#I’ll probably make another post about this because I find it so fascinating

[feelingtheaster99]

When your parents pick up up after the first day of your freshman year of high school during which you got attacked by corn monsters, witnessed five people die, two of whom were kids your age (which despite them eventually being resurrected is still incredibly traumatic), one of whom you accidentally killed in self defense (and as they died they have a speech about how it was YOUR FAULT, sending you into a panic attack), and two of whom died in a murder-suicide to resurrect your newfound friends… but your parents are mad at you because:

You are SLEEVELESS

You defended yourself using your martial prowess (instead of magic)

You got detention

[andrewsknives]

i’ll just put some of my thoughts here abt kev<3

what makes me really sad in aftg is that kevin is left alone at the end of the day. and before anyone says ‘but he has thea’ yeah, who was abused in the same ways as he was.

he’s left in the environment where he will never get better, because with thea at his side he will never understand how badly he was actually hurt and how much was stolen from him.

it breaks my heart that nora didn’t see him in a relationship with someone outside the exy entirely, someone who would be gentle with him, someone who would teach him to live a normal life, someone to show him that love doesn’t have to hurt and that a relationship is all about partnership.

because again back to thea, kevin doesn’t tell her things, he probably doesn’t think he can — she had to find out about his hand from LIVE TV!!!!! their relationship was all mutual attraction mostly based on fascination about one another’s exy skills. thea told kevin she’d wait for him to grow or whatever (i believe it was from extra content that we don’t have access to anymore so forgive me if im wrong) and then in her post about thea nora said thea was already starting to focus on building life without kevin when he joined the foxes, she literally didn’t gaf about him.

and it only makes me think about how kevin /carves/ the affection, the warmth of having other person always in the arm reach, how he clung to abby after the incident after kathy’s show in tfc, how betsy admitted to jean in tsc that kevin struggled to trust her at first but then opened up.

kevin day wants to get better. and i just wish he had the support to

[smokestarrules]

Why Caleb & Evelyn’s Absence is Good Writing

So if you don’t know me, I’m a big fan of Caleb and Evelyn (Clawthorne. Because I’m sure). I’m fascinated with their story -- I wrote an entire fic about them in 2022 before we even knew Evelyn’s name -- and I find them both incredibly interesting considering what is both shown about them and not. Despite that, I had a feeling that neither of them would make an appearance in Watching and Dreaming, and I was right. 

Understandably so, some people were disappointed with that decision, that they were hoping for an entire flashback scene or something close to it. But while that also appeals to me -- oh my god does it appeal to me -- I also really enjoy the intangibility of it all. 

So, I have three reasons as to why I like that Caleb and Evelyn didn’t show up again, which I’ll go through in no particular order. The rest of this post will be under a cut because it’ll probably get pretty lengthy. 

1) Haunting The Narrative

Half of Caleb and Evelyn’s intrigue comes from the fact that in the end, we really  don’t know all that much about them. Everything that we do know is from second-hand accounts at best and the rest of their story is up to your own singular interpretation; we only know the bare bones of their tale, but at the same time, they’re both extremely monumental to the main plot of the show. 

They’re hardly ever shown centered on-screen (in Evelyn’s case, never), and again, despite their huge impact on the characters and world even 400 years later, it’s part of their charm that... they’re mysterious. You’re not meant to know much about them, not meant to perceive them as normal characters. Caleb never speaks in the show, Evelyn hardly even appears, and in the end, they’re not meant to be understood. 

Caleb seems to have undergone some semblance of a redemption, but that’s only alluded to considering how he ends up dead; the implied is everything, and getting a concrete answer would, in my opinion, ruin part of what makes this story so fascinating. 

Of course, the biggest argument I’ve seen against this idea is that casual viewers of the show, the ones who don’t care about combing the background of Hollow Mind for lore about Emperor Belos’ big brother, will be confused without the lack of context. And... I disagree. 

Sure, maybe some people haven’t seen the portraits from Hollow Mind, but they’ve certainly seen Caleb when Gus went through Philip’s mind in King’s Tide. Maybe they missed the book about Grimwalkers in Labyrinth Runners, but they definitely caught Caleb in Philip’s diary during Elsewhere and Elsewhen. Then, in Thanks to Them, there’s an entire scene in which Masha very kindly gives an entire summary on the topic, tipping off both the main characters and anyone else in the audience who may be confused. 

The story’s all there, both in the background and in the forefront of the show, and it’s weaved in so beautifully that it’s hard for me to believe that anyone would see Caleb in For the Future (of which is a scene I will be talking about soon) and have absolutely no idea who he is. 

So in the end, I think having a more clear understanding of the going-ons that set everything into motion would be almost doing a disservice to the fans who have spent their time piecing things together and it’s also not really necessary in the first place. It’d be nice, and I’m sure I would have gone even more insane with more to analyze, but with the way this show has always portrayed Caleb and Evelyn, them fading into obscurity in the final episode just seems... fitting. 

2) Philip Doesn’t Really Deserve Closure

It’s a simple fact: Philip Wittebane is kind of a fucked-up guy. 

Besides a flashback scene, another idea for a potential Caleb and Evelyn appearance that I saw tossed around most was this: it’s the end, Philip’s about to be defeated, and in the interim, he sees his brother one last time. 

Either he’s given forgiveness or not, Caleb being present at his lowest moment would undoubtedly mean something to Philip; over the centuries he’s spent a significant amount of time trying to remake his brother -- to make him better -- and no matter how you feel about him, Philip is a tortured soul. Perhaps Caleb could help him accept his inevitable death, perhaps he could have one last chance for Philip to have a moment of genuine vulnerability. 

He’d die with the ghost of his brother and the ghost of his brother’s wife looking over him, and he’d die content... maybe. 

Or you can go the other route: 

On the other hand, maybe Philip goes to his death kicking and screaming the whole way, with Caleb and Evelyn staring him down as he’s ultimately annihilated for good. The tale of two brothers is over, and while Caleb is the one who perished first, centuries ago now, it’s Philip who is undoubtedly the one who loses in the end. 

The last thing Philip sees is his brother’s hateful, tired face, and he dies with that image. 

Of course, that’s the one that sounds better to me; Philip is not a villain you could ever redeem (a cruel upbringing will not excuse everything) and to even make an attempt at it would feel cheap and be completely unaligned with ToH’s core values, which actively (and correctly) condemn people like him. 

The problem with both of these ideas, different as they are, is that both of them give Philip a sense of closure that he simply does not deserve to have been rewarded with. Either way, he knows for sure how his brother would feel about him -- or, at the very least, how he believes his brother should feel about him -- and it’s just that, the knowing, that rubs me the wrong way. 

In the end, the last time Philip sees his brother is in this scene in For the Future, and it’s safe to say that there’s no actual closure or anything close to it here. Whether or not you believe this is actually Caleb or just Philip hallucinating him (personally I subscribe to the latter), it doesn’t really matter because the idea stays the same. 

Philip spends this scene snarling curses at his unyielding brother -- who seems to be, notably, his younger self, given his hair length -- while also actively melting away in front of his eyes. Philip is the one who’s alive, Philip is the one who (he believes) is on the right side of history, and yet Philip is also the one on his knees, his entire body disintegrating slowly due to his own choices. 

As the episode continues, it’s shown that Philip is seeing Caleb and the other Grimwalkers that he’s likely killed as well, and they’re clearly more of a taunt to his already-collapsing mental state than anything else. Again I reassert my opinion that they’re not actually there, that they’re simply Philip hallucinating in one of his weakest moments yet, and because of that, there is no answer given. 

They stare; he tells them to “Shut up” and they don’t react in the slightest. They watch and they stare and they dare him to care about them in any way and the entire scene is just... a precipice. Eventually they disappear for good, and Philip moves on without even trying to process this phenomenon. 

Basically what I'm saying is that Caleb appearing in Philip’s last moments would give him too much credit. And that actually leads us right into the final point I want to make, which is this: 

3) Caleb Wasn’t Actually That Important To Philip 

In the long run, at the very least. 

Now hear me out. When I say ‘important’, I don’t mean that what happened with Caleb didn’t have long-lasting effects on Philip, because that’s simply not true; otherwise, my entire last point would be meaningless. Obviously, it’s Caleb (and to a lesser extent, Evelyn) who can be credited with initially setting Philip down this path; Caleb was probably the most stable thing in Philip’s early life, and losing him in a way that felt like abandonment -- and then killing him -- is undoubtedly something that would stick with you for a lifetime, 400 years or not. 

But Caleb’s death is also largely an excuse. 

Much in the same way that “saving humanity” is an excuse for Philip to commit the atrocities he does, Caleb’s betrayal pushing him towards that path and his subsequent attempts at bringing him back are also an excuse. 

Here’s the thing: if Philip was genuinely passionate about remaking his brother -- but better -- then he’d care about the Grimwalkers more than he does. If Philip actually considered every Grimwalker a potential Caleb that he could just fix, then he would not have been able to dispose of them so coldly. There’s dozens of their corpses piled under the Skull, yet he only even commits to memory a rare few. Even Hunter, the closest to Caleb a Grimwalker’s ever gotten, was given a Sigil! A Sigil, which tells me that no matter what, no matter how perfect Hunter may have turned out, Philip was never going to let him survive the Day of Unity. 

True, there’s definitely a part of Philip that hates the Grimwalkers because they can’t be Caleb, at least not in the way he thinks he needs (which is impossible, but I digress) there’s also a part that I think is just... carrying on because this is what he’s done for the past few centuries. It’d feel like giving up on himself to give up on the prospect of having Caleb beside him again, but there’s no passion anymore. 

In the end, I think Papa Titan said it best:

“...That man doesn’t care about anything but his need to be the hero in his own delusion.” 

That’s exactly it. Philip believes himself as the hero of the story, as someone who’s been suffering for centuries but will one day finally get the ending that he deserves. He goes through all of this not because he wants to go home and not because he wishes he could return to the life he and his brother once had, but because he so desperately wants to believe in the delusion that he is a person doing all the things he does for good. 

You don’t live for over 400 years working towards a singular moment without at least having the thought that maybe what you’re doing is incorrect. But Philip has never let those supposed doubts stop him, and by the time the series is ending, nothing matters except his goal -- to see the destruction of every last witch and demon on the Boiling Isles.  

Which is why, in this final scene of his, there’s not a single mention of his brother. His brother, who he’s spent the last 400 years trying to save; his brother, who, by learning to be better, essentially kickstarted Philip’s entire goal, but it became so twisted so quickly as Philip subconsciously decided that he was the only one who could ever fix things. 

To put it simply: Philip’s only ever been concerned with himself. His idea of morality, his vision of the Boiling Isles, his opinions on the witches that live there. Nothing else matters; Caleb is a crutch to fall back on and so is the idea that Philip’s saving anyone, it’s all just more vindication to feed into his hero complex, because he’s the only one that really matters. He’s human and Luz is human and so they’re redeemable, but he stopped seeing Caleb as human the moment he saw him with Evelyn. 

In the end, I feel as if it’s almost safe to say that Caleb and Evelyn as constructs are more important to the all-encompassing plot than they are to Philip specifically; they set him on his path, sure, but his descent into madness almost feels inevitable, death of his brother or not. He blames his own misfortune on them, and the fact that they're never quite seen makes Philip’s villainous qualities that much more emphasized, I think. 

Overall, I loved Watching and Dreaming and I loved ToH and I think the characters of Caleb and Evelyn are some of the most haunting I’ve ever encountered, literally and metaphorically. 

Their story is largely up in the air, but it still gets told, you just have to look for it. That's their charm, that’s why they’re interesting to me, and that’s why I am content with getting the amount we got of them. 

[guided-by-stars]

Do you like ISAT? ⭐️ Are you looking for more media to get into? Did you stumble across this post because you’re into one of the other projects mentioned here? (If yes, play In Stars in Time!!)

I’ll be dividing this up into sections based on the content in various Acts, so spoilers for each individual section below! I’ll be trying to avoid as much spoilers as possible for the other projects referenced here, for obvious reasons, but some concepts and thematic threads will be mentioned in order to give context.

This isn't a complete list, I'm sure I'll think of some perfect things to add here after I've posted it...Also sorrry most of these are video games.

Long post, so it'll be under a cut (But PLEASE PLEASE take a quick glance at the visuals/pictures I've provided and see if anything looks cool!)

If you’ve played up to Acts 1 & 2:

⋆ ˚｡⋆౨ৎ˚ Madoka Magica ⋆౨ৎ˚⋆ ˚｡

Okay, this one's a little obvious if you know a bit of anything about both of these. It's definitely the most well known piece of media on this list. Puella Magi Madoka Magica, also known as PMMM or Madoka Magica, is a magical girl show. Directed by Akiyuki Shinbo & Yukihiro Miyamoto and produced by Magica Quartet, it centers around magical girls who have to battle witches, and only gain their powers through contracts with an alien being. This also gives them one wish. ***MINOR spoilers for Act 4 of ISAT, skip if needed...Wishes, huh? Powerful and dangerous wishes, huh?***

The writing has a lot of depth to it, the bonds between the characters are interesting, and the narrative weight they have placed on their shoulders to save the world...well!

I have an important other reason why ISAT fans may really enjoy this series, but it would spoil a lot of the series... so first, some visuals, because this show is beautiful.

Okay, now spoilers for Episode 10. These are pretty big spoilers, so avoid if you care about that sort of thing. I don't personally think it ruins the series to know about beforehand, but you do lose some of the surprise. ***Spoilers for Ep. 10 of PMMM, skip if needed: Well! It's a timeloop show. Specifically a timeloop centering one person who's terrified of loosing the person they love and prone to obsession.***

You can watch it on Crunchyroll, or you could watch it illegally on a few different pirating sites, it's not exactly obscure. There's the series, but also multiple movies. There's also a new movie coming out in 2025! Exciting!

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ 1BitHeart ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

1bitheart, created by Miwashiba and produced by PLAYISM, is a ?visual novel? I suppose. There are other mechanics besides just talking to people (mystery solving, gifting, walking), but that's the best way I can describe it. In 1bitheart, you experience the world through Nanashi's eyes, a severely agoraphobic guy. I feel like if you like Siffrin, you'll probably find him interesting. Honestly, I don't have much more to say here...just that the vibes of this game feel like something many ISAT fans might enjoy.

If you like dialogue and character building, then maybe give it a look! There's one more spoilery reason why you might find it interesting, but it's a major spoiler for BOTH games...so. I'll leave that for you to discover.

Visuals:

You can buy 1bitheart here:

☆ The Endless Empty ☆

The Endless Empty, created by Erik Sheader-Smith, is another artistic RPG game with themes of suicidality, imagery of stars, and a fascinating battle system. It's very...scrapbook diary nightmare anatomical textbook, if that makes sense. It's short, inexpensive, obscure, and delightful, in my opinion. Guys. This is good.

Visuals:

Buy it here:

𓐟◇ OFF ◇𓐟

I see a lot of people around who are into both ISAT and OFF!, which I find supremely unsurprising. Both are created by French devs (OFF by Mortis Ghost), steeped in that background, unique RPG battle system (many enemies in this game are basically Sadnesses), limited palette (and often black & white) and [killed for spoilers].

I find the translation writing fascinating, personally. There's a lot you can dig out of here.

Visuals:

Get it here:

๑ï🌧Mr Rainer’s Solve-It Service🌧๑ï

Easily the most obscure game on this list, Mr Rainer's, created by Etherane, is an incredible game that's more of a visual novel than a text based adventure. The worldbuilding of the story is fascinating, and the characters are compelling. The story ends with SO MANY unanswered questions and mysteries, which is another reason why it fascinates me so.

Like ISAT, Mr Rainer's is a game pretty much entirely in black, white, and red, about an amnesiac hooded figure who doesn't remember their past and is INCREDIBLY fucking hungry constantly, a story with multiple endings, a story about identity and belonging and being the only one of your kind in a strange land, a story about grief and life and touch and connection and cycles of pain...

Please give it a chance, I have absolutely nobody to talk to about this game. It's only 5 hours and it's only (around) five dollars...

Visuals:

You can get it here!:

If you’ve played the whole game + 2Hats (DO NOT READ ON IF YOU HAVE NOT DONE 2HATS!!! I AM WARNING YOU!!!):

⚂ ⊹.🂱 Yugioh (Specifically the Toei series and Duel Monsters)⊹. 🂱 ⚂

Well! Here it is! The series about friendship, "other you's", "you see everything I do and you know how my body reacts to things", "you’re me but also not me but also another me but also you’re NOTHING like me", "facade sees facade in the eyes and Knows" and [spoilers for Yugioh redacted].

Guys if you don't gaf about card games, in the Toei series they are an extremely small aspect of the show and other games (like Tamagotchi) are similarly important!

It's got a fucked up by grief and trauma guy who does morally grey stuff and is fixated on his own past and really does just deep down Want to be Useful!! It's also got a codependent protector who really needs to be protected! It's got GAMES!!! SO MANY GAMES!!! and DRAMA!

Visuals:

(Toei)

(Duel Monsters)

Watch Toei series here: (WARNING!! THE EPISODES ARE NOT IN ORDER! BE CAREFUL!)

You can watch Duel Monsters many places, both legally and illegally.

⟳⏱︎ Start Again, duh! ⏱︎⟳

If you've only played ISAT but not Start Again (You know who the dev is...), you might think there's little of value there besides additional dialogue, but you'd be entirely wrong. Not only is this LOOP's story (and valuable to examine because of that), but the House is quite different, there's unique art, and there's different endings as well. PLAY START AGAIN START AGAIN START AGAIN: A PROLOGUE!!! YOU WILL NOT REGRET IT!

Visuals:

Get it here:

✧♥ Hello Charlotte series ♥✧

Hello Charlotte, also created by Etherane, is an incredible series, and one of the three most impactful game series I've ever encountered. The amount of unexpected developments that happen...I couldn't possibly understand where the game was going until everything clicked at once. Personally I think it's a masterpiece of storytelling.

Another artistic RPG maker game- so of course the art is beautiful. There's a battle system...in one of the games...yeah it's rudimentary. It's more of an exploration/puzzle game than anything. It's more of a STORY than anything. I would really really really hate to spoil this game, but what I will say, is there's a reason why I put it in the 2hats section. A very good reason. Pleaseee check it out it's so much content for so incredibly cheap. Criminally cheap. You will become incredibly attached to Charlotte.

Visuals:

Get the first game here (name your price!):

EP 2:

EP 3:

[beatriceeagle]

@tevyaa sent an ask with a snippet from "something just broke" for DVD commentary. Unfortunately due to the nature of the fic, even a very short snippet takes up a massive amount of space (and the formatting limitations of the ask box make it very difficult to parse) so I'm making a separate post for it.

Commentary under the cut. (Since this fic heavily includes diegetic bolded text, my commentary will be indented.) Tragically, it doesn't seem possible to right-align text on Tumblr, so apologies for any confusion about who's speaking.

Given the subject matter of the fic, be advised that there's a whole lot of discussion of sexual assault below.

"unstoppable mofos in masks" group chat

Donna I have a question I'd like to throw to the chat

Would you be comfortable with male survivors in here?

There was a version of this fic that dug into the gendered experience of sexual assault a lot more, but I ended up mostly cutting that thread for being a) not totally relevant to the broader point I was making, b) very difficult to untangle the Watsonian and Doyleist implications of, and as a result c) something that I wasn't totally sure what I wanted to say about. Some of that material ended up in "this year's love." Some of it is still floating around in my brain.

I left this particular conversation less because I had something to say with it, and more because it felt like something these particular characters would bring up.

Mia are they unstoppable mofos in masks? because if not could be a problem

Firenza I assume this is someone you know and trust not to fuck up too badly?

I'm really proud of "Firenza Hale" as a secret identity name for a fire-based superhero.

Donna I do

Barbara I'll vouch for him too.

I hope everyone appreciates that Barbara and Bruce are the only characters in the fic who end every sentence with a period.

Firenza Then I'm okay with it

Donna Mia, I’m assuming you were trying to say you don’t mind?

Mia 👍

Donna And Kory already said she’s okay

Okay, I’ll add him

Donna Troy added Dick Grayson

Mia no fucking way

oh wow that was super not okay sorry

I have read some of Mia's run in Green Arrow, but not nearly as much as I have of many of the other characters, so although I have a sense of her personality, I was very worried that I might have totally missed the mark with her. My general sense from the reaction I've gotten is that I did not at the very least TOTALLY miss it, which is a great relief. I bring that up mostly because, for obvious reasons, this is the moment that I worried most about. It did very much feel like a moment that needed to be acknowledged, though, and Mia seemed like the right choice of person to do so.

Dick Hey Mia 😎

I assume you’re the one who named the chat?

Mia like it?

Dick It’s amazing

-----

"unstoppable mofos in masks" group chat

Here's the level of picky that I get about writing: In this fic, I tried not to have the same characters/medium twice in a row, so for instance I tried not to have a newspaper article followed immediately by another newspaper article, or a Donna conversation followed by another Donna conversation. And TO THIS DAY it bugs me that I didn't find something to go in between these two group chat snippets.

Firenza Hey, does anyone know anything about Lois Lane?

She approached me to talk to her for an article about the JLA's response or lack thereof

Her work seems good, but I wanted to be thorough

Barbara Lois is on the up-and-up

Missed a period here. I should probably go back and fix that.

Donna She is JLA-adjacent, which is probably technically a conflict, but you know how that goes

The journalistic ethics of the superhero world fascinate me to no end.

Firenza She actually told me that

Donna Well I think she's a great reporter who's interested in the truth

Dick This is a pro-Lois Lane household

Apartment

Whatever

Firenza Okay, that's all very reassuring

Btw I know she's looking for other vigilantes to talk to, anonymously or otherwise

-----

Texts between Barbara Gordon and Stephanie Brown

So, have you decided about Bruce?

nope

stuck in unending indecisive hell

Steph and Mia have similar texting styles because they're modeled after the younger Gen Z texters I know. Steph uses slightly more punctuation than Mia because I tried to make everyone's personal style slightly different. (I also tried to think about how different social circles would affect each other's styles. The OG Titans grew up together and stay in frequent contact, so they write similarly! And so on!)

I may have a compromise option for you. Or at least, something that you could do to test how you feel.

??

Lois Lane is doing a story on the JLA's general culture and response to abuse and assault. You could talk to her about your general feelings—and you could do it anonymously.

She probably wouldn't print specific accusations without more evidence, but you're not sure you want to do that anyway.

So it could be a way of saying *something* without having to decide whether you want to say *everything* yet.

I thought the Steph subplot was important to include because this is fundamentally a fic about the SYSTEMS that allow sexual assault to flourish, and systems that allow sexual assault will also allow other kinds of abuse. I also knew that I wanted the fic to end with everything not totally tied up and neatly resolved, and this was an obvious choice for a loose thread to remain.

that's… an idea

i'll think about it

[dear-wormwoods]

Rising from the dead to express a thought I had at the gym the other day while listening to IT again. I don’t know if anyone is still around to read this, and this post will probably be a bit incoherent, but - here it goes:

Okay, so we all know that Eddie feels a ‘rot’ inside him and that’s why he relates to the leper and goes back to Neibolt to put himself in the leper’s shoes before IT shows up.

I’ve written about this a few times over the years, so I don’t need to get too deep into it, but Eddie’s fascination with Neibolt only begins after he finds out that the leper doesn’t actually have leprosy but syphilis, at least according to Richie, and that the STD can be transmitted between men, not just men and women. It’s only then that his experience with the hobo transforms from a scary encounter with sexual overtones to something he identifies with in a way that’s confusing to him. He takes the feeling of ‘badness’ he’s had his whole life (see: church/toilet anecdote and shoplifting sign anecdote) and applies it to something he can actually visualize - physical rot, like he witnessed on the leper. He subconsciously associates the sexual nature of the leper’s disease with his own feelings - the rot is tied to sexuality, which IT used to target Eddie. The reason all this is relevant to THIS post is that Eddie is never able to express his thoughts and feelings in a way that is helpful or healing for him - he spends his entire life subconsciously repressing his sexuality, and thus is never able to rid himself of that ‘rotting from the inside’ feeling.

Which brings me to the scene I want to actually write about: the scene where Bill and Richie talk about Georgie’s death.

Like Eddie, Bill is weighed down by something rotting inside him - his feeling of guilt over Georgie’s death and thinking he’s responsible because he’s the one who made the paper boat. Unlike Eddie, Bill is able to voice his feelings, and voicing them allows him to let them go. He unloads on Richie, and subsequently receives some comfort, albeit not the best comfort because Richie is not very nurturing. Specifically, Bill feels clean after that release, which I’ll come back to in a bit.

On the same page, still on the subject of Georgie, Bill expresses that maybe Georgie didn’t know that Bill never meant for him to die, to which Richie responds:

This idea that death is like a window and everything becomes clear when you die, including knowing what others think and feel, seems like a relatively unimportant line at first glance. It definitely seems like Richie is making shit up - the closest line I could find to what he’s talking about is in Corinthians I, but that verse isn’t about death, it is about love and doesn’t mention any windows, only a mirror. Richie is just talking out of his ass. To be honest, I never paid this quote any mind any other time I’ve read or listened to the book. This time it jumped out to me because —

The concept returns upon Eddie’s death! Now, obviously Eddie’s death is incredibly important and meaningful because it symbolizes self acceptance in his last moments, but I never realized before that the window imagery had come up in the text previously.

As Eddie’s dying, both the ‘clean’ feeling Bill felt and the clarity Richie described come into play. This is the first time in Eddie’s life that he feels the ‘impurities’ leaving him. His death is cleansing him of his rot, allowing him to accept himself in a way he never has before. In addition, he’s able to see through a clear window and bask in the light of it, which, if what Richie said is true, means that he now has a true understanding of what others think and feel about him. This adds another layer to Eddie’s death that I never realized before - he is suddenly aware that the other Losers love and accept him for who he is, because he has that death clarity, and not only does that allow him to let go of his own pain and confusion (the rot), it almost allows him to voice his own feelings.

Richie loves him. The other Losers do too, but Richie is the one talking to him, the one he’s looking at in this moment, the one whose face he touches before he dies. He wants to voice his own love, because now that he’s let go of his self doubt he finally CAN, but dies before he’s able to.

The full Corinthians verse Richie MAY have been referring to before is often read at weddings:

Now, Richie was obviously inventing shit when he was comforting Bill, but there is something to be said for this verse re: Eddie’s death. It was not just about self acceptance, it was about accepting love from others and giving it in return.

After the fight is over, after ‘but he knew well enough’, when the Losers are back outside, this moment occurs:

Love overcomes everything, it’s the only thing that lasts, the thing that allows for full clarity and ‘knowing’.

All this dot connecting is to say that Eddie was going to say ‘you know I love you’, not ‘you know I hate that’.

[ryuichirou]

Replies

More replies! Related to our posts from yesterday + a couple of JadeSil ones from a while ago.

Anonymous asked:

I guess Sebek will be annoyed on waking up in the morning with Silver only to realized animals are around.

lol yeah, imagine falling asleep with Silver and waking up to that one scene from Bambi where all the animals greet the new prince. Things Sebek has to get used to….

hipsterteller asked:

Welp at least they didn’t find a skeleton

You mean… under the birdies?! Spooky..!

Anonymous asked:

Poor Jamil can't catch a break even at clubs.. (he secretly loves it, don't tell anyone lol he's shy)

- basketball poly asker

(this is related to a reply from yesterday)

Yeeeah, it’s probably better for Jamil when he gets pestered by these boys: this way he gets to have some action but also don’t proactively seek it out lol But of course the thought itself would never occur to Jamil! It’s all his subconscious mind.

Anonymous asked:

Hehe...imagine Azul seeing Jamil and Ace together. Another jealously alert. Even better, Jamil, Ace, and Floyd together.

Azul would get jealous with anyone who gets close to Jamil probably lol So with Ace it would be the same scenario as it is with Ruggie: he’s confused about Jamil’s choice and tries to win him over.

And with Floyd, well, Azul would just have to shut up and be patient and hope that Floyd gets bored of Jamil… because if he tells Floyd to stop, Floyd is just going to cling to Jamil even more :(

Anonymous asked:

Hi! I’m that JadeSil shipper from that one ask, is it okay if you can give some hcs on how would Silver’s first time would go if it was with Jade?

+

Anonymous asked:

I have Jade/Sil brainrot after seeing some other people talk about it…(and totally not because I am dirty minded)

What if one day Silver was eating Mushroom Risotto but it had a “special” mushroom (courtesy of Jade)  which had an aphrodisiac-like effect. Silver eventually asks Jade for help on why he feels so weird…and you can imagine how the rest goes

Sorry it took me so long to reply, Anon! Or are you two different Anons..? In any case, I’m sorry for taking so much time and for not giving a satisfying answer: since these two aren’t a ship we’re very invested in, even though we like it in theory, I won’t come up with any headcanons, but I’ll share my thoughts…. Because when I started to think about their first time, the setup I came up with was pretty much the same as what was mentioned in this second ask lol

Since the main theme/motif of their relationship that I always think about is mushrooms, I think the whole thing will start with Jade’s fascination with Silver’s appetite for mushrooms and his appreciation of them. And for a very long time, he would simply feed him without adding anything suspicious to it, but then he’ll notice just how good Silver is at describing the differences between different kinds of mushrooms Jade uses for the risotto. So of course he’s going to be tempted to feed him a “special mushroom”…

Poor Silver would be so conflicted. He never expected to get poisoned, and Jade seems deeply concerned as well… but is he really?  And would Jade really make such a mistake?

So yeah, long story short, Silver’s instinct would probably be to try to get back to his room and hide there until he gets better, but the poison is too strong, and with all his actions and words being just a big blur, he’ll end up having sex with Jade.

Jade is going to be surprised y Silver though, because while he knows that a lot of what’s going on is due to aphrodisiac (that was the whole idea), some of the things just seemed way too “natural”: Silver’s body is clearly used to having intense and lengthy sex, his movements are very intentional and he even has some noticeable preferences. Silver wouldn’t say a word during their first time (he just couldn’t articulate – he was too aroused), but his body language spoke volumes. Jade would probably be quite intrigued by him…

(whoops I guess I wrote it in a way that it isn't Silver's first time, I just noticed that...sorry!!)

[effervescentism]

I have… so many thoughts about Harry Potter it’s actually embarrassing so I’ll be spewing them here 🫶

FOR REFERENCE: Fuck (is cursing bad here??) JKR. Her ideology is shit and I hate her but I will be talking about HP because the character building is decent and interesting to build off of

With that in mind: Tom Riddle & Voldemort (I’m separating them since I will talk about both differently)

TOM RIDDLE: Honestly Tom is one of the most interesting characters in HP solely because of the information given about him. The only time we see him in childhood is completely through Dumbledore (who I don’t hate but definitely is a capital b biased person that I also wanna explore in another post but).

The memories mostly comprase of the whole wardrobe on fire scene (awful way of introducing magic to a child btw) and Tom’s penchant for stealing items from children at Wools Orphanage and harming Billy’s rabbit as revenge. For me, this set the scene as a child that is trying to gain and find power wherever and however, possible. I think that his experience in Wools formed him into a Survior, willing to do anything to find power he feels he was deserved. We also see this kind of behavior when he goes to Hogwarts, forms the Knights, and so forth. This blatant disregard for everyone around him and his singlemindness to get to the top does kind of resonate of ASPD (Anti-social personality disorder) to me (not like a medical professional so take lightly).

I do think that Dumbledore’s whole thing about Amortentia and unable to feel love is kind of B.S. because it feels like a cheap way to say that he was doomed from the beginning. It doesn’t make sense considering how would it even work to create a child incapable of feeling just love? (Weirdo magic thing probably since potions usually aren’t based on a lot of logic) but you would think that it would be illegal, not just banned at Hogwarts if creating it in the first place if that’s a possible side effect. It seems like an excuse of why Dumbledore fundamentally thought something was wrong with him even as a small child (more of dumbledore’s rigid thinking). Also, there was little to no mental health services in the world as far as aware- especially in 1930s it was greatly unlikely that either world would have any access to them. This makes Tom’s conditions, whether it be a mental disorder or just traumatic issues from growing up feeling unwanted and both of his parents gone, difficult to understand especially for a man terrified of making the same mistakes from his youth.

Only other information that we have is from the diary, which does not actually reveal a lot about his exact life or memories. We can see that he is clearly a charming, influential person, although some of the influence might be a side effect from the horcruxes nature, and we see that he obviously knows how to manipulate people and get what he wants. He has a clear blood bias that we see, and he also clearly detest being a half blood in contexts when he talks about his “filthy” muggle father. He also seems to kind of have a superiority complex that only gets further in as he goes farther in the horcrux path, (greatest wizard of all time, etc). Although it’s assumed that he’s already created his first horcrux and the after effect is the diary, but we actually don’t know. I do wonder if this kind of overly confident shade of him was done after he split his soul in a two or if it was him naturally.

He also, has this clear fear of death that is why he created the horcrux assumably, but this is likely onset by the blitz and his want to stay at Hogwarts full-time (which is such an interesting parallel between him and Harry it’s obvious that they are supposed to be parallel characters, but the direct comparison between two scared children is truly fascinating and how dumbledore deals with it is eye-opening).

All that I have talked about are most of the actual facts surrounding Tom Riddle and his youth, but I also do have opinions. It’s clear that because of his Muggle-sounding name (riddle isn’t on the pure blood 28 list and likely not recognizable to purebloods) that he was probably treated badly in his first years before he could gain real power (from his studies and his heritage). I do wonder what he did if there was people that did that to him? Did he try to take revenge on them, or did he just rely on the fact that he is superior to them (in insert ways) so he cannot be harmed by them. 

What i find interesting, that I feel like a lot of fans misinterpret, is his personal beliefs. It’s assumed that he hated muggles & muggleborns to an extent, he talks about filthy Muggles, blood purity, and all of his politics hinge around those ideals. He clearly goes with pureblood ideology, and he leads a pseudo cult that is about exterminating muggles & muggleborns from society. But, he is a halfblood. which makes me wonder what was his true reason for doing all of this. Since to truly believe these ideals, he would have to consider himself lower than purebloods, something that he would never do. Was it for power, a mix of both or did he just kind of turn insane after too many splitting of a fundamental part of him? Also ends up working with multiple magical creatures, such as werewolves, and dementors making me believe either that was a false agreement, or he believes them to be semi-equals, which is also contradictory to the rest of the pure blood beliefs. It’s a question I can’t answer but undoubtably his blood & origin makes a major impact on his decisions, especially regarding Halloween and the prophecy.

Overall, he is a fascinating character to examine in his youth, and although I think we make too much distinction between him and Voldemort, since they are truly two sides of the exact same coin and acting like they are different people is smoke and mirrors, I feel that if we don’t distinct between them, we will lose a lot of interesting discussions. Tom did make the decision to split his soul, but did he actively participate in some of the stuff father along when more horcruxs were made? Or was that only Voldemort? When does the line between Tom riddle and Voldemort begin to blur and when does it fade? Ultimately, Tom is a good jumping point to wonder about choices in life. For how much emphasis Dumbledore places on the power of love, I truly think choices and decisions ruled the difference between Harry and Tom because they were in essence so so similar yet so different and that’s what makes me interested in the both of them.

if any of you liked this one, I’ll do dumbledore and Voldemort (or I’ll do it out of my own volition when I get too bored lmao)

[covenofthearticulate]

*breaks in through your window*

AIR CATCHER 2 PLEASE

WIP Titles

ehehehehehe YEEEAAAHHHHH this one is a long time in the making— I had originally wanted to do a one-year anniversary celebration and post a follow up fic on the same day, but since June is right around the corner there’s no way I’m going to make it LOL but I’ll gush about it anyway!!!

I really am interested in an Air Catcher sequel that in some ways mirrors the same plot beats of the original except Louis’ and Lestat’s roles are switched, so it’s Louis experiencing a bit of sub drop and Lestat experiencing top drop. Idk like it seems like a straightforward sort of premise, just a classic dom/sub scene, but I’m just never not fascinated by Louis and Lestat’s power dynamic and how they are constantly finding new ways to save each other and also to fail one another.

I think Lestat’s relationship to power is incredibly tricky, and given the context of their previous relationship, Louis’ decision to lend that power to him is also tenuous at times. To me, the stakes are actually much higher in this dynamic simply because Lestat has hurt Louis so many times in the past (that's not to say Louis hasn't hurt him as well but...[insert standard Abusive Relationship Acknowledgement/Disclaimer Here]). So on the one hand, I'm imagining this incredibly overwhelming scene where their communication is probably terrible and they trust one another but they have an enormous amount of baggage. But on the other hand, I also really want to explore what it might look like for them to experience the high that leads to the sub drop in the first place!! Especially since the original fic was written in that sort of period where human sex is still fairly novel, like I want to really dig in to the idea of Lestat learning what drives Louis crazy, how to really push him and get him past the point of logical thought and into that sub space to begin with!!!

ANYWHO I don't have a snippet because I haven't started writing it lmfao I'm still braindead from all the brain cells I dedicated to Open Wide but this has been on my docket for a long time so I'm really hoping to at least get it started soon!!!!

[three-semicolons]

I wish this fandom cared more about Aang.

I love every single character in A:TLA. In fact, I don’t think I have a favorite or least favorite character because all are balanced so well. But there are floods of video essays about Toph, Katara, Sokka, and god forbid even mentioning one or the members of the Fire Nation royal family. If anything, Zuko’s character has begun to grate on me over the years because he’s just so… overdone. Like a rich 3-star Michelin meal eaten over and over and over again until your arteries turn to butter emulsions and you just want a salad.

The exception is Aang. Fanart of him is by far the least prominent — especially when excluding group shots and romantic scenes. Searching for video essays, it wasn’t just that there were few; there were none. The only content I could find exclusively about his arc was a critique of the finale.

And on that note, it’s exclusively Aang’s flaws that are fixated on while others go forgiven, and all of the most fascinating parts of his character are either cast aside or given to another person entirely. Aang is childish and hesitant and matured and humbled. He’s haunted by the weight of his title and the guilt surrounding the genocide of his people (which, hot take, is by far the most tragic backstory in my opinion, but at the levels of trauma these characters have experienced, comparison becomes pretty irrelevant), and yet throughout the series finds the strength to assume his role with the support of those he loves.

For a fandom that produces ten “gaang-reacts-to-the-pretty-obvious-origins-of-zukos-scar” fics every day and half a dozen other explorations of characters’ trauma a week, how come the burden of expectations on the boy whose culture was eradicated by his failures is left so unexplored? How come nobody cares?

Idk. I’m not upset that any other character is getting love. I love Zuko and Katara and Sokka and Toph and Azula and Ty Lee and every one else so, so much. But I love Aang too, and it upsets me that I’m seemingly so alone in this.

It occurs to me in retrospect that this may partially be due to shipping. Ive always disliked romance in fiction and Avatar’s is no exception. It makes a lot of the relationship content unrelatable, but that’s perhaps the greatest portion of ATLA fandom output. Seeing as Aang is a literal child and not much of a “stud” by most standards, I understand why the various edgy 2008 emo kids got all the hype. I get it. But it makes me sad regardless that such a shallow interpretation of media has been allowed to dominate so much.

I’ll probably make more posts like this but I’m done for now. I made this blog just to vent my frustrations in the ether. Man, I’m bummed.

[becomingabeing]

Love in the Big City: Reflections on Part 1

For context, this is the first time I am reading this story and I haven’t proceeded beyond the first part yet. I’m sure I’ll revisit these ideas once I’ve read the entire book.

As I finished Part 1 of Love in the Big City, a few strains of thought stood out for me. This got long so I'm putting it under the break.

First, the sarcastic, cynical and sometimes acidic nature of the prose. The narrator reads much like a jaded man in his mid-to-late twenties. As @twig-tea has pointed out, the “disaffected tone was intentional and also unreliable.” The narration keeps readers at a distance from the narrator’s more vulnerable feelings while simultaneously drawing us into his internal world with his sharp commentary as if we’re in on this joke together. 

Of course, there is the queer platonic relationship that starts off this recollection of the four great loves of the narrator’s life. @doyou000me @lurkingshan @bengiyo and others have brilliantly explored this dynamic. I love that the novel starts with this relationship as a sort of frame of reference for what’s to come. The narrator’s heartbreak following his breakup with Jaehee and getting left behind by the one who taught him “every season is its own beautiful moment” is painfully palpable. 

Next, the tense dialectic of anonymity and visibility that is present throughout Part 1, and I suspect the remainder of the book. This 2011 article on queer representation in Korean film put it succinctly: “For now, gays and lesbians in South Korea live and work under a dual system: privately out of and publicly in the closet.”

Related to this, I have some thoughts on citizenship and belonging I’ll probably make a separate post for.

While the shield of invisibility can protect us when we’re living in homophobic society (speaking from personal experience), it is nonetheless an act of erasure. There is a subversive agency in the liminal existence practised by the narrator, his “fuck you” to societal mores and his dogged opposition of tradition. But it is highly isolating. Even the person he considered his partner-in-crime “forever” leaves him behind when the pressures of heteronormative milestones come calling.

Again, the narrator himself admits he isn’t exactly closeted but he doesn't protest the homophobic comments of the male nurses at the clinic, holds his tongue around the straight people at Jaehee’s wedding and of course, he’s extremely hurt by Jaehee’s betrayal when she outs him (though that is more about his best friend abandoning him because of her shifting priorities as @lurkingshan notes here).

Then we have the titular “big city” which I believe is shaping up to be a character in itself. Yes, I read reviews and “spoiled” myself – the NPR review mentions the narrator and his partner taking walks all over Seoul and how that plays into the public/private dichotomy.

It reminds me of another favourite book of mine, Amruta Patil’s graphic novel Kari. In Kari, the queer protagonist navigates her sexual and gender identities vis-a-vis navigating the sprawling metropolis of Bombay. There too readers will find a fascinating tension between the public and the private, especially as it applies to a persecuted minority. I’ll be looking out for this thread as I read further.

Finally, going forward I will be thinking about the idea of queer failure. In The Naked Civil Servant Quentin Crisp writes, “If at first you don’t succeed, failure may be more your style.” 

Failure, in this context, is not a failing but a subversion of heteronormative capitalist measures of success. The queer subject has been epistemologically tied to negativity, nonsense, anti-production and alienation. Rather than escaping the structural associations of queerness with negativity and lack, a certain type of queer art embraces it and works it into its unique perspective. I get a sense of that from the narrator’s series of “failures” (in love, sex, career, military conscription) in the eyes of heteronormative society. This applies to Jaehee as well – even when she marries she speaks of a “contract” to have no babies thus failing to reproduce the family unit (as a microcosm of the nation) that is the ultimate goal of an “ideal” heterosexual marriage. 

Now, whether this conception of queer failure holds true for this narrative remains to be seen.

[i-am-just-a-skeleton]

oh before i forget, i wanted to post something for @maycuryweek

this is the first scene of an AU i've been working on for a while (which i Still don't have a name for). Sorry if the formatting's a little odd i've never posted fic on tumblr before

Brian hadn’t expected to find anyone else up in the tower, especially not at this time of night. So when he opened the door to see a girl about his age sitting in the window, he nearly dropped his candle in surprise. “Oh dear, I’m sorry, I didn’t know anyone w-” The girl startled at his words, jumping up from her seat.

“Who- Your Highness!” She quickly began to collect the drawing paper and pencils left behind her in the window seat.

“Don’t do that, I only wanted to look at the stars a bit, you can stay if you like. Or you can leave, you- you don’t have to though, I’m sorry, I-” To his surprise, she had started laughing. He stared, not sure what to make of the outburst.

“I’m sorry, that was terribly rude of me. Only, you looked so funny, all pale and wavering in the candlelight, like a nervous little ghost.”

At that, Brian couldn’t help but crack a smile himself, relaxing enough to approach and sit on the opposite end of the window seat. “I’m Brian”

She laughed again, in a way that implied she had obviously already known his name, but found his insistence at maintaining politeness to be amusing. “I’m Melina. Do you come up here often, then?”

“Not really. Well, sort of? About once a week I think. Er. Sorry”

She waved away his apology, shuffling the papers in her hands. “Probably no surprise we bumped into each other eventually, then. I’ve been up most nights the past week. I’m trying to draw the view from the tower, but in another day or two the moon will be too far gone and I’ll have to wait until next month for the light to be bright enough again.” She sighed dramatically at that and gestured out the window. He followed her hand, looking down instead of up as usual.

“Oh!” He pressed closer to the glass, trying to take in the whole of the view at once. Below the tower, the castle gardens spread out like a tapestry. The hedges and paths traced delicate lines across the whole thing, and the pond made a perfect mirror at the far end, shimmering in the moonlight. “It’s beautiful. I’ve never… I hadn’t really paid much attention to it before.”

“Really? Then what have you been doing up here?”

“I’ve, um.” Brian ducked his head, looking out into the garden rather than at his newfound companion. “I’ve been looking at the stars. I found this book in the library, that talks about their positions, and how they can be used for navigation, and how they change throughout the seasons. It’s very interesting.” He stopped there, still staring out the window. Now she would laugh at him again, and say that spending his nights mooning away over stars was a silly thing to do, and-

“Oh, that sounds fascinating!” He looked up with a start.

“It does?”

She looked at him a little oddly, but smiled and said: “Yes, it does. Tell me about it?”

"Oh! Well, um, what do you want to know?"

"Hmmm... tell me about your favourite star?"

"It's not a star, exactly, or not a single star at least. It looks like one from here, but with a telescope you can see it’s really three all together. There’s a sketch of what they look like in the chapter about wizards’ stars- that’s stars they use for magic, I’m not sure how though because the book doesn’t go into very much detail on that. I suppose you’d have to be a wizard to know the specifics. Anyway, those are called the Shifters because they have to do with transformation magic. You can see them now, they’re just there." Brian gestured for Melina to move closer so he could point out the stars’ location.

“Is that them? Up above the trees there?”

Brian nodded happily. “Yes, and if you look there…” He pointed up to the sky again, and set off explaining the nearby constellations.

---

It was only when the edge of the sky started to grow grey that he realised just how long they’d been sat there. Melina blinked sleepily at him when he stopped in the middle of a sentence, and then glanced out the window where he was looking.

“Oh, it’s gotten- early, hasn’t it?” She collected her drawing papers from the seat beside her as Brian hummed a response. “Someone’s probably going to be looking for us soon, we’d better get back downstairs before they do.”

[gurokichi]

I could never become bored of you, not that easily, at least! You are my Bon, you can't get rid of me that easily <3

Yeah, I got 2 kitties! Both of them are boys, and their names are Pickle and Bean! Maybe one day you'll get to see pictures of them! I also have a dog, snails, isopod, beetles, chickens, and hermit crabs! Got a bit of a zoo around here!

I'll definitely watch some of your suggestions, and I will be sure to tell you my thoughts! Just another excuse to talk to you!

I will hopefully be posting on my blog again soon, and I am so excited to now that I know you will be watching my blog (˶˃ ᵕ ˂˶)

I mainly read fiction, distopian, and horror/gore. But also, like when books have lgbt+ characters, and have read a few Manga! I just borrowed a book from a friend called "The Corpse Queen" by Heather M. Herrman, I strongly suggest it, I've also just started reading a GL Manga series called "Whisper Me a Love Song" and so far have been really enjoying it!!! I like plants in many ways, I learn about plants, I grow both indoor and outdoor plants, and I have a fascination with all living or once living things,,, and they happen to fit in that category too!!! I don't think I could pick just one flower as my favorite, but I do enjoy Asters a lot! Bleeding hearts? awe, it makes sense that a sweetie like you would love a poisonous flower!

What video games do you like to play? I'd love to hear all about your current favorite game! What part of history do you like so much? Oh and you collect things too! I would love to hear all about your little hoards 💕

-Dolly

I’M YOUR BON?? ASJHFSHBHKHGSGHFHJKSHLJS (＞＜)

Okay. Anyways. Sorry, got a lil excited there... I’m your Bon, and you’re my Doll!! All mine!!! I’m glad to hear that you wouldn’t get bored and leave. I’d do anything to make sure my precious doll stays with me!

AWH, they sound so darling. You have so many… how do you keep up with all of them??That’s really cool, though! You definitely have some uncommon pets.

I’m excited to hear your thoughts (๑>◡<๑)

I will definitely be watching my doll’s blog! How could I not? Anyone would find it hard to take their eyes off you. Besides, I’d love to see more of your posts when you decide to go back to it.

Ah, those are all good genres! Thank you for the recommendation, and I’ll check out the manga you mentioned later. Asters are gorgeous; my doll has great taste in flowers!!

I usually prefer games with long stories. I like RPGs and visual novels the most! I find pixel art really nice to look at, so a lot of my favorite games feature that. I’ve been playing through a farming sim called Fields of Mistria lately; it’s been really enjoyable so far! The best way I could describe it is as a mix of Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing. As for my current favorite games, they’re probably… Minecraft, Danganronpa, Persona 5 Royal, and Identity V. I’m not finished playing through P5R, but I like it so far. I’m currently replaying and trying to get all achievements in every Danganronpa game! I’ve finished Trigger Happy Havoc, and I’m now working on Goodbye Despair. Having a bit of trouble though, because I have a friend I’m sharing my Steam library with who is ALSO playing through the Danganronpa games. I can’t play the games until they get off, bleh. AH, I also started a playthrough of Red Dead Redemption 2. I suck ass at it. I ended up punching my horse when trying to get on it. I also drew my gun on it multiple times. So sorry to my horse, it did not deserve that. It took me like 10 minutes and frantic googling to figure out how to get back on my horse after I accidentally got off (ᵕ���ᴗ—)

Do you play any videogames? If you do, I’d love to hear about what you like to play.

Ah, I just like history in general. I love to learn about things. Some things that caught my interest for awhile in the past though are torture/execution methods, the Chernobyl disaster, the Carrington event, WW2, old medical treatments, and Greek mythology. I haven’t been into history as much lately.. so I probably couldn’t explain anything here well.

I do collect stuff! I have a collection of various plushies, figurines, keychains, and knickknacks stored in my room. I think my favorite things that I own are probably my jar of uranium glass and this stunning piece of bismuth I got just a couple weeks ago. I’d like to start a full on collection of uranium glass, but that’s expensive, and I have no idea where I’d put it. Uranium glass is absolutely gorgeous, though! I hope to at least get a couple more pieces in the future.

[bleachbleachbleach]

B3 can I just say that the machinations of your mind fascinate me so…can you pls elaborate what you mean by 1970s aerospace corruption schemes reminding you of hitshina? cuz I’m out here trying to Google it at 10 pm out of pure academic curiosity. Thanks for sharing ur thoughts with us tho!! Love how ur able to connect things in bleach with stuff I wouldn’t have thought of otherwise like genuinely <3

It's true, this blog will see Bleach in absolutely anything. It’s not even willful; everything can and WILL be Bleach. We were watching the first Fast and Furious movie last night, and ended up talking about Bleach (i.e. the sexual renaissance Hisagi experienced on first sight of Lance’s snakeprint pants).

But for the 1970s aerospace corruption schemes, I was thinking about HitsuHina first and the 1970s aerospace corruption schemes came up as a result, rather than me independently reading about 1970s aerospace corruption schemes and applying them to HitsuHina. I feel like the connection here is probably of the “…needed to be there to make sense of this…” variety, but I have also been VIBRATING INTENSELY OUT OF ENTHUSIASM FOR ALL OF THIS since yesterday, so I’ll do my best to explain my thought process!

I’ll begin by saying that I don’t think Hinamori cares about 1970s aerospace corruption schemes, nor do I think she’d be able to come up with a reason why she should, if anyone asked her. As far as she’s concerned, she is going to visit her grandmother in Junrinan to bring news of her having made 5th Division Vice Captain! And she’s taking Hitsugaya with her, which will make this the first time they have gone back to visit together.

But first Hinamori has to do her job, because part of becoming a Vice Captain is waking up at 2AM on your day off to see if you have any messages that say “we were able to handle it, actually, you don’t need to come help!” and not finding any, and so going out to deal with that before your long travel day begins.

Okay, what IS her job, though. Why does her squad need her at 2AM?

And I was like, well, I don’t want her to have to trek out to Rukongai, because that seems logistically complicated. So I decided that in this time period, the 5th has oriented itself toward the Living World! Because Aizen is supervising field studies regarding the nature of souls’ perceptions of the afterlife and how many require konsou vs. not! (Or at least, that’s his interest on paper. He has some ~other personal investments~ as well, carrying over from his presence at the Trauma Field Trip.)

So the thing Hinamori needs to deal with this morning is that a soul was recently ferried from the Living World into Soul Society and, owing to the nature of its death, is FEROCIOUSLY clutching its memories and beliefs. It is not taking its number and filtering obediently into Rukongai like it should, and the last five hours of Hinamori’s poor subordinates’ shift have been failing to convince this soul do just… do that. Now it’s her turn, because she’s the Vice Captain and this is what you do.

What is the soul clinging so hard to, then?

Or, to back up: When do I think Hinamori might’ve become the 5th VC? Byakuya and Ichimaru become captains sometime post-1960s, which leaves Ichimaru’s previous post open for some amount of time. I want this story to be before Isshin’s disappearance, which is some point around 1980. So I was like, okay, let’s say 1970s, then. Again, not that such a date means a whole lot to Hinamori, but it means a lot to me in terms of set dressing.

So I decided, in the Living World, it is 1976, and this soul died trying to visit justice upon another, whom he believed had betrayed their shared ultranationalist beliefs and incited national shame (via 1970s aerospace corruption schemes).

I decided that in Soul Society, there is an additional level of protocols for souls such as these, where their life purpose becomes so entwined with the nature of their death, so as to result in statistically more complications on the afterlife end (and, often, a higher chance of developing spiritual power). These protocols come up even more particularly when a soul’s life purpose specifically taps into identities and ideologies bigger than one person, one soul—where the visions/desires operate at the level of the (ultra)national/societal, and manifest in a death so ideologically fraught that the symbolic weight of it cannot be left behind, even in the afterlife. (This soul became a kamikaze and flew a plane into his betrayer-comrade’s house.)

--This is not something Hinamori yet has conscious awareness of, but to be dedicated to purpose in this way makes for the kind of shinigami the Gotei would like to have, if also the kind of shinigami Aizen has variable respect for.

The only parts of this situation that matter to Hinamori are the parts that help her ease this soul into his afterlife, and convince him to take his ticket and keep walking.

Then she’s on her way to Junrinan, and her weekend in the countryside with her grandmother and Hitsugaya. But the ghosts that follow her, whether she is aware of them are not, are about the ideological commitments of vice-captaincy in the Gotei; the ever-changing nature of human souls as their world changes; A I Z E N, always; and the rapid emergence of one’s identity, either in periods of dramatic economic/cultural growth or in similar periods when one’s professional growth is entangled with one’s spiritual/shikai growth (increases in talent beget promotions beget situations that inspire further evolutions). In my headcanon, Tobiume expresses as a carrion phoenix, aka condor!Tobiume.

Hinamori and Hitsugaya talk about the nature of flight, which it turns out Hitsugaya knows something about, too.

Most of that is dramaturgy, rather than things that I’m expecting to make an explicit appearance in Hinamori’s Pleasant Vacation Weekend, but THAT is how I decided yesterday that 1970s aerospace corruption schemes were “so HitsuHina.” I am very excited about it!!

[child-of-hurin]

tagged by @dontbotherwiththepronunciation and @chthonic-cassandra

tagging:

I saw this meme going around recently and I can't remember who's already done it and who hasn't, so I'm blanket tagging anyone who reads this and feels like it :) tag me so I can read your response

3 ships 

Túrin/Nienor (TOLKIEN) I haven’t talked much about them lately but they’re still the most compelling to me… Part of what keeps me distant from fandom is that I feel like many fans won’t touch this ship with a ten foot pole. So even non-shippy fics or meta ends up OOC, fails to acknowledge how these two are both founding & sinking stones in each other’s lives…Etc…But it doesn’t matter much, I’ve been shipping this by myself for a long time and I’ll probably do it forever 😌

Irene/Eugenides (QUEEN’S THIEF) My current obsession, this ship lets me explore so many things I like :’D

Sandor/Sansa  (ASOIAF) Another ship that lay dormant but that’s re-awakening lately because I keep seeing posts that annoy me lmao. The problem here though is that I love their interactions in canon, and although I’ll be very happy if they meet again (and wish them to do so), I’m perfectly satisfied with what we got!  I genuinely find their arc very touching if heartbreaking, and I love what GRRM is saying — esp. regarding gender and socially-enabled abuse — through them. I think I’m mostly fascinated by the conflict in how these two come into contact with very idealized notions of how they should interact: Protector-protected for Sansa, Preadator-victim for Sandor, and yet no matter how much they try to convince each other AND THEMSELVES to fit into these models, reality imposes itself every time, and then they end up relating to each other as one person to another… It touches me deeply, this theme of the rawness and implacability of perceiving someone else (whether you want to or not!) instead of the idealized version of them. And how it's not necessarily easy to bear, or to live with!! I also love thinking about them in comparison to Theon and Jeyne, who have somewhat similar themes (especially like, the crushing weight of being aware of someone else's humanity/peerness), but somehow managed to free themselves whereas Sandor failed Arya and himself and ‘died’ & Sansa is now at Littlefinger’s mercy. We'll see where that will go, though (or not...it's been 84 years)

first ship

I always have a different answer for this one haha. Now I’m thinking it might have been Rodka/Sonya from Dostoievsky’s Crime and Punishment…

last song: 

last movie

John Water’s Hairspray (1988), delightful

currently reading

I’m reading a bunch of books at the same time right now… Let’s say The Count of Monte Cristo which I hadn’t read before & I’m right in the middle of. I’m reading it in English which feels a little silly, but whatever. It has WAY more orientalism than I ever thought. The psychology of it is also more complicated than I was originally led to believe. I'm fonder of both Franz and Albert than I think I'm supposed to be. I’m halfway through and I can’t believe Dantès owns two slaves...I do love that he’s not beating the vampire allegations.

currently eating

Trying to make space for a raisin roll 😞

currently craving

Mint tea...

[lumosatnight]

Talk to me about SNARRYYYYYY (had to sorry 😂) 💛

Send me a ship and I’ll give you my (brutally) honest opinion on it (and also maybe a fic rec).

Haha hi Danni!!

Initial impression: confusion, hesitance, a little weirded out. Wasn't Severus in love with Harry's mom? Isn't that kinda creepy to be dating Lily's kid?

Improved impression: UNHINGED SCREAMING. Wasn't Severus in love with Harry's mom? Yes, and that's why this ship is so interesting (although one could argue it was platonic love but that was definitely not what was written in canon). Isn't that kinda creepy to be dating Lily's kid? Yes, and it creates such a fascinating relationship dynamic. Harry's eyes, Lily's eyes. Who does Severus really see when he looks at Harry? How can he resist falling for Harry when he already fell so hard for Lily all those years ago (and still carries a torch for her)? Answer: he can't.

In terms of cross-gen pairings for Severus, Snarry is probably my favorite. I don't really see him as the type of person to go after one of his students unless it was under very pressurized circumstances. Say, for example, in the middle of a war and he's just trying to do his goddamm best at keeping this infuriating kid alive. I could also possibly see Snaco, but that's an essay for another day. Although Eldritcher has an amazing Snudley fic that I devoured.

Surprisingly enough, I also enjoy reading Snarry in different AUs, outside the HP universe or the war doesn't exist universes. I attribute that largely to you actually. You kept posting so many Snarry recs in the CoMS discord, and I kept clicking them haha. But I do think their underlying personalities remain. Severus is an insecure, bitter, ugly (yes ugly) man. He thinks the best years of his life were stolen from him. He does not see any reason to care. Harry is an impassioned, stubborn, reckless youth. He listens to Severus. He finds a way to get past that bitter exterior and in a way Severus lets him. He makes Severus feel seen when really that was all he ever wanted.

And wow, that turned into a whole essay. Apparently, I have more thoughts about Snarry than I thought. I've never written a full Snarry fic, but I am oh-so-tempted by the Snarry AUctober Fest.

-

My ship rating: Snarrytastic

My fic rec: Miraculous by @liladiurne [E, 15.5k]

When Severus finds out that the gorgeous and charming young man Lucius set him up with, the one who's accompanying him to his mother's charity ball, is really a hired escort, he is furious and disappointed. At first. But then he realises he can use this to his advantage. After years of celibacy, he's finally found someone he connects with, someone who understands him. And this time, Severus actually has the means to see him again. Or the money. But if money's what it takes to spend time with Harry, then he's more than willing to drain his family's fortune. In an unexpected twist of faith, he might not need to.

(been thinking a lot about this fic recently and ik you've already read it because i'm pretty sure you're the one who recc'ed it on the server, but it keeps spinning around in my head. soooo goood)