#MY POOR BASTARD

[ravencromwell]

Rereading Dickens Christmas Carol for the first time in a long time. And the more I reread, the more it strikes me how seamlessly a queer reading could slip within these pages. Not an especially twee reading, wherein all Scrooge's troubles start and end with grief over Jacob Marley's death. For we know that Scrooge was a "Tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!" And we know that he and Marley were "two kindred spirits"

And perhaps that very fact makes the similarities to queer life, unintended as they most likely were by Mr. Dickens, achingly poignant to me. Scrooge is, we're told, "secret and self-contained and solitary as an oyster." How much that resonates, for so many of us who shield our innermost selves but from a select group of friends. And we know that Scrooge and Marley were, at the very least, certainly that for one another. Scrooge is Marley's sole mourner; his sole executor and beneficiary; and even Dickens notes, "friend." How reminiscent is that of queer couples across history, estranged from their families?

Scrooge lives in a set of chambers that once belonged to Marley—clearly Dickens wanted us to believe Scrooge gave up his own dwellings after Marley's death to economize. But with only a flicker of change, those chambers become _their chambers, rented by Marley as the senior member of the couple. The place is so desolate Dickens notes "one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and have forgotten the way out again." The perfect abode for two queer misers who wanted no one prying into their business.

Marley's name is still above the door of Scrooge's counting-house: a mark by which, no doubt, Dickens meant to convey Scrooge such a penny-pincher he couldn't bother to have it changed. But a thing can be both! mark of frugality to ludicrous excess and! mark of mourning. "sometimes," Dickens opines, "People new to the

business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names. It was all the same to him."

This is why "death of the author" matters so much, in expanding our interpretations of texts. It is vastly far from the lens Dickens would have intended. But, the idea of a ghost of queerness, so taboo in the society it could barely be glanced at sidewise in this tale that is all about the inexplicable and yet that lingers over everything becomes an astonishing lens through which to read this book. Thinking of Scrooge as a queer man, his "melancholy dinner at his usual melancholy tavern" becomes a eerie prefiguring of the hollowness of days spent by Isherwood's A Single Man. In this universe, little wonder Scrooge doubly hates mention of time with family, marriage, etc. when the precise nature of his grief is both unacknowledged and unacknowledgable.

And readings like this are vital, because the uncomfortable truth is, discrimination doesn't "discriminate between sinners and saints", to borrow a Miranda phrase. It is easy, in my liberal circles, to fight for queer people who hold "the good sorts of politics". But what about men like Michael Hess, culpable for supporting Reagan even as his contemptuous homophobia let the aids epidemic run rampant? How much harder is it to remember Michael had a partner? That he deserves empathy and compassion for being practically tarred and feathered out of the party upon his own aids diagnosis?

Expanding our imaginative universes to include queerness, not as redemptive panacea, but merely as one aspect of identity, personality, often in vicious conflict with others. Even! as we consider those stories equally worthy of being told feels vital if we're ever to truly express the complexity of what queer humanity looks like.

[gkdmts]

chess is fun until the pieces start running around and flipping you off right Leona finished the cloudcalling event yesterday! the best one for me so far, i haven't laughed so much at any other.

da bonus scribble! the chess pieces in question. not gonna finish this one but look at these sillies

[hoarder-of-dragons]

[Season 2 summed up]

Aziraphale's thoughts: Oh I shall team up with Crowley and make Nina and Maggie fall in love and make them confess. Oh what if I also confess then. I need to prepare everything to set the scene.

Still Aziraphale's thoughts: Ooohh a ball with dancing and tiny snacks to make it fancy and it will be like a Jane Austen novel coming to life and then I will ask Crowley to dance and all our problems will go away as I stare into his eyes....

Crowley's thoughts: Keep Aziraphale safe Keep Aziraphale safe Keep Aziraphale safe Keep Aziraphale safe FUCK YOU GABRIEL Keep Aziraphale safe Keep Aziraphale safe Keep Aziraphale safe PLEASE HOLD MY HAND AZIRAPHALE Keep Aziraphale safe JANE AUSTEN WAS AN AUTHOUR?!?! Keep Aziraphale safe-

[starii-lins]

shitty lil comic of what i hope smilk's defeat will be like. third act breakdown and all idk

also bonus bcs i think this is what he does. he's a cries when angry guy (projecting) when he's frustrated he rips up the vanilla puppet or something idk

[elsecrytt]

curse technique concept:

your technique can make anyone fall in love with you. it's not permanent, but the emotions are extremely real, and powerful, wearing off over time unless refreshed.

the technique is activated by eye contact.

you've also taken a binding vow - you cannot activate your technique at will, it's always on. this makes your technique much stronger than it should be.

so you run around with a blindfold, much like gojo, just to prevent making random people fall in love with you.

it's not so bad, really!

growing up, your parents would wear eyepatches - with only one eye making contact, the technique was half as effective!

except... if the effectiveness of the technique increases proportionally with the number of eyes... well...

[chilopodabode]

the blue ones

[cipher-sketches]

Started playing Limbus Company last night and I had this exact mental image come to me when I got to the toxic gas portion of the Canto I dungeon

No one will find this funny but me, but I am my own target audience so I can live with that

[royalarchivist]

Mike: I'm gonna show this picture to Bad, I'm gonna show him you're really a thief and you were stealing from him! [Laughs]

YD: You're– Ah, what's that word I learned? What was it?

Mike: What, what?

YD: The insult you told me. The Brazilian slang.

Mike: Ahh, filho da puta!

YD: One more time! Ah– Filho da puta, filho da puta!!! 🤬

Mike: [Laughs and hits YD]

YD: [Laughing] Filho da puta! What the fudge, filho da puta! 😄

Mike: [Still laughing] What the fudge, filho da puta!

[ninjakitty6252]

I originally typed this out as a comment but thought it could stand on its own as well.

When you think about it, Vex and Pixal are parallels. Both were with Zane at a time where Zane had lost his memory. Pixal guided him to discovering the truth and accepting his new titanium form, as well as continuing to aid him for many years both inside and outside of his head. We see that in Dragons Raising that Zane finds that talking to Pixal (or in this case a picture of Pixal) helps him solve problems. Zane looks up to her and the guidance and comfort she brings. Vex on the other hand used Zane’s lack of memory to manipulate him, to shape him, and mold him into the Ice Emperor something that Zane still is haunted by and regrets (quest for the lost powers book) He was used as a pawn. Both Pixal and Vex advised and guided Zane, but Pixal did it out of love and respect for Zane, while Vex did it out of spite and a longing for revenge. It’s really interesting when you think about it.

[tenshi-agerasia]

in-universe alien stage mechanisms and the use of colors in round 7 (a luka & till rant ft. mizi & hyuna)

it's generally agreed that alien stage can be interpreted as a metaphor for the kpop industry, and as someone who did tons of studying (because of my 3d fav) on how performances work in c-ent, i noticed some things on my nth rewatch of blink gone

meta-wise, the colors in the mv are green (to represent till) and purple (to represent luka). this combo works really well for the song, but is there an in-universe explanation to the lighting? yep:

take a look at the scoreboard. even in-universe, green represents till and purple represents luka. taking the idol theme more literally, we can also assume that these are their official colors. i went back to the TOP 3 video and well well well guess what appears during luka's part

the lightsticks, the projected neon signs, the same kind of mask (?), the stadium lights. we can reasonably assume that this purple is luka's official fan color and represents support for him.

and guess what color almost all of the crowd is repping during round 7 through lightsticks and masks?

that's right, overwhelmingly purple. don't forget that the winners of each round of alien stage are decided by live in-house voting, and audience members will always be biased towards who they're a fan of. remember that luka is insanely popular and already won a season, so his fanbase would be larger, more developed, and more devoted.

till was, for a lack of better words, cooked. he was doomed to lose from the start, because how can a few of his fans outvote the majority?

i've seen some people theorize that the result was rigged, and i completely disagree: you cannot fake support on this large of a scale. "oh, but the color of the lightsticks are controlled by the organizers" then explain the masks, a clear fandom symbol

also, from my experience in survival shows, vote counts in the final round are usually hidden until the results are announced, which explains the wobbliness of the scoreboard bars like they're inflatable tube men in front of a car or mattress dealership.

an alternative explanation to the lightsticks is that it represents the current vote, but i'm not inclined to believe this theory because, again, the masks. like real-life idol performances, i think that this is just a show of support from the audience.

back to the meta: mizi's appearance in the crowd is a reinvigoration of determination in till, and in terms of color, she is a break of bright green among the sea of purple. she not only stands out because she's someone he loves, she is visually a breath of fresh air for him.

do you think, in those last moments, he was not only happy to see her alive in front of him but to also see her wearing his color?

in this part where they're reaching out to each other, the pink-purple light that seems to be shining from mizi is representative of how she's a beacon of hope for till. in-universe, however, till is just moving towards the audience, the close proximity of the lightsticks illuminating his face with color.

mizi and till are surrounded by this vibrant purple, a symbol for luka. even with mizi's more pink-ish radiance, they are literally in his territory, at the mercy of the system that he has been through and learned to play along with.

the same can't be said about luka when he sees hyuna again:

the warmth of his fan color disappears, replaced by a colder indigo. the audience, his fans, the aliens that he knows how to use to keep himself alive mean nothing to him right now. it's this cold feeling of shock that makes him so unsure of how to react.

in this moment, he is no longer luka the performer, luka the idol, luka the twice winner of alien stage—he's just luka. he's vulnerable to emotion, an unfamiliar thing, and he's so painfully human.

luka: (sees hyuna) holy shit it's you... mizi: till is literally dying behind you luka: this ain't about him

another detail: these shots were never shown in the mv so i'm assuming they're taken by in-universe cameras (see the red flashes in the audience), especially because of the angle (downwards pointing perspective)

[velvetw0rmart]

It's what I had to do, Hold it in and keep it tight, smile honey it’s alright, Is it even worth the fight? If it helps you sleep at night, Out of mind and out of sight, anything you wanna try, Nothing's gonna make it right, it’s already over.

Already Over - Johnny Manchild

Line art only version, I liked it more before I attempted to practice with india ink T_T I have learned my lesson.

[iambecomeahamburger]

[fyoht]

oh my god. look at him. what a little bitch.

[dizzybizz]

the little chipper

[bladedweaponsandswishycoats]

Justice in the Dark and the Art of Translating Vibes (or: Why the drama's kabedon (ep. 18) is actually the novel's car kiss (ch. 75-76))

I've been mostly burying myself in the material rather than reading what anyone is saying on social media but @lunarriviera said I should share this, so here goes.

I really like the way the creators of Justice in the Dark worked really hard to translate emotional beats and preemptively plan for censorship, and I think it does something interesting because it moves parallel moments around to where they need to be given the exercise in translation that an adaptation must perform.

Spoilers for both Modu and Justice in the Dark versions below!

The main one I want to talk about here is the kabedon/wall slam that takes place when they go to investigate the crime scene where Feng Bin was killed.

Obviously, the scene as it appears in the book at that moment in the plot would not have made it into the drama in a million years, even if censorship wasn't the way it is:

So it is a given that there was not going to be an interrupted wallfuck in the drama, and the creators were well aware of that. In many dramas, the usual thing to do would be to say "well, we'll try and do as much as we can, perhaps a generous shove would be allowed."

But JitD didn't do this. Instead they looked into the origin of the interaction and considered where the characters stand at this point.

Previously, a similar divergence already occurred at the point of the car kiss/Fei Du passing out at the front door that happens in episode 13 after having gotten dehydrated and low blood sugar from being sick in the aftermath of Zhou Huaixin's stabbing. The kiss, likewise, could never have been shown in this particular reality. To compensate, the creators of the drama made Fei Du's state during the car ride worse, and likewise heightened the severity of the reaction when it happens.

First with the car ride, in which Fei Du is arguably worse off in the drama. (And I really recommend rewatching this bit, both for the filming and the incredible music they gave this little mini-montage):

Then when Fei Du collapses, in the drama they make him actually fully fall unconscious:

The novel version, Fei Du IS out of sorts, and the general progression is the same, but they do also make out in the car before Fei Du gets out and I think it is reasonable to say on that basis that he's not quite as obviously out of it as in the drama. Likewise, he never fully passes out:

So what happened here is that the creators turned it to their advantage; recognizing they can't have the kiss, they decided to crank up the angst/whump and make Fei Du even more messed up (which, let's be honest, is almost as good). What's more, it is an option that was not available if they had been able to do the kiss. So, in a sense, they have adapted to their constraints and provided us with a "two cakes" option.

This is a good example of what I mean by the translation/substitution. Another one is the way they substitute the flashback childhood fever scene since they cannot do the forehead kiss in the very next set of scenes. But I think folks have probably talked about that already, and it's not the one I really wanted to get to.

So now for that: the kabedon at the start of case 4 (or Verhovensky/Doestoevsky/the Yufen School case, whatever we're calling it). This was the passage I quoted at the start of this post, and it, like the car kiss, could never have appeared in the drama.

And here the drama team again did a translation, but in this case it takes into account not just the novel parallel at this moment in the case/plot, but also the relationship progression for each the novel and drama.

Specifically, in the drama, as stated, there was no car kiss. In addition, the novel sequence puts two other important and relevant sequences between the car kiss and this scene: Fei Du's first and second nights out of the hospital. The first night is the one that involves blanket-burrito Fei Du being handcuffed to the bed and the non-consensual hairdrying (glorious moment), the second involves their first fuck, which takes place the next night, after Fei Du has gotten up for water and interrupted Luo Wenzhou reading Lao Yang's testament, and Luo Wenzhou telling Fei Du that he can't explain everything to him yet, so please give him a few days. I won't go into the excellent translations that do occur in the drama condensed single night of that sequence, but suffice to say, when drama Luo Wenzhou wakes up covered in photographs from Luo Guosheng's crimes 20 years ago and Tao Ran's urgent call, in the novel he's waking up in Fei Du's arms. And so later when Zhoudu are going to the Lovers' Mirror on the crime scene date, this is the first date after the first fuck—in the novel.

Meanwhile, in the drama, there has instead been much yearning and a sleepless night where I am certain they were both horribly desperately wishing they were in bed with the other—but they weren't. (Aside: yes I do also love the other interpretation that the filmmakers were gesturing towards them being together with overlapping cinematic effects, but I'm setting that aside for now, what can I say, I like multiple interpretations, I contain multitudes etc.) Thus this moment is not the same moment as it is when it happens in the novel.

What moment is it?

It's the car kiss.

As far as the relationship beats, Zhoudu are still at the heightened point of tension without much physical contact that their novel versions were at during the car kiss.

And that—that kiss was initiated by Fei Du.

(Aside: yes, I also agree with the perspective that Fei Du was trying to get rid of him so he could go have some quality basement time, and he knew that kissing him would make Luo Wenzhou aroused and flustered and furious—and probably he'd storm off. But people can have multiple motivations and he DID want to kiss him too.)

Anyway it is here (apologies for the long screencap):

What does that sound like?

Yep. This is actually the car kiss.

Tbh I don't care at all who tops and I think it is a boring thing to argue about, but I started thinking about this because I was wondering what the writers in the drama were doing and at first glance this was a surprising scene if watched with the novel equivalent in mind. I was convinced that there's no intentional choice made to invert/reverse anything, because in all other matters the creators have been paying an incredible amount of attention to trying to follow the novel in spirit and vibes even when they cannot do so literally. So why would this suddenly be an outlier?

And thus my proposed answer: It's not. It's absolutely in line with the translation strategy they've been pursuing in other scenes previously, but it is complicated by the divergence in relationship progression between drama and novel, the consequence of which its equivalent emotional/horny moment falls at a different plot moment.

The drama kabedon is the novel car kiss, not the novel kabedon.

[churchofpossum]

More of them.