#HONESTLY IM SO SMART

[c10v3r]

my names lightbulb i was bit by a radioactive spider yadda yadda yadda

i rewatched across the spiderverse yesterday and i was like "ykw. lightbulb spiderperson." so i made this

[wineredsea]

I‘ve only had dulcinea septimus for a few pages but she‘s definitely one of my faves so far

[profoundmakerdreamerss-blog]

Tomarry AU where Tom HATES this book he read because his favourite character dies a miserable death. So what if his favorite character was a no-named side villain? Why does it matter that he only had like seven lines (seven is Tom's favourite number anyways)? He was still gorgeous, smart and strong and beautiful — and it doesn't matter that others think he isn't all that because they would never know him— understand him like TOM DOES.

An AU where Tom has a healthy obsession with a character named Harry Potter, a no named baron's son who was the first to go against the king (MC's father, and the mc who is incidentally known as Draco Malfoy, ahem anyways); he tries to “poison” him. But he gets caught or to be more precise he ends up sacrificing himself for the common girl Hermione Granger (the female lead, I'm sorry guys but imagine the fucking drama.) who gets blamed for his transgressions.

But that is not why Tom falls for this weak villain, no — it's because he respects how this no-named orphan became a baron on his own two feet without anyone being there for him especially in a world where old money and title is everything— and he hates how he had to give his life for the MC to notice the female lead? (Harry is better looking and smarter than her anyways — Tom, in an online forum perhaps.)

Anyways, now imagine Tom dying (he hated it so yes he ends up looking for immorality anyways.) and waking up in the world he hated. Now imagine, Tom Riddle, waking up in the body of a Duke who wasn't even given a name in the novel. (He would know because he has a photographic memory, ok? It's totally not because he read it more than 14 times) and then saying fuck it and owning it.

Just think, Tom taking over the world slowly with his worldly knowledge while trying to keep Harry alive because even though he was right about Harry being smart; the guy treats his life like Draco treats his money - you get the idea.

[rpfisfine]

boyfriend

[eightspringdays]

what kills me is that asa spent god knows how many hours in the library studying for this date, 100% believing denji would fall for her if she cosplayed a fax printer and spitting to him the twenty pages of information she memorized about starfish when the boy just wanted to see irl happy feet

what kills me even further is the fact denji actually listened to her

and she listened to him to

to be loved is to be seen, man

[bugisbonkerz]

guys genuinely i’m both excited and terrified the dhmis pilot will be shown in full again because . first off, never before seen (by me) content, and we don’t get that a lot in the dhmis fandom. possibly new characters, dialogue, etc!! second, THE CREATORS DONT EVEN LIKE IT AND HID IT FROM THE PUBLIC AFTER IT WAS SEEN ONCE WHAT IS IN ITTT😭

[yourlocalderp]

erm spoilers

guys he might actually have been shot in the penis look at the hand placement /j

[oifaaa]

Jason 25 years in the past would also have to deal with Alfred in his 20s-30s. I can not believe Alfred was a nice normal young man when young.

I mean alfreds background is that he's ex mi5 Shakespearian actor who decided to for some bizarre reason take up his dad's job as the Wayne butler after he died young alfred is definitely weird but he was also thinking about quiting being the Wayne butler and was only stopped by Martha and Thomas dying and needing to look after Bruce I wonder if he'd even stick around if there was someone else already willing to look after him

[daily-hanamura]

[pinkeoni]

Will Byers: The Final Girl

Looking more at Will through Carol J. Clover's Men, Women, and Chain Saws

After making this post about Will's gender expression in which I referenced and was inspired by Carol J. Clover's book Men, Women, and Chain Saws, a book which was mentioned in this article, an article which brought to my attention my Mori motherthroat, I have since made it through the books introduction and have gotten all the way to the end... of the first chapter. Like I said, I'm a slow reader.

But it's within this first chapter that Clover actually talks about the Final Girl trope, something that I, and others, have suggested that Will falls into.

And to be honest, I didn't quite get the Final Girl labelling of Will until I started reading Clover's book and made my analysis. But now, it all makes sense. So I wanted to do a deeper dive into Will as the Final Girl of the show, how he embodies this trope, and how he subverts it.

Defining Will as a "Final Girl"

The idea of Will being the Final Girl is a way to allow Will to have the masculine hero role that the creators seem to be teasing for him, without sacrificing his more feminine role of victim. The term victim-hero that I used in my original post is one that I got from Clover herself, which she uses in reference to final girls. Final girls spend the majority of their film suffering at the hands of the killer (victim) before eventually turning the tables and getting revenge (hero) or is saved by an outside force, typically (but not always) a male one.

The Final Girl idea for Will doesn't come out of nowhere either, as the show itself plays with slasher tropes. Season one opens with a culling from the killer with the initial lab sequence, and dialogue from Brenner suggests that there were other victims, with only Will being left as the lone survivor. Season four feels more slasher-y, with the kills being on screen and the killer actually given a name and a face (making Max somewhat effectively the Final Girl for that season) and the season ends with the idea that the killer is still on the loose, with emphasis given to his connection with Will.

Carol J. Clover describes Final Girls as follows:

“The Final Girl is boyish, in a word. Just as the killer is not fully masculine, she is not fully feminine—not, in any case, feminine in the ways of her friends. Her smartness, gravity, competence in mechanical and other practical matters, and sexual reluctance set her apart from the other girls and ally her, ironically, with the very boys she fears or rejects, not to speak of the killer himself.”

Where Final Girls are often boyish girls, Will is a girlish boy. So it's not just the narrative that aligns him with other Final Girls, it's his characterization as well. His non-conformity to gender norms, as well as his romantic reluctancy, is part of the trope.

This is most notably exemplified in season three, when Will is unable to relate to the heterosexual-romance drama that his other male friends seem to be intertwined with. Even Dustin, who doesn't share much time with the main crew this season, had a girlfriend, something that allied him to Mike and Lucas and set Will apart.

In season one Will feels more Sally at the end of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, after being tortured for the last chunk of the film by the slaughterhouse family, Sally makes her escape on the back of a pickup truck. Will spends most of the season evading the killer (who we later learn to be Vecna) until he is rescued by Hopper and Joyce. Will and Sally never turn a weapon against the killer, but they endure, out last, and survive long enough to be rescued.

But Sally's case is just one way that the Final Girl story can end, and you're more likely to find a different kind of ending— with the Final Girl turning the tables on the killer and getting back at him. Sometimes, but not always, by brandishing the killers own type of weapon against him.

So now we're in a post-vol. 2 world where the killer is still at large, Will has been confirmed several times now to be the center of the final season, it's said to be Will's "coming-of-age" story and the killer's reign can't last forever.

Clover talks about "phallicization" when describing the journey of the Final Girl.

"The tale is no less one of maleness. If the experience of childhood can be—is perhaps ideally—enacted in female form, the breaking away requires the assumption of a phallus. The helpless child is gendered feminine; the autonomous adult of subject is gendered masculine; the passage from childhood to adulthood entails a shift from feminine to masculine."

But is that really the answer? For Will to wield a weapon against Vecna and brutally kill him? For Will's femininity to be framed as something that needs to be overcome?

To go in the opposite direction (castration) hardly seems like a solution either, especially considering that the phallus belongs to gay man. To castrate would be to suggest that the phallus— sexuality— is one that is dangerous and needs to be removed.

So how do we find a middle ground, one that maintains the phallus without eliminating Will's feminine character traits? And is there a solution suggested in the text?

Oh rod motif, you never get old

In episode one the phallus is represented as something destructive, the rifle, which Will puts down and arguably because so, was afforded more time than if he had used it.

As the series marches on, the phallus never goes away— it just transforms.

The phallus has gone from something of fear and destruction to a representation of love and creation. But Will has yet to self actualize because the above scene is also an act of castration because Will doesn't claim proper ownership over the painting. The phallus is a beautiful display of love, but only if it belongs to someone else.

The show may have (unsubtly) foreshadowed this self actualization as it relates to the phallus and the defeat of Vecna.

And I don't really think that people at this point want to spend the rest of the post reading about Will with powers theoretics so I'll just leave the suggestion there for now and allow you to come to your own conclusions.

Final (Girl) Thoughts

The idea that heroism is male and victimization is female is an idea that is as old as and older than Odysseus, but that isn't to necessarily say that heroism and self-actualization is a purely male idea, something that may have been contended by the existence of Final Girl herself.

"At the moment that the Final Girl becomes her own savior, she becomes a hero; and the moment that she becomes a hero is the moment that the male viewer gives up the last pretense of male identification. Abject terror may still be gendered feminine, but the willingness of one immensely popular current genre to re-represent the hero as an anatomical female would seem to suggest that at least one of the traditional marks of heroism, triumphant self-rescue, is no longer strictly gendered masculine."

[lavenderjewels]

you fascinate me

[greencloakedfae]

I do not have enough brainpower in me rn to do more than just post random surface levek babbling about how much I love this show. But the moment i do i have the need to go on a full in-depth word vomit about Thomas Blancheford he's so pathetic

[larrythefloridaman]

I think about Larry (pre-loop) and Home's relationship a lot. How theres a sense of resentment on home's side and a sense of distrust on Larry's. How Larry can puff his ego up easy and yet every time hes given a chance to interact with himself in an externalized fashion theres this. distaste. Its never really strong enough to call 'self-loathing' exactly. Its very... casual. Almost insidiously so.

I think about how FL Man in the nccts expressed his hopes of becoming a champion eventually (although he'd just went 0-2 in his first tournament, and his friend dani would later outpace him easily) and his disappointment at becoming a plain ol' doctor on the sidelines instead (a perceived failure despite how much of an accomplishment he later knows it to be on the other side of that degree- larry shot for the stars and landed on the moon, but fl man is barely past being a dumb kid and kinda doesnt... get that concept, just yet i dont think) and his excitement about the powers hes going to have (which is soured by seeing them in action- clearly a little unnerved by the visceral reality of it.)

I think about how FL Man was 19-20, in that weird transitional phase from being a teenager into being an adult, and doesnt really think of himself as 'grown up' yet. I think of how Home is a boring stick-up-his-ass old man to him (and his shock that home is younger than larry as of current is still funny to me.) I think of how, often, when youre young and dont know much about adult life, before you start to mature, you arent really excited by mundanity. you want something dazzling, you have big hopes, often dictated by what the people and culture around you expect or deem valuable, and how sometimes it feels like a betrayal of your past self or a failure to give up on those hopes once you know more about yourself and what you want and who you are and how things work. I think about how Hamburger Helper shot down Larry's grab for captainship in seemingly as embarrassing a way as possible, because he thought Larry needed to learn patience and respect for his elders.

It seems. likely. to me that Larry got involved in Order's experiments in the interest of attempting to skip the work. hoping to become a better fighter he involves himself in all too many a superhero's origin story, is victimized by painful, unethical science, only to gain a power that, for all he loves it and benefits from it, he has also called a curse, a power that those who arent used to it sometimes look upon the symptoms of with a visceral disgust, a situation he and j0hn were lucky to survive and thrive in spite of together, where others werent so lucky. (For one thing if i recall, juniper's parents certainly weren't.)

I think about Larry and Home, opposed. Sometimes you look at your past self and all you see is a naive idiot, reckless and impatient and clueless, unbaked. It can be hard to give someone responsible for every bad idea you ever had the credit for surviving to become you, especially if youre not that happy to be you. And sometimes, you can't imagine why or how you would ever choose to become something you think you'd hate, make choices you'd regret, before youre standing there in your own shoes. Larry cant trust himself. And sometimes that's for good reason. Home didn't tell himself he'd die, after all. (And his boyfriend kept his future self's secrets- in a way he'd placed the person he'd become over who he was then. Did he think of him as a fixer-upper in the end, like his tech? ...As long as j0hn was happy, and safe, larry didn't mind. He knew he was a bit of a fuckup. J0hn was his whole world. The love of his life. His partner in everything, even this nightmare. And even if he loved the person he could be more than who he was, he was going to become him, so that didnt matter.) (J0hn doesnt care for the mustache.)

And i think about how home was there, a participant and a witness and a victim all at once, unable to alter the course of history but instead forced to watch and enact it and to reflect on how foolish he'd always been as hes forced to be complicit in the suffering of the community he wants nothing more than to protect in the pursuit of his endgoal, forced to trust that if he succeeds it will all turn out for the better. I wonder how much he blames himself. I wonder if he ever apologized to himself the way he apologizes to others he had to rope into all of that.

And he was right. It all worked. The plan worked. He played his role beautifully, so beautifully its part of him now. And he got the happy ending he wanted, he didn't even have to die for it. Turns out, it wasnt really the ending like he thought it might be. And now what? What does he do with himself? Whatever he wants, he has AGENCY now, hes an adult with a degree and a job he (mostly) loves serving his community and useful skills and money and time. He can help people, like hes trained to do, like he did all this to do in the first place, like hes good at. (After a little horrifying revenge. Just a little. If he has to send Dr. Order to a poetically satisfying end to keep her gone for good they can at least drag her errandboy's one winged corpse onstage as a bit for a while. And then that went horribly wrong. And then she wasnt gone for good. And the new susan's too cool and good for it to really be fair to hate her. Cool, cool, awesome doesnt completely fuck up the cathartic closure of that chapter of his life for him at all no sir definitely not hes definitely not having a dissociative episode just seeing Her again, ruining the illusion that he can just move on like all that didnt happen.)

And In his heart, he's always going to be making up for the fact that he couldnt do more. That he couldnt bear it all by himself. That he didn't do more when he could. That he failed to avoid this being necessary in the first place. That it was all rigged from the start, and that to an extent that could be understood as his own fault, and he did all this to himself and thats true in too many ways. Hes making up for being a low-class beat-down fool that doesnt really belong with the stars, but is among them anyway. He's making up for the fact he always was, always is, and always will be. Hes making up for it. He martyrs himself to pay back some intangibly infinite cosmic debt for surviving and thriving at others' expense- survivors guilt has always been something he and folk seem to have in common. Its his apology, for doing what hes done and being who he is. He owes everyone that much, for putting up with him all this time, doesn't he? He'll take advantage of the thick skin hes developed to protect others from the consequences of his and others decisions, draw the attention off of his collaborators, he'll always take the hit to take care of someone else.

But all that doesnt account for the fact his loved ones... yknow. Love him. And want him to be safe and comfortable and live for them as much as hes willing to suffer and die for them.

[lazaruspiss]

my sibling is starting to write fic and it's so. like they've been drawing for forever and never seem insecure about art. but writing is still new to them! so the fic isn't working how they want it to. i got to point at their pile of like, 20 something filled full size sketchbooks and go, look, you've made all this art, practiced all this time to be good. and how many things have you written? 3? you keep going! you keep doing it and it will be countless one day!

[conanssummerchild]

fuuuuuuck im going to get a bad grade on my english gcse jesus christ they should cancel the stupid transactional part i hate it so much like "write an article about-" KILL YOURSEKF but like this is just making me think like if i cant handle ONE exam how the fuck am i suposed to pass the rest of my gcses next year, ive studied nowhere near enough for english and im exhausted how the fuck am i going to study for more than 8 other exams and pass

[harapeveco]

Rei's house

I’m insane and I know a lot about interior design against my will so I used it to make a rough floor plan of Rei’s house

This wasn’t an easy thing to do for two reasons: 1) the only rooms shown so far are the living room and the hallway and 2) Newo doesn’t know how to draw a house apparently LMAO. It’s something I noticed while skimming through the manga to get references but yeh Newo doesn’t put too much effort in backgrounds unless it’s absolutely necessary, what they do is draw the basics to give the reader an idea of where the characters are. I went through their other art and it’s also that way, tho in their pokemon art it has more detail than in knk but I would argue that since knk has to be ready within a month while their other art doesn’t it shouldn’t be surprising it’s drawn that way

Anyway here’s what I could make out so far

Rei’s house seems to be the kind that’s square rather than rectangular so let’s work keeping that in mind

The first room would be the living room which as you can see it’s pretty clear how it’s supposed to look however there are a few weird things going on with it, the first one is the couch on the left that has a ? next to it. I put it there bc there’s two panels where it doesn’t appear at all…those panels being these two

But for the sake of my sanity let’s say it’s there. Then there’s the dinning table and you can tell it’s in the same room since in the front you have the left couch that sometimes disappear. Another thing to take into consideration is the door in the far end, I put it there bc when it opens Rei looks to his right and seeing the direction Tobi is opening it it seemingly opens that way which is weird bc doors usually are supposed to open right next to walls but whatever

Next thing I want to point out is the hallway

This one is interesting bc it shows what seems to be a door close to Rei on the left side and another door in the back to his left. There isn’t another visible door which makes sense he’s probably covering with his big head but yeh I wanted to point this out bc that either means that door goes to the dinning room which wouldn’t make sense when supposedly theres already a door at the back that takes you to the living room OR Newo accidentally put the living room door in the wrong place, which could be, I don’t think they really are thinking about making it consisten which makes sense, you don’t read manga to see rooms you pay attention to the dialogue and characters

The rest of the first floor (kitchen, bathroom, laundry room) are just guesses on my part. Going on a tangent here for a moment but the reason why I made the kitchen like that has a reason you see, kitchens follow this “triangle rule” where the three most important elements of a kitchen (these being the fridge, the sink and the stove) need to be put in a triangle formation so there can be better mobility. Also important to keep in mind fridges need to be far away from stoves. If you look closely to the first picture you’ll also notice the window to the right has also a curtain. Curtains aren’t meant to be near stoves for the obvious reason that they can catch on fire so I put the sink there and the stove the other way. I’m assuming there’s a window there behind the stove too bc something something air circulation there’s a lot of science behind this stuff

Also idk if this is relevant but the entrance is also kinda easy to make out for some reason

Another thing I noticed that made me want to kill myslef is there’s this part where reinochi sits together in what seems to be the couch form the right bc in the front there’s the window HOWEVER in the very next panel you see a window behind them as if they are sitting on the left couch what they fuck 😭😭😭 bitches be rotating….like I know it’s not supposed to be like that and was a mistake Newo overlooked (the same way they’ve overlooked the fact Tobi has a turtleneck in recent chapters but I digress) but after you notice it you can’t just unsee it 😭😭😭

Anyway this house is a mess that’s why I decided to make my own floor plan that makes sense to me

The living room, dinning room and kitchen I kept them all the same as well as the bathroom and laundry room tho the change I made was the mystery door. Instead of it being in the far back I put it in the same place as the door we saw in the hallway and by the end I put the stairs that lead to the second floor and next to it a closet but now that I look at it maybe the stairs themselves can be the closet 🤔🤔🤔 you know how some stairs have like a door and space inside you know what I mean

The second floor is a bit more simple with Rei’s room right next to the stairs. The bathroom is in exactly the same place as the first floor bathroom bc plumbing is all supposed to be in the same place and next to it the master bedroom bc it’s the biggest room. There’s an extra room that leads to hell idk I haven’t thought that far

Anyway it’s almost 3 am idk why I did all this but I hope you get to enjoy my insane ramblings uwu