#a muse in her feelings

[chloesimaginationthings]

I know Vanessa regret saying this in the FNAF movie,,

[taffywabbit]

a cover of "Panic Station" by Muse, ideally suited for chases through futuristic train platforms full of loop-de-loops and hostile robots!

usually I have a really hard time doing arrangements of existing songs, but I felt unusually motivated to tackle this one and managed to see it thought to completion! (took me a while because I kept spending too much time jamming out to what I already had done instead of working on the next parts lol)

♫ made with OpenMPT! ✎ cover art by me! ► SoundCloud link: https://soundcloud.com/taffywabbit/turmoil-terminus-zone ★ original song (for comparison): https://youtu.be/vk24UKKI4yY?si=RdQkA4BAHoRX1d7P

and here's the full-size cover art, while i'm at it!

[skrrtscree]

the ghost of you 🤍🪻

[yoohyeon]

Gyeongree’s First EP ‘Eternal bloom’ Concept photos 1&2 + Track list

2024.08.21 - Do not repost

[cripplepunkbarbarian]

I am so glad that the kid spectrals have such normal and caring spirits who will definitely not physically endanger and/or cruelly betray them in the midst of their lives already being destroyed by cults, monsters, and interpersonal drama. It’s so cool and nice 👍

[expectiations]

The Husbands of River Song is not and has never been about the Eleventh Doctor being a deadbeat, distant husband (gross mischaracterization by the way) and the Twelfth Doctor being the "better, more mature, affectionate" husband.

It was about River Song. It was about River and how the events in Manhattan took such a toll on her. It was about letting us see River dealing with grief the way The Snowmen showed us how the Doctor coped after losing believing he had used up all his time with River.

Looking at THORS now with The Ruby's Curse in mind, I get the instinct (for lack of a word that I cannot remember) that the Manhattan incident Blue Roach read from River's diary was not the Manhattan episode that we saw in series 7.

On that note, I'd also like to bring up the fact that the Doctor grounds River and River grounds the Doctor. As Tree talked about in one of her tags, River's empathy is more cognitive than emotional and after musing on it for a bit – considering that the Doctor can no longer go to Manhattan (which may have changed in later series but I wouldn't know at the moment because I have yet to overcome series 7b) and that River does spend time with her parents in Manhattan post-TATM, would the latest Manhattan incident in River's diary be the funeral for Amy? Amy's death? Perhaps even Anthony's? I mean, we already know Rory died five years earlier than Amy. So, knowing how deep River's love for her mother is, it's not too farfetched to say that River spent that time with them. River was by their bedsides as they drew their last breath.

Then Rory's gone, Amy's gone, Anthony's gone. Where does that leave River? Where is the Doctor? (sulking on a cloud on top of Victorian London? trying to figure out the mystery of his newest companion? all while constantly mentioning a certain Professor Song who actually turns out to be his dearly sort of departed absolutely beloved wife?)

Without her parents (and her husband) to ground her, she goes on this maddened, grieving space Robin Hood spree. She seeks fun to fill in the void and takes up marriage as a hobby/side quest. Does she look for the Doctor? Perhaps. Yes, actually. Considering she crashed her latest sort-of-husband's ship onto a planet where she purported the TARDIS to be.

But... she's stealing the TARDIS. She could have just called the Doctor, yeah? So, she doesn't want the Doctor to know then. Well... yeah, considering she has two sort-of-husbands in hand.

So, River would just have gone on from one space Robin Hood spree to the next had the TARDIS not sort-of-stranded herself on Mendorax Dellora to make sure her Water stopped being stubborn and reconcile(?) with her Thief?

Also taking note of how River has read stories about them and knows that Darillium is purported to be their last night together (I could also bring up the fact that this is why I find it easy to digest the "River meeting regenerations of the Doctor younger than the Tenth Doctor makes sense and doesn't break cannon nor ruin SITL/FOTD" but that would take a whole other post). Does this River believe her time with the Eleventh Doctor has ended? The same way series 7b Eleven believed his time with older versions of River has ended? Is this all part of some grand fuckup in communication all thanks to their tangled timelines?

Maybe. Maybe not.

But has River not just been running from her family's death? Has River been running from her supposed last night with the Doctor?

"But River doesn't run." Oh yes. Yes, she does. She knows when to stand her ground. She knows when to charge. And she knows when to run.

"That's out of character for her." No, it's not. She's not invincible. She's this well trained assassin, yes. But invincible? No.

Invincible from the tendency to be blinded by their emotions? Obviously not.

River lies. And River runs.

She is not afraid of her death. She is afraid of the day when her husband, her Doctor, looks into her eyes and looks right through her. And it shouldn't kill her but it does. It did.

So she ran and ran until her bigger-on-the-inside Mum gently reached out and put her back together with the only person left who could ground her. Who she didn't recognize at first but still fell in love with (and would have loved even if he hadn't been revealed to be her actual, long missing husband). Who finally found out their last night wasn't just any night – it was a twenty-four year long last night. Who finally gave her a breather from all the running she'd been doing.

And oh what a night that was (it was the talk of the universe).

[blood-starved-beast]

Not dissing on anyone in particular but it's interesting to see people trying to retroactively justify or otherwise "call out" on the fact that Melinoe has no connection to her birth family. It's the Point I'd say. And thematically, she's likely never coming "home" for real. Cause it was never home. Can no longer be home and all.

[ossifer]

wrt baru my hottest take is that i do not personally read her as being low empathy and instead interpret her tendency to model other people + herself as rational actors & pragmatism throughout the traitor as stemming from her scholarship courtesy of falcrest & farrier, and how her earliest motivation is to 'outlaw the deaths of fathers' and rewrite the doctrines. a key part of the traitor is that she abstracts the people of aurdwynn prior to her various encounters with tain hu and treats the province with an only-partially affected level of emotional indifference, and to me this reflects how her focus begins and ends with taranoke initially: the subversion of the masquerade is an incidental detail to her infiltrating them; the horror of the policies she hasn't witnessed, the subjugation of the people she holds no loyalties to, elude her nascent perspective and thus she is unbeholden to them for a while (“I am an accountant. Heredity is not my concern”)

this is all to say that i do not think her obstensive low empathy is a matter of any particular tendencies but rather a byproduct of the fact she has unwittingly adopted the attitudes of an imperial technocrat in a foreign land, albeit with an added detached disdain due to her disquiet with falcrest: she internally characterises herself as seeking to rewrite its doctrines, loosen its hold on taranoke, but not to abolish it & this means that she—in her privileged position within aurdwynn—is content to let the specificities of it fall to her blind side. her gaze remains turned to taranoke and thus she is able to treat aurdwynn as an abstracted dilemma, its people as either unagentive or as following a linear path in pursuit of their goals; baru has fallen prey to thinking herself as an accountant, adopts falcresti modes of thinking so long as they suit her goals, and walks the path of complicity.

this changes over time, of course, and as time goes on we see these patterns of thinking break down as she draws parallels between aurdwynn and taranoke, as she rebels and cannot continue benefitting from the comforts of her imperial office, as she strays from accountant to revolutionary. she fulfills the role of traitor but it comes at a great personal cost that weighs on her: she trades the dukes as currency, buys her ascension, but she accrues an emotional debt that while not in of itself incompatible with her having low empathy does involve a large degree of guilt that i personally think showcases how imperial thought & farrier's process both rely on momentum. baru was conditioned to repress herself and to act with decision & directness because those are the conditions integral to maintaining her detachment: when she loses momentum, collides with tain hu, it comes undone.

what i find fascinating about her perspective is that while she has a vested interest in falcrest's demise, the process of arriving at that as the logical conclusion is one that takes time and requires her to see her illusions of its merits shattered: despite understanding it as an oppressor, she initially conceptualises its power as a neutral thing, something to be coveted and stolen away from it, rather than existing due to its exploitative nature. but that flawed conceptualisation stems from a partial perspective that is informed heavily by the education she received. i do not think that baru's perspective is a 1:1 with that of a citizen within the imperial core by any means but i do think she is a poignant illustration of how one's thought is inevitably informed by the predominant hegemony & the means by which imperialism indoctrinates: falcrest extensively employs various forms of social coercion rather than open force and baru's obstensive low empathy is to me a key illustration of that in practice

i personally think that baru has an excess of empathy, enough that it proves narratively significant at several points, but the reason it comes across as low is because her perspective is one that was engineered to suppress it. the farrier process is a more overt and expedited way to convey what happens when your perspective is informed by the thought of those who live comfortably off the dividends of the very same systems of oppression that leave you subjugated, when the culture you were raised in is primitivised and you are taught imperial sciences that allow you to abstract the fact of your neighbours dying of plagues introduced by the arrival of your coloniser.

“I’m not doing this,” Shir said, with terrible distance. “You are. You set the terms. This is your choice, it is the shape of you, to spend people for power.”

[emmm-uhhh]

Had to get a sketch out of my system, it’s been a while since I’ve drawn, boohoo adult responsibilities

I think this is a sign I need to rewatch my favorite romance anime of all time (it is, I made the sign for myself)

[spiderwarden]

Breaking tumblr by confessing that my findings have me deducing she is bisexual with a preference for men.

[mxtxfanatic]

Do you think Jiang Cheng even thought about his sister at all when he gave up on living after his core was melted?

Jiang Cheng didn’t even think of his own family when their dead bodies were splayed out in front of him:

With much fervor, Jiang Cheng was still searching with his eyes for the figures of Yu ZiYuan and Jiang FengMian. Wei WuXian, however, felt his eyes tear up at once. Among the people, he saw many familiar silhouettes.

—Chapt. 59: Poisons, exr

…and you think I’d believe he had a sparing thought for his sister in out-of-sight-out-of-mind Meishan? Lol. Lmao even.

But seriously, he doesn't think of her or anyone else for that matter because his concern was getting revenge, and if he couldn't get his vengeance, he had nothing to live for:

[Jiang Cheng] did wake up, but he didn’t move at all. He was so uninterested that he didn’t even turn around or ask ‘where is this’. He didn’t drink any water, he didn’t eat any food. It seemed that all he sought for was death. Wei WuXian, “Do you really want to die?” Jiang Cheng, “I can’t seek revenge even when I’m alive. Why shouldn’t I die? Maybe I’ll be able to turn into a ferocious ghost.” Wei WuXian, “You’ve been undergoing soul-calming ceremonies ever since you were young. You won’t be able to turn into a ferocious ghost even after you die.” Jiang Cheng, “If I can’t seek revenge no matter if I’m dead or alive, then what’s the difference between the two?” After he said this, he wouldn’t speak again no matter what.

—Chapt. 60: Poisons, exr

[drivebypainter]

I love drawing Miku to get out of art blocks or to practice new styles haha

[presiding]

dishonored 2 rewrite: the monster in the hull updated this week 🍷

[geodethecrow]

why is it called a stroke (soft, gentle petting motion) when it's so violent and harsh (interruption of blood flow, possible brain tissue death)? old age (what is old age nowadays) is so cruel to people in different ways (my grandmother: one two strokes. my grandfather: watching his wife (the love of his life) wither (is she a flower? what flower? (my great-grandmother on the other side (and she is on the other side, dead) is a lily-of-the-valley)) and fall (first a cane, then a walker, now a wheelchair) and try to go back to what she was (she's in a memory-care home now)) and why do I not feel anything?

[faithhearted]

@honorhearted said: "Can we speak of this another time? I'm busy." (for Mary!)

This was not how Mary envisioned her life unfolding. Ever since she was a child, she had strived to be proper, to be viewed as a good and Godly young lady. ‘Be kind’, her mother had told her, ‘kind and fair and devout and true. These are the makings of a desirable woman.’ and so she’d obeyed. Even now, over and over again Mary told herself to be kind, fair, devout, and true, and your husband will love you.

But she had not married the man to whom she’d been promised. Instead, she’d wed his brother, who had taken her hand out of some sense of duty or responsibility though he never spoke about why.

No matter how kind, fair, devout, and true she endeavored to be, her husband did not love her. He’d done his husbandly obligation and together they’d conceived and raised a child, but still, he did not spare her an ounce of affection.

Instead, Abe’s eyes lingered upon Anna Str.ong, the woman he had always loved and loved still. It tore at Mary until her heart was in tattered shreds. Anna was everything Mary was not.

Anna was inconsiderate, tempestuous, fickle, and irresponsible. She too was a married woman and yet Abe wanted her. In truth, Mary once utterly despised Anna for this, and that hatred ate at her gut until she was tired of the way that hatred felt. Instead, all her energy was now spent on ensuring her family's survival.

A fortnight ago, Mary had been brought to the Contin.ental Army’s New Wind.sor camp for her protection, and for her son’s, and Abe was off once again, in another covert plan to enlist in Arnold’s unit. While Mary supported her husband’s revenge against Sim.coe, she was once again left alone to wait for a man who did not want her and who might very well never want her.

Despite all this, Mary worried for his safety. Early that morning, she’d set out to Major Tall.madge’s tent to inquire about Abe’s well-being only to be met with unattentive indifference to her presence. It was something she was used to but refused to tolerate further.

"Can we speak of this another time? I'm busy."

“We will speak of this now,” she firmly insisted, snatching the quill from his hand if only to force him to look into her pleading eyes, “Please, Major, you must know something about how he’s fairing. Will you not permit even five minutes to ease a wife's concern?”

[morpheusbaby3]

I was watching Calliope's episode again and I understand more and more why Morpheus loved her.

She is indeed powerful. I'm not referring to magical power or her being a goddess, but she is a POWERFUL WOMAN.