#I'll fix-it I'll make it worse!

[magecat1]

In fact, I've been thinking for a long time about making a few posts about why Ben and Jennifer's relationship is shown disgustingly in canon. From a script standpoint, it's disgusting. I have a lot of thoughts and stupid jokes, they prevent me from writing anything coherent.

Basically, the entire season needs to be corrected, but it will take even more time.

Let's start with their meeting.

(I won't write that the very idea of ​​The Truman Show, written by Reginald Hargreeves, raises more questions than the timing of the episode.) Let's be honest, their first dialogue is similar to a dialogue with an NPC. Either add Jennifer a conflict with Ben, or remove it altogether.

Let her attack him, let her recognize him as that crypto-scammer, let him complain that she or her friends lost money because of him.

Or let Ben remember what happened in season 3, and those portraits of her in his room. She just appeared in his dreams as an obsession or they knew each other in that universe but she died and he's suffering.

Or combine them all!

Jennifer: Wait, you're the dude who made me lose money!

Ben: You look like the girl in my dreams.

Yeah, let's make it a ridiculously absurd conflict!

The kindred spirits the writers apparently wanted to write don't work like that. Because it turns out that Ben saw a woman for the first time after 4 years in prison, and Jennifer ran after him because... I don't know. She got turned on by his tentacles???

Or they could start communicating like two normal people, like in the table scene. Why not? They clearly had some kind of mutual attraction before they even touched hands. Let it be a banal love at first sight. We know so little about Jennifer that she can be written into anything.

Ben can tell her that his entire family died. The guy is clearly lonely because he is "happy for the first time in his life." Let him talk about how much he misses the Sparrows. His life has gone to hell several times in the last 6 years. Let him express his dislike for the Umbrellas. That they see him as a replacement for his brother, albeit unconsciously. That he blames them for the death of his family. That they just irritate him because he has such a nasty personality.

Let Jennifer tell him about the squid, if that parallel is so necessary. She clearly didn't have a normal family. Let her feel lonely too, let her not know what happened to her for the first 10 years of her life (I don't know how old she was when she was pulled out of the squid). Make her more afraid of squids. Not just because of that weird barn scene. Let it be a character conflict. Run away with a guy who reminds her of her childhood nightmare, or stay in a city where everyone lied to her.

They must have something in common, besides memories from a past life they don't even know about.

[screwpinecaprice]

Reposting a connverse I made in 2021. Well, specifically posting this again after editing a few stuff.

I had been so bothered with how I kept editing Steven until I made his silhouette floppy-looking. So I fixed it a bit.

And that this was suppose to be flipped in the first place (which was why Connie's nose piercing was on the right side on the original.)

[hypervoxel]

Oh, so, like, the entire first season's establishment of the characters and their interactions don't actually matter in Helluva Boss. Okay, cool.

Like, I get that characterization develops over time and the writers come up with new ideas and places they want to take the story, but. So much of the Stolas/Blitzø stuff recently isn't character development: it's retconning.

[official-english-major]

Calypso 🤝 rapunzel from tts

saying the phrase that triggers someone's trauma

[gopped]

One off-sex scene where when you play durge you have the option to at least fuck Gortash once dropping when? Super gross violent foreplay devolving into sickeningly sweet angsty sex where you both know no matter what it will never work and your love is forever doomed and dooming you both to an eternal torture for just existing.

[pupsandwich]

sorry to all soft lawrence enjoyers, but i would NOT treat that man right. Shears RIGHT away i wanna see him cry!!!

[running-in-the-dark]

I have officially started painting the walls in the living room.

well, I've mixed/adjusted the paint and painted some swatches and put up masking tape and all that stuff. I'll be painting tomorrow. I'm so excited (to get started, but mostly that I'll finally be all done with evvvverything*)

*until I think of the next thing I want to do, and the next one after that, and -

[another-clive-blog]

You can save this for after the first poll is done, but I'm curious which of the songs YOU think is Clive's theme?

Partially because I'm curious if I'm the other person of the two person vote you were talking about. (I'm under Gilded Casino personally, but I can see the vision with the others as well)

Knjefbjkfenf sorry anon I didn't see your ask :///

I personally voted for Sorrow because I'm a true Clive Dove trauma believer (Also funfact ! Sorrow is also the song playing when Claire is rescuing Clive from the fortress =) I... probably should have said it before lol)

I know Sorrow is meeeh for a lot of people because it is associated with the accident in general and everyone's trauma, not just Clive's. So not only does it play with other characters, we don't hear it much, like we hear it in Layton's tragic flashback and Clive Just Happens To Be There In The Background lol

But this moment was such THE defining moment for Clive, like that is IT for me. All of the other characters transcended this event some way or another, Claire gave her death so much more meaning than an explosion, Dimitri decided that this tragedy was avoidable and he worked hard to undo it, Layton did everything he could to rebuild his life... But Clive never did. This guy has no real job, no real prospect of future, his only objective is to destroy everything like ??? He just never healed and never found meaning other than his pain and that is it. This trauma led to ten years of madness, ten minutes of terrorism and then a lifetime of prison : he's never getting out, never being free again, this event will always define his life in every way. Also when I hear the song I think about Claire pulling Clive's corpse behind her and that is quite representative of him lol Tbh I thought Gilded Casino would score higher :o We're alone together </3

[magecat1]

I'm probably formulating the titles to the topic of the post very incorrectly, but I'll continue to write "my fix-it".

the last post, I talked about how I would have corrected Bennifer's first meeting. It would have been logical to write how I would have changed the episode of the rescue and kidnapping. But no. I really don't like the whole canon of Reginald's fake town. So I suggest changing their first meeting even more!

Let them get to know each other before the start of the season. 6 years have passed, you can add anything. Ben set up a financial pyramid, he could have found a girl. Okay, even if Abigail had organized their meeting, it would not have been as difficult as her plan in the series.(Why was Abigail so sure that the umbrellas would drink the marigolds and go save her? The more coincidences in terms of coincidences, the worse this plan is.)

Meeting outside of screen time solves many problems. There is no need to show the beginning of a relationship from scratch. How they met, why they liked each other, what they went through. If the characters have known each other for a long time, even if behind the scenes, their relationship is easier to believe.

You know, a few nice flashbacks really save time. All that's left is to show the relationship in the present tense, how it works, the feeling can be expressed in words. The rest is up to the viewers to figure out. Well, if Jennifer waited for him to get out of prison for 4 years, then she clearly saw something in him other than the money that the government took (or whoever took it). Ben, he clearly communicated with her better than with anyone from Umbrella. I really like how he acted like a fool in love. So silly. If we had delved deeper into the reasons, we could have had some good conflict and character development. It's a shame that it wasn't there, as well as in Jennifer's character, as well as a normal love story development. I hate wasted potential!

[callixton]

rocking back & forth trying to be normal abt the way people talk abt bsi i am going crazyyy........ there is critique to be had but people's full disengagement from anything else the story has to offer or attempt to reconcile its intent with its execution makes my head blow up. bc i don't think they actually understand its intent. or themes. which is crazy bc personally i think the bioshock series hits you over the head with what it's going for even if it doesn't always get it right. like i do not know how much i can emphasize that the point was not centrism. that was a mistake in execution. i literally cannot think of another mainstream game that comes anywhere close to confronting america's history and flaws-inherent-in-its-founding head-on the way infinite does.

also i DO think a lot of my reaction comes out of playing if before the original series and therefore not having the expectation that it's a 'choices matter' game (which. it's sort of barely in the gameplay in the original but i do understand it's in the text) and also the themes of it are very up my alley! arguably much more than the original! but i don't think that's an excuse for every audience member being unable to engage with a new game and world on its own terms

[outlying-hyppocrate]

sometimes i think about killing myself just so my family will be free of the burden that is me and finally leave the country.

[hasarjunadoneanythingwrong]

this is so mean but the sad thing is they arent even wrong

[iliveinprocrasti-nationn]

my mum supports me in getting accessibility aids when i break down about it but the moment i'm not upset or in tears then it's what if people don't want to talk to you because you're in a wheelchair and what if they think you're fragile and i want you to make friends but this might not help and-

[queenlucythevaliant]

In Defense of Wuthering Heights

This is not an “I can make him worse” book. It’s a “we can make each other better in the face of tremendous pressure to do otherwise” book. I promise. 

I’ve already written extensively about my love for Charlotte Brontë’s Villette and while I love lots of other Brontë books with all my heart, what I really want to do tonight is try to make you fall in love with Emily’s Wuthering Heights (generally the most divisive Brontë novel among modern readers) the way that I did.

The thing that a lot of people don’t know which I really think ought to be printed on all the dust jackets is that the Brontë sisters were the daughters of a revered. They were PKs and it totally shows.  

So Wuthering Heights is not a romance; it’s a family tragedy. Specifically, it’s an astonishingly hopeful book about generational trauma. 

Heathcliff is Mr. Earnshaw’s bastard son. This is never explicitly stated, but it is implied so heavily that it might as well be. To boot, Mr. Earnshaw favors Heathcliff over his legitimate son, Hindley. When Mr. Earnshaw dies, Heathcliff is immediately and violently cast out of the family and forced into servitude. Mr. Earnshaw’s hidden infidelity is Wuthering Heights’s original sin.

Of course, Cathy and Heathcliff love each other, but it’s a violent and destructive like-recognizes-like kind of love between two people who, on the one hand, absolutely should not be together and, on the other, totally deserve each other. They’re capital T Tragic and capital R romantic: co-dependent, sharp-toothed sibling-lovers who don’t understand their own relationship as kids because their father lied to them. That lack of understanding follows them into adulthood; they don’t really know how to make sense of what they feel for one another, but boy do they feel it. 

Cathy tells Nellie “I am Heathcliff” and “He’s more myself than I am” and “whatever souls are made of, his and mine are the same,” and it’s half a reaction to the fact that one of her brothers (Hindley) has cast her other brother (Heathcliff) out of the family with a vengeance and half a statement of the fact that although she doesn’t know what Heathcliff is to her, she doesn’t know how to live without him. And while Cathy’s love for Heathcliff definitely fills romantic roles once they’re adults, it’s doesn’t really read as sexual. To use Lewis’s parlance: it’s not eros/gift-love, but rather need-love in the most emphatic sense. It’s storge. Actually, it’s really posessive storge that thinks it’s eros. Hence the problem. 

From the other side, Heathcliff is an outsider from the moment he enters the story. He’s an intruder and a presumed bastard. He’s coded as non-white, maybe Romani or similar. (Probably not actually African-black, but kudos to that one movie for at least making the attempt.) He’s… probably kind of a psychopath in that he displays cruelty to animals and then later on becomes a charismatic, manipulative monster. You can make a nature vs. nurture argument—Heathcliff is definitely on the receiving end of a lot of cruelty—but there’s also something Off about him and that too is othering. And after Mr. Earnshaw dies, Cathy is the one person who still loves him.

But of course, they can’t actually marry. On and off the page, that simply cannot be. Heathcliff runs away, Cathy marries Edgar Linton. They hurt each other badly in the process. Neither Heathcliff nor Cathy can escape the harm that Mr. Earnshaw began and Hindley perpetuated. Cathy dies, Heathcliff marries Isabella, and then things get really interesting.

Because the beating heart of Wuthering Heights, the place where you can profoundly see the fingerprints of the reverend’s daughter, is in the third generation. Cathy and Heathcliff devour each other in life and in death, but the children survive. They forgive. The patriarch died without knowing what he had wrought on his children, the second generation died in anguish, but the third makes it out. Or at least Hareton and Cathy II do.

Cathy’s daughter is named for her mother. Heathcliff’s son by Isabella Linton is named Linton Heathcliff. Heathcliff forces Hareton, Hindley’s son and the only one among the third generation not named for his parents, to live in the same debasement that Hindley once forced on him: he denies Hareton any education and forces him into servitude while simultaneously courting his admiration. In essence, Cathy and Heathcliff implore the next generation to go on living their parents’ tragedy and it. Doesn’t. Work.

Heathcliff tries to force them both into awful situations in which they must act out his trauma, his revenge, to go on perpetuating the pain and bitterness. And at first, it looks like they’re going to play their parts. For a time, they’re as awful to each other as everyone else is.

But then they change. Hareton tries to stand up for Cathy II while she’s essentially being held captive as part of Heathcliff’s 12-Step Revenge Plot. Cathy teaches Hareton to read. She laughs at him, but when she realizes that she’s hurting his pride she apologizes and learns to be patient.  

“I didn’t know you took my part,” she answered, drying her eyes; “and I was miserable and bitter at everybody; but now I thank you, and beg you to forgive me: what can I do besides?”

And after this, they both stand up to Heathcliff. They say, “This ends here. This far and no farther.” Heathcliff is their dragon and they face him together. And when everyone else is dead in grand, tragic fashion, Cathy II and Hareton are left living.

But it’s not just that Hareton and Cathy II survive. They specifically un-do the failings of the previous generations. There’s a kind of atonement to it. They’re honest with each other, unlike Mr. Earnshaw. Cathy recognizes Hareton’s humanity, something Hindley never did for Heathcliff. Hareton lets go of his bitterness and resentment, while Heathcliff let his fester into cruelty and Elaborate Revenge. Cathy II is willful, like her mother, but she is also kind. Hareton is proud, like his father, but he is also compassionate. They forgive each other, while Cathy and Heathcliff only ever held grudges.

At the beginning of the book, Cathy is dead and has explicitly not gone to heaven; with the Brontës, you’ve gotta take these things seriously. Cathy is not in heaven and Heathcliff is a monster and they both seem to be damned, but they do not succeed in damning their children. And in that (I would say because of that), even Cathy and Heathcliff find peace after death.

I also do think that the fact that the story is narrated by Lockwood (weirded out by all of this) and Nellie (unreliable, cares deeply about everyone involved) can make it difficult to see the redemptive arc in the story as clearly as we might if it had an omniscient narrator, or if, say Cathy II was narrating. We're presented the Cathy and Heathcliff love story as this great, horrible, compelling saga (and it absolutely is), but then the following generation can almost seem like a footnote. They're adapted out of most of the film adaptations. But they're the whole point!

I do get why Wuthering Heights just isn’t to some people’s taste. Really. Some people just don’t go for Big Romantic Family Tragedy and that’s fine. But too many people come to the Brontës looking for Jane Austen or Elizabeth Gaskell and that’s just. Wrong. You’ve gotta at least read Wuthering Heights on its own terms before deciding that you hate it (not directed at anyone specific on here, but I do know people irl...). And you really ought to read it with an eye towards Emily’s faith. It makes a world of difference.

TL;DR- There’s a beautiful, very Christian center to Wuthering Heights and it’s one of forgiveness instead of revenge and kindness instead of cruelty. It’s a book about people who are destroyed by the sins of their fathers and those that manage not to be. In a way, it’s almost a fairytale.

[avoidmint]

Hey all, just wanted to apologize for the lack of new posts since returning. I've had some pretty serious burnout lately due to health issues leaving me pretty exhausted, physically and mentally. It's taken a bit of a toll on my creative output as I've been struggling to find inspiration and energy to do much of anything.

I'm still trying to work on getting at least something here and there that I can post, but it'll probably be pretty limited for a while until we figure out what's going on. And admittedly most of the time I have spent drawing lately has been of OCs, and I don't generally post OC art. <<;

Anyways, just wanted to explain that I haven't fallen off the planet or anything yet, just having a bit of a hard time right now. Sorry for the lack of content!

[eternalergo]

the things I would do to that puppet.......