#I love dreams wherein I am a beast

[definegodliness]

Had a dream last night

Best movie you'll never see

[shoezuki]

Shoe im too sleep deprived to go zooming on all those screenshots and redownloadong the bird app, may i ask what is happening w the dream drama u posted? I love ur summaries, they make me laugh about things i am gratefully unaware of

My beloved anon im sorry it took me this long. But i am lazy. No other reason really. So i am now chronicling this dhit on my phone. And oh fuck dude is it a trip

SO. this fuckery began with quackity announcing the QSMP. He did so on the 17th of march and whatever the fuck. He mentioned it earlier than this (edit: just checked but the First announcements was the 10th)

And this is all great. New server that fucks. But what truly started all this. Was dream's tweet on his private twitter.

Im gonna try to be kinda impartial qnd jus. Explain it all as is but first i gotta say who says this shit lmao. So quackity announces his new project and is very passionate about it, he tweets more on his alt(?) About how much it means to him to bring his two languages spanish and english together. And dream on private is like 'wow cool! Guys dont get mad at me when i announce the same thing later tho haha' its just so weird.

But anyways. The usmp wasnt even A Thing. Only written instance of dream makin a multilingual server was in a tweet defending himself from copying quackity. (Altho he allegedly mentions in streams or whatever wanting yo do things w other ppl from other languages? But that shit dont count n im not diggin audio n videos out fuck that).

The actual, official announcement of dream makin a usmp was april 2nd (idk why this says the 3rd but whatever) wherein he announces the 'first multilingual smp' with a list of languages that will be on it such as portugese, spanish, english, russian, etc. And that it has live translation.

The same day, quackity releases a tweet labelling the qsmp as the 'first multilingual smp' and that he is introducing a live translation system to it. Mr beast connects that the usmp and qsmp are similar to which dream responds. Quackity doesnt respond, nor does he acknowledge the usmp at all.

Dream's response is essentially theyre different in that qsmp is spanish and english, he announced his live translator first, they had 'similar good ideas'.

So. This sparked a lot of drama and discussion. Because of the 'first multilingual' bit in that people began discrediting qsmp as it was 'only' english and spanish, and therefore was bilingual and not multilingual. Altho others countered thid by saying quackity himself called it a multilingual server in his streams. Not to mention the idea that the translator was copied but regardless both those things are kinda stupid arguments and just drama inspired by the comparisons.

More notably is that dream team were making fun of the 'first multilingual server' bit after this. Dream was liking some jokes at it as well

Dream also liked some. Vaguely sexual/romantic 'they should just kiss already' art of him and quackity?

Also after this dream started somewhat addressing/replying to quackity more. Quackity didnt respond to any of it.

Dream also tweeted this on his private the day after

Most narrowed in on the 'this wouldnt have happened without quackity' and was often interpretted as dream saying quackity HELPED him w it in some way or that there was more collab behind the scenes but we will find that to be false. Because. On april 27th. Dream dropped his magnum opus. Which i will include in one screenshot.

Anyways i seriously encourage reading the full thing here because its. Something. Theres so much. It is literally 1.7k words. A lot of it is repetitive but i will. Try. To summarize it.

Essentially dream is writing that he has been trying to contact quackity for some time now with no response. He has been messaging him about how theyve ended up with similar servers (therefore noting that neither one know of the other). This gets nothing. Dream tries contacting quackity more publically with jokes. Nothing. He starts going through secondary sources by talkin to ppl to message quackity for him (i think some people who dream knows that are on the qsmp. Unsure who) but quackity doesnt say shit. Dream is being absolutely ghosted.

Im also noting this last paragraph in his first tweet where he describes being 'taken back' when quackity announces the qsmp live translator after his usmp announcement, because he 'knew it would cause more drama'.

He says he messages quackity so they can plan how to deal with the 'vitriol' between the teo 'communities' and that the drama can be solved with 'communication'. He is ghosted. He also mentions that he puts the usmp 'on hold' in the 2nd tweet so it all can be dealt with and he can 'extend love and support to quackity'. Most notably he says that its alluded that quackity wouldnt let ppl who were on the usmp couldnt be on the qsmp which dream tries to say makes sense for quackity to do.

Theres apparently a fucking image limit on the tumblr app which ive hit so i am now not using images and speedrunning this shit. But im quoting this one thing exactly as its most important:

"That being said, I’ve seen the communities split against each other and have tons of hate build around this and around the speculations of peoples motives and friendships and so on, and it’s really really harmful to the community as a whole. I have seen more threats, doxing, fights, slander, and hate between a bunch of fan bases that I’ve seen in a very long time. I personally have experienced an elevated level of in real life threats & stalkers & even had the police involved in somebody showing up at my house, & even putting trackers on my family vehicles, surrounding this drama, for the first time since pre-face reveal. That’s really why I feel like I have to say something about it despite me wanting to avoid any kind of serious talk about all of this, especially even talking about communication publicly feels wrong but necessary in this instance. I never like to air out anything that feels or is private, but I feel like in this case it’s really important for my fan base to be aware of my intentions, motives, thought process, and how we got to where we are. I’ve always been a creator that’s very open with my fan base about everything going on in my life and this is a massive thing right now for my friends & me"

His last tweet begins with him saying he 'doesnt want anymore drama' and ends eith him saying he loves quackity and believes this is all just a miscommunication.

Now, obviously, shit blew up. Hes been ratiod a few times by people meming it. Ive seen many people on quackity's 'side' saying that the usmp doesnt even exist yet, dream is the one causing drama, etc. And people on dream's 'side' saying quackity is being horrible and needs address this because its caused dream to be in danger. Most importantly. Quackity didnt address it at all.

But then quackity announced he was going live in an hour. And a lot assumed hed say something. But he didnt. His stream was roughly 15 minutes long and it was entirely quackity announcing that he was introducing brazilian/portugese speaking streamers onto the qsmp.

Anyways. Theres a lot of details but my hand hurts now. A big thing is whether qsmp or usmp was 'first'. Imo theres a lot more pointing towards quackity having had this is store for a longass time, as he had been hinting and a project of his for months and more notably the qsmp is so organized and put together i doubt he couldve had it finished up 'after' dream as dream's nonexistent server was an idea he got after that squidcraft thing in early March i think?

More recently (i think today) i saw that quackity apparently took two emojis off his twitch that were dream roblox characters and i saw people freaking out in r/dwt2 about how quackity could be so petty? But ya. My condolences if youve read all this.

[soullessjack]

need to know what you think of soulless jack . deranged about that whole arc.

I am so abnormal about him oh my fucking god. Literally a beast in a situation. Gnawing on him at all times. The most interesting part of it is seeing how much genuine anger and impatience and downright ruthlessness he’s capable of when the chips are down. Like, they were already hotheaded and stubborn and set to a plan but now, if anybody gets in his way he won’t fucking hesitate to remove them by whatever means he can. I mean he threw Rowena back into her apartment when she refused to help any more and literally sabotaged Baby’s engine just to keep Sam and Dean away long enough to finish the spell he’d cast specifically for them.

And it really just adds to the idea that his excessive politeness and usual mild mannerisms are truly nothing more than a performance, a robotic exaggeration of traditionally socially acceptable or likable traits displayed to gain approval, acceptance and to emulate human normality (autistic masking 101). Like we’ve seen instances of him being impatient and impulsive and all those other charming qualities beforehand, but now without a soul to help him regulate those traits he’s truly a lot more volatile than he’d ever want to admit or accept.

It’s also a major insight into the perfectionist complex he was inadvertently instilled with by Sam and Dean (and Cas, but more on the latter) at the very start.

Dean instills the notion that Jack is already inherently/biologically evil and therefore fundamentally unsalvageable, because how can you possibly fight or be saved from what you really are? His indirect comparisons of Jack to Lucifer and Cas also don’t help with this, because that leads Jack to try and emulate him and Cas as much as possible without ever finding a solid sense of who they actually are. If they can be more like Cas, they can be more good, and thus they can be accepted and gain respect + acknowledgment of their humanity.

Sam instills the notion of purpose as a means of value and worth by way of seeing Jack’s powers as a tool to save Mary (re: inter-dimensional can opener). He also instills the notion of respect and humanity as something earned through effort, but not inherent to the person. Dean can’t possibly respect Jack as a mostly-human being or respect his autonomous choice to be good; he can’t possibly respect an inherently evil monster. Jack’s humanity and goodness has to be proven with hard labor and grand gestures. Sam is also the one to tell Jack up front that he is inherently dangerous; that while they may need to protect Jack from various threats in the world, they may also need to protect the world from the threat Jack potentially poses. Dean is similar in that regard, but he affixes danger to moral standing, unlike Sam who is aware that Jack does not consciously want to be a threat.

Castiel instills a similar notion to Sam’s, wherein destiny and affixed purposes within greater plans act as complete justifications for everything; for unconditional love, for unwavering faith, for actions, etc. He and Kelly both wanted Jack to live because they shared the idea that he could bring paradise on earth, and nothing more. Re: emulation of a better person and purpose as value, Jack now thinks they have to be just like Castiel, that they have to accomplish the grand scale cosmic miracle Kelly dreamed of in order to ever be truly good or worthy or to continue being loved by his chosen father (and to make Kelly’s death actually he worth her sacrifice). I think this explains why they butt heads with Cas most often, as well as their overt retaliation against his defense in Moriah. His unwavering faith is not in Jack as a person or as they really/already are, but as what he believes Jack can be.

In some form or another, all of the parental figures Jack has view him as a tool for something (except Mary, I’m pretty sure she was the only one to actually see him as a kid). All of this culminates to mold an extremely skewed view of morality for Jack, where he personally denotes evil/monstrosity to anyone or anything that intentionally kills and harms innocents, whether they’re human or not. He also denotes goodness/humanity to Sam and Dean, to hunting, to killing the aforementioned evil innocent-murdering monsters, to protecting and saving. Mia Vallens also instills that inherently monstrous traits can be utilized for good like her closure shifting, and as such Jack throws themself into hunting, into the role of a protector, of a hero that crushes villains and always wins—because even with the burdening idea that they may be ontologically evil and fundamentally unlovable in their true nature, they can be loved and accepted and achieve some semblance of goodness through purpose, destiny, and utilization of their nature for good.

Thus, Jack cannot handle failure of rejection, because he objectively views every failure and rejection as proof that he cannot be anything he’s tried to be. If he fails to protect his loved ones or to be more like Cas and The Winchesters, then he’s failed to fulfill the purposes and destinies that he sees as a reflection of his own self worth, ergo his true nature must be evil. Then it comes to a full on collision stop when he lashes out at Mary and inadvertently kills her. and every single fear, every single basis of the rejection Jack has faced, everything they spent their entire life fighting to prove wrong, was proven right. They are hopelessly genetically evil, they cannot meet their affixed purposes and ergo they have no value. His powers can’t be utilized for good as he’d intended, only for destruction and death. All these interlacing notions just get worse with their actions under Duma’s manipulation, because he’s just happily killed more innocents, and despite having the heartbreakingly good intention of making the world a better place to make up for Mary’s botched resurrection, the action outweighs the intent entirely.

The Moriah script specifically notes how truly unhappy Jack is with being soulless and with Dean being right, because he never wanted this. He never consciously wanted to hurt the people he considers to be all he has in the world, or to cause as much harm as he ended up doing, but to kill and destroy is the inherent nature of all monsters, so he essentially takes his failures and actions as insurmountable proof that he is truly helplessly evil, whether he consciously wants to be like this or not.

Despite how dysfunctional and harmful TFW ended up being to Jack’s development, I do also think that his soulless arc reflects his attachment to them in the best worst way possible; the fact that he genuinely loves this ragtag handful of weirdos enough to not only destroy himself over them, but to destroy others for their sake….the fact that he stakes so much of his identity and livelihood on them that as soon as he gets an inkling of losing it all (ie Mary pressing that something is wrong with him) it makes him go fucking insane…::so horrendous and juicy…

I just wish more was done with him, that he’d lasted longer than four episodes and that the writing didn’t flip back and forth between “Jack is horrified by what he’s done and what it implies for his livelihood with the Winchesters as well as the long/standing question of what his true nature really is” and “Jack only logically knows what he did wrong and blames Mary completely.” As is evident with this entire post, there’s so much to be gleaned from Soulless!Jack, and also just Jack as a character I think is extremely rich in discussion.

** btw, tysm for the ask!!! I’d been looking to have something long winded posted eventually but didn’t know what to start with. too many ideas for the blorbo just ricocheting off of my inner skull walls).

[schismusic]

THE DISCOGRAPHY PRINCIPLE, Episode 1: Autechre - or, Into Battle with the Art of Noise

The discography principle may be defined as an objective way to determine whether or not you're worthy of calling a band or artist "your favorite" or "one of your favorites". A possible enunciation of it goes as follows:

"Let u ≝ some asshole, B ≝ {b|b is a band}, n ≝ #({x|x is a record by b}); let p = #({y|y is a record by b in u's possession}) = p1 + p2 wherein p1 ≝ number of physical records by b you own in any format and p2 ≝ number of records by b you have downloaded. If p ≥ n ∨ p2 = n (for n → +∞), then ∃b∈B such that b is one of u's favorite bands."

When u = me, this subset of B (which we might call Bf) is comprised of six bands, off the top of my head: Autechre, Godflesh, Shellac, Kraftwerk, Fugazi and Coil, listed in no particular order.

If you want to read the prologue to this series, go here. Otherwise, let's get going.

The concept of usefulness in the context of art criticism is very slippery and, one could argue, absolutely toxic and painful to the development of artistic expressions of all kinds. I have, in the past, been one of the leading proponents of it, but you have to understand: I routinely dealt with people who would add Arctic Monkeys and late-era Caparezza to their end-of-year lists. Drastic measures were in order, I'm sure you guys get it. In virtually all other instances, defining a record "useless" falls into one of the earliest trappings of retrograde art criticism, which is the supposed non-functionality of bad art, or more punctually the quality of non-functionality as inherently bad - wherein I am rather ready to assure you all that most of my favourite records of the past six or seven years fall into the category of absolutely unapproachable crocks of shit OR are records absolutely no one felt the need for except me (and even then, sometimes I didn't even know I'd love them, see Yellow Eyes' recent neofolk foray Master's Murmur).

A similar argument could be made for the concept of incomprehensibility. There are records that are just cryptic for the hell of it - and it would be unfair to label power electronics as such, in that power electronics is usually very direct with what it is about and how it takes it across, but early Brandt Brauer Frick records might very easily fit the bill: who, really, feels the need for live-played techno with classically trained interpreters except for people who like to groove but also have to pretend they know their shit about music and don't want any of that fake computer shit? Or even, why would anyone legitimately give a shit about a Stephen O'Malley record without guitars? - but Autechre I think are simply a different beast. Wherein the vulgata concerning their production essentially revolves around the idea that their first three are the best, then it's all noises and "self-serving experimentation", whatever the fuck that means, and for as many autism jokes people like to make about their music because they simply don't want to even try to give their music a fair chance to stand on its own and just pretend like "wow these guys sure are making computer farts haha", one of the best conversations about music I've had in a while revolves around something that binds Autechre and another dearly-beloved of all obnoxious music people, and later also featured in this series: Coil. And I'm not talking about the (very openly stated) relationship of most-likely-mutual influence between the two groups, but it does stem from that, or more specifically from the aborted collaborative record they toyed with in the early 2000s. This aforementioned collaborative record (which, in the early 2000s, would have probably sold like pre-sliced and pre-Nutella-coated bread to the admittedly very specific audiences the two projects had, regardless of its actual outcome) was shelved, and I quote verbatim, for "not being good enough", which is simply something that you do not do in electronic music unless you are really, really good at what you do - the best at what you do, even. Which would explain why no one ever shuts the fuck up in that particular world and everyone has like a full record and three splits/EPs out every year.

Autechre is something you have to want to waste a lot of time (and money, if you're an obsessive like me) into. There's a number of very cute cheat codes to getting Autechre but the gist of it is that just about nobody I know actually followed the advice literally everyone hands out - i.e. to start with Incunabula. I know I absolutely didn't. The first Autechre record I listened to was Confield, which I later purchased at a certain particularly well-known record shop in my city: my first thought was I really didn't know what to make of it. In retrospect, it's no surprise: literally any other Autechre record would have been better. There are more accessible ones and more inaccessible ones, but either of these options probably would have given me a different shock that would probably have hit me harder. Had I picked up a record like Amber, or Tri Repetae, I probably would have been like "damn this is very '90s but at the same time it still sounds very futuristic in terms of approach and arrangement choices, there's like a billion albums-of-the-month on Pitchfork that sound exactly like any one of these tracks but stretched to forty minutes to one hour" and maybe give it another listen, and then two, and then before I know it Rsdio becomes my most played track of the year (unfortunately, as you might have guessed, this isn't autobiographical, but that's because I ultimately got Tri Repetae on vinyl and mostly play it from there - it's "incomplete without surface noise", after all). If I had picked elseq, or - God forbid - the NTS Sessions, which at that point had been out for like a year or something, you know for a fact I would have tried to get absolutely fucked up by listening to the full four-hour thing while doing something really stupid, like taking a walk around in a blizzard or while in sleep deprivation or while studying linear algebra hoping that my brain would increase in mass all of a sudden. I would not have gotten it, obviously, because I was and to a massive extent still am an idiot who got lucky. Anyway, the point is that Confield felt and in part still feels to me like it's unexpressed potential, but not in the way a record like Radioactivity by Kraftwerk is: Confield looks at you, the listener, and goes "there's a whole other world where we already are. Too bad you can't see any of this shit, because we most definitely do!". Its second half gets noticeably more focused if you listen to the whole thing in sequence, though.

My second attempt was with Oversteps, bought on the same day as Confield, and again - at that point I was already kind of expecting Autechre to just fucking smoke me right then and there. Of course it did not happen, because Oversteps is a fundamentally easier record to approach than Confield is - and in buying it, I also missed the chance to buy Exai, which promptly disappeared from the record shop the very second I managed to go back there, and which would have probably gotten me in a whole ass elseq loop, but let's not dwell on the past, what the fuck did I know then? It's not like anyone has the idea to start with a two-hour-and-a-half impenetrable wall of glitching after all. Whatever. Oversteps is pretty cool though, because it gave me a pretty neat access into a number of other Autechre factory-seals like their stark sense of melody and a style of compositionl development recalling more the idea of a place than it would an actual track (and not even in the Ambient 4: On Land way, where it's "music that describes environments" inspired by the anything-goes bombastic mnemonic approach of Federico Fellini's Amarcord, but rather in its own way of "music that is the environment it describes": spatially organized arrangements, something meant for you to explore, and as such something that you need to spend time in, perhaps repeatedly). Obviously articulating this train of thought was absolutely out of the question and I therefore kept saying "damn, I need to get to this record and listen to it in full", which I later found out doesn't fly more often than not. Autechre is something you want to get back to and waste a shit ton of time on, every track approached like a little world or some sort of escape room even, where all the clues are there and everything you need to do is look (listen) more intently than you did before. I like to think of Autechre as a challenge and I'm assuming that Sean Booth and Rob Brown kinda see it like that too, but not as a challenge to the listener as much as they do it to challenge themselves.

There are absolutely going to be Autechre records you like more than others, some are not gonna speak to you at all, some might be more approachable or just more stylistically in line with what you do (and the best part is that you're gonna find it changes from person to person), but the best part is that there is never an Autechre record that feels thrown out for a quick buck or rushed or forced to develop old ideas and intuitions - for better or for worse, that is. At the same time there definitely is a form of continuity that makes it especially rewarding to listen to Autechre sequentially, the way some people like to watch and rank a director's filmography.

After the pandemic ended, and as people were beginning to go out again albeit maybe wearing masks and gloves, I dropped out of Mathematics and started watching a ton of movies. I fell in love with Nicolas Winding Refn, a director that makes it really easy to put on a movie and let it slide over your skin bathing you in thrills and aesthetics, but is pretentious enough to make that stuff at least try to have something to say (some people argue that it's detrimental to Refn's work, and to an extent I agree; I, for one, simply can't help but appreciate a man who very gleefully declares that the female experience is a mystery to him and at the same time that there's a sixteen-year-old girl within him and that he plays dolls with his daughters and that he never had a girlfriend until he met his current wife Lia Corfixen. The Neon Demon feels like it'd be just one step away from being a male-gaze-glorifying flick if it wasn't for its inherent absurdity and absolute lack of understanding of human relationships that makes it that bit less relatable and more forcefully estranging). Anyway as I was fixating on Refn's movies and downloaded all of them to watch and rewatch them, I also found myself back onto Autechre and decided to take a step back. This time I picked Amber - Incunabula being described as their masterpiece still sort of intimidated me. In retrospect, if I had heard Incunabula without a clear picture of what Autechre would evolve into, I'd have had a hearty laugh and thought something like "man, this aged horribly". Amber has a bit of an edge to it, despite what Booth & Brown say about it, and the elements left over from Incunabula are turned into a less rigid, more impalpable version of themselves that isn't afraid to, for instance, remove all drums and toy with the listener's sense of rhythm in a way something like Kalpol Introl never really did (see: Nine) or face a horrifying creeping darkness that Incunabula's more clearly urban/cyberpunk sensitivities more swiftly dealt with, for instance on tracks like Teartear.

Not one to be easily discouraged (at least when I feel like it), at the first opportunity I decided to buy a record I didn't already know: the choice fell on Tri Repetae, in that it was the next step in the Autechre canon (EPs notwithstanding) and I knew it'd be a step closer to Confield. I wanted to see what the story went like, on its own terms, because the key to this whole ordeal was that I needed to let the record do the talking before I had an opinion on it. And Tri Repetae really did talk to me, because it was exactly what I expected: it had the more discernible elements of early Autechre but also, again, an edge. It's that edge for me: that's the point of interest I end up into, the sort of liminal in-fieri elements that all Autechre releases imply to an extent, and the fact that something as fundamentally ungraspable as C/Pach or Rsdio feeling like it got back home after a whole sleepless night out walking in the cold could coexist with a veritable banger like Eutow (still the one track from Tri Repetae that elicits the most powerful emotional/elated reactions from me) simply blew my mind. Dancing to Eutow in my room and immediately finding myself bobbing my head to, of course, C/Pach and then Gnit led to the next realization in a long series: after everything that's been said about them, the being a four-dimensional object, the being famously impenetrable to all but the most dedicated nerds, the truth about Autechre is that they are a band about rhythm.

I don't exactly expect anyone to be surprised by this, really, but the conscious realization that what I had read on Wikipedia in passing (that Sean and Rob actually met up in the '80s while in the tagging/hip-hop/electro scene in London) actually had bearing on the duo's production was the key to unlocking the rest of their music. Every single thing Autechre have ever done has a form of pulse in it and it takes movement for it to be fully tapped into. Some hacks have recommended listening to Autechre on headphones (deep cuts on YouTube, I see you!) but as for me, I recommend speakers, possibly big, possibly hi-fi, possibly equalized for techno/dance music, and I recommend listening to them with a lot of free space around you. The inherent exploration of space that dancing entails very easily translates into an exploration of the underlying structures in Autechre's (whatchamacallit) songwriting, and from there the rest follows. Even Incunabula, which I finally tackled in summer 2023 and appreciated for what it is: provided you can deal with outdated sound palettes, an excellent record that stands as a true high mark in the exploration of analog instrumentation possibilities, a true forward-looking and forward-pushing debut outing on whose shoulders all future Autechre releases stand, even the most radical.

But Autechre could never stand still and simply replicate Incunabula all over n billion times; that's simply not the cloth they're cut from, and if that was the case I'd be very hard-pressed to think they'd feel as relevant as they do with every subsequent release. That they could drop, in sequence, Exai, the whole five records of elseq and the NTS Sessions boxset and still elicit the electrified reactions they did, both positive and negative.

One of the first serious conversations about music that I had with my old band's bassist was about electronic music, which was actually somewhat foundational to my appreciation of this particular art form (I was a die-hard Daft Punk/Justice guy, Waters of Nazareth and Genesis were to me what Metallica or System of a Down to a number of other people I know: a show of force that made me conscious of the physical impact of sound on a human's body, not just pleasant vibrations to the ears). She told me - and I'm willing to bet that was an old idea that she has since discarded - that she really didn't feel like electronic music was alive, and with music being "life" to her that was a true oxymoron that rendered her incapable of objectively judging electronica. At the time I would have never showed her Autechre, if anything because I did not know them if not by name, but my current understanding of them makes them the most serious counterargument to that affirmation. Autechre's music doesn't try to measure up to the feel of live band jamming because it doesn't need to, despite it often being (according to Booth and Brown) the result of lengthy, additive improvisations that the duo trade back and forth. It simply takes a step sideways, making all analysis on those terms essentially unserviceable and useless. And if it wasn't as massively pretentious as it is, this shit simply wouldn't fly: any tension to a conventionally-imaginable sense of humanity would make it clear that the duo aren't into it really, and ironically it ends up feeling less believable; it starts breathing weird, it turns into a captatio benevolentiae to the listener. And Autechre is meant to challenge us, or rather it's meant to challenge me, and Sean Booth and Rob Brown.

Ironically enough, Autechre's records feel more and more rewarding the more you get familiar with them, and therefore it turns into its own peculiar brand of process music, so to speak. And it's a hell of a process, granted, but it definitely has something to say to you as a listener, if you're willing to give it a shot. Autechre's music is incomprehensible and useless, if you don't know what to make of it, but the only way to know what to make of it is engage in it and make up your own mind about it.

[craftylovegentlemen]

Genesis

Chapter 37

1 And Jacob dwelt in the land wherein his father was a stranger, in the land of Canaan. 2 These are the generations of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brethren; and the lad was with the sons of Bilhah, and with the sons of Zilpah, his father's wives: and Joseph brought unto his father their evil report. 3 Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age: and he made him a coat of many colours. 4 And when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably unto him. 5 And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it his brethren: and they hated him yet the more. 6 And he said unto them, Hear, I pray you, this dream which I have dreamed: 7 For, behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and, lo, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright; and, behold, your sheaves stood round about, and made obeisance to my sheaf. 8 And his brethren said to him, Shalt thou indeed reign over us? or shalt thou indeed have dominion over us? And they hated him yet the more for his dreams, and for his words. 9 And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me. 10 And he told it to his father, and to his brethren: and his father rebuked him, and said unto him, What is this dream that thou hast dreamed? Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee to the earth? 11 And his brethren envied him; but his father observed the saying.

And his brethren went to feed their father's flock in Shechem. 13 And Israel said unto Joseph, Do not thy brethren feed the flock in Shechem? come, and I will send thee unto them. And he said to him, Here am I. 14 And he said to him, Go, I pray thee, see whether it be well with thy brethren, and well with the flocks; and bring me word again. So he sent him out of the vale of Hebron, and he came to Shechem. 15 And a certain man found him, and, behold, he was wandering in the field: and the man asked him, saying, What seekest thou? 16 And he said, I seek my brethren: tell me, I pray thee, where they feed their flocks. 17 And the man said, They are departed hence; for I heard them say, Let us go to Dothan. And Joseph went after his brethren, and found them in Dothan. 18 And when they saw him afar off, even before he came near unto them, they conspired against him to slay him. 19 And they said one to another, Behold, this dreamer cometh. 20 Come now therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him into some pit, and we will say, Some evil beast hath devoured him: and we shall see what will become of his dreams. 21 And Reuben heard it, and he delivered him out of their hands; and said, Let us not kill him.

22 And Reuben said unto them, Shed no blood, but cast him into this pit that is in the wilderness, and lay no hand upon him; that he might rid him out of their hands, to deliver him to his father again. 23 And it came to pass, when Joseph was come unto his brethren, that they stript Joseph out of his coat, his coat of many colours that was on him; 24 And they took him, and cast him into a pit: and the pit was empty, there was no water in it. 25 And they sat down to eat bread: and they lifted up their eyes and looked, and, behold, a company of Ishmeelites came from Gilead with their camels bearing spicery and balm and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt. 26 And Judah said unto his brethren, What profit is it if we slay our brother, and conceal his blood? 27 Come, and let us sell him to the Ishmeelites, and let not our hand be upon him; for he is our brother and our flesh. And his brethren were content.

28 Then there passed by Midianites merchantmen; and they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the Ishmeelites for twenty pieces of silver: and they brought Joseph into Egypt. 29 And Reuben returned unto the pit; and, behold, Joseph was not in the pit; and he rent his clothes. 30 And he returned unto his brethren, and said, The child is not; and I, whither shall I go? 31 And they took Joseph's coat, and killed a kid of the goats, and dipped the coat in the blood; 32 And they sent the coat of many colours, and they brought it to their father; and said, This have we found: know now whether it be thy son's coat or no. 33 And he knew it, and said, It is my son's coat; an evil beast hath devoured him; Joseph is without doubt rent in pieces. 34 And Jacob rent his clothes, and put sackcloth upon his loins, and mourned for his son many days. 35 And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted; and he said, For I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning. Thus his father wept for him. 36 And the Midianites sold him into Egypt unto Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh's, and captain of the guard.

Genesis 37

Diane Beauford

[chibimyumi]

Hi, again! No worries—Tumblr is a fickle beast.

I was just curious about whether you plan on making any posts on the Mars Red anime adaptation after it reaches its conclusion this season. Totally understand if you don’t have the time or the inclination, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on it! Hope you’re doing well! 🖤

【Related post】

Dear Grelleswife,

I am SOOOOOOOO sorry for my late reply! The truth is, when I received your ask I hadn’t finished the series yet, and then it took forever to find the time to finish it. Hence the tardiness.

Now FINALLY moving on to you question: my thoughts on the finalised series.

Overall I enjoyed the show, because the atmosphere is just amazing, the world is intriguing and charming, and something about the setting is a bit of my guilty pleasure. The show kind of made me feel like a tourist. A person who is visiting a place once dreamed about but never belonged to, deeply intrigued by the surroundings and hungry to see more. I think MARS RED manages to invite the audience into its world very well.

I can't really put my finger on why I am captivated by the world, but it just does. It is just a feeling, and it is a good feeling ^^

The parts I enjoyed less was the storytelling. The plot of MARS RED I actually like very much! It is just sad it wasn’t executed very well. Very often I had the feeling that I was missing an episode because the pacing was so fast. There were some amazingly gripping ideas in MARS RED, such as the death of [spoiler] in the natural disaster, or the final battle between Kurusu and his foe. However, because the series did not take the time to actually develop the characters, make the audience get to know the characters, those gripping ideas didn’t quite land the punch in my heart as I trust was the makers’ intention. That was very much a shame in my opinion, because while I did enjoy those moments, I wish I could have really FELT it.

A minor beef I have with the animated adaptation is the inconsistency/softness of law of the universe in MARS RED. In great part it is because I am a big fan of clear laws. Another factor might be because I have watched the sound theater version, wherein the laws of the universe are more compact, more “hard magic” so to say. In the sound theater, the higher ranked a vampire is, the stronger they are of course, but also the worse “vampire-bound weaknesses” are. Depending on whether the story was focused on a stronger or weaker vampire, the audience knows what laws govern the story, which was not really the case in the anime version for me.

There were moments wherein in-story some vampires cannot even be around right before the crack of dawn, because the sun would be lethal enough already. And then there were also moments were A-class Kurusu and even S-class Defrott were fine as long as the sun wasn’t too strong? In other moments it was also not really clear what powers are available to what class of vampire, then it just made me question what the point was of having 5 vampire classes. I think the beginning of the series made a very decent beginning of introducing the universe’s law, but from the second half on it seemed like it was just one big vampire-zombie apocalypse, and it was quite hard to follow what was happening. I wouldn’t be able to retell the events of the series without aid, so to say.

But either way, overall my experience was positive! There were no moments I had to drag myself though, which I cannot take for granted! The world is still immersive, the characters (though mostly not developed to their rich potential) were inviting, and the plot (in theory) was compelling. Save for the bad pacing and unfulfilled potentials of the show, I would still say it was enjoyable.

The Japanese rating and (6.88) and the IMDb rating (6.3) are quite similar, and I think I agree with these ratings. Nothing phenomenal, the concept is amazing, but the execution leaves quite a lot to be desired. All in all, a 6.6 rating reflects my opinion of this series.

[ladyorlandodream]

Lady Dimitrescu-tag FanFiction List PART 4

Part 1   Part 2   Part 3   Part 5   Part 6   Part 7

(I’m very behind with the FF update, I’m sorry but I’m busy)

641) Belas Love (Chapters in progress)

642) Into the "Village" (Chapters in progress)

643) Heisenberg's Monster #66139043 (Chapters in progress)

644) Betrothed (Chapters in progress)

645) Dead Man's Party (Chapters in progress)

646) Sacrament (short story)

647) Alternate Fate (short story)

648) Under The Table (short story)

649) 【生化危机8/all卡尔·海森伯格】Story back on（PWP）(short story in 中文-普通话 國語)

650) A Debt Repaid (short story)

651) the beast may try to hug you (short story)

652) The only one left (short story)

653) song of storms (short story)

654) Resident Evil 8 Village But Ethan Has A Brain And Uses It (Chapters in progress)

655) The cogs of fate (Chapters in progress)

656) The All Seeing Eye and The Fourth Lord (Chapters in progress)

657) Perennial (short story)

658) Unhinge (Completed)

659) Rallentando (short story)

660) The Chosen (short story)

661) Transactional (short story)

662) The fifth lord (Chapters in progress)

663) The Hunger (Chapters in progress)

664) The Four Lord's Grace (Completed)

665) i know the end (Chapters in progress)

666) Merely A Taste (short story)

667) Reawakend (short story)

668) The Traveler and his necklace (short story)

669) Resident Evil: Village of Friendship (AU) (Chapters in progress)

670) Don't Go Far Off (Chapters in progress)

675) look me in the eyes (short story)

676) Let's See How Special I Am (Chapters in progress)

677) Resurrection (Chapters in progress)

678) how i wish to dream again (Chapters in progress)

679) || Metamorphosis || (Chapters in progress)

680) The Bird Cage (Chapters in progress)

681) knifepoint (short story)

682) Dangerous Games (short story)

683) Safe With Me (short story)

684) The End of Winter(s) (short story)

685) A night to remember (Chapters in progress)

686) The Lady's Hospitality (Chapters in progress)

687) A Machine or A Man? (Chapters in progress)

688) Take A Break (Chapters in progress)

689) Mouth (Chapters in progress)

690) The Green-eyed Monster (Chapters in progress)

691) I'll Give You This Song (short story)

692) Just Let Me Adore You (short story)

693) Alexandra (short story)

694) Entertaining Company Intermission (short story)

695) Come Back To Me (short story)

696) melting fire (short story)

697) Mamă (short story)

698) Thicker than blood (Chapters in progress)

699) Secrets Don't Always Belong in the Dark (Chapters in progress)

700) It All Depends On You (Chapters in progress)

701) Karl Heosenberg sfw/nsfw headcanons (Chapters in progress)

702) Lady Dimitrescu Tells a Bedtime Story (short story)

703) I Don't Mind (short story)

704) I can’t change her (short story)

705) Family, Made Whole (short story)

706) Splitting Hairs (short story)

707) In The Glow of the Morning Sun (short story)

708) Big Sis (short story)

709) sacrifice is something quite other (short story)

710) Red Lipstick (short story)

711) Hope Awakens (Chapters in progress)

712) Anonymity (Chapters, Completed)

713) House of Dimitrescu (Chapters in progress)

714) The Family (Chapters in progress)

715) Finders Keepers (short story)

716) Chase The Night Away (short story)

717) Metal Rebel Soul (short story)

718) How Did It Come To This? (short story)

719) Decency (Chapters in progress)

720) A Wolf in Shepherd's Clothing (Chapters, Completed)

721) Only Heaven I'll Be Sent To (short story)

722) Five times Ethan Winters temporarily lost his hand (and one time a swamp monster gave it back uwu) (Chapters, Completed)

723) Birds of a Feather (Chapters in progress)

724) lick your wounds (Chapters in progress)

725) Care of Her Cold Embrace (Chapters, Completed)

726) Draga Mea (Chapters, Completed)

727) not with a bang, (short story)

728) beat me up, beat me down. (Chapters in progress)

729) Spores of Affection (Chapters in progress)

730) The Rise of Mars (Chapters in progress)

731) Mine (short story)

732) All in the Family (Chapters in progress)

733) Stick to the shadows (Chapters in progress)

734) Little Hiker in Red and the Big Bad Wolf of the Factory (Chapters in progress)

735) Metal Moon (Chapters, Completed)

736) Somewhere in Europe (Chapters in progress)

737) Blood and Winter (Chapters in progress)

738) A Maid's Devotion (Chapters, Completed)

739) The Handmaiden (Chapters in progress)

740) Lost|Karl Heisenberg x Reader (Chapters in progress)

741) Village of Blood and Death (Chapters in progress)

742) Sing Me A Lullaby (short story)

743) Coping with res 8 found family (short story)

744) What do you see? (short story)

745) Those Were The Days (Chapters in progress)

746) Fatherhood (short story)

747) A Spark In The Snow (Chapters in progress)

748) The Losing Game (Chapters in progress)

749) Gatecrasher (Chapters in progress)

750) The Feel Of Something Different (short story)

751) Lady Dimitrescu x FTM reader (short story)

752) Take Your Heart in Your Teeth (Chapters in progress)

753) FAITH, LOST (Chapters in progress)

754) One of Those Days (short story)

755) Taking Care Of You (short story)

756) Draw me like one of your French girls (short story)

757) So the wind was a friend after all (short story)

758) Oil and Water (Chapters in progress)

759) We are Nuclear Funeral!! (Chapters in progress)

760) I'll Take My Chances (Chapters in progress)

761) Family Pet (short story)

762) The Doll Makers Best Friend (short story)

763) Her Persephone (Chapters in progress)

764) Saccharine Sweet (Chapters in progress)

765) Lost Control (Chapters in progress)

766) Home Is With You (short story)

767) To Feel Beautiful (Chapters, Completed)

768) Festering Affection (Chapters in progress)

769) Who wouldn’t love you? (Chapters in progress)

770) Mourning (short story)

771) it only takes one spark for two to fall apart (Chapters, Completed)

772) (One-shots series) Village of Shadows... (Female Reader x Various Resident Evil Village Characters) (Chapters in progress)

773) Operation HeisenTrescu (Chapters in progress)

774) Tough As Iron (Chapters in progress)

775) Into The Fold (Chapters in progress)

776) You seem so stressed (short story)

777) The Smallest Mistake (Chapters in progress)

778) A Quiet Morning (short story)

779) OP. 51, no. 6 (short story)

780) I saw the world ending when you didn’t (Chapters in progress)

781) Deep in the Woods (Chapters in progress)

782) It Was An Accident (short story)

783) A flower crown for a queen (short story)

784) Back Burner (Chapters in progress)

785) My Maid (Chapters in progress)

786) Anomaly (Chapters in progress)

787) Good girls are usually rewarded (short story)

788) touch me yeah, I want you to touch me there. (short story)

789) Just a painting (Chapters in progress)

790) The Wolf Pack (short story)

791) Embryology (Chapters in progress)

792) Entertaining Travelers (Chapters, Completed)

793) Gilded Cage (short story)

794) Dark Shadows - Resident Evil Village [Leon Kennedy x Reader] 

795) Rose Shampoo (short story)

796) The village (Chapters, Completed)

797) The Kink Haus (Chapters, Completed)

798) The Things We Hide (Chapters in progress)

799) Agent 7 (Chapters in progress)

800) From The Pits of Hell Rose An Angel (Chapters in progress)

801) Freedom has its Price (Chapters in progress)

802) A Home by Your Side (Chapters in progress)

803) "You Remind Me" Karl Heisenberg/Original Female Character (Chapters in progress)

804) Nimble Fingers (short story)

805) No time to die (Chapters in progress)

806) Ethan Commits Identity Fraud (Chapters, Completed)

807) with this unruly heart of mine (short story)

808) The emptiness within (short story)

809) A child of the four houses (Chapters in progress)

810) Old Addictions Die Hard (Chapters in progress)

811) Village of shadows, souls of light (Chapters in progress)

812) yard jerky? awooga!!! (short story)

813) Six bottles in twenty minutes (Chapters in progress)

814) Witch’s Pet (Chapters in progress)

815) 聖殤 (short story)

816) Beautiful Monster (Chapters in progress)

817) Transmutation (Chapters in progress)

818) Showtime (Chapters in progress)

819) Good Girl (Chapters, Completed)

820) Wherein Lady Alcina Dimitrescu Builds a 5G Tower on the Castle Because Her Pet is Bored (Chapters, Completed)

821) Claw Problem (short story)

822) Resident Evil Village But No One is a Fucking Idiot (short story)

823) Deal (Chapters in progress)

824) I'm in love with a fairytale (Chapters in progress)

825) Winter in the Vineyard (Chapters in progress)

826) Darling~ (Chapters in progress)

827) a little unconventional, i know (but Mama i'm home) (Chapters in progress)

828) Shame (short story)

829) Alcina and you (Chapters in progress)

830) The Man of Shadows (Chapters in progress)

831) Headcanons And Other Such Rubbish~ (Chapters, Completed)

832) you're a pain in my ass (Chapters in progress)

833) Wings, Claws, and Steel (Chapters in progress)

834) The Scent of Scarlet (Chapters, Completed)

835) A Wound Time Could Not Heal (Chapters in progress)

836) Fractions (Chapters in progress)

837) Inhuman Urges (Chapters in progress)

838) The castle in the mountains (Chapters in progress)

839) Sibling Shenanigans (short story)

840) Solace (Chapters in progress)

841) The Longest Winter (Chapters in progress)

842) The Great Importance of Expendable Goods (Chapters in progress)

843) A puppet’s poem (Chapters in progress)

844) Darling. (short story)

845) Painting the Roses Red (Chapters in progress)

846) Three times, three ‘I love you’s. (Chapters in progress)

847) to possess and to hold (short story)

848) Sanguis, mommy (short story)

849) Kinaiya (Chapters in progress)

850) Restless (short story)

851) The Bride of Frankenstein (Chapters in progress)

852) Wolf's Cry (Chapters in progress)

853) i live in a fifth one (Chapters in progress)

854) More than a carnal pleasure (Chapters, Completed)

855) Runed Path (Chapters in progress)

856) The Scent of Smoke and Roses (short story)

857) tall teddy bear (short story)

858) Headcanons | Resident Evil Village's characters (short story)

859) Your Obedient Servant (Chapters in progress)

860) Fragments of Cadou (Chapters in progress)

861) Beauty and Her Beast (Chapters, Completed)

862) Pack War's (Chapters in progress)

863) Era by Era I Fall Again (Chapters in progress)

864) Magnetism (Chapters in progress)

865) Blood and Scrap (Chapters in progress)

866) Metal Stages (Chapters, Completed)

867) Untitled (Chapters in progress)

868) Be My Angel (short story)

869) Resident Evil Imagines and One-shots (Chapters in progress)

870) A red field sways in a winters breeze. (Chapters in progress)

[larryfanfiction]

Disney AU

🌹 Elysian by wonderlou (81k) Beauty and the Beast AU

“What could be it, Niall?” Harry asks gently with a sigh. He slouches down further into his chair, crossing his arms lazily across his chest. He is bored. He has been bored for five years straight, but even more so now that his one interest has shut himself out entirely. Harry had not even heard from Louis, not since last night, not since he had gotten on his nerves so much that he was torn between knocking him out and smiling in surrender to the slight awe he felt. Louis is opinionated like no one he’s ever seen, but his voice is honeyed; high-pitched and indignant. Harry is nothing short of entranced.

Or, Harry is running out of time to fall in love, but with Louis, it seems as if there’s all the time in the world.

🧜🏻‍♂️ The Importance of Body Language by zimriya (11k) The Little Mermaid AU

Harry really has no idea how he’s going to get out of this one. After the little incident with the fishing wire, he’d been told that under no circumstances was he to visit the surface of the water, as he is the heir to the throne and his safety is essential to the continued existence of their underwater society. Or something. Harry loves his mum, but there’s really only so much talk of royal duty a prince can take before he does something drastic. Like purposefully disobey her strict instructions to stay under the sea for the rest of his natural life, and instead swim too close to a human ship and get himself spotted by none other than the unfairly attractive Prince Louis Tomlinson, for example.

Needless to say, Harry is fucked.

🧜🏻‍♂️ Hey baby won't you look my way by larrysbitchx (10k) The Little Mermaid AU

Louis want’s a prince charming. Harry might just be him. But what happens when a human and a merman fall in love?

🐶🐱 We Could Live This Life Forever by dearmrsawyer (31k) Lady and the Tramp AU

When Harry’s adoptive parents bring home a brand new baby of their own, he fears they won’t want him anymore.

A Lady and the Tramp AU where everyone’s human

⚓️ Drowning In Your Eyes by smittenwithlouis (45k) Pirates of the Caribbean AU

“Capt’n Styles, are you certain of this? They be attracted to man-made light.” “What is? Sharks?” The young blonde asks in terror. “Worse than sharks, lad. There’ll be flesh eating mermaids upon us in minutes, mark my words!” Paul huffs as he continues to wave the bright lantern in front of him, “And Captain Styles here, has us bait!” Or: The Pirates of the Caribbean inspired au where Harry is a fierce pirate who holds the heart of a beautiful merman.

👑 Because You Saw Me When I Was Invisible by supernope (32k) Princess Diaries AU

A (not so) loosely-based Princess Diaries AU, in which Harry finds out he’s the heir to the throne of a country he’s never even heard of.

🏹 Not in Nottingham by UserFromPluto (11k) Robin Hood AU

“Love him?” The prince repeated, “and does this prisoner return your love?” Harry did not answer but stood looking at Louis, trembling and heaving breaths. Louis met his gaze, hair falling over his eyes, arms gripped roughly by two guards. “Harry,” he said simply, “I love you more than life itself.”

(Robin Hood au in which Harry and Niall steal the show, Liam’s big heart gets him in trouble, and Zayn and Louis really should stop being arrow magnets)

👠 a dream is a wish your heart makes by theneverending (22k) Cinderella AU

Fairytale retelling of Cinderella, where Harry is a servant boy who’s too kind, Louis is a prince in an arranged marriage, Liam is Harry’s step brother, and Niall is Louis’ dutiful grand duke.

👠 your rainbow will come smiling through by hazkaban (17k) Cinderella Story AU

when harry isn’t working at his stepfather’s cafe, he’s trying to make swim captain and trying to finish all his coursework on time. when he’s not doing any of those things, he’s talking to the boy he met on the oxford hopefuls subreddit. when they decide to meet, he’s elated. he finally gets the chance to meet the boy he’s been crushing on! when the day comes to meet his prince, he learns that his online crush is none other than louis tomlinson, captain of the football team and friend of his terrible stepbrothers. now harry has to decide whether telling louis the truth is the right choice or if it’s better to just let sleeping dogs lie.

🦎 long hair don't care by ballsdeepinjesus (20k) Tangled AU

He catches his breath and stands, brushing dirt off of his breeches when he hears a scared peep behind him. Louis spins around, startled, and is greeted by the sight of an extremely pale boy with extremely luscious dark brown curls. His hand starts to reach out involuntarily to try and pet his hair, but he stops it quickly and tries to smooth it into a bow. He glances up, fluttering his lashes, and levels the trembling boy with a charming smile.

“Hi,” he drawls. He doesn’t see the frying pan until it’s too late. Everything goes black.

[harry is sheltered and louis is a thief. or, a tangled au.]

🦎  You Were My New Dream by larryshares (48k) Tangled AU

Prince Harry has spent the majority of his life trapped within the castle walls, forced to hide from the kingdom he never asked to be born into. He doesn’t want to be the next King of Eroda, because according to his father, kings don’t wear dresses, paint their nails, or braid flowers into their magical hair. And Harry happens to love those things about himself, almost as much as he thinks he could love the new combat instructor his father has summoned to mold him into a more acceptable man, just in time for his impending coronation.

🧚🏻‍♀️ no place to call home by suspendrs (21k) Peter Pan AU

“What are you smiling about, Harrison,” the boy spits, body language suddenly getting defensive. “I’ll have you know that I’m-”

“Harry,” Harry interrupts, giggling. “My name is Harry. And if you’re not called Peter, then what are you called?”

The boy tilts his chin up slightly, surveying Harry like he’s checking if he’s worthy of knowing something as important as his name. “Well, Herschel, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Louis.”

Or, Louis isn’t Peter Pan and Harry isn’t Wendy and Neverland is nothing like Harry thought it would be, but it’s perfect anyway.

🧚🏻‍♀️ Tell Every Lost Boy (that you're my man) by LittleLostPieces (17k) Peter Pan AU

A modern-day Peter Pan AU, wherein Harry struggles with his overwhelming jealousy when Louis brings a new mate into their makeshift family.

Starring Louis as Peter Pan (obviously), Harry as Tinker Bell, the others as the Lost Boys, and Greg as Wendy

🧚🏻‍♀️ faith, trust and pixie dust (and a little bit of something else too) Peter Pan AU

“Are you seriously apologizing for taking out a bullet that was lodged in my shoulder and saving my life?” he asks slowly. “Y—yes?” the boy looks unsure of himself now.

“Marry me—”

For once, the boy isn’t the only one blushing and Louis silently curses Earthen terminology for making its way into his vocabulary.

Taking a deep breath to regain his composure, he coughs out, “I mean thanks. That was very nice of you…?”

“Harry,” the boy fills in quietly, flashing Louis a tentative smile. Louis thinks it suits him well and he mouths the name to himself, liking the way it rolls off his tongue. He watches as Harry hesitates before asking his own question, albeit doubtfully.

“And you’re—you’re P—Peter Pan, right?”

Or, the one in which Louis is a punk Peter Pan and Harry is an insecure flower child.

❄️ The Cold Never Bothered Me Anyway by timefornothing (17k) Frozen AU

“Lou! Give me my glove!” Louis held it back away from him, blue eyes glittering with desperation. “No, Zayn. Please, I can’t live like this anymore! We can’t keep the entire world shut out! I can’t live like this!” His words rung out shrilly, making the crowd go silent. Zayn stared at Louis, eyes wide with unimaginable pain. Finally, he swallowed hard, whispering quietly, “Then leave.” He took one more look at Louis before it was too much, then he turned away, stalking towards the back of the room. or the one where One Direction are the characters in Frozen. Starring Louis as Anna, Zayn as Elsa, Harry as Kristoff, Niall as Olaf, and Liam as that stone troll that always knows what to do.

♣️♟ like cabbages and kings by you_explode (60k) Alice in Wonderland AU

When Louis was a kid, he had a series of very vivid dreams about a place called Wonderland. There were rabbits wearing waistcoats and talking cats and ridiculous tea parties, and amidst all the absurdity, there was a boy. A boy with dimples, big green eyes and the sweetest soul Louis has ever known. Louis has always kept a place in his heart for that boy and for his funny dreamworld, and when he’s twenty-five and his life falls apart, it turns out Wonderland might not be so imaginary after all.

🌿 Let's Fall in Love in a Place You Want to Stay by embro (134k) Tarzan AU

A George of the Jungle / Tarzan AU where Louis is a model who meets Wild Man Harry in the Congo. He was raised by apes and barely speaks a word of English and turns Louis' life upside down.

🗡 Dirty secret by iilarryii (122k) Mulan AU

"Dad, you can't go!" Louis yells to his father as he watches him pull out his sword.

"Louis, you know that I have to. It's the pack leaders orders," Dan says calmly. "I need you to promise me that you'll take care of the family if I die."

"So what? You'll just give up?"

"Of course not. I am just willing to die for my family's safety."

"So am I."

The Zoely pack is attacked by rogue alphas and the pack leader orders all alphas over the age of eighteen to protect their pack. Dan Deakin is one of the strongest alphas in the pack, but there is one problem. He has a wife and six kids to feed and look after. Louis is the oldest child and the one who wants to protect their family.

Or a Mulan AU where Louis is an omega who takes his father's place in the war.

📕 You Bring Me Home by reminiscingintherain (22k) Saving Mr. Banks AU

"Are you willing to fly to LA to meet with Tomlinson?" "I suppose I don't really have much of a choice, do I?" Harry grumped. "I'm assuming he's paying?" "Business class all the way," Liam nodded. "And he's kindly arranged for me to accompany you. So at least you're not going to be on your own." "Please do tell how that's a good thing."

Or, the one where Louis wants to turn Harry's book into a film, and Harry's very picky about what happens.

[Saving Mr Banks AU]

☂ Harry Poppins by jacaranda_bloom (32k) Mary Poppins AU

When Louis’ best friends pass away he finds himself with an instant family. Maddie and Thomas are wonderful children but take an immediate dislike to every nanny that sets foot inside their house. After nanny number six is summarily dismissed Louis is at his wit’s end, that is until an unusual man arrives on their doorstep. Harry Styles is like nothing any of them have ever encountered before, and perhaps, exactly what they’ve been looking for all along.

🐎 It's the Climb by lululawrence (25k) Hannah Montana AU

Louis stretched out his back and turned around, startled to see the most beautiful man he’d ever encountered in his life riding towards him on a horse.

He had to still be asleep. This was one of those super weird dreams people had where the knight in shining armor (or in this case, red sleeveless flannel) literally rode up to them calling their name. - The Hannah Montana AU where Louis is a world famous punk rock singer with a stage name of William and Jay drags him back to Tennessee for the summer. In her attempt for Louis to get back to his roots, he just so happens to reconnect with Harry, and things never go quite as Louis expects them to.

🎬 Supposed to Be by kikikryslee (26k) Geek Charming AU

“I’m making a movie for a film competition, and I want you to be in it,” Harry told Louis. “I think you would be a great leading actor in it.” “Why?” “Because it’s you. I mean, who wouldn’t want to know all about the amazing Louis Tomlinson? It would be a great movie.” “You don’t have some weird crush or, like, secret obsession with me, do you?” Louis asked. Harry bit his tongue so he didn’t say “Ew, I have standards.” He didn’t think that would go over well. Of course, that was assuming Louis understood what that meant. — Or, the Geek Charming AU where Harry’s a film geek, Louis’ a popular jock, and they both need each other to get what they want.

🐮  Love and Other Antidotes by haztobegood (16k) Emperor's New Groove AU

Arrogant pop star Harry Styles is transformed into a cow by his bandmate Amy Z after a heated argument. Left in the back of a truck, Harry finds himself at a rural farm hours away from his band. Harry has three days to make it back to London and turn back into a human before his next show. His only chance to reclaim his glamorous life rests with a kind farmer named Louis. They must work together to find the antidote before Amy Z finishes him off and takes over the band.

⚽️ The Game Plan by Justalittlelouislove (5k) Game Plan AU

Louis's life is exactly how he likes it: all about him. When it suddenly gets turned on its head and one little lady makes a huge impact, will he learn to handle it or run for the hills?

🎈 Up by Thingssicant (26k) Up! AU

Louis Tomlinson thought he had everything he wanted. He had a wife and daughter, a good job, a house with a white picket fence, and even a few pets along the way

It’s only when he turned 71 that a load of balloons and poorly timed knock on the door changed his life forever

🏰  Teacups by sincehewaseighteen (25k) Disneyland AU

"Looks like your attraction is not any body’s cup of tea today,” he puns cheekily. Harry rolls his eyes and lifts the box onto the counter easily, dusting his hands off without a blink of an eye to Louis. “I think it might be your costume.”

“Alright, babe, you listen here.” Harry comes forward and makes sure he’s close to Louis’ ear. Louis swallows carefully when Harry speaks. “Cut this shit out, you’re no Peter Pan in my eyes. You’re a fucking twit. I know what you’re like, and that’s all you need to worry about.”

or the au where louis works as peter pan at paris’ eurodisney while harry’s the mad-hatter who works at the teacup ride, and just so happens to be the annoyingly gorgeous man louis is in love with.

🏰  Unbelievable sights, indescribable feelings by serenityandtea (8k) Disneyland AU

Louis and Harry spend a pre-Christmas weekend at Disneyland Paris with their three kids. Lots of fluff, rides and a meeting with Santa.

Everyone says that Disneyland is utter magic.

Louis definitely thinks so when he catches the look on his husband’s face; Harry looks completely ecstatic. Never mind their three children; Louis would go through all this hassle again just to have his husband beam at everything around him once more.

🏰  Acorns and Thimbles by izetta (12k) Disneyland AU

There is a startling amount of Disney films where the couple falls in love after just one day. Louis isn't entirely too convinced of how realistic that is, but he thinks he is starting to understand how they all felt.

Or an AU where Louis is Peter Pan at Disney World and Harry is a park guest.

🏰  Magic by dolce_piccante (3k) Disneyland AU

AU. Girl!Direction. Harry and Louis go to Disney for a wonderful holiday filled with familiar characters, fireworks, and some Magic Kingdom magic.

🏰  Faith and Trust and Pixie Dust by kotabear24 (10k) Disneyland AU

Harry Styles and his son, Lucas, are spending four days at Disneyland for Lucas' sixth birthday. Louis Tomlinson is Peter Pan there, and takes a shine to both the boys. He gives them tickets to a Peter Pan show that night, and spends the evening with the two before spending the night with Harry. Lucas and Harry both find themselves getting attachd to Louis, and Louis finds the same himself.

🏰  Once Upon a Dream by objectlesson (26k) Disneyland AU

“M’not gonna half-ass our fake relationship,” Louis almost snaps, voice sharp with a defensive edge, like Harry wandered too close to a bruise with needy fingers. “Now kiss me again. We’re gonna make every shitty tourist here wish they had stayed in the Midwest. We’re gonna burn Disneyland down with our gay. ”

Harry shuts his eyes and opens his mouth, because he can’t fucking say noto Louis.

Or, a fake dating AU where everyone is lying and they happen to be at the Happiest Place on Earth.

🏰  The Way You Make Me Feel by MiniMangaFan (6k) Disneyland AU

“You couldn’t last a damn day without trying to sleep with me.”

“I can last a whole fucking week,” Harry says, rising to Louis’ challenge.

“Wanna make a bet on that, Styles?”

“You’re on,” Harry grins.

Or, Disney AU where Louis and Harry try not to fuck in public places.

_____________________

Deleted fics we have a copy of (just send us an ask):

⚪️ Bittersweet and Strange by Keep_Calm_And_Read_Fic Beauty and the Beast AU

He agreed to stay so his sister could go free, but he never signed up for this. Beauty and the Beast AU in which Harry is taken prisoner in King Louis 'The Beast' Tomlinson's castle, Master Liam Payne may or may not be a torture specialist, Master Zayn Malik may or may not be the Master of War, and no one will tell him what the hell Niall does around here. Basically, Harry hates his enemy with a passion. Then he kind of has a passion for hisenemy. Then he wonders if he and Louis are enemies at all.

⚪️ The Dreams That You Wish by Keep_Calm_And_Read_Fic Cinderella AU

Cinderella/Ever After AU in which Louis is the world’s sassiest servant, Harry is a closeted prince with a deadline, Zayn is Harry’s chaperone, Liam is given the unenviable task of trying to distract Zayn long enough that his sister, Druscilla, can seduce Prince Harry (hint: doomed to failure) and Niall is the worlds most inappropriate fairy godfather. Destiny, romance, mistaken identity, sexcapades and oblivious!everybody abound in this gross bastardization of one of my all time favourite fairy tales.

More Masterposts

[givemeonebreath]

A big, messy Linked Universe playlist

Link for Links

Heavy on the angst, because of who I am as a person. (At the same time, don’t take it too seriously, man.)

Influenced by canon, manga (TP Link is really Going Through It™ ), my personal perceptions, and popular fandom canon.

A pretty wide variety of genres, with a bias towards metal and prog rock.

I kept snippets of lyrics for most songs, also because of who I am as a person. (Some were particularly hard to narrow down to just one verse or chorus.) Those - and a little more rambling - are under the cut if you really want, in the order of the playlist. But. It’s long.

I didn’t initially make this with the intent to share, but hey. Throughout my past year+ of listening, I’ve been haphazardly adding songs to a playlist I very creatively named Links. If something reminded me of them, whether through the music or lyrics or both, I threw it on the playlist, so some songs might seem odd or vague. Some are really on the nose, as subtle as a sledgehammer. (Sky for Sky? Dude. Sorry.) Some are there because of a fitting line or two that stuck in my head. Ultimately, music - like any form of creative expression - can be interpreted in a multitude of ways. 

My listening habits and tastes are erratic, which is why this is one big, jumbled playlist and not separated for different Links. Not to mention if I did that, some (Wild, Legend) would have a lot and some (Wind, Four) would have none, both because of my own familiarity with them, and because of the general themes of the music I tend to listen to. Most songs are a general ‘hero’s spirit reborn’ mood, anyway - those are the first part of the playlist. The second half is more nuanced to specific Links, plus a few Ganon vibes.

1. Deep Purple - April (Koji Kondo, composer of the original Legend of Zelda theme, was into Deep Purple as a kid, and it shows.)

2. Kamelot - Regalis Apertura

3. Au4 - So Just Hang On, Beautiful One (I’ve posted this here before. I can’t hear it without thinking of LU now.) So I slipped in through the gate almost unknown. All my border stamps were late. Seven days old. Cold hand griped my shoulder blade, broke the bone. Bloody nose and turned away, all the way home.

4. FC Kahuna - Hayling Don’t think about all those things you fear, just be glad to be here

5. Glass Animals - Youth Boy, when I left you you were young I was gone, but not my love You were clearly meant for more Than a life lost in the war

6. Pain of Salvation - Restless Boy A restless boy in a world too slow A flame born into cinder, ash, and glow I've given everything I gave it all Yet find myself alone

7. Haken - The Endless Knot Our design shifted frame by frame! Across the line our cycle starts to fail. Our design shifted frame by frame! Across the line we die to live again.   We need a story to believe in. We need a hero to prevail. We need a challenge we can overcome, it takes a tragedy to make us one 

8. Kamelot - Memento Mori (I particularly associate this with Time and Twilight) I am the god in my own history The master of the game I may believe if she would come to me And whisper out my name Sometimes I wonder where the wind has gone If life has ever been Sometimes I wonder how belief alone Can cut me free from sin

9. Katatonia - Fighters Look I told you so We never stop If we said that We'll back it up For sure You know We're fighters

10. Megadeth - This Day We Fight! (I mean, all Links, but particularly Warriors) For this I was chosen, because I fear nothing With confidence I tread through the dead of the night Off to another war-torn, faraway battlefield Wherein lies a demonic enemy horde

11. Moon Tooth - Igneous Well, the spirit took me And this old broken body leapt up and danced Settin’ out Settin' out with all my heroes in a bundle at my back Hawk am I More wings span in my shadow than overcast Yeah, you know what they say Always need something to look up to, ha

12. Samael - Moongate Destiny, tomorrow is today Destiny, without boundaries How many nights will we spend together traveling infinity back and forth and again How many times will we go together questioning eternity about us about our wonders...

13. TOOL- Parabola This body holding me reminds me of my own mortality Embrace this moment, remember We are eternal, all this pain is an illusion

14. Lunatic Soul - Blood on the Tightrope No matter how hard you try To shut down your feverish thoughts They hunt you down with no regret Cause you have to fix it all

15. Hybrid - Keep It In The Family

16. Soul Savers - Unbalanced Pieces Gone, now carry on Through violent seasons I call you mother, mother, mother In vain, absent chain The twilight's bleeding And the playing board has two unbalanced pieces

17. Steve Von Till - Valley of the Moon All she gives is a stone facade Like ill-given flowers at a dead man's wake Here we slave for the dreams of another And fight over scraps like wayward dogs

18. Ludovico Einaudi - Experience

19. Lunatic Soul - Summoning Dance Three stones on the right side Three stones on the left My vicious circle of life and death   “Oh you want it” I hear it again “Oh you want it” My burden Curse to break

20. Lunatic Soul - Through Shaded Woods Run through your shaded woods Run through your shaded mind Run through the night Run away Run through the darkness Run

21. Lunatic Soul - Naavie

22. David Bowie - Nature Boy There was a boy A very strange, enchanted boy They say he wandered very far Very far, over land and sea A little shy and sad of eye But very wise was he

23. The Dandy Warhols - Sleep Well, I could sleep forever But it's of her I dream If I could sleep forever I could forget about everything 

24. Au4 - Everyone is Everyone (and Everything is Everything) Tripping and tumbling, Flipping and fumbling. Flowing on the rivers of sadness That have been forever rumbling.   But from dawn until now Of all the paths that I could have gone down Of all the valleys That I could have been flowing through.   In spite of all the chaos And all that has come between us, How is it I still find myself Here with you. 

25. Kingcrow - Everything Goes Your hands again upon the ground Falling rain for hours and hours As you learn the game Time dispels the fog ... Ever been there? Ever felt like prey? Ever thought your mind was feeble? Lot of things that don’t make sense

26. Pain of Salvation - Icon As a child I felt too old And now when I'm grown-up I feel too young A different kind so I've been told Just slightly out of reach and out of time

27. Sophia Loizou - Divine Interference (I got spooky dungeon vibes. Also, the title.)

28. Carpenter Brut - Fab Tool Runnin Gunnin Forward in the phantom shatter so grand Splatter grand, arcanum fuel Wrought iron out of the sky Over me, tells no lie

29. Blue Stahli - Death Will Have to Run All on the open road Where none will ever grow A journey toward the known With countless miles to go

30. Gyroscope - Mistakes & Ladders I am the first? No I can't be the first A continuous nothing, destined for something Tell me who you are and why you trapped me here

31. Queens of the Stone Age - Run, Pig, Run Run, pig, run Here I come

32. Chali 2na & Krafty Kuts - Guard The Fort The swords are drawn and odds are stacked And we clash the impact's a thunderous clap Calm demeanor Even though we are under attack [...my turn to guard the fort ready for combat]

33. The Great Discord - Army of Me (lol)

34. Kongos - Terrified I think I'll start again and change my name You only live once or twice, what a shame Somebody fucked up when designing this game

35. Woodkid - Run Boy Run Run, boy, run! This ride is a journey to Run, boy, run! The secret inside of you Run, boy, run! This race is a prophecy Run, boy, run! And disappear in the trees

36. The Beta Machine - The End A million miles away from you this time I'll do what it takes I'm on my way If lines are in the sand I'll go under If I can make it in time I will bring you back with me

37. Devin Townsend Project - Gump When we last met who was I? I'm sorry we no longer see eye to eye The energy to keep you in while keeping myself out I'm sorry how you'll take this  But I just don't have the patience anymore 

38. Arrested Youth - Riot! I can't get much satisfaction living in this cave It's tough to breathe, I'm in the belly of the beast Can't sleep with all my rage With me and all my generations living in this cage Pick up your guns and tell your sons, tonight we break the cage

39. Led Zeppelin - Friends So anytime somebody needs you Don't let them down, although it grieves you Some day you'll need someone like they do Looking for what you knew

40. Faunts - M4, pt 2 (Wild) Fight your foes you're not alone Holy war is on the phone Asking to please stay on hold Bleeding loss of blood runs cold And I need you to recover   Because I can't make it on my own

41. Faith No More - Ashes to Ashes (Wild) I want them to know it's me, it's on my head I'll point the finger at me, it's on my head Smiling with the mouth of the ocean And I'll wave to you with the arms of the mountain

42. Devin Townsend - Jupiter (Wild) I know you At least I think I do Everything's changed But in the days that are so dark It's wonderful

43. Katatonia - Neon Epitaph (Wild) Shadow of my shadow Cling not to my grief I am long left behind now You are free

44. The Smashing Pumpkins - The Beginning is the End is the Beginning (Wild) Time has stopped before us The sky cannot ignore us No one can separate us For we are all that is left The echo bounces off me The shadow lost beside me There's no more need to pretend Cause now I can begin again 

45. Katatonia - Lacquer (Wild) My voice travelling Soaring bird above your head The house we lived in Ridden with disease ... The levee breaking I can't live to fight once more The road to the grave is straight as an arrow I'm just staying around to sing your song, baby

46. Eskimo Joe - This is Pressure (Wild) There is no romance in suffocation  The walls fall down like your expectations You want to scream  And you want to shout But you've built up steam  And you can't let it out This is pressure 

47. Portugal. The Man - 1000 Years (Wild) We'll wait 1000 years  Until the end of time We'll wait 1000 more Dressed up in gold and white We'll climb the mountain sides  To find what's in the sky We'll dig through mountain sides  To find what's deep inside

48. Au4 - An Ocean’s Measure of Sorrow (Wild) Forgot my name and who I was. Memories of nothing floating up. All of the sorrow we once knew, Colours the ocean's water blue.

49. Band of Skulls - Carnivorous (Twilight) I am corrosive and cohesive Like a chemical bond I'm all together undone I am the broken kingdom I'm just so, so, so  So carnivorous

50. Glass Animals - Flip (Twilight) I wanna go back with a club and attack I wanna take to my guns and break you I gotta make my little foe take his own

51. TV on the Radio - Wolf Like Me (Twilight) My mind has changed my body's frame, but, God, I like it My heart's aflame, my body's strained, but, God, I like it

52. Kamelot - The Spell (Twilight) All my demons cast a spell The souls of dusk rising from the ashes So the book of shadows tell The weak will always obey the master

53. OSI - Radiologue (Legend) I was dreaming I was heading west thirty days faster Had a fever woke up in a sweat bailing out the water  Can't go on Can't go back   Heard your voice coming through the noise wrote it in the radio log Hurt my head, wondering what you said so I threw it overboard  

54. Katatonia - Don’t Tell A Soul (Legend) I have been destroyed by the perfection that is a lie see I'm moving soon see my feet are already on the road and if you know where I’m going don’t tell a soul

55. Haken - The Mind’s Eye (Legend) The shape of things to come are closer than they seem Changing your design every time you disappear I'm planning my escape through portals of your mind Where people seem to drop like flies

56. Pain of Salvation - Species (Legend) Sometimes I hate my fucking species Yet most days I'll do anything to please it  My generation was fooled to pursue our dreams But it is not what it seems You never need what you want And you rarely want what you need

57. Euringer - Do You Kiss Your Mama with That Mouth? (Legend) All my life, misunderstood I'm fuckin' too smart, too smart for my own good The last question, before I go is "Hey motherfucka, do you kiss your mama with that mouth?"  Yes! I kiss your mama with this mouth

58. !!! - Pardon My Freedom (Legend) Like I give a fuck, like I give a shit Like I give a fuck about that shit Like I give a fuck about that motherfucking shit

59. Team Sleep - Ataraxia (Legend) Froze asleep Coma deep I dream I'm out with you Alone at sea

60. Oliver Tank - Embrace (Legend) You're in my dreams The world is torn apart at the seams And I don't wanna leave Wearing my heart on it's sleeve

61. Machine Gun Fellatio - The Girl of My Dreams (Is Giving Me Nightmares) (Legend) The girl of my dreams is giving me nightmares I don't know what it means but she's got multi-coloured hair When she stands in the sand I dream of peaches And I'm not sure what that means either

62. Earl Greyhound - Shotgun (Legend & Hyrule) I am nobody, nobody is who I am I am a traveler on this land And nothing, nothing, nothing in my hands

63. TV on the Radio - Staring at the Sun (Hyrule) You're staring at the sun You're standing in the sea Your mouth is open wide You're trying hard to breathe The water's at your neck There's lightning in your teeth Your body's over me

64. Echo & The Bunnymen - The Killing Moon (Time) Fate Up against your will Through the thick and thin He will wait until You give yourself to him

65. Sufjan Stevens - Sugar (Sky) Don’t break my heart, don’t break my flow now And all this rage has got to go now Let’s take up this lifeline Come on, baby, gimme some sugar Don’t make me wait Don’t make me wait too long Don’t make me sing the sad song Come on, baby, gimme some sugar

66. Obsydians - Ascension (Sky) Rise above the hardships you’ll face I will sign and keep on rising As long as you are giving me your soul and keep me awake Feel like home and spread your light around I will listen and just be there As long as you are giving me your love I’ll give you my soul

67. Sonique - Sky -_-

68. Enter Shikari - The King (Ganon) Watch your back, my friend I'm about to kickstart a cycle Of never ending revenge And this time it's primal, it's tribal

69. Saul Williams - WTF! (Ganon, Hylia) "You've been polluted, uprooted by time You have been muted, computed but I'm A living vessel of the one, of the moon, of the sun" Hey! You ain't as dead as you seem, what the fuck? Hey! But you keep living your lies

70. These New Puritans - We Want War (Ganon/ Dark Link/ any nemesis I guess) Shadows dance back up, it's happening again If you listen carefully you might hear them whisper: "We hold all the secrets, we hold all the words; But they're scrambled and broken so you'll never know" Can't you see them Floating like black ash? Can't you feel them Crawling down your back?

[s11e17]

5 and 16, and then 22 for A Remembered Earth! <3

ohooo 💖💖💖 fyi im answering this on mobile so if the formatting is fucked im sorry 😭

5: Share a snippet that you’re proud of from an upcoming fic/chapter.

ok for context cas has been rescued from a djinn and is telling sam what he saw in his dream

“Okay,” Sam says, “sure. If you’re really okay with it, then yeah, I’d— I’d love to know what an angel dreams about.”

Castiel wonders how to say it. “We had a house,” Castiel starts, “me and Dean.”

It was a small house. Castiel remembers that vividly. It was tall enough to feel comfortable, but with only a single floor. Two bedrooms— their room, and a guest room. Roof access. It was the kind of house where you could bump shoulders with someone in the kitchen easily, the kind of house that built intimacy. Castiel remembers Dean standing in the back door with his coffee, face turned up to the sun, as he did every morning. He was so beautiful. He’d had a smile on his face, an easy and gentle smile. He’d taken a sip of his coffee, and said, glad we started shellin’ out for the good stuff, Cas, because he knew Castiel was behind him. After so long together, Dean could trust that Castiel would always want to watch him in the morning sunlight, freckles coming in across the bridge of his nose. Some days, Castiel would kiss his shoulder, and say, You are who I cherish most in my life. Do you know that? and every time, Dean would say, Yes, sweetheart. I know.

“We were so happy,” Castiel whispers. It’s all he can think to say. He looks at the sunset. Dean will come home in an hour with new parts for the ‘58 in the garage and a spring in his step, and Castiel will say, Welcome home, Dean, and Dean will say, Thanks, man. They will sleep in separate rooms. Dean has no need for the kind of love Castiel dreams of. Dean is already as happy as he will ever be. In his own way, in the way Dean has outlined with his words and his body, Dean has delineated what it is that he wants and what it is he finds unnecessary. Castiel is honored to fit almost entirely into what Dean wants. The only thing he wishes is that he could jettison the remains.

16: Do you stick to canon when you write characters and fics?

Definitely yes! I love & respect AU writers, but I generally prefer to stay in the canon universe. I just saw a post that described fanfiction as literary analysis which really resonates with me - I find it a conpletely different beast to original fiction (both fanfic & original fic are legitimate forms of writing, but for me, they're just completely different and have few transferable skills) so stuff like worldbuilding and OC-making doesn't come easily to me.

22: Have you used any symbolism in [the remembered earth]? What does it represent?

Ahhh!! wow what a question 🥺 there are a few I can think of now, looking back:

the small trees — little shrubs, round and brittle, nothing like the Californian redwoods or even the Virginia conifers — grow at half-height and half-density, cut down by the wind and the sun and the solitude. Dean can see right through them. in this bit, those trees are definitely supposed to parallel Dean himself (or rather, his view of himself).

Dean can barely imagine surviving another year, let alone ten. But he has reason to, now — him and Cas, and the smile that comes out of Sam every so often, and the girls, and Amanda, too. “Yeah,” he grits out, feeling it like an oath. She tilts her chin at him, and he nods back, like signing a contract. This isn't really symbolism, but I very much took this concept from Lee Maracle's novel Celia's Song, wherein an agreement between Celia's nation and the longhouse snakes is broken because many members of Celia's nation (I'm avoiding the name bc I've forgotten) were killed by a plague introduced by colonizers. It doesn't matter whether they had a good reason or not -- they were unable to fulfill the terms of their agreement (taking care of the longhouse), leading to chaos. Obviously you should read the actual book rather than just taking my typed-up-in-two-minutes-summary haha, but I am interested in the idea of agreements that last beyond your lifetime, intergenerational responsibility, and how the Winchesters fit into settler colonialism. This is especially relevant since spn is filmed on unceded Coast Salish territory.

[komoryriku]

Queering KH: Part 2

How to Queer this Anime Game? By me, an American nerd lol

Pictured: Dream. Drop. Distance. Sequel. 8)))

What is Queering 

I’m so excited to talk about this okay this is literally the only fun thing I get to do as an English major anymore lmao.

“Queering a text” is the academic term for taking a given text and extracting the queer subtext of it, or applying a queer reading to it. It is taking a piece of literature, film, or art and reading into it for the gay coding. It is an especially important tool for reading old literature written during periods of extreme homosexual oppression, wherein the author would be forced to hide hints of homosexuality under layers and layers of superficial text.

Pictured: Sora and Riku battling Ursula as she means to wreck their ship, mirroring the disaster that Sora’s friends Eric and Ariel (lovers) faced at sea.

As a post-structuralist, I am also here to inform you that every text is made up of intertextual influence. This means whether the JK Rowlings of the world intended it or not, their characters may well be queer coded because of the unconscious influence of homoerotic customs in our culture that have permeated the text. It’s why people speculated that Newt Scamander was gay, because he showed little interest in Tina and preferred to focus on his beasts, which is not normative for a male protagonist in straight media. People likewise considered that Merida from Pixar’s Brave might be gay, because she had no interest in dating men and wanted to live a wild lifestyle traditionally associated with masuculinity, things that are pretty in line with lesbian coding. And let me tell you, lgbt claimed Queen Elsa IMMEDIATELY for very good reason. Pretty much everything about her journey, purposefully or not, makes for an strikingly overt gay metaphor. Let it Go is a coming out song for a woman suffocating under normativity all her life, deal with it.

Same, Elsa.

Oh whoops I accidentally pasted this picture of Riku here.

Keep Cultural Distinctions in Mind

Something else important I want to point out is that different cultures are- different lol. They are going to vary. What is queer coding here is not necessarily queer coding in Japan. A man presenting femininely in American media would certainly get him coded as gay. A bishonen in an anime though? Not so much. Men bathing together in Japan is common practice so that would mean nothing gay over there. In America however, you have things like this vine. 

In which 2 dudes are chilling as far away as possible from each other in a hot tub to prove they are not gay lol.

So when I say the male members of Organization XIII bathe together, it means literally nothing in a Japanese context.  

But let me tell you this: homosexual mlm tend to enjoy bathing with other dudes. Sexual attraction is sexual attraction no matter where you go. So how would you queer code a Japanese character as gay in a hot tub context? 

By American logic, if the straight thing to do is sit 5 feet apart in a hot tub, then the inverse, the gay thing to do, would be 2 men sitting very close together in a hot tub. So if I were to code 2 American male characters as gay in a hot tub context, that is what I would do. But if I really wanted to hammer it home, I would ALSO have them blushing so there is no straight explanation for their closeness. 

And for a Japanese character, for whom bathing with men might well mean nothing, I’d definitely have them physically blush, so that you know it does NOT just “mean nothing” to him...

Oh look at that. Amano went out of her way to draw Roxas blushing at the concept of bathing with men. So when I say “the members of Orginization XIII bathe together”, you know that means something to Roxas, cuz the coding tells us so. There are indeed certain ways you can depict a shonen being either interested in or at least affected by that idea. You just have to mind those codes telling you what the character really feels, especially when they can’t really say it.

Speaking of blushes, Amano uses them a lot. 

They’re a pretty effective tool for hiding gay coding into your characters cuz an anime character might blush for any number of reasons, from being flustered by their crush, 

to being flustered because they don’t have a crush.

If you’ve ever translated Japanese media, (I haven’t, but I have friends who do), you know that Japanese is very vague which means you need the whole context to properly understand a scene. It’s a similar situation with queer coding. Consider this scene of Roxas blushing. 

If Roxas felt positively about the insinuation that he and Xion are holding hands, how might one code this? Well, if he’s feeling really excited about it in a positive way, you might draw him smiling or expressing flattery on his blushing face. However, Roxas reacts negatively, with a frown on his blushing face. This insinuates he does not like this idea at all, especially since he also shuts it down right away in his dialogue.

But you might say “Well how do we know he isn’t just shy?” to which I say- well we can’t know. That’s the whole point of queer coding in literature. It is to say a character is queer but without actually saying it, to give plausible deniability for safety. It is to suggest a character is queer but without any confirmation. It does not mean that the character isn’t queer, however. It just means it cannot be confirmed by the text alone. However, a bold text that is very determined to have hidden queer characters without any straight explanations, will provide coding that has very little or no straight explanation. 

Back to the Roxas and Xion dialogue^. This scene alone cannot confirm or deny anything. As I explained however, the suggestion that Roxas is not straight IS there. Considering the whole context, also, this scene is another piece of “evidence” to add to the pile of suggestions that Roxas isn’t straight. This coupled with the bathing panel, and this panel of him admiring Axel, his male mentor, with deep flattery during his first day of adventuring, all exist.

Roxas does not express negative sentiments in his blushing at men, nor does he say anything dismissive to them. When he blushes at Xion’s comment, however, it is with a negative reaction. Consider also that if the author wanted Roxas to appear straight, she would present them in ways that allude to straightness and NOT in ways that allude to queerness. Roxas would not do suggestively queer things like blush in flattery at Axel calling him special and then dismiss Xion’s suggestion that they are holding hands if he were simply coded as straight. Queering a text sometimes requires a lot of critical thought like this. This is because again, these things are hidden, and sometimes hidden really well so that unsuspecting straight people will not even consider the queer suggestions. This is one of the advantages Nomura has in his favor with Kingdom Hearts: by making it so convoluted, the gay text can be forward, strong, and blatant but remain undetected by straight powers. This keeps the series safe from oppressive scrutiny. Characters like Namine and Xion can exist as literal illustrations of compulsory-heterosexuality. And people will still think Sora and Riku are straight. 

Even if I don’t know all the queer codes Japanese culture might specifically have, (and I do not, I do not live in Japan nor have any semblance of what that is like beyond what my friends who have lived there can tell me, and what I can research while sitting in my pajamas in Kentucky lol), there are certain things that are rather universal. Blushing, physical contact, lingering gazes, etc etc. Attraction is attraction and certain body language and other physical symbols will translate and will travel. So that’s the majority of what I will have to focus on. 

But I do want you to know that rainbows are still gay in Japan. 

Finally I also want to express that cultural intermingling is a thing. We do not live in bubbles, especially with the internet. Our cultures affect each other ALL the time. Although Kingdom Hearts is primarily a Japanese series, it is consciously tailored to appeal to both America and Japan. This is by design given the idea was to marry a Japanese hit like Final Fantasy with an American phenomenon like Disney’s media. This is why they take special care in minding the English translations and dubbing of the KH games (when they are able to do so, mistakes are still very often made and i hate it cuz they’re usually heterosexual-agenda-pushing “mistakes” =~=). The games are so intimately tied to both the Japanese and American cultures they are derived from which is part of why accurate translations are so important. And given what they would mean for queer audiences, what they represent for queer people makes accurate translations even MORE important. Some things get quite lost in translation, and some things are grossly added in translation. We will discuss that down the line...   

A brief aside that I implore you to ignore:

On the subject of Roxas not being straight, I have heard of one really fun queer motif in Japanese media which is ”ryoutoutsukai (両刀使い)”, “the two sword fencer”: the dual wielding bisexual. Now- I do not necessarily think this is a means of coding Roxas as bisexual, and beyond that, from what I’ve heard in my research on bisexuality in Japan, certain age groups don’t even believe in bisexuality there. However, a love of more than one gender exists no matter who is willing to acknowledge it or not, and this motif is there. And Promisekeeper and Oblivion do rather fit the bill of representing homosexuality (Oblivion/Soriku) and heteronormativity (Promisekeeper/Sora and his childhood friend Kairi). So- while i don’t think it means anything, this fun idea is there~  I will say, however, that as far as I can tell, Nomura and his staff know exactly what they’re doing with their queer coding and are well connected to it in both cultures. So I mean- if any anime team would know bisexuality exists and how to code it, I firmly believe the KH team would, so. There is some food for thought for you~

Get ready for part 3, I hope you like TWEWY~ B)

[randomcanbian]

(re: Fandom Meme) B, D, N, P, R, Y ??? (also if you feel like answering T again about anything else pls do (. ❛ ᴗ ❛.) (also let the record know that your first answer was *chef kiss* wonderful and should've been canon imo (╯▽╰ ))

B - A pairing you initially didn’t consider but someone changed your mind

Felix x fem!Byleth from FE3H... I thought it’d be the same as f!Dimileth (the fandom version of it at least) where the man is like ~~ohhhh I’m a monster I’m so broken ahhh I push people away and go on berserker rages because of my tragic backstory~~ and the woman has to be gentle and kind, the epitome of femininity (despite being a mercenary who had been trained to kill since she was 11...), basically put himself above her on so many levels and the onus is on her to ~~fix him~~~...but apparently not??? The fancontent is so gorgeous and has them as equals, both lonely people who’ve had their childhood taken away from them, both who’ve closed themselves off from the world (or in Byleth’s case, has never known how to open herself up to it), both of them seeing themselves in each other, both taking it upon themselves to meet each other half-way and from thereon help each other process their past and walk forward into the future...damn man, the kinship and the partnership in this ship... (also it really helps that 1. Felix is awed at Byleth’s swordsmanship and tactical mind and pushes himself to surpass it, forming a foundation for a healthy rivalry 2. the fandom does not forget that Byleth is her own person and not just Felix’s partner *cough* Dimileth *cough* Edeleth *cough*)

D - A pairing you wish you liked but just can’t

Hmmmm well sometimes I wished (in general) that I could actively ship mlm couples, just because there’s so much content for them :)) (don’t get me started on how fandom gravitates towards male characters and mlm ships...lmao someone way back then gave me the excuse that it’s because the actual creators put more effort into their male characters and that they end up becoming more complex and interesting and like *looks at my fandoms where there are just as many girls as guys, just as interesting (if not more so) backstories and dynamics and interactions for the female characters, looks at the sheer number of mlm shippers in those fandoms who squeeze the most out of every insignificant moment for their male characters while ignoring the depth and complexity of the female characters* sure)

N - Name three things you wish you saw more of in your main fandom (or a fandom of choice)

Glee

1. Fanfic with more “out-there” ideas :)) (Don’t get me wrong, there are fanfics that fall far from Glee’s high school/young adult/modern-coming-of-age setting, and even for fics that do fall under those spheres there are some that deal with complex, intricate themes in such an incredible manner or even if not that are just plain enjoyable but like,,, there aren’t enough for my ever-expanding hunger HAHA)(my last couple of fandoms were dark fantasy/sci-fi/whatever The Good Place is so I guess I just got spoiled lmao)

2. More analytical thinking LMAO I guess it just frustrates me that there are so many people in the fandom who take things at face value??? Given how biased the writers are and how shit they are at continuity it really doesn’t make sense to me that so many people take things so literally haha

3. More fanart unu I totally understand though that the fandom isn’t as big as it once was but a girl can dream, you know?

P - Invent a random AU for any fandom (we always need more ideas)

Something that I had wanted to write for Brittana (since 2012!) but never had the brain cells to: a sailor!AU where the characters live on a flat world and they’re trying to sail towards its edge (encountering so many mythical beasts and legends on the way) (may or may not be inspired by C.S. Lewis’ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader haha)

Special mention to this AU since I've used for at least three fandoms by now haha: Pygmalion&Galatea!AU wherein one character creates a statue and her love for it brings it to life :)))

R - A pairing you ship that you don’t think anyone else ships

LMAO I went through Bae Doona’s body of work (what was available of it at least) in 2015 and ended up shipping her character Park Hyun-nam with her best friend (Yoon Jang-mi) in 플란다스의 개 (Barking Dogs Never Bite)...I wrote a very small ficlet of them (I literally had to create the section for them in ao3...and lmao I just checked and I am still the only fic in there HAHA)(please don’t look for my account btw all my fics are so self-indulgent and atrocious huhu) and I also made this gifset of them :))) As far as I know I am literally the only one in the entire world who ships them HAHA

Similar story for her character Ri Bun-hui in 코리아 (As One)...although honestly if it turns out that a decent number of people have seen this movie I’d be surprised that no one else shipped Bun-hui with Hyun Jung-hwa??? Because they??? Tennis table rivals from North Korea and South Korea who have to team up to win at the Olympics??? Jung-hwa trying to get Bun-hui and her team to loosen up??? Them becoming closer??? When the Olympics are over and the North Korea team have to go home, and Jung-hwa chases after the bus and tries to reach for Bun-hui’s hand, realizing that they might never see each other again??? I??? (Just...I had to make this gifset of their hands: when they first meet each other, when one takes the other’s for comfort, the last time their fingers will ever touch...)(Also let’s ignore that it’s a re-telling of real life event akjsndaskj haha)

T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending, about anything at all

(Thank you roseate ;u; I’m glad that you agree and are interested with my headcanons ;o;)

Santana’s a trivia nerd and is the type to deep-dive down Wikipedia pages which is why she makes all those obscure references :))) (Also a more specific version of this headcanon, not something that I’d die defending but like,,, something that I won’t let anyone take away from me lmao is that she’s a TV/movie buff, dabbles in comics (specifically, DC and follows character like Wonder Woman, the Birds of Prey, Poison Ivy/Harleyquinn, Batwoman, and Renee Montoya), and started getting a little into theater/musicals after spending time with Kurt and Rachel :))) She also has a record player back in Lima and has a bunch of vinyl records back home (back in high school she’d play a couple of slow songs and just slow dance with Britt in the privacy of their bedrooms uwu)(imagine this scene and this song playing in the background ;u;)

Y - What are your secondhand fandoms (fandoms you aren’t in personally but are tangentially familiar with because your friends/people on your dash are in them)

BTS, because so many of my friends are KPOP fans

Genshin, also because so many of my friends are into it

魔道祖师 (The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation) because my close friend fangirls over them so much and we just exchange anecdotes with me and Glee/Fire Emblem and her and TGDC

Critical Role and My Brother, My Brother and Me podcast because my gf is a huge fan of them :))

Not quite there yet, but I am looking forward to having Dostoevsky’s extended universe as a secondhand fandom HAHA

[whereforebase]

Top 5 monologues?

i hate you so much

1. Mark Antony, Julius Caesar 3.2

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones; So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus Hath told you Caesar was ambitious: If it were so, it was a grievous fault, And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it. Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest— For Brutus is an honourable man; So are they all, all honourable men— Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral. He was my friend, faithful and just to me: But Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man. He hath brought many captives home to Rome Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill: Did this in Caesar seem ambitious? When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept: Ambition should be made of sterner stuff: Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man. You all did see that on the Lupercal I thrice presented him a kingly crown, Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition? Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And, sure, he is an honourable man. I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke, But here I am to speak what I do know. You all did love him once, not without cause: What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him? O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason. Bear with me; My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, And I must pause till it come back to me.

2. Richard, Richard II 3.2

No matter where; of comfort no man speak: Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs; Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth, Let's choose executors and talk of wills: And yet not so, for what can we bequeath Save our deposed bodies to the ground? Our lands, our lives and all are Bolingbroke's, And nothing can we call our own but death And that small model of the barren earth Which serves as paste and cover to our bones. For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of the death of kings; How some have been deposed; some slain in war, Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed; Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd; All murder'd: for within the hollow crown That rounds the mortal temples of a king Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits, Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp, Allowing him a breath, a little scene, To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks, Infusing him with self and vain conceit, As if this flesh which walls about our life, Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus Comes at the last and with a little pin Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king! Cover your heads and mock not flesh and blood With solemn reverence: throw away respect, Tradition, form and ceremonious duty, For you have but mistook me all this while: I live with bread like you, feel want, Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus, How can you say to me, I am a king?

3. Edmund, King Lear 1.2 - literally 50/50 tossup between this and “this is the excellent foppery of the world” don’t make me choose

Thou, Nature, art my goddess; to thy law My services are bound. Wherefore should I Stand in the plague of custom, and permit The curiosity of nations to deprive me, For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base? When my dimensions are as well compact, My mind as generous, and my shape as true, As honest madam's issue? Why brand they us With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base? Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take More composition and fierce quality Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed, Go to th' creating a whole tribe of fops Got 'tween asleep and wake? Well then, Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land. Our father's love is to the bastard Edmund As to th' legitimate. Fine word- 'legitimate'! Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed, And my invention thrive, Edmund the base Shall top th' legitimate. I grow; I prosper. Now, gods, stand up for bastards!

4. Lady Percy, Henry IV Part 2 2.3

O, yet, for God's sake, go not to these wars! The time was, father, that you broke your word, When you were more endear'd to it than now; When your own Percy, when my heart's dear Harry, Threw many a northward look to see his father Bring up his powers; but he did long in vain. Who then persuaded you to stay at home? There were two honours lost, yours and your son's. For yours, the God of heaven brighten it! For his, it stuck upon him as the sun In the grey vault of heaven; and by his light Did all the chivalry of England move To do brave acts. He was indeed the glass Wherein the noble youth did dress themselves. He had no legs that practis'd not his gait; And speaking thick, which nature made his blemish, Became the accents of the valiant; For those who could speak low and tardily Would turn their own perfection to abuse To seem like him: so that in speech, in gait, In diet, in affections of delight, In military rules, humours of blood, He was the mark and glass, copy and book, That fashion'd others. And him—O wondrous him! O miracle of men!—him did you leave— Second to none, unseconded by you— To look upon the hideous god of war In disadvantage, to abide a field Where nothing but the sound of Hotspur's name Did seem defensible. So you left him. Never, O never, do his ghost the wrong To hold your honour more precise and nice With others than with him! Let them alone. The Marshal and the Archbishop are strong. Had my sweet Harry had but half their numbers, To-day might I, hanging on Hotspur's neck, Have talk'd of Monmouth's grave.

5. Romeo, Romeo & Juliet 5.3

In faith, I will. Let me peruse this face. Mercutio's kinsman, noble County Paris! What said my man, when my betossed soul Did not attend him as we rode? I think He told me Paris should have married Juliet: Said he not so? or did I dream it so? Or am I mad, hearing him talk of Juliet, To think it was so? O, give me thy hand, One writ with me in sour misfortune's book! I'll bury thee in a triumphant grave; A grave? O no! a lantern, slaughter'd youth, For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes This vault a feasting presence full of light. Death, lie thou there, by a dead man interr'd.

[Laying PARIS in the tomb]

How oft when men are at the point of death Have they been merry! which their keepers call A lightning before death: O, how may I Call this a lightning? O my love! my wife! Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath, Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty: Thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks, And death's pale flag is not advanced there. Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet? O, what more favour can I do to thee, Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain To sunder his that was thine enemy? Forgive me, cousin! Ah, dear Juliet, Why art thou yet so fair? shall I believe That unsubstantial death is amorous, And that the lean abhorred monster keeps Thee here in dark to be his paramour? For fear of that, I still will stay with thee; And never from this palace of dim night Depart again: here, here will I remain With worms that are thy chamber-maids; O, here Will I set up my everlasting rest, And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last! Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss A dateless bargain to engrossing death! Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide! Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark! Here's to my love!

[Drinks]

O true apothecary! Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.

[corvichor]

I may be a little (very) late to the party, but in regards to Ava’s Demon - while I’ve seen much discussion on which character is which fairy tale, I haven’t really seen anyone equate the characters with the fairy tales from the Titan Tales book? (Nevermind. I was being stupid and using ‘fairy tales’ rather than ‘titan tales’ in my search phrase.) SO. Here it is. 

The Little Merling

The Little Merling (The Little Mermaid) is, fairly obviously, Gil, what with his connection to Nevy and the sea (and also his homoerotic dream). I’m somewhat certain that the Sea Witch in this case will end up being Nevy, while the Prince (for the moment) is either Odin (who is an Actual Prince, apparently) or Olai (who, being Odin’s brother, is also probably an Actual Prince). I’m not very certain about the casting of the Prince (I suspect that it may end up being a character we haven’t seen yet), but we do have a rather limited cast, so Odin/Olai it is, for the time being. The reason I named Olai at all is because there seems to be some very obvious hinting at a relationship between Ava and Odin, so depending on which version of the fairy tale you follow, it could go down in two ways. Also, what struck me most about the Odin in Gil’s dream were his rings - which bear much resemblance to the rings we see on another Arrow’s hands.

Happy Ending - Odin is eventually substituted for Olai, once Gil and Olai meet, and then they live happily every after. The end. 

Probably the more likely ending - Odin (The Prince) and Ava (The Other Girl) get together, and Gil (The Merling), turns to sea foam (or a “monster of failure”). Of our current characters, he and Maggie are currently the most likely to fail their pacts. The more obvious choice would be Maggie, considering that she currently has a pact, but Gil (whose pact may or may not end up revolving around Paradise - which probably doesn’t exist), feels like another likely option for a failed pact (and also the failure I would personally prefer to see).

Beauty and the Titan

Beauty and the Titan (Beauty and the Beast), through process of elimination, is Maggie (seeing as she is literally in possession of a rose). The Beast in this case would be Maggie, with her desire for love and affection (and also Odin’s equating of her to a monster (and her visceral reaction to it) in Chapter Two). The casting of the other characters is currently unclear. Seeing as the original Beauty and the Beast was influenced by the Greek myth Eros and Psyche, and I have seen some relating of Eros and Psyche to the Star Host, the cast of characters for Maggie’s fairy tale may still be incomplete, so I’ll leave my speculation here for now. 

I have also seen speculation of Maggie’s fairy tale potentially being Snow White, with the seven flowers for the seven dwarfs, but several very central aspects of Snow White’s fairy tale do not line up with Maggie’s story. Her appearance - skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, hair as black as ebony (or the night, depending on which version you read), apples, and a death-like sleep. While Maggie has been depicted with apples in official art, she has yet to appear with apples in the actual story, nor has sleep been a major theme. I am personally of the opinion that if Snow White does happen to be a fairy tale referenced in Ava’s Demon, Snow White may be Magpie Arrow instead, or another one of the Arrow siblings. I have no evidence to support this, but I’d like it to be true. 

The Wolf and the Fox

The Wolf and the Fox is Odin. He has often been symbolised as a fox, and his story seems to mesh with that of the Fox in the fairy tale rather well. It might be worth noting, at this point, that the title of this fairy tale has not been changed by TITAN, whereas the title of every other fairy tale has. This may have to do with the fact that the other three hosts so far have been raised in TITAN’s ideology, where Odin has not. It may have a deeper meaning. It may also simply be that the title bears no changing. It is unclear, at this point. Moving on - the Wolf in this fairy tale is Olai. The relationship between the Wolf and the Fox in the fairy tale mirrors the relationship between Olai and Odin in the story. Odin (the Fox) is the weaker of the two, relating to Odin’s standing in his own family, wherein he is ranked below his own younger sisters. Odin’s mission, assigned to him by Olai (the Wolf), is to retrieve a Vessel. This is the first ‘errand’ we’ve seen so far, but according to the fairy tale, Olai will fail where Odin succeeds. Perhaps Olai will fail to enlist the help of the Vessels, after Odin has brought them to Aedinfell. Perhaps some event will happen in the story wherein Odin succeeds his brother as head of the family. Only time will tell.

A Follower’s Adventures in Titanland

A Follower’s Adventures in TItanland (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (and Through the Looking Glass)) is Ava, which has been officially confirmed through the Ava in Wonderland AU. I won’t cast the characters, seeing as there is already an official list. The imagery present in Alice in Wonderland - the whimsical, fantastical madness - is reflected in Ava’s own mindscape, in the bizarrely childish drawers and toys. There have also been several visual references to Alice in Wonderland in the story, most notably the references to Alice meeting the Caterpillar, referenced in Ava’s meetings with Wrathia in her mindscape, and also her encounter with Odin after the Limbo Lenses fiasco in Chapter Eight.

Alice’s ‘Drink me’ bottles are also reflected in Wrathia’s potions - catalysts of change. While Alice merely changed shape and size, Ava changed entirely, in a release of bottled rage. The constant theme of Alice not being Right, not fitting in - being too big or too small - is also reflected in Ava’s story, being an outcast and a loner. While there is an official character list for the Ava in Wonderland AU, their functions change within the story itself - Odin changes from the White Rabbit (when Ava follows him onto the ship at the start of the story) to the Caterpillar (in the scene depicted above) to the March Hare (the Mad Hatter’s companion, wherein he shares food with Maggie (who according to the official cast, is the Mad Hatter)). Ava herself changes from Alice to the Red Queen during her rampage as Wrava, where she beheaded several guards. 

None of the analysis here is very in-depth, considering that I am probably not the only person who has done this, and also the fact that I am not in the mood for writing entire essays on this speculation, but - here it is, nevertheless. 

[autisticmight]

how does someone who knows little-to-nothing about it get into sanders sides? i saw thomas' vines, and i've been sort of tangentially aware that the facets of his personality that he portrayed in the vines have since become characters, but there's a whole bunch of new ones??? what the fuck is a janus???? HELP. tldr where do i find The Lore? plz obi wan ur my only hope

it’s very simple!!! you hyperfixate on thomas sanders’s content in, like, 2016? and then he uploads a video called ‘my true identity’, which is a bit weird, but you love those vine characters. then he uploads more, and it becomes a trend. apparently people in the comments are shipping the prince guy and anxiety. you rewatch the new year’s video an embarrassing amount of times with your dog

i had a whole paragraph here about why i like the series, and why i dropped it and then picked it up again, but it was just a block of lowercase text and i guess it’s kind of hard to read

anyway, here’s the playlist of every episode, but i’m going to put a summary of the series and individual episodes under the readmore, while also ranking them, because i am Special Interesting and i like being useful. and i guess i’m gonna write using. like. actual grammar. if the readmore doesn’t work, then. have fun reading my infodump

here we go

Sanders Sides: A Summary

Fictional Version Of Thomas Sanders (known as Character!Thomas, and will be simply referred to as ‘Thomas’ henceforth) has ‘Sides’, which are parts of his personality that have been exaggerated and personified. It’s a nice little series set in some kind of semi-urban fantasy world, but mostly in Thomas’s living room. It mostly uses the idea of ‘Sides’ to represent the inner schemata of an individual. In simpler terms, you know when you’re conflicted, and you end up arguing with yourself? Yeah, it’s that.

Also, don’t read the comments, unless you want to disregard the care I’ve taken to not put spoilers in the Season 1 Summaries.

Season 1

I’d like to split this into parts, because there are a lot of things in earlier episodes that conflict with later characterisation. However, it’s also fun to watch them, and then rewatch them after some of the longer episodes, and feel your heart shatter!

This half of Season 1 was made solely by Thomas. It tends to be a bit more scattered, and can be watched out of chronological order, or completely skipped. Yes, I’m telling you that you can skip literally all of this section, if you want to. However, these are also the easiest videos to watch, and offer a taste of Silly Sanders Sides Hijinks without the emotional commitment.

My True Identity (6 min) - Thomas delves into the three aspects of his personality; his Logic (Teacher Guy), his Creativity (the Prince, also called Princey), and his Morality (Dad Guy who is Not Thomas’s Dad). At this point, the characters are far more similar to their Vine counterparts, and the characterisation clashes with later episodes. (3/5 - A nice way to see if you’ll enjoy the humour of this series)

Way Too Adult (5 min) - Thomas is asked by his family to help cook Thanksgiving dinner. Dad Guy pops up and discusses with Thomas how he can better learn to take care of himself. Features a talking stove, which is part of the reason why I classify this series as urban fantasy, and the start of a running joke. (2/5 - A fun, albeit rare, look into Dad Guy being responsible. I actually prefer this to My True Identity, but ranks lower due to conflicting with later S1 characterisation.)

Taking On Anxiety with Lilly Singh (6 min) - Thomas hopes and dreams to get rid of his Anxiety, who is a sassy, snide guy, sitting on the staircase. Princey, as the embodiment of Thomas’s hopes and dreams, is... Usurped by an imaginary version of Lilly Singh, who helps teach Thomas how to cope with feeling anxious. (3/5 - Introduces some secret tools that will help us later. The tools are Thomas being able to travel to various places in his head, and also Anxiety.)

A New Year of Lying to Myself... In Song!! (7 min) - The first video wherein you realise that this is A Thing. Thomas welcomes in the new year, hoping that 2017 will be better than 2016. Logic shows up to help him figure out some New Year’s Resolutions, accompanied by Dad Guy and Princey. Anxiety joins in to point out that Thomas has rarely, if ever, kept to his resolutions before. Through the first musical number of the series, the Core Sides and Thomas figure out simple, achievable resolutions that Thomas can use to improve his wellbeing. (4/5 - Unintentional foreshadowing in the form of a bop.)

The Dark Side of Disney (6 min) - Princey, not for the last time, enthuses about the wonders of Disney. However, Anxiety also appears, insisting that Disney is not as wholesome as it first appears. They argue and bond, despite the fact that Thomas still hasn’t redacted his statement regarding his hopes and dreams to get rid of his Anxiety. (2/5 - I have strong feelings on the meaning of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and ‘The Little Mermaid’, both of which are shrugged off in favour of the tryhard-edgy ‘blegh stockholm syndrome’ and ‘blegh change yourself to get your man’. Still, it’s a fan-favourite for a reason, and the endcard always makes me smile.)

I’m in a Disney Show!! (6 min) - Princey enthuses about the wonders of Disney, because Thomas is in a Disney show. He talks about what happened, while the Sides (mostly Logic) suggest clickbait titles in order to entice people to watch the video. (2/5 - L*gan P*ul is mentioned, as he was also in the episode.)

The Mind vs. The Heart (6 min) - Thomas finds himself split between following his mind, Logic, or his heart, Morality. Features onesies, and looks further into the characters of Logic and Dad Guy. (3/5 - Pretty calm and peaceful, to be honest. It’s nice.)

Then we move onto the second part of Season 1. This is when Thomas’s friend, Joan, began to offer their input into scriptwriting and directing. They’re most of the reason why Sanders Sides is an actual series, instead of being silly skit characters in short vlogs. From here on in, episodes become more complex, and work on an actual timeline.

Alone on Valentines Day (9 min) - Thomas is rather upset that he will be, as the title says, alone on Valentine’s Day. The Sides try to help him figure out how to get a date with an imaginary version of his friend Valerie, but each of them has a weirder way of going about it than the last. (4/5 - Far more cohesive than previous videos, but Thomas still wasn’t fully out as gay, so his hypothetical date is a woman. Yes, I took points off because of that. Yes, I’m about to erase the 3/5 to make it 4/5 because Valerie is a delight.)

Losing My Motivation (9 min) - When Thomas finds himself procrastinating, Logic takes it upon himself to find out which side is causing it. In order to get into a deductive mindset, Logic dresses up as Sherlock, while Dad Guy joins in as Watson. Once the case is solved, an important piece of information is revealed: the Sides have names. (Logic’s name is revealed) (3/5 - It’s just a fun little video, and I can’t keep giving every video from here on in 4/5, or that’ll ruin the whole thingy.)

Sanders Sides Q&A (9 min) - Exactly what it sounds like. There’s not much else to say. (2/5 - I love it, but it’s not really necessary to understand the whole series. It’s just extra characterisation.)

Am I Original? (12 min) - Thomas finds himself in a creative rut, trying to think of a completely original idea. Princey requests full creative control - “full-on Daydream Mode” - in order to rapidly consider and enact many different concepts, all while trying to make something that has never been seen before. (Princey’s name is revealed) (4/5 - Important characterisation for Princey. I originally rated it lower due to Thomas’s inability to rap, but upon rewatching, i found that the ending dialogue between Princey and Thomas was worth two points, rather than the single one I gave it previously.)

My Negative Thinking (13 min) - When Thomas messes up in an audition, his ego - Princey - is out of commission and being cared for by Dad Guy. Therefore, the only Sides available to aid him in this situation are Logic and Anxiety, neither of whom can help Thomas in the way he wants to. Anxiety is worsening Thomas’s mental state, so Logan proposes a debate in order to combat those cognitive distortions. (4/5 - A fan-favourite episode which offers a lot of insight into Logic and Anxiety as characters. It is useful as a tool for identifying cognitive distortions in real life, which may help with the individual’s mental health. Even though it introduces another running joke, it’s educational and fun, and it develops their relationship in a positive manner, I just don’t particularly enjoy it.)

Growing Up (15 min) - It’s Thomas’s birthday! He’s in his late twenties, and he’s still a kid at heart. He hasn’t done his laundry, he's silly and immature, and he feels like he isn’t at the point that he needs to be in his life. Therefore, all the Sides, except for Dad Guy, who ironically embodies Thomas’s inner child, work on trying to make him more mature. (Morality’s name is revealed) (3/5 - Features the concept of Voltron Shirt. I love this episode, but there is a noticeable change in audio quality at the end which affects how enjoyable it is.)

Making Some Changes (15 min) - Back in Thomas’s living room, and in opposition to his view from the last episode, Anxiety is worried about how life changes in unpredictable ways, and especially about losing contact with Thomas’s friends. Therefore, in order to keep Thomas’s friends permanently by his side, Princey gets them all to shapeshift. (3/5 - It might be skippable, but it’s just really, really fun.)

Becoming A Cartoon (10 min) - Adding to the whole urban fantasy thing, it turns out that animators can literally, physically turn people into cartoons. Thomas wants to be a cartoon. Princey catches Anxiety in his arms and says “everybody loves the villain,” and I think that’s all you need to know. (1/5 - Co-stars B*tch H*rtman, known for Fairly Odd Parents, Danny Phantom, and Being A Bigot, who did the character designs for the Sides, if not the actual animation. And the designs are kind of. Eh. Just watch some fanmade animatics.)

Accepting Anxiety (23 min) - Part 1: Excepting Anxiety (10 min), and Part 2: Can Anxiety Be Good? (14 min) - HOO. If the musical number or the animation didn’t clue you in, this video confirms that Sanders Sides is A Thing. Remember how Thomas hoped and dreamt to get rid of his Anxiety? Remember how he never redacted that statement, or even expressed a bit of remorse? Well, here, his wishes come true, and he doesn’t feel bad about it at all! That’s because he has absolutely no shame, caution, or fear of death. Yeah, he’s a mess. Therefore, the Sides make him take them on a magical quest to Anxiety’s Room, in order to un-mess-ify Thomas. (Anxiety’s name is revealed) (5/5 - The team really went above and beyond with this one. Like. Hoo. That’s it. Just. Hoo. Hoo. I’m an owl.)

And that’s Season 1!!! I’m going to add Season 2 in a reblog, because this has taken roughly three hours and it’s been really difficult to not spoil their names!!! which i did anyway because their names are all easier to type from muscle memory!!!

[scarletgardensrpg]

UNDEAD ♦ THIRTY-SEVEN ♦ ASCENDANCY

CECILE BUCHANAN is the Resurrector of the Ascendancy and second-in-command to De Dominee. Killed and resurrected by Nikolaas in the Red Room, Cecile is the first recorded Undead to walk the Earth. The circumstances of her death and revival are peculiar and scientifically unreplicable thus far—the product of extensive experimentation prior to her exposure to the 197th iteration of PM-GRNT, her body reacted to the chemical abnormally by simultaneously killing, then reviving her as a semi-conscious rotbeest following consumption of Nikolaas' blood. This genetic anonmaly, wherein she never developed a true rotbeest state, enables her to survive without PM-GRNT 197. She and her brother, Evander, are responsible for the initial Scarlet Death.

BIOGRAPHY

tw: gore, implied animal cruelty

At fifteen, she was already vicious. The dog's fucking dead, what am I supposed to do about it? Revive it? She was still in her Sunday clothes: Valentino kitten heels and a jumpsuit the color of wet ink. Six rubies and a rosario dangled from her ears. By the quiet, seething look in Julian's eyes, she knew it was taking everything in his power not to rip them out. They stood opposite of one another in the foyer, six unbreachable feet between sister and brother. Mr. and Mrs. Buchanan were God knows where. Evander was drinking on the beach. And the Dobermann was dead. Don't be a baby, Jules, Cecile said, and turned to go, pleasure heavy in her gut. You have others. She'd do anything to hurt Julian, if it meant that pretty expression would bloom on his face: wrath, spreading like blood in water.

- ❀ -

It came down to three things: she was a bastard, she was a girl, and she was second-born. Senator Buchanan made his preferences clear, and that preference burned through every designer dress, every blank check, every Maserati and summer house in the Hamptons. What good was it to look good, live well, when every nice thing felt like an IOU to Julian? Why pander to her older half-brother when he already looked at her with cold, patronizing eyes, as if she were a particularly troublesome dog to keep on a tight leash? Maybe Evander could live like that, hanging onto his every word and lolling after him mindlessly—but Cecile could not swallow the indignity of it. Her girlhood was one turbulence after another: the burn of her cheek where her stepmother struck it, the noxious silence of every family dinner, the freezing bath tile against her knees when she would bite down on her knuckle to keep from screaming. She would grow into a cruel, mean girl. A bitch. She would prowl boarding school halls at midnight with predatory calm, one hand gripping a bucket of gasoline; the other a lighter and match. You're making it worse for yourself, Evander said, after the third expulsion. Is getting kicked out for arson your grand strategy for earning Papa's approval? But by then, she was just angry. She was just trying to kick hard before going under. Fuck Papa's approval, Cecile said, and rolled herself another joint.

Eventually, Papa ran out of ideas. He met with doctors, businessmen, then a scientist and lawyer, both young. Harvard brats, Cecile learned, one ear pressed to the mahogany door of her father's study, who were working on something that was sure to intrigue you, sir, and certainly Julian. Because, of course, Julian had a place in this room of important silhouettes; he'd soon become one himself. Cecile's twenty-first birthday present was a swig of vodka and a biochemical test subject consent form. Evander had looked so terrible, signing his own set of paperwork while Julian simply watched them from the other side of the desk, Papa's hand on his shoulder. See? Cecile leaned over in her seat to poke Evander in the cheek with a single manicured nail. We're the same in this family's eyes. Disposable vermin. Terrible, harsh silence. She was looking at Julian, and found all of it unspeakably funny. Twenty-one years of Cecile's best efforts at nightmarish behavior—and here he was, winning in a landslide. Even she couldn't have dreamed up something so cruel. She was drunk on rage. She was dizzy with fury. And yet, when she addressed him, her voice was soft as a lily. You know, Jules, I really should've killed the other two dogs.

Later, they would call her helpless. A young, naive woman, dragged kicking and screaming into the Red Room, terrified for her life. As if Cecile has not spent every waking moment raising hell and terrorizing others. They would forgive all her sins, it seemed, so as to make room for the greater one: for what was a wealthy Senator's troubled, bastard daughter to two people in pursuit of divinity? One was inappropriate; another was utterly sacrilegious. Cecile supposed it was the easier narrative to tell; Eve, tricked by the devil to bite the fruit, could still claim some morsel of innocence at the trial of God. But, of course, the truth was, Cecile had never once been interested in innocence. She would always go after what she wanted with teeth and nails. She would always worship herself before all others. Nothing frightened her anymore. Whatever elixir they were perfecting for Julian, she would taste it first. Chemicals, poisons, pain—all of it was but a symptom of eventual power. And, ah, in her did power rise. Whatever she had become under Nikolaas' guileful hand, it was heady and powerful and utterly inimitable. Half-beast and half-woman, waist-deep in death: was Cecile not single-handedly responsible for ending a world? Did she not raise rotbeest after rotbeest, and let the ones she adored most feast upon her own flesh until they were returned to consciousness? Later, they would call her helpless—and perhaps, in comparison, the spiteful little girl of her past was helpless. But not anymore. Divinity lived within her now. She had swallowed God whole.

CONNECTIONS

NIKOLAAS – LOVE DESTROYED, TOO. Is she in love? Not with him. With his jungle garden of a mind? Maybe. Maybe it's psychological delusion, wired into her for survival's sake in the Red Room. Maybe it's a product of dying and living again by his hand, of having known what his blood tasted like in her mouth. Maybe it is simply true, unadulterated friendship, forged on strange foundations. I'm your one and only? She teases him, and licks the rim of her champagne flute. He is, whether aware of it or not, afraid of her. Or, more accurately: afraid of what he is capable of creating. After all, she has him to thank for a number of things—her untempered darkness, her gift for passing that same darkness to whomever she pleases with a single bite, her freedom from a past life that would have chained her to Julian. But, in spite of the wondrous creature he has forged from blood and science, Nikolaas refuses to spawn another like her; perhaps because he can't stomach the flesh it requires, or perhaps because he sees what she is capable of. Cecile doesn't mind—she's rather possessive of him, and dislikes the idea of sharing. She has followed him to Amsterdam, as she is sure she would follow him anywhere—to hell, to the ends of the earth, to heaven with a torch. They've made something beautiful since then: an ascending legion of the restless Undead, fed on a new drug that will carry them to dizzying heights. Cecile plans to rule someday with Nikolaas by her side. I'm your one and only, she says again, and this time, it's not a question.  

BLUE, DIMITRI, & JACQUES – BLOOD HOUNDS. They carry within each of them a vicious appetite for disaster—her appetite, dark and divine enough to swallow a city whole. They are perfectly cruel, unrivaled in beauty, unmatched in prowess—and of the hundreds of Undead who call her Mother, Blue, Dimitri, and Jacques remain her undisputed favorites, all raised on her blood. They are the three she looks upon with cold pride and infinite expectation; the standard by which all her other creations are measured. Do they share Blue's labyrinthine mind, her measured capacity for torment? Can they wear violence with grace and allure, as Dimitri does? Does Jacques' bizarre madness gleam in their eyes? The collective name Cecile gives them is fitting: for they are her dogs, her beasts, her children. She commands: Kill for me. Die for me. Live for me. And like good pets, they always oblige. She does not need their love, and shows them very little of her own—but still she demands their loyalty, their fear-tinged worship, and a promise to accompany her to the ends of the world. As their Resurrector, this is an eternal debt they owe to her. 

JULIAN & EVANDER – BLOOD IS BLOOD. The funny thing is, Cecile loves them. She loves them as all families are condemned to love one another, from birth to death to beyond that, too. One simply cannot discard of convenants made in blood—as much as she wishes she could. Julian, princely and immaculate, has always inspired murderous pursuits within Cecile: some ugly roiling mix of jealousy and resentment for her older half-brother that has seized her since girlhood. He has never taken her seriously. Instead, he insists on taking care of her, on filing away her teeth so she will stop biting his hand; not understanding Cecile can never be the sort of girl to accept condescension for benevolence. Now, stronger and standing on a level playing field with him at last, she finds herself continuing to provoke him, even word from her mouth a harsh lashing she hopes will make him flinch. If she is yearning unconsciously for the nod of respect she never once received while alive, Cecile will never say it out loud.

As for the youngest Buchanan, Cecile regards her little half-brother with less hostility—but contempt nonetheless. Brilliant, handsome Evander, who could aspire to great heights, if he didn't have such an inferiority complex when it came to Julian. She had hoped to make him into someone worthier when she killed him—but if he'd rather sulk uselessly in the cementary, fine. The fact that her brothers get along with one another just fine, even now, is a source of confused frustration for Cecile—and if she must be honest, once an injury to her feelings as well. They have always seemed to get along better with one another than with her—and being the bastard daughter, Cecile used to find it hard not to feel bothered. Of course, many years have passed since then. In death, Cecile is calm and calculative, unfazed and secure in her own power. She harbors some resentment against Julian for his complicity in selling her and Evander to the Red Room—but the satisfaction in having come on top regardless outweighs it. The matter of her killing Evander is also...well. Her baby brother was not appreciative of that gesture, possibly. All in all, she wouldn't say she's on good terms with either one of her siblings—but alas, blood is blood. For all their complicated histories and intertwined grievances, Cecile suspects they will always be apart of each other, for better or—more likely—for worse.  

OPEN ♦ FC: OLIVIA MUNN