julienbukowski

[cardo-de-comer]

soo helloo and i think it's time for me to explain the deal with my characters and this whole "you're not supposed to be here" thing.

i made these characters way back in june and by today they have a lot of lore around them in my head. i even have a dream to make a game with them but it's just a dream for now so i'm gonna try to explain the main things about this story. Obviously this is a long post, although I tried to keep this stuff short. and excuse me for my writing and any mistakes, I don't usually write this much text.

It starts with the world. Alternate 15th century, humanity is almost gone and what's left of it shares quite a big city with demons and angels. However, demons and angels are usually being treated like servants - eventually one gets tired of it all, so everyone knows an uprising is just around the corner. Let's just ignore that for now.

The City has a catch of it's own - it's alive. The walls have eyes and ears and the City knows every resident by heart and soul, both figuratively and literally. Usually City acts through the King, it chooses protectors for itself, ones who have strong minds to comprehend it - they will be called the royal knights, each of them have a company of a /more wiser than the rest of them/ demon and angel to help with their tasks. Only the King and ten royal knights know that the City is alive and very talkative but they don't understand fully what it's trying to tell them. Most of them choose to ignore the voices in their head because hey, that's what you do usually in this situation, otherwise they drive you nuts.

City is also extremely emotional and appearance depends on its condition. Usually it's a sunny day out and the city looks welcoming, but you don't want to be there when the City is scared: it might eat you alive by accident. Now that the environment is aside, time for the main three characters.

Imri is a young lad who will soon be a royal knight. He actually wanted to be a painter when he grows up but well, you cannot disobey the king's orders. Quite emotionless and a man of a few words, he tries to stay on a neutral ground between good and bad - a perfect candidate for manipulation to all three sides, demons, angels and the City.

look at him

Royal knights get to know their angel and demon companions at least a week before they get knighted to avoid any misunderstandings. Imri doesn't mind his friends at all, although one of them caused quite a fuss.

Angel /they name themselves Lyra/ is an overly positive, naive and blindly kind entity. A bit childish and very fond of justice, they try to act as a voice of conscience, not understanding that sometimes this can make everything even worse than it was. There is a feeling that they're trickier than it seems but you can never quite tell.

the latin text all over them is just a part of their design

The demon though... That's not even a demon, that's the Devil himself. Yes, everyone knows who this is, everyone avoids him and he's not supposed to be here at all. Despite being THE Devil, he didn't try to do anything horrific yet and, when he's not joking around, he tries to be the voice of reason, the voice that no one listens to. He seems to know a lot more about this whole world than anyone else but he talks about it only when he wants to.

no one likes him at all, expect maybe Imri who just tolerates his presence like he always does

That's the main three. There is a few secondary characters, Imri's father being one of them.

sir Jastrab is one of the royal knights, he's a bit naive, loyal, and a soul so kind that his demon hung himself. Oh well. He lost one hand in what he calls "a work accident" which is partly true but he never goes into details.

He never wanted for his son to be a part of the knights because he knows by experience that it's not an easy job and not every father wants for their child to go insane from the voices in their head.

few people said that the angel accompanying him looks like d20 and so be it

The others are Sun and Moon - local deities, despite being on the sky every day and night, usually they don't really care about what's going on down below. You can still talk to them but don't expect much action. Regardless of all this, they are still loved by almost all living things. They can rarely meet each other but humans always depict them together no matter what.

creators of the Stars - some part of a human soul that i can't talk about :)

Angels and demons come in all forms and sizes but those are the main population - lesser demons resemble the Devil in some ways and lesser angels look like clovers. Rivals usually but when the revolution happens, they learn to tolerate and work with each other. Humanity doesn't really have a chance.

they hate everyone equally And there is another being, that Imri meets a few times through the story - it's Death. Death is just having fun in this end of the world and there is a lot of work to be done.

this is an old and rough design so maybe it'll change The whole story begins at that day when Imri is supposed to be knighted. Everything seemed fine until Imri gets to hear the City for the first time and realizes that he hears and sees a lot more than everyone else. Completely overwhelmed he blacks out - even the toughest of minds often can't take it - and wakes up later only to find out that the King got killed somehow, angels and demons saw this as the starting point for a revolution and the City starts to panic.

Now Imri, guided by his companions and the voice of scared City that's crumbling and slowly drives him insane, shall travel to the center of it to find out what really happened, getting through demons and angels who are busy destroying the rest of humanity. Fun.

There is a lot more to this whole thing but I cannot tell the entire plot because spoilers, in case if i actually will make something out of this story. Think of it as a game lore. I'm not sure about making sth yet because i operate only on hopes and dreams and i barely have any strength lately but who knows... But now you have at least some context! And yeah, thank you if you actually read all of this, you're a hero.

Now i need to get back to drawing. Thank you all for your support. <3

[robsheridan]

“Apocalypse in Pink” part 2 (see part 1 here), from the August 1983 issue of SPECTAGORIA Magazine. Sera Clairmont’s celebrated underground fashion magazine was always scratching at the bleeding edge of culture, deftly navigating the trends of the Reagan ‘80s by simultaneously coopting and corrupting its materialistic obsessions. Never was that theme on visceral display than in this controversial issue. Apocalypse in Pink found Clairmont’s “Barbie dolls” trying to keep their glamour and their plastic smiles in the flames of a Capitalist Cold War simultaneously obsessed with materialism and annihilation; an America that, Clairmont wrote, “relentlessly asks women if we’re beautiful enough, if our clothes are fancy enough, if our pursuits are ambitious enough, and at the end of every night, if we know where our children are.”

In true Spectagoria fashion, what begins as stylish playful “nuclear Barbie” iconography gradually descends into horrific flames and melting pink plastic bodies, with only the womens’ smiles in tact on their smoldering skeletons at the end of the issue.

Reportedly, this issue was sent to Spectagoria subscribers in a package that included a pink lighter and a note that read, “when you’re finished reading, finish the job.” When burned, the magazine was said to ignite in a dazzling show of hot pink flames that sparkled and crackled, a performance art to complete the issue’s vision. As a result, Apocalypse in Pink is one of the most rare and coveted issues of the magazine, with no complete copies known to exist.

Most who have studied Spectagoria lore conclude that the exterior of the magazine was likely coated in a chemical powder that created the fantastical pink flames. But such a magic show has been meaty fodder for those who believe the rumors of occult powers and dark witchcraft surrounding the publication…

---------

NOTE: Spectagoria is an ongoing work of fiction created by me. This alternate reality horror story is part of my NightmAIres narrative art series (visit that link for a lot more). NightmAIres are windows into other worlds and interconnected alternate histories, conceived/written by me and visualized with synthography and Photoshop.

If you enjoy my work, consider supporting me on Patreon for frequent exclusive hi-res wallpaper packs, behind-the-scenes features, downloads, events, contests, and an awesome fan community. Direct fan support is what keeps me going as an independent creator, and it means the world to me.

[coraniaid]

The scene where Willow confronts Faith is Choices is kind of fascinating to me, because ... well.

I like Choices quite a lot, and I think Willow's dislike of Faith is perfectly understandable and in character (and her speech has some fun but probably not intentional foreshadowing for later seasons), but it's hard not to notice that the narrative expects you to be rather more unambiguously on Willow's side than I think is really warranted.

I mean, Willow might not have been the most popular girl in high school, but she has multiple close friends, a nice boyfriend, a stable [and fairly comfortably middle-class] home life, she "represents the pinnacle of achievement in Sunnydale High" in the words of her school's principal, she's trusted enough to teach at the school, in a year she'll be able to go to any college she wants (and, unlike some people, she can afford to go anywhere she wants), she used to hack into government computer databases (before she ever met Buffy!) and now she's teaching herself dark magic "for fun" and she hasn't [yet] ever suffered any real repercussions for either of those things.

On the other hand, from what little we hear about Faith's past we know she grew up poor and that her mother used to get drunk and beat her, that she didn't have any friends and dropped out of high school young, she is very strongly implied on multiple occasions to have been the victim of some pretty horrific abuse before being called as a Slayer, and after being called as a Slayer she got to watch the one adult who ever told her she mattered get killed horribly in front of her before fleeing across the country to a town where she doesn't know anybody, still has no friends, doesn't have a job or go to school and lives alone in a motel in the bad part of town. And when she accidentally killed a man, while trying to do the whole slaying vampires thing she's supposed to be doing, the Watcher's Council -- who never actually bothered to send her a new Watcher of her own -- decided to have her abducted and dragged away to England [a fate which surely nobody deserves].

Yet a part of Willow clearly thinks (and almost outright says) "oh, well, yeah, but she hangs out with Buffy sometimes when I don't get to and she slept with the guy -- not my nice boyfriend! -- who I used to have a crush on (and who I was briefly cheating on said boyfriend with), so it's clearly impossible to say which of us really had things worse and I don't need to feel sorry for her". And -- again, while this is great characterisation for Willow -- it's kind of hard not to notice that the writers think she has a compelling point.

Yes, sure, Faith has defected to working for the Mayor and has a knife drawn on Willow this scene (she's not anything like a blameless victim at this point of the story) and it takes a certain level of physical bravery for Willow to stand up for herself despite that. But ... I mean, come on. "You had friends like Buffy" is only true if you accept it to mean "you had exactly one friend, who was Buffy". "It's way too late" for Faith to seek forgiveness ... how many people has Faith killed at this point? One, by mistake? Giles has killed more people than that. "Some people think you had a lot of bad breaks?" Yeah, actually in Faith's shoes I'd want to hit Willow after she said that too.

I realize that part of the show's central thesis -- something that explicitly came up as recently as Earshot -- is the idea that everybody, regardless of how comfortable their life might seem from the outside, has their own sorrow and pain and (only occasionally metaphorical) demons to fight. But while that's not entirely wrong, it's also ... not entirely complete? Everyone has it bad sometimes, but some people really do have it worse than others. Pretending otherwise is ... not a serious position to take.

Willow's life could be better, but she's not gone through anything like Faith has. I'd argue she literally can't imagine how bad Faith's life has been. She really doesn't have as much moral authority as the show's writers think she has at this point.

[Compare this part of Season 3 with the first half of Season 6, when the show is overflowing with sympathy for Willow's abrupt descent into magic addiction but has no sympathy at all for Amy Madison, whose own magic addiction is just implied to be because she's inherently a Bad Person who Willow needs to avoid and whose own horrific past and abusive mother and complete lack of support system is just entirely forgotten about. Or, indeed, to the weird take of Dead Man's Party, which has Buffy apologize to Willow for ... what? Having problems of her own that don't revolve around Willow? Being too busy mourning the loss of everything she ever cared about to tell Willow how uniquely special and amazing she was for learning rudimentary magic? Not being grateful enough for Willow restoring Angel's soul without bothering to ask Buffy if that was something she still wanted her to try?]

So, the overall effect is ... yeah, it's a good scene. But it's almost a good scene despite the writer's intentions, not because of them. It's much less of an ambiguously triumphant moment for WIllow than I believe we're meant to read it as.

[queerfables]

Alright GO fans, let's talk Sodom and Gomorrah. This biblical story comes up a few times in Good Omens canon, a kind of offhand mention each time, and the most interesting part to me is the implication that Aziraphale was there.

If you only know the cliff-notes version, you've probably heard it as the story of God condemning homosexuality to the point of wiping out several cities over it. Maybe you've heard this too, but - that's not exactly what happened. Look, I'm an atheist, I have no dog in this race. If I thought it was about smiting people for homosexuality, I'd be happy to call God a wanker and move on. But I've read the story of Sodom and Gomorrah (You can too! It's very short!) and I've read other parts of the Bible that reference it, and I think a much more straightforward interpretation is that it's about offering hospitality and protection to strangers. It's also about the consequences of wanton cruelty, and God laying waste to those deemed beyond salvation.

In Good Omens, the book, Aziraphale and Crowley discuss Sodom and Gomorrah this way:

"Come off it. Your lot get ineffable mercy," said Crowley sourly.

"Yes? Did you ever visit Gomorrah?"

"Sure," said the demon. "There was this great little tavern where you could get these terrific fermented date-palm cocktails with nutmeg and crushed lemongrass-"

"I meant afterwards."

"Oh."

According to the book, then, Aziraphale at least saw the city after it was destroyed. Maybe Crowley saw the aftermath too or maybe he just heard about it. They both understand it as horrific.

The show is more direct, and suggests that Aziraphale was there during the actual destruction. Gabriel asks if Aziraphale remembers Sandalphon. Aziraphale does.

"Sodom and Gomorrah. You were doing a lot of smiting and turning people into salt. Hard to forget."

Aziraphale regards Sandalphon warily during the conversation. I believe we're supposed to interpret this scene based on the popular understanding of Sodom and Gomorrah as cities that God wiped out because of the inhabitants' sins. The obvious implication, then, is that Sandalphon is the heavy, the one called in to deal with disobedience. He's trigger-happy, relishes violence, and Aziraphale has seen what he's capable of. From the careful way Aziraphale discusses their prior acquaintance, I think he feels the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was a tragedy and believes Heaven's actions were disproportionate and unjust.

I'm confident this is how we're supposed to read the scene. In the context of the story, we're supposed to understand that Aziraphale doesn't approve of the smiting, and that he feels threatened by Gabriel and Sandalphon coming into his bookshop and pressing him about Armageddon. But I'm fascinated by what it would mean if Aziraphale and Sandalphon's history really tracks onto the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Because if Good Omens' version of Sodom and Gomorrah is at all biblically accurate, and if Aziraphale was there... it's kind of mind-blowing, actually, that he still feels so much compassion for the people who died and still thinks Sandalphon was wrong.

I'm going to explain why, but fair warning, it gets ugly. I promise nobody is actually raped, and I think that promise in itself says plenty.

According to the Bible, Sodom and its surrounding cities are accused of being overrun with sin. God sends two angels to Sodom to verify this, intending to destroy everything if they find it to be true. In the world of Good Omens, I think one of these angels must be Aziraphale. The other one is likely Sandalphon, but in the Bible it's God rather than either of the angels who rains down burning sulfur on the cities so it's possible it's someone else, and Sandalphon is only on smiting duty. Without anything else to go on, though, let's assume it's Sandalphon.

So our two angels arrive at Sodom in the evening, and at the gate to the city, they meet Lot. Lot is an immigrant who has made his home in Sodom, and I think the implication is that this is why he's not completely steeped in sin like everyone else. In any case, he immediately offers to put the angels up for the night, and although they'd planned to stay in the square, Lot is really insistent. He is a good host! Also, he knows the city is dangerous. So the angels go to his house and he makes dinner for them, and then before they can go to bed, a mob shows up at the door.

See, the men of Sodom have heard about the strangers staying with Lot. They surround his house and demand he hand them over. The New King James Version puts it this way: And they called to Lot and said to him, "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may know them carnally." Several other translations say that the men wanted to "have sex with them". But I mean. It's a fucking mob. They've surrounded the house. We all get what this is, right?

So Lot goes out to meet the men, and he says "Don't do this terrible thing." Off to a good start! Then he says, "Tell you what, I have two virgin daughters. Do what you like to them and we'll say no more about it." Oh boy. Dad of the year award, right there. But still, he insists, "The angels are under my roof and my protection."

The men outside Lot's house are pissed. They say, "You're an outsider, who are you to judge us?" They threaten to do worse to him than to the angels. They swarm him and almost break the door down, but the angels pull him back inside.

The angels then strike the mob with blindness to stop them getting into the house. They say to Lot, "Look, you gotta take your family and get out of here. God sent us to see how bad things were and, uh, long story short, we're burning it all to the ground. You get it, right?"

Maybe you know the rest. Lot's son-in-laws don't believe him and won't leave the city. Lot's wife looks back and turns into a pillar of salt. Lot and his daughters take shelter in a small town called Zoar, and from there flee to the mountains. Everything else is destroyed.

It is a tragedy. The plains are leveled down to ash, until there's nothing left that can even grow. Was there really no one innocent in those cities? No children or animals? (You can't kill kids). Still, I think about that awful night under Lot's roof and I don't think I could blame anyone for giving up on all of it.

So what if that's the story? There were two angels in Sodom before it fell. What if it really was Aziraphale and Sandalphon, trapped through the night in a stranger's house, surrounded by men who want to rape them. Whatever their power as angels, that has to be terrifying.

If it was Sandalphon there with Aziraphale that night in Sodom, I have to wonder what he was like. There isn't any kinship or understanding from Aziraphale. Despite knowing the circumstances better than anyone, he still sees Sandalphon as a threat. Given that, I think Sandalphon must have taken a truly disturbing kind of joy in raining down vengeful fire and brimstone, beyond what you might expect from someone who was afraid or angry. Maybe he was never afraid; maybe instead he revelled in the violence building through the night as the reason he needed to tear everything down. Maybe he was afraid in the terrible way that exposes the depths someone will sink to to protect themselves (maybe offering his daughters was never Lot's idea). Or maybe Aziraphale just tried to reach out to him afterwards, to offer understanding and ask for some in return, and Sandalphon shot him down so coldly and viciously that Aziraphale knew immediately this wasn't something he was allowed to have feelings about. Whatever happened that night, it left Aziraphale feeling more of an outsider from Heaven than ever.

But if it happened that way, it happened this way too: Aziraphale survives a night like that, and when he looks out into the breaking dawn, he thinks, these cities don't deserve to burn. He sees the good in a place that's just shown him its absolute worst. I think that says everything about him as a character, actually. Of course he won't give up on Heaven. Of course he'll fight tooth and nail for his home on Earth. Whatever the worst is, there are still things worth saving. There are still, always, people worth protecting.

On that note, before I wrap this up, I want to go back to Lot's words to the men of Sodom, and draw a parallel that makes me feel some kind of way. Because when Lot declares the angels under his protection, what he says is essentially, "Do not do anything to these men, for they have come under the shadow of my roof for protection." And all I can think about, reading these lines, is Aziraphale standing in his bookshop as it's surrounded by hostile demons, and telling the angel under the shadow of his roof, "You came to me. I said I would protect you. And I will."

[rewritingcanon]

What would you say are your more controversial opinions about the hp characters?

ohhhh okayyy. i feel like my opinions on a lot of the characters aren’t controversial because i dont feel super strongly towards anyone in any negative light but here are some i could think of at the top of my head:

i’m glad the malfoys faced more extreme backlash after the second wizarding war. a lot of people in the fandom seem to be very sympathetic towards draco and scorpius for getting dogpiled with the brunt of it (which yeah, it sucks, especially for scorpius) but the prejudice makes complete make sense to me. if i was someone who didn’t know scorpius’ character, and had someone from my family get killed in the second war due to death eaters or something— seeing the malfoys still be wealthy and walk around freely without any jailtime, i would be bitter too. they’re hated on but they’re still one of the richest families ever, so they’ll live LOL

another anon has asked about this and i haven’t responded to them yet but when i do i will link it here for my reasons. basically: the best character in the cursed child is harry potter. i think the way they wrote his character and ptsd carried the play. it was def his story, not albus’.

i do think dumbledore has some aspects of him that may be considered morally gray, but mostly i dont think he is. he does everything for the good of the world, and his complete selflessness leads him to sacrifice anything for it— even himself and the people he loves, when necessary. i completely understand why people wouldn’t agree with his methods though.

james potter isn’t a sunshine character he’s a dickhead. fans of him made him a golden retriever character to be more palatable for modern times. i like him the way he is: an asshole and then less of an asshole 👍 this is what true stanning looks like

pansy parkinson is racist and out of all the female side characters, developing HER is so questionable from fandom

harry had questionable descriptions about a lot of male characters to make people think he could be a little 🏳️‍🌈 there was bill, there was sirius, there was cedric. but draco is not a part of that list. harry was not feeling draco whatsoever throughout the series but drarry shippers cling to that one ‘obsessed’ line

furthermore, harry rejecting draco’s offer of friendship wasn’t a sad or a ‘what if’ scene. draco was being a classist piece of shit and harry didnt want to fuck with that, there isnt any way in any timeline he wouldve accepted draco’s friendship.

slytherin sucks just generally lol. people want so bad to pluck anti-heroes out of a series that was written specifically with the mind to make all the characters suck.

hermione and ron’s drama isn’t as toxic as people make it out to be. yes, this includes the time hermione sent birds after him. people act like its the end of the world but she was tackling puberty and the end of society soooo i give her a pass to tweak out.

mostly every harry potter character has horrific names. like literally mostly everyone. even the name harry potter 🙁

movie romione wasn’t that bad LOL

severus snape’s ‘redemption’ or whatever was so ass. he bullies kids for five years and then everything is chill because… true love? on harry’s mum? are you kidding me 💀

weasley family angst goes hard but people (especially percy stans and some ron&ginny stans) acting like they’re the most toxic family to walk the earth make me want to rip my hair out and eat it. molly loves her kids guys shes not evil. jesus.

genuinely trying to think of more but i can’t right now…. maybe i will reblog and add to it. i feel like most of my opinions aren’t that controversial though 😭

[heartgold]

(incest, csa, suicide cw)

umineko is full of complicated and fucked up parent/child dynamics, so the way kumasawa and genji were like the parent figures sayo always wished she could have and then turned out to be the people who hurt her with the most intent often flies under the radar. but I'm constantly thinking about it.

they never saw her as more than an extension of her biological mother and a way to personally atone for failing her... by ultimately failing her daughter too and in very similar ways. kumasawa incentivised young sayo's beatrice roleplay and taught her magic bc "it was like it was meant to be". in kumasawa's eyes, it was as if beatrice's daughter unknowingly shared a connection to her mother thanks to the whims of fate. but to sayo, the magic she was taught became her primary way to cope and to find some confidence in the face of the hardships she was going through. of course the idea of no longer being 'yasu', the clumsy servant mocked by everyone, but rather the powerful witch beatrice who inspires their respect became so important to her! but then as she learned later, she spent all her life roleplaying as her dead mother who was horribly abused (and whose abuse was enabled and covered up by sayo's parent figures!) and by then she had all but absorbed her as part of her identity and sense of self, all while being secretly primed to ultimately play her part and finally "become" her in genji's bullshit redemption arc plan for kinzo. kumasawa knew everything and intentionally encouraged this while sayo had no idea. it's no wonder beatrice went from being something empowering to sayo to the cruel voice tormenting her in her head, reminding her of her worst thoughts. beatrice became an embodiment of trauma! not just sayo's trauma but also her mother's, which she took upon herself. all of the people who knew the truth manipulated her into walking the path of becoming her mother and saw her as nothing but that. a replacement, a vessel for the "true" beatrice. the very same idea behind her mother's grooming and abuse.

the cruel irony here is how all of this was done to prove a point about kinzo not repeating his actions and to relieve his guilt in time before his death, with genji/kumasawa/nanjo celebrating kinzo being "successfully redeemed" by not raping his daughter again... all while sayo comes out of this horrific situation terribly sexually traumatized regardless. all at once, she learns the depth of violation she suffered from some of the few people she thought were on her side. the way she was manipulated and gaslit all her life about the circumstances of her birth, her parentage, her body, her entire identity and personhood. how they were willing to risk her safety by making her work under kinzo to prove that he wouldn't sexually abuse her. the shock of learning what happened to the mother she was unknowingly raised to become, and how those people did nothing to help her back then either. how her mother, too, was groomed into playing the role of her own mother for kinzo!!! the horror doesn't end. the traumatic impact and consequences of all of this on her life were never in their minds, only making sure sayo would play her role in granting kinzo a peaceful death. putting kinzo's guilt to rest was always the priority, and by trying to prove he wouldn't repeat the past, they did so themselves by dooming another beatrice into becoming a vessel for her mother and shouldering generations worth of trauma.

there's this metaphor in umineko about the powerlessness of children before their parents and how many are born to fulfill a specific purpose for them, becoming an extension of their parents who project on their children and try to shape them into a specific kind of person to successfully play a role. having a child is compared to creating a fictional character which is compared to inserting a piece of yourself on a gameboard. this goes for every parent/child dynamic in the story including allegorical ones such as bern/erika, and of course this reflects the way the only people sayo could call her parent figures shaped her into an accessory in her father's narrative. she was always their means to achieve that, not even a person in the grand scheme of things. a piece of their own creation, shaped and molded into a role, without autonomy of her own. furniture in every meaning of the word in sayo's personal lexicon.

it hurts how she trusted them and even made fantasy versions of them to include them in her world! she wanted them to be part of it and that's a precious thing to her! and then turns out the characters she created were much better people than their human vessels. even more encouragement to reject reality altogether and immerse herself even deeper in a rabbithole of fantasy to cope with her real life being almost unsurvivable after nonstop betrayal and hurt!

the nail in the coffin is, after doing all of... That out of his fucked up sense of loyalty to kinzo, genji goes on to enable and help out with sayo's mass murder-suicide plan... as his way to atone for how much suffering he caused her? the results of his actions were a major driving force in her suicidality and furniture complex among all the many factors pushing her into a corner, and then he reasons that agreeing to help her kill herself along with literally everyone and providing her with the means to do it is the correct thing to do for her??? genji's undying sense of duty and loyalty is truly his worst and most terrifying quality. he'll stop at nothing to honor it.

[determinate-negation]

Hollywood has made a lot of movies about the Holocaust, but not a single one has shown a romani perspective, even though half of Europe's roma population was exterminated by the nazis. I can't really think of anything coherent to say about this, do you?

because it is not of interest to western audiences and doesnt fit the pre-established popular narrative structures of mass culture relating to ww2. whats going to be a popular movie has nothing to do with the real magnitude or importance of something. the big space that ww2 and nazi movies occupy in mass culture also has little to do with the real history of the holocaust for any of its victims. in fact the holocaust was pretty absent from american consciousness post war, it wasnt seen as part of why the us was fighting ww2, survivors didnt talk about it, and it first started to enter popular american consciousness in a big way because of a nbc tv series in 1978 called holocaust about a fictional jewish family. and although this series was the first time many americans had even seen or heard of many aspects of the holocaust, it was still criticized for sanitizing the true extent of nazi war crimes and how horrific conditions were. all this is to say that very few of these popular culture representations really have to do with showing the full reality of something, there are calculations in terms of everything relating to the mass market for film and tv. theres on one hand a western fascination with the third reich (just go to any book store and see how many books there are about hitler) that i think motivates a lot of these representations and on the other hand the transformation of memory of the shoah into a political tool for us interests and the rise of the israel lobby in the us, thus american films are more likely to feature jewish narratives. jewish protagonists in world war 2 movies will likely be more relatable to an american viewer than roma people, straight up, because most mainstream holocaust films with jewish main characters are about middle class ashkenazi jews who lives are much like middle class americans. even though most of the jewish victims of nazism were poor religious eastern european jews. its the fear that it could happen to you, and thats less apparent if the story is about victims you cant relate to. also, theres a lot of jewish directors in america and not a lot of roma directors 🤷🏻

further reading:

The Culture Industry

[burst-of-iridescent]

Hey does everyone remember when Aang physically hurt Katara via burning her due to his own negligence with fire because he didn't listen at all to her concerns? But all of Katara's concerns were her being worried for him getting hurt and not herself, and then he hurts her badly, this never gets addressed again in the show, but I remember this vividly.

i actually like this scene on its own.

aang burning katara is a good character building moment because it's a brutal reminder of his own capacity for destruction. he needs to understand that his reckless actions can have horrific repercussions in order to fully realize the weight of his responsibility as both a firebender and the avatar, and it makes the moment where he uses zhao's recklessness against him more impactful. it also sets up the "water = life, fire = death" dichotomy that's part of katara's arc on viewing the world in binaries, which will later be broken down in book 3.

but ultimately the incident is still of greater significance to aang, and he's the one to bring it up in the guru and western air temple episodes, telling both guru pathik and zuko about his guilt over burning katara and his refusal to firebend ever again. this experience is also what leads him to accept zuko as his firebending teacher, and then finally forgive himself when he learns the true meaning of firebending. for the most part, it's a well-sustained arc and one of the few narratives aang has that is actually brought to completion.

do i wish that katara and aang had actually talked about his actions beyond this episode? yes. do i wish the aftermath had been focused a little more on katara instead of showcasing the impact of her physical injuries mostly through aang's continued self-flagellation? yes. but as a one-off incident contained to a single episode, i don't mind it.

what i do mind, however, is that this is not the last time the show is going to use katara as a lynchpin for aang's character development.

in the book 2 premiere, katara is turned into a pawn to propel aang into the avatar state. in the guru, her imprisonment is the reason that aang chooses to go back to ba sing se instead of unlocking his chakras. that is three separate times now that katara has been damselled in order to facilitate key turning points in aang's narrative, but not once does the same apply in reverse. there is never a moment where aang is the only one put in danger solely to drive katara's arc, the way she is in his. the closest we get is katara bringing aang back to life, but even then his death is still the result of his own choices and more integral to his storyline than hers.

now, compare this to the final agni kai.

at first glance, katara being put in danger just to complete zuko's redemption looks like the same tired trope, and had the scene ended at his sacrifice, it would be. but crucially, it's katara who continues the fight. katara who defeats the scion of fire nation destruction at the height of her power. katara who saves zuko just as he saved her.

in proving herself a master waterbender powerful enough to defeat azula and save someone she loves - someone who sacrificed themselves for her - from fire nation aggression, katara brings her own arc full circle. it is in triumphing over azula by saving each other that zuko and katara become the people they were always meant to be, and so their individual arcs are brought to their narrative culmination through bookending the other. the final agni kai works where the kat.aang moments fall short because it is of equal significance to both zuko and katara's narratives.

obviously, this is not to say that it's bad for certain characters to exist just to drive another character's arc. it's inevitable that some will be written solely to fulfill that purpose because a story only has so much narrative space, and it usually can't - and shouldn't - be divided equally amongst every single character.

but if we're talking about two main characters who end up in a lifelong romantic relationship, and it's the female character being repeatedly damselled to drive the male character's storyline within an already imbalanced dynamic... perhaps it's time to rethink a few things.

[romcomeon]

𝟎𝟎𝟓. 𝐒𝐓𝐔𝐏𝐈𝐃 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄

✒ 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐘𝐁𝐈𝐋𝐋: he is astounded and non-plussed. he is filled with calcu-LUST!

✒ 𝐂𝐀𝐒𝐓: reader as aaron, satan as cady

✒ 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐒𝐄 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐒: satan x gn! reader, mean girls au, high school au, satan is figuratively and literally stupid with love, they are both acad achievers trope, filled with fun and fantasies during math period. not exact to the musical/a lot of creative liberties were made. warning: mathematics used as an allegory.

✒ 𝐄𝐗𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐒: wc: 3k+ | read on AO3 .ᐟ

✒ 𝐅𝐑𝐎𝐍𝐓 𝐒𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐒: @satangcrush ﾉ @mammonsrockstargf ﾉ @nick-writes-stuff ﾉ @eraofkalki ﾉ @torchvic

First crushes? Unfamiliar.

Satan had never fully grasped the concept of a first crush when he first felt the so-called warm butterflies prancing down in the pits of his stomach. That weird burn creeping up your cheeks when you think about someone for more than five seconds. That sickening feeling of screaming into your pillow every night at the fraction of a second of a cheesy romantic fantasy.

Oh no? Is that not how it works?

Maybe you mean the emotional anguish of a lovestruck poet scribing his words in ichor. The fair maiden whisked away by a narcissistic count begging to be rescued by a handsome, well-respected knight. The two rivals lunged at each other's throats in the presence of a great war, shouting confessions and earning the audience’s pity from the first string of the lead’s last breath to the last pull of the trigger.

Love can not just be proven thematically, but also through scientific intuition; such as oxytocin. As oxytocin is associated with trust, sexual arousal and relationship building, it's sometimes referred to as the “love hormone” or “cuddle chemical.”

During childbirth, oxytocin stimulates uterine contractions and facilitates lactation by promoting milk ejection. Well, beyond that, oxytocin is involved in developing trust and empathy between individuals, enhancing social interactions, and strengthening relationships. Research also suggests that it may influence stress reduction and overall well-being. And oxytocin has also proven to not only work in the context of romantic love, but in platonic and familial bonds all the like.

Love is also applied more in the mythological context. The ancient Greeks consider love as a major pivot point in one’s life, emphasized by the many temples worshiping such deities. A notable example would be Aphrodite, the predominant symbol of love and beauty among the greek pantheon.

It didn’t matter how sensual the portrayals were, as Aphrodite had always symbolized love as a whole. Starting with oneself in Philautia, rooting its way towards Agape, or love for everyone else. Entwined in these emotions were Philia, a love formed from a long lasting friendship.

And of course there was Eros. Eros, the symbol of romance and intimacy, where in an act of passion two souls merge and drown among their pleasures. After that, it turned out to be Pragma. Love wasn’t just sex, of course, it needed meaning.

Pragma, the slow, meticulous, carefully nurtured sense of true love. From a simple story of “once upon a time, there was love at first sight,” to the melancholic departure of “‘til death do us part”; Pragma became the end goal for most souls. A yearning that spans beyond eternity, making its mark in the mortal earth and ascending beyond our subconscious. Pragma was beautiful. 

And then came the starting spark. The “casual” goers turned into an emotional rollercoaster. Every hip, up-to-date teenager heard of his horrific thing that many choose to avoid it! Oh the tragedy!

Rumors speculate that this thing rips off the bonds of Philia, or further cements the destiny of Pragma. Sometimes these instances come in cheeky, little dreams, often mistaken for Eros when the infatuation could be described as a simple fling. Like what Satan heard shouting across the halls before the bell rang:

“QUIT IT NERD! THEY’LL NEVER LIKE YOU, LOW-VI!” 

—wow. American high schoolers have zero chill. To be laughed at for a simple meek confession that wasn't even on purpose, to these elaborate schemes of trying to forget such in the span of weeks. Some say it is annoying, others say it is an inspiration, but most agree that once it clouds your mind then there is no escape.

You are simply a goner. Gone are the normal everyday lives where you do your tasks normally. Gone are basic social skills when talking to this person face to face where you suddenly slur your words out like a hangry hippopotamus. Gone may be your suave, charm, will to live and step foot into society due to the amount of sheer embarrassment blah blah blah, yada yada yada.

Yeah, Satan got nothing from that the first time he thought about it when stepping foot into this new place. As far as he knew, it wasn’t like this back when he and his family where off during his ‘parent’s’ work in Africa: studying wildlife and socio-economic conditions and not… I don't know, feelings?

Hearing the mad lad screaming profanities at the top of his lung earlier made the blonde cling onto his cardigan, swiftly grabbing the book and leaving the sight in a matter of seconds. Luckily it was nearly the start of first period so a sigh of relief escaped from him, but oh my were these people just continuing to talk more about that escapade? 

Poor Low-vi. He almost deserved it.

Now where was he…? Ms. Neverbury still hadn’t gotten through half the attendance sheet and Satan was already tapping the eraser end of his pencil against the blank notebook for two and a half minutes. Emerald eyes scan the room, taking in the bright walls decorated with countless manuscripts, letters spelling out common English words, and pictures that reminded him of a high-end kindergarten. Washed out voices of “present” and “here” leave his ears, as the blonde’s mind starts to wonder again at the faint glimpse of red-marked hearts scribbled on the window.

Right. This oh-so terrible feeling that everyone was fussing about. Satan believed that the scholars would call this Ludus, or simply the playful act of love.

Feelings developed out of whimsy, more focused on admiring one’s aesthetics than forming a true, deep connection that transcends space and time. The thing that allegedly lead to so many heartbreaks; some even crying for months on end because of their unreciprocated feelings.

Others laugh at how some “weak minded idiots” have very puny hearts, only to see them grow envious at the sight of someone else clasping arms with their boo boo bear.

Ugh. Thinking about that is stupid. Love is so so stupid. 

Which is why you can’t really prove love. It just… happens? It’s unpredictable. You may think it’s going to be a Pragma forevermore until one of them is scared of commitment because it was one big Ludus.

It didn’t, per say, make sense.

Why obsess over something that can’t be proven? It’s not like mathematics. In a scenario given two conditions, such as x and y; where x is the universal��

And he had to be reminded how he was almost late. Just wonderful. 

Sure, Satan would navigate the school a lot easier had he not just moved from an entirely different continent, but high school directions were as shit as an endangered species’ fecal matter. Up close, for the extra measure.

“Morningstar, Satan?”

“Here,” Satan blurted. 

Everybody heard of first heart breaks? That felt more natural. 

“Pssst.”

Satan perked up from his desk, cocking his head at whoever called his attention. Or was it because the hiss reminded him of the indefinite amount of cobras that surround their tents whenever his father insists on going on long-term trips fully unprepared? It could be the latter, could be not. What he wasn't prepared for was as soon as his gaze lifted from the now pre-calculus filled page, he felt he had gone frozen.

You faced beside you as you tilted your head, scanning the new blood’s notebook. With a tiny ‘hm’, you had your chin up, before greeting him with a charming smile. “Hey there,” you whispered.

Satan had all his attention on you. His own self being unashamed of subconsciously peering over your body, taking in every minute detail from the way your hair framed your hair to the weight of your jacket draped on your shoulder. Down to the minute flutter of your lashes, and the tiny crinkle under your eyes as your smile widens while introducing your name. 

You cleared your throat. “You are?”

“Satan.”

Oh Diavolo, did his voice nearly crack? Thank eternal damnation since you seemed to just nodded along, taking a brief mental note of the identity of possibly a new friend. In the meantime, you lean a bit closer. “Are you new?” you whispered once more, peeking at yours sides so long as to not get caught by this terror teacher.

“You got that right,” Satan sighed. “I just moved here so I could make ‘human’ friends.”

You chuckled. You revert back to your chair, arms stretched out before placing them behind your neck. You rest your back against the backrest, adjusting yourself every so often to keep yourself comfortable. “That’s sick.” 

The teacher taps her ruler on the wooden table. Shakes her head, almost unenthusiastic about today’s lesson. “Okay, let’s dive right in,” she starts off, pulling the thick open book towards her, as her hands glide across the pages. “Chapter 1: Limits and their Properties,” she said, and the class immediately grabbed their own respective books as they flipped to the given chapter.

“What the heck are limits, you say?” the miss scoffs, waving her ruler around before slapping its edge on her palm. The tiny clanks of her heels echo through the room, while momentarily pushing her narrow-framed glasses up the bridge of her nose. “If I write the equation: the limit as X approaches two of x plus one, the function I’m taking the limit of, I don’t expect you to know—”

“X is equal to three.”

Her steps come to a halt. She stared down at the class, amber eyes squinting. “Come again?”

“X is equal to three,” Satan repeats. “X approaching two with the condition of x plus one, the limit would be three.”

The class was silent, as everyone’s vision was set on the new student. Satan lets out a ‘tsk’, scrunching the collar of his light pink cardigan to avert his attention away from filthy, prying eyes. Not that he had to brush off a growing blush from a special set of spectacles. Oh no. 

Miss Neverberry, the teacher at hand, had her curiosity piqued. “Tell me, Mr. Morningstar, find the value of k for which the following limits exist. For the limit to exist we have to cancel x minus 3.”

Not a moment to spare, Satan’s mind was now set on solving the given problem. Like clockwork, with every snap of his finger as he mumbles the possibilities, canceling out assumptions based on the given formation, and proving his final answer through extra steps before he announces his final verdict. Yes he is sure the problem is simple enough and it isn’t as complicated as finding derivatives or explaining trends. But he’d much rather spare himself the embarrassment rather than proclaiming the right magnitude with the wrong sign.

“K is equal to…” Satan pauses, trailing off as each snap of his fingers grows louder while he solidifies the claim in his mind. “K is equal to negative three.”

Miss Neverberry clapped her hands. “Indeed!” 

The class was pleasantly surprised, some calling for small applause. “Damn boy,” one of them comments.

Satan was used to praise. When he got into Trigonometry at the age of 10, he was praised for being a genius. At least, he wasn’t supposed to be affected. Yet there it was, that stupid feeling prancing in his heart and going to a near frenzy when he hears the soothing melody of your voice that was filtered in his brain that it didn’t matter if you sounded exactly like that.

“Wow,” you let out a soft laugh, a smirk ghosting your lips.  “Are you trying to make the rest of us look dumb?”

“I’m not trying,” Satan answered. “It’s just happening.” 

You looked amused.  “Challenge accepted. I’ll have to play at your level. Like how J.R. Smith had to step up when Lebron Ja—” 

The last time Satan had a crush, that fickle heart ran away. 

Literally. The kid ran away. And being Kenyan, they ran fast. 

It’s okay, Satan was five, there were no hard feelings. Except tantrums. And throwing his toys at the wall. And nearly getting lost in one of the cities. In short, it didn’t last. And there was another incident when he was nine, going to one of the peace corp tents carrying a peony of small, wilted flowers.

They laughed. They laughed and it made Satan cry. 

By the age of thirteen, as he rummages through the larg stacks of books pilled behind their temporary home, he comes across a note on general algebra. At the first page, his tiny nails piercing through the thick paper, that’s when Satn declared he would rather not focus on love in the meantime.

Instead, he’d be more inclined to his knowledge. To supplement his intuition until he is fully ready for the commitment. Beecause, as one might theorize, your feelings being unreciprocated is a testament to you not being ready for what’s there in the world. As such, in his logic, by studying math, he’ll be able to dodge the pain that romance brings.

Soon, Elementary algebra morphed into Algebra two, and then Geometry, praised with a good sense of Statistics and General Probability. He memorized the digits of pi by heart, and had preferred to solve questions mentally, where if he gets a question wrong, he’ll try again for countless more attempts.

Three point one four one five nine, two six five three five eight nine… and so on.

Mathematics became a gateway for other knowledge. Since he first discovered it in a book, it allowed him to broaden his scope by dabbling into other literature: biology, chemistry, physics until it reached specialized studies and expounded towards surreal theorems on the human mind.

If it weren’t for the simple introduction to the variable x, Satan would have never had the spark to constantly find answers to the unknown.

And even when he did, new variables resurfaced, each with their own specialized formula waiting to be discovered. 

And it seemed it had gone beyond the boundaries of real numbers. He is nonplussed, suppressing the ever growing curiosity known as calcu-lust.

Dragging him down to the basics where he first discovered the duality of x and y.

Given the points P and Q where it signifies where the line meets. Connections can be marked by the distance formula of d is equal to the quantity square root of (x2-x1) squared minus (y2-y1) squared.

When time passes P and Q move closer towards one another, such that d decreases with every chance of its coordinates. In a hypothetical scenario that one moved by about 3 units, a possible outcome could be that the distances had decreased from 5 to 1.7 units depending on the other variable. 

From here they find their midpoint M, symbolized by dividing their exes and whys into perfect halves, marking the new coordinate on the given plane.

Noting that the slope equation is equivalent to y-y1=m(x-x1), when the time is right, the slope becomes y=x+1.

At the right set of numbers, the right computation, and a bit of fate, when x approaches positive infinity, y increases. As when one is happy, they too can make the other happier forevermore. 

There may be simpler examples of how love works, yet this is what makes the most sense to Satan. Love proven by arithmetic. Solid evidence that required a special kind of understanding. It could be simple for one to say “when you are happy, me happy,” but sometimes, it takes convincing oneself of the truth at front.

Love may not be so stupid. But one’s perception could be.

“Find x?”

“X is 2-5-6 point.. 9-8”

“Given the parameters, what if the shortest length of side A in the nearest tenth?”

“Seven-tenths.”

“What is the difference of the square root of three over sin(20) and 1 divided by cos(20)?”

“Four multiplied by the quotient of sin(60) minus sin(20) over sin(40)...”

“It’s just four.”

“Marvelous! Marvelous!” the teacher claps, tapping her ruler on the blackboard. “Such bright minded students we got this semester!”

Ms. Neverberry turned around, as students could mutter a sliver of “thank the devil” slipped from the madame’s lips.

A fourth of the class snickered, fondly recalling the endless tattletales of how this batch of students had a worse performing grade compared to the batches that preceded it. It didn't matter how the lesson degraded from calculus back to trigonometry, but the teacher reckoned that everyone needed a refresher.

You lean closer towards Satan once more, nudging his elbow. “Hey, can I have an eraser?” And didn’t the pastel blends of yellow and pink suit him nicely, complimenting the vibrancy of his green eyes? How he paired well with the softness despite having a near-opposite attitude, and you couldn’t help but find it endearing how it just made him… so..

“I would love to.” Satan whispers, before coughing to his fist. “Ahem. Sorry. Just take it.”

You shook your thoughts away from that developing daydream, quickly snatching the Siamese cat themes eraser—rather high quality—and making sure to return it after use.

And it was also safe to say that it hadn’t yet marked the end of your not-so-subtle note passing. Every time you feel unsure of a number, you turn towards the equivalent of a sentient calculator, showing him your sheet and asking for any corrections.

Most of the time there weren’t any errors. And when there were, it was minor.

“Is this correct?”

Satan raised his brow, his face contorting in unease. “Double negative is.. Negative?”

“Ah.. missed that, thank you.”

Most of it was minor. 

And mostly you were obvious to the said blond growing braver by the second, seemingly not paying attention to the lessons if it weren’t for his quick-witted responses to every practice drill. How he wondered how you were in those clothes… Almost undressing you with his eyes but laden in the gaze of a devout poet than a pervert.

If you wanted you could joke about if he was enjoying the view and Satan would absolutely deny it. Not out of hiding his feelings but more so on the actions caused by said feelings. If only you understood how Satan views love as a concept, rather than a concrete set of rules that follow direct boundaries. How this little tinge of Ludus, like he hypothesized, shouldn’t be as nerve wracking as what their peers keep spouting on.

It was still Ludus until one of the final equations presented on the board. Find the condition such that—

“Two over zero is undefined!”

“Two over zero is undefined!”

“Jinx!” you laughed, watching your new friend’s face flush crimson.

Satan crossed his arms, letting out a sarcastic “hah..” before muttering beneath his breath. What were they? You could care less. 

Oh the wonders of love-based mathematics.

He didn’t get it. Didn’t get it — ‘til now.

a/n: okay... the 5th installment that got to be the second upload... oops? I am so so sorry- the first half of october had been hectic and as such I was forced to cancel 3 out of the 8 stories. the good news is that I could still work on the other stories with ample of time, and to make it up, I will be following up the 3 fics in November—or at least before a December event..

this is shorter than the last because it is meant to be! it's just a simple moment with sprinkles of small flashbacks to reflect one dozing off, and honestly? anything longer would be dragging the whole song.

that's all, and always remember: you can run the world with shoes you cannot walk in!! <3 xo, eden.

event masterlist | main masterlist | divider by cafekitsune

[wonustars]

𝘚𝘦𝘶𝘯𝘨𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘰𝘭 ’𝘴 𝘓𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘴 (𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦𝘳)

“𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴, 𝘢𝘭𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘴. 𝘪’𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘭 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳, 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘺𝘰𝘶” - 𝘮𝘢𝘪𝘬𝘦𝘦’𝘴 𝘭𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘣𝘺 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘩𝘶𝘴𝘩

story inspirtation came from this poll pairing: c.sc x reader word count: estimated ~10k+ (this teaser: 983 words)

genre: friends to friends with benefits to lovers, slowburn, angst, fluff, smut (mdni)

summary: You and Seungcheol have been friends ever since you were kids. Growing up as neighbours, experiencing all the horrific adolescent moments in high school, and now going to the same University together. Even though you’ve denied it many times to your friends, part of you has always had feelings for him, not that you would ever say it out loud. He is the one person you can trust with anything and everything. So what happens when he propositions the idea of becoming friends with benefits? (the plot maybe change a little while i’m continuing to write but the overall theme will stay the same &lt;;3)

tags: bestfriend!seungcheol, nonidol!au, university!au, female!reader, mutual pining, slow burn so painful you'll feel it in your toes, they are one year apart, SLIGHT like extremely miniscule wonwoo x reader (for the angst mwahahaha), seungcheol is a jealous jealous man, they're both idiots, jeonghan is a menace as always, seungcheol has a lot of pride, so does the reader, (i'll add more once its finished lol)

warnings/smut: this will be added on in the full post.

taglist: open! send an ask, dm, or comment to be tagged for when i post the full fic.

notes: long time no post everyone.... a LOT of people voted for an s.coups story on my poll so i'm here to deliver mwahahahaha...ALSO im so proud of the banner i made like udek i love how it looks hehhehe, i spent a good hour or so on it T-T ! i really have an urge to write a longer story, so idk when i'll be finished because it may take me a while to finish so sorry in advance. I just started writing and I was playing Mikee's Letters by Just Hush during it and so i thought id incorperate the song into the story, but barely lol (its a tagalog song so sorry if the translation is a lil rough my tagalog is not the most accurate). this story is SOOOOOO self indulgnet that it should be criminal lol BUT im really excited to write this and im really excited to share it with everyone,,, but first i actually got to finish it hehe. talk to u soon, mwah <3!

As long as you could remember you and Seungcheol have been attached to the hip. Even though he was a year older than you, you couldn’t remember the last time you spent a day without him. You’ve been in each others lives ever since then, starting all the way from the young, bright age of 5, when you and your family moved into the small, humble house across his. Although your parents weren’t very well off, Cheol was. It was an odd thing that you two were neighbours because his house was much more grand, and nicer kept than yours. This didn’t really bother you growing up though, he always made you feel like an equal.  

Seungcheol has been with you through it all, the petty fights in middle school to the pains of adolescence in high school. He’s seen you at your worst, like the time you tripped and fell trying to impress a cute guy at school, which resulted in a nose bleed. You were so embarrassed but at the end of the day Cheol was there to help you clean your bloody nose and pick you back up. A true night and shining armor, which was practically his brand. He was the one to patch up your heart, breakup after breakup. Always your shoulder to lean on when you’re feeling down, and especially when you’re happy. 

A man and bestfriend like Choi Seungcheol didn’t come around very often, and you took notice of that since you were young. You cherish every moment you have and will have with him. He is a true gentleman with a heart of gold. He’s handsome, smart, rich and caring. Every single box on your list is ticked off when it comes to him. Yet, you know that no matter how hard you love him, you will only ever be his bestfriend. The girl he sees as practically his younger sister. The bittersweet feeling of being so close to him tugs your heart till its torn. It took you a long time to accept that all you’ll ever be is his bestfriend, and even now, you’re still trying to accept this fact. 

...

Seungcheol has always seen himself as your best friend. The man that will be there for you when you have no one else to turn to. He has never seen you as more than his best friend, his y/n. He is a man who never second-guesses himself, always keeping a strong-willed sense of mind. Every time one of his friends asked him if he had feelings for you, he would simply answer no; and that you were like a younger sister to him. 

That first year was lonely for him, he didn’t really know anyone and all his classes kept him away from socializing. The only thing that seemed to have stayed constant was you. You face-timed him at least once a week before he went to bed, never forgetting to remind him how much you missed him, and how much you cared for him. In the simplest words, you were his rock for that first year. 

Seungcheol was never warned about how lonely and jarring your first year could be. The change in place, people, and most importantly the change in the fact that you weren’t there experiencing it beside him. He was never one to believe clichè sayings, but he finally understood what the saying “distance makes the heart grow fonder” really felt like. He had gotten so overwhelmed from the loneliness he even began to write you letters, ones he would never actually send out, as cheesy as it sounds. But knowing that he was addressing them to you brought him some type of solace in that first year.

 A year later you came to study at the same university, and he was elated, to say the least. Finally, he had thought to himself. The one person he hadn’t been able to see, smell, or touch for a year was finally going to be in his proximity. 

Unlike Cheol, you were only able to go to this school through bursaries and scholarships, your parents simply just couldn’t afford to send you to school in a different city otherwise. It reminded you how lucky Seungcheol was to receive support from his parents, getting and going to school was nothing he had to ever think twice about. You knew you could’ve stayed with your family, and gone to school closer to your house, but with Cheol away, it just wasn’t the same. Nothing had felt the same since he left. But this didn’t matter to you the moment you felt his arms wrap around you again. 

You stood there in the airport all alone, eyes searching for a head of freshly dyed blond hair. The moment you heard his voice call your name, you knew you were finally home. 

“Y/n!” An excited, deep voice calls out for you. 

You whip your head around to see him. The man you hadn’t seen in so long, the man you were so desperately in love with. Your best friend. 

“Cheol!” A squeal escapes your lips, you run to him. He pulls you into a tight hug, wrapping his large hands around your smaller frame. Swinging you around like crazy, a laugh bubbles up from your throat. 

“I’ve missed you so much y/n.” Cheol exasperates as he hugs you tighter, leaving a kiss on the top of your head.

“I’ve missed you too Cheol…” You whisper into his chest, breathing in his expensive cologne, not caring that you are in public; staying there to embrace him for a weirdly long period of time. “Never leave for that long again.” 

[meanbossart]

its funny looking between his former fixation (orin) and current one (astarion) and noticing he has a very obvious 'type'. what made him so taken with orin, though? what did he like about her? did he not have any initial misgivings? was he ever concerned she might turn on him?

B)c Please know how happy it made me to finally have someone spell this out lmao. It's absolutely true, at least within the dynamic that DU drow shared with each of them; there are a lot of parallels to be found between Orin and Astarion.

The tough part of this question however, is that I have a very difficult time pinning Orin down. She's easily the most elusive character out of the Chosen, and while I understand this Is likely a consequence of being underwritten, I also see a certain charm in a character who's lack of development is part of their tragedy - whose story is very much about not being allowed much individuality of their own, and having no resolution. I think this is a space worth playing in.

I couldn't tell you what the hell Orin likes, what she was like besides blood-thirsty and deranged. I can barely fathom her sitting down to have a conversation with someone. Think about it - she was raised from childhood in the Bhaal temple, both her parent's were faithful servants and she was essentially groomed from birth to be either Bhaal's Chosen, the Dark Urge's consort, or a sacrificial lamb. Nobody had ANYTHING to gain from allowing her to develop any humanity.

Of course, this doesn't mean she doesn't have any, deep inside. We see glimpses of it in fairly difficult-to-get dialogue regarding her origins during act 3. My very vague take on Orin is that she was a determined and persistent person who learned to make her circumstances work for her as best as she could, who had a strong sense of her boundaries but a horrifically difficult time differentiating between negative emotions - this is why I personally don't even know whether she """"led DU drow on""" our of malice or self-preservation. Perhaps she didn't know either - I think whenever Orin felt sadness, discomfort, anger or even happiness or love, she found a way to turn it into bloodlust and sadism, every time.

And it's in part this elusiveness that would have attracted DU drow. What did Astarion have to do to get DU drow to pursue him? He had to feign disinterest, he had to pull away - the fact that Orin never allowed DU drow to get close enough to truly know her plays a significant part in how unhealthy his attachment for her became.

That said, this was a long game - he did become infatuated pretty much from the moment he saw her when they were both teenagers. This is a much simpler concept to understand - he was profoundly emotionally inept and neglected, and she was probably the prettiest thing he ever laid eyes on, not to mention the only other person in the temple close to him in age.

Truth is, they did have a lot in common on the very basis of having been so thoroughly stripped of their humanities, but It was a closeness born entirely from circumstance - the implied vulnerability in the type of life they shared together, even if they never spoke about feelings or shared what normal people would qualify as a "sweet" moment. They didn't really use their words, and when they did, they were like daggers - twisted murder sibling banter.

But when they had to work together it was very different. They played off each each other like match and friction, like two fitted cogs turning a wheel. There must have been nothing that swelled DU drow's heart more than when they killed together, perhaps even more than when Orin hurt him. He loved seeing her in her element and yearned for nothing more but to be let into the joy she found in it.

He Never had any misgivings. He always thought she would come around (to him) eventually. He was completely and entirely blind to how much her resentment towards him grew throughout the years, how he lost a sister through wanting a lover.

[outsidersheadcanons]

To extend on my last post.

Dally tells Pony and Johnny the most scary ghost/horror stories like they are 100% true.

He always tells them when they’re out at night walking home or smth or right when Ponyboy’s supposed to be getting to bed

The worst part is that he’s a good storyteller so you can bet he’s putting the most horrific images in these poor kid’s heads.

And no this does NOT help at all with Ponyboy’s full belief in monsters. In fact Dally’s almost completely responsible for that

[anthurak]

Continuing my analysis and theorizing on Asmodeus, Mammon and the rest of the Deadly Sins of Helluva Boss and their backgrounds, characterization and where the show might be taking them, I’ve been thinking about what their expressions of their respective ‘Sins’ might truly represent for their characters. Both in the way they express it and even the whole reason they express a ‘Sin’ in the first place.

Now assuming that all of the Sins are Fallen Angels just like Lucifer, and their presence in Hell is a result of their expulsion from Heaven, and Hell being the new home they’ve built for themselves;

What if their expression of each of their ‘sins’ is a metaphorical or even outright literal trauma coping mechanism?

Like given what we’ve seen so far of how Vivzie and her team approach and interpret the ideas of Hell and Heaven, I think it’s all too easy to imagine them framing the ‘fall’ of the seven sins to be a truly horrific event that left all of them with massive emotional and mental scars and trauma. Like getting kicked out by the universe’s most controlling, rigid, conservative and violently judgmental family.

So what if the whole reason that Asmodeus, Mammon, Beelzebub and the rest started expressing and embodying their respective ‘sin’ was as a way of processing and coping with their trauma?

And of course, there are healthy ways of dealing with trauma, and unhealthy ways as well. Which I think is the true difference between the Sins.

Basically, Ozzie and Bee found healthy ways of processing and coping with their trauma, while Mammon DIDN’T.

More specifically, we see with both Ozzie and Bee that they are able to manage their ‘sin’ (ie; coping mechanism) so that it doesn’t become harmful to themselves or others: Bee is acutely aware of and concerned when someone is overindulging to the point of self-harm, while Ozzie strongly stresses the importance of consent when it comes to sex.

Mammon meanwhile, clearly has zero management or restraint over his ‘sin’. I think it’s all too plausible that Mammon’s obsession with wealth and attention for his ‘brand’ is deep-down a way for him to distract himself from some deeply repressed pain and trauma. Thereby showing how a coping mechanism can become harmful not just for oneself, but others as well.

And the best part is that even with the little we know of them at this point, I think we can already guess that Belphagor, Satan and Leviathan could display/represent other means of coping with trauma, either healthy or harmful.

We know that Belphagor runs Hell’s pharmaceutical business, so I think we can all agree that could easily be a way to show how medication can either help or harm in dealing with trauma. Satan being the Sin of Wrath could represent how anger can be used as a coping mechanism, while he apparently running a workout app could hint to him using fitness as a coping mechanism. And Leviathan being associated with social media of course has all kinds of potential to the show the good and bad ways THAT can be used to deal with trauma.

Over the course of its run thus far, Helluva Boss has shown itself to be in large part a story about dealing with trauma, with practically all of the primary and secondary characters having arcs heavily influenced or even outright defined by their struggles with past trauma. Blitzo, Moxxie, Loona, Stolas, Fizzerolli, Barbie Wire, even more minor or antagonistic characters like Octavia, Verosika and Striker. ALL of these characters have been shown grappling with past pain and trauma, with almost all showing that they are coping with their trauma in either a healthy or unhealthy manner.

Whether Moxxie recognizing that it is his father who is at fault for all the pain he went through and not himself, Fizzerolli finding a loved one who has helped him cope or Barbie Wire simply spending a long time in therapy to show the positive ways people can deal with their trauma. Or conversely, Loona’s closed-off, angry and generally anti-social defense mechanism, Stolas trying to throw himself into a relationship he doesn’t fully understand, or just… EVERYTHING that Blitzo has going on to show the harmful ways people can deal with trauma.

So I’d say it really only makes sense that with how the show has also taken steps to ‘humanize’ the Sins, that this theme of exploring how people deal with deep-seeded pain and trauma would likewise extend to them as well.

[avelera]

"Nice is Different than Good" Character Interpretation: Hob Gadling as Kind of a Bastard

Ok, slightly controversial take on Hob Gadling Is Kind of a Bastard that I've been toying with. It runs counter to some wonderful let me be clear, amazing fanon I've seen in some fics, so this is much more me going, "Hey, here's a way to do it different that might work better in different stories fan writers might want to tell," and not to invalidate other takes or even to put forth that I think this is necessarily true of Hob in a meta sense, it's just shining a light on the text from a different direction, y'know?

Hob as Neutral Evil (credit to Winter on the big dreamling server for this concept!)

I'm obsessed with the idea that Hob is neutral evil on ye olde D&D alignment chart because it makes so much sense if the axis for evil is primarily based on selfishness.

Primary evidence? How casually he talks in 1489 about having done a bit of soldiering and banditry. Those jobs are about killing people. Maybe not all the time as a bandit, ideally, but even then it's about taking their stuff. There is absolutely zero remorse in Hob's tone about being a soldier and a bandit just because he's at his most wide-eyed innocent and has since picked up a trade.

Hob as Politically Conservative until at least 1789 but possibly until 1989

Hob as far as I can tell is a model of the white male middle class existence in England throughout what we define as more or less the "modern era". As far as I can tell, there's no indication at any point prior to 1789 that Hob rocked the boat or was at all out of step with the Powers That Be.

In general, I kind of see Hob as always just this side of the "wrong side of history" and I personally find it more interesting when that's where we find him. And not in a grand sense but in a "middle of the road" sense of just going along with the day to day accepted levels of harm and evil caused by societal momentum. Generally speaking, only a very small percentage of the population takes active part in moving the needle towards good at any given time on a variety causes, and I tend to see Hob is generally speaking outside of all those minorities of do-gooders, except when it comes to taking care of his immediate friends and family. Which is a pretty average place to be.

Indeed, when it comes to the Wat Tyler rebellion, it's my personal headcanon that Hob was more likely on the side of the soldiers putting DOWN the rebellion on behalf of the local lords, and unlikely to have been interested in or part of the cause of greater equality in England. The fact he's a soldier drinking with his mates openly in a tavern when people around him are talking about Wat Tyler and he's blithely ignoring the discussion is where I get that sense.

Indeed, I believe (though I don't know where to cite it, even in the English Civil Wars, Hob was canonically on the side of the monarchy. So jot that down as Hob being pro-monarchy.

While, yes, I believe post 1789 he learned to be less of a piece of shit about taking active part if horrific industrial-level cruelty, I don't see evidence he became a superhero after that. The one bit of "on the page"altruism we see from him is him flipping a coin to Lushing Lou and telling an obvious alcoholic to go get a drink so she stops pestering his friend by offering herself to him as a prostitute, something Hob seems entirely comfortable with.

In 1989 when Hob gets out of his sleek convertible, dressed like a stock trader, he uses the Financial Times to shield himself from the rain, a periodical that apparently was just lying around in his car. As tempting as it would be to say it's to somehow show off to Dream, he has no reason to believe Dream would come back to his car so more likely, it's just something for himself.

All of these put together show me on the page that Hob stayed pretty fixated on making money even after deciding and coming to regret being part of the "shipping business".

And to be clear, we don't actually know when Hob quit the shipping business. Personally, I like to think he did it right after Dream asked, but that's a romantic take and deliberately so. Hob having the opinion by 1889 that slavery is wrong is not necessarily a progressive take by then. Regardless, even if in 1789 he learned it was wrong, that still puts him just slightly ahead of the curve, philosophically speaking.

If we pull in comic canon we do know Hob was ahead of the curve on feminism by 1912 in Hob's Leviathan but again, women would get the right to vote by 1918/1928 in England after the issue had been discussed for at least a century (keep in mind, male Catholics couldn't vote in England until the early 1800s) so again this puts him as palatable to modern readers but not necessary terribly ahead of the curve.

Now, let me also be clear, where Hob is at in 2022 is anyone's guess. Personally I think Dream not showing up in 1989 was a second wakeup call for Hob. If he'd drifted back towards selfish hedonism by 1989, as his whole vibe suggests, he might very well have looked in the mirror and thought, "What if this is why my stranger stayed away?"

We know he becomes a teacher. That probably would go a long way towards changing his politics. We know he's a history teacher, so now he's got the long view. He's spending time in academia, which tends to lean left. My point is, Hob in 2022 is anyone guess and I think there's a lot of evidence and word of god evidence that he's become a Good Person by then, but I also think it's the 1989 meeting that jumpstarted him being Good and not just Nice. Because I do think Hob throughout all these periods of being morally a bastard was always good to the people close to him in his life. I think he was a good friend and a good husband and would have been a good friend to Dream had he allowed it. And that's what I enjoy most, that he could be both of those things, Nice and Not Good.

Hob as non-religious

I admit, this one is very near and dear to my heart for personal reasons of identifying as an atheist when it comes to Christianity and being a lifelong skeptic of Catholicism for the brief time I was technically a member of that organization (all of which while I was a minor). To be clear there is just as much evidence to say Hob is any number of religious alignments as there is that he has none. It's a totally personal choice by any author, I'm just outlining my evidence for why I write him as effectively an atheist.

The Black Death is considered the period that broke the spine of the Catholic church as a monolith in Europe. All the good priests who did their duty taking care of people and giving last rites died leaving only the ones who fled or were young, with tons of money given to the church because of all the rampant death.

Hob would have been born into an era that was particularly rife with both fanaticism and anti-church sentiment. There was a lot of evidence abounding that being a good Christian just got you killed.

Given Hob is a soldier drinking with his mates 1389, I don't see much evidence of him being particularly devout there. No less so in 1489, by the way. Not saying there's evidence against it, just that there's no evidence for it and indeed, societally there's justification for him to not be devout given the century he was born.

1589 I'd say we've got some evidence Hob isn't devout: he seems unperturbed by King Henry's ransacking of the monasteries. Politically speaking, if Hob is a New Man, he might have even benefited from that ransacking personally. In my personal view, Hob is an opportunist and most likely converted to Church of England at the earliest possible opportunity to curry favor with the Powers that Be. I don't personally see him as someone who would bother pretending to be Protestant while continuing to practice Catholicism, because:

Why would Hob bother to be faithful at all? He can't die. The #1 reason to be devout is to avoid Hell or get into Heaven. Hob has clearly chosen the secular world as the only Heaven he cares about. He says that his current life is what, "He once thought Heaven would be like" and it's a very secular vision of good food and safe streets. He does not appear to be pining at all for any spiritual version of Heaven and indeed, speaks of Heaven as a dream only in the past tense.

Personally, by 1689, I think Hob has plenty of reasons to hate God after what he's suffered and the fact he's still not interested in dying to me seems a pretty strong indication that he does not hold romantic views of the afterlife.

Finally, for 1789 to the present, there was absolutely a class of gentleman who were progress minded, obsessed with technology and the Age of Reason. Many American Founding Fathers were self-proclaimed deists, basically a safe form of atheism that said eh, yes God exists and is out there and we owe him some deference, but he doesn't impact day to day life and we can safely ignore him most of the time. Personally, and this is pure headcanon, I put Hob in that group cheerfully ignoring religion and never looking back because he's more interested in the new technologies of the day and not the crusty old church.

We also know, canonically, that at least in 1789, Hob does not consider himself Jewish.

And of course, we can't forget: Hob has evidence that the Christian cosmology is wrong, somehow, given his stranger and his own immortality.

Frankly, given that Hob appears on the page to be a hedonist with no fear of dying, it's interesting to speculate on what his moral boundaries would be at all coming from a world where Heaven and Hell were the primary means of moral social control. It is possible to speculate that Hob could have gone completely off the rails as far as worrying about his soul for a bit there, other than thinking he's already sold it, which could go either way as far as trying to redeem himself but again, he speaks casually of being a soldier and a bandit, so it doesn't sound like if he worried about his soul being sold already, he thought there was anything that could be done to redeem it.

[astralexpressarchives]

The Renheng Iceberg Explained

Alright so there's this renheng iceberg on twitter that I was recently informed about. I'm wayyy too deep into the lore so I skipped to the bottom and everything there was stuff I was already more than familiar with.

So I figured why not put all this information to some use and make a post explaining the more obscure items on the iceberg and leaving out the self-explanatory ones, doing my best to reference as well as possible.

Blade gazing at Imbibitor Lunae statue

This was a hidden interaction where you could find Blade standing near the statue of Imbibitor Lunae at the scalegorge after revealing Dan Heng's vidyadhara form. He says he is 'mourning for folly' and asks you if Dan Heng is happy. You can watch a video about this here.

Good friends who are bad for each other

This is Kafka's description of what she knows about Blade and Dan Heng's history in her companion quest. This answer is a "truth" in her game of truth and lies.

"Apparently, they used to be good friends... Well, good friends who were bad for each other. Bladie forgot nearly everything, so he doesn't remember well. Together, they did something bad — something terrible. It led to horrific consequences. That's the information I managed to piece together. Bladie refused to tell me the details."

Dan Heng gets nightmares about blade

We see this in-game in the cinematic leading up to the Xianzhou questline. This is also suggested in the Only Silence Remains lightcone description.

Matching Jade Ornaments

Referring to this idea.

There is also a vidyadhara egg that says:

"You edge closer to the pearlescent shell and have a dream in which you are a Pearlkeeper who rides the waves, and travels across the ancient sea with your true love. The time you have spent with your lover is full of happiness, but the time of hatching rebirth is determined by destiny. You secretly put a jade pendant in your mouth so your lover can recognize each other in the next life."

And considering that DH:IL 4 story has him refusing to speak during the entirety of his interrogation, death sentence, and final verdict, it definitely leaves room for imagination.

Bracer Lore

This one encompasses a few of the other ones on the iceberg, too. Really, it's worth reading the entirety of the Passerby of Wandering Clouds relic set lore. Keep in mind all relic sets are in chronological order of head/gloves/body/feet. The bracer also mentions this part about 'That owner also once shared company and drinks with the unnamed, the two of them simply gazing at the moon with no words exchanged.' This has an interesting meaning in CN that tells us this drinking was an engagement ceremony. People thought this must be a typo but, despite many tickets from people, their only response has been that they're unable to comment further. They still haven't changed it as of patch 1.4.

Dan Heng polishes and gaze longingly at Cloud Piercer

A recent addition in patch 1.4 where Pom-pom now says:

"Passenger Dan Heng often carefully maintains and polishes his spear. Although the Express is very safe, it seems that he is not willing to drop his guard. Hmm, Pom-Pom can tell that when he polishes his spear, there isn't just alertness in his eyes, but a glint of longing, too. Don't underestimate me, Pom-Pom had dealt with all kinds of different passengers!"

I'm sure by now everyone knows that cloudpiercer was made by Yingxing (Blade).

You can see screenshots of this interaction in this post.

Mirror Inverted Colours

Apparently, a big part of CN character design focuses around the concept of inverted colour palette designs for ships. Because Blade and Dan Heng share inverted colours, this is considered a good sign for the ship as it indicates they were most likely designed together.

Danmei Coded

Danmei is the CN genre for mlm. It has a lot of stereotypical tropes that are very common in this genre and apply to renheng also. My personal opinion is that renheng is very similar to something written by Meatbun in particular - this is a danmei author who wrote erha, yuwu, and casefile compendium. The associated tropes are:

Lovers to enemies back to lovers angst timeline often including misunderstandings involving tragic betrayal

Black/red character x white/blue/green character

Under the moonlight

Amnesia and/or reincarnation themes

Protag did something that made everybody turn on them + complicated political drama plot

Redemption in death/isolation/retreating from the world at the end

Waiting frankly ridiculous amounts of time to be with the lover again

One character pursuing the other character literally

One character considered dead or demonic in some capacity, the other is ethereal and godly

Mortal x immortal

Afterlife/spirit realm shenanigans usually involving fractured souls as a result of torment

Contrasting personalities + others don't think they should get along/are bad for each other (usually the deviant personality is considered to be corrupting the noble/revered personality in some way which often involves a rebellion)

Mirrored Ultimates

Their ultimate animation sequences are very similar with close eyes with weapon - open eyes - attack.

And both of their ultimates take place in different versions of the same location:

Vidyadharas can't identify items belonging to their past yet Dan Heng got the bracer, jade pendant(?), and cloud piercer

There is an NPC named Lingling in the alchemy commission who is responsible for assisting in vidyadhara hatching rebirth. She collects the personal belongings of vidyadhara who claim that they want to keep the items for their next life. She says that:

From what I've seen, most Vidyadhara lack emotions fresh after their rebirth, and are unable to understand the sentiments of their previous selves. Not a single one has ever been able to identify which one of these items used to belong to them.

This is a big indicator that DH = DF and that their romance will be continuing in this life, too. We know from Passerby of Wandering Clouds relic set that Dan Heng is still in possession of the bracer because of the line: "His fingertips could still faintly feel the temperature from the other."

The stars always accompany the moon

This is a reference to their names in CN where the Xing in Yingxing means moon and the Yue in Yinyue jun (Imbibitor Lunae) means Moon. Their ship name Xingyue means Star and Moon, which is often why you will see them referred to with the Star/Moon emojis as well as the sword/leaf emoji.

Blade came to see Dan Heng blushing when Xiyan asked him to act the character in his story

This is referring to this video on weibo where Dan Heng is talking to Xiyan. You can see the characters in the crowd then Dan Heng starts blushing. The next time you see the crowd, Blade has arrived third from the right.

"Eternal Regrets of a High Elder" and "Dreams from a Past Life"

These are arias from the Cloudcry Songbook written by a Vidyadhara named Lingjie who reincarnated into Chunfen. Lingjie was an opera singer and apparently a big fan of Dan Feng and his romantic life.

My friend wrote the poem analysis of both of these arias. I would strongly recommend reading her translations.

TW: These translations do include mentions of a new leaked poem. Some of the content is NSFW.

Dan Heng named himself "Dan Heng" due to the "Dan" character carved by Yingxing/Blade

We know that Vidyadhara do not usually name themselves based on their past lives as they have no attachment to them. The other iteration of Dan Heng was named Yubie for example. Dan Heng's name in CN is  丹恒. The Dan 丹 means red/pellet/powder/cinnabar. You can see Dan is inscribed on his spear that Yingxing made for him, thus the logical conclusion is that Dan Heng saw the inscription and chose it as his name.

The Star of the East (Jupiter, Wood Star)'s god is Ying Xing, and their guardian beast is Azure Dragon/Canglong/Qinglong

This one is the only one I didn't understand when I first saw it, so I had to request the help of my CN knowing friends to figure it out.

Yingxing's name is 应星 (where the 星 means star).

The CN god of Jupiter Taisui Xingjun 太岁星君 is known as Yin Jiao 殷交

Jupiter is the planet associated with the Chinese wood element, known as the wood star

Azure Dragon is known as Canglong or Qinglong in CN. This is the guardian of Jupiter (the wood star).

Blade's fansong equates Yingxing with 听星 (judging star) which is an alias for Taisui Xingjun

You can read my friend's explanation of the relevant line in the fansong below.

Dan Feng's crime was inspired by Chang'E, the moon goddess for stealing an elixir of immortality and Yingxing was inspired by Hou Yi, a mortal and husband of Chang'E (he was given immortality but didn't, this parallels and contrasts Yingxing's immortality)

So there's actually a bit more to this. I'm going to just use my friend's explanation here:

According to Shang dynasty’s Guicang, It is said that there is a moon maiden who escaped to the moon after stealing an immortality pill. This story was eventually given more details: The moon maiden became known as Heng’e 姮娥, who was the wife of Hou Yi - the hero who shot down the 9 suns. Hou Yi was given an immortality pill/herb as a reward, but Heng’e stole it and flew to the moon. In some versions, upon finding out, Hou Yi tried to shot down her to prevent her from floating to the moon, but he hesitated and ended up choosing not to in the end because he still loved her. In the moon, Heng’e stayed in a palace called 廣寒宮 (the Vast Palace of Coldness) and cursed to be separated from her husband, alone with only the moon rabbits and the immortal osmanthus tree forever. Later on, her name was changed to Chang’e 嫦娥 because Emperor Wen of Han’s name was 劉恆 Liu Heng, and so the 姮 Heng part of her name became a taboo. The interesting here is that 姮 (Heng’e), 恆 (Liu Heng), 恒 (Dan Heng) are all alternative ways to write the same character, 姮, which originally means moon, Heng’e. In addition, we also have a lot of official artworks depicting Dan Heng with the moon and osmanthus flowers:

Yeah so I think that just about covers everything. I left out the ones that were self-explanatory but if anyone is still confused about any of them I can try to elaborate further in the replies.

[heartgold]

Something ingenious about ep3 is how Battler is at his worst here but in a markedly different way from his ep1 characterization... Also it's meta!Battler who acts that way rather than his piece, which marks not only the author shift but also this depiction being deeply allegorical

Like. Ep3 meta!Battler is super dismissive of Beatrice even as she tells him about the most horrific parts of her trauma through a fantasy lens that doesn't even obfuscate the worst of it (and Battler actually... manages to decipher it with some prodding from Ronove), and yet he still brushes it off. His relationship to Beatrice in the meta layer is super antagonistic at this point. He correctly figures out that she's confessing to something very painful but doesn't care to think about it or why she's bringing it up because she has already been characterized as a heartless cruel monster in his eyes, therefore she hasn't earned his sympathy and good faith. It might as well be a trick just to confuse him

The way their relationship improves the moment she starts "reforming" and acting all cute and pitiable is important because it shows her both playing into his fantasy of "fixing" her and making her change her ways just to sweep the rug from under his feet and prank him about it at the end AND playing into this good victim fantasy for herself and genuinely relishing in the understanding and good faith he was willing to extend to her once she played the role he wanted her to (this is blatantly Sayo's complex with becoming the person others want her to be in order to deserve their love... It hurts........)

This marking the author shift and being a meta-only dynamic is super interesting to me  because it can mean so many things. I like to think of the metaworld as a representation of the journey in understanding the story from within. We know that from the IRL angle Tohya wrote ep3 while not knowing the full truth and believing Eva to be the most likely culprit based off snippets of memory and her survival. You could read Evatrice claiming the role of the antagonist while Beato goes through a "redemption arc" as Tohya struggling with his memories, deep down knowing the painful truth but being unable to access that memory or accept it, therefore pointedly scapegoating Eva to process his feelings of guilt and grief towards the witch

But by wishing her to be blameless and pinning everything on someone else he is neglecting her heart and looking away from her true feelings, from all the things she wanted to communicate and from all the circumstances that brought upon the tragedy (and ultimately, from Battler's sin). I can see this internal struggle being meta-translated as ep3 Battler being selfish like that and refusing to engage with Beatrice until she becomes "good"... You can feel a lot of self loathing in it. It's a rocky start to their parallel journeys until they both Get It and it's so interesting to me how, in hindsight, it's very clear that it truly starts when the stories change hands

Overall it's a VERY good discussion of projection, with the added lens of how we engage with stories. How only seeing what you want to see flattens the complexity of humans into characters. Beato's "redemption arc" is tropey for a reason! She even shouts out dating sims and anime as the inspiration for it to make it clear this was just her reducing herself to a character archetype! Umineko is very critical of the idea of redemption in the first place and it really shows here