much. that’s what scully called diana, “i know she was your friend,” and he turns it back onto her. you were my friend. you told me the truth.

in my opinion, it’s not that he doesn’t love and grieve diana, but that there’s a freedom in knowing the truth. knowing who someone is, and their intentions. knowing who has your best interest at heart. knowing where you stand in the world, what you want to do.

that’s really what allows for the openness and lightness of s7, in the wake of diana’s absence. mulder’s always seeking, always learning.

[sapphira-mydnyte]

🐍Fashion Show Friday: Ominis Gaunt🐍

👑Class, Sass, Royal Badass👑

"Kneel.... before your king." - Ominis Gaunt

[robotpanties]

uuuuuhhh no reason just wanna see the robot get preggers because nobody is really taking advantage of the narrative consequences of the robots of ULTRAKILL having fleshy bits inside them (in my humble opinion hahahaha...hahaha....hah....). Anywhosen also a sucker for general Bad End especially when it involves a psycho-sexual (breeding) binding to a greater entity but also I wanna see the murder-robot get knocked up. And the galaxy brain bit of this is instead of calming down they just get Worse.

YEAH NO ONE REALLY TAKES ADVANTAGE OF THAT. and well i mostly assumed a very small percentage of people actually want to breed the robots like that which is why.

also i don't think this as a bad end, but a bad path that can lead to some other.. inch resting things (my stupid ass is trying to craft a plot with horror and drama from this path and how it'd change the story slightly despite knowing I will never get around to writing it in fic form except tiny excerpt ideas and art)

also i have so much to say abt the 'it doesn't calm down it just gets worse' bc its So true

[poetryofyouth]

hhnggg i just imagined a photoshoot concept, sth like "true" eroticism, 1800s clothing with all these layers so no or barely any skin shown, hands gripping fabric, eyes hungrily yearning for what is underneath, i want to make the viewers actually feel sth just seeing someone's ankles. if i can ever pull sth like that off i will die happy.

[slightlytoastedbagel]

Something so fucked in how it's Wilardo specifically who ends up doodling with Claire and Sirius, who gives them both some of his preserved flowers as a thank you for letting them stay in the mansion/just out of kindness. He's the one that struggles for around a day debating if it's right to kill Claire for his wish and ultimately decides letting them both live is the easier (happier) option for him. Even if he'd be dead soon after. How when it all ends it isn't Noel or Ashe who walks away with them both but Wilardo, who had killed them both in Sirius's initial scenario.

[stewyhosseini-bf]

one thing I will say that I kind of miss about the previous seasons is how the episodes used to feel a bit more self-contained, like their own little movies, which I'm kind of missing a bit in s4. lucy prebble at one point in the succession podcast described it as them having a sitcom-like feel to them, because each episode is built around one specific event; and while that's definitely still there in season 4, the way each episode does truly pick up almost exactly where the previous one left off time-wise, and the way that Logan's death and the children's grief is the red-thread that closely connects the episodes, kind of makes it feel like one long movie rather then 10 separate episodes. which is interesting and makes sense considering the focus of the season is supposed to be the children dealing with logan's death and consequent absence, and it's puts a slight spin on the formula they've used for 3 seasons and I think they've done that really well - so it isn't even a critique on my part, but I personally still really loved and kinda miss the way the episodes each felt more like their own thing, previously, ig

[quinn-pop]

finally was able to catch up w yohane in time for the finale. i could not stop thinking about this

textless + original