#I still have some analysis posts I've already written that I plan to post but then I'm moving on to SPOP

[justgivemethephd]

15.11.2024

Happy Friday everyone!

I am completely dead. I had to start lab work at 6:45am today and I will be running my analysis until probably around 8pm or 9pm, so I'm basically surviving on coffee at this point. Buuuuut fortunately it is giving me plenty of time to work on my upgrade report, for which I have written about a quarter of the introduction so far. Considering I started writing it yesterday and already know exactly where I want to go with it, I think that's pretty good. I'm hoping I can have something resembling a first draft by the end of next week, and then with a bit of luck one of the post docs in my group will agree to read through it.

Other than that nothing much has happened. I've been quite busy but I've done almost everything I wanted to do this week, which I'm super happy about. I'm still not feeling 100%, but at least I am feeling more consistently motivated. I had a meeting with both my supervisors today for the first time in a while and it was also good to be able to discuss what I've been working on and plan with them what I will be doing in the next few months. I think it allowed me a moment to consider everything I've done in the last year and kind of centre myself again. After feeling like I've been spinning out of control for so long, that's also a big relief. Overall, I'm doing a lot better mentally than I have been in the last few weeks, and I'm looking forward to the weeks of hard work that are coming my way.

My boyfriend will be out of the apartment this weekend, and while it would do me some good to rest on Saturday I'm really tempted to take myself out on a solo date. I've been meaning to go to a modern art museum, and considering I have to run some errands anyway maybe I could kill two birds with one stone. We will see what happens, but it kind of all boils down to my energy levels at the end of the day. Plus, I'm starting to play dungeons and dragons with my friends again on Sunday, so I have to consider that this won't be a rest day either! Still, I'm looking forward to a hopefully relaxing time.

I hope everyone has a great weekend! Please take care of yourselves and take some time to reset.

_____

🎧 - 'My Marmalade' by Katya Lel

🎮 - World of Warcraft

📖 - Once upon a broken heart by Stephanie Garber

[vii0so]

[BSD 120.5] Theory/Analysis

NOTE BEFORE READING: 90% of this post was written on the day of the chapter's release but got forgotten in my drafts. As I'm too lazy right now to read through and edit, expect things that: make no sense, are worded as if the chapter came out today or recently, stop in the middle of the sentence/incomplete etc. Also for some reason I added stuff not directly relating to the chap...I'm sure I wanted to lead into a bigger point but by now I have no idea what I was going for.

I realised it's almost time for the new chapter and that's how I remembered this was still in my drafts...

So I'm posting it more for me rather than anyone else (which I sort of already do anyway).

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Well well well...it's been another month so I'm here again to put my 2 cents in on this month's chapter.

I'm sure there's no need to say it but the following will contain spoilers for BSD chapter 120.5.

And as always with my long posts...expect me to sidetrack a lot.

This includes a deep dive into Fyodor's title as well.

Today's Topics:

Humanity & Fyodor's outlook

Fyodor's title

Fyodor's humanity

Ability Users & Humans

The page isn't with Fyodor

Thoughts on Fukuzawa's "death"

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Humanity & Fyodor's outlook

Today's chapter gives us a great insight on Fyodor's goal, or at least confirms the one we already knew of and bathes it in a new light. But let's first start with what his outlook on humans is.

"An unlearned outlook befitting of your short lives."

"Your" = humans "Short lives" = human lifespans

This is basically saying: "You haven't lived as long as me so you don't know/understand" Or better yet, "You will never have enough time in your short lives to learn like I did."

Fyodor in his immortal life has seen things, witnessed eras come and go, same with wars. He has had nothing but time to observe humanity and their many flaws.

He believes no one with a short life-span (humans) will understand his learned outlook.

Note: We don't know how old Fyodor actually is. I personally believe that he's over two thousand years old but I only have one small piece of unrelated evidence that supports this. Though, no matter the age, he has lived a long time, that doesn't change.

Fyodor looks genuine in this scene. The look of "acceptance". Accepting the fact that humans won't understand or change, no matter how many centuries pass.

Note: It should be remembered that acceptance does not mean compliance. Fyodor is the perfect example of this.

It honestly feels lonely. Trust me, I don't even like Fyodor but this is just depressing, even for the villain. Imagine your ability has made you pretty much immortal and you watch humanity make the same mistakes, have the same flaws, see them drive themselves to ruin multiple times and no one will ever understand you as they haven't lived as long as you. (Arguably, I'd say Dazai got close)

TLDR: Imagine living forever and watching humans ruin themselves repeatedly and having no one who will understand what you're thinking. That's Fyodor's life.

He lost faith in humanity a long time ago.

Anyway...on a different note (slight backtrack), our boy Atsushi seems to agree or at least understand that "Humanity cannot bear such enormous virtue." Based on his expression here and the panel.

It's like his expression is saying, "Damn, he's right, I've gone through so much to stop this but it's just way too much even for me (an ability user)." or something...idk honestly.

Atsushi is emotionally tuned in with the world so maybe he just saw Fyodor's expression and was like: "holy shi-" again, idk.

"Pure evil"...not like anyone has said otherwise about Fyodor.

His calm yet determined(?) expression when Fukuzawa tells him this shows that he finds what he's doing as necessary and planned.

What Fyodor wants is a world war. Specifically, one that will eliminate all ability users. Instead of getting his hands dirty, it'll be done by humans.

Now, I know that ability users get separated a lot from your every day average human but Fyodor's choice of words shows that he doesn't view ability users as humans at all.

Though, the way he uses the word "humanity" may be more as in those of the greater population, or just "The ones without abilities."

With [One Order] though, does "humanity" include ability users? In theory it should, and yet it doesn't seem that way.

Fyodor believes there will be peace if ability users are gone...Looks like he either has never seen a world without ability users or there's more to this plan than he's letting on.

"What...are you...? I can't possibly see you as human."

Fyodor has never once claimed to be human. Or at least he has never seen himself as human.

And he clearly separates himself from those with short lives (humans) as a different being.

He has been considered a demon throughout the whole series.

Now for my monthly: "Analyse the original Japanese even though I don't speak it."

Today's segment will mostly be my curiosity taking word form, so feel free to skip to the next part or enjoy.

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Fyodor's title

First off, I didn't manage to get the raws to see the spelling of the title. I only heard the spoken Japanese version in the anime, which was "majin".

[ Dazai says it around 12:33 in Season 3 Episode 8 ]

So feel free to interpret it as either [魔神] or [魔人] (both are pronounced as "majin" but have different meanings).

Due to the official translation calling him "conjurer", I thought that maybe it was [ 魔人 ] but the fact that the fan translation calls him "demon", points closer to [ 魔神 ].

Left: Fan translation (DazaiScans) | Right: Official English translation

When you break it down more into individual Kanji, you start to see the difference and similarities.

Both are pronounced as "jin" when in "majin".

[ 魔 ] / "ma" is in both [ 魔神 ] and [ 魔人 ]. And it's from "ma" that we get the more demonic/evil meaning.

So, in a way, even [ 魔人 ] could be seen as "demonic person".

[ 魔 ] / "ma" is in "majin" and "akuma"

Now, when Dazai was called a "demon" he was referred to as "akuma".

As you can see, [ 悪魔 ] is way more serious than [ 魔人 ] or [ 魔神 ] .

This obviously gets lost in translation, as both become "demon".

One instance where Dazai is being referred to as 悪魔 is in the 15 light novel and manga adaptation. For some reason, it's not in the anime.

I'm not here to talk about Dazai's humanity though. I just wanted to show the difference in seriousness of "demon" between the titles*.

*Correction, "Demon" is not Dazai's title. While he has been called as such, his only known title was "Black Wraith" (Kuroi Yuuki - 黒い幽鬼).

Yuuki [ 幽鬼 ] - ghost; revenant; spirit (of the dead); departed soul

Kuro [ 黒 ] - black (as noun) - Kuroi [ 黒い ] = black (as adjective)

So back to the topic at hand!

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Fyodor's humanity

Fyodor being referred to as "majin" instead of "akuma" makes a big difference even if both can be "demon".

In this chapter - as I stated earlier - we see Fyodor talk as if he isn't human. Akuma would refer to a demon - not human, but majin refers more closely to an "evil being", and if it's [ 魔人 ] it can especially be seen as a "demonic/evil human".

Therefore, Fyodor's title shows that he is human, no matter how much he separates himself and the rest of the ability users from the greater human population.

...Wait a minute...just remembered something.

I should have trusted my memory and checked the raws from chapter 120 earlier...it was literally only a month ago and yet I almost forgot Fukuzawa literally used Fyodor's title at the end of the chapter!

So Fyodor's title is [ 魔人 ]

[ 魔 ] for "witch", "demon", "evil spirit"

[ 人 ] for "person"

...Remembering this earlier would have saved me so much time ;-;

I will still keep what I wrote from earlier - my rambling about wether it's [ 魔人 ] or [ 魔神 ] - as I spent way too long on it and don't have enough mental energy to change it.

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Ability Users & Humans

(Specifically in the eyes of Fyodor)

Now that we know it's [ 魔人 ], I can analyse further into Fyodor's view on ability users.

In short, Humans are...humans, I won't go into the foolishness and ugliness of humans, because in life there's death just like there's pain in love, it's yin and yang. Basically: where there's good, there's evil.

人類 - mankind; humanity

異能 - unusual power; superpower; ability beyond that of humans

者 - person (rarely used without a qualifier)

I understand 者 as the user in "ability user"

So 人類 vs 異能者 = Humanity vs Ability users.

[Section Incomplete] - I remember wanting to talk about how Fyodor sees himself and then talking about how that shows how he views humanity and ability users. First off, he doesn't care what he becomes or is seen as. He is the type to "willingly become a demon for future peace" (at least "peace" in his eyes). I remember having a plan (in my head) for this section but...by now I've forgotten and are too lazy to continue it.

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The page isn't with Fyodor

This may sound strange since we see Fukuchi hold the page too but remember: we never saw them actually use/write on the "page" that we've seen. It's basically just a normal piece of paper.

Fukuchi claims the paper he's holding as the page. [Chapter 83.5]

There's no proof of it actually being the page though.

Fyodor offers the page to Atsushi [Chapter 119]

This was Fyodor's plan to show Atsushi that the page is there with them. So that he has no reason to question where the page is.

If you see an apple in front of you, you won't be thinking "I wonder where the apple is" but instead believe that it's right there.

I had a far fetched thought that maybe the page was with Fyodor in the prison and then made to be found by Sigma in the guise of the note claiming he needs help:

When Sigma picks it up, it looks like there are two papers.

And yet, when he shows it to Fyodor there seems to only be a one:

Now of course, this could just be artistic error or even mere perspective but I don't think so. Every detail is usually intentional.

So what's the second paper?

The page.

...possibly

"How did Sigma not realise?" I don't know...Maybe it's been changed to appear as a blank page somehow.

This would tie in with my theory from last update that Fyodor is in a rush to get to Sigma before he wakes up.

Atsushi thinks Fyodor has the page and that he'll have to take it off him (steal it) somehow. He has no idea that the page isn't even close by but instead in Meursault.

A lot of people think "How could Atsushi's day get any worse?"

Well...fight a literal god-like-level being who is controlled by a 2k+ old evil mastermind who wants to get rid of all ability users by manipulating the general public and then never even get the page that you were fighting for because you were being manipulated this entire time and the page was never there...

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Thoughts on Fukuzawa's "death"

First off, I don't think I've mentioned it in my theories so far but I don't believe that those "killed" by ame-no-gozen will stay dead. At some point, all of them will be alive again with no issues.

Anyway, Fukuzawa's "death" reminded me of Rampo after the "Kamui is Fukuchi" discovery. Is this a sign that we'll see him in the next chapter? ...probably not, but it did feel like a parallel, at least to me.

Also, I know last time I said "maybe next chapter he'll die" but no, this is not the death

Btw, this feels like a parallel to me even if it's not exactly the same:

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██████████ Complete!

Note: The following segment was written around a week after the chapter released.

The moment I finished reading the chapter (a few hours after it released) I started typing this immediately. So I've been writing this on and off for a week now...

First, I was tired IRL, then the next day was busy, and the next and the next and...you get it. I probably wrote most of it on the first day while tired so don't mind if anything makes no sense.

This must be the longest theory post I've written for BSD so far...

Should I stop doing long posts? Would you guys prefer short ones? I try to do one long post per chapter, but I feel like not many people read them, precisely because they're long. I like doing it like this as it's more compact (in my opinion) but if you guys would like me to stop the long posts let me know.

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To the people who actually read this post, if anything doesn't make sense or seems incomplete, it's because I wrote all this while tired (35% with a headache) and whenever i came back to write more I couldn't remember what I was trying to say...

It was in my drafts partially incomplete so since we're expecting the new update soon, I remembered this and posted it.

[allgirlsareprincesses]

What did you think about fourth wing??? I'm dying to know. There isn't enough hate (coherent analysis) about these US Air Force Propaganda books. Please share your thoughts ☕ if you feel like it of course. I just really love reading your analysis about character building and romance 💋

HOOBOY. Brace yourself for the negativity. And for those of you who enjoyed Fourth Wing, turn back now and preserve your peace!

Firstly, I lowered my expectations going into this book. Not so much because I thought it would be bad, or I wouldn't have bothered, but because I've been burned before (I liked ACOTAR but hated ACOMAF and quit it about 3/4 the way through... I try to keep my negativity to a minimum but maybe some day I should post my full rant on that series, too). For the most part, I can be satisfied with a proactive heroine and a brisk pace.

And for the first half of the book or so, that's what I got. I liked Violet and the way she used her wits and studies to overcome obstacles, and I was charmed by her friends and dragons. Xaden struck me as kind of a cookie-cutter Sexy Emo Bad Boy, but that's okay. As long as Violet was having a fun adventure, she could have a steamy romance with the tattooed hottie, too. Dain sucked, but to his credit, at least he was written as sucking from the jump instead of like Tamlin who was character assassinated in the second book...

But then, once Xaden decided that he needed to personally oversee Violet's protection instead of just Liam, I started to notice that our heroine had stopped driving the action. Suddenly, she was reacting to things that happened instead of making plans and following through. She stopped using her wits and her book knowledge, she didn't pursue the obvious mysteries that should have intrigued her, and she just generally retreated into more of a helpless damsel than she had started. And here was Xaden, being JUST as controlling and protective as Dain, but because he's sexy and has a magical justification for his protectiveness, he gets a pass.

And then the worst part. It's revealed that Xaden's not ACTUALLY a bad boy at all. In reality, he's secretly noble and generous and self-sacrificial. Just like Rhys, this guy with the Dark Prince aesthetic is actually secretly perfect, and he's also been obsessed with the heroine since he first met her. So there's not REALLY any way for him to grow or any conflict for him to overcome, because he's already this perfect, flawless, blameless hero. And Violet doesn't figure out his secret on her own through clever sleuthing, doesn't defy expectations to do something no one else will do, she just discovers Xaden's noble crusade and decides to go along with it. Because why wouldn't she? He's already done all the hard moral work (or so we're told) of risking everything for an enemy. Now she just gets to go into battle and nearly die so that Xaden can have Man Pain.

It was just deja vu. Once again, a proactive heroine became passive when confronted with the perfect sexy man with the bad boy aesthetic. So BORING.

And lest you think I'm being too critical, I want to point out a variation on this story that I actually love: The Folk of the Air series, by Holly Black. In that story, Jude is similarly a proactive heroine who meets a sexy bad boy, but there are two key differences in her story: one is that she never STOPS being proactive. Take a look at all of the major plot points in that trilogy: nearly all of them are created by Jude herself, and frequently when she's taking action in opposition to what other characters (even allies) want. Jude makes plans, she follows through, she takes risks, she defies convention. The other major difference is that Carden is ACTUALLY a bad boy at the start of his story. He's a selfish, vindictive brat, and it takes him a long time to grow to a place of maturity (at which point he's still not perfect, but he's better). So he doesn't just have the Dark Prince aesthetic while being secretly perfect - he's actually a real antagonist to Jude, which makes their story much more compelling.

So yeah, those are my thoughts. Hope you enjoyed this rant.

[bonesandthebees]

Arcane makes book club anons come out of lurking lmao (and I'm no exception). I would absolutely love to hear your thoughts and possible analysis when you finish season 2! Likes and dislikes and everything in between, like a full-blown post with 'read more' lol.

Hope you get better soon! Wish all the warmth and coziness ^^

-🌹

OKAY FINALLY FINISHED I'VE BEEN HOLDING ONTO THIS ASK ROSE

so I definitely have Thoughts on arcane that I'll throw under the cut

ok. so overall I really really liked the show. I got a LOT spoiled for me before I watched it (even though I tried to avoid spoilers it just kept ending up on my dash) so that might be why I was okay with some of the more 'controversial' writing choices since I already knew they were coming. like I knew that Vander was still alive going into s2 and was going to come back, I knew Isha was going to die, I knew Jinx was going to die, I knew Viktor and Jayce were going to have a Madoka Magica-esque homoerotic ascending into the universe kind of ending so like I had a lot of knowledge going into it

I've seen a lot of criticism about Isha's death feeling pointless and while I get where that's coming from, personally I didn't mind it because of the drastic change it sparked in Jinx's character. you could argue she was already going in this direction anyway with realizing that she had to step up and do things to help others and that Isha didn't need to die for that, but personally I still think it made sense. I do wish they had spent a little more time fleshing out Jinx's role as an older sister/mother figure to Isha and how that probably changed her perspective of Vi because there's no way that didn't affect how she looked back at her childhood memories with Vi now understanding what it was like to be in Vi's shoes. but I get it, they only had limited time so I'm not, like, upset about it.

however, I do think I have an issue with Jinx dying as a writing choice. while I do appreciate the 'poetic' nature of it with Vander finally getting to rest and one of his daughters needing to take him down, I also think it just didn't need to happen? Jinx and Vi could've both pushed him off the platform and Jinx could've tossed one of her bombs down after him. while I understand the character arc of her sacrificing herself for Vi, I think we'd already reached that point of her character growth by her teaming up with Ekko and joining the final battle and fighting side by side with her sister in the first place. it definitely felt like Jinx's death was kind of just thrown in because the writers wanted to make it feel more like a bittersweet ending than anything else. I will say though, I do understand that Jinx's ending was going to be a tricky one for the writers to figure out no matter what. she did, yknow, commit an act of terrorism and murder several politicians so it would still feel weird for her to get off scot free after that, but maybe she could've just left Piltover/Zaun entirely and gone off to explore the world or something. I just think there were alternatives the writers could've considered.

those were my main issues with the show though. otherwise I really really loved it. call me controversial but I love Caitlyn and Vi and their whole messed up thing going on. I definitely feel like Vi joining the enforcers in Act 1 was REALLY strange for her but I do feel like it was a character choice that made sense after the terrorist attack at the funeral and also everything she'd just recently been through with her sister. Now do I think she would've gone along with Caitlyns' gassing plan... ehhhh debatable but I'm going to let it slide.

But Caitlyn I adore because she's such a messy character. Yes, I like the cop because I like that she's a really shitty person. I like how she's written, sue me. I loved seeing her good intentions and morals get so twisted in s2. I think it was incredibly fucked up of her to use the gas against the Zaunites to try and hunt Jinx down and it's a great example of how horribly messed up she was by her mother's death! And I think her entire dynamic with Ambessa was so well done. Caitlyn was mourning her mother and angry and desperate to find a direction to put that anger in, and Ambessa, a mother, hands her an army and tells her what direction to point her anger in. I've seen some people argue about whether Caitlyn was aware she was being manipulated by Ambessa or not because of that scene where Vi points out to her that Ambessa was doing that and Caitlyn says "I know" and to me it seemed very clear that Caitlyn was saying that she knew she was being manipulated only in retrospect, not during it.

Like, I'm not over here trying to defend Caitlyn's dictator arc or say she gets an excuse because she was manipulated. She still had choice and agency and did some very terrible things but I think it's fascinating how she got to that point and I can understand the circumstances that altered her mind to get to that place. And again, I think it's very important to recognize that Caitlyn had just lost her mother who she had a very complicated relationship with, while Ambessa was a mother herself and while she might not have been traditionally motherly, she definitely positioned herself as a mother-type figure towards Caitlyn in terms of giving her guidance and wanting to push her in the direction she wanted. Caitlyn was such a moral part of the show in s1 so I just really loved seeing how twisted she got in s2.

Okay I rambled a lot about Caitlyn but I have a lot of feelings about her. I like really well-written bad people with good intentions. This is very long now but I have soooo many thoughts about this show and I really loved it even if I do have a few issues here and there. The animation and music and characterization of everyone was so good and I had such a fun time watching it. Also just, so many incredible female characters. They're all so different and complicated and arghhhhhh yes this show is incredible with its women. I haven't even gotten to Mel and how much I love her or Sevika and how she's my favorite female dad figure lmao. But very good show overall!!!

[lil-miss]

Dib Perfuming Bullshit

Hey, folks ready to watch me go insane?

Too fucking bad you're here for the ride, I'm holding you all hostage.

So I'm a bit of a fragrance nerd and I've been thinking about various perfume choices for my girls and I'm going to explain them to you in excruciating detail. I'm making these separate posts because I have a LOT more to say about Zim and my perfume choices for Dib are also pretty in-depth.

So my first perfume choice for Dib is Molotov Cocktail by Sylhouette Parfums.

This scent is essentially Dib-smell distilled into a perfume. She would also totally buy this perfume because it has a cool-looking lid and it's named Molotov Cocktail.

It has top notes of gasoline, vodka, and pepper. Middle notes of blood, sweat, and rubber. And finally base notes of metal, iodine, musk, and leather.

That sort of industrial, metallic scents from the gasoline and metal match nicely with the more alcohol-like or chemical smells like vodka, rubber, and iodine. Then by mixing in more organic scents like blood, sweat, and musk, you create something unique and genuinely repulsive to most people. This results in a scent that really encapsulates Dib by being strange and disgusting to most people. Some of the finer details also make me think of particular things I associate with Dib such as the leather for her coat or the iodine reminding me of iodine antiseptics and the medical scenes I've written for Dib or plan on writing for her.

Since this sort of encapsulates Dib's natural musk she wouldn't really wear it since it wouldn't add much to what she already has going on. When it comes to a scent she would actually wear I would put forward Leather + Pine by Ranger Station.

Leather + Pine has a smell of pine wood and dirt, and Dib would enjoy wearing it because she thinks it makes her seem mysterious and like she just emerged from the woods. She probably just smells like she was rolling around in the dirt and that's what everyone thinks she was doing since that's more expected than her actually wearing a fragrance.

The top notes are fresh evergreen, moss, and ocean. Middle notes are pine, dirt/earth notes, and cloves. And the base notes are leather, ambroxan, and musk.

Since this is a scent that I would intend Dib to be wearing purposefully, I feel like the thematic analysis of this has more to do with how she wants to present herself to others. People use things like fragrances or makeup to make people see them a certain way so it can reflect how they want to be perceived. Scents like pine, ocean, and clove are polished and found often in more serious masculine scents. They are also deeply complex scents, meaning people may associate them with mysterious people with complex personalities. This reflects how Dib wants to be perceived, she wants to be taken seriously and be considered mysterious and complex because this is how she sees herself and she wants other people to see her the same way.

Next is Zim!! I have a lot of headcanons/analyses like these for a lot of characters not even just IZ characters so if you think this is interesting I'll take requests in my asks. Why any of you would willingly subject yourselves to my ramblings is beyond me, but still.

[amberinn]

She was losing her lifeforce, her spirit down there.

Watching it flow down her arm, her arm, her arm.

She weakly nibbled at the pen.

Grasping it with the weakest tug from her teeth.

Scratching down the answer, her will.

The seconds ticked down on the laptop, in rhytmic synchronization with the enormous puddle growing by Min's body.

A final sound, mm-mm.

The denial of a red beep, the blaring ×

The flick of a lever

______

(guys help me out, describe to me how you would describe the × sign idk what word it is for this

AND for this! v

like ❌✅

what this called. *Charles Cuevas squinting in confusion sprite*

Preview of what I'm cookin rn

First time writing character death by the way

Never did before

This is like my second or third time writing angst too I'm not someone who writes a lot

I wouldn't say

I think there's like uhhh

56 drabbles on inanimate insanity (not all of them were posted as i do ykyk) + 3 drabbles on charwhit + 1 areden fanfic + 1 testbulb fanfic + 2 amber cookie & sugarglass cookie fanfics

that's all I've ever written really haha

it's a lot still though!!! look 56?

proud of myself

63 things I've written which probably still amounts to like maybe 7 thousand words... ah I don't know just sum up the word counts on ao3

maybe multiply the ii drabbles one by two

that much

so like 10k

woo!!!! :0

already??????? after 3 or 4 years o_O??

It's... Honestly impeccable, amazing that I've been able to write more than 300 words this time around

I'd attribute that factor to the fact that I've well...

Been doing a character analysis of sorts!

Of Teruko Tawaki and her relationship with Xander and Min!

I hope it's cool

Mmh

And like I've been crutching on the plotline of drdt pretty heavily!!!

so ive never rll gotten that feel "this is where i need to end it off" like i usually do with fanfiction

which I by the way write without any sort of... plotline I guess?

I'm with it the same way I am with planning

If I have a plotline before this It'll go so badly and I'll just take a left turn and then everything will fall apart, because I did not FOLLOW the plan

So I sort of just stare at the blank paper, type in some words and then it just flows out.

No control over it whatsoever just imagination and me trying to describe that imagination in words that give out what I mean best

[thebisexualwreckoning]

Mind analysing your poem a little? 👀

Incredibly long post alert to anyone who plans on reading this

Obligatory transphobes and terfs dni. The following poem is about and written by ‘them gotdamn trannys and queers’ and is about beautiful beautiful t4t sex

i am kissing you. on the mouth.

thank you so much for sending this in i genuinely love talking about my poetry so much muah muah muah!!!

Original poem if anyone wants to read it:

Anyway.

Welcome to Prof A. 's line by line analysis of his poem*. So buckle your seatbelts because this is gonna be loooong ride. Let's get started!

*Disclaimer: you might interpret some of these lines differently then i do and that is perfectly alright. poetry depends on everyone's own lived experience and that does not make any one interpretation less valid. i might have written the poem, but your interpretations are still just as true.

I'm going to start with inspirations and the title first because i love providing backstory and talking about other poets. Very specifically one poet that inspired me to write this actually. You can skip this part if you just want to know about the technical structures and literary devices and specific meanings behind the poem

The title was originally part of a completely different short story/prose poetry  (i hadn't made up my mind yet) thing i was going to write but then never got around to finishing. but i just so happened to be going through my old writing (always keep a handy little notebook on hand. it has saved my life so many times) and find the little snippet i wrote and go, 'wait i actually like this very much' and decide to reuse it for something else.

but anyway, couple hours later im doing a voice of country thing for my literature class and analysing poetry by indigenous and aboriginal Australian poets. and i come across this little poem called 'a portrait of a genderkweer on fire'  by a certain Ellen van Neerven (who belongs to the Mununjali Yugambeh people of south east Queensland btw) (go check out their poetry it is genuinely life changing) and it sticks with me you know. it really does. poc trans people writing about their lived experiences as poetry? why didn't I, a poc trans person, think about that!

(no seriously, in all my years of writing poetry it for some reason never occured to me to write about my people. so genuinely thank you Ellen for that!)

now i've already got a first line ive been wanting to use, i am feeling extremely queer and angry because of unrelated transphobia a friend faced and i have a mechanical pencil and notebook in hand.

So i start writing.

(Apologies for my awful handwriting. i was writing while pacing and waiting for the bus)

Alright, kiddies. As you can see, most of the poem was taken verbatim with very few changes to the actual word choices behind the poem. (I will be doing a deep dive into the language as well, dont you worry)

The biggest change made actually is the switch from prose poetry to a more traditional stanza poem. i made the decision to do this actually because originally the poem was meant to be much longer and incorporate the original piece i decided to rework this into.

The quote 'sometimes i imagine what heaven is like' was meant to be repeated at the start of different stanzas which would be written in prose form, each detailing a different phase of queer love in secret, from secret night time affairs (this specific poem) to escape and loving loudly (the original thing i wrote). however, it didn't really work the way i wanted it too and i decided this was fine as it was and started to edit and play around with it a bit.

i changed 'sometime i imagine what heaven is like' to 'Do you imagine what heaven looks like?' and made it the title of the poem instead of the first sentence. the poem itself now becomes the narrator's idealised image of what heaven would be like for them. i go a bit more on depth about this in point 3 of Changes to the structure

Changes to the structure

As mentioned, the first change was from prose to stanzas. I'm about to get full on literature student about this so bear with me

Each stanza has one (1) extra line from the previous one in the poem. For ex: stanza 1 has 4 lines, stanza 2 has 5 lines, and stanza 3 has 6 lines. this was a deliberate choice i made. not to be too english teacher about this but it shows the narrator is coming to some sort of a revelation soon. (i wont spoil too much about this tho. for reasons)

ENJAMBMENTS!!! if you don't know what an enjambment is, it refers to a line break that interrupts the flow of a sentence: usually the line usually doesn’t end with punctuation, and the thought continues on the next line. now, i heavily fuck with enjambments in poetry. which is why i was so eager to use them over here. they represent a kind of stream of consciences here rather than structured thought. enjamments also help in rising tension and drawing the reader in deeper, making them want to continue reading to find out what happens next.

syntax: now the poem is actually meant to be wish fulfilment of sorts for the narrator, where they imagine all the things they wish they could do with their lover. that's why its not written in present tense using sentences like 'the moon shines' or 'the bedsheet are sweaty...'. The narrator is basically telling the moon to shine through his windows and the bedsheets to be stained and his lover to run a finger down his spine. we don't actually have anything written in present tense till 'She holds me close...'

the random spaced out/missing words a.k.a SYNTAX 2.0! because yes. there are certain words missing. ive intentionally left a space between 'left' and 'tramp' and between 'Boy' and 'fuchsia'. there is also a missing word before 'count'. now, if you read my original version of the poem, you can find out what words are actually supposed to be there, but when i put it into verse form, i found that many of the words id written in prose didnt actually fit. but without them the sentence kind of fell apart. so i decided to leave blank space where those words were supposed to go to signal to the reader that something is missing while not actually needing to mention that

4.5. just like the stanzas growing by a single line in each verse, the missing words also increase in a frequency of one (1), zero of them in stanza 1, a single missing word in stanza 2 and 2 of them in stanza 3.

5. capitalisations and Punctuations to immerse the reader more and help with the stream of consciousness style of the poem, most of the poem is written in lowercase with no punctuation being used throughout the only things capitalised are 'Factory Made Cunt', '... Boy' and 'She holds me...' you may have noticed a common string between these words is they are all related to gender. 'Factory Made Cunt' especially was written to put emphasis on the inherent transness of the character while '... Boy' was capitalised for this and to have more of a visual distinction from the black space that follow. 'She hold me...' however was written to directly contrast the lowercase 'god' and how to the narrator their lover is the divine being instead of any so called god (which is weird because i personally am a religious person).

Language choices and line by line analysis:

'moon shine through the' - moon shine over here is meant to show how queer people often can only exist in the freedom on night time and their love is often only seen within the secrecy of moonlight and not under the brightness of the sun. (also all moon deities are queer icons).

A friend of mine also provided the connection to 'moon shine' being a reference to illegal moonshine (home brewed extremely strong alcohol) and how that itself was a reference to illegally transtioning without the goverment knowing/able to get medical stuff

'window illuminating short bristles of': the narrators lover being a trans girl with a buzz cut was an intentional choice to show that gender expression does not equal actual gender. buzz cuts are traditonally associated with men, but also many butches in the community rock a buzz cut as well and its too show that there's no right way of being trans and presenting as a woman.

'her hair tickling' and 'the underside of my nose': im going at these two together since i don't really have much to say about them separately. it's more meant to be visual imagery, reinforcing the two are intimate in some manner but not really expanding whether it's platonic or romantic yet. its also meant to evoke the image of the narrators lover lying on their chest and but the narrator not caring about the fact that they might be slightly uncomfortable but loves their girl too much to push them away

'bedsheet sweaty and cum': confirming the fact that they are in a sexually intimate relationship and are lying post-coital (i cannot believe i just used the term coital. this has become an academic essay)

'stained entangle around the curve of' - some sensual imagery and tactile imagery

'her thigh where my' - more imagery

'lipstick left        tramps stamps on her' - tramp stamp is a reference to how trans women are often oversexualised and is meant to be a reclamation of their own bodies and sexualities

'Factory Made Cunt' - emphasis is placed on these words by being the first capitalised words in the entire poem as of yet. its meant to kind of condemn the never ending discussion about trans women's bodies and especially their genitals and the hyper sexualization of girlcock by fetishisers (not that there is anything wrong with girlcock. this user loves girlcock and boypussy). its kinda like the narrator is saying 'so what if her pussy is surgically made. how does that make it any lesser)

'           count down the' - once again, not really much to say

'knobs of my spine leaving behind a shivering' - more more sensual imagery

'mess of a Boy    fuchsia bright silicone' - just like how 'Factory Made Cunt' condemned speculation on trans women's bodies, this condemns speculations on those of trans men. it also challenges the assumption that just because you are a man or that you top, you immediately have to be the dominant one in the relationship. 'fuchsia bright' was also a deliberate syntax choice. the silicone is the bright thing here not the fuchsia giving the narrator the chance to have a dick which is bright/illuminated moment for them as a trans boy.

'dick still hard whispering lover' - the 'dick still hard' part was meant to be an ironic comment on how cishetero patriarchal society is always going about people in sapphic relationships using dildos and saying that they should just fuck a real man instead of a fake approximation of one (not that they are that eloquent) but the joke is that while those criticising sapphics who use dildos actually need to wait for a dick to get hard again before they can have sex while the sapphics don't have to worry about that since dildos are always hard. also the 'whispering lover' thing was written completely out of spite to prove the friend with the moonshine interpretation wrong when she said that lover cannot be an appropriate term of endearment and to her credit she has since changed her mind and has been very gracious about it and glad to be immortalised in a poem in this form

'in my ear She holds me close' - more more more sensuous imagery along with auditory imagery of whispering in ears.

'leaving behind no space for god' - a play on the popular phrase 'leave some space for Jesus'

Anyway, this turned out way to big and way to detailed for a simple little analysis but once again, i am a student of literature and this is quite literally my life's passion, made even easier since i have direct access to the writer's brain instead of having to make my own assumptions and spend hours researching.

I hope you enjoy if you or anyone else even bothers to read through considering just how much i actually wrote. but yeah, here's my final literary analysis of my poem Do you imagine what heaven looks like?

[tvmicroscope]

Hey hey :) I just wanted to let you know that I love love LOVE your analysis (all of them!) on Young royals. It's so well thought through and well written with humor and detail, and I've learned so much from reading them.

I was just thinking if you ever thought about doing an analysis about the topics of hands ( - and touching, like in Wille dream in s2e1 hands play a major role and to calm his anxiety in S1 as well... ) and another about the topic of lighting, light versus darkness (like the sunlight in the morning after scene in S1, the kind of darkness when they first kiss in S1 as a representation of staying hidden, a secret...).

I don't know if there is even anything to analize to be honest or if I'm just too lost down the rabbit hole for this show. Haha. 🙈 I'm not as good in spotting things as you are!

Anyway, I just thought I'll message you. No pressure of course, just wanted to ask if you're planning on or thought about it... Sorry this got longer than I planned to.

Once again, thank you for all your amazing work! I hope you have a nice week! 😊

Hey, I hope it's okay if I answer your ask publicly instead of privately? (I just thought some other people might be interested in my answer, as well.)

Anyway, sorry my reply is coming so late. I'm a bit overwhelmed with all the reactions and comments I'm getting right now.

But thank you so much for your kind ask. It really means a lot and motivates me no end.

As for your question: While I haven't considered writing anything about the lighting specifically (I feel most of it has probably already been written at some point, and you're making some really good points yourself in your ask!), it might come up here and there in a half-sentence. But no, I don't have anything specific planned in that regard.

I do, however, want to write rather extensively about that dream sequence in a really freakishly long post I'm planning to write about the sexual subtext of this show. So far I haven't written a single sentence of it, but it lives rent-free in my brain, so it'll have to come out eventually even though I'm still a bit unsure about how to proceed down that avenue. Writing about sex in a context of a show that's about teenagers should be done very, very carefully and respectfully (if at all). None of us want to be August, after all. On the other hand, the writer put the subtext in there for a reason, so pretending it's not there, I feel, would just take away from our film analysis experience and leave some very interesting and enlightening subtextual hints unexplored.

So, basically, watch me struggle with this for another couple of weeks and then at some point in late summer I will probably manage to write it all: the hands, the dream, the everything...:D

Thank you again for your ask. I was feeling a bit down in the dumps yesterday (writing-wise) and needed some motivation and then suddenly the comments and the asks started to come in and made me smile. Yours in particular.:)

[beauty-and-passion]

For the survey thing, are you planning on making a list of responses given and/or using responses to write up a fan script yourself? I apologize if that’s a dumb question I’m just confused

That's not a stupid question at all, don't worry! Yep, the idea is to collect as many ideas/themes/suggestions as possible to do a fan writing. I am talking specifically about "fan writing", because writing the full scripts for all episodes:

will take too much time

I am not American, so I will inevitably end up not making as many references/puns as an English-speaking person would

It's not my job to write a full script, it's Mr. Sanders' job

What I will do instead is something like this:

Plan season 3 (decide which themes will be developed and in how many episodes)

Write an extensive summary of every episode and how I want them to go (i.e. flow of the conversation, how it should be developed, what the characters should do/say etc.)

This is why I am collecting themes and ideas now: I am only one and my memory isn't perfect, so I will inevitably end up forgetting something. Also, this fan writing is a sort of "gift" from a fan for the fans, so it's only fair to involve as many people as possible and to write something that will include the most appreciated/requested ideas.

So the survey has multiple goals: to help me plan season 3, to collect as many ideas as possible, to get new ideas and to see which concepts are the most requested and therefore should be more developed.

Until now I've collected 50 answers and, wow, I can't express in words how much that means to me. Your feedback is awesome and deeply appreciated, so thank you all SO MUCH for what you are doing.

These 50 answers are already helping me plan some stuff, they are telling me clearly what people want to see more (by now, Virgil and Janus' backstory has been requested by the entire world so I will pay extra attention to it) and some of your suggestions are A-MA-ZING. I can't stress enough how much I love you all, because some of your ideas are wonderful - and I'm not talking just about the serious ones, but about the silly ones too. They are so great!

I will keep the survey open to everyone for the entire month of May, in order to collect as many suggestions as I can. But in the meantime, I will still give you something! And that something includes:

a headcanon post (it won't be included in the season 3 planning, it's my own headcanon)

all the analysis for the remaining episodes I haven't talked about yet

These posts are all written, I just have to proofread and post them. And speaking of the analyses, one of them includes a rewrite too, so that will hopefully give you an idea of how I plan to write season 3.

So, well, if you're interested, just stick around because more stuff will come very soon ;)

[alesyira-ffn]

ngl I'm a little upset at a review I got some hours ago, even though it was glowing with praise and a thumbs-up (lol more upset about a positive review than a critical review).

I feel a little hands-tied when I get a really long review from an anonymous reviewer. I don't like dropping all my comments/replies into the next chapter because there's no guarantee that the next post will be anytime soon and it feels a bit rude to the readers to constantly eat up paragraphs for responses. please please log in if you want a reply to reviews.

I had some ??? moments reading this new review because I only added a new scene for Kagome to the last chapter after thinking about Kagome frequently just walking off-stage to give h/s a few minutes alone for whatever dialogue I had in mind, while all the rest of the scenes talked about in the review had been in planning and were mostly written since mid-January. I must have misunderstood the review, but it kind of felt like it said all those yay-details were inspired by the concrit. that felt a little yikes. Maybe I'm just being over-critical of user analysis and extra-defensive of my story-baby.

I should probably be clearer about what parts are inspired by reader feedback so this frowny moment could have been avoided. (I literally choked on my coffee thinking that the kiss scene at the end of that chapter which I've been shaping and thinking about for weeks might have ended up as a suggestion in that earlier review and it could have also fallen under the umbrella of 'came from user suggestion'. I'm going overboard here and it's stressing me out. I will stop.)

please understand I cannot change anything major about my storyline to fit reviews, to include relationships and the relationship struggles that are already in the works. No spoilers here, but this isn't a Hiei/Kag-only fic. The story has been in planning for long enough that all I can/will do is drop in additional details to help the existing ideas and flow make sense. Most of the chapter I posted on Saturday along with 90% of the content in the next six chapters have been completed for over a month, pending the additions of minor connecting elements and final cleanups.

anyways, it's been bugging me all day. lol. end rant. writing is currently on hold while commission work still in progress.

(Please please do not review with scene requests or storyline suggestions, because I have another 50k words already written and if something is suggested that I'm already working on I might have a panic attack.)

[ilikekidsshows]

What do you mean Adrien need more respect can you elaborate more because it wasn't the only time I see you said it

The way I see it, 'Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir' made a mistake in the very way the show is designed: they constructed a setting where everything hints at Adrien being a main character or at least a secodary character, but he's actually not. The show basically lies to the viewer about what to expect when it comes to Adrien's character. And I tend to have a pretty big beef with shows that lie to me.

The show is called "Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir", Adrien's father is the literal main villain of the series, all the minor villains have a personal connection with him and his family has a long history with the Miraculous items. Meanwhile Marinette is just some girl from a bakery next to the school he goes to. The show's very story engine, the construct that creates the stories told in it, puts a lot of weight on stuff connected to Adrien when it comes to the superhero action, while Marinette's story engine connection are her feelings for Adrien, which generate the romantic comedy plots.

All the lore in Miraculous revolves around Adrien. You'd think that this would mean that Adrien would have a vital role in uncovering this lore as Marinette is the one who saves the day. You'd think Adrien's nearest and dearest being villains would be delved into some more since it's such a recurring thing. But none of this happens. Instead the show goes out of its way to make sure that anything that should be about Adrien and how he feels about it, is made to be about Marinette and how she feels about it.

Adrien discovers the Miraculous grimoire in his home, but the episode goes out of its way to make sure Marinette gets her hands on it and is the one who gets to meet Fu and become his student, while Adrien is left out on the lurch. Marinette is the one with an arc of realizing just how evil Gabriel is as she grows past her idolization of him, which might be building up to her being the one of the heroes who figures out he's Hawkmoth first. Marinette is also the one invested in Chloé's failed attempt at becoming a hero, while Adrien's feelings on Queen Bee are never brought up.

Season four ruined Adrien's relationships with every single character who isn't Marinette or Plagg and I think the only reason Plagg was spared is because they literally can't remove that relationship from the show. 'Rocketeer' exists solely so that Adrien won't tell Nino about him being Cat Noir, so that Adrien doesn't get a confidant like Marinette gets in Alya. This makes it so that Adrien will have less screen time to talk about his duties and life. The point is to make sure Marinette has more screen time.

The fallout of Marinette and Luka's relationship ending is depicted from Marinette's perspective, to show how she's getting by after the breakup. The fallout of Adrien and Kagami's relationship ending is depicted from Marinette's perspective as well, to show how she's feeling about Adrien and Kagami breaking up. We still don't have a single scene of Adrien and Kagami discussing their failed relationship outside of the breakup scene, which they absolutely had to include. The writers don't actually want to write about Adrigami, it only existed to make Marinette angst for the dramatic season three finale.

The way Nino and Kagami get removed from Adrien's support network is solely because the writers don't want to write about Adrien's relationships. They only care about writing about Marinette. I'm not saying this lightly. This is a consistent pattern in the show. The same happens in any situation where Adrien has a strong emotional response to something, and the writers sideline Adrien's emotions by having Marinette be even more upset by it or by giving Marinette something worse to deal with.

In the New York Special, Adrien kills someone and quits. This grief is sidelined in the narrative to focus on Marinette having an emotional breakdown about not being there to help Paris and then later angsting about Adrien quitting. The matter is resolved not by dealing with Adrien's grief, but by him coming back for Marinette's sake. The Cat Blanc timeline is not important for Adrien's character, despite the point of Akumatization being character development, it only exists so that Marinette can be upset about it. We know this because Adrien never finds out about it, while Marinette gets nightmares about it. In season four, Adrien gets pushed aside by Marinette constantly, and he is understandably hurt by this and quits. The episode then has him "learn" that Marinette needs his emotional support so much that he should come back and cater to her needs and ignore his own. In 'Destruction', Adrien once again Cataclysms someone, and once again the writers shoehorn in Marinette being upset about not being able to fix it. The best Adrien can manage on his emotions being taken into account by the writers is a few seconds of getting equal screentime with Marinette's.

The season four finale is what makes this writing bias obvious when the part in the story where Adrien was logically supposed to discover just how much Marinette had been keeping from him gets pushed aside by Marinette having an emotional breakdown about Félix tricking her and stealing all the Miraculous. The writers' priorities seem to be that Adrien's feelings on anything don't matter, only Marinette's. Whenever Adrien is justified in being hurt, the writers hurt Marinette worse so that they can ignore him and focus on Marinette instead. They also constantly keep information from him that the other characters should be giving him while not calling out these characters for keeping very important information from him. The important thing about said information control is that it’s always information that Adrien would do something about or have strong feelings about. It’s another sign that the writers don’t want to write about Adrien.

(This paragraph has been edited for more accurate information on the episode ‘Emotion’. The previous misinformation got mixed up because of a spoiler so now this post is accurate and spoiler-free.) The season four finale pivoted Félix into the role of the primary villain in Miraculous after Gabriel. However, in season five, Marinette gets top billing in the episode where he is convinced of the error of his ways, not his cousin Adrien, who Félix has wronged in every single one of his appearances and whose feelings about that this episode is supposed to address. The writers only allow Adrien to have his say once he’s been missing for most of the episode/Marinette has had enough screen time. The sidelining of Adrien and Félix interactions in favor of Marinette content is more on the whole "not allowing Adrien relationships outside of Marinette" thing they've been pushing since season four. Any relationship Adrien has only gets the minimum possible amount of screen time. It’s also part of a different pattern of Marinette and her feelings still getting focus in episodes that should be about Adrien, his family and his feelings, since we also had the episode with the anniversary of Adrien’s mother’s death have another confession attempt from Marinette and ‘Gabriel Agreste’ shoehorned in an entire Marinette subplot. The only time this series had a genuine Adrien-focused episode was when he and Kagami broke up, which I already stated was something the writers just couldn’t resonably exclude. 4% of this show’s episodes deal with things to do with Adrien, but only 1/4 out of those episodes puts focus on Adrien over Marinette.

Mariette’s romantic relationships in this show are really lopsided as well. We all know that it's a gender role cliche for women to always do the emotional labor in a relationship and to offer comfort, but Miraculous "solves" this one-sidedness by reversing it. Marinette's love interests are her biggest emotional support. Every finale has either Adrien or Luka swooping in to comfort her while she's having an emotional breakdown. Even Cat Walker is presented as a romantic option through having him swear emotional labor to Ladybug. Meanwhile Marinette never has to comfort her love interests because they're very skilled at hiding their emotions. This might be another symptom of the writers just not wanting to focus on characters other than Marinette, but I have seen that even progressive people in terms of women's issues tend to balk at the idea of men seeking out emotional support and comfort. Marinette and Luka breaking up the instant Luka needed more emotionally from Marinette does lean towards this former bias since Luka is allowed to have emotional needs as long as he doesn't ask Marinette to help with them. But, regardless of the reason for it, the end result is that Marinette's love interests are more emotional support dispensers than equal partners. The writers don't want Marinette to have boyfriends, they want her to have servants who cater to her needs, because she’s the main character and her boyfriend is her prize that she wins in the end.

This show has no respect for Adrien as a character. It seemed like he was set up as the secondary main character, only for him to be consistently treated as nothing more than Marinette's love interest. The writers only write as much about him as they absolutely have to. The fact that Adrien is also an abuse victim whose story is strictly about how little control he has of his life makes this all even worse, because the writers are actively removing any control he might have on the narrative as well. They're not doing this for the sake of theming, because then they would focus on his feelings about this. It's all for the sake of not having anything derail from their singular main lead. Adrien is a prop for Marinette, not his own character. And I’m too invested in Adrien’s character to be cool with this.

The thing about any of this is that if it was just any one of these matters alone, or even just a few of them, it wouldn’t be such a big deal. Nothing is perfect, after all. But it’s this much stuff, and I’m sure this isn’t even all of it. It’s not only a consistent pattern, it’s a constant pattern, and it’s made me lose my patience with this show. It’s obvious these problems aren’t going to be mitigated, because they aren’t problems, it seems to all be on purpose because it keeps getting worse. Maybe it’s backlash at those Toxic Adrien Stans who want Adrien to be the main character in Marinette's place, so the writers diminish his role to drive home the point that he’s supposed to be Marinette’s support and will never usurp her role. The reasons don’t matter, all that matters is that the end result is my favorite character being treated like garbage.

[background-character-341]

Okay, so I've decided to finally write this analysis that's been kicking around my brain for way to long.

Also, just a note before we start: I wholeheartedly believe that byler is endgame and Mike loves Will. Therefore this analysis was written with that in mind. If this bothers you for some reason, keep scrolling.

So, without further ado:

Stranger Things 4 and Romantic Monologues

We all love to shit on Mike's monologue and how it was a complete and utter failure as a declaration of love. We also love to heap praise on the van scene as a romantic moment. But these two aren't the only two romantic monologues in season 4, and if we take a closer look at them, there's a pattern regarding which ones work and which ones don't.

Mike

So Mike's monologue is objectively bad as a declaration of love. There are a million analyses on how bad it is. And it's very bad. Mike is lying the entire time, uses words that are a direct callback to things said to El by her abuser, and has to be prompted by her brother. Not to mention the fact that the entire thing was in response to Will's feelings, not hers. Mike barely pays any attention to what El actually wants, instead giving her what he thinks she wants. Yeah, Mike told El that he loved her. But it was never really about hearing him say I love you. I won't dive too deep into that; go read this post if you want to know more. But the general gist of it is that the only reason El wanted to hear him say I love you was because Mike wasn't making her feel loved. And his monologue didn't fix that because it didn't come from his heart. It was fake and riddled with romantic cliches and had to be wrenched out of him by the image of her choking on the table in front of her. It's very bad.

Steve

So Steve's monologue is technically two monologues, but I'm going to treat it as one for the purposes of this analysis. I absolutely despise these monologues. But we're already off to a better start than we were with Mike, because Steve is being genuine. You can tell because he isn't falling back on romantic cliches or what he's supposed to say in a moment like this. His six little nuggets speech feels genuine because that is how he feels. It's all coming from his heart.

The problem with his monologue, and the reason why I hate it, is that it doesn't take into account what Nancy wants. And we know that she doesn't want any part of the future he's envisioning for himself because she goes out of her way to tell us. She says, "That sounds like a nightmare". She is very clearly not on board with this plan and the writers make sure we know that.

So while Steve's monologue is genuine, we have yet another romantic monologue that ignores what the person on the receiving end actually wants.

Jonathan & Nancy

This one's a bit of an outlier. Technically, it's two monologues: one from Jonathan and one from Nancy. But they're set side by side like a dialogue, so it makes more sense to look at them as one.

Unlike the previous two declarations of love, these two actually take into account the person on the receiving end. They're about their qualities and strengths and what they see in them. We already know they love each other before they ever say it because you don't talk like that about someone you're not in love with.

But this is also the first time we've seen an endgame couple say the word love in relation to each other. And after they both say they love each other, Nancy insists that everything is fine in their relationship, and you can hear the bitterness in her voice. She's lying. And we find out later that everything isn't fine in their relationship, and they are in fact having communication issues. Their monologues did nothing to change that. They did nothing to fix their problems.

The monologues are genuine. We can feel that. We never doubt that they actually love each other. And we can see that in their reunion in episode 9. But they don't address the actual problems they're having. Something's still missing.

Lucas

As they're walking to skull rock, Lucas and Max have one of the most important conversations for rebuilding their relationship in season 4.

Lucas in this scene is reassuring Max with this monologue. Telling her that she doesn't need to hide anymore because he understands that she's going through something hard and he's here for her. It's a monolgue that's tailored to Max's insecurities. When Max tries take on some of the blame for their relationship falling apart, Lucas immediately shoots her down because he knows that she has so much guilt over what happened to her brother, and what she needs right now is someone to tell her that it's not her fault. Lucas tells Max that he sees her because he knows that she has been feeling invisible.

I see you aren't inherently romantic words, but they do more for Lucas and Max's relationship than any I love you ever has for any other relationship in this show, because they are the words that Max needs to hear.

And that's the crux of it really. This monologue works because it's what Max needs to hear. It's about acknowledging her feelings and reassuring her insecurities. It's about bridging the gap between the two of them.

Joyce

Joyce and Hopper have two romantic moments after they reunite: one right after, and then one at the church. The first one is basically Joyce telling Hopper that they missed him and the second one is her telling him that he was worth that whole trip. Unlike Lucas's monologue, they're both much more romantic moments, but they still follow the same basic formula. Joyce is telling Hopper what he needs to hear.

Hopper's main insecurity is that he only brings sadness and death to the people around him. But here Joyce is telling him that that's not true. They missed him. They want him around. She even brings in El as proof of this. And she's telling him that he's worth it. He's worth all that money, he's worth getting captured, he's worth crashing a plane in Russia. He's worth it. And they missed him.

Will

So, finally, the van scene. This scene has been analyzed a million times. I have gone from thinking that Mike is an idiot with rocks in his brain to being convinced that he knew exactly what Will was talking about here. This scene has so many layers, so much to be looked at and analyzed, and there's no way I can do it justice. This is where I direct you to this analysis. Just go read it, it's amazing.

But from the perspective that we're looking at, from the perspective of romantic monologues and why they work in Stranger Things, this one follows the same formula that the last two have. Will in this scene is doing the same thing for Mike that Lucas did for Max and Joyce did for Hopper: he's reassuring Mike. Mike feels insecure in his relationship with El. He feels like he's not important. Like he's nobody, and nobody needs him. And Will is telling him, "No. You are somebody. You are important. You make (El) feel like she's not a mistake. (El) needs you Mike."

The reason Mike is so moved by this monologue is that this is everything he has ever wanted to be told. And for the first time he feels loved. And Will never once said those three words.

I see you, I missed you, I need you. On the surface those words aren't nearly as romantic as I love you. But that's the point. I love you is too general. I love you could be about anybody. But having the ability to look at someone, see the parts of them that they hate, and say that they don't need to feel that way because you're there? That's specific. That's love.

Grand declarations of love don't work in Stranger Things because they don't actually address the relationship. They don't get to the heart of it and tell you what it is about these two people that makes them compatible. And they don't address any of the underlying problems in a struggling relationship. All the I love yous in the world can't change the fact that Jonathan is lying to Nancy about Emerson. They can't bridge the huge chasm between Steve and Nancy. And they certainly can't make Mike and El's relationship less toxic.

[lefthanded-sans]

Hi! I've stumbled upon your "Determination, determinism and quantum mechanics" post while researching the topic of sans in connection to quantum mechanics, and I thought your post was pretty good. if you've written anything else on that subject i'd be interested in reading it (i think i found some just by searching your blog, but yanno how tumblr's search function is) and it'd be nice if you could point me in the right direction (but I'll understand if you don't have the time. Thanks either way)

Gosh, I'm responding to this a month late. My apologies! I hope you get this.

Howdy howdy, and thank you so much! It means a lot that you liked that post. You've probably already seen the My Analyses page, which is frightfully out of date. Anything that didn't make it onto that page will still have a my analysis tag. But yeahhhHhHh... tumblr's search function is.... yeah.

I know that, before I made this sideblog, I wrote a few ideas about Sans and Gaster on my main. It's still on the My Analyses page for lefthanded-sans, but I want to bring up Gaster Destroyed Himself with the SAVE Function in case you haven't seen that one yet.

Unfortunately, it's also been several years since I've analyzed Undertale, so I don't remember if I have other posts that discuss Sans + quantum mechanics. Going to the archive for the first year of this blog is where you're most likely to find things, I think.

I also was going to explore this idea in depth in a fanfiction, Reset or Resume. I had SUCH a long and COMPLICATED series of charts for how this story was to come together, and I was so excited for its epicness. Eheh. But I got tired and busy and never finished it, and instead of posting it with fanfare a chapter at a time as planned, shyly tossed the unfinished product all at once onto FFN at an obscure hour. I don't think I got to major quantum physics stuff, but I want to be helpful bringing up anything on the subject on the rare chance it helps you.

I do talk on the opening author's notes page on point #4 about a quantum physics inspo, but obviously, in many cases, creative writing details for flavor are going to be different than actually-thought-through-meta-theories (though I will say that if my characters make hyper-specific scientific references or name a paper author, that's probably referencing an actual article). Shoot, I'm sure I had story ideas that I never wrote down that were more meta...... hrmh.

If you have any posts that you've found or written, I'd be interested seeing those! This convo is re-sparking my interest in this area.

Lastly, I want to speak with humility to make sure people know the level to which they should be taking me "seriously." My college background was in linguistics and music. I enjoyed sciences in high school, but I am very, very clearly neither a hard sciences expert nor amateur, and shouldn't be taken as someone who knows or has any expertise on quantum mechanics.

I realize most of this was already on my blog, but I hope that helps! Thanks for bringing some smiles to me about UT!

[bunnykookie99]

I've been thinking about Gwen and Duncan's relationship a lot these days 🤔

Although it is true that the start of their relationship (as a couple) didn't happen in the most ethical of ways, what with Duncan cheating on Courtney and Gwen betraying her newly made friend(-ish).

And even though I know they broke up in "Total Drama All-Stars" (which, by the way, I personally choose to ignore the existence of, given how awfully written the season is; I can maybe save some bits and pieces of it... maybe...), I still want to write my own little analysis on Gwen and Duncan's relationship.

Beware this is going to be a longish post since I have no control over my words and thoughts 😹🙈

I'm going to start off with what I believe is the cause of things going wrong between Courtney and Duncan.

Courtney became very controlling during Total Drama Action. She expected things to always go her way, not realising that most of the times it is impossible. In her relationship with Duncan, in particular, demanding of him to completely change himself for her was, well... wrong.

One of the reasons their relationship didn't work was the fact that none of them was willing to compromise for the other, or rather Duncan was kind of inclined to, until he wasn't anymore (which to be honest fair, because Courtney never seemed to be willing to do the same 🤷‍♀️)

With Gwen it was different. From the very start of their couply relationship she made things clear: "no pressure, no planning, no pookums". I think Duncan was really looking for that: the freedom of being himself around the person he liked and not being pressured into something he didn't enjoy. And Gwen offered him just that: she already knew what kind of person Duncan was, with them being friends first, and she liked him just like that.

I really liked (and still like) their relationship because of how happy they looked when they were together, always smiling and teasing each other. 🥰 In addition to this: if Gwen made a playful remark, Duncan always had an answering jab back and vice-versa.

I think this playfulness is actually a very important point in their dynamics. Courtney rarely answered Duncan's teasing and rather played hard to get, which I guess was exciting for Duncan at first, but in the long run it became boring and just repetitive. On the other hand, Gwen's playful answers to his snarky remarks, kept Duncan on his toes, never quite predicting what she was going to say and entertained him, made him laugh.

Also the amount of high-fives and playful punches deriving from this dynamics?? How they somehow naturally gravitated towards each other in Total Drama Action, initiating a series of (sometimes) completely uncalled for touches??

One more thing...

I know I said at the beginning of this post that I refuse to aknowledge the existence of Total Drama All-Stars, but I need to talk about the bits and pieces that I'm saving from it... sooooooooo yeah... here we go.

With Gwen, Duncan let out his sweeter side; he was worried about her, tried to cheer her up when she was down, asked for kisses, took a leech for her (🤭), kissed her on the cheek, encouraged her even when they were on different teams, admitted to missing her, CAME BACK ON THE SHOW JUST TO BE WITH GWEN!! NOT FOR THE MONEY, NOT FOR FAME, BUT FOR GWEN!! 😭😭 All that without caring much about his bad-boy reputation (at least before the show went completely haywire). I think that is a sign of growth, which Duncan could reach because of the pressure-free nature of their relationship. I believe Gwen (or better the Gwen from the first three Total Drama seasons) was the right girlfriend for Duncan. As I said before, she always played along, but she also knew when to "reprimend" him for being too childish (for lack of a better word) or what words to use to convince Duncan to do something, without being bossy.

As for Gwen, she found someone to share her hobbies and interests with in Duncan. Someone who understood her tastes. A friend she could confide in and someone to have her back when everyone else disliked her. Someone who liked her just the way she was. 💙💚

Now, in my heart they are still together and happily living their lives 🤷‍♀️😉

[bonesandthebees]

I would prefer it if you waited and dropped both Glass and Rose at the same time. For one I still need to get my Glass analysis done and I know Rose is going to take away the brain rot for that, but I really want to finish it. For 2 I’m still kinda dying this week and could do without the distractions (though I should be through the worst of it by Friday, so Rose would be a nice reward).

For 3, I like it when we close one story and move on to the next. The rose hype has been created, people will read it whenever it comes out. (And people should learn to have some damn patience.) I like your system for starting new fics. So I don’t think you should change it because you feel like you aren’t writing fast enough. And it’s not like there haven’t been droughts before. We got through September after all.

And 4, just do whatever you want. It’s your stories. You shouldn’t feel pressured to post them fast (you already write a ridiculous amount in such a short time span (yes this is me being jealous /j)), but I get the frustration of not meeting self imposed deadlines. If you want the satisfaction of putting something out, go for it! If you want to stick to your original plan and update at the same time, you do that.

-🌲

ngl I'm surprised that I've had people telling me to hold onto it and wait I thought everyone was gonna tell me to just post rose first lmao. also so sorry you're dying spruce but I'm wishing you the best of luck!!! you can get through it!!

I mean either way I would link rose when I post the finale chapter of glass, but yeah I do like the system of waiting to post so I can throw them both out at the same time. although I'm pretty sure I posted chapter 2 of stars before I posted the epilogue to world forgetting so I haven't always followed the system lmao

I know it's a little ridiculous for me to put so much pressure on myself to finish things faster. in total honesty I'm just frustrated with how long glass has taken to write. my fics usually take around 9 months to write, but by the time glass is done with it'll have taken 11 months. this is dumb for me to be upset with myself over though because I didn't take a nearly month long trip to europe while writing my other ones, and I've also just taken a lot of trips in general this year and have also had a LOT of shit going on in my real life that's kept me busy. so it's understandable I know but my brain just likes to be mean to me sometimes about this stuff

since hearing your feedback I'll probably wait, but we'll see how I feel once I finish the rose chapter. also while I know what's going to happen in the glass epilogue I haven't actually, uh, written out an outline for that. so I should do that.

[xivu-arath]

so it seems from the new lore, that the whole "team up" theory seems more creditable in the terms of xivu and Savathûn working together. though it seems post exorcism that this alliance may have fallen out given the fact Xivu arath is torturing one of savathun's hive guardians for secrets on how to possess the light. To which may seem that Xivu working with Savathun was less "being sisters" and more or less she wanted in on the power too. To which unlike Savathun who wanted a new life and purpose, Xivu was just looking for new way to become stronger, possessing both light and darkness. Do you think Xivu Arath has lost all trace of her former life that she is more obsessed with war and power unlike Savathun who wanted to be free from the deep and Oryx who found the darkness to be the ultimate purpose of life?

again, under the cut because spoilers for the campaign now that I've finished it:

yeah, it does seem like the alliance has served its purpose afterwards! at least, that the scorn are all over the throne and in every single important space, even savathun's temples, looking for that same power, and the hive aren't working with them

but. savathun didn't have her memories for most of the campaign, and had left those places abandoned. she would have no idea why there's all these explosive dudes scuttling around everywhere, or why there's constantly more every time she turns around! on xivu's end, the hive fighting back is pretty much an invitation to show up and get a close look at this fancy power herself, and the fact her sister isn't answering her calls while she does so...? extra infuriating

plus there's her exact wording while she's interrogating sok'tol. "SING OF HER LIES. SPEAK OF HER TRUTHS." while she obviously does expect to extract some information from him, and is empowering herself from his struggles and deaths in turn, she might still think the deceits will still go back to her sister, and make them stronger together...?

less objectively, you're asking if I, one of the Main Xivu Arath Sympathizers who is already brainstorming how we can still not kill her permanently, if she's lost all traces of her former life. I am going to say no lmao!

but also because we just can't say? every single fragment of xivu lore from her own words has been from books of sorrow. everything past that is through others' words and eyes, from wrathborn to hive to techeuns. I think it's important to remember that she has a driving purpose from her worm (to test her strength) that has melded with war, and that constrains her actions to growing stronger a lot more than being cunning or seeking to understand does. she's forced onto the path of violence and simplicity in a way that can't be reduced to obsession imo

savathun was cunning to be safe - you can see this in what the worms promised to her, in the plans she crafted during the campaign and her plans for the traveler, as well as her own parallels to mara. xivu... I've written about with the assumption that her own desire for strength was to protect - but until we see more of her, so much of this analysis is headcanon that can be dashed away bungie, still. (even if most of twq had a lot of my ideas and theories long being proven right so I'm currently feeling a bit smug, haha)

I hope this. mini-essay answers some of what you were asking about in some way