#HE'S SO UNBELIEVABLY FUCKED UP IN THE MOST TRAGIC WAY

[cookies-over-yonder]

every day i'm distraught about grant wilson

[faggot-greg-house]

time 4 me to rant abt house again. tragically i think abt that old man constantly

so let's talk about the demonization of addiction in the show, specifically in season 7 + season 8. sorry if this is formatted really weirdly or doesn't make the most sense but i'm not sorry enough to change it

house is an addict. this is an incontrovertible truth. house does not stop being an addict once he gets sober, and i think the show treats that fact in a downright cruel way. this extends through a LOT of parts of the show, particularly in the ways that house and his pain management are treated, but none of them make me quite as angry as season 7.

in season 7, house relapses. he relapses because he is terrified. house is not good at coping and we all know this, and he spent many years coping with vicodin. it made his life easier to live in so many ways!! but in season 7, he's sober (and his pain is being managed in such a shitty way but WHATEVER) and he's faced with the frankly terrifying thought of his partner having cancer, and he relapses! there is literally nothing wrong with this. relapsing is normal and okay and not an issue. recovery from addiction is not a straight line! relapsing doesn't mean you have failed or that your recovery is ruined or damaged. relapsing is common and normal and something to be treated with kindness and patience and support.

when house relapses, cuddy responds with anger and breaks up with him. i do not understand a universe where cuddy is an accomplished doctor, a kind person, and the partner of an addict, and yet she reacts the way she does to his relapse. it is utterly unbelievable to me because it is so fucking incredibly out of character.

not only is this unbelievably out of character, it is so fucking cruel. for a show with a relatively okay/nuanced depiction of addiction and disability to take such a sharp turn into "once you relapse you are a failure" is so....... demoralizing and saddening. they decided house is a failure because he relapsed. they decided house should lose the people who love him because he relapsed. they decided that house should commit literal and actual attempted vehicular manslaughter as a snowball effect result of relapsing. i don't understand how the show went that direction, and frankly it makes me so fucking sad to see

[efingart]

Hey E! idkifishouldaskhereorinyourcodaccount BUT I’ll ask anyway. I’ve noticed you post a lot about Frank Woods, what made Woods be THE favorite character for you?

Hey no worries, I'm not exactly the most organized so it doesn't make a difference to me!

Oh my god where do I start? I'm going to try so hard to hold back because I will just tell you everything I like about him and this will take me even longer to write 😅

Frank falls into the unwanted child trope a bit. Not confirmed by Activision, but close enough and it is a trope that I find myself drawn to. The idea that he was a runaway, his home life must have been bad enough that the streets were better. Born right at the start of the Great Depression so his early life was never going to be easy. But he must have been resourceful and smart enough to survive. Another quality I like in my faves. It's interesting to think about that piece of his history that we will probably never get in any detail in canon. But that's ok, I'm happy to fill in the gaps with my own headcanons and fics.

Frank was then able to pick himself off the streets and enlist (his options were so limited, but he must have made the best choice for himself at the time.) Become such a standout that he was recruited into the CIA. And there, despite being a "self-reliant loner" he developed close friendships with Mason and Bowman. (as an aside, it is always funny when people hc he's an extrovert when he's very much not)

It's clear he cares for them deeply, even at the expense of his own well being as seen in 'Payback.' I do think he was still reeling from Bowman's death and that's why he acted with such reckless disregard for his own life. (But that's headcanon)

The way he reacts when anyone else is hurt or in danger, it's always them first him second, even in the middle of a firefight (redirecting Mason's attention to the pilot in 'Victor Charlie,' the kid on the PBR in 'Crash Site', the nurse during 'Suffer With Me' in BO2, multiple examples).

Then the way he treats Bell. I think he's the first person to deliver Bell a genuine compliment in the game (if you're a good shot). He knows his people and if I could ever get the damn sound bite again of him saying to Bell that he'd bet they'd like five minutes with the supercomputer to work again I'd link it here. How does he know Bell is such a nerd if he doesn't give a damn about his team?

He and Mason are the only ones who actually treat Bell as a member of the team. And that endeared me to him before I even knew about the plot twist.

And of course, the pain of Black Ops 2. He's just fucking dragged through the ringer isn't he? Everything, the shipping container, watching his entire team die, his tragic mistakes and how he reflects them as an old man. I really love that we get to see him as an old man. See him removed from his experiences in the 80s section of BO2. It's so interesting.

I mean even while he's still managing fresh life-changing injuries he still rallies for a kid who needs him. And he must have done a good job raising David because the kid turned out just fine in the end.

I probably could think of a half dozen more specific examples, his outrage at Project Greenlight for one: "Thousands dying in a flash and you're talking about fucking infrastructure."

Or how he has David's childhood drawings hung up in his room at the Vault.

I'm sure I'll have a dozen more after Black Ops 6 comes out if they deliver on the promised emotional journey storyline for Frank. (God, I'm so unbelievably happy he's in BO6.)

TL;DR

Frank is a complicated person. He has had it rough but doesn't wallow in self-pity. He's a smart and capable leader. He's imperfect. He knows how and when to keep things light. He takes care of his people. He rallies when he's most needed even if it's at his own expense. On the shallow end of things? He's hot, he's got great fashion sense.

Sorry, it took me a bit to get this all out. I think again I was trying to balance the urge to just dump every thought and feeling I have vs trying to be a bit more thoughtful about it. Also just cross-referencing things from the games to make sure I remembered them correctly. I'm sure there's a lot I left out. I'm planning on playing through 1, CW, & 2 again before BO6 comes out so I'm sure I'll have more thoughts to share. 😅

I genuinely appreciate you asking me about this, I love talking about Frank. Thank you so so much.

[dionysism]

okay fuck it tier list of every greek mythology or greek myth inspired musical i've listened to (so far)

with, if you care, short reviews for each below the cut. i'm like half asleep but take my poorly organized thoughts

paris the musical

this one is my all time favorite of all the ones listed here. the musical scores and vocals are just on another level. it's a rock opera so it's got guitar solos and the songs are so catchy. business is my favorite track i could loop it for weeks. i also love their patroclus characterization and i am obsessed with achilles in this unironically one of my top patroachilles adaptations of all time and the musical isn't even about them 😭😭 AND PARIS... the actual focus of the musical, i love this take on him too. it's kinda comical but also actually tragic at the same time. which i mean. paris is kinda comical but ultimately tragic in general so its fair 💀 things definitely go down differently in this than in the iliad though like agamemnon and the greeks are actually planning to invade troy before paris even shows up to take helen and ulysses (odysseus) is the only one who thinks this is stupid. he does manage to convince the rest of them to maybe Not, but then paris takes helen after what's supposed to be him going there to strike a trade deal. and agamemnon uses that as the perfect excuse to justify something he already wanted to do unprovoked anyway. also agamemnon and menelaus were going to violate xenia and kill paris in their home after making him a guest (again, before he does anything with helen) which was ?!?!!? but like similar to epic this is more like an au to me than a faithful iliad adaptation. i also love this helen characterization and the whole dynamic between hector paris and cassandra i wish i could put them all in my mouth and chew them up

ulysses dies at dawn

this is another great one. i will say this is the only album from the mechs i've listened to and the band itself has a whole ton of lore so there may be details i'm missing but i love it so much. this is definitely more of an inspired by tale—takes place in the future (i think?) on a planet that's entirely machine and metal and all animals and natural life is extinct. and all the characters are named after greek mythos characters and they have similar stories to their original counterparts but adapted to this futuristic universe and it's just so unbelievably cool. also ulysses nonbinary in this?! (the narrator says the records are lost to time and we can't be sure if ulysses was a "man, woman, both, or neither" and only refer to them with they/them pronouns) anyway i won't say too much on this one because the story tells itself and i don't want to spoil but GO LISTEN this album is fantastic

hadestown

this one i think is the most popular/well known on this list so most of you have probably heard of it but i'll still give my review. everything about this musical is incredible. i absolutely adore this take on orpheus and eurydice. and this is a take on persephone and hades i don't totally hate (because usually i do) and the way at times they paralleled orpheus to hades??? there was a quote i read from its wiki page once that sums it up pretty well, from todd osborne, "it is a musical both about how art can save us and how, especially in an apocalyptic world, hope might be the only thing we have left." just such a beautiful musical and beautiful story and the themes and messages like stop i could talk about this musical for hours let me stop

for epic i've already summed up most of my thoughts on it here

theseus the musical

um. i'm not going to lie there's multiple parts of this where i do not know what they are saying. i have auditory processing issues and i usually really need the lyrics and i cannot find any anywhere for this so i'm kinda just going on vibes. but the songs are catchy and i like the parts i do understand 😭 and well i love theseus. dearly. my little princess with a disorder my freakazoid i want to trap him in a jar like a bug and shake him around his enclosure. i'll kind of take literally anything i can get on him

penelope off broadway

full title is penelope or how the odyssey was really written and this is such a fun one. this is a comedy musical and the premise is that the epic poem, the odyssey, actually comes from fake letters penelope wrote to stall the suitors in odysseus' absence. so she's just making shit up like "umm... my men got turned into pigs so i'm gonna be late sorry babe :/" and signing it as odysseus. obviously not the most accurate characterizations but again its more of a comedy spinoff than a faithful retelling. telemachus also gets a cute little romance. (spoilers ahead if you care) they scared me for a second i thought they were having it that odysseus cheated penelope and she was gonna leave him but that's not the case and it has a happy ending so <3 this one is just so funky and silly like if you want a lighthearted not super serious musical you will love this it's really adorable and the woman who plays penelope's voice is incredible like omg some of the high notes she hits??? woah

jasper in deadland (tw suicide mention)

this one is also an inspired by/based on tale where jasper (orpheus) follows his friend agnes (eurydice) into deadland in an attempt to get her back from what was either an accident or a suicide attempt (but most likely suicide) he runs into various figures from greek norse and egyptian mythology and like it wasn't bad or anything really the songs just weren't catchy enough for me. i'm not gonna lie that's literally my only issue. i just cannot get into it and listen to it multiple times if it's not catchy enough. but the plot is cute!!

percy jackson the musical

i just don't personally care for percy jackson, sorry. never really did. you'd think as a greek mythology obsessed child i'd eat it up and i mean as a kid i did like it a little but i don't know it just never hooked me. i've tried to get back into it but it's even less enjoyable to me now unfortunately. the songs weren't catchy (to me) and i didn't like the lyrics either. it's not necessarily a bad musical. it's just not my thing

aristos the musical

sorry it just kinda felt like tsoa the musical to me and i immediately couldn't enjoy it 😭😭 that's literally all i have to say

[daincrediblegg]

Just a laundry list of stuff from the Terror scripts that doesn’t nearly get as talked about as much as it should and I’m going to make it everyone else’s problem

The way that neptune’s shit in front of hickey is LITERALLY a revenge shit. Puppy knew puppy always knew- but also how neptune is so beautifully and carefully tied into scenes like. The script loved this dog. So fucking much ("we put up with it because the captain loves it" DAMN RIGHT!!!! THATS HIS DOOOOOOG).

As much as I hate these bitches: that extended scene with Sir John and Lady Jane???? Him in bed with the flu and they are literally the picture of casual tenderness and affection and I might never recover from it. He literally asks her to stowaway like I CANNOT with that shit it’s so unbelievably cute. "I'm ill, Jane" will haunt me forever.

Sofia’s “you should marry a pole, not a woman”??? YYYYYYYOWCH

Also the change your jacket before you come down to dinner bit to Francis that was carried over from the book makes me go insane. Yes. Change your whole self to make yourself presentable to good society and then you can be with us. Yeah. Sooo fucking normal (I am yanking that man away from Sofia with my fucking teeth on the scruff of his neck).

Also. The Pelgar Bridgens romance. Is so real. Show gets so subtle with it I read it as a storge kinda bromance first go around but script loved these two guys being in love so much and it was beautiful that it was literally written queer love from the get go. And put up against Hickey and Gibson it’s a stark and beautiful and TRAGIC as fuck contrast. Like show showed it well but the way it was actually written is ascendant to me.

JFJ being at home in combat. Jesus fucking christ. And the crown of thorns. Jesus was a man riddled with scurvy and his name was james fitzjames. also the splinter thing he literally carries the ship with him in the most painful way possible. christ alive.

[missyourflight]

some stuff i read and watched january - may

i had to stop doing f1 stuff (because it was making me miserable lol), redirected most of that energy into reading romance novels (occasionally other things but mostly romance novels lbr) and watching films. anyway now interview with the vampire's back and i'm fully deranged about that etc. highlights below!

black sails (s1 & 2 rewatch): i do enjoy s1 for my sins (marcus aurelius foreshadowing!) but it's Wild how much s2 kicks up a gear the instant they start properly pairing off flint and silver. coming back for the rest of the rewatch once i've calmed down about the vampires so the true devastation lies ahead etc. also i rewatched twelfth night for toby stephens reasons, his orsino remains a formative piece of nonsense

mary & george: i'm not going to get into the whole nicholas galitzine filmography deepdive i was compelled to do for reasons not even known to myself but i raced through this. very sexy obviously but often in a way transactional or empowering or tender without necessarily being romantic. like it's not reinventing the wheel but it felt like a more expansive presentation of intimacy than you usually see in a costume drama. tony curran great in this!

shōgun: god what a show!! epic and tragic and funny and specific and just like an unbelievable showcase for craft and talent. fuji forever

a moment of romance: andy lau so gorgeous i could die, neon bloody hong kong action with a love story that's almost chaste until they finally kiss and it's fire actually. the rain! sparklers! explosions! a motorcycle helmet that says "safety!" on it!

tampopo: spent way too much money on a bunch of criterion collection blu-rays and i Loved this one, even the freaky egg stuff. an all-time food film and also baby ken watanabe is there with a little bandana!

all that heaven allows: i always feel like i came to sirk backwards because i saw far from heaven first; did magnificent obsession and written on the wind as well and the colours are always gorgeous but this was far and away my favourite. at one point a teapot gets smashed and i gasped like my heart was breaking

thief: god this absolutely rips! unfortunately your girl Is a michael mann bro (austin butler heat 2 let's gooo) and incredibly into things like blowtorches and shots of windows exploding outwards like a shower of diamonds

challengers: feral about it obviously, itemised list of derangements here

la chimera: it's josh o'connor season and i loved this even more than challengers, there are moments in this that felt like miracles

emma. (2020): rewatched this with the blu-ray commentary which only made me love it more, also i've warmed on callum turner since i saw his trip to the criterion closet, what a babe

queen of the damned: watched this in a vampire fever and in the spirit of "how bad can it be?" and the answer was: worse even than that

furiosa: a mad max saga: i really felt the saga of it all, like the almost mythic telling of it, and hemsworth's great and the action's great, but most importantly OH GOD TOM BURKE IS SO HOT AS PRAETORIAN JACK. OH GOD HE'S SO HOT AND STOIC AND SOLID and i was not prepared for it to be a Romance like that oh god

land of milk and honey by c pam zhang: near-future dystopian unbelievably sexy food book, i still think about some of those images. a duck breast split open like a geode!! fuck!!

the spymasters series by joanna bourne: i haven't loved a romance series like this in a While, it's napoleonic era spies! everyone's in love and constantly betraying and shooting each other! it's Not lymond but it was twisty and detailed enough to scratch the lymond itch for me. you can basically read them in any order because they weren't written chronologically, but take my advice and start with the black hawk, because then you can play "what's hawker up to?" in all the other books and hurt your feelings, then go back to the spymaster's lady and do the rest in publication order. i love my terrible spy family!!

practice by rosalind brown: i'm so obsessed with this, it's about a student trying to write an essay but really it's about shakespeare and yoga and the elaborate gay fictions she's constantly making up in her head

henry henry by allen bratton: henry iv by way of brideshead and patrick melrose, i deeply loved this and i deeply loved this hal. one for the hal/hotspur yuletide enjoyers etc

you should be so lucky by cat sebastian: i also read and loved her cabot series but this one really got to me. as a brit i can never truly be a baseball understander but this crossed the bull durham/everybody wants some!! line of making me yearn about it a bit

kaliane bradley, the ministry of time: loved this so wildly that i committed multiple counts of reverse wage theft to dazedly copy the best parts into my notes app and yowl about it with my friends who'd had arcs. sexy time travel roommate situation, my beloved

add me on goodreads or letterboxd if you're into that sort of thing etc

[rosie-kairi]

Man the way KH brainrot has me going insane, especially khux and having ven shoot up from top 5 characters all the way to number 1, like he's the most tragic character and I can't get over it (i will fight anyone who says its not ven they're wrong).

Like in unchained x he's likely 8 years old, no wonder he always considered himself not very good and didn't have friends. All the keyblade wielders are preteens and teens none of them want to train a 8 year old from the ground up which sucks because we know by bbs he's actually very strong and a talented wielder.

Then we fast forward 2 years to union x and it was only recently pointed out to me that has he not replaced strelitzia he likely would've fought in the keyblade war. He narrowly escaped dying as a child soilder at 10 in war and the universe saw that and decided to make his life worse for it. Because then we find out the original darkness took advantage of him and the guilt nearly ate him alive he was willing to let his own surrogate brother strike him down as righteous justice. But when that didn't happen he then willingly jumped into a fight he knew he would lose to save his friends at 11 years old. Ven is a baby! He's too young for all this! And then he never sees his friends the only family he's ever known again! What the fuck!

And then the poor kid gets screwed over even more because a maniacal old man has been obsessed with his visage his whole life and he gets trained tortured for a year and when xehanort can't mold ven into his perfect weapon he just straight up murders him! Ven is only 12 and this is the second attempt on his life! He barely survived and then gets placed in the care of his old friends grandson that he does not know or remember and then is almost killed by him (god poor ven the memories are too painful to bear) and then he's lied to about losing his new friends and forced into a fight to the death. Once again Ven willingly enters a fight he knows will end badly for him to save his friends and he's 16! That's 4 murder attempts now!

And then poor Ven is left in an enchanted coma for 12 years since radiant garden doesn't fall for another year and then 9 years go by until KH I and then Sora goes to sleep for a year after COM, and then when he finally wakes up it's to fight in the war he barely escaped from as a child.

And only now post Melody of Memory he reaches 17 by a miracle but it seems the fortellers and MoM are the new big bads so I can only imagine what horrors wait for Ven. Poor kid barely escaped childhood and has had years of his life stolen from him like Ven cannot catch a goddamn break and he lives rent free in my head I think about his overarching story too long and I can feel the madness set in.

Totally!!!! Nothing but bad times are coming for this kid in the coming saga. There's the stress of looking for Sora, of course, but then after everyone let's their guard down DARING to believe that they'll get some peace and quiet for once in their lives THESE assholes with the animal masks and the unbelievably strong keyblades show up and Ventus recognizes them somewhat. And then that leads to him slowly getting his memories back and he remembers what happened to him in the past. He'll collapse from the weight of it all!!!

Ventus is so. Everything to me. I think he's probably my favorite character in the "mainline" series proper. You can fit SO much horrific experiences inside of this little blonde boy

[0another-nameless-ghoul0]

ok a little while ago I saw a post about how sadly symbolic it is that Luis stopped Krauser with a gun after knives were repeatedly shown to be the most useful/powerful weapon (I cant find the post but if anyone recognises this pls link <3), and it got me thinking about how unbelievably horrifically sad that is.

Luis's only goal during the Krauser scene was saving Leon. there's literally no other reason for him to force himself up in agony and aim and shoot and then hold himself up until Leon is safe other then to save him. Luis is a scientist, he knew he was done for.

By that point, Luis's motive had been slowly built to the point that we know he has changed, or rather tried to. There's a lot of hints that show that Luis himself didn't think he could change, 'makes me feel better' rather then making *him* better, and obviously his line (that literally broke me) 'people can change, right?' these are his dying words, he doesn't try and justify himself or say that yeah he wasn't good but now he is, he doesn't even try and make Leon think of him in a positive way, he literally tells Leon he led a shitty life, THIS IS THE ONLY MAN WHO WILL REMEBER AND KNOW HIM IN HIS LAST MOMENTS, AND HE TELLS HIM THAT HES ESSENTIALLY A BAD PERSON. THATS SO FUCKING TRAGIC?????????

(sorry lol) He does everything he possibly can to help Leon in his last moments, putting himself is agony to save him, giving him the key, telling him to save himself and Ashley and also to end this. (btw can we talk about that?? if this poor guy wasn't tragic enough his last moments were spent begging the only guy he trusted to undo his life's work, I'm lit gonna cry jesus)

Anyways, to the point I was trying to make: in his last moments, when he knows he wont make it, when he understands just how bad he had been for the world and the one guy he trusts, he does one last thing to try and make something good happen. one last thing, one last moment of influence o this world, and even then he cant be good enough.

Knives are shown again and again and again to be superior, and Krauser has a knife to Leon and Luis has to use a gun to try and save him. even in his final moments he cant be good enough. his very last positive moment and its a losing battle. that is so unbelievably heart shattering sad.

[clarajohnson]

the magicians s2e6

quentin coldwater you are so goddamn embarrassing i love you

once again alice is such a fun fucking character. she liked when q did pretend cirque du soleil ????? i could cry !!!!

margo's outfits are improving but i'm looking forward to when we get past the amazon corsets

the only thing better than "no offense q but you're a little crazy right now" is him blithely acknowledging it, "maybe, yeah"

my children loved me i was a good mother!

NIFFIN ALICE I LOVE YOU FOREVER !!!!!!!!!!!!!

i couldn't possibly make fun of q for trying to summon niffin alice like sorry you would do it too for alice quinn

best bitches !!!! they could've parented a demon baby together it would've been okay

okay i think he actually would've liked a unicorn milk latte. or have requested one in earnest at least.

like i need more people calling me daddy!

something hale and summer do is they occasionally adopt the same affect, the same intonation, it's such a subtle thing and it doesn't come up all the time but it so clearly telegraphs that these people are completely tethered to each other

"i know my daughter she's trying to protect us" oh PLEASE

ughhhhhhhhhhh i forgot about loria. oh my god fuck your parents dude. BUT ELIOT DON'T !!!!!

cin-ci-nahhh-tee.

SCREAM at the virgin queen margo

god fillory is so much fun like it's total bullshit all the time but it's also SO fun i enjoy that half of the plot so much

what's fen's title? do we know? queen consort? she has to have a title right

"if ess was a girl and you found pussy you know interesting in a sometimes you like thai food kind of way"

not to do this because i do this constantly all the time but margo hanson is my best friend i'm in love with her

don't worry the thing will not be born AUGH once again i feel like this is such a randomly traumatic plot to force on julia

niffin alice has terrible posture. somebody get her a better niffin bra!

q thinks people's love for him is so conditional every time it comes up it makes me so sad. also i would like for him to get a better hair routine i know grief and everything but dude it's stringy.

i remember when i first watched this episode i wanted daniel to have died from falling off the ladder he doesn't even deserve all that i was just mad at him for being a shit dad

ess is hot but not hot enough to act like this. you're a virgin to me sweetheart? i think margo should be allowed to kill him.

actually margo should be allowed to kill me if she wants to

queliot obviously first most tragic romance in the magicians but fen/baylor is possibly ranked second when you think about it. wait kady/penny. okay fen/baylor is top three.

JESUS CHRIST I FORGOT ABOUT DANA'S WHOLE THING

even i studied and i'm dead!

it's so sweet that she has dreams about forgetting to study. sorry i feel like somebody applauding disney for having a gay character but i genuinely like the female characters in this show so much. they get to do all kinds of shit! and feel shit!

yeah honestly the reynard plot occasionally veers into an almost anti-choice rhetoric, i could have done without like 90% of this plot

i love asking questions that have a 50/50 shot of being resolved in this episode but do we ever find out who dana's son is

once again! best bitches!

you guys have been so royally fucked with! sometimes the florida jumps out of him

"she never figured out how to be a woman" is such an insane thing to say. the magicians should've dug into motherhood more. haha. wrote a thesis on motherhood voice.

I FORGOT ALICE WAS IN THE TATTOO OH MY GODDDDDDD

cripes reynard is so fucking scary

benedict you are an angel

"we're gonna put our jimmy choos so far up your ass you're gonna taste next season" as a declaration of war is unbelievably good

[stranger-rants]

Is it me or does the Duffers' decision to kill Eddie seem classist? Think of how that translates to other fans who might identify with him because they live in trailer parks or have to do things they're not proud of to get ahead or stay afloat but still have aspirations and set goals for themselves despite their situations. They didn't give him that chance even though he was trying so hard, but because he didn't graduate high school all the time and engaged in "degenerate" activities like stealing trailers and joyriding and the scene with the wires and selling drugs, lived on garbage food and didn't have the luxuries or opportunities the main surviving characters do, didn't have it easy, he represents so many teens with hard lives. And the decision that HE had to die of all people... just gives me the ick for that reason. They should've been smart and considered what kind of message that sends to kids like Eddie, that they get punished. Did this cross your mind too?

They did say Eddie was “doomed” from the start - that he wasn’t going to graduate and he would probably end up in jail. I get that they were trying to say that no matter what, the town would treat him like he was The Devil. However, my dudes… y’all are writing this. You could have easily resolved that particular conflict by showing Eddie defending the town instead of killing him in by far one of the most pointless-to-the-narrative onscreen deaths I have ever seen for a character.

I take issue with how they positioned him as an oppressed outcast to begin with, borrowing the aesthetic of Satanic Panic in the 80s without really understanding it. Again, it says a lot that Eddie was the initial target of the panic but that shifted to Lucas with Eddie nowhere in sight of The Mob. The lack of narrative continuity and the way you can just tell they’re projecting their own oppression fantasies onto these characters for being NERDS while expressing the most classist, racist, sexist, et cetera opinions make me roll my goddamn eyes any time they talk. Tragedies are only effective if there is a connection made between the tragic event (e.g. Eddie’s death) and the events leading up to it that could have been avoided (e.g. The lynch mob). This is effective for maybe a quarter of Eddie’s story, but it completely loses focus on that trajectory by separating Eddie from the Hawkin’s lynch mob and having him fucking die for no real reason fighting monsters anyone in their right mind would run away from, where his death is witnessed by one character who has to tell his uncle (and the audience) he died a hero even though his death did nothing.

The absurdity of his death calls into question the motivations behind The Duffer’s choice to make him a tragic “doomed” character. I am still pissed about what they did to Billy, but there are things that happened in his story that made it an effective tragedy even moving into season 4, despite their best efforts to put dirt on his name. The person he became because of his traumas makes him difficult to love, and as a result he is unable to get the support he needs to survive. He dies in one of the show’s most intense scenes, where it is witnessed by everyone. He was hurdling towards an inevitable end because of the failure of his community to protect him in many ways, and he decides to die for them despite this. That is fucking tragic, and it would be an unbelievably good tragedy if they didn’t keep shitting on Billy as a character after the fact. The fact that we have to be told that Eddie was a hero, but you have to fight tooth and nail to get anyone to acknowledge that Billy actually did die a hero is a failure on the Duffer’s part to understand what they actually fucking wrote… which isn’t a surprise considering how much of what they wrote was heavily dependent on actor input. They are fucking hacks.

All of this is to say that Eddie’s death and their comments on his death are classist. They wanted a character who was easy for the audience to love, easy to market and make a profit off of them, who they could kill off for a relatively lower-risk on screen death all while hiding these motivations behind the lip service they pay to issues like poverty and social isolation. Eddie was not actually doomed because he was poor or neurodivergent or a social outcast. There were plenty of opportunities to subvert that, but they didn’t.

He died an utterly pointless death, and I stick by that.

I grew up in a trailer park with alcoholic parents. I graduated high school and college. I have a Master’s degree, and my own house and my own car. Like Eddie, I had alternative interests and I was socially outcast in some ways. I am not an exception. There are plenty of people like me. If they wanted Eddie to represent what happens to people who are rejected from society, fine… but then they should have linked it back to the Hawkins community and not have him run into a hoard of fucking demobats for no goddamn reason.

[polyhexian]

i bet eventually jaspers face HURTS when hes sick good lord

Jasper's face probably ALWAYS hurts lol

MH:

Jasper let out a deep sigh in his sleep, strands of corn-stalk hair falling across his forehead past the wrinkled red-pink flesh of his scars. His face looked as peaceful as it ever did, but the way that the skin had healed pulled one of his eyebrows down in a look of mock worry, and the bridge of his nose up almost until a snarl. One of his eyelids was so deformed that it didn't quite close all the way when he was asleep, showing just a sliver of pink between them. The smallest cut tore through his lips and pulled one into a minute but immutable scowl.

That's his canon timeline scars so it's also most of eventually. But I've interpreted hunters possession scars not like the scars you get from cuts, but from burns or acid. So his face is all manner of fucked up now. He had the slashes but now they've sort of bled out so it's just his whole face now, both eyes, nose, most of his lips. And then it goes down on his right jaw and down his neck and into his chest. The skin is stiff and painful when he moves it too much. So big expressions hurt. Which means scowling- but also smiling. For someone like jasper, I think, the fact that smiling is painful is particularly... Tragic. I think it also makes his eyelids stiff in a way that means he's always aware of when he's blinking, if you've ever had something on your eyelids in a way that makes you constantly aware of them instead of just doing it autonomously it is... Very exhausting and stressful.

And then of course there's the sun. His face is going to burn so easily. It's gonna itch when he's outside.

He spent almost all of his life in a mask. I'm sure he very much wishes he could still wear one both because he doesn't want anyone looking at him but also because it just straight up fucking hurts. But he wants very much to be Jasper even if being jasper kind of sucks ass a lot of the time.

He's just a sad wet cat of a man here. Pathetic. Miserable. Face all fucked up. Epilepsy. Some brain damage. Unbelievable trauma and mental health problems. Has had a bird nannying him most of his life and the bird is dead.

It's very hard for anyone in his general vicinity not to feel at least a little pity for him lmfao I mean. Jesus Christ. Look at him

[netherfeildren]

hello vic, it’s vatican garden anon again back from my european vacation…. i’ve been trying to figure out how to put this in words and will probably come up short on what i want to express BUT lemme give it a go.

i know when you replied to my initial ask you said “take that back” in regards to me saying your words matched the artwork i was viewing but no girl, i stand by that statement wholeheartedly. a couple days after being in the vatican i visited the borghese gallery and got the chance to see bernini’s rape of proserpina, a piece i have been wanting to see irl for about 10 years and was finally able to do so. and though it’s beauty and magnificence struck me like a dagger to the chest i couldn’t stop remembering your words in TCC when din is chasing reader and finally catches her. i couldn’t stop seeing them in the stone. the way you are able to help create distinct images in your readers’ minds rivals that of published authors. i’ve read so many books and fanfic through the years and none of it has stuck with me in such a deep way like your pieces do. like dude, i’m out here looking at sculptures and paintings and what comes to mind is something you wrote and i read weeks ago.

i don’t know much about anything but i do know your writing matches thousand year old masterpieces AND that i will be here tooting your horn whenever you post new pieces. you are a gift to this community and i hope you continue being unhinged as hell here and on twitter cause man do you give me some laughs with the stuff you post over on that hellhole.

ps PINK — fantastic magnificent jaw dropping panty soaking piece of writing there. i don’t know how you came up with that idea but girl am i GLAD you did. the daddy kink the slight breeding kink the fucking your ex-husband’s DAD, my god. you ticked a good chunk off my list. i can’t wait to see how you bring it all together in the last chapter.

hugs and kisses,

vatican garden non 🫶🏽

hello, my friend. apologies for sitting on this for a few days, but you’ve truly left me speechless this time. a mere thank you seems entirely ineffectual and redundant so i’m only going to say it once and not go on and on and that’s it. thank you truly from the bottom of my heart so much. your words and your kindness mean everything to me because to be honest my writing means everything to me and for you to share the way you feel about my work with me… there are no words. i really truly appreciate you so much.

i love the borghese, one of my favorite museums in the whole world. i feel like the focus is always on proserpina’s face, so tragic, unbelieving, etc. but pluto’s expression is what i always remember the most, that evil smirk like he knows he’s caught is prize and is so triumphant in it. i have a lot of bernini saved in the tcc pinterest board so it seems as if i’ve somewhat captured the atmosphere i was going for.

i hope you had an amazing time on your trip and i’m so glad to hear you’ve finally gotten to see the sculpture. i hope it was all you’d imagined and more. and please, let’s not draw attention to my very personal private internet diary where i act completely normal and sane and not at all unhinged.

one million hugs and kisses in return :)

[curlytheintrovert]

My Favorite Papa Joel Moments (Pt.8): The Finale!

🦠 It’s the sweetest, most tragic thing that while Ellie is so closed off, Joel is so open. He’s trying so unbelievably hard to get her out of her PTSD head space…and it’s kills me how little it helps. Joel has finally accepted his role as her dad, he’s raw and heartfelt, his voice and mannerisms are even softer, but Ellie is just gone. (And Joel openly talking about Sarah?! It’s such a testament to how he’s opened himself for Ellie) It’s not until the giraffe scene that we see Ellie come out from the darkness, which shows how heart shattering it is that Joel’s sweet attempts has been so ineffective. And even when Joel’s happily looks at her laughing, he pauses and looks heartbroken, like he knows. It’s clearly what compels him to try and convince her they don’t have to go through with the plan for a cure. He doesn’t want her to break anymore than she already has, showing how he has always prioritized Ellie’s emotional well-being.

🦠 For how emotional and devastating this series has been, Joel’s confession was the one moment that really made me tear up. Joel admitting to trying to commit suicide explains EVERYTHING about his character. It gave a full, complete picture of him in a way that’s breath taking. Sarah, and in turn fatherhood, truly was his purpose—when he lost both of them something fractured. And it fractured so hard he wanted to die. He loves hard and it explains so fucking beautifully why he tried so hard to push Ellie away at first. It explains why he’s capable of ruthless murder. It explains why he’s so closed off. And it explains why loving and protecting Ellie felt like his downfall. Joel already lived through his downfall once, and he lived in the miserable aftermath for years and years. But when he says “It wasn’t time that did it” and his eyes just shine with love, it reinforced to me why a suicide attempt makes so much sense on his part: He’s hopelessly devoted to and in love with his children.

🦠 Joel’s binge killing through the hospital…there are no words. When I rewatched it a second time it brought me to tears. In my previous pt. 7 post I addressed how bone chilling Pedro’s performance at Lakeside is when he’s silent and flat eyed. And that exact same look occupies his face throughout the entire scene. It’s terrifying. I don’t even know if I see this man blink. The way it’s shot is cinematically perfect: the tragic music, how you don’t fully see rebels faces and sound is muffled. We are in Joel’s head space, we live in it more than we ever have. But the music really makes you understand how horrific it is…your heart breaks for the rebels but also for Joel too. He loves his daughter so much that he doesn’t see people, he doesn’t feel anything, it’s just Ellie. That’s all there is for him. Honestly my favorite shot of the entire show is the bullet casings falling around his eerily steady, calm footsteps. Like his humanity is crumbling one bullet, one life, at a time…Yet the best parallel is the distinct way Joel carries Ellie, and by extension Saran, bridal style through a similarly horrific situation, but this time he redeemed himself no matter the cost.😭 He saved his girl!

🦠 Now for the ethical question everyone will be discussing: Did Joel do the right thing? My favorite thing in the tlou podcast is when Neil talked about the test players for the game and their thoughts on the ending. It was a 50/50 chance for those without kids and 100% of those with kids agreed with Joel’s choice. I personally am a parent and am completely in agreement! As a parent there’s nothing you wouldn’t do for your child and it’s painted so beautifully in this episode. Joel killing and lying to keep her alive would have seemed like nothing compared to losing her, and I uncomfortably have to agree. No parent should be excepted to just accept their child’s death (and especially if you knew you had the capability to stop it!) I’m so sad but so interested to see where our favorite tragic father-daughter duo will go from here…season 2 is gonna be a doozy!

[thelivingautomaton]

hello time of wheelies, i am still livetweeting the books but i am now done with book 2 and figured you all might want an update, the most important being: y'all were right about the religious freaks with coffee, good god

yeah so let's start there with the seanchan because hooooooooly fuck

literally every time any of the seanchan are on the page i just sat there open-mouthed going "oh my god these guys are such FREAKS". but it's also so galaxy brained of robert jordan to introduce another antagonistic faction but have them be completely unconnected to the ongoing battle of dark vs light + unrelated to all the other factions in the setting?

and all the insane details about their culture. the nails! the blood! the insect-like armor! THE GROLM? (they're dimension-hopping colonizers????) also i only picked up on it b/c i was on the lookout but when lord turak is talking about "caf" and saying that the aroma is almost better than the taste, i literally sat up and yelled THOSE FUCKS HAVE COFFEE

for real though it is so unbelievably funny/based for rj to be like, okay, the prophesied last battle between the forces of good and evil is about to take place, world-shattering apocalypse, make or break. meanwhile, some guys from across the ocean are gonna invade and Do A Colonialism.

also, the damane? UNBELIEVABLY fucked on every conceptual level. special shoutout to renna's cloyingly patronizing treatment of egwene though, that shit actually made my stomach churn. (also also, shoutout to nynaeve for immediately seeing the damane/sul'dam/a'dam for what they are and reacting with the extremest revulsion when she has to put the bracelet on, love u bb girl <3)

kinda wanted at least one comedic interaction in the battle of falme where a bunch of seanchan soldiers run into The Actual Ghost Of Artur Hawkwing and lose their shit though. actually i thought it was soooooo funny as a narrative choice to have the horn blown but you barely see what happens in the big clash on the ground cos you're in rand's pov and he's too busy fighting ba'alzamon in a giant laser light show in the sky

(i still. don't really understand how that worked exactly but WHATEVER, it's fine. sad about the heron blade though ;-; but at least rand got to "prove" he has/had the right to it beforehand when he defeated turak. without channeling, even! which makes it 5x more badass)

also i thought it was interesting that by around the midway point of the book you have the pov characters dealing with three different factions whose way of doing things seems strange and alien: the seanchan, the aiel, and the cairhien nobles with the great game. just thought it was an interesting parallel

also, rand trying his best to Not Participate in the great game and just getting pulled in deeper was never not funny, sorry not sorry. rand and co infiltrating barthanes's mansion to try and grab the horn and the dagger was Peak D&D Heist energy and i loved it

the other big thing that had me losing my shit was surprise! parallel dimensions

LITERALLY WHAT THE FUCK. the moment that the realization hit that the washed-out otherworld that rand/hurin/loial found themselves in was an ALTERNATE UNIVERSE where artur hawkwing didn't defeat the trollocs, i fucking went crazy. and then loial talking about the excerpt from "mirrors of the wheel" and going on about worlds that are shadows of the real world! i was hooting and hollering and going "this is just like chronicles of amber" (which i highly recommend for y'all, VERY different vibe compared to wheel of time but they're super fun and you'll love them if you like the whack-ass stealthy sci-fi/genre blends in WOT)

and then the escalation to rand actively trying to use the stone and flickering through countless permutations of his own life? utterly fucking bananas. also: unbearably tragic! literally what if you lived out hundreds of versions of your life but despite the seemingly-infinite choices open to you, they all really boil down to one choice: play the role that's meant for you and be doomed by the narrative, or don't play and be doomed anyways. like. FUCK

robert jordan i am begging you to give me more insane alternate realities for your made up fantasy universe, i am begging you for more insane creepy shit like the otherworld being devoid of people and all the color washed out since it's a "weak reflection", it is SO GOOD

this is tangentially related but: i knew who """selene""" really was going in, but i did NOT know her introduction in the books was this fucking batshit, and also that she comes across as literally the shadiest motherfucker alive. "oooh, here i am in my pretty white dress being attacked by a beast, come save me! no i don't know how i got here, i was just riding! don't mind how i know a surprisingly specific amount about the portal stones! you're my hero! you can blow the horn and be a great man!" unironically i love her so much for this scheme, and how it plays off so well vs rand's insistence that he's just a shepherd + his starting to settle into the position of "lord" and/or "dragon"

but fr though i think this conflict is sooooo interesting as a central narrative theme, i.e. the choice to seek out glory and heroism for its own sake vs taking it upon yourself as your duty because there's no one else who can vs running away from that duty and responsibility. "We may be a poor pair of heroes, but we are what there is." "It was not what I was made for, but all was breaking apart, and they were alone, and I was all they had." everything with rand feeling the "threads" of his duties and "death is lighter than a feather, duty heavier than a mountain" and the idea of choosing to sheathe the blade in yourself when the moment comes. and how that ties in with ingtar's final choice and his sacrifice!

it's all about the CHOICE!!! this is literally me irl rn:

oh my god what else. i loved getting so much more detail on the aes sedai (who are basically underfunded academics constantly squabbling among their respective departments, i have decided) and how channeling works/feels. (the parallel between the girls imagining saidar as a flower vs rand feeling saidin as the flame and void with a sickly light in it. chef's kiss!!! but also, rand simultaneously craving saidin and being sickened by it? chewing glass about it, nbd) verin mathwin aka The Aes Sedai Ever is unbelievably great. a lot of this book felt like buildup so i'm hype for things to start popping off, especially now that rand has apparently accepted the mantle of dragon. these books are crazy and i love them

[hanasnx]

im absolutely obsessed with the way you write anakin, sometimes i even forget that your content isn't part of the star wars canon - it is, in my heart.

even when we're talking about his debauchery, you manage to write in a way that is not only sensual but has this lingering tragicness? like in the moment it's "anii ;))" and when the post-nut clarity hits makes me go "ani :((".

most of your writing takes places before revenge of the sith -if i'm not mistaken-, and knowing how close he truly is to the edge? makes it all the more painfully delicious. i want to give him head so good he won't turn to the dark side, but knowing him, it'll just push him further into its arms. 

you have such a good grasp on his character and a beautiful tongue that shares it. i love how unabashed, indulgent, unfiltered and most importantly true your writing is. 

mwak lov it, keep it up <3

~🥩

"i even forget that your content isn't part of the star wars canon - it is, in my heart." jesus fuck this shit hit me. it means so much to me to read this because i do try my hardest to fit these concepts into the anakin skywalker we know in canon. im a stickler for his characterization, borderline clinically obsessed with getting it right. the fact it can fit within star wars canon to you makes me so unbelievably happy.

"even when we're talking about his debauchery, you manage to write in a way that is not only sensual but has this lingering tragicness?" shut the fuck up i'll kiss you. like thank you? oh my god? sensing the layers i try to put into my writing is a huge compliment, i thank you for your fine-tuned comprehension.

"you have such a good grasp on his character and a beautiful tongue that shares it. i love how unabashed, indulgent, unfiltered and most importantly true your writing is." this was such a beautiful sentence to read and to know its about me makes it all the more special. truly i loved this message, i was so pleased to be the one to receive it. i boasted about this message tbh i read it out to my boyfriend in the car when i got it. and then i gatekept it for a bit. it makes me really happy youre reading my work and appreciating it. and then taking the time out of your day to message me about it. thank you sincerely

[unohanabbygirl]

Wow you’ve got me pondering one of the truly darkest HIPS timelines where Luke dies and Osferth is found by Aemond. I can imagine Aemond making his way to Osferth after investigating any child born with dragonscales and when he does find Osferth he basically kidnaps him. (If we want to make it really sad Aemond was following Corlys and snatched up Osferth right after the two made contact). In this timeline Aemond never learned how to control himself as a prime alpha unlike Corlys because he was too obsessed with proving his memories wrong, so when he does kidnap Osferth and holds him captive, he ends up assaulting Osferth at the same age he did Luke when Osferth goes into heat. Truly one of the darkest most tragic ways this timeline can go. The only possible way I can imagine this being any sadder is if Luke IS alive and was away when Aemond found Osferth and now must grapple with his son undergoing the same thing he did, from the same person in fact. You can’t tell me that Luke doesn’t have nightmares about Aemond attacking Osferth in the OG story once Osferth presents. Damn. Why is HIPS so TRAGIC

Since Osferths birth Luke has been praying for his baby to be a beta for many reasons but mainly because beta’s don’t have to deal with the pain of being an omega in such a disgusting society while also having the privilege of not succumbing to the mindless base instinct to breed like alpha’s and omega’s do. It’s the perfect safe space in between but especially since if Osferth happened to be an omega Luke wouldn’t be able to let go of the fear that Aemond would somehow end up finding and hurting him. Only to fall into a horrible depression once Osferth starts to smell unbelievably sweet, the first sign of many. Feeling that he’a failed his son once again.

If Aemond ever touched Osferth Luke would probably have a fucking heart attack. Knowing that his son not only fell victim but that it was to the very man who did the same to him. Grappling with the chance that a child may come about from this yet again. It’s something so tragic that no one in that situation would be able to recover.

The most likely way this particular timeline would end is that both Luke and Osferth take their lives together. The painful reality is just too much, stuck wondering if this is something that’ll keep occurring till the end, they’d rather end things themselves than wait to find out the answer. Taking a painless poison before bed as they fall asleep in each other’s arms and never wake up. It’s painful but their love for each other makes it horribly beautiful at the same time.