#also i dont have coherent thoughts on this but i do feel its worth mentioning also that the studio’s name is madhouse

[quicktimeeventfull]

in the tags of a recent post of yours you mentioned L having psychosis, and while ive seen people talk about him being very easily interpreted as neurodivergent, especially autistic, i havent seen anyone talking about psychosis in relation to him. would you mind elaborating? i love nd readings of characters, and a new perspective or idea is always fun

absolutely!! i’m always very happy to talk about this.

so this is based on a brief but very memorable line that was added into the anime. it’s from silence (L’s death episode) and it takes place in the rain. L mentions that the bells sound louder than usual on this particular day. we also get a few extra scenes of disjointed images from what is presumably Wammy’s house, with a bell ringing.

what’s literally being depicted on screen is that L is having and has apparently been having auditory hallucinations throughout the entire series.

this is almost certainly meant to be understood as a metaphor — L is “hearing” both his oncoming death, and the echoes of his past. in regards to this, i think it’s worth recognizing that there’s a really long history of using mental illness, especially but not exclusively psychosis, as symbols or metaphors for various things, including death and guilt and sin. this scene is very much playing into that framework.

imo it’s not unreasonable to just ignore the fact that L is, literally, psychotic. it’s clearly not the intention of the scene, and there’s absolutely no invocation of it before or since. at the same time, though, choosing to engage with it via analysis or invocation within fic/art/etc. without in any way acknowledging the backdrop against which it exists (ie the very troubling & dehumanizing history of reducing mental illness to metaphor) inevitably results in the replication and unintentional endorsement of that history. after all, if you choose to use it as a metaphor, you’re doing the exact same thing madhouse did. also, choosing to ignore it outright is (imo) genuinely a valid choice, but it’s not a choice without weight and context behind it.

more broadly, when it comes to potentially incorporating that psychosis into the rest of the story — i don’t have any particular on how it should be done, other than that it’s 100% possible and i think it would be really interesting to see people engage with it in an intentional way.

[creatively-cosmic]

i wanted to draw something different today soooo. i went n scrounged up a buncha pokepastas that ive read/pokepasta ocs ive seen around recently (mostly via mutuals)! ill tag creators and link sources under the cut, and ramble a little abt my thoughts... ^^

if anyone wants me to untag or remove their stuff from this btw let me know i didnt ask i kinda just. started doodling.

also half of yall i either never followed or only Just did i need 2 remedy that. ive been observing yalls stuff from a distance i keep forgetting to Press the Fucking Button is all

Your Friend Silver (Elias) by @uuberwachen ! this was such an INSANELYYY well written story and it stuck with me for DAYS. it really slots in the space in my mind that holds the classics and the twists and stuff with it genuinely got me. i cant recommend it enough if anyone who sees it hasnt read it yet. i got so excited when i saw a dedicated ask blog went up. i wish i werent scared of sending in questions to those things

Pixel Blue: 3DS VIRTUAL CONSOLE (2016) by @calybunz ! ahhh this was such a cool one to read! id see updates on it incidentally n i can tell a lot of work went into it- it was definitely worth it! its well written with a lot of heart.. maybe im just a sucker for stories that focus on a sympathetic blue.. the ending made me so SAD dude what the fuck. though my favorite parts were probably the dream sequences- godd the imagery of it all was fantastic!

Nuzlight (Mia) at @nuzlight-mia ! this is one i dont know much about yet, but her personality and design really captivated me when i first saw her! she seems like such a sweetheart and i look forward to getting to see more of her :3 i feel so bad for her situation.. the story n concept are all so interesting!

Missing Numbers (Green) at @themissingnumbers ... is our thing but green is hells (@hells1nfern0 ) dude that i have no sway in so. whatever. im unwell about him im excited for more to be revealed abt him :] i cant really say more than that since i know his secrets

FIRE RED FREE DOWNLOAD (Infected/Abandoned RED) by @aibouart ... another one i saw the design of first and was just IMMEDIATELY struck by. i love when stories twist in-universe things that're generally treated as normal and mundane and use its horror potential! a parasect parasite outbreak where the protagonist gets infected by that and ends up full of mushrooms...? thats the kinda shit i love to see >:)

Jack by @sparklingdemon ! cool ass design ive been wanting to draw and a cool concept to go with- the creepyblack protagonist as a grinning-reaper type where the ghost is an extension of him rules. i also loveee when designs utilize the fossil missingno stuff!! kabutops's arms lend themselves REALLY well to being a scythe

Glitchy Red: Retold by @lycankeyy / @glitchyred (idk which blog youd rather have tagged sorry). so i saw this when the official ao3 repost went up or got mentioned or something and it. really. resonated with me. like its hard to put my thoughts into coherent words, other than i had to just. Lay Down for the rest of the night after reading it and just feel whatever emotions struck me. it cut really deep but honestly- that's just fantastic. it's not often that i read something that makes me feel as viscerally as this rewrite did, and i have nothing but adoration for it because of that (we do have the plural bias which doesnt help regarding this lol). in my mind this is the definitive version of glitchy red.

Sanctuary AU (Aster) by @possiblyfunny . ANYWAYS ON A LIGHTER NOTE i fucking love aster more than i can put into words. given we get tagged in almost every piece of him that goes up its always such a delight to see and learn more about him! id been planning to draw him for months at this point but only just got around to it haha -v-" i look forward to seeing more abt the sanctuary au! please continue to tag me in those posts idc if it includes my guys or not i just care so much abt it

[butchpeabody]

ok i finally feel coherent enough to post my spiderverse thoughts. theyll be under the cut and ill tag this post "atsv spoilers!" (as well as anything else i rb.) if you havent seen the movie id advise against checking the notes as well jic someone replies

so like. first of all what the fuck. i was fucking slackjawed from the last 30 minutes of the movie starting to getting home and sitting down. absolutely MASTERFUL movie in every way imaginable. i dont have the words in my head rn but its just. GOD. fuck. i will be buying the artbook when it comes out

individual points:

-i really really do love the curtains are blue style gwen trans allegory good fucking god. WHAT THE FUCK shes so good. by no means the main character (i was actually kind of worried when thebmovie started like i do love her im glad she got some shit but ibwas like...is this gonna be from her pov the whole time when miles is here...it wasnt!) but i adored her in this shes so ficking full of issues

-HOBIE. HOBIE MY FRIEND HOBIE. i really enjoy his presence in the movie- when hes mentioned once or twice before appearing i thought hed have a rivalry with miles but that was absolutely not the case. in retrospect its really funny that miguel grabbed him for his fucked up spiderverse shit giving that his entire MO is anarchism but if he were not there miles would absolutely be hurt or worse. im INCREDIBLY excited to see what they do with him in the next movie- especially because i can kind of see him as a parallel to aaron in a way? such free spirits ...artistic .... also i dont have as much to say about him but god pativr is so good i love him. i LOVE HIM

-peni was my favorite character in the first movie when i was younger but i had since grown like...worried about her showing up in future movies because of her stereotypical portrayal. its probably too early to give a clear for now nor is it my place to comment on the actual content of that BUT for what its worth she seemed much more faithful to the comics' tone in this movie- it seems that the implication was that peni experienced her comic run in between movies? her mech and outfit are far different. she was fucking HAGGARD when she first showed up. ham and noir coming back in the next movie will be nice but i do hope that they replace hams voice actor.

-miguel is so fucjing fascinating. people either seem to desire him carnally or hope he dies and im definitrly not in the former and im like.....nnnot entirely in the latter. intetesting character excited to see where he goes! what the FUCK was his problem though. you are a GROWN MAN trying to tear a 15 year old asunder because hes like hey i dojt want to stand idly by and watch my dad perish dude. he sucks and is horrible and i want to study him. jessica also really but she seems less fucked up and more like...willing ti take care of her responsibilites despite the emotional toll. excited to see if they clash more in part 2

-i dont even have the words to describe the animation but everyrhing is so beautiful. a few characters have sketch guidelines on them despite being 3d! the first fight scene of the movie contains a chararacter from a fucking da vinky world and hes in sepiatone and its fucking GORGOEUS.

-miles. ohhhhhh milesmilesmilesmiles saving the best for last. what do i even say man the progression of his arc, the way the smallest action of his from the first movie set off a massive chain of events, the turmoil he goes through and comes out stronger. his PARENTS. HIS RELATIONSHIP TO THEM HIS WORRY FOR THEM. i nearly screamed when he went in the wrong universe and aaron was there, AND HIS DAD WAS DEAD, THE THING HE WAS TRYING TO PREVENT. AND THEN ALTERNATE MILES BEING THE PROWLER. IS THE IMPLCIATION THAT EARTH 42 MILES WOULDVE BEEN THAT UNIVERSES SPIDERMAN BUT BECAISE THE SPIDER LEFT HE BECAME THE FUCKING PROWLER???? FUCK MAN!!!!! i need to see him thriving i hope he gets home okay. amazing movie amaaasizinngngnnn

[detransdamnation]

it was absolutely worth the wait. I went over your answer over and over, at least 5 good times and i feel like i take something new out of it each time around. I will probably write something longer soon to touch up on some things (as long as you dont mind of course) In the tags you mentioned being willing to give your opinion on other potential factors and well i know its a bit of an open question but you got my attention spark there and i wonder now what other factors you would name besides the ones we brought up up there?

(Also the part where you explained that specific feeling of wanting to start over, have something you can call your own after being mistreated-having control over something. This was just…huge.) also x2 i wish you didnt hate the things you write so intensely but at the same time i understand. Just know its nowhere near what your head tells you it is. You are one of the most raw and at the same time coherent and brilliant people talking on those matters, in my opinion. Cheers☁️

Gender roles—and hatred of, or discomfort with, those who do not conform to them—is a massive factor in most cases of dysphoria. Directly intertwined with that, as well, is social influence. What is essential to remember when we speak on the latter aspect is that it is not something particularly unique to dysphoria, nor does acknowledging it make someone’s dysphoric distress any less real; it simply exposes the—perhaps uncomfortable—fact that we are who we surround ourselves with and can (and do) make unconscious decisions about ourselves and who we are based off of what others around us are doing, feeling, or expressing.

The fact of the matter is, gender, like any other social construct, requires participants in order to exist, and through participating in this construct, we influence others to do the same. This starts young and could be (in fact, largely is) as covert as, for example, raising a daughter “like a girl” or a son “like a boy”—“unless they tell me they are otherwise.” This is something that I have actually heard multiple parents say word-for-word when faced with the prospect of having a transgender child. I specifically bring it up here because it is typically said under the impression that this approach does dysphoric young people well—but although their hearts may come from the right place, they also miss the mark entirely.

By treating people differently according to their sex at all, we reinforce these gender roles and stereotypes that harm us in the first place. We continue to place a certain gendered value on all of these things that should be neutral—behaviours, clothing, toys—and instill in these children that, if they happen to fall outside of those boxes, they are atypical. Despite my own family actually voicing that it didn’t matter what I liked so long as I was happy, I still never sought out my “nonconforming” desires until after I had told them I was transgender because they, themselves, did not take that initiative to expose me to anything outside of what was “normal” for children of my sex. The truth was, the thought of my existing as anything outside of that made them uncomfortable, and moreover, made other people uncomfortable, which they never challenged—and even though I wasn’t able to voice any of this as a child, I did pick up on it. Everything outside of this box was like “The Forbidden Fruit” and it was very clear to me that, if I reached for it as the sex that I am, I would stand out. I would be “different.” I didn’t want to be different. I wanted to be me.

The sentiment itself also insinuates that the parent would raise the child differently only if they came out as trans, which implies that they would only allow this hypothetical child to be themselves if they took on an identity that was more palatable to them. It is an eerie echo to how so many trans children’s stories start out—Jazz Jennings, Josie Romero, Kai Shappley—and it shows a great lack of insight on as to why children would even express the desire to be another gender in the first place. If the only thing standing between a “wrong” and a “right” is our sexes, of course we will come to despise them. Of course we will decide that we are another gender. We have internalized that this is the only way that we can be accepted as ourselves. We become influenced into transgender identity because we see no way to peacefully exist as “cis.” It should go without saying that this does absolutely nothing for children who are predisposed to dysphoria.

Which leads me to the last point I will make in this post. Something I know influenced my own dysphoria was certain personality traits. For example, one of my most pervasive personality traits throughout my life has been self-consciousness. To add insult to injury, I was also a fairly “early bloomer” as a child, puberty-wise, and developed relatively fast on top of that. So, you can imagine how detrimental it was for an already hypersensitive child to be given even more reason to “stand out.” I started to spend a lot of time just looking at myself and my body and how I presented very quickly became a constant underlying monologue. I wasn’t even dysphoric at this point, just painfully self-conscious—but that set the perfect stage for my dysphoria to develop because I was already uncomfortable with myself in the general sense. I just needed something specific to latch on to.

Although only a personal experience, if even a small fraction of dysphoric people could relate to it, it would track with what has already been established in many other mental illnesses. Self-esteem is a huge factor in anxiety disorders: Someone who is confident and self-assured is probably going to be a lot less likely to develop an anxiety disorder than someone who is meek and dependent on others’ reassurance. Perfectionism could be a factor in obsessive-compulsive disorders: A child who needs things to be “just right” will logically be more likely to become clinically obsessive over that as opposed to a child who only cares about getting things done. Similarly, I think that a barrage of traits could be a factor in dysphoria and whether or not our brains go through with its development depends on both the environment we grow up in, as well as just how these traits develop when faced with an onslaught of pubertal hormones (so, a matter of luck).

This about covers most of the rest of my thoughts, albeit condensed as much as I reasonably could. It is difficult (not to mention time-consuming) to lay out the whole crux of my thoughts and beliefs with every single detail and nuance in a blog post, so this definitely doesn’t encapsulate absolutely everything I could say. I’d certainly be okay with you sending in something long. I’ve enjoyed hearing from you, Anon, and I cannot describe how happy I am to know that you enjoy my writing. Thank you for listening. I give you my cheers in turn.

[starlit-dreaming]

Lucathy Ideas (10/?)

never thought i’d see the day where i’d be hitting double digits for my lucathy idea posts tbh

this is more of a note to self, but i’d like to go back over my idea posts, clean em up, make it tidier and more coherent, maybe add more content to make it longer. idk when i’ll be doing that. maybe i’ll include a word count at the end of each post to show that i went back to edit all of it?

or maybe i’d pick one of the au ideas that’s really fucking long and flesh it out in a separate post and title it “Lucathy Ideas: Extended Edition” or something 😂

edit: fuck im actually considering it

obligatory warning: its a long post turn back to save yourselves  

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accidental sugar daddy acquisition -- Sugar Daddy Lucas AU

• i’m finally talking about my sugar daddy lucas au that i mentioned in post 9 of my lucathy ideas series and im ngl im surprised i never mentioned it before now???

• @lithium-15 and @hwang-lucas because i feel that these two are specifically interested in this au (i have another sugar daddy lucas au thats more nsfwyn, but i think i’ll save the nsfwyn au ideas for a later lucathy ideas post)

• i don’t remember the original prompt word for word, since i saw this otp idea several years ago and i dont really feel like scrolling through my otp idea tag on my inspo side blog (thats like,,, its like. at Least 3-4 years worth of posts i think???)

• tl;dr -- rich dude ends up becoming a broke pal’s anonymous benefactor thats like a gang leader or something. i think the premise of it was that the broke dude was a college student??? and they would eventually get their degree and meet the person that’s provided them financial stability.

• yes, its another rich lucas x broke athy. cause im a slut for that otp dynamic ngl

• idk if i want this to also be a single mom athy au??? and a crime boss lucas au

• actually yknow what fuck it lets say that athy’s a single mom (i’ll think of a different idea for crime boss lucas, though; its implied for this au, but i dont feel like going with that)

• if we wanna make it spicy we could say that lucas and athy had a one night stand and didn’t recognize each other or something. or maybe lucas recognized athy??? regardless, im not sure rn. im kinda leaning towards the fact that they didnt recognize each other

• so yeah. athy is a single parent, probably got pregnant while she was in college and couldnt bring herself to abort because she didnt want to be alone or something (similar to my lawyer athy + ons au -- she realized that she wanted to have a family)

• she’s a waitress at a coffee shop, owned by lily maybe? that stays open pretty late at night. hannah and ces are her coworkers, although they work mornings and afternoons

• helena and cabel are regulars, and lucas is somewhat of a regular who stops by for coffee at night

• im thinking that lucas would be an influential family with some shady dealings on the downlow (maybe? i don’t remember if the prompt had the rich pal be a rich and generous mob boss or something), and that he ends up more or less becoming the family heir to his grandmother’s business

• so he ends up being a regular at the cafe in the evenings and ends up befriending athy (begrudingly)

• she’s comfortable enough with him to talk about her babies (as usual, its gonna be the twins -- ari and eli from my other ideas/wips) and he’s just dumbfounded because he never expected her to be a single mother

• eventually he decides to anonymously help her out

• by buying the appartment property that she lives on

• and getting someone to act as the “landlord” and tell her that someone already paid for her rent, and that it’s something that the landlord is offering to all the single parent tenants (which. lucas decides why the fuck not, it’ll be less hassle for him, plus he’s stupid fucking rich)

• ok now i’m gonna go over the basic timeline that i have in mind:

• i like the idea that lucas and athy end up meeting at the cafe when she’s still pregnant. and that lucas just decides “fuck it i can afford to run a few businesses why tf not” and bought lily’s cafe, allowing lily to still run the business as she likes, and giving the staff higher pay and more benefits (and lily more or less has a positive view of lucas)

• spoilers: he totally bought the business after hearing that athy might need a second job after she gives birth to her babies cause like. babies are fucking expensive

• guess who also paid her hospital bills?

• if you guessed lucas, then you’d be correct

• so her babies are born, she’s got a pretty good pay, so she’s able to pay a babysitter to take care of the babies whenever she works.

• throughout their friendship, lucas will more or less be stuck wondering why the fuck he’s doing so much for athy, and at first it’s simply because he thought it was annoying to see her suffering so much just to try and make ends meet, and eventually its because “oh fuck its because i consider her to be an important friend”

• because even though he is attracted to her, he does consider her to be an important friend and all

• the feelings end up coming in later

• at one point, athy comments that while she wants to continue college and finish up her degree, she finds that saving money for her babies is more important

• and lucas is just “you do realize that im rich with a ton of money that doesnt really get used for much, right”

• and naturally athy’s a very stubborn person who, despite finding the offer to be very beneficial, is Very reluctant to take on his offer

• he more or less tells her that if she feels bad for taking advantage of this offer -- which she shouldnt since he wants to help her -- then his one request would be that she gets at least a degree in business (so that he can just hand the cafe over to her as a gift in the future if she wants it)

• so yeah. she ends up going to college

• in terms of the twin’s age, year 1: lucas provides her financial stability in terms of handling the hospital bills, her rent, and giving her better pay /// year 2: athy gets a babysitter for the twins and goes back to finish up college /// year 3: she gets her degree in business

• OH MY GOD WHAT IF

• WHAT IF LUCAS’S NIECE IS ATHY’S BABYSITTER

• EVEN MORE REASON FOR LUCAS TO INTERACT WITH ATHY MORE OFTEN

• like. she’s a high schooler. looking for a summer job maybe??? and lucas is just “i have a friend looking for a babysitter”

• his niece, after being introduced to athy via lucas, is 100% in the conspiracy mindset that lucas and athy are exes or something and that this is lowkey his way of introducing his kids to the family

• and i mean. if we’re going with the idea that lucathy had a ons in this au, then she’s Technically not wrong with that theory?

• anyways, when the babies are finally 3 y/o, i’m thinking that lucas more or less established a place in athy’s life as her benefactor and friend, enough that the twins know that he’s always around

• hell, he’d probably go out of his way to help her buy groceries at one point. maybe a while before she hires his niece as a babysitter???

• i want the babies to cling onto lucas and call him dad when they’re toddlers because they both just see him with black hair and red eyes and go “he looks like ari/eli!!!”

• note to self: ari and eli both have black hair, but ari is the only one with red eyes (could pass off as rose pink like diana’s tbh). its only in wmmap-verse that they both have blonde hair and blue eyes (unless they’re in disguise)

• note: lucas’s niece is 100% going to teach the lucathy kids a bunch of slang. deadass i Will have these twins shouting shit like “YEET” or something

• i think thats all i had in mind for this au???

where the hell would i be without you -- Soulmates AU

• im ngl ive been listening to dodie music again (specifically “Sick of Losing Soulmates” which Hurts)

• i have like. 7 Soulmate AUs. but for now i’m just gonna focus on 1 of the 7 ideas i have, which happens to be the one that im the most interested in

• name of your sworn enemy / name of your soulmate

• for lucas, it’s Aeternithas de Alger Obelia and Athanasia de Alger Obelia. and tbh? he’s pretty pissed off that he has 2 names from the goddamn obelia royal fam tbh

• aeternithas would 100% assume that lucas is his soulmate (he isnt). idk who would be his other name. honestly? who tf knows cause i sure dont

• i considered having the whole soulmarks thing fade by claude’s generation, hence why athy wouldnt have a name on her wrist anymore, but i decided against it

• so lucas would be her soulmate

• the problem is that idk who would be her sworn enemy

• at first, i considered it to be claude for her sworn enemy, which would later change after she almost died (so after lucas saves her, claude’s name ends up disappearing)

• which i decided against cause i mean. he doesn’t Actually hate her from what i could tell. he just hates the fact that diana died and is coping with it by pinning the blame onto athy

• maybe he would be the name on athy’s wrist until she turned 5 y/o, when she actually meets him and causes a divergence from the lp-verse

• like. in the lp novel, claude wasnt her sworn enemy. i’d say it was probably jennette? and that lp athy believed that she had the rare platonic soulmate. or maybe she had ezekiel’s name as her soulmate, but she firmly believed that he was her sworn enemy since he’s jennette’s fiance

• the main reason why athy would have different names, comparing lp with wmmap athy, is because wmmap athy has the knowledge of her previous life

• at least, thats how i justified it lmao

what remains to be seen -- Model AU

• kinda self-explanatory, really

• like c’mon. look at lucas and athy and tell me that they can’t be models in the modern world

• i kinda imagine that athy would be a movie actress and model. normally she ends up playing princess roles, since she ended up gaining a lot of fans after her role as Princess Athanasia in the Lovely Princess movie when she was a teenager, so much that people often refer to her as “princess” or “Athy” (mainly from the people that worked with her on the film)

• she’ll be Lee Ji Hye in this au, but i’m referring to her as Athy to make it less confusing for my normally sleep-deprived squirrel brain

• i will admit that at one point i was tempted to have this as another fake dating au, where lucas and athy have their picture taken together and ends up having a shit ton of shippers

• lucas and athy for sure meet at a photoshoot for the first time

swipe tap swipe tap -- Tinder + Modern AU

• this is basically that imagine your otp post where this girl’s at an airport, her flight was delayed, and she’s swiping through tinder, and there’s a guy that’s behind her who goes “ouch. hard no for that one?” and she turns around and sees the guy she just swiped no on

oh how my knees go weak to be the one -- Canon Compliant

• similarly to the 100 prompt challenge of mine, i’d like to do a prompt challenge but with kisses

• not gonna go too detailed into it, since this will probably end up becoming another nsfwyn idea of mine. cause while im thinking of innocent kisses like butterfly, cheek, or forehead kisses, there’s definitely suggestive prompts here waiting to be written, especially when you look at the list

• also it doesn’t really help that i deadass got the title of this au from The Hush Sound’s “The Boys Are Too Refined”, and in the lyrics, there’s a mention of “oh, how my knees go weak to be the one / she kicks and bucks” plus “and if the timing is right / to sneak off into the night / i’ll let myself be taken just for the thrill”

• i considered using a lyric from their other song molasses, but that song gives off more of a sad vibe while the boys are too refined is more suggestive

• so yeah. suffice to say this is gonna be my nsfwyn project

• i’ll have to compile a list of different types of kisses, but if anyone’s curious on it that i’ll gladly post the list of which kisses i definitely plan on writing (i’m aiming to write 20 different kisses)

working out the differences -- Gym / Workout AU

• based off on a gym/workout prompt list: “I don’t care what your personal trainer says, if you keep doing it like that, you’re going to fuck yourself up, here let me show you how it’s done.“

• one of the au ideas that i don’t feel like writing, but it’s one of the au’s that i like to imagine, especially since it sounds really in character for lucathy

• like deadass lucas just criticizing athy’s personal trainer for being an absolute dumbass, and he’s infuriatingly annoying but he’s also RIGHT and athy absolutely hates him

• but eventually she decides to hire him and it’s 100% not because of how hot he looks in his black workout shirt

a writer and a murderer walk into a bar together... -- Matchmaking AU

• i’ve been, admittedly, looking through my “imagine your otp” tag on my side blog, and one of the otp prompts is about a matchmaking service based on your search history, and the match up ends up being a writer and a serial killer

• if it wasn’t obvious based on my previous au ideas, i’m a huge fan of author athy

• here’s the post in question [click here]

• im not too interested in writing death and all that, even if it’s for a murder comedy??? which is kind of ironic considering that i 100% wrote a murder mystery once when i was still in high school and was about to write a story involving detailed injuries and violence back in my college days, so this is just one of those ideas that’s vaguely in the back of my mind

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this is one of my smaller posts, since i guess i’m mainly thinking about both the sugar daddy lucas + single mom athy au, the nsfwyn-type of au’s, and the whole “going back to flesh out some details for some AUs or have the ideas be ready to get posted on wattpad and ao3” 

ideas i’d like to go over

• have one of my lucathy ideas post be focused on nsfwyn content (and thats my tag for 18+ content for those who would like to block the tag and avoid seeing those types of posts, and i sincerely hope that if i have minors following my blog, that you do Not read it or that you don’t actively let me know that you’re reading it otherwise i’ll feel inclined to actually kickstart my nsfwyn blog again. liking/reblogging posts are fine, i just don’t wanna know anything #let me be ignorant so i don’t feel like i need to be a responsible adult who has to hide that shit)

• my soulmate au for the death timer (although it’s probably gonna end up being pretty short

• hanahaki au (idk if ive mentioned it before; double check the ideas first)

• abo au w/alpha athy and beta lucas (did i ever mention this au too? fuck if i know; might talk about in the nsfwyn-focused idea post)

• au where athy ends up never meeting ezekiel prior to the debutante

[letterstomilen]

i discuss the classification of igneous petrology as you fall asleep during my lecture (PART 1) (ASMR)

Childe/Zhongli, Alternate Universe (read part 2 here) When Childe's younger sister tells him about the volunteer at the library, he does not make the connection between that and his new favorite ASMR YouTuber, Rex Lapis.

Childe has a very effective method of getting through college. His little sister, who’s caught him making coffee at three in the morning on more than one occasion the past week alone, would beg to differ. 

“You’re the best older brother,” she starts off, and he’s sure she’s trying to convince herself more than him at this point, “but you need to fix your sleeping habits.” Then, because she’s his little sister, she’d flash him a smile and pat his shoulder reassuringly.

(The comment is not lost on him though. He understands his sleeping situation will eventually wear him down if it hadn’t already, but he believes if he’ll drink a coffee every morning and a Monster every night, he’ll get through three days. By the third day, he’ll hardly be coherent but that doesn’t matter because he’ll conk out for the next twelve hours and then repeat.)

“Don’t worry, Tonia,” he says, trying to sound as reassuring as possible as he contemplates whether it’s worth it or not to swallow a pill of 5-hour energy with his morning coffee. “Once break ends, I’ll get back to normal.”

“You said that six seasons ago.”

Childe frowns, trying to remember if his sleeping schedule was this dysfunctional last year. “Huh?”

“The Walking Dead seasons,” Tonia clarifies, as if she’s not twelve years old and the show is for grown adults. He thinks. He hasn’t checked Commonsensemedia ever since La Signora labeled him as a “helicopter parent” and his Netflix tab has been playing How to Get Away with Murder as background noise for the past few weeks.

Isn’t it a show about zombies though? Tonia’s sheepish smile tells it all, because it’s the same exact guilty look he had when he got caught red-handed as a kid.

(Once he remembers later, Childe promises himself, he’ll check out The Walking Dead.)

“Oh. Well. I have a lot of shows to catch up on, you know. Not to mention a ton of my professors gave me reading for over the break.”

A half lie. They did give him a lot of reading because each professor assumed that their classes were his only one, and with seven days left, he still has a textbook worth of reading to go through. But there are no shows that Childe would sacrifice his precious sleep for. As a matter of fact, he would love to sleep. He’s spent the majority of his classes back in high school sleeping and faking attention, saving his grade at the last minute — it was quite the extreme sport really, if he says so himself.

Whenever he tries to sleep recently, his thoughts run at several hundred miles per hour, and he spends several hours staring at the ceiling before succumbing to the computer at his desk and watching trashy movies. At this point, he must have gone through the entire romance comedy list on Netflix. (Not a proud point in his life but if anybody ever wanted him to give a list of best to worst romance comedy movies, he now has one.)

Tonia, on the other hand, isn’t incredibly convinced.

Admittedly, the excuse was lame. Also, he can’t easily lie to his little sister, who’s far shrewder than he takes her for at times.

“You never start your reading in advance. You like to speed read it right before your class or watch a five-minute video on the chapters while your teachers take attendance. But that’s… uh, ‘a bad work ethic.’” Tonia looks immensely proud of herself as she says this, finishing it off with, “Zhongli told me that.”

“Zhongli?” he repeats, trying to remember if that’s one of her classmates or some stranger that’s hoping to kidnap his sister.

“The guy that volunteers at the library sometimes. He recommended me a loot of good books to read, but he talks like an old man.”

“How old?” Childe can tell she’s enjoying this — talking about her new friend at the library that he’ll probably have to run a background check on.

“Like he’s in his sixties or something. But he looks… actually, he looks your age! And he’s a student too. I told him all about you.”

Well, that doesn’t sound very reassuring coming from the mouth of a twelve-year-old. He’s not sure if that translates to his social security number, his current dilemma, or just that he’s her older brother.

“Like all of the stories you told me when I was a kid. And then when Lumine came to pick me up, she stayed to show him pictures of you too.”

“Of course she did,” he mumbles, ruffling her hair. One of these days he’s going to move without telling his classmates and the twins won’t enter his apartment unannounced. (But Tonia adores their company and the stories they tell her far too much for him to actually do it. But that doesn’t mean he’s above making threats when they tell his little sister about the bet he made about white-out and how it could dye hair. The jury is still out on this one.) “She’s just mad because I get away with it and she doesn’t. But don’t do it yourself. It’s a bad habit,” he adds, remembering that he should at least try to be a good influence on his younger sister when he can.

“Okaaay,” she says unconvincingly, before shaking her hair and running off to her room with lunch he prepared for her.

Watching her close the door and no doubt continue her binge of The Walking Dead, he takes out his phone and texts Lumine.

 Childe

12:35

ur a horrible influence on tonia

 Childe

12:35

and whos this ZHONGLI

 Childe

12:35

also is twd appropriate for 12 y/os

 Twin 1

12:37

a normal person would say hi

 Twin 1

12:37

also 1. me n aether watched it when we were 12 so probably and 2. some guy at the library that also goes to our school

 Well. At least he’s somebody they know. But The Walking Dead?

 Childe

12:38

thats not very convincing

 Childe

12:38

also dont ppl DIE? get BITTEN???? what if she gets nightmares

 Twin 1

12:39

isnt she 12 r u telling me u weren’t watching R rated movies at 12

 Childe

12:42

thats very different from a 10 season long show that is hailed as “one of the greatest horror shows in history” and “paved the way for post-apocalyptic horror”

 Twin 1

12:42

well if she has trouble sleeping she could always watch asmr. that helps me during midterms idk

 Childe

12:42

whats asmr

 Childe

12:43

asking for my sister btw

 Twin 1

12:44

A feeling of well-being combined with a tingling sensation in the scalp and down the back of the neck, as experienced by some people in response to a specific gentle stimulus, often a particular sound.

 Childe

12:45

wtf?

 Twin 1

12:45

people on the internet make random sounds or just talk into a mic n its supposed to be very relaxing. how have u never found out abt this?????

 Childe

12:45

idk the only thing on my youtube recommended r greatest stunts and chapter review videos

 Twin 1

12:47

… makes sense

 Twin 1

12:47

check out rex lapis’ channel he looks like ur type

 Childe

12:48

i thought we were talking about my sister????

 Twin 1

12:50

[message screenshots.jpg]

 Twin 1

12:50

ya she told me everything

 Twin 1

12:50

have fun i need to convince aether to not commit arson bc of his TA

 Childe

12:51

hope he does it

He opens his Youtube app, typing in Rex Lapis and expecting Lumine’s suggestion to be a joke. Despite them being friends for nearly two years now, she’s never made any indication of knowing his type. And he’s sure he’s never been that vocal about it either, only shooting appreciative looks at history majors and paying more attention than necessary to the TA for ‘Tradition of Justice and Law.’ (It’s unfortunate that those short-term crushes never led to anything, but maybe that’s for the better seeing that Childe has never understood the appeal of relationships.)

It is an ASMR channel, judging by the ASMR playlist he finds as he scrolls through the account. The icon shows no face — only a microphone — which leaves him skeptical. Most of the video titles belong in a petrology lecture as well, which makes him even more convinced that it’s a joke. He finds a few readings of ancient literature and decides to pick ‘I discuss the classification of igneous petrology as you fall asleep during my lecture (PART 1) (ASMR)’ because that’s exactly what he needs. (Not the very moment — but ten hours later when he’s in the bed memorizing the pattern of his ceiling wondering why he stole from his fifth grade teacher’s candy jar during lunch.)

When Childe opens the video, he damn near gasps.

The man in the video is exactly his type. His eyes are a soft amber color, framed with long lashes, and it’s almost enough for him to lose his dignity and message Lumine a long thank you text about how she is always right and he’ll pay for her coffee for the following week.  He smiles at the screen, albeit a little sheepishly, dark hair framing his face with a long ponytail that Childe can’t see the end of. On his right ear, there are a pair of earrings with a single feather that brush against his neck when he moves his head.

Even before he speaks, Childe is mesmerized, sure he’ll already memorize his features from the curve of his nose to the way he tilts his head, displaying the expanse of his neck.

Really — he reminds him of actors in historical dramas, the way he sits regally, and how he speaks. His voice is low and slow as he adopts a careful manner of speaking, leaning into the mic.

“I’m Rex Lapis, and I’ll be discussing igneous petrology today, which is part one in a three-part petrology series. I apologize in advance, seeing that my knowledge is limited compared to many petrologists out there but my friend Venti said that many of my viewers are here for my voice, so I’m very excited to start today’s video.”

Holy shit.

For the following week, Childe learns less about petrology, the philosophy of economics, and historical revisionism concerning matters of war and more about Rex Lapis, who is not in love with his voice but often finds himself in the middle of long tangents without explanations. His favorite book series is the Legend of the Lone Sword, which he says he’ll look forward to reading out loud for the channel. (Childe replays that part of the video again and again, captivated by his excitement as he mindlessly taps the mic while he speaks, his tangent cutting off mid-word — as it usually does, much to his dismay.)

His guilty obsession is not lost on Tonia, who realizes that instead of drinking Monster every night he’s been engrossed in his phone completely, often not noticing her or when the water starts bubbling. But because his sleeping schedule has been alleviated, she says nothing until Lumine comes over as she always does, not forgetting their weekly schedule of watching trashy movies while leeching off of Childe’s food.

Because he doesn’t trust the twins with the kitchen — even if they can cook — she instead spends her time sitting next to Tonia and spreading more of her anti-Childe propaganda while they wait. This usually involves Tonia occasionally calling out Childe’s name and asking, “Is that true?” or “Did you really do that?”

This time is different though.

Worried that Lumine finally decided to show Tonia a video of last semester’s presentation, he leans over, looking at the computer screen.

And he’s wrong. Unfortunately. Maybe it should’ve been his presentation because even if he botched it and accidentally projected his work process — screaming notes and all — to the class instead of his actual presentation, it would’ve been better than the two of them watching one of Rex Lapis’ videos together.

The ‘I read Erosion: Essays of Undoing to you as it rains outside’ video, to be specific, which is where Rex Lapis is embarrassed by Venti mid video when asked if this was his idea of a date with a lover. (And then it ends with Rex Lapis asking for video suggestions from the commentors, his face still flushed from the previous comments.)

Oh God — oh fuck.

“So he is your type,” Lumine says, her expression a bit too smug for his liking. Tonia looks half awake, scrolling through articles as the video plays, more interested in ‘Top 10 Glenn Rhee Moments’ than Childe’s crush. Her expression is a bit guilty as she does so — she’s biting her lip and avoiding his gaze, but he assumes that it’s just because they went through his YouTube history.

“I can neither confirm nor deny that statement,” he retorts, but the YouTube history she pulls up once Tonia hands the computer over to her says it all. (It’s quite mortifying, really — even Tonia is giving him a look, but it’s not as bad as Lumine’s shit eating grin.)

“Well… he does have a nice voice,” Childe finally says, thinking that perfectly encompasses his most recent obsession. Because he does have a nice voice — it’s soothing and speaks to him without really speaking to him directly. (The good looks are a bonus, he assures himself. A fantastic bonus, but a bonus nonetheless.)

“He does,” Tonia confirms, smiling toothily up at him, and he resists the urge to ruffle her hair with Lumine staring at him so skeptically. “But I don’t understand much of what he’s saying. He — heh — talks like an old man.”

“Don’t worry, Tonia, your brother likes him because he’s attractive,” Lumine informs her, now fast forwarding on one of Rex Lapis’ videos. “Did you know that he lives nearby?”

“Huh?”

The knife he’s holding clatters to the floor, and the two look down and back up at him with— hold on, why does it feel like they’re in on a secret he doesn’t know about?

“Yeah, he’s working on his grad thesis I think… Aether told me it was about something on history,” she muses. “That’s why I recommended his channel to you. He’s a bit of a celebrity in his department.” Childe’s sure his jaw dropped now, trying to maintain his facial expression as he takes out a new knife to chop up the onions.

“Really,” he tries to say as calmly as possible, wondering how he should accompany Aether to his lectures without trying to seem as obvious as possible. His voice is a bit shaky he realizes but he can’t quite make the connection between Rex Lapis and actual graduate student that goes to his university.

“Yeah, actually…” Lumine is definitely pretending to think now, enjoying this far too much. “He—”

“It’s Zhongli!” his little sister yells excitedly, practically jumping up and down at this point as if she won the lottery. “Zhongli runs an ASMR channel and he talks just like that in real life! Right, Lumine?”

“Yeah.”

Childe sighs, holding a hand up to his face. The realization that he’s been obsessed with the same guy that hears about every stupid thing he did secondhand is way too much — and the fact that he’s been listening to his voice every night before he went to bed the past week is way too much. He’s sure his face is redder than before judging by the amused expressions on Lumine’s and Tonia’s faces — really, they’re mirror images of each other right now.

Not for the first time, Childe swears to himself that he’ll never let her into his apartment without signing a contract ever again.

[fiercestpurpose]

hi u talked about how jean often gets overlooked as a mother, would u be willing to talk more about it? its really curious to me how scott is often associated with the role of 'father' and his relationships with nathan and rachel, how he 'failed them etc, gets talked about to death but people dont talk about jeans as much. anyways would love to hear what u have to say!

Hi! I really have three main categories of thoughts about this: Jean’s relationship with Rachel, Jean’s relationship with Cable, and Jean’s relationship with the idea of family/her own motherhood.

Jean’s relationship with Rachel is… complicated. First of all, Jean is incredibly important in Rachel’s life, but it’s not always our (616) Jean. Rachel is obviously the biological daughter of another woman, 811 Jean, and that woman raised her and was her mother until she died when Rachel was about 8 (well before the rest of Rachel’s X-Men did). Losing a parent that young is frequently very traumatic and defining, and it certainly was for Rachel, so she develops this relationship that is not so much with Jean as it is with Jean’s death. She comes to the 616 and she learns that Jean is already dead, and she vows to reclaim the name Phoenix and honour her mother’s memory (even though 616 Jean is not really her mother). And then, at least twice during the Cross-Time Caper, Rachel has to watch different universe’s versions of Jean die, trying and failing to save her. So Rachel has this whole relationship with Jean as a concept, with Jean dying and leaving her, before she and 616 Jean ever develop a real relationship with each other.

And sometimes, people (fans and writers both) use Rachel’s preexisting relationship with Jean As A Conceptual Mother as evidence that 616 Jean doesn’t really count as Rachel’s mother. However, 616 Jean and Rachel do have a relationship. It starts with Jean rejecting Rachel, denouncing her because she doesn’t accept the future that Rachel represents and doesn’t want to consider her as her daughter. She later apologizes for this, saying that she shouldn’t have pushed her problems onto Rachel because they weren’t Rachel’s problems to deal with. And we see them hug and make up and it’s clear that they consider each other family.

That relationship, the daughter viewing her mother as a concept more than a person, the mother pushing her problems onto the daughter and trying not to accept the future that she thinks the daughter represents, reads to me as a very believable mother-daughter relationship. The circumstances are a little strange, but the emotions are familiar. Many children have a hard time adjusting to seeing their parents as their own people. Many parents have a hard time recognizing their grown children as being their own people and also their children. It’s a very complex relationship that’s certainly worth exploring, and referencing it only when they want to make a joke of it (as X-Men Gold and All-New X-Men both did) is a sign of writers who are not really invested in the emotional lives of those characters.

Onto Cable! In some ways, Jean’s relationship with him is a lot simpler because he is actually and inarguably her child. To be clear, she’s not his biological mother, and we’re going to put her blood relationship to his biological mother aside because it’s not actually that important. Jean is his mother because she raised him. In X-Factor vol 1, she becomes one of his primary caregivers once his mother is out of the picture, largely because she is dating his father at the time. (I’m not going to get into the whole Sinister-creating-Maddy-to-breed-with-Scott thing or the Maddy-living-in-Jean’s-head thing. It’s messy and it complicates things, but it doesn’t change the basic facts of Jean’s situation.) Jean in X-Factor is a co-parent with a day job, a woman who’s responsible for feeding the baby and changing his diapers and helping teach him how to walk and talk and keeping him safe from harm (that time she takes him into a fight excluded, of course). The first manifestation of baby Christopher’s psychic powers is that he and Jean share a special telepathic bond. It’s hard to tell how long this goes on for (comic timelines are, as always, vague and difficult to pin down), but it’s at least several months.

After Simonson’s run on X-Factor, baby Christopher is removed from the picture by being sent off to the far-future — only to be raised by Slym and Redd, who are, of course, Scott and Jean. As a Scott fan, a Jean fan, and a Scott/Jean fan, I’m always surprised and frustrated by how little The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix gets referenced. This is years of their lives that they spend raising their son. Specifically, twelve years, which is quite a long time, and means that Cable is probably 13 by the time Slym and Redd have to leave. Redd is the mother that Cable remembers when he grows up. She’s the one who rocks him to sleep, who negotiates with his father about how to properly raise their son, who does everything in her power to protect him while continuing to participate in a secret rebel organization. And the telepathic connection he had to her resurfaces, so that they are able to fight together on the astral plane.

(If you ever want to cry about Scott/Jean or Cable’s childhood or the Summers family in general, I highly recommend The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix. I will forgive Lobdell any number of crimes because he gave us such an excellent miniseries.)

But she isn’t just there during his childhood. Jean has a relationship with her adult son as well. They work together as X-Men many times, before and after she realizes that he is her son. Of course, there are those incredibly cute panels you may have seen of Scott and Jean and Cable all getting together to celebrate Christmas. And after the defeat of Apocalypse, when Scott is believed to be dead, Jean and Cable become especially close. It is Jean that Cable confides in, sharing with her his feelings, his loss of purpose now that his war is over, how hard it is for him to be vulnerable again. And when Jean thinks Scott is still alive but no one else believes her, Cable is the one who comes with her and helps her bring him back. Unfortunately, post-Search for Cyclops, Morrison comes in, and Morrison has no interest in love or families and does have an interest in killing Jean off to further his ship.

Prime Cable is dead now, of course, so I cannot hope that writers will explore that relationship any further. (EDIT: Oh, yeah, he maybe sort of came back again in a comic last month. Clearly that shocking turn of events made a big impression on me.) I did enjoy getting to see Jean and Hope bond after his death over the love they shared for him, and I can wish that the writers will carry that relationship forward. As for Bable (baby Cable), he’s an angry teenager who experienced the events of The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix #4 about three or four years ago. He’s angry, he’s upset, he’s lashing out by killing his future self. There could be something really interesting there, in Jean’s relationship with Bable, if they chose to remember that he’s still the kid she raised. Her place as the mother of a rebellious teenager is complicated because he’s both the boy who brought her husband back to life and the boy who killed the adult son that she loved. If writers looked past the soap opera of it all to actually acknowledge the emotions involved, they’d see there was an interesting story there, one that is not just about the Scott/Cable relationship but necessarily involves Jean as well.

I’m sure there are things to be said about Stryfe and Nate Grey, but I honestly do not know or care enough about alternate versions of Cable to really have a coherent picture of Jean’s relationship with them, so I’m gonna skip that.

Next, I want to talk about Jean’s relationship with the concept of family. I would like to mention (as I always do), that Jean’s entire family — her parents, her siblings, and her siblings’ children — were murdered by aliens. How she feels about this is a mystery, as the comics have not addressed it at all, but she might feel guilty, because though it’s not her fault, they were killed because of her. She might also feel guilty because while family in the abstract is very important to her, her relationship with them was strained and she wasn’t as close to them as she’d like to be. She might also feel angry as hell that somebody decided to murder her family despite them doing absolutely nothing to provoke it. Any of those emotional responses would influence how she relates to her children and her granddaughter. Maybe she becomes a little more attached and attentive because she has no other family left. Maybe she distances herself from them out of grief. Maybe she rounds up her incredibly angry son and takes him into the stars to attack aliens so they can be angry together. I think any of those, done properly, could be interesting and in-character for her, and I just want some writer to acknowledge Jean as a character with her own history and her own relationships that shape her actions.

Finally, Jean’s relationship with the concept of her own motherhood. Jean is someone who wanted and expected to be a mother. I usually tend to read Jean as coming from a more traditional and conservative family, but I don’t think that’s an adequate explanation. I think Jean genuinely wants children. In X-Factor, she says, “I always thought we’d have a girl,” when talking to Scott, showing that she had thought about children being part of their future. When she talks to Rachel about her upcoming marriage to Scott, she mentions that she thinks it likely that another Rachel will be born. She wants kids, she’s seen them as part of her future for a long time, and then she got them! She got to be a mother, to Nathan Christopher and to Rachel, as explained above. I think a woman who wanted to be a mother and now is a mother should be allowed to have real relationships with her children. This isn’t like Emma, whose distance from the Cuckoos can be read as her viewing herself more as their teacher than their mother, since Emma always understands herself as a teacher. When Jean holds a baby in X-Men Red and winks at the mother and tells her that she’s implanted a psychic suggestion he not cry so much, that’s because Jean has been responsible for a baby before. Being a mother is part of who Jean is, just like it’s part of who Jubilee is or who Sue is, and I wish that writers and fans understood that.

[ansu-gurleht]

okay so i went through the datamined books from eso, taking notes as i went. @boethiah sent me a message this morning about it, asking what i thought. so i figured i might as well get real comprehensive about taking down notes to answer decently, or at least do it to organize my thoughts. 

before she sent me that i hadn’t heard about this, so i went into it bright-faced and intrigued. i didn’t think my notes would end up too long, so i just figured i’d send them to her when i was done, even “talking” to her in the notes (you’ll see what i mean by that). 

but uh. as all things lore-related, i got a bit carried away. stopped almost halfway thru to go to class, and by then i’d started to notice some really weird, kinda silly shit in it. and then i noticed everybody in tesblr talking about it, and finally realized, “oh. so it’s like that.” so i figure i’ll post it here publicly instead.

despite the uh. obvious nonsense in a lot of this, i think there’s a lot of interesting things hidden away. so what i’m going to do is just post my notes under the read-more. i’m too lazy to organize them into something more coherent lol. they’re basically just me commenting on certain lines and stuff. 

i won’t like, really go into why most of this is stupid, bc other people have already done so, and better than i probably could’ve. but you’ll know. somethings i quote things and just. have no idea how to even address them other than, at best, “??????” either bc it doesn’t make much sense, eludes useful analysis, or is just stupid.

anyways, here goes:

book 1:

azura: - "the Path"? am i wrong or has a "Path" never been referenced in khajiiti lore?

khenarthi: - alkosh comforts khenarthi after lorkhaj died? yeah right. - khenarthi's role as psychopomp for azurah mirrors kyne's role for shor. but azura doesn't factor into nord/atmoran mythology at all.

jone and jode: - azurah cares for jone and jode? interesting. (also, "Bright Moons"? full moons?)

lorkhaj: - lorkhaj as "White Lion?" - namiira (the Great Darkness) followed lorkhaj as his burden? - mention of a "path" again, made by lorkhaj with purpose. sounds yokudan. - "in conflict with himself" & "represents the duality of the Khajiiti soul" ... desert and jungle ... strife, hardship, and life, love ... both tainted deadly by nirni, according to ahnissi - "We honor his sacrifice by walking the Path with purpose and resisting the call of the Dark." ... the Path again ... the Dark? namiira? - (the khajiit seem to conflate namira and nocturnal. this isn't a new concept, as they both genuinely do overlap in many ways, but an interesting one.) - "the true spirit of Lorkhaj will sometimes appear" ... "by Azurah" - nerevar/ine, "or Khenarthi" - hjalti, "or by his oldest name" - ...ysmir?

magrus: - all of this magrus stuff is new, to my knowledge. - the importance of him fleeing from "Boethra and Lorkhaj" probably excites you :P - "fell into the Moonshadow" ... "too full of fear to rule a sphere" ... "tore out his other eye" (odin parallel? a "failed" odin, maybe? unless seeing "out of one eye" is metaphorical) - "Varliance Gate"???? "Aether Prism"???? they're the sun, but those names are brand new afaik. overall a strange alternative to the story of magnus and the sun - "Some sorcerers hold that Magrus left the eye willingly" - more odin stuff

book 2:

- azurah knows all the names of all the spirits, their protonyms? that's interesting. a lot of that "protonymic" lore is derived from the whole "true names have power" stuff, popular in magical circles from sources like kabbalah thru the lens of crowley. - "And Fadomai told stories of her children and her favorite aspects of each of them. When she reached Azurah, she smiled and told her favored daughter she could not decide. And Fadomai died." ;----; - "sat in the Great Darkness for timeless ages" ... sat with namiira? - seems to have carved moonshadow from the great darkness. (the great darkness seems to have dual meaning as both oblivion and namiira. then again, i think only clan mother ahnissi said the great darkness was namiira, so that (morrowind) lore might be outdated.) - this scene with lorkhaj and his empty dark heart is......interesting. - "UR DRA NA MII RA UR DRA NA MII RA UR DRA AZU RA" - you can pick out "namiira" and "azura" in this, but the meaning of "UR" and "DRA" elude me. - lorkhaj gets his heart torn out YET AGAIN. very rude azurah - the "Moon Beast" and its hunger remind me of the yokudan sep. - i think once upon the time "dro-m'Athra" referred to daedra in general, but i think eso has made them a specific type of daedra resembling khajiit. even more specifically, some kind of "dark khajiit" born from dead evil khajiit. - "lighting the fire with lanterns of love and mercy" - your vivec is showing, azurah. or i guess, the other way around. - this "ashes of Lorkhaj" bit gets me thinking about ysmir, again. but i'm not sure what to do with that.

book 3

sheggorath: - now THIS is a not shitty interpretation of sheggorath! he's not a "god of madness," but a god of mental fortitude, a god who tests convinction. - more stuff about "the Path" - "must be ... overcome before a Khajiit can visit Hermorah's library"? - "Sheggorath is dead and has been replaced by something Other" - the hero of kvatch? but if this is from eso, that hasn't happened yet? unless the mantling of sheogorath is a pretty common occurrence; i remember someone on tumblr suggested that this might happen every era.

orkha: - "Orkha ... followed Boethra back through the Many Paths" ... what does that mean? - "Lorkhaj, Khenarthi, and Boethra battled the demon in the ancient songs" - ... as trinimac? - "but Orkha could only be banished and would not die" ;) - "serve as tests along the Path" - so far these princes are being painted similarly to their house of troubles counterparts

dagon (also called merrunz.) - no reference to merrunz being the kitty cat. :( next - ...okay not really. "explore the Great Darkness rather than the Many Paths"? - molagh "tortured him until the creation of the World?" but "the wife of Molagh freed Merrunz"? who is "the wife of Molagh"?

molagh (balls) - "twelve Demon Kings"? should probably look into how they got that number - "Boethra and Molagh fought to a standstill before the lattice, but it was Azurah who shackled the Demon King with secrets only she knows." - i dont have anything to say about this really, just an interesting line i think. - "you will overcome him with the might of Boethra, the Will Against Rule." - interesting...afaik, aside from HAVING a khajiit name, boethiah never really factored into their faith that much, and wasn't ever mentioned in clan mother ahnissi. i wonder if azurah at some point attempted to unify her plans for the dunmer and the khajiit.

merid-nunda - interestingly, the khajiit seem to call her by her magna-ge name. - "False Spirit of Greed"? - magrus "loved only himself and his own creations"? idk if this seems all that congruent with the magrus from his own description - "cold spirit, born of light without love" - interesting - "blame her for orchestrating the death of might Lorkhaj"??!?!?!? what?????????? - "When Merid-Nunda dared assault the Lattice, Azurah struck her down before the Varliance Gate and dragged her away from it. She then cast Merid-Nunda into the Void and bound her there with mirrors. The nomads say she has since escaped." this whole thing is interesting

book 4

nirni: - nothing interesting on nirni.

y'ffer: - y'ffer "corrupted by the Great Darkness," (namira), who apparently killed nirni???!??! what??????? - worth noting that ahnissi doesn’t paint y’ffer as “corrupted” or evil or anything. in her words he’s kinda just a moron who doesn’t *get it* and does his own thing instead.  - don’t get the obsession with making namiira some like. crazy super evil being. feels like eso took a look at the list of princes and was like “who hasn’t tried to destroy/take over the world yet. that’s what daedric princes do right”

hircine - hircine doesn't get a funny ta'agra name, i guess. - graht-elk?

hermorah - hermorah helps azurah maintain the ja-kha'jay?

sangiin - according to what this says about sangiin, khajiit are actually NOT one of the most hedonistic races on tamriel. suuuuuuuuure, buddy.

book 5

- a look at the khajiit afterlife w/ azurah in moonshadow. - first you walk the sands, then you walk the glass, then you walk the thorns, then you have a good time, then azurah sends you back to nirn do something else (reincarnated)? but it might just be this one guy who goes off to do something ("Bring my children back"), he seems kinda special. no idea who he's supposed to be.

book 6

- all this shit about akha and alkosh and alkhan is bullshit. the fuck is akha even supposed to be? according to his name you'd assume an association with akatosh, but alkosh is akatosh, right?

akha: - this book says akha is the first cat. ahnissi says alkosh is the first cat. - "Pathfinder and the One Unmourned" - are we talking about akatosh or dagoth ur here. - "Many Paths"??? again?? what are they. knockoff walking ways? - "mated with the Winged Serpent of the East [akavir], the Dune Queen of the West [yokuda], and the Mother Mammoth of the North [atmora]. He then went to the South [pyandonea] and never returned." then alkosh shows up and says "yikes that akha guy was a little fucked huh?"

alkosh: - alkosh is "The Dragon King" and "Highmane." association with the Mane of the khajiit - "In time, the children of Akha overthrew [Alkosh] and scattered his body on the West Wind." ...??? is this a reference to the middle dawn? seems unlikely - apparently khenarthi put him back together. also seems unlikely

alkhan: - oh so the khajiit recognize alduin now too. cool.

boethra: - and boethiah i guess, why not????

mafala: - mafala has always been part of khajiit religion, tho, afaik. she is the og clan mother. - "She watches over Eight of the Many Paths, each of which a Khajiit must walk in time." ?????????? wtf are the many paths!!!!! why are there eight of them!!!!!! is this a reference to the spiral skein, or satellite realms (the spokes) of it? - forreal i think they gave up on pretense here when they started listing allies and shit. - "Her numbers are Eight and Sixteen, and these are two of her keys." this just sounds like something from the 36 lessons tbh. this doesn't sound like khajiit lore at all

book 7

lorkhaj (moon beast): - confusingly, lorkhaj as fadomai's favored son and lorkhaj as the moon beast are called by the same name, and despite this have separate entries in these books. - wonder if there's some equivalent in other myths to the moon beast. he seems pretty interesting, being "born of the dark heart of Lorkhaj" - there's UR DRA again, attached to namiira, again, who is apparently an enemy of the khajiit.

namiira: - apparently eso has rebranded namiira as like, an absolute enemy of the khajiit, with the dro-m'athra as her corrupted-khajiit minions or something? except i thought dro-m'athra originated from the moon beast? anyways, ahnissi only said that the great darkness became namiira. didn't say that was a bad thing necessarily. - also, her khajiiti ta'agra name, namiira, just so happens to be her protonym, NA MII RA.

noctra: - oh, so they do have nocturnal, as "noctra". - wait, so she's the "daughter of twilight"??? isn't twilight, idk, azura's thing???? (i feel like i've heard nocturnal be associated with twilight before, but it still makes little sense. it was probably from eso, too.) - boethra separated noctra from namiira. one could say she *stole* noctra from namiira ;) - noctra is ok by the khajiit, whereas her progenitor namiira is not. ok?

varmiina: - ok we have vaermina now too i guess. why the fuck not. - "The Lost Daughter. This spirit was not of any litter, but was born from Fadomai's fear of losing her children." - "Azurah killed this dark spirit in the Underworld" what the fuck is "the Underworld". they just be making shit up now

[?????] (no, really. that's what it says. dunno if that's a placeholder or intentional): - "[?????] A spirit of vengeance. It has no will of its own, as it was born from Azurah's grief after the death of Fadomai and Lorkhaj." ????? - "It sometimes appears in songs as a black panther, a warrior in ebony armor, or as a hidden sword." idk about "a black panther," but the "warrior in ebony armor" evokes ebonarm, who's technically still canon, and "a hidden sword" could be umbra. not sure what the connection here is.

[gaarfielf]

k im gonna throw in my hot take on part 5 now i think the time has come where i’ve watched enough of the damn series i can make a coherent essay on whats what on what (putting it under a read more bc this shit is gonna be long and i dont want my followers to suffer too much)

I’ll do this character by character starting with the new ones

Ami: I’m having a hard time deciphering whether she’s being underutilized or over utilized because number 1) her character isn’t interesting enough to have her keep coming around, especially when her only connection to the group is Lupin. She hasn’t had any interaction with Goemon or Jigen that i know of and she hates Fujiko for ??? reasons. That being said, I would’ve preferred if she was fleshed out more because 2) literally having her be the distant girl that is quiet and doesn’t understand social norms is..... really boring. It’s almost as boring as having a female character whose only there as a set of boobs... (coughs). She isn’t interesting because they didn’t make her interesting, yeah? It’s hard to hate a character based on the fact alone they were clearly written by a man but I mean it very literally when I say she could’ve been something great. Having her confess her love to Lupin was straight up disgusting and I really expected more from tms in that vein. Putting romance where romance doesn’t need to be is bad enough let alone when you jack knife it in between a child and an adult. And for those of you saying ‘Oh hhhh she’s like nineteen’....look into your heart. Even if she is 1) she sure as hell doesn’t look it and 2) Lupin is like 40-50. In the wise words of me, children loving adults was a myth made up by pedophiles in support of the devil. Npot to mention pitting her against Fujiko because they both like Lupin?? I ain’t even gotta explain why that’s a pathetic excuse at writing. But I will. Fujiko is a grown ass woman so why the fuck would she care and Ami is a child who shouldn’t be in love with him anyway. She has truly been nothing in the series except a tool and even at that not a likable one.

Yata: Do I even have to say that I can’t write anything about a man who hasn’t had more than 4 minutes of screen time in the last 24 episodes? He was hyped up before the series started and he’s done nothing but be Zenigata’s personality in the place of Zenigata y’know. Actually speaking and having one for himself BUT WE’LL GET TO THAT LATER. He’s done nothing but yell and cry over literally nothing? Like he fights Zeni’s fights because for some reason Zenigata got super lazy this season (again, we’ll get into that later) and he’s just a pointless character.

Albert: Gay rep for life haha just kidding he was bad at that too. I think they literally introduced him as faux-gay rep because they know the fans wanted more sensitive interactions from their already existing male cast members and they were like ‘well that’s gay so we’ll give them this guy’. And speaking on behalf of myself - ‘I don’t want these’. So Albert shows up, supposedly having a HUGE connection to Lupin’s past and then............we never see him again. And they literally tell us nothing about him except he’s gay and works in the government. Apparently when we say ‘we want gay rep’ they hear ‘very minor gay character??’ and didn’t hear us say ‘no’ back. And every time I hear anyone say 1) ‘well, his connection to Lupin is supposed to be a mystery!’ I can feel hives growing on my skin because i’m allergic to bullshit like if they weren’t gonna tell us the connection, and whatever the connection is didn’t reveal anything new about the character outside of ‘Lupin knew somebody that wasn’t Jigen when he was younger’ then why?? mention it?? why make an entire arc dedicated to not telling us something if the end result was ‘it doesn’t matter who he is’? 2) ‘well they’re obviously cousins’ except they obviously aren’t. if they obviously were, they’d say that they were cousins. like if y’all are digging up bits of the manga from 40 years ago to say ‘there was a character who had the same last name’ but are also out here saying ‘Jigen doesnt have a sister bc they said that over 40 yers ago and haven’t mentioned it since’ then I ain’t got nothing to say to y’all, you’re just dodgy and ain’t worth the stress of talking to. 3) ‘they’re maybe gay’ well the cool thing about gay rep is that we don’t give honourary mentions out for series that were too cowardly to actually come right out and say it. So in conclusion, Albert was written by cowards who couldn’t decide what to do with him.

Enzo: Boring. That’s literally all I have to say. Trying to give him depth by making Ami his daughter was predictable and not at all interesting. To be honest I completely forgot she was looking for her dad anyway because she didn’t seem to care that much about finding him either (or seem to care about anythign really). He’s a shitty villain and every time he speaks I got my finger on the right-key because I don’t care what he has to say and so far I haven’t missed anything good so yeah. Just disappointing.

I think that’s it??? For new characters?? So I’ll move onto the main cast

Jigen: I 👏 WANT 👏 JIGEN 👏 TO 👏 DO 👏 SOMETHING like good fucking God the man hasn’t done anything this whole series up until 24 where he got  5 minute scene dedicated to him killin’ cops (direct action) but like?? As a character he hasn’t progressed he has BARELY spoken and we’ve learned one new thing about him the whole series in the episode where he meets the daughter of a woman he used to work with. And that one thing that we learned was: he used to work with the mother of this girl. That’s it. Episode 24 he got a little bit of dialog with Lupin that I guess was supposed to be like character development but it was so weird because it was kind of directed at the audience?? So it’s like is he talking to me or to Jigen because if I was Jigen I would not have one goddamn clue what he was talking about. Also, he’s so depressing this season?? Right up until now we’ve seen very little personality from him aside from Angry and Complains a Lot. He smiles sometimes sure but like he doesn’t exactly have a lot to smile about this season considering he’s not really in the limelight anymore and is only brought back to foreshadow how much he hates technology and wants to retire. Personally, Jigen is one of my favourite characters and the fact he hasn’t achieved much this series is a big let-down

Goemon: I can’t even imagine how let down Goemon fans feel because again, up until Episode 23 he did nothing. He had an episode where he fell in love?? With a girl?? Disguised as a woman?? For some reason?? It was in one of the throwbacks and I’ll admit that maybe the episode made sense and I probably missed something but to me I had no clue what was going on. ANYWAY like his big scene in the spotlight is 3 episodes before the end of the series (its not like he’s a main character or anything) and he cuts Lupin. Because he thinks that he isn’t really his friend. That’s it that’s the only reason he almost murders his friend. Just kidding the other reason was that it was a half ass attempt at shock value to make sure the audience was still paying attention. They can’t seem to decide this season whether they want Goemon to be edgy or stupid but I think we’ve gotten a greta big helping of both so thanks tms /sarcasm/. They’ve really just dragged his character through the mud this season because he used to be stoic, mysterious, traditionalist but lowkey clumsy guy and then now he’s. I don’t even know how to describe it he’s just become so cutesy and edgy at the same time so we get him cutting Lupin in half right in front of UwU i eat my fish skin first ! I’m quirky ! like what am I supposed to feel about this grown man? He’s really too back-and-forth for me this season

Fujiko: I’M GONNA GET HEATED ABOUT THIS ONE SO BUCKLE UP I’ve never seen Fujiko written this poorly since TWCFM (yes i’m outting that as a bad series too so don’t @ me about that lil tidbit). She’s there as a piece of eyecandy bUT SHE IS SO POORLY DRAWN IT MAKES ME WONDER IF ANYBODY AT TMS HAS EVER SEEN A WOMAN IN THEIR LIFE TIME. Seriously her proportions are so off and outwardly repulsive looking it makes it hard not to skip anything she says in the series on account of how half-ass her character looks. Not limiting herself to being visually repulsive, she also has a half-ass personality. Suddenly Fujiko isn’t the come-and-go as she pleases, mysterious woman that gives Lupin intel on very high security operations she’s just. There. At some point in the series she said ‘a woman’s body is just a tool to get something she needs’ and I wanted to puke this is NOT Fujiko’s character at all and I’m disgusted that they’re brushing her off as a pair of walking talking boobs. Also her absolute lack of empathy is just mind numbing because they’re somehow trying to convince the audience that Lupin broke her heart due to wedding related reasons that still haunt her but? Seeing him cut almost in half does nothing for her? And then she deadpan ‘This is just how it is’ like this is just putting her in such an evil light that I hate because I love Fujiko! In every other season she’s fighty and sarcastic and witty AND NOT JUST THERE FOR EYE CANDY. And going back to the wedding thing, why is this being made into such a big deal? There’s literal episodes in other seasons called ‘Fujiko Doesn’t Look Right in a Wedding Dress’ ‘Fujiko Doesn’t Want to Be Married’ ‘A Ring Is Like a Trap’ like she 👏 don’t 👏 want 👏 to 👏 be 👏 married 👏. And the preview for the next ep shows her in a wedding dress so I’m ultimately preparing myself for the big season finale being them getting married.

hurray.

Final thought on Fujiko being, the episode where she picks up Lupin to save him from succumbing to his crossbow wound (easily the funniest thing thats happened all season) I mean. Yeah it’s kinda cool. I don’t really have any strong feelings about that like I’m not about to praise them for something like that when it was immediately followed by her and Ami slap fighting over him again.

Lupin: In my days of watching Lupin movies/specials my slogan was ‘if the ratio of screen time in the movie between characters is 10:0 in Lupin’s favour then it ain’t a good movie’ and it’s ringing true to this season where it’s all about Lupin. I understand obviously it’s a series called Lupin III like I’m not stupid but the amount of ass kissing to his character is something else like they’re putting him on this huge pedestal like he’s a do-no-wrong kind of guy to the point where he’s boring because he’s done nothing wrong. Ever. He doesn’t argue with anybody he doesn’t have any strong emotions really (outside of that episode where Zenigata loses his memory we see him outwardly angry for a minute). It just makes him such a dry character when they try to mold him into being absolutely flawless and admirable. Also the amount of faking his own death and ‘oh no is he gonna die’ moments are just not entertaining. Like I said earlier when he got shot with the crossbow that was the hardest I’ve laughed in a long long time. It played like an SNL skit (you know what one). And again we aren’t learning anything new. Whose Albert to him!? We never got to know, What’s his relationship to Fujiko!? We’re probably gonna find out they’re getting married last episode after all the touching moments they had together this season like.... like uh.... when they uh... oh right they’ve barely spoken to each other all season. And when they did they were arguing. Love is in the air huh?

Zenigata: AI’ll try to keep this brief but Yata’s taken over his character this season. He’s barely spoken, he has like, NO energy or determination. After the episode where Lupin faked his death (the first time, not the proceeding 90 times) Zenigata just stopped appearing and stopped doing anything productive. If anything his character became an excuse for an info dump. Like oh we see a war torn area whats going on? Zenigata is conveniently nearby to say ‘these people are at war!’ and then outside character will tell a 18 paragraph history on him of whose at war and their history and then Zenigata says ‘okay’ and doesn’t appear again for the next 2 episodes.

Now for the closing thoughts I guess

i don’t know why they’re looking at Lupin having plot as separate from Lupin being episodic. Like they’ve separated him from adventure so he’s just doing the same things over and over again. Not to mention like I said earlier, the fans wanted to see more sensitive interactions between the already existing characters, and if anything, they’re farther apart and just really confusing and contradictory. It’s hard to get through an episode when every week its another ‘great time for another plot arc they’re never gonna finish’. When I watched episodes of Part 1 and 2 and 4 (not so much 3 because i can’t find anywhere to watch it lol) I’m pretty attentive all the way through because the series drops tidbits of information about the characters and they make the episode enjoyable to watch. This season is so dreary and dry I can’t find anything to enjoy about it because it’s just one disappointment after another. I’m trying to to sound bitchy as I type all this out but I mean I’m speaking as a fan who is just really disappointed. I know I’ve said ‘disappointed’ a lot in this whole thing but there isn’t another word to describe it because that’s really the way that I feel about part 5. Seeing my favourite characters on screen is supposed to make me feel happy and excited to see where they’re gonna go and what they’re gonna do not make me think “I hope they don’t ruin this character for me’ in every. single. episode. This season has been underwhelming, unenjoyable, inconsistent and just really exhausting to me overall.

i gotta go eat now so peace out and if you read to the end of all this then hopefully i’m not the only one in this boat but if you don’t agree with me then i guess thats just how it is yeah?

EDIT: I forgot to mention that the callbacks were cool at first but now I just find they’re baiting me into thinking i’ll enjoy the episode because i’ll find something I liked from one of the better seasons in it. They’re just really overused at this point because these callbacks aren’t being used for anything. like ‘lupin is making his plan at the cagliostro castle!’ like. why. ‘detective melon is also angry at lupin!’ but if she isn’t like teaming up with zenigata or actually doing anything to find him why should i care. 

[unproduciblesmackdown]

here’s me talking about the month since i was last online

firstly it was/is depressing not to be able to talk with ppl or hear from them. or just to be able to talk somewhere i know people CAN hear. i also mentioned being completely detached from the news. i like to be current about the news. anyways i was like “well not like this is anything new” as its technically unusual for me to NOT be cut off both irl and from the internet. but, shockingly, that doesnt make it not depressing. and having something for even a bit makes it more frustrating to lose it even if its “normal” for you not to have it. also by depressing i mean i was going like hmm i sure am even more tired than usual and i am less interested in my few lingering faint interests. whats up with that! and then i was like oh yeah thats called Even More Depression

it is funny because im someone who has never really had that many friends and when i do we often end up separated one way or another. Very Close friends &/or Very Longtime friends are a foreign concept. basically the heights of my “what i wish it was like” for life involve having a group of friends with whom you can have fun in an empty parking lot in the middle of the night just talking and hanging out and messing around. friends that you feel comfortable being yourself around and like they appreciate you as much as you do them. i do not think this is ever going to happen, but oh well because in reality i can be very picky about people because i am weird, to put it that way for now. my social landscape and language is not always considered normal or even tolerable. and i have a lot of standards for who i want to have around me in terms of traits and personality. theres a lot of things im not interested in. anyways. i also just, in the way things actually are, often prefer to be alone, so that i can be myself and do things i feel like. i dont have to worry about being strange or feeling like i need to please people. anyways. unfortunately i dont ONLY like being alone. i actually really like to be with people and talk with them but i rarely can, and i figure this is bad for me. isolation isnt good for anyone obviously. not being able to be around friends in person depresses me. not being able to talk online either depresses me further.

i think sometimes about how much i dont say. its a funny place to say it, in an overly long text post. but one of the reasons they can be so long is because irl i dont really talk much to people. so it builds up and can come out through writing. sometimes it comes out in talking. i think that in conversations, when i do talk, i talk too much because of this. so one of the reasons i dont talk much is to prevent this, which obviously is like “well that would just cancel out” but there are other reasons i dont talk. but i have loads of thoughts and things to say. i end up keeping so much of it to myself and wonder sometimes if i’ll ever get to say some of it. sometimes i’ll have something to say and bite it back. i’ve been “quiet” all these past twenty some years of talking and i know the reasons i dont talk. i was thinking about the feeling of biting something back in an individual occasion feeling like the cumulation of all the years worth of keeping my own voice running in my head alone. it kind of feels like what you want to say is in your chest and throat and the roof of your mouth.

speaking of the roof of your mouth, theres a weird sensation i can feel sometimes, seemingly at random but mostly in strange times like trying to fall asleep. it is so transient and unlike any actual externally caused sensations that its been difficult to try to get a grasp of how to describe it, but i think i have it thanks to ongoing effort and an unusually long period of it a few days ago during which i was especially alert about it. it’s like having a pressure radiating out from inside your mouth. like an orb pushing outwards against the teeth and roof of the mouth. which i’m fairly sure isn’t anything that would ever happen, so i am assuming its some little neurological hiccup that happens to align every now and then, but maybe a previous life cycle has put something weird in their mouth. or shot into it, because i would be like, well not much has changed.

anyways. words sitting like a pressure in your mouth. i was seeing a thread about how grief is ongoing and reoccurring which also mentioned that people who specialize in knowing how grieving and living with it works often consider it to be a form of grief when someone’s life is affected by something like trauma. they have to grieve themselves because of the possibilities taken away from them. i feel that, sometimes. thinking about how i wish i had a life where i felt free to speak and where my identity mattered and i got to feel like i could be myself and it was important and it was important what i thought and wanted and who i really was. and where i got to have friends and do things and realize what it was to actually feel happy, not try to understand an unhappy existence as what must be okay. its not just what couldve been in the past, but also how that couldve affected the present and future. im not sure who i’d be if my life didnt have to be about survival and escape. i say i never had dreams, which is true, but in retrospect i DO think that when i was fifteen and really bearing down in trying to figure out what i wanted to do, i was already seeing activism as the answer, which made sense why it wouldnt register as a dream or ambition and why it was also impossible to pursue. i still dont think of anything like personal fulfillment through a career/job or anything. but i also dont think of what i want to do as very relevant to anything at all anymore.

anyways. i’m “used” to things, but they still depress and hurt me. i actually have a lot of sadness and anger about some of these things, like never getting to have the friends i wanted or never being able to speak and it not mattering who i really was, and how long it took me to realize this really wasn’t okay and it wasn’t because of some personal deficiency which made me deserve it somehow. also the abuse. i remember i had this how-to book about weaving friendship bracelets which i got sometime in elementary school, and it even supplied some twine and stuff. i had always wanted to have occasion to use it, and i never did, which is just symbolic. the twine/potential friendship bracelets can also be things like positive social connections that feel real and open, or my ability to feel secure in expressing affection because it seems mutual. but anyways. i also just go along.

i was thinking about the Being Gone For A Month thing and the not-talking and holding all my words back even though i think so much about all sorts of junk and thus have too much to say, and about a week ago i just spent like six hours writing about myself. i was debating doing so in the first place because i figured i wouldnt post it. i did write it, but i won’t post it. its just good to talk to myself in the form of writing. getting thoughts into that form requires an extra level of analysis and coherent flow that can help put even things you already knew more in order. so here’s this stuff instead.

there’s not much to say about this past month. the worst of it was that discovering my weird tooth is all janky and broken has made me on edge about teeth. i mean, i’ve already all but stopped worrying about the broke tooth, because i kind of do that sometimes when i can. just worry hard and then stop, because what can you do? might as well try to avoid stressing even worse. and in this case i dont have money and doubt i will ever have a job w dental coverage, so i cant do anything about it. but im always worried about my teeth because, fittingly, my parents dental genes seem to combine into that of a tasmanian devil. i think im in some Dental Report b/c i had this weird situation that needed basically a root canal but it wasnt the normal kind of root canal situation and the dentist said he hadn’t seen it or heard of it even. special. i was horrified about needing the root canal, because of the clichés. but it ended up being fine and i really just sat there for an hour thinking about whatever. dental procedures are truly not what theyre hyped up to be. on account of local anesthetics. anyways. when i left my parents house i was specifically worried about leaving my access to a dentist, but obviously it wouldve been far from worth it. but that doesn’t mean i dont worry about my teeth. so i had these few days where i just had a spontaneously sensitive gum spot and another one which im guessing i caused by jamming corn shards down in there by eating corn on the cob. that happened sort of last year, i got really worried about an angry-looking spot on my gums and finally realized something was just up in there that needed to be flossed out. anyhow. the point is i got overly worried about everything that always worries me even though it used to worry me even before going to the dentist and they’d say the stuff was fine actually. but still. i got

very worried for a minute there and i realized very easily that if i start getting any really serious tooth problems i am out of here. i have no motivation at all to live through it. i don’t want to have to deal with that. it’s way too much. i dont even have motivation to be alive now. but when i was worrying i was thinking about not using my handful of cash to change locations, but instead to get some fancy Dying Equipment. there are still some methods by which im not sure i could try offing myself. but if things got a lot worse, like teeth problems, i could probably lower those standards. i COULD obtain some items for one method, or by necessity do it for free. im less worried about the tooth stuff now. it was just an unfortunate convergence of a couple tiny things. but ive still got a sensitive spot or two, and im always a bit worried. if something bad happens i cant do anything about it except get tf out of this life cycle, right.

there was something else unfortunate i was going to talk about. maybe just the depression.

there were nice, small things. i always knew how to enjoy those kinds of stuff. i like the sky, and i appreciate that its summer. theres a lot of fireflies sometimes and i saw kittens chasing them one day. one of those kittens mightve gotten killed by something since. i got to hear rain on the roof a few times. i like corn on the cob even if it betrayed me. i was wanting some last summer. i also got to make sweet tea and lemonade for the first time in forever. i’d been wanting that for a long time too.

the nicest surprise was that i had been writing extra hard since the start of june. i sort of really pushed at it and got to the dividing point between the section and the next, and i was sure it was shorter than previous sections. but actually it was just over 1000 words short of being 140k, and i’d written it all in about five weeks, and it was abt 22.5% longer than the next longest section i’d written. i’ve since gotten to a point i’ve been writing towards since this whole time, and im right on the verge of another long awaited one right now. it’s nice, but writing has been fun, and i hope i dont get depressed if i hopefully do finish it. i can just write some more, but doing so on my phone isnt the most efficient. it doesnt seem sustainable.

anyways thats it for now before i can think of anything else to say am i right

[gooodluckmode]

im deep in the vld hole here and need to voice my thoughts on kallura given literally everything so far & how i believe it doesnt make sense? (even though a lot of ppl have already said that) and maybe my worries will subside a bit. this most definitely might be a jumbled mess but i hope if youre worried or anxious or just kinda ehhh on the whole possibility this will help your worries subside too!!

(definitely got longer than i intended it to be but its coherent!)

i guess first ill go with the vld staff and crew. have to start with this dont @ me: lauren montgomery retweeted very obviously romantic klance art months ago (which im still not over lol). onto more serious stuff, i do know in an interview it was said sexuality can be explored? jeremy shada has said on a few occasions that he wants more keith and lance interaction and he has said that lance is gonna mature! i see that as a really good opportunity to address sexuality - have lance contemplate his bc of his feelings for keith. like that potential just seems so big and i would be disappointed if they wasted it?? lance obviously has confidence issues and to have him work through everything would be rly nice to see? also bex brought up klance in an interview and looked so devious and happy when she said she likes watching the klance shippers explode (i love her). she also said kallura is a bromance and thats it. of course this means nothing for sure but its stuff to think about. steven yeun said quite strangely that you never know where the romance is or who it is between so like ?? that can go both ways given what question he gave that as an answer to (it was about keith and allura). and just in general i know this crew isnt against lgbt content and representation (they’ve already done a bit with pidge & worked on lok which has korrasami!) so why not go further? and of course if they do go further, im just gunna guess and say it would be with klance, and if klance happens, well, kallura cant? honestly vld is ripe for amazing storytelling and relationships (if they choose to address romantic relationships - which if they dont thats totally fine too! the friendships in this how have amazing potential too!) and i want to trust the staff to handle it all well no matter what and not force anything just bc it happened in the older voltron.

onto keith himself. we havent seen keith show any real interest in allura at all. heck he even wanted to leave her on a galra ship in s1? in s2 its obvious he is hurt by her comments but yeah of course who wouldnt be? when he was in the little pod thing with her in s2 he didnt act like he was interested in her that way and when she kinda sorta hugged him after apologizing he didnt really react like someone would if someone they were interested in p much hugged them? i mean yes there are maaany eps left (at least 4 seasons worth!) and i know shada mentioned slowburn and i think it was lauren and joaquim that mentioned romance not being the paladins’ priority bc duh war but theyve also said they can plant things in early eps and seasons to go back to and really the only two ships that you can really argue things have been planted for for ultimate slowburn are shallura and klance (have you seen how tender some moments between shiro and allura are??? and of course bonding moment).

allura also hasnt really shown any romantic interest in keith either and tbh i really think she just felt genuinely bad that she treated keith that way after finding out he was part galra? i dont really see the apology scene with the kinda hug as totally romantic but i definitely see why it worries ppl bc it does worry me too. (especially when coupled with the scene of them in the pod together in space but *big shrug* you know. i dont think that scene was romantic either except for when the pod exploded and they had to cling to each other??? but i digress). idk how other ppl interpret allura’s age and i dont wanna start discourse here but i personally feel like she is an adult in human age and keith is obviously a teenager and like yeah age gap problems but also??? no offense to keith but allura deserves someone more mature and just.. better for her?? and IF she gets paired up with someone i think given her interactions with shiro, he would make the most sense (plus she will probably play a very big role in finding him and saving him and im super excited for that!! allura is gonna kick some ass)

additionally ive already mentioned this but i mean the development and potential for both shallura and klance cant be ignored. this isnt a “shallura and/or klance might become canon post and here’s why” post but it is a post that points out two very popular ships in the fandom that make a lot more sense given everything. if you want a good klance meta, head on over here. i dont have any shallura metas on hand but if anyone knows of any link me!!

and also real quick i mean.. the crew on vld is capable of telling a good story and i really want to trust them to not write forced relationships if they make anything canon at all. i know a lot of ppl think s2 didnt rly compare to s1 but i think s2 was made to set us up for A LOT in the upcoming seasons. plus tyler labine has said that they do look at feedback they get from fans when considering things (for example they know how ppl have reacted to how hunk was treated and theyre going to work on showing him in a different and more heroic light rather than just the comedic relief food guy). i know this fandom has a bad rep when it comes to discourse about everything but i also know ive seen legit respectful constructive criticism from fans and thats what will be mostly heavily noted - NOT harassment!! dont harass the crew!! these people are working on a show you love and dont deserve the terrible harassment i know has gone on. being someone who lives for characters and character development more than plot, im really concerned about relationship dev in the upcoming seasons (platonic and romantic) and im sure a lot of ppl understand where im coming from but more than that i think its important to enjoy the show and the story, you know? i think the lore in this universe has got amazing potential and im excited to see it unfold along side these characters that i love!

feel free to message me or add more!

[edwad]

notes for a marxian course

im becoming more and more aware that a proper course on marx’s capital ought to begin with an overview of the history of economics and economic history and the ways in which each informed the development of the other. i also think more emphasis needs to be placed on marx’s own intellectual biography, because it is not enough to know that he disagreed, but that he came to disagree over a long period of time and after serious study. you’ll get some of this in capital itself, but it is often the case that he skips much of this or presents it in a way that leaves you unable to tell whether he figured something out in his youth or the day the page was sent to the publisher. maybe its a bit more ambitious but what i have in mind (and what would be most ideal, i think) is a full course on the marxian approach, including not just the mature works of marx but all of the other things mentioned above, as well as probably the secondary marxian literature and the history of its development. 

i think it could probably be broken up into 3 sections, each being able to stand alone as their own course, but remaining coherent and complementary 

the beginnings of capitalism and pre-marxian economic thought

marx’s intellectual development and the critique of political economy

economic history and theory since marx

as it stands, @edwadacademy provides a good chunk of the second section with some minor dabbling in the other two. i would be unsatisfied by leaving it in the state it is, since it really only covers volume 1 (and is in desperate need of revision regardless), but i could not honestly create a course for volumes 2 and 3 of capital any time soon, since i have not been able to read them fully and certainly havent been able to reflect on them as much as i have the first volume. i would also have a harder time finding resources for the later volumes, since ive spent a lot more time studying the first, not to mention that they are read less and so have fewer works written about them in the first place (especially volume 2). 

there would also be a problem of scope, in that the first and third sections deal with many thinkers across a long period of time, whereas the second section deals more specifically with marx (and probably some of his most immediate contemporaries) during his lifetime and maybe a bit after (say, until the death of engels since he was the editor of volumes 2 and 3, although i could certainly move much of that to the post-marx section as well, since things like the “prize essay competition” would be worth discussing separately. 

however, i dont think this problem of scope implies more or less readings between sections. for example, i dont believe the first section needs to be as extensive for each important economist as section 2 will be for marx, and it can serve as a more general survey of the literature in relation to marx. similarly, section 3 wouldnt need to be assigned reading for every economist since the formation of the second international. it could be lighter, maybe depending on figures that really are crucial, with a broader summary of everything else. 

in this way though, you can almost expect section 2 and the reading of capital to constitute the core of the course and its driest, most boring patch. i would need to find some way around that by sprinkling it with some resources in the secondary literature, but for the most part i still fully expect it to be a brutal undertaking. “there is no royal road to science,” but there are royal-er roads than others and i dont want to scare anybody away.

at the same time, it wont be easy going. it would necessarily have to be tough on the reader, since the subject matter and its presentation have a history of being “dismal” in the first place, especially when it comes to wading through marx. for that reason, i dont think this is necessarily a course i could ever run anyone on tumblr through, and in fact itd be unlikely id ever run through it myself, but it seems like a worthwhile project that i can at least provide for someone that has the sorta dedication most of us lack or at least something of interest for someone that has some interest in one of the sections as a stand-alone subject. there will always be some demand for guides through capital, and edwad academy has been an attempt at being one such outline, but there is also bound to be an interest in the economic theory that marx is critiquing and the history of capitalism’s development itself. similarly, many people would like to know what has become of marxian theory and are interested in the 20th century debates surrounding value theory, crisis formation, monopoly capitalism, imperialism, etc. 

this would be a fun project for me and might even be useful for someone else, so i dont feel like its a total waste of time, especially since (as i’ve already said above) ive got a lot more reading to do of my own, so at the very least this can help me with an outline of how i could continue my own study, or at least a list of resources to refer to at any given moment. 

there is some potential benefit in doing this, and the main thrust of the whole thing would be present the surplus approach as a viable alternative to mainstream economic theory today, while showcasing its early history and eventual fall from prominence in the years leading up to marx’s critique. a study that would emphasize the developments of the physiocrats, smith, ricardo, and malthus, which leads inevitably to marx’s critique of them all and some of the other heterodox theories that arose around this time (what heilbroner has referred to as “the underworld” of economic thought), before finally being bookended by the works of kalecki, sweezy, sraffa, etc (or to put it in slightly different terms, the post-keynesian, neo-marxian, and sraffian/neo-ricardian schools). 

i think a well-rounded knowledge of marx and his project requires all of these things, and i think this sort of outline could provide enough room for useful debate without getting bogged down in criticisms that shouldnt have survived as long as they have. i doubt itll be widely used (if used at all), but i do like making reading lists so i’d probably do it anyway. besides, i do this sorta thing so often that much of the work is already done, i would just have to piece it together.