#I have no idea at what point he's being hyperbolic but knowing him a bit I don't think much is

[carrotpiss]

.

[starry-bi-sky]

This is very inspired by @minnesota-fats post about Danny being Bruce Wayne's clone (which has been rotting in my brain for two days) but an au where danny isn't just Bruce Wayne's clone, but also not fully a ghost.

both ideas can be used separately honestly, the idea just came to me while thinking about the bruce wayne clone idea, and a lot of this idea is just "danny without his ghost powers. i might probably make a part two that delves into him being bruce wayne's clone.

Hear me out.

A Danny Fenton who has the ghost sense and the fangs and the pointed ears and the scary eyes and an increase ecto-essence, but does not have the ability to "go ghost". His accident occurred when he pressed the "on" button on the outside of the portal, and the button electrocuted him due to faulty wiring. He ends up miraculously surviving but not without some new additional abilities (and electricity-based trauma).

Since Danny no longer has a built-in alter ego with the invert wardrobe to match, he doesn't see the point to take ghosts back to the ghost zone. What the hell can he do anyways? All he has is a cosmetic add-in, a lower body-temperature with an impressive ability to hold his breath longer than a human realistically should, and a built-in ghost detector. Not very helpful if you ask him.

That is, up until he goes into the lab after his parents catch a relatively harmless ghost and sees them vivisecting it. He's horrified. He thought his parents were using hyperbole when he said they'd tear them apart molecule by molecule.

(Granted, he also believed that ghosts were unfeeling up until he saw this random ghost being absolutely terrified for its existence on the table.)

After an argument over his parents harming the ghost, Danny goes back up to his room and refuses to leave, not even for dinner. Later that night after his parents went to sleep, Danny steels his resolve and sneaks back down into the lab and releases the ghost back into the ghost zone.

This happens a handful of times, until, finally, frustrated, Danny tells the latest captured ghost to tell anyone inside that if they even think about coming through, he'll capture them and bring them back to the zone himself. It's for their own safety.

The ghost agrees, and goes back inside. Danny steals a "failed" thermos from his parents' stash of weapons. The next time that a ghost shows up, its the lunch lady from episode one. Danny manages to defeat her without being seen, but knows that if there's gonna be consistent daytime ghost attacks then he can't base his luck around fighting without witnesses.

So he fashions himself with a makeshift outfit. This really only consists of an old, nondescript hoodie and a plain black face mask. Its the best thing he can do at short notice, however. Later, for his nighttime ghost fighting, his outfit is only slightly better.

He considered using one of his parents' lab suits. But white sticks out at night and the material doesn't protect you from road burn. His outfit is pretty homemade, with knee and elbow pads under his clothes and multiple layers. A long sleeve shirt over a hoodie over a black denim vest he found on sale. He later on manages to make brass knuckles ghost-proof and manages to stitch them into his gloves. (he gets very good at sewing).

His favorite part of the entire outfit, is a Casey Jones-style full-face mask he found while thrifting. It allows him better breathability than the face mask he was using (calling Rule Of Cool law here), and he can use his scary eyes to make him look more intimidating. His gloves, his mask, and his thermos are the things he carries around with him constantly, and, later on, wears baggier clothing to hide the fact that he's wearing knee and elbow gear under his clothes.

Did I mention he has long hair? Danny has long hair (because GNC danny ftw, it goes past his shoulders) that he braids back. it's a bit sloppy but it keeps his hair out of his face well enough. He takes the fenton creep stick with him.

(He and Bruce have, ultimately, a more lean build than a bulky one. It helped Bruce with his Brucie Wayne persona big time when he had to look like a pretty skinny boy, he uses body language, optical illusion, and body armor to make himself look bulkier as batman)

He still goes by the name Phantom. He still has a bitter rivalry with his parents, who have no idea that its him. They think he's probably some other ghost with beef with the other ghosts (he still triggers their ghost sensors), and still want to capture him.

He doesn't talk around the living. He doesn't have any fancy voice changer and dropping his voice hurts and ultimately, he just uses ASL if he ever has to talk in front of people. The ghosts know his voice at night, but not during the day.

He hardly talks to the living. He avoids them like the plague actually. When he defeats a ghost and there's an audience, he barely sticks around to have a nice friendly chat. He tries to get away as soon as possible. He's paranoid over people finding out who he is. He doesn't have that ghost form to fall back on here.

Oh god this is getting so long, so i'll post another part soon.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 4.5 (Dani interlude) Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 7.5 (Dan Interlude) Part 8

[fernandezology]

don’t take me for granted-mason mount

pairing: mason mount x reader

summary: “but every time i leaned over and said i’m sorry you said it was fine. you squeezed my hand and said it’s fine. i love you. don’t worry... it’s fine.”

warnings: angst with a twist at the end

word count: 1,2 k

life is good.cause we fucking did it. it couldn’t have gone better.

you looked beautiful tonight.the entire night, while i was talking to all these smiling,sweet,rich people who one month ago wouldn’t give me the time of day... i would look across the room and see you. and i’d think, god,she is the most beautiful fucking creature on planet earth.and the sexiest. there’s truly no one sexier. even christian said it.

speech he gave after being voted as the best at fifa awards left you…speechless.you had no intention of talking to him so you just looked at him confused.

he recognized your “what is that supposed to mean” look because let’s face it,he knew you like the back of his hand.

not in a bad way. a good way. a respectful way. but it’s true. every time i’d see you... he continued to talk while kissing the back of your neck,with your glass of old fashioned,smiling and chatting it up,i’d think to myself:

“god, am i fucking lucky.”

nobody in their right mind would have energy to start an argument after a long night of pretending to be interested in people you’ve never seen before. thankfully,there were few familiar faces who made this night bearable. however,some of them turned it into the worst night ever. including him. you didn’t want to raise any suspicion so you dryly smiled at him.

what was that?

what?

that smile?

what?

it was a fake smile. i thought you are going to be a little bit more excited for me. don’t think your behavior went unnoticed. it seemed like you were not yourself tonight, especially around my mum. what’s wrong?

point is… i don’t have nothing to say to her. which is the reason i didn’t talk to her.

it’s just... she notices.

really?

yes.

how do you know?

i just do.

really?

well she sees how you are with other people... you’re talkative, you’re funny.

what can i say, i’m personable.

right. which makes her insecure.

what? other human beings with personalities?

no. it’s the fact that you’re not yourself and she knows it. can you just tell me what happened?

tust me. it’s not a good idea. let’s talk tomorrow.

but i know you’re upset at me.

it’s not a big deal.

i can’t go to sleep knowing you’re angry.

i’m begging you. nothing productive is going to be said tonight.

how do you know?

because i know you.

you turn and walk down the hall toward to bedroom,already regretting you said anything because he is not gonna let it go now.

as you were taking off your jewelry,you look at him in the mirror,realizing this is gonna be a long night. truthfully,you didn’t have one of those in a while- at least not this sort of long night.

really... you wanna go there? it’s your speech, mason.

why do you have to find something... anything...the most minor fucking detail to harp on, to fucking ensure that there is no possible fucking reason to celebrate.

you didn’t thank me, mason. that’s not a minor fucking detail. that’s a big one.

oh give me a fucking break. when i said you’ll find the most minor fucking detail and turn it ugly... i fucking meant it.

but i’ve thanked you a million times before. you know i’m thankful. you know I’m appreciative. and you know it was a mistake, so why turn it into anything more?

because it is more.

you can’t be serious.

i’m dead serious.

then you’re out of your mind.

and you’re hyperbolic.

i’m not. it’s hysterical to think that forgetting to thank you is symbolic of anything other than me legitimately forgetting to fucking thank you.

you looked at him in the mirror and turned to him:

mason,you thanked a hundred fucking people. you thanked your agents. your teammates. your parents. your fucking third grade teacher and the kid who was playing with you at academy when you were eleven years old and saw whatever-the-fuck.

i didn’t thank the guy who saw me scoring a free-kick identical to one i scored in 2020?

you know what i mean -

you don’t have to be sarcastic and petty about it. i forgot to thank you.i am sorry. i am genuinely sorry.which is why i apologized a hundred times during the awards. i couldn’t even focus on the awards because i felt so guilty.

that’s a shame.

but every time i leaned over and said i’m sorry you said it was fine. you squeezed my hand and said “it’s fine. i love you. don’t worry... it’s fine.”

well mason,i changed my mind.it’s not fine.

how can you just change your mind?

honestly... it’s really fucking easy.

that doesn’t seem a little crazy to you?

not at all.

really?

nope.

why?

because while i was sitting through awards it was fine,then every single person from your dad to declan came up and said, “i know you’re probably a little upset he forgot to thank you but i know how much he counts on you.”

they said that?

they told me not to read into it.

what does that mean?

that’s funny you say that... that’s the exact same thought i had. but let’s not digress. because as the night went on, i became less fine with it.

before you could continue why you weren’t fine with it,he asked you to sit next him. even though this was probably your worst fight ever,you missed being close to him and how could you refuse?

because it’s not just about you forgetting to thank me. it’s about how you see me and how you view my contribution, not just to this relationship, but to your work. after listening to you complain about new coaches,new methods,waking up in the middle of night when you were crying about not being good enough and not wanting to leave your childhood club,supporting you when you wanted to quit football completely…

i really hope you don’t actually think that i don’t appreciate everything you did for me. for us. if it wasn’t for you,i wouldn’t be here where i am right now. i would still be mediocre. there is a reason why they say that after every great man is a great woman. you are the most loving and patient person i know. thank you for everything, i don’t know how will i ever make it up to you,but i’ll do everything in my power to make you the happiest woman in world every day until we die. i’m so sorry. thank you. thank you for loving me. for making my life anything but mediocre. we make the best team and i love you,baby.

i love you too,just don’t take me for granted.

great... are we no longer fighting?

you look at him and smile and then it turns into a laugh.

what? don’t tell me you already know what i wanted to ask you. he smiled for first time since you came home and but it felt like forever since you last seen his contagious smile- one of many things that made you fall in love with him.

you shrugged your shoulders, completely oblivious on what is he talking about until you saw him getting on one knee.

will you marry me?

[cherubic-cherry]

Tim shuffled away to get behind him as quietly as he could, which Tim thought was pretty quiet. He glared up at the Flonase above him, just a bit less than a foot out of reach. He still had the chance of being able to jump and knock it off the shelf which would in turn immediately get the other man’s attention.

He could try to grab some cans or find some type of step stool to boost himself up but that again would get the man’s attention. He looked at the man again, looking down at his bandages, the darkened blood that oozed out of his hand and seeped through the gauze.

Tim had gotten a cut on his hand once after tripping on asphalt and trying to catch himself. He could remember how difficult it was to hold his camera or his books, it couldn’t have felt much better to carry a basket.

He trailed his eyes back up to his face where his blue eyes were pointed right at him.

“Do you need any help with your basket?” Tim blurted in a panic. He had to stop himself from slamming his head into his hand.

He wasn’t an idiot, he knew that talking to strangers was the definition of a bad idea, but the hunger was eating away at his brain cells.

The man gave him a look, a well-deserved look, he looked even more confused than Tim was. He looked down at Tim then at the Flonase beside his head and then back to Tim.

“Sorry, I should just mind my business. I just mean -never mind, I’m so sorry- I should not have bothered you-” he started off. Tim should know better than to bug strangers, especially criminal strangers.

“Can you even reach the shelves? You’re like five.”

It was a good thing Tim didn’t have any proof this man was a criminal, or else he would’ve immediately called the cops on him. If Tim’s Father were here he would laugh and tell him that this is what he deserved for bothering strangers.

“ I’m nine,” Tim corrects. He hated to correct people, most times it made people irritable and annoyed but there was no way this guy seriously thought Tim was a five-year-old.

Most people assume he’s younger than he is but still, it stays around the seven-eight range, at youngest six. He must have been baiting him, or using a hyperbole to drive the insult in.

“There’s no way, you’re seven tops.”

“No I’m nine,” Tim insisted again.

“I don’t believe you.”

“ There are people who don’t think the earth is round, that doesn’t make it not true.”

That gained Tim a laugh, not a soft chuckle that he receives out of politeness from others when he’s being ‘weird’, but a gruff, spontaneous laugh that makes him jump back from the sound.

“Your hand is hurt. It’s bleeding. I can help hold the basket. Even five-year-olds can could a basket."He didn’t mean to use his ‘smart-ass tone’ as his father would put it but it came out subconsciously.

Read the rest of the chapter here:

[kind-of-a-shitty-wizard]

hiii i got a little insane over haskills characterization in the other elder scrolls games / material. teehee rambling abt these ^ quotes under the cut (long). also im not that serious abt any of this tbh im just glad haskill appeared in any other elder scrolls material at all LOL

OKAY. okay. about these quotes. idk why other TES media does this, but in these quotes from elder scrolls legends + the interview with haskill it seems like the writers are pushing to give the impression that haskill slightly resents or is even indifferent to his position / the isles / sheogorath ?? (unless haskill is being a little bit more flippant or hyperbolic than usual...?) which is characterization that is NOT what i got from playing oblivion at all skdskdjfn

like... when i played oblivion i thought it was very clear that haskill prefers to be in the isles, serving sheogorath, more than anywhere else. (<- i think this is actually the reason he's technically "mad" even tho he seems sane outwardly. if you enjoy being among madmen it probably means you're mad yourself ykwim). i think haskill does like the isles, his ass is just reserved abt it, like he is about everything... yknow just like jeeves, whose character he's been compared to lmao:)

i think unfortunately some writers take his annoyance with the player and his slight second thoughts about sheogorath's plan in oblivion, and mistakenly assume that he's just annoyed at his whole position. haskill does have his moments of exasperation, but the thing is it's usually only exasperation and it never verges into anger or bitterness or resentment like the top quotes seem to indicate. for example, haskill says this abt his idea of you mantling sheo / the clowns debacle:

^ This quote is a good reference point for haskill's view on sheo bc its pretty much the most critical-of-sheogorath quote from oblivion i can recall, and it tells us a lot of things. in this quote he expresses some exasperation about the clown idea (because he's a prissy bitch who doesn't want to get his outfit dirty /affectionate) and shows some apprehension about one of his lord's ideas (because it involves you, and haskill doesnt like you). but these 2 points he has beef with aren't really reflective of sheo himself but of other issues - ie he doesn't directly question sheogorath. and IN THE END Haskill defers to sheo's judgement because haskill trusts him and values sheo's ideas. in all of his oblivion dialogue, this is the most critical toward sheogorath he gets, and he never outright insults or shows resentment toward him or the isles like in the above quotes bc his loyalty to sheogorath eclipses it

on the contrary (and i dont know why the writers for non-oblivion elder scrolls content dont seem to see this??), theres so much evidence that haskill actually does, you know,,, enjoy being in the isles. here are just some snippets i can think of:

"the isles are hardly a place for anyone, really" <- i BEG to differ, Haskill likes it here, he likes listening to prisoners being tortured in xedillian, he likes wearing his ridiculous frilly high collar outfit emblematic of the fashions of the isles, he doesn't care about morality and it suits him just fine that it doesn't matter here!! (the end quote might be him being a little facetious about relmyna but to be honest i wouldn't be surprised if he thought decency and morality WERE provincial notions because he certainly has no problem killing people lmao). and again, to enjoy doing these things / being around madmen probably says something abt haskill being mad himself. lol

not to mention he likes a bit of joking around. which i imagine sheo does a whole lot. when YOU rib him a little he says this:

his derision in the first bit i think indicates, "i cant believe you would joke around at a time like this," and the upturning of the "very good" i think indicates, "it was a good joke / maybe they could mantle sheo after all". he's not all dour - he appreciates a good joke, especially from (someone who's about to become) his Lord!!

and going a little deeper into haskill actually liking the isles... haskill clearly holds what sheogorath and the isles represent (chaos, free will, individuality) very highly. a good example of this is when you ask him about dyus, and he gives this snarky reply:

^ he says this with such VITRIOL its so funny :p and the amount of disdain in this line indicates (to me) a real conviction in his belief in the free will, chaos etc that sheogorath represents.

this is why i dont think this quote makes sense. "i cant remember why i put up with [sheogorath]" <- haskill wouldnt say this bc he understands fully why he puts up w sheogorath, and his own convictions in sheo that lead him to keep doing it, and even if this quote is him being hyperbolic, i dont think he'd joke about his faith in sheogorath like that because, yk, one of his characteristics is that he's extremely loyal, and moreover he never said anything to this effect in oblivion sdkjskdjs

him having a strong belief in what sheogorath / the isles represent is also evidenced by the language haskill uses when talking about sheo. whenever haskill mentions him, there is an element of poetry and respect to his words that shows that haskill thinks about him highly at the very least:

^ haskill constantly stresses sheogorath's intrinsic unknowableness and power and unique wisdom in a way that feels very respectful. saying "to attempt to fathom [sheogorath's will] is a foolish endeavor" shows that he knows there are unexplainable aspects to sheogorath that he takes note of, respects, and knowingly keeps his distance from... he gets sheogorath and reveres him (at least more than most others or the HoK). in these quotes especially, it feels a bit like hes trying to illustrate how impressive sheogorath is to the HoK, hyping up his boyfriend if you would. who said that. and combined with this respect is (i believe!!!!) a deep care. he is invested in the isles and sheo and wants to help them out of more than just duty. he gets fearful and even loses his composure at some points in the story when sheo/the isles are threatened which i think indicates that he deeply cares for them both!!:

i think this is a care that, combined with the respect he has for sheo, makes it really unlikely for him to get more than exasperated with his behavior and verge into resentfulness. i dont think anyone truly understands sheogorath, not even haskill, but haskill respects sheo as a god, and also gets him in a more familiar/personal way i think - like the way that a cat owner loves their cat but gets exasperated with it when it gets its head stuck in a tissue box. he doesn't angry or anything because he understands that it's the cat's nature to get stuck in the tissue box / sheo's nature to be wild and unpredictable and messy. (the difference being that sheogorath is an all-powerful god cat..... do u see my vision???)

anyway this got crazy long JHDSHFSD... to finish i wanted to look at this extra bit of characterization i found that was wild to me:

^ like. i truly dont get where they got THIS characterization LMAO sheo constantly calls haskill faithful and smart and knowledgeable in oblivion, he practically begs you to summon haskill for help, hyping up his boyfriend so to speak, they care for each other your honor so of COURSE sheo trusts haskill to do his job. what are the legends writers doing in there!!

ANYWAY dear god this got long im going to bed <3

[horizon-verizon]

I mean... Of course, Cersei hates Robert, he routinely rapes and beat her. It wouldn’t be a problem if Robert was only a cheater, he’s a wife-beater and rapist.

*EDITED POST* (3/3/24)

I assume that you are talking about this recent REBLOG I just put up about Rhaegar, Elia, Lyanna, and Tywin.

The entire point(s) of that post was to:

point out how Rhaegar's cheating was not the cause of Elia and their kids' death.

argue against the idea he was entirely or mostly responsible and also want to say that the entire dynasty's collapse was only caused by his infidelity. That such a thing could be caused by such.

argue some people have conflated Victorian (a hyperbole) family values of fidelity or their own personal past with a bigger, interconnected political condition that was a maelstrom in Rhaegar's case. While ignoring his concerted attempts to even get rid of his own father before.

argue that some people think that somehow, just staying with Elia would have prevented her death, or that it was easy to ascertain that Aerys and Tywin and everyone else would act as they did if we were him -> as I already listed in that post.

And this is what I said about Cersei:

The text never once explains or indicates how Elia herself feels about Rhaegar or Lyanna, but we have people claiming that she was emotionally wracked by this? Maybe upset for her reputation or shocked, but we still don't know who this woman was by personality, this all the guesswork based on her heritage, her health and the arrangedness of the marriage itself. One also cannot claim that she was something like Cersei was/would be, feeling totally humiliated, jilted of a perfect and glorious life, hating Rhaegar, etc. Nothing in the text gives strong evidence of that.

She is not only hateful towards Robert because he beats and rapes her (completely justified); she hates him for treating her as second place to someone she sees as inferior to herself and someone who "stole" Rhaegar from her. BUT she is hateful toward Robert & compares him to Rhaegar specifically bc for years she has wondered what life would have been like for her if she married Rhaegar instead of this man who she thought would at least appreciate her for the qualities she's told to have/be the best for a woman...but instead gets an abusive, self-deluded man who lusts for a girl who never even liked him AND was not the idea of a "perfect" woman to Cersei, but is still her competition for male favor (a woman's political key to access to power).

(*I must bring a more nuanced point about this, though and note that aside from Robert whispering some other girl's name on their wedding night, Cersei also has had an issue with not "measuring" up to the masculinized standards of competent personhood, so Robert's revealing that he wants and continues to want Lyanna over her pokes at Cersei's deepest insecurity.

GameofThronesHistorian on TikTok notes how Cersei expected to marry Rhaegar after Tywin dumbly got her hopes up and she spent a lot of her time fantasizing about being with him and being Queen but he marries Elia, Aerys basically insults the entire house along with Tywin, and her hopes are dashed along with a bit of her pride ostensibly (nobles get a lot of their pride from their house identity). She finally gets to be Queen (the position dangled in front of her like a prize since childhood, snatched away, and now she "has" it back), but she discovers that the queenship doesn't make up for Robert's clear preference for the same girl "her" Rhaegar got himself supposedly killed for.

When Cersei married Robert she expected to finally overcome the haunting legacy both girls left behind her own insecurities & ruined hopes. When she actually gets to be Queen, she discovers that this thing she thought would "fix" everything, assure her longlasting dignity and power. and that was been long promised to her cannot make up for the slight Robert gives her and thus traps her in a marriage that quickly becomes abusive.

For someone like Cersei, who grew up hearing that she is the most beautiful person around while having almost nothing for herself other than that and later being queen as Tywin always promised to her name [bc her patriarchal society affords way less in terms of prestige, value, and recognized respect to women as it does men & boys AND makes physical features comparatively final measure of worth for girls and women], it's not that hard to see that Cersei's feelings are not baseless or totally irrational. Her already existing insecurities mushroomed into a plague that also sharpened her need to be "perfect" and counteract the feeling of never measuring up. Therefore, her classist-generated need to self-empower evolves into her stomping on others to get power and the self-satisfaction always distant from her.*)

Neither her feelings nor Catelyn's for Robert/Ned cheating on them are things one could automatically guess are the exact same as Elia's toward Rhaegar being with Lyanna. Even without the beating/raping, because they are unlikely to be similar women w/exactly the same experiences.

I say this to point out that Cersei, while definitely being a victim of domestic abuse, still has a specific personality, history before him, and expectations of herself from her class position and gender. From those expectations, an idea--and the need to constantly reaffirm that idea bc of how little room it leaves one for developing a constant sense of self apart from it--of her exceptionality. Cersei is a NLOG and very much by a social-inspired inner compulsion.

What we know about Elia apart from her having kids and being married to Rhaegar comes from Oberyn and her Martell family members. And we get barely much from there (compared to other characters) aside from how she had had her own mind (her voicing her desire against a potential match by his farting). We have her in her early/mid-teens at the Lannisters wanting to see baby Tyrion and thinking/acting like she thinks him cute and witnessing child Cersei pinch baby Tyrion's penis (which already shows us a deep resentment against male privilege at such a young age and how it turned to who her father blamed for the absence of her mother). We don't have a PoV from Oberyn, so we get a few sentences of his feelings towards her in dialogue and dialogue is not as rich as the direct inner thoughts of characters. He does not have a reflective view of who Elia was as much as current/adult Ned Stark for Lyanna (who had PoVs) because he's focused on revenge. Even Ned could have thought more about other things that showcased Lyanna's personality independent of her engagement to Robert, but Oberyn seemed much more aware of who Elia was than Ned with Lyanna.

We don't know who adult Elia really is like we do Cersei, just her position, she was sick most of the time, and that she was Dornish. We do not get her life with Rhaegar, we do not get details nor suggestions in-text of her dynamic with Rhaegar as much as we get with him & Lyanna.

In a Con, GRRM has reportedly gone on to state that Elia and Rhaegar's relationship was "complex". Does this mean that there was affection but a mutual understanding that there was no deeper romance? Does this mean that if Elia were healthier, she would want to develop one with him? Either way, would she want it to be monogamous or not? Again, she's from Dorne, she's more likely to be more okay with it being an "open" marriage AND it being known Rhaegar has a side lover as she has enjoyed more body autonomy and a stronger sense of her own political autonomy from childhood.

But while she is Dornish, after she married Rhaegar she had to live in a nonDornish court in a nonDornish region while raising children, knowing that a man versus a woman having extramarital lovers are treated very differently. [a fuller explanation by dwellordream HERE]. For her own image and social standing, would she want him to be discrete even more than if they were just minor nobles? Or is she secure in the knowledge that her kids will always inherit before any of Lyanna's bastards (would she be, how likely is this) and de-prioritize how bad Rhaegar's cheating makes her look for her own safety (she nearly died the last time she gave birth)? We simply don't know for sure, even though I believe that Elia knew about Rhaegar and Lyanna bastard and wasn't against it.

this is essentially just a reception, so you could scroll past if you need. I basically free-write these things.

The answers to all these questions for Cersei are too obvious. We have Cersei's PoVs and her interactions with multiple people with both PoVs and with none--either dead or still alive by the last published book. And we get her own PoVs to draw her motivations and psychological processes and make better, credible conclusions.

Cersei's Lannister self-defensive-exceptionalist mindset feeds into her believing herself to be the paragon of any living woman, especially paramours, and mistresses. That PLUS her own need to have something close to or the same authority and power a man could have in her world, which she buys through sex, giving up some of her agency during some sexual encounters, and making herself NLOG to (mistakenly) gain men's loyalty or at least obedience to her commands. All of which is always in flux and depends on the person. To repeat myself, she very much cares about and is emotionally dependent on her nobility, her titles, her rank, her Lannister name, etc to accrue power for herself to her own detriment and to the abuse of others, which worsens or gains justification under Robert's abuse.

On the other hand, Cersei, her whole life, has been externally defined through a sexual lens. Yes, even in childhood. Sex and reproduction. She isn't a "whore" or a "slut" for then using what people used to objectify her into a weapon or device for her own intentions when she has learned that that is a direct way of accruing others' interest in her own and her kids' advancement. Cersei, while loyal & protective to her children, also--from her own experiences with powerlessnes from her gendered value in her family and society--tends to be less patient with them and be less able to address their emotional distresses. She seems abusive towards at least Tommen. And yes, in a feudal world, one can gain much political power & resources through their kids' claims and/or positions of power -> Tommen or Joffrey were kings and she could be Queen Dowager/Mother, the highest female rank a noblewoman could have...at least how GRRM wrote Westerosi society.

This is the crux of her motives: she learned that power-as-masculine AND power = male sexual dominance. Unlike the Tyrells, who have a better grasp of using both actual soft power and hard power (mostly yhr first) to maintain social dominance, Tywin is more the silent, golden rock that intimidates you into following him. Power, she learned from her father, is less diplomatic and more forceful and fear-inspired, violent, physical, and from Robert, sexual. All traditional qualified as masculine and assigned to men, who are given the privilege to hold/lead armies and wield weapons in battles:

In medieval times a woman could not bear arms; therefore a woman could not take on a role which, even symbolically, required her to carry arms. In medieval times a woman who took on an overt military role was an aberration. Lyon, A. (2006). "The place of women in European royal succession in the middle ages."

From childhood, she absorbed this ideology and "decided" to essentially prove she was "not like the other girls." And the loss of her mother to childbirth, how her father never truly coped, would have had her rush to gain his love, and when that didn't work, to gain his respect. But she is female, so Tywin never will. She learned that being anything "feminine" is inherently "weak", and so she tried her entire life to differentiate herself from the "weak" women around her. Cersei is the ultimate NLOGs.

She gave up her sexual agency for her children (yes, the same ones who she abused at one point) to shore up defenses for their/her own position and safety, as she wouldn't in a hundred years have sex with some people willingly if it did not come with the expectation of their support, resources, etc. Class/masculinity-perceived-through-hypersexuality is to her, strength even as it puts her at a disadvantage as a woman, as she's that much more open to scandal if the odds go out of her favor and the Lannisters lose much of their power and the others' fear of them.

She imagines herself as Robert/in the male/"dominant" position (she herself imagines that position as male, the place of power she internalized as prime her whole life) when she's sexually rubbing and fingering Taena of Myr. She continues to finger her painfully despite Taena protesting in pain, thus herself becoming a sexual abuser so she can feel the power and defy Robert/men. Power that she learns directly resides in using sexual ties or performing sexual abuses. Taena also, as Cersei's "spy" on Margarey, and as one far beneath her rank, is also a person who acts as socially lower than Cersei herself, which feeds into Cersei's ego. So Cersei banks much of herself and self-worth on her class to a dangerous fault.

She has basically felt compelled to buy into that exceptionalism at full speed to compensate for her lack of power and feelings of inferiority from that lack. Cersei is rather a pretty complicated woman, while also being very simple. Her class position as aristocratic and Queen Dowager/Mother and her desire for power in the aristocratic space are directly related and inspired by her long sexual objectification. This is where gender and class intersect. Her hatred of Robert is obviously justified and comes from her long struggle to gain and keep autonomous power from men; that doesn't mean that she also doesn't eventually use her class and internalize female inferiority as her final crutch.

Cersei's personality and her abuse from others and against others are two related and unique things informing each other from her young childhood, especially evidenced by her thoughts and actions of her youth before she married Robert, how her father & those others around her treated her, and her observations of the events before Robert rebelled concerning women's abilities. Elia is, by contrast, a silent victim so it's easier to project a lot onto her the way it isn't for Cersei. Or Catelyn.

Even with the societal setup of misogyny put up against her since birth and her trying to collect power for herself, the consequences of how she does it, the carelessness of it, and the losing control of her impulses are going to be reasons for her downfall anyway.

[fullscoreshenanigans]

(from here)

@questiontocertaintyofreality @whywoulditho ooo lemme do a little promo post to put in the REN tag because the fic makes me happy

Fair warning that as of writing this post, the fic is currently unfinished. I know some people are hesitant to start fics in light of that, but even if a fic remains unfinished my general perspective is to proceed forward and appreciate what an author did share of their work and play around with the little plot bunnies that spring forth in my head.

With that said, some snippets and ramblings (spoilers, natch):

I've said this numerous times before how I'll give more leeway to individual short comics with the hyperbole being used to quickly and clearly deliver a punchline with a limited amount of time and space (like in the chapter 91 "Hayflick Effect" → "Hey! Flick!" bonus comic), but I hate when Emma is stripped of all her nuance to facilitate familiar shipping formulas. I understand how this snowballs from innocuous offhand jokes in the fandom, but it's unfortunate when these things overtake popular perception of her. She's emotionally intelligent and cunning (we see this early on when she's brazen enough to muse what Conny's up during her confrontation with Isabella in the hallway, all while keeping up the most cheerful front), so I always enjoy reading fic that keeps that balance in mind.

Beautiful, a simply beautiful exchange of greetings.

The preestablished Noremma is absolutely delightful. Another thing thing I've mentioned before is my dislike of Norman being extremely uncharacteristically nebbish or aggressively confident and suave when pursuing relationships that' works in tandem's usually packaged with Emma becoming bizarrely demure. Again, I understand the appeal of stock scenarios, but it's not something I enjoy reading for them. I adore when they reach this level of knowing, playful banter with an underlying thrum of challenge, bred of familiarity at which boundaries can be teasingly skirted and which are low blows and off-limits, and founded on them being equals (after both of them, to different degrees, placed each other on pedestals).

I generally have two default outlines for how I see REN getting together: all together at once, or NE getting together first before roping Ray into the relationship. Here it's clearly the latter, though with a bit of a twist in that NE isn't as intimately familiar with Ray stemming from a shared childhood, but there is an awareness of him being out there. There's also the layer of longing that I personally vibe with for him and incorporate into my interpretation of the ship that can be summed up as "Ray is first to know, last to go, and Emma is last to know, first to go." (Because when there’s something she wants and believes it’s correct to do so, she just goes for it. There might be some delay in trying to find the correct timing, but the progress on it dramatically picks up when she realizes, "wait, why aren’t we together? We should fix that." lfjldj adore that respectful tenacity and ambition.)

With Ray, there's a denial born from years of steeling away his heart so he would have the mental fortitude to see off multiple children on their shipment days and a bone-deep belief that after everything he's done, he doesn't deserve such love. He is committed to the vow he makes to Emma in chapter 38 about living on to protect their family, and multiple times he's at the center of discussions what's the best path forward to secure the safety of his friends and family. He can be in the spotlight for that, but when it comes to advocating for his own wants, he falters; accepts that internal strife born of self-loathing as penance for everything he's done to reach this point, prostrates himself to the idea that Emma and Norman are beyond him when it comes to matters of the heart, and attempts to twist and contort to himself he's content to live the remainder of his days with this secret if it means they'll be happy together. (I'll also do a quick shoutout to @salsae's vowsverse for the ultimate breaking down of this wall; simply spectacular culmination of all the build-up over the years.) But all this is underlined by a desperate clinging to the hope that a future with them is possible, a hope that he would never dare put to words but still subconsciously lingers as he tries to extinguish it.

Tying that long tangent back around to this AU, again, Ray doesn't know the two as intimately as he does in canon, but there's a spark of hope at the thought of a different future for himself that he wrestles with, griping over the ludicrousness at the pair's goal and fighting them tooth and nail with each step of their approach, yet he's still the one to initiate their game and can't help but want to meet them to see if there's a foundation where his hope can bloom.

Finally, I am going to McFuckin' Lose It™ if the reveal that Ray is the son of the kingdom's enemy happens in the middle of Norman holding court (either with Emma and Norman knowing beforehand or it being a surprise for them, too; both have delicious potential.)

[mariana-oconnor]

The Greek Interpreter pt 2

We have literally 0 plot to theorise on so far, just Mycroft in all his Mycroftian glory.

"I have had something quite after your own heart--a most singular problem--submitted to my judgement. I really had not the energy to follow it up save in a very incomplete fashion, but it gave me a basis for some pleasing speculation. If you would care to hear the facts--"

This is a bit like when my Mum tells me that I should look at the crossword she's started. Mycroft wants to share his enjoyment with his brother. Such a good older sibling. Also, he's too lazy to actually do the legwork required. But that's what younger siblings are for, isn't it? Or at least that's what my older brother tells me.

"This is Wednesday evening," said Mr Melas. "Well then, it was Monday night—only two days ago, you understand—that all this happened. I am an interpreter, as perhaps my neighbour there has told you. I interpret all languages—or nearly all—"

...He interprets all languages.

All languages.

All languages. Or nearly all. That's a lot of languages, my dude. I know some people who speak a lot of languages, but none of them comes close to speaking all languages. 5 or 6 I think is the most I've ever encountered, and only fluently in 3 or 4. There are definitely people out there who speak more, but nearly all. This man is officially the most knowledgeable person who has ever appeared in a Sherlock Holmes story. He's a linguistic genius.

The Internet tells me that historically the person who is said to have spoken/understood the most languages was Sir John Bowring, a 19th century governor of Hong Kong. He understood 200 languages and spoke 100.

The person who currently holds the record lives in Brazil and claims to speak 59.

The BBC website tells me that there are up to 7000 different languages, although 90% are spoken by less than 100,000 people. But Mr Melas does not specify that he speaks all the common languages or all the popular languages. He says he speaks nearly all languages.

Yes I am taking this literally purely to be difficult. It's more amusing that way. I know this is a case of hyperbole for fiction's sake, but I like the idea that Mr Melas speaks 6000+ languages. This is another case for random supernatural occurrences within the stories.

"I was not surprised, therefore, on Monday night when a Mr Latimer, a very fashionably dressed young man, came up to my rooms and asked me to accompany him in a cab which was waiting at the door. A Greek friend had come to see him upon business, he said, and as he could speak nothing but his own tongue, the services of an interpreter were indispensable."

First, I like the note that Mr Latimer is a fashion-conscious man. Second, how did he and the Greek man come to be friends if they could not speak each other's languages at all. Have they always spoken through other people? Maybe you should try learning some Greek, Mr Latimer.

"It was certainly more roomy than the ordinary four-wheeled disgrace to London, and the fittings, though frayed, were of rich quality."

Mr Melas is a cab snob. 'Four-wheeled disgrace to London' is a delightful turn of phrase.

"I had ventured some remark as to this being a roundabout way to Kensington, when my words were arrested by the extraordinary conduct of my companion. "He began by drawing a most formidable-looking bludgeon loaded with lead from his pocket, and switching it backward and forward several times, as if to test its weight and strength. Then he placed it without a word upon the seat beside him.

Well, this can't be good. Shenanigans are afoot. I like that Mr Latimer is very clear about this, though. Oh yeah, I'm a bad guy. Look at my bad guy credentials. There's no beating around the bush, just straight up threat of violence. Clear. To the point. No need for words.

"'This is very extraordinary conduct, Mr Latimer,' I stammered. 'You must be aware that what you are doing is quite illegal.' "'It is somewhat of a liberty, no doubt,'"

This is such a polite exchange. 'Uh, you are aware that kidnapping me is illegal, sir?' 'Yes, it's a little rude of me.'

So casual, so matter of fact. If I were kidnapped I wouldn't say 'hi, you know this is illegal, right?' But then i don't speak 6000+ languages, so what do I know about talking?

Realistically, this is terrifying, but Mr Melas' account is hilarious.

'I beg you to remember that no one knows where you are, and that, whether you are in this carriage or in my house, you are equally in my power.'

Less hilarious. More terrifying.

"'Well done, well done! No ill-will, Mr Melas, I hope, but we could not get on without you. If you deal fair with us you'll not regret it, but if you try any tricks, God help you!' He spoke in a nervous, jerky fashion, and with little giggling laughs in between, but somehow he impressed me with fear more than the other."

Yep, this guy seems unstable. Also 'no ill will'? You literally kidnapped him with a threat of violence. Yes ill will. Much ill will. I don't think you know what ill will means.

"'But say no more than you are told to say, or--' here came the nervous giggle again--'you had better never have been born.'"

Yep... this is the sign of a totally stable and reasonable person and absolutely not a creepy murderer. At least we already know Mr Melas survives to relate this tale, or I'd be certain he was about to be buried under the floorboards.

"'You are to ask the questions, Mr Melas, and he will write the answers. Ask him first of all whether he is prepared to sign the papers?'"

The fact he is not allowed to talk indicates that something about his voice would give something away. If they don't know Greek then writing and speaking are pretty much interchangeable for getting information across, so there would be no need to stop him from speaking because he can write incriminating things just as easily. Unless, one of them can read Greek, in which case why get an interpreter? So I stand by my thought that his voice must be incriminating. Or he's mute. Always possible.

"I took to adding on little sentences of my own to each question, innocent ones at first, to test whether either of our companions knew anything of the matter, and then, as I found that they showed no signs I played a more dangerous game."

Resourceful and intelligent. He tests the water first with non-incriminating stuff, then gets more in depth.

"'Harold,' said she, speaking English with a broken accent. 'I could not stay away longer. It is so lonely up there with only—Oh, my God, it is Paul!' "These last words were in Greek, and at the same instant the man with a convulsive effort tore the plaster from his lips, and screaming out 'Sophy! Sophy!' rushed into the woman's arMs Their embrace was but for an instant, however, for the younger man seized the woman and pushed her out of the room, while the elder easily overpowered his emaciated victim, and dragged him away through the other door.

OK, so Sophy seems to have been having quite a pleasant time of it all told. While poor Paul's been going through it. Kind of dumb of them to let her walk in on them, though. I assume that they had a plan to avoid that which somehow went wrong. Also, if she's being held of her own free will, this seems like it might put an end to that? Unless she's very gullible.

So, brother? I'm thinking relative because he has to sign something before she can get married? Or he wants her to be married? Presumably there's some sort of fortune involved.

"'We should not have troubled you, only that our friend who speaks Greek and who began these negotiations has been forced to return to the East. It was quite necessary for us to find some one to take his place, and we were fortunate in hearing of your powers.'"

'forced to return to the East' is that like saying he's in the cellar looking for a cask of amontillado? Maybe he just had a family emergency... maybe?

Also 'your powers', yes. Mr Melas's linguistic skills are clearly a super power.

"if you speak to a human soul about this—one human soul, mind—well, may God have mercy upon your soul!"

This threat clearly worked well, considering Mr Melas has so far told at least two souls about the situation, with great glee. I get the impression that Mr Melas is a stifled adrenaline junkie and this is the best thing that has happened to him all year.

"I cannot tell you the loathing and horror with which this insignificant-looking man inspired me. I could see him better now as the lamp-light shone upon him. His features were peaky and sallow, and his little pointed beard was thready and ill-nourished. [...] The terror of his face lay in his eyes, however, steel grey, and glistening coldly with a malignant, inexorable cruelty in their depths."

Sounds delightful.

Honestly, it's the little pointy beard that clearly marks him as a villain, though. Everyone knows that.

Although if he doesn't put more care into maintaining it, the league of villains will have him cast out for failure to maintain proper villainous standards.

"Any steps?" he asked. Mycroft picked up the Daily News, which was lying on the side-table. "'Anybody supplying any information to the whereabouts of a Greek gentleman named Paul Kratides, from Athens, who is unable to speak English, will be rewarded. A similar reward paid to any one giving information about a Greek lady whose first name is Sophy. X 2473.' That was in all the dailies. No answer."

Well now they're definitely going to know he said something. Subtle.

"In the meantime, Mr Melas, I should certainly be on my guard, if I were you, for of course they must know through these advertisements that you have betrayed them."

You don't say? No, seriously. I'd be worried if I were him. But apparently he's just got absolutely no fear.

"Then the brother--for that, I fancy, must be the relationship--comes over from Greece to interfere. He imprudently puts himself into the power of the young man and his older associate. They seize him and use violence towards him in order to make him sign some papers to make over the girl's fortune--of which he may be trustee--to them."

OK, so clearly that's entirely wrong because it's Watson's thoughts on the matter. So back to the drawing board. Not to disparage Watson, at all... but there's no way it's right if it's his theory.

"I really fancy that you are not far from the truth."

Really??!? That's probably the biggest surprise of this whole story so far.

Sophy seemed to have no inkling of any crime or ill-intent on the part of the bad guys, so they're clearly being subtle with her. Or they were. You don't just wander around a kidnapper's house going 'I came to find you Harold, because I was so lonely all alone up there'. Unless you're actually a character in an erotic thriller novel, then I guess that probably is a thing you would do.

I don't think this is an erotic thriller, however.

Did Watson really get this one right? I guess we'll find out next time.

[star-sworn]

do you ever think about how like. kairi was asleep for a year searching for sora’s heart and sora was asleep on that couch (for a week? a year? however the time difference works in unreality) and reached out to kairi’s heart somehow (assuming it wasn’t just her subconscious creating an image of sora) like do you ever think about both of them being asleep at the same time for a significant period of time and their hearts connecting with one another across realities within their dreams. do you ever think about what a beautiful image that is

sweetie. sweaty. honey. I only think about this maaaybe once a day. And that's not that hyperbolic. I mean you really said it all--They are literally BONDED across the chasm of reality itself. We can all speculate whether it's from the paopu fruit (as I think) or just The Power of Love™️, but regardless it's beyond romantic. And it was when she needed him. She needed him, and he was there. Whenever she needs him, he never lets her down, literally using himself (projected on to her I guess?) as a shield. I have no hands here, so let me use yours, I'll give you my keyblade, I'll give you my strength. Even when I'm in unreality you are not allowed to mess with Kairi. How many times must I teach you this lesson old man?

I do think what you pointed out about it happening when they're both sleeping is really interesting. There is a wonderful symmetry to it, dreaming of each other, reaching for each other--in a world without you, i'll dream of you, right? It seems that's how Yozora reaches Sora too, and possibly riku, given the endings of Remind and kh3? some very weird jumbling of memory and dream going on here. It reminds me a bit of CoM, where Sora is put to sleep in order to unscramble his memories. The concepts of dream and memory and sleep are often found together in kh. once nomura puts you to sleep, no telling what weird shit's going to happen to you lol. oh the sweet sweet torment of kh mysteries.

And iirc from a nomura interview from after the trailer drop it seems Sora was asleep from the time between kh3/remind and this moment of waking in the kh4 trailer, and that he was asleep for seven days (because of course he was). So either a week in unreality is a year in kh time, or there's even zanier time shenanigans at play. It could just be a way to quickly handwave over the intervening time, so they might gloss over all of this, but I really do hope they'll show us or describe to us the MoM scene from Sora's POV (and also how/when he got changed into his new 'fit lol). I wrote that mini fic on the MoM scene because it's so fascinating to me. He just knew. She must have been calling out to him, and he knew. How did he know she needed him? How did he get to her? I have to lie facedown now.

The fact that Kairi thanked Sora at the end, to me at least, (and im not a sap nor am i biased in any way) says that it was actually Sora, not her own imagining of him. But it does present this interesting idea if it is some sort of self creation--that in a moment of weakness, again her own demons, when she needs strength and courage, when she feels she's not enough, she thinks of sora, and that gives her that courage and strength. I mean, who does she know that's defeated Xehanort? (If you can't get Sora himself, store-bought is fine).

Anyway, I actually rewatched the kh4 trailer a few days ago and I still clutched my chest when it first reveals Sora on the couch. I don't think I'll ever forget how I felt seeing him there, knowing he was (at least to some extent) alright, seeing him so altered and grown up, so far from all he's known. KH certainly isn't in Kansas anymore. Just think, what if Sora had just saved Kairi, right before that moment cuts in and he opens his eyes? A girl can dream.

answering this ask Maria (can I call you that? mutual level up?), you literally have me kicking my feet under my desk like a middle schooler after the big dance. this was good for my soul. Kh always makes sure there's something spicy even in the seemingly innocuous titles, and wow, MoM truly has a banger. A love banger. This is where I'm torn. Because a sokai reunion after returning from unreality would be oh so sweet. If either Sora or Kairi don't fall to the ground because their knees give out when they see one another, it won't be angsty enough for me. And you've discussed before, Kairi doesn't have to girlboss her way to Shibuya in order for kh4 to be satisfying, iirc. and Im with you on that. to me, she's as much 'home' to Sora as DI is, so it could be a very cathartic way to end kh4, similar to the end of kh2. But also, them reuniting in quadratum, then perhaps even teaming up? sweet dreams are made of this.

will i trim this down? no. should I have? probably. but im so happy I have a fellow new fan to enjoy the ride with. we both missed the hype for 3, but hot damn, we arguably picked the best time to become kh fans. Hope your finals are going well sweetie, and you have a wonderful Christmas. thank you for this gift in my tumblr stocking, it's always welcome.

[bookofmirth]

I was watching a video on YouTube about ACOTAR on discussing ships and saw a comment that said “it seemed out of character for Azriel to give the necklace away to someone else rather than return it as he'd planned. Azriel put a lot of thought into Elain's necklace - it looks ordinary/everyday at first glance, but the light reveals it's secret, inner beauty and depth of colour. He's spent a lot of time with her, he knows her well and thinks Elain is like that necklace. Azriel was always endgame for Elain and Lucien was a fun shakeup to get us all thinking, “what” and this has been setting up since book two. SJM has been building toward e/riel, and if gwynriel becomes cannon, it's her backtracking on the original plans, maybe responding to readers who ship them. Based on what we have- e/riel is wayyyyy more likely than gwynriel. It would be so out of left field which is NOT what SJM does.” >>> I honestly thought the necklace was generic. Az was okay with giving it to any priestess and in his chapter we didn’t get any text evidence that him and Elain spend a lot of time together. I don’t see how Azriel was always meant for Elain and what build up? If there was build up shouldn’t we’ve gotten Azriel to talk about how much he liked her/was in love with her in his chapter?

Hmmmm no no no sorry, I don't know who said these things but nope! Azriel was not always endgame for Elain, that's factually untrue. That sounds like someone who either went into the series knowing it's a fandom ship, or someone who went back and reread once they'd made up their mind. I also highly disagree with the idea that Azriel knows Elain well. What does he know, other than Garden? She's Elain and her job is Garden. Like that's the extent of his knowledge. (tbh that's the extent of the fandom's knowledge as well, though I am being a bit hyperbolic. We know a bit more, but not nearly as much as we know about other characters. If my head canons about her character and personality are true I won't be surprised, but at this point they are just very strong suppositions.)

Azriel literally didn't care who got the necklace because it was such a generic feminine thing. You've heard of Girl Dinner and Girl Math, well Azriel originated the concept of Girl Gift! It's not like he got it engraved with Elain's name or something.

I've been searching Azriel's chapter for evidence of his romantic feelings for Elain for two years now and I'm still coming up empty! We get his thoughts for the first time in the series, and he's got nothing?

[reflections-in-a-critical-eye]

About the Jin post, I was thinking about the connection with the previous 'stan language' post and it seems to me that there's an obligation to be hyperbolic on stan Twitter. Minimum words, maximum drama. And the most dramatic gets more attention and quite a few members of Army like being influence leaders of some kind. It's meaningless theatre and shallow joking that actually attempts to compensate for how Jin has never been the centre of attention really

Most of this fuss isn't from Seokjin stans even. There's a weird kind of 'facelessness' and OT7ification to what stans are saying. People are sidestepping anything interesting that has been revealed in this. Like that he publicly has been the sole face of the enlistment debate for 4 years now (2 years before he had to enlist) and how burdensome he admitted it was. He has always seemed like the last member who would think he deserved an enlistment for his contributions and hence was more likely to serve.

I think a lot of nuances are lost by this insistence on treating every members action as all the members' actions - and it's all for Army ofc. Apparently Chris Martin wrote Jin a love song for his fans and this is a story fans desperately want to be real because the idea of any Other Jin would care more about leaving behind is too much self-forgetfulness for some people

These are some really good observations anon, I completely agree.

I want to expand a bit on what you said about ot7 army who are turning this into the BTS and Army experience of enlistment. A lot of focus is on their feelings and how are they gonna make it through the same process 6 more times. It's almost impossible to see Jin come out as an individual out of the way these fans are talking about it. Instead, they keep making tweets about how Austronaut is the song for them and how much they cry, while the majority of them are barely talking or not at all about things Jin said in the weverse live. And from what I discovered, several translation accounts ignored it or brushed it off and it will be interesting to see how it will look in the official subtitles.

Jin said how he wanted to go in Spring. Obviously having a training when it's warm is better than in the middle of the Winter. Except the members didn't agree with it. As Jin said, it was to have one more concert in person with fans. Now, I don't know how that talk went down exactly, but for a man who said he got hurt by all the comments of him not enlisting, to have to make another compromise, always catering to Army, it probably wasn't an easy thing to do. He wanted to announce much earlier that he is enlisting, but all of them, including the company decided that it's better not so they don't have a sad concert in Busan.

This is just my personal opinion and not to be taken as an objective stance, but at this point, fuck that. He is a man that should get the possibility to enlist when he feels it's right. Of course that by being an employee and in a group in which compromises are necessary, I see how this decision needs to be discussed. But if they were already ready in 2020 after the release of BE, that what the hell does it matter? They had the concerts in Seoul, LA and LV. They still released those stupid ass songs just to make it to the American charts and Grammy. They kept pushing it and pushing it. I don't know, it just seems like the last two years of the pandemic could have been a good opportunity to enlist since group activities such as a world tour were on hold anyway.

[the1975attheirverybest]

Thoughts on this take? I saw it and it makes sense. Perhaps the next leg of the tour (after the festivals?) will be a different show. About what? Who knows. But different. Still part of some continuous theme though that can be categorized under “ATVB”

Thinking about how often Matty said “it’s all part of one big show” in April when explaining the reason why the house was gone and they were doing atpoaim instead

And it explains the caption “still at their very best”

They’ve got this show concept that started with the house, then there’s a breakdown/intermission with atpoaim, and then at some point a third version of the show. I imagine all 3 work together to illustrate or explore one topic. Maybe sincerity? Or the idea of performance in general?

I also don’t know (if this theory is true) whether it’s something Matty would’ve been planning all along, or if it was a more recent decision due to him deciding the first leg of the tour was unsustainable and not good for him or something

I like this a lot but I’m not sureee. Like, it’s hard for me to get a read on Matty’s current position towards the beginning of the atvb shows. Like if he ended it because he genuinely felt that the experience had reached its logical end or run its course or stopped being useful, or if he had imagined himself going with it a bit longer but the backlash showed him that he was doing more harm than good?

Like I know what we as a fandom feel about this tour. But I’m really really curious about how HE feels. Was it exactly as he’d hoped? Did it work better than he’d planned? Worse? Why or why not. But of course no interviewer has asked him that yet :(

As we have all noticed, at the latest shows they’ve been flashing atpoaim across the screens a lot. And I’m not sure why. Is Matty trying to suggest that the live shows are an extension of the video series? A response to it? In dialogue with the hyperbolic “persona” that he plays? If so, it’s funny cuz intimacy is difficult to cultivate at big venues like that. So like why does “atpoaim” show up everywhere. Before he deactivated instagram he’d changed his bio to “character in a movie” instead of The Problem Attic. So is this kinda another way of saying we’re all characters in some big movie that we’re unaware of? Is HE calling the shots cuz he’s the one pointing it out?

WITH MATTY YOU NEVER REALLY KNOW UGHHHH

[2n2n]

rapidfur 

In chapter 82 we see snippets of tsukasa and amane alive... as I'm sure you know! The issue is we can't know how canon it is, but I like to believe they're real as they seem a bit too grandiose for a kid like Tsukasa to imagine. (Plus, the reveal of Tsukasa's face in the school entrance ceremony...) He seems kind of Tsukasa-ish all things considered. maybe a bit more placid and normal? Less crazy-looking?

ah you’re right I’m being hyperbolic (its a TRAUMA RESPONSE!!**a joke**)I’m really thinking about this sort of minicomic, 

every time one of these flashback minicomics happens or a more context-filled color spread I’m like *on my knees* PLEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASE WHEN YUGI!!!!!!! PLEASE LET ME SEE THEM TALK *shaking bars of my cage* PLEAAAASE SHOW ME THEM PLAYING LITTLE GAMES, WHAT IS THE DYNAMIC LIIIKE AT AGE 8??? They be catching bugs and playing katanuki but pleeaaase, is Amane like, a doting big brother??? Is Tsukasa like, more attentive or placid?? Or more wiley??? Would Amane pick on him with little games and stuff??? Did Tsukasa pull back on his rowdiness at all, is he still super clumsy, AAORUGORGH it feels like we cannot see anything more substantial yet.... the random few silent shots are edging me. Did Amane compare his stupid kokeshi doll to a penis back then????? At what age does his sexual irreverence start?? Does he subject Tsukasa to his boob talk?? I have 100 questions. AND WHAT WOULD TSUKASA SAY OR DO??? I can’t begin to think about ‘Tsukasa with others’, I CAN’T EVEN QUITE TALK ABOUT LIVING TSUKASA WITH AMANE....!! *visibly dying on the ground* did they draw zoo animals together. What would Amane say about Tsukasa’s drawings. Did they give eachother Valentines. What kind of Christmas presents would they get each other. What are birthdays like at 8-13. Does anyone COME to them or is this insular? 

Besides that, we also have Tsukasa at age 8, who is allowed to go out with amane and roam the festival. All we know about him here is that he hyper focused on a stall game for hours and starts to あばれる if anyone stops him. This is still not a lot, but it does paint a picture of a volatile and independent child... still, it's interesting how AidaIro still refuses to show his face most of the time.

Oouuuuhh I can’t use the word volatile, despite, the phrase, being so like wildin’, look at how incredibly affectionate Amane is as he talks about it, hims little blush, it makes me envision Tsukasa flailing his little arms around and whining and Amane not having the heart to drag him away. 

this panel is my lifeblood......... Amane referring to Tsukasa doing something sooo inconvenient but so warmly ..... he’s like... *sigh* that dog of mine ..... maybe he just knows this will happen every Tanabata. Resigned. Its even Amane’s favorite game too, argh..... I wonder how long he ‘lasts’ having fun with Tsukasa ... *losing the plot*

...anyway this is just me adding on, I think the idea that Tsukasa was different is interesting because otherwise --

--WHAT WAS THE POINT... of aidairo hiding his face!?!?

Anyway I am just adding on a little bit, I think we really don't have enough evidence on alive Tsukasa so I am anticipating the bait and switch now. i am enjoying reexamining my interpretation of the yugis by reading your blog!!

WHAT WAS THE POOIIINT OF NEVER LETTING US SEE THEM JUST, TALK???????? I feel like any more like... nuanced? Expression is really being guarded.... there’s this like, sense of plausible deniability, maybe Tsukasa was always :D ... or was he ? arrrghhh

anyway I did assume the most desirable bachelor to talk about was 13 year old Tsukasa, truly the biggest mystery. We only have his most sublime serene corpse drawn.

I guess friendship with the 4 year old would be like, him showing you hims, giraffe drawing, maybe, playful but also walking away mid interaction bc he saw a grasshopper. 

[laconic-void]

hey hello, i'm also hyperfixated on the sandlot (it's been an on-and-off fixation of mine for years) and i would love to hear you talk about it

Oh my goodness gracious. Hello. Hi!!! It's like 11pm rn but I'll try my best! I am so sorry I didn't see this btw I'm not gonna be as active for the next couple weeks. Here's a link where you can watch the movie btw https://archive.org/details/the-sandlot-1993-vhs-full-60fps

Yeah so I first got into the sandlot pretty recently. My teacher showed The Sandlot 2 to my class several years ago and I only remembered it because I thought David Durango was hot (I'm 16 dw) so I watched the second movie again because someone uploaded it on youtube.

I thought it was okay but at that point I had never seen the first one, so I watched it shortly after and I was like wow!!!! This one is definitely a lot better! Then I watched it two more times in the same week! I'll include a bit about the second one at the end of this but anyway.

I headcanon Scotty Smalls as trans and autistic because I am so cringe because he reminds me a lot of myself when I was younger. I personally believe that the whole reason his family moved to the valley was to find a more hospitable environment for trans people and/or start over going stealth as male. He is shown without a shirt in the pool but he is pretty young, and puberty blockers started being researched in the sixties. Is it unrealistic to say Scotty was able to get his hands on some? Yes. But did he have a stepdad who had a baseball signed by Babe Ruth? Yes. My explanation is that Bill knew a guy, who knew a guy, etc. This would explain how Scotty doesn't know anything about baseball, and possibly why he doesn't have a cap other than the notorious fishing hat, which he probably borrowed.

For most of my life I didn't know I was autistic and had absolutely no idea about dyspraxia. I've been total shit at sports all my life, and Scotty is, well, he's getting there. The instructions he received from Bill were "move the glove where the ball goes," and Scotty obviously attempts to do that, but he isn't able to catch it. I'm not great at throwing, either. I can never aim right. Additionally, Scotty doesn't know what Ham is talking about when he asks him for a smore. "How can I take some more of nothing?" That scene was pretty spot on, as well as the one before it where Scotty actually says "oh, yeah!" too loudly while they are talking about the beast.

Speaking of his stepdad, I see Bill get mischaracterized a lot in fanfics. He's not abusive or mean to Scotty, they are "still getting used to each other." He really was busy with work when Scotty asked him to play, and I find it EXTREMELY hard to believe that he hit his eye with the ball on purpose. He did tell Scotty what to do to ensure his eye wouldn't swell anymore, and although he wasn't exactly begging for forgiveness, Bill isn't seen showing much emotion throughout the film. And Scotty explicitly says "I didn't have any trouble calling him dad all the time," so their relationship is pretty good. He did say "my stepdad is going to kill me," but he just swiped the most valuable object he owned and wrecked it, and that's generally a common thing for kids to say when they do something like that, even if it is obviously a hyperbole. In the end, Scotty was only grounded for a week.

I like Benny's characterization in the movie as well. Even if you ignore his compassion towards Scotty, you can tell he's a big softie just from the insults he tries to hurl. At the beginning, while the rest of the gang is getting creative, Benny only says, "base up you blockheads." Before the pool scene, Benny hesitates while he is trying to insult the others, and what he says isn't even that convincing. He also only says "Shut your mouth, Phillips!" in comparison to Ham's insults rolling smoothly off the tongue. Benny was originally supposed to say some of those lines, but I'm glad it was changed, because it definitely would not have made sense. The only exception is when he tells Yeah-Yeah he runs like a duck, which is still a pretty good-natured insult in comparison to what's said during the exchange with Phillips, but it shocks Yeah-Yeah so much that instead of starting his sentence with yeah-yeah he starts it with "kk." I find that interesting. He doesn't say that at all during the rest of the movie as far as I know.

That's all for the first movie I can think of for now, but here's some trivia you may or may not already know:

-A record heatwave was going through Utah at the time and Tom Guiry fainted on set. Unfortunately, this ended when the pool scene came around and if you look closely, you can see the boys' teeth chattering.

-Tom Guiry and Mike Vitar met up weeks earlier than the rest of the cast so they could establish a convincing relationship for the film. It worked and the other cast members thought they had been friends for a long time, and Tom and Mike still keep in touch to this day.

-Unlike most movies, The Sandlot was filmed in chronological order.

-There's a ton more here, I'm not 100% sure on the accuracy of all of it but it matches up pretty well with other websites https://www.daily-choices.com/everything-youve-ever-wanted-to-know-about-the-sandlot/44?xcmg=1&_d=d

Now I'll talk for a bit about the second movie, in my opinion, it is not a great movie, but here is the link if you haven't already seen it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIvIbS4__TM. Here's a paragraph defending David Durango I wrote on discord a bit ago (warning, it is a bit aggressive lol):

Guys I'll be real with you, the second sandlot movie kinda sucks, but I will NOT accept any hate towards my boy David Durango. And no, it's not just because he's hot, but because he's actually a decently written character if you stop viewing him as the wannabe Benny Rodriguez that the director tried to frame him as. Is he very nice to Smalls at first? No, but Smalls quite literally set the sandlot on fire at the beginning of the movie. Kind of a dick move. And it is completely fair that he wouldn't want him over there, because unlike Scotty in the first movie, Smalls has zero interest in baseball at the beginning, and he's a foot shorter than him and the rest of the team. Not to mention the little league team was threatening to take the sandlot away. A review I watched complained that it was odd for the kids to approach the team on their own field, but my interpretation is that they have been run out of different fields in the past, especially considering how strong their reaction to the girls is. Also, considering David was badly bitten by Goliath to the point where he STILL has the scar on his leg, it's only fair that he is experiencing some mental health issues. Given how afraid he is of the carnival and of other people seeing his scar, and his adversity to helping the gang get the rocket back, it's fair to say he has PTSD from the incident. The film takes place in the 70s, when mental health care was practically unheard of. It's unlikely that David ever received any effective treatment, and being laughed off by the rest of the gang was a very real possibility. Eventually, he does decide to help the rest of the gang, and he hops the fence and retrieves the rocket. In sandlot fashion Goliath chases him through the town, and he starts on a bike, which is admittedly less impressive than Benny going on foot the whole time, but come on, what would you have done? And he does eventually start running.

That's it for now! I can probably think of more stuff later if you want but I hope this was plenty for you to read!

[jonathankatwhatever]

It’s 25 Apr 2023. I just had a realization: I was thinking about my doubts being centered in the fact that I construct a version out of what I see and hear from you, and it then occurred to me that you couldn’t talk about what’s inside you openly the same as I never could, which meant you had the same conversations, tailored to you because we are each finite constructs within the grid squares. That suggests 1-0Segment pairings, like attention paid versus not paid, because my mode was to engage entirely in something as though that was the path without paying attention to the larger context, meaning I would absorb their ways of being and acting by becoming one of them, for better or worse.

That suggests a K occurred in which you picked a course, but of course you always pick the course because if this pairing is correct then you have a different guide form, one which works on the outer edge. Or from and thus to. Not sure. This is really murky. As a pairing, I delved inside dimensional enclosures, but of course so do you, as does everyone in some ways, so there would be a shared boundary with hyperbolic and n-sphere spaces over the Euclidean to manifest I//I. Translate that as I//I is not the simple rotation of a triangle or fD or Hexagon, etc. but is the axis on which any rotation fits. So we can spin a rock in place and that’s the same mathematical idea as a 2-sphere being a sphere.

Just realized I need to think through this arrangement of spaces. Hyperbolic exterior, but I’m using Euclidean as the boundary when it’s the n-sphere that describes the boundary. Oh, I flipped the meaning at the juncture, which is nice to see a few days late. Nice proof the idea of Attachment because we couldn’t have the definitions of this boundary without Triangular and grid squares. That makes clear why we can capitalize Boundary as notation: it isn’t Pi or any one definition, but it’s the various definitions of a boundary that describes the same space. Connects to manifold surfaces and to interior spaces. I see: the confusion in my mind arose because I saw Pi and e as calculations in 0Space, when they’re actually 0Space results, so what I seeing in my mind was the alternation within 0Space between the calculations and the ideals. And I picked the one, when in fact they exist side by side and you can see the juncture of Attachment in the notation Boundary. This applies at scale, so one or many.

I’m feeling a bit better. What’s going on seems to be a massive change in relations between my selves. The shell was able to do his thing, which meant leaping in the air to dance down the University Path stairs, the Winthrop Path stairs and the Summit Path stairs. He had a lot of fun, but every now and then I’d find myself trying not to be scared. Trust him. Stay the fuck out of the way. Let him be himself. You know it’s in those moments when you’re transititioning that you get hurt. But it’s impossible to be always in it, always into it. That’s I//I: there is always that Attachment, which is memorialized in the n-sphere. I think this may be first real explanation of why these pieces all fit together like this, why you can map a regular sphere to a sphere with a point at infinity.

And it connects to an idea that came to me while walking yesterday, which he also had a very good time with, that repentance isn’t just making up for what you’ve done but actually taking that harm into your heart and soul so you know what it feels like, what it felt like to be that other person. It’s actual empathy. The example which came to mind is that Germans really should be studying Judaism so they can learn to identify as the Jews they murdered. It is the only way they can confront themselves. It is the way to repent.

I see a split coming in Judaism anyway. It’s inevitable now that Reform and those less devout than that are accepting the paternal line. The solution should be algorithmic, meaning it’s a perfect use of the blockchain. Just enter the data about a Jew’s heritage and it’s a permanent record. I mean that if you can accurately track heritage, then people who want to keep to the old definitions can do that. The old definitions aren’t racial: a convert’s bloodline becomes part of the tribe. That’s normal for tribes.

My answer to the issue of refusal, like we want everyone here to follow our rules, is to say then if you are here you have to follow our rules. If that’s unacceptable to you, then you shoud see that your demands are equally unacceptable.

You are clearly hyperbolic. Maybe I am too but it’s not as obvious, certainly not at comparable scale. So, that explains why I’m becoming more hyperbolic: it’s the same process we’ve been describing in which the orthogonals approach the same values. I can see the simplest case of pure inversion positive and negative.

But as I remember, that came out of generating a grid square by rotating a bT around the 3rd End. We never finished that; we left out the transition from Triangular, which is 60 degrees, to grid squares. Oops, wrong! I did it correctly before, the gs form was generated by rotating around the center of a bT, not an End. That version of a gs fits with the version constructed by rotating around the midpoint of a 1-0Segment.

The version constructed around an End is different. It draws the midpoint lines of Triangular, so each bT is symmetrical along each of the 3 axes. That makes the center point used in the first version above. I think this may be something important, that this may be the generation of D3 or here 3D space in the sense of being able to locate in x,y, and z. That’s true. I can explain it in two Pathways.

One we’ve done before. That’s the construction of a D4 space out of both D2 and D6. That brings in Regularization as the generation of an ideal 1Space polygonal form with a center. This results in removing 2 of the 3 pairings in Hexagonal.

The other is what I mentioned day before or so, that I saw IC and the count of 4 as inherent to existence as the solution to the issue of there being 3fD to any bT. Where is the 4th? It’s constructed. So grid squares represents this in the 4square, which is also within any 1Square. That works when you count the contexts as we did years ago, that the 1 being constructed can be in any location, though these pair, with the typical being ordinary notation of positive and negative.

I keep saying that grid squares are a construction and that reality is a construction in grid squares. That is what this says in fairly blunt terms: there is a 4th grid square generated in relation to any 3gs. In dimensional terms, any D3 has attached a D4. Thus the more definite the D3, the more defined the D4, which relates to win probabilities and everything else. This was such a substantial upheaval of my thinking at the time that I nearly passed out from the strain. I could barely lift my head.

BTW, I’m doing this now largely with my right eye closed because my left has become focused on infinity and needs the upclose work. I can feel the eye opening and relaxing.

I noticed a number of teachable things in my routines. Example: I have realized, as you clearly have, that every bend or other movement down becomes an opportunity to reach for the ideal coming up. Like dance or weight training but without constraining the movement to a small set of Pathways. Like you can learn a Turkish get-up or whatever they call it now, like you can learn a squat, but then you’re training that specific movement, not all the possible movements, not all your personal potential movements. So a better design for training would be to do the strength move when you’re not doing the strength move. Or do the dance move when you’re not dancing. Meaning for me that I stand in whatever position I’m in and take that to its conclusion with my legs fully engaged, core tensioned and then extended upward. I’m getting closer to being able to describe the tensioning itself. That’s difficult. I can see easy examples like holding something and pulling across, learning how to do that with you arms, with different body parts, until you realize you can do it internally across the hips so you are pulled tight in various ways. Does wonders to pull out pain and free movement.

I found an amazing tensioning yesterday. Or rather, he did. He was standing at the top of a long flight of stairs and did a high stretch like a sun salutation which tensioned so the back lifted, so the chest kept that going, until the only direction left was into the neck and into the chin portion of the head, meaning I was able to pull that tight from all the way down my body. That neck area is just about the hardest place to tension like that, where all the pulling roots externally, when I’m not otherwise working that area.

So, to get back to the top, if I had conversations about what to say and how to act, but then I was sent out to become one of them in various ways, and you were too but not because entirely different scale means external direction so you can do that work.

Oh, I’m achieving contraction across my right knee unlike any I’ve been able to manage for many, many years. And I started taking off more from each foot, as opposed to jumping or leaping with nearly all leg movement (to avoid pain). I was surprised at how natural it felt now that I can do it.

I keep forgetting to type that each time I start to think about how this symmetry works, I hear that we’re the same, just expressed in different D3-4 forms. That’s the essence of what manifests as entanglement. Need to break.

[attemptsonherlifepdf]

bojack horseman and bo burnham: the art of acting like you’re acting and the comedy of misery

at the core of bojack horseman, raphael bob-waksberg’s 2014 comedy, is a story about the relationship between performance and depression. the protagonist of this renowned tragicomedy is best described as a sympathetic villain; he is shown to clearly be in the wrong across various events of the show, and is explicitly referred to as a bad person, but the audience is granted deep access to his personal struggles, resulting in some portions of the audience finding themselves on bojack’s side. the duality of his character is complex, but can be broken down into some core components, that all stem from the impacts of stardom and performance. the standup comedy of bo burnham arguably echoes this sentiment in real time. having been a performer from a young age, burnham creates work that serves as a satirical commentary on the life of entertainers. he uses original songs to explore the reliance upon and resentment for his performative nature both onstage and within his personal life. both the comedian and the netflix show are widely understood to be thinly veiling their critiques of the entertainment industry behind a particular brand of witty and absurd humour.

both bojack and burnham’s content openly criticises their audiences and explicitly states the manufactured nature of the narrative the audience is fed. in the fifth season of bojack horseman, the show satirises itself by having bojack star in a police procedural drama, parts of which are actively written by other characters to reflect events of bojack’s life. the titular character he plays, philbert, is the epitome of selfish male angst, and an example of what bob-waksberg’s show could have been; another story about a sad and angry man whose guilt supposedly makes up for the people he has hurt. according to bojack, philbert teaches us ‘we’re all terrible, so we’re all okay’, an interpretation that is harshly disputed by diane: ‘that’s not the point of philbert, for guys to watch it and feel okay. i dont want you, or anyone else, justifying their shitty behaviour because of the show.’ this moment is a direct reaction to some of the online reception bojack horseman has received. various circles of the show’s fanbase have found themselves relating to the protagonist to the point of defending his untoward behaviour, a response not intentioned by the show’s creators. this is not the only example of bob-waksberg’s ability to make his work self-evaluative. in season six’s exposure of bojack and sarah lynn’s problematic relationship, characters question their sexual encounter from the first season. the writers use this as a way of examining their own choices, and the harmful tropes they played into when using this exploitative sexual encounter as a gag. this self-evaluative quality is what sets bojack apart as a show that assesses the performance it participates in, much like the comedy of bo burnham.

bo burnham is known for directly addressing his audience, particularly in terms of discouraging idolisation and parasocial relationships. some examples of this manifest as responses to hecklers rather than a planned bit in the show, for instance:

heckler: i love you!

bo: no you don’t

heckler: i love the IDEA of you!

bo: stop participating!

he actively addresses the issues posed by being an entertainer, and encourages the audience to understand and recognise that his onstage persona is just that: an exaggerated persona. not once does burnham claim to be fully authentic onstage, and even moments of authenticity we see in his latest special, inside, are staged. we make the assumption that having the physical setting of a stage stripped away grants us a more personal look at the entertainer’s life, but he makes it clear that even in his own home we still see the aspects he has carefully constructed rather than the full truth. arguably though, parts of the show really are authentic; in his monologue during make happy, bo deconstructs his own show in a way that is similar to bojack horseman’s later seasons, admitting that all he knows is performing and thus making a show about the more mundane and relatable aspects of life would feel ‘incredibly disingenuous.’ in his attempts to separate himself from this onstage persona he actually manages to blur the lines between what is acting and what is now part of his nature as a result of his job. this notion is echoed in bojack horseman as bojack’s attention seeking nature is attributed to his years acting in front of a camera every day.

bo suggests that the era of social media has created a space in which children’s identities mimic that of an entertainer like himself, describing the phenomenon as ‘performer and audience melded together.’ in this observation he criticises the phenomenon. bo attempts to force the audience to recognise the ways in which their lives are becoming shaped by the presence of an audience and to some extent uses his own life as a warning tale against this. he points out the way in which the ‘tortured artist trope’ means that your cries for help or roundabout attempts of addressing mature themes such as substance abuse, mental illness and trauma become part of that on stage persona and therefore become part of the joke. both bo and bojack address these topics in more discrete manners earlier in their careers, but this eventually becomes expected, and thus they are forced to explicitly detail their struggles with these topics in order to be taken seriously. even then, portions of the audience are inclined to see it as part of the persona or as something that fuels the creators creativity and thus does not need to be addressed as a legitimate issue. the emphasis on creating a character or persona promotes the commodification of mental illness: any struggle must be made into a song or a joke or a bit, must be turned into part of the act in order to have value. this actually serves to delegitimise these emotions and create a disconnect between the feeling and the person, as it becomes near impossible to exist without feeling as though you are acting. even when an artist’s cries for help become blatant, they continue to go ignored because now they serve the purpose of creating content that criticises the industry they stem from. online audiences can be seen as treating bo burnham and his insightful work as existing to demonstrate the negative effects entertaining can have, and because this insight is useful or thought-provoking to audiences, he is almost demanded to keep entertaining and creating. in response to this demand, his work becomes more meta and his messages become clearer, and the more obvious his messages, the more people he reaches. this increases audience demands and traps entertainers in a cycle fraught with internal conflict.

during bojack’s second season, bojack’s date asks him, ‘come on, do that bojack thing where you make a big deal and everyone laughs, but at the same time we relate, because you're saying the things polite society won't.’ this moment exemplifies how aspects of his genuine personality have now become a part of his persona and this is demanded of him in genuine and serious situations, undermining the validity of his emotional reactions. he immediately makes a rude comment to the waitress at the restaurant they’re in and satisfies his date by performing that character he has set himself out to be. some circles of the fan base have argued that bojack is written as a depiction of somebody with borderline personality disorder, offering a psychoanalytical lens through which to view this notion of performance. a defining symptom of borderline personality disorder is a fluctuating sense of self; having grown up on camera, being demanded to perform to others as young as six years old, bojack’s sense of self will have been primarily dictated by the need to act.  whether this acting is for the sake of comedy, or as a representation of masking his mental illness, when they need to act is taken away bojack entirely loses his sense of self and relapses into his addictions: ‘i felt like a xerox of a xerox of a person.’ burnham’s depictions of depression run along a similar vein; in his new special he poses the idea that his comedy no longer serves the same personal purpose it once did for him. he questions ‘shit should I be joking at a time like this?’ and satirises the idea that arts have enough value to change or impact the current global issues that we are facing. burnham’s ‘possible ending song’ to his latest special, he asks ‘does anybody want to joke when no-one’s laughing in the background? so this is how it is.’ implicit in this question is the idea that when the audience is taken away and there is nobody to perform his pain to, he is left with his pain. instead of being able to turn his musings and thoughts into a product to sell to the public, he is forced to just think about them in isolation and actually face them, an abrupt and distressing experience.

the value of performance and art is questioned by both bojack and burnham, particularly during the later years of their respective content. burnham’s infamous song, art is dead, appears to be a direct response to the question ‘what is the worth of art?’ he posits that performing is the result of a need for attention (‘my drug’s attention, i am an addict, but i get paid to indulge in my habit’) and repeatedly jokes throughout his career that the entertainment industry receives more respect that it deserves (‘i’m the same as you, im still doing a job or a service, i’m just massively overpaid’). his revelations regarding the inherent desire for attention that runs through all entertainers is frequently satirised in bojack horseman. bojack is comically, hyperbolically attention hungry and self-obsessed, and the show has a running gag in which he uses phrases along the lines of ‘hello, why is nobody paying attention to me, the famous movie star, instead of these other boring people.’ his constant attempts to direct the focus of others towards himself result in bojack feeling like ‘everybody loves you, but nobody likes you.’ his peers buy into his act and adore the comical, exaggerated, laughable aspects of his character, but find very little room to respond to him on a genuinely personal level because of this. interestingly, bojack appears to enjoy catering to his audience and the instant gratification it produces, whereas bo burnham becomes increasingly candid about his mixed feeling towards his audience. ‘i wanna please you, but i wanna stay true to myself, i wanna give you the night out that you deserve, but i wanna say what i think and not care what you think about it.’ he admits to catering to what audiences want from him, but resents both the audience and himself in the process as it reveals to himself which parts of his character are solely for the sake of people watching him.

within bojack horseman, this concept is applicable not only to the protagonist, but to the various forms of performer demonstrated in the plot. towards the show’s end, sarah lynn asks ‘what does being authentic have to do with anything?’ to which herb kazzaz responds, ‘when i finally stopped hiding behind a facade i could be at peace.’ this highlights the fact that because entertainers are demanded to continue the facade, they do not receive the opportunity to find ‘peace.’ this sentiment is scattered throughout the show, through a musical motif, the song ‘don’t stop dancing.’ the song stems from a life lesson bojack imparted to sarah lynn at a young age, and becomes more frequently used as the show progresses and bojack’s situation worsens.

sarah lynn is also used to explore the value of entertainers; in the show’s penultimate episode, she directly compares her work as a pop icon to the charity work of herb, arguing that if she suffered in order to produce her work. it has to mean something. she lists the struggles she faced when on tour: ‘i gave my whole life...my manager leaked my nudes to get more tour dates added, my mom pointed out every carb i ate, it was hell. but it gave millions of fans a show they will never forget and that has to mean something.’ implicit in this notion is the idea that entertainment is the epitome of self-sacrifice. there is a surplus of mentally ill individuals within the industry, largely due to the nature of the industry itself, but some may argue that the cultural grip the industry has, and the vast amounts of respect and money it generates annually, gives the suffering of these prolific individuals meaning.

the juxtaposing responses entertainers feel towards their audiences manifest as two forms of desperation: the desperation to be an individual who is held accountable, and the desperation to be loved and validated. we see both bojack and bo depict how they oscillate between  ‘this is all a lie’ and ‘my affection for my audience is genuine’, or between ‘do not become infatuated with me im a character’ and ‘please fucking love my character i do not know how to be loved on a personal level.’ bojack explicitly asks diane to write a slam piece on him and ‘hold him accountable’, similar to bo’s song ‘problematic’ in which the hook includes the phrase ‘isn’t anybody gonna hold me accountable?’ for his insensitive jokes as a late teenager. their self-awareness is what enables their self-evaluative qualities, but self-awareness is its own issue. bojack grapples with a narcissistic view of his own recognition of his behaviour before settling on a more nuanced, albeit depressing take. originally he makes the assumption that in recognising the negative aspects of himself, he is superior to those who behave similarly: ‘but i know im a piece of shit. that makes me better than all the pieces of shit that don’t know theyre pieces of shit.’ eventually, during his time at rehab he is forced to reconcile with the fact that self awareness does not, to put it bluntly, make you the superior asshole, it just makes you the more miserable one. the show does, however, make a point to recognise how the entertainment industry protects ‘pieces of shit’, prioritising their productive value over how much they deserve to be held accountable, demonstrated using characters like hank hippopoalus. the show itself obviously stems from the entertainment industry, as it is a form of media produced by netflix, one of the most popular streaming platforms available. bojack horseman and bo burnham represent the small corner of the industry that is reflective enough to showcase the damage it inflicts. this is powerful in terms of education and awareness, and urges audiences to question their own motives and versions of performance, but the reflection alone is not powerful enough to help the artists in question. burnham’s candid conversations surrounding his mental health continue to reveal a plethora of issues somewhat caused or sustained by the nature of his career. within bojack horseman, bojack is only able to stop hurting other characters when those characters construct a situation that forces him to face consequence, his introspection alone is not enough. while bojack ends on a message of hope, suggesting to the audience that reverting back to the status quo is not the only acceptable way for events to end, it leaves stinging lessons and social commentary with the audience regarding the unnatural and damaging narrative that performers live through. on a similar but markedly different note, bo burnham’s work and personal progression is playing out in real time, and not in a way that is as raw and genuine as it appears. each bit is planned, even the most vulnerable moments that appear unplanned and painful. his latest special is not entirely devoid of hope, but does translate to audiences as a somewhat exaggerated look around the era of social media and the development of performance, using himself as an example.

the absurdist humour that often acts as a vehicle for poignant statements or emotionally provocative questions is very specific to each media creator. bob-waksberg’s use of puns, tongue twisters and entirely ridiculous circumstances served to simultaneously characterise his points as an expected part of the show’s style of humour, similar to bojack’s emotional instability, but also to make them appear gut-punching in comparison to the humour. burnham’s work is similar in that poignant but blunt statements are often sandwiched between absurd and exaggerated jokes, making them stand out via contrast but not giving the audience too much time to dwell upon them as they are said. performance art is second nature to entertainers, and is presented a an issue that is infiltrating the general population via social media rather than solely affecting the ‘elites’. bojack horseman and bo burnham present the duality of artists simultaneously attempting to level the playing field and increase their chances of survival in the industry, and encourage audiences to know that everyone is bluffing and you’ll never have the right cards anyway.

i.k.b