#also theyre not entirely accurate anyways in this

[stardayzzing]

[Helios & Apollo]

Quick doodle of the ketchup and mustard gang (the COLOR pallets Im a mess)

This is, I guess like,,, a teaser to my actual Apollo design? Because he has an adult design,,

I've been debating doodling little comics and scenarios and expanding the ideas I have for my silly little version of greek mythos as a family djdj

Quick Disclaimer: The Greek Gods are deities and similar that I actually really do respect. I pay tribute to Persephone even :) My art and designs are just fun little versions I like to shake around like dolls and in the concept of like one big complicated fictional family which is different than the /actual/ gods and how I view them!

[inthedeepeclipse]

On Ibara, Hiyori and the Buisness world of Enstars

Smth smth hiyoiba is a push and pull relationship of who will drop their guard down first. Hiyori is usually first to do so, because of the way Ibara grew up he won’t drop it unless its a completely private space.

I would say that Ibara knows that Hiyori puts up an act. I’m pretty sure its canon that Hiyori was communicating with Eden during Getto Spectacle, and especially towards Eden and upper management. They’re aware of it, but its hard to be vulnerable with these two.

They trust each other. They’re aware of the power they do hold. (Though I’m not sure if the child soldier thing was told to Hiyori in canon) At least in the business world, I’m guessing. Hiyori still has connections, and Ibara has the power to turn his creative ideas into reality.

I really do want an exploration of the buisness side of Enstars. We do have canon corporations, but technically its a competitive monopoly. Eden climax has already brought us a set up, and bringing us to an understanding of how being an idolized person in a competitive market makes you lose yourself and greed talking to make those actions take place.

Their first interactions are about Hiyori’s judge of character and the inner workings of CosPro. (Saga Release 6) Because that is what they know about each other at that moment.

ES is operated mostly by Tenshouin related companies, making their name more widespread. Hiyori comments about this in his Idol Story 2. This is making (his family’s) the Tomoe Foundation’s name lessen. HappyEle, please tell me where the Tomoe’s put their money in. Because its definitely not the entertainment industry.

Anyway, by Hiyori’s actions I suspect that the rest of the Tomoe’s are overworkers~! ⭐️ So while his parent’s respect his decision of going to the entertainment industry, they probably dont understand why he got there in the first place~! ⭐️ That’s why Hiyori is so against Ibara working so much~! ⭐️

[icewindandboringhorror]

Recent game related things .. hrmm...

[suremarkj]

who: @cursedflesh​ where: outside of terry’s place (doxxing :elmo:) what: that’s our grandma!

if there was one thing mark was sure of, it was that leo was going to be seeking terrence walker out. and if there was one thing mark was sure of ( so... that would make it two ), it was that he, as the man who had introduced her to the genealogy websites, could not bear to be responsible for any disappointments she may encounter in her endeavors ! ( any disappointments at all would be a shame, but to be actively responsible for them ? well... ) lucky for him, with some followers in high places, terrence walker was decently easy to place... he never thought he’d be alright with this so-called ‘doxxing’ ( a real invasion of privacy -- the house he actually lived in was as off the grid as possible for a reason ), but queefburglar69 finally came in handy. “ tell you what, a little old woman’s gonna stop by any time now -- ‘bout yea high, ” he began, putting his hand level to his shoulder, “ and she’s gonna be real excited. gonna tell you she’s your great-great-great-great-something-grandma, and you gotta at least pretend to be happy, ‘right ? name’s leo -- might introduce herself as leonarda with a real long last name -- and, boy, she’s been fuckin’ waitin’ for this. ”

[gibbearish]

saw the barbie movie

[izzyshandz]

I swear if i see one more mf say izzy has been 'redeemed' or needed a 'redemption arc' im literally going to scream into my pillow until i lose my voice.

redeem is such a black and white way of looking at his entire character and dismisses everything hes gone through and yall (izzy haters and others) are just so fucking snob nosed and ignorant to sit there and think hes a villain because of how he acted. theyre fucking pirates. theyre not perfect, none of them are. eds a villain, stedes a villain, if youre doing it like that. ed has killed so many people, stede literally left his wife and kids and also had a hand in killing people; it may be easier for them to change because of the perspective the show gives them and they had love but izzy did not. everyone hated him, ed, his own crew, stedes crew.

normalizing peoples reactions to things as something other than villainy and heroism is so god damn important in a show that's trying to accurately involve our perspectives in this day and age. its a tale as old as time, making someone 'completely in the wrong' because their perspective isnt the one you aligned with as much.

like the rest of the crew izzy had his own bad things hes done, he didnt need this 'redemption' everyones blabbering on about. he needed to be fucking heard, to be seen, and acknowledged-- not thrown aside and abandoned because of a whim. you all can ride up blackbeards ass because oh hes so hot, hes so pretty omg wow; but that wont ever change the fact his character is a fucked up person... youre allowed to love him anyways, why not izzy? we didnt see blackbeard before screen but how hes mentioned it shows he was a shit awful person, the only reason no one cares is because on hes fuckin gay for stede or whatever so the main characters get a free ride. ( i agree they all get a free ride, im just tired of this izzy isolation man )

why does he need to be redeemed in your eyes? just because youve seen what hes done? he was literally a product of his environment in season one he was a product of blackbeard's leadership. only with the loyalty and solidarity of the crew did he really begin to find himself, thats fucking hard to do that late in life. instead of calling it some bullshit black and white redemption arc, lets just celebrate izzy being himself and being fucking loved for once in his god damn life.

hes also way more fucking mature and put together than people give him credit for. love you izzy.

edit: thank you all for the reblogs and insights in every single one, i read them i promise i do. im just so mf heartbroken we have to tag things as discourse when its really just about people not being compassionate. (as a couple people have pointed out) i will said id reblog and comment on every single tag but this is my side </3 EVERYONE PLEASE READ THE REBLOGGED TAGS TOO / / theyre so real ! ive also opened up that ask box thingy i havent been on tumblr in yrs and have 0 clue how any of that works if anyone wants my perspective on anything izzy related. *or otherwise ofmd related

[popstart]

Ok, i Saw that post about you complaining about How Gw*ncan shippers are racist to Courtney.

Can you give one example of that?

I had to go through my blocked accounts list to get this shit and it made me wanna shoot myself 20 times in the head so its not gonna be 1000% comprehensive bc i think that would qualify as self harm. ANYWAYS.

the biggest one is the massive amount of double standards and hypocrisy these people have between duncan and courtney (+ gw*ncan and duncney. censoring makes me feel like a child but i dont want people finding this post when theyre looking for ship content)

when the white man is "hostile but theres more to him than that" and when people call the white boy a "horrible person but hes literally a child" but courtney (and sierra) should be beaten to death because theyre obviously unable to be complex characters or children. its a really classic example of expecting women (ESPECIALLY of color) to grow up faster than men and having higher expectations of them

another example of weird violence and double standards people have towards courtney while not caring about anything either white character has done. post not made by the same person but it is reblogged by them

and ive posted this before because it seriously baffles me but this is just such an extreme reaction to a character existing. also the constant comparison to animals and dehumanization these people push onto courtney doesnt get past me. like calling a character a cunt and comparing her/her fans to tapeworms. get real man

and sure. this could all be a gross exaggeration on my part because theres just no way all of this is meant to be taken 1000% seriously, its just such a weird pattern to see. people constantly praising two white characters for doing nothing wrong and for being perfect and happy and healthy (despite the show frequently showing the contrary) while completely ignoring and shitting on a 16 year old brown girl in entirely absurd ways. These people genuinely believe that gwen and duncan are innocent, with the biggest thing they takeaway is that theyre "flawed but still good and complex."

anyways do i find it accurate to call these people definitive racists/misogynists? not rly no. i just think its extremely telling how much they praise two white characters for being pure and innocent and doing nothing ever wrong when provided with textbook evidence that its not the case.

like you can love any character (or ship) you want but love them WITH their flaws and recognize that nothing is perfect. in 0 way am i saying that liking duncan or gw*ncan is terrible and awful and should be grounds for public execution and im also not saying that courtney is perfect and did nothing wrong and everyone should love her forever. im just asking for a mutual respect that doesnt seem to exist for these people. everything has flaws, but blowing out of proportion the flaws of things (or characters) you dont like gets very very icky and hypocritical when you turn around and praise something that had very similar fall outs

[lunatic-fandom-space]

Alright, I read The Vampire Lestat all in one go in 8 hours a few hours ago, I spent the whole day at the library just reading it (i brought food w/ me dw) and then I came home, tired ass balls legs hurting from sitting and stimming for that entire time and I immediately went to bed even though I had so many thoughts that I wanted to write about, and now its midnight and I cant sleep and Ive realized that my sleep schedule is just fucked now, so yeah its The Vampire Lestat Thoughts Time now

I wanted to start this post off by talking about the post I made immediately after reading Interview with the Vampire, which was a very short one where I think I basically just called Lestat a very pathetic abuser and I meant that in a very specific nunaced way but I dont think i did a good job conveying that. Anyway, the only person who ever interacted with it was a blog that was called smth like lestats-left-eye and they interacted with it like 8 minutes after I posted it and the reason I remember it so clearly is that I thought that was really menacing. Like, imagine you make a post calling some character a piece of shit and then within minutes you get a notification thats like "characters-no1-fan replied to your post". But they didnt say anything mean, they were basically just like "you need to read the vampire lestat STAT" presumably because they thought it would make me think differently about him but honestly all it did was make me more convinced of his patheticness, less so of his 'abuserness', for lack of a better term, but I think thats mainly because the Thing that would make me call him an abuser was his relationship with Louis and he didnt talk about that very much, and all his other relationships were just like, weird. so. At this point i feel like I should clarify that wben I call him that Im not doing that to moralize or to be judgemental of people who like him, I like him, i just feel like thats an accurate way of describing him and the particular way in which he was manipulative and demanded love

Anyway, the first thing that made him really pathetic in my eyes was the way he 'debunked' Louis' claims at the start of the Interview with a Vampire section because, idek how to describe it, but theres just something so annoying about it. Hes like "I mean, I suppose its true from his point of view, but i actually didnt indescriminately murder random people, I only killed the bad ones, and he also completely neglects to mention our romantic walks and our cute little shakespeare-reenactments for Claudia, and also he says Im stupid and dont know anything but I was actually just keeping the knowledge of our power from him because he seemed so burdened by what little he already had :(" like come on man. And obviously I understand that the power-thing in particular was a retcon because the first book was a standalone, but these books are really well-written and they dont break my immersion so I dont really feel the need to do like, extensive doylist-analysis, yknow what I mean

Like, Ive been reading the ACOTAR series by Sarah J Maas and Ive been critiquing and complaining about those books on a sideblog and authorial intent comes up a lot because theyre clearly trying to say one thing, convey one particular message in an honestly very annoyingly moralizing way, but what the characters actually do and say blatantly contradict it, and for all that the series' fans talk about all the characters being morally gray, theres a very obvious refusal to have them be anything other than paragons of goodness by both the texg and those same fans. And those are not issues I have with the Vampire Chronicles so far, so when i say that I find that Interview with the Vampire section annoying, Im not criticizing the writing, Im saying that Lestat seems like the most frustrating genre of person. I mean, I do have some criticisms of the writing, specifically of the story, but I'll get to that later

For now I wanted to elaborate a little on why I found Lestat so annoying, and its the fact that he spent this whole book talking big game about being evil and revolutionizing the evil-game but then at the end he seemed so unwilling to just let the general public actually think of him as such, even though most humans considered it fiction, like he had to soften the blow at the end. And I do think its him just wanting to soften blow as opposed to him actually wanting to set the record straight because he cares that much about the truth or whatever, because I think if he actually cared about that, he wouldve been a bit more specific instesd of just being like "yeah, Louis said a bunch of things that are wrong about me, but I can forgive him because I suppose they were right from his perspective, even though they arent really" like dude.

It really feels like hes just using this evil-shtick as a crutch and as some kind of self-justification for being unlovable. Like, if hes evil and no one loves him thats fine because evil has no need for love, but if hes evil and someone does love him thats even better because then its a deep romance capable of withstanding anything, yknow what Im saying? But then he talked about the fact that demons in hell and vampires are capable of love and he talks a lot about his own capacity to love, so idk. I definitely feel like he feels a measure of resentment at the fact that Magnus, who was this horrifying stranger that immediately abandoned him, was able to inspire this great love in Lestat but his pretty self wasnt able to do the same with the fledgelings that he turned who were people that he knew and loved in life and/or that he spent decades of his undead existence with

Granted, maybe unlovable isnt the most accurate term to use here bc I dont think that exactly is what matters to him, but I cant think of a better one rn. Actually, now that I think about it, maybe its less about him wanting to convince the general public that he wasnt the pretty pathetic and despicable person Louis described him as, and more about him wanting to convince himself that Louis doesnt actually think of him that way. Or maybe 'cant' is a better word to use here instead of 'doesnt' because the way he says that Louis left out the less dysfunctional parts of their relationship kind of makes me think that Lestat thinks those parts being present makes his feelings and his view of these things unjustified, and I feel like theres a bit of an accusation there that hes purposefully trying to slander him, but the thing is, Louis has way less of an incentive to lie about Lestat than Lestat does to lie about Louis. Like Louis just kinda randomly agreed to do this interview from some guy decades after they last saw each other and then it got published. Even if you said that Louis was somehow masterminding the interview-guy, I just couldnt believe it because I dont see a reason as to why he would do all this and I dont think hes the kind of guy who just does shit for no reason. I also dont think hes nearly as spiteful as Lestat to do this. Also the idea that he would try to slander like this is stupid because who would care about this. Like, humans just see it as fiction and vampires are mad about him giving out the names and locations of vampires but I dont think they actually care about this niche insane relationship drama. And frankly, I feel like Lestat is just way more deluded. Like he calls Louis and Nikolas cynics but Im just like, no, I think those guys are realists and youre prone to delusions of grandeur. but then Im a pretty cynical person myself, so I would say that, wouldnt I

That actually leads really nicely to the second thing that makes me find him really pathetic, and its basically just the entirety of the last three or four chapters. Or, I guess I wouldve called them pathetic if it didnt look like they were at least kind of true ?

Okay so, while I was reading those last few chapters I was basically thinking to myself "okay, Lestat is obviously just making all of this up, I predict that the next book is gonna have a bit where Louis is like 'yeah, I read that autobiography of his and I guess i cant confirm or deny most of it bc he never fucking told me anything, but he just completely made that last bit up, I never went to come find him, and infact, now that hes done this ive decided that Im only communicating with him via passive aggresive autobiographies in which we continously debunk each others claims about our relationship'" because its just. come on, did those chapters not feel like a self-indulgent daydream? Like, "i was looking out the window the day before my big concert when my ex-boyfriend that I still love showed up and I went outside to see him and he was looking really bad in his jeans and sweatshirt but its fine bc i love him, and he hugged and kissed me just like he used to, like a lover <3, and he was sooooooo concerned for my safety and he asked me to just stay with him forever but this time I was the one to reject him, but then I still managed to convince him to go to my concert with me and we kissed before the show started and he was in the audience cheering me on after that, and it was the best concert anyone has ever seen and I felt so awesome standing on that stage, and then once it was over we were attacked by some of my vampiric h8ers but it was all good because my mom appeared out of nowhere to save us and she was wearing modern clothes obviously but otherwise she was exactly the same as when she abandoned me 200 years ago" hey buddy, i thought you were writing an autobiography not fanfiction about how you wish the people you love would stop abandoning you

Louis' behaviour for this whole section is the main thing that ticks me off because I felt that he was just so out-of-character. And obviously the characters that feature prominently in both books are quite different in both of them, but they are still recognizable as themselves which was not the case with Louis imo. And granted, there is a pretty significant gap between me reading the first book and me reading this one so my memory is a little foggy about everything that happened in it, but Louis was just way too outwardly-lovey-dovey for someone who, when talking about their relationship to an unrelated third party 11 years ago, decades after they last saw each other, at best seemed to look back on all that with complicated resentment. Like I just dont buy it at all.

But again, I was reading all that with the assumption that this would (at least partially) turn our to be made-up, and yknow, it still might I guess, hope is the thing that dies last and all, but Im a lot less convinced of that because of the stuff with Akasha

And now its finally time to talk about my criticisms regarding the story and theyre all linked to Akasha and her cringefail husband and honestly Marius too. Im curious if this is a hot take or if this stuff is something that a lot of people dont like. Like, if youre immersed in the book fandom please tell me if this is a thing where you read that I have some criticisms of the story and you immediately knew it was gonna be this, or if youre surprised because the majority of people find the lore very interesting. But when youre telling me, please do so without spoiling me, Ive come this far knowing a very minimal amount about these books and I would very much like to keep it that way and finish all of these books until I start to fully engage with the fandom but I am very curious. Also, I am open to discuss all of this if any of you would like that, just please respect that fact that I dont know anything that happens in later books and that I would like to keep it that way

But anyway. Full disclosure, I already didnt like Marius when Lestat met him in person, I thought he was interesting as a component of Armand's backstory but I really didnt want him to still be alive and I didnt want Lestat to find him and speak to him and then he not only did both of those things, but he was like super buddy-buddy with him in a way that bothered me. And as if all of that wasnt enough, he goes on this lore dump that lasts like 9 chapters that is so fucking boring I dont even have the words to adequately describe just how bored and tired I was reading it. And the things that were revealed in this loredump were just weird and baffling in a distinctly bad way, and I feel like usually when you get stupid worldbuilding in books that are trying to Say Something its to enhance the themes of the plot, but I cant possibly imagine how any of this stuff with Akasha and her cringefail husband and the demons who possessed them does that

Like, the main thing that I find compelling about Anne Rice's vampires is their humanity and the fact that their moral and existential dilemmas are fundamentally the same as the ones that humans face because theyre essentially just more durable humans, and while this origin story doesnt change anything about that on a deeper level, it still really bothers me. Because humans dont have this clean epic symbolic origin story where we all came from two people that can easily be named, we just kinda evolved into existence for no grand, religious, immediately-obvious reason, but we ponder our own collective existence anyway, just like these vampires. Hell, plenty of us even think lf ourselves as monsters of destruction who shouldnt exist for the way we hurt our environment and other creatures. And like, Im not saying that they should be talking about evolution in the 1700s or that I explicitly want it said that vampires evolved alongside humans because that would just be stupid in a new way, but idk. I guess what Im trying to say is that I really didnt need an explanation for how these vampires came into existence because I was engaged enough with their philosophical discussions and fucked up relationship dynamics that it didnt even cross my mind to ask any questions about their collective origin.

And just on a basic level, none of this ancient vampire history-bullshit satisfied me in any way. Also, the whole descriptions of everything in ancient egypt and whatever-that-keltoi-place-was-called just felt kinda off, like they were lacking the authenticity of all the other descriptions, and its not because we didnt spend a whole novel exploring those places because we only got a very brief snipped of Armand's backstory and that part wasnt lacking at all. I was initially ready to chalk this up to a classic combination of orientalism and racism, but honestly, given that the parts about the super-pale blonde people werent that much better in this regard, I think its mostly a case of us just not knowing a lot about these ancient peoples. Like, I dont know a lot about 1700s France or 1800s America but when I read about those places in these books I do get the impression that Anne Rice knows a lot about those places or that she did a lot of a research on them, whereas with ancient egypt and the keltoi-place Im just kinda like "well, this is obviously just a bunch of madeup bullshit innit". And it really frustrates me that I cant really tell if its meant to be made-up bullshit in-universe or if its meant to be true, but I guess Im gonna have to get used to that feeling if I wanna keep having a fun time reading The Unreliable Narrator Chronicles books

Regardless of the actual bullshit-status of Marius' stories though, I was quite surprised and very disappointed that Lestat seemed to just believe it with no issues. Like, 1984!Lestat didnt add any commentary to Marius claims, he just repeated them verbatim bc why not, and 1700s!Lestat didnt have any questions or doubts that I can remember. And like, even if it is true, why was he just okay with that being the truth, I feel like he should at the very least be a little angry at the revelation that theres these oldass vampires who have to stay alive or else all the other vampires will die. Again, to kindof tie this back to my previous point, humans arent like that, we dont have some kind of anker-point that needs to stick around or else we'll all die, so this doesnt feel like its adding anything to the existentialist themes of the series. Its also logistically kinda stupid because we're told all of vampire kind is tied to both of them but like, how does that work? What if you only killed one of them) Are all the female vampires tied to Akasha and all the male ones to her cringefail husband, or are all the vampires that Akasha bit connected to her and then all the vampires that were bit by her vampires are connected to her through their makers as well and so on and so on? Iirc we're told that if you killed one of them, you would kill the other or they would just kill themself or something so it wouldnt really matter, but like, if you could just kill one of them without the other one ending up dead, what would happen?

And like, theres things about these vampires that dont really make any sense, like the fact that their fingernails look like glass or even bigger things like the fact that drinking dead blood is very harmful but drinking blood from other undead people has a healing effect, but those things dont put a huge damper on the series' themes so far so I dont care about them

But anyway, the thing that bothers me the most about all this is that Lestat didnt see or acknowledge the obvious similarities between what Marius was telling him and what Armand's coven used to believe. Like, what's the difference, really, between "vampires were created by the devil and are servants of the devil (aka demons)" and "vampirism was created by a demon and then given to two humans who them created other vampires"? I guess its the fact that Marius doesnt let his belief prevent him from enjoying life, but then it doesnt really feel like Lestat needed to talk to this guy, or like hes actually as open-minded as Marius said he was. Like, Marius basically told him "unlike most people, youre genuinely open-minded because youre listening to what I have to say about how to gain meaning in life" and Lestat, who basically already believed the same things as Marius when it came to that before they ever even met, said "yes i totally agree"

On a similar note, how fucking convinient that Lestat had this weird improbable idea about Osiris being a vampire god and then it basically turned out to be true. Like not literally, but the two people whose story directly inspired Osiris and Isis were both vampires and theyre like, the first vampires. what are the odds of that

Also Im pretty sure Marius said something along the lines "most people dont like what I tell them about the origin of vampires because they want a clean creation myth and thats not what happened" before he started talking about it, but then it was just a clean creation myth ? Like, in a previous paragraph I said that humans dont have an origin where everyone is descendet from two people, and as I was writing that I noticed that the story about Anasha and her cringeful husband is remarkably similar to that of Adam and Eve. or maybe not remarkably similar, but similar enough that I feel like Im not reaching when I say that

And of course this is a story with characters that are unreliable narrators on purpose so all of this might be 100% intentional and might pay off somehow at some point, but Im not really gonna know until I read the next one I guess and Im gonna have a hard time motivating myself to do that when the ending of this one was so bad (to me!!).

Idk, basically what Im hoping for right now is that this series will comtinue to deconstruct and retcon itself, both because that keeps me on my toes in a way thats fun (especially because Im going in completely blind) and because godddddd I really dont want to deal with any of the stuff involving Anasha, i think its all so stupid. I really hope that in the next book it turns out that atleast the stuff about all vampires' lives being tied to hers turns out not to be true and thats shes just gonna be a strong old vampire whos special because of her super strong psychic powers and because her blood makes other vampires strong (which is another concept I really dont jive with, the stuff with older vampires being strong and making strong vampires, but I dont really have much to say about it beyond that, so I'll just leave it at this). But honestly, Im really just hoping that in order to not disappoint myself too mucj, in my truest heart of hearts Im actually hoping that Lestat just decided to dip his toes into fiction writing 97% into his autobiography and then that Queen of Darkness is gonna be an in-uinverse fiction book written by Lestat de Lioncourt

But again, I probably wont feel like finding out for a little while, and as I think about it Im noticing that its mostly because Im not looking forward to having the same borderline-spiritual experience that I had with The Vampire Lestat, where I entered this monk-like state of mind and then walked through the city to the busstation feeling like I wasnt occupying the same reality as everyone else around me, with this book that I have a suspicion that I will not like it. And before you ask, yes, I know that I would have the same experience because it had basically nothing to do with the plot or themes of The Vampire Lestat, its just that my legs were hurting because I had been sitting on a wood chair with no pillow and continuously rocking back and forth because thats how I stim when Im sitting, and also my brain felt fried from how I forced myself to focus and read this book whose language is pretty challenging for a non-native speaker for 8 hours straight

Anyway, this ended up being way longer than anticipated but Im glad. Believe it or not, even though most of this post was just me complaining about one thing or another, I did like this book and I like that it made me think all this and that it made me feel passionate enough to write it all down, even though I do genuinely dislike the ending and am not really looking forward to reading the next one. But I definitely will do it at some point, so dont take this as a sign to tell me what happens in it, I maintain that I do not want to be spoiled. If one of my hopes ends up coming true and you want to encourage me to read it that way for some reason, please only do so in the vagues possible terms. like literally just tell me "ayyyyyy youre right 👍" without eleborating. And if you want to be evil, you can tell me that even though my predictions arent true and make my disappointment even more crushing that way ^^

Alright, thats it, I hope you enjoyed this. Also, I did end up managing to go to bed an hour after I originally started writing this, and then I ended up waking up again at like 4am and wrote some more and then I took a nap and wrote some more and then I took another nap, and it just kinda kept going like this and now its 3.30 pm so. you better appreciate that even if you think my takes are bad

[hehearse]

i keep trying to like. hold myself back from sending too many asks but im listening to my orv playlist again and every single song starts playing and i immediately fall ill. anyways!!

idk if u mind or not but ORV Spoilers for anyone reading this 👍

eighteen is Francis Forever by Mitski. hsy and yjh about kdj. specifically when theyre both trying to cope with him being gone post scenarios.

"i dont know what to do without you, i dont know where to put my hands. ive been trying to lay my head down, but im writing this at 3am" is so hsy.

"on sunny days i go out walking, i end up on a tree-lined street. i look up at the gaps of sunlight, i miss you more than anything" is yjh. i always think about how he takes to running post scenarios.

"i dont think i could stand to be where you dont see me" feels so much like how as a constellation kdj could join the channel and watch them even when he wasnt in the scenarios.

nineteen is Welly Boots by The Amazing Devil. kdj and his kids. sys and lgy and even ljh. i feel like the anger about it fits with jihye more than yoosung and gilyoung, despite her not being like. His Child. in the same way the other two are.

twenty! Soldier, Poet, King by The Oh Hellos!! yjh, hsy, kdj. a soldier, a poet, and a king. thats just what they are.

twenty-one. Boats & Birds by Gregory and the Hawk!! kimcom in general abt kdj. the whole stardust part is upsettingly accurate to how he fucking scattered himself over the entire universe.

so many evil songs get added to my playlist. i don't think i got that many new songs in the last 4 years that i got in the last. whatever number of days it was. the playlist is so fresh and unfamiliar now...

Francis Forever by Mitski

a murder from the start huh. but also the lines "i don't think i could stand to be where you don't see me". rotating in my brain. something something about kdj on the train but not watching him despite being able too. scared to see them smiling in front of a sunset along with him - without him. something about them visiting him in the hospital, unchanging, unconcious, so close yet unseeing, scattered far away... head in hands

Welly Boots by The Amazing Devil

WOHOO back to the songs i know B)

specifically lee jihye grabbing his collar, screaming about them betraying and letting die the constellations that were on their side. and the song as a whole. very much kids and kdj. loving but distant and speaking different language. realisation of love hitting with a delay.

(but as the devil on your shoulder, let me whisper sweet nothings into your ear. in an evil, fucked up way it could be 17yo yoohyun about yoojin. still holding trust and belief that they are not that far apart even if he leaves)

do you see my vision?? do you???? (<- possessed by the sctir demons)

i feel like the Soldier, Poet, King by The Oh Hellos i got shown along with several DIFFERENT animatics even during my voluntarily confinment in the non-spoiler bubble FSDECDE so there is nothing more to say about it....

Boats & Birds by Gregory and the Hawk

this is so evil of you. so cruel to miette. "I live to make you free"??? head in hands. yeah. the gentle melancholy etc etc... i would even. more spicifically point at ysa. because she knew all along.... and she let him go (even if she didn't want to, even if she didn't want to so bad...... i wonder if that's what being in his head for so long did to her. or strengthened her resolve in that regard.)

[gladosluver]

! FAKE BLOOD/DEATH WARNING !

sato death recreation irl by yours truly

guess who convinced their only 2 irls to be tsmc trio (we had a hajime but they moved out of the prefecture and told nobody)

despite doing adobe stuff for years now, and literally being adobe certified, i specialize in vector graphics. i rarely ever edit real photos, so this was really difficult and tbh doesnt really look that nice BUT i tried and slayed and thats all that matters

alt stuff v

we had about 3 minutes to get these pictures so theyre not thattt accurate. right when this photo was taken 5 administrators walked by but since we were in the art hallway i guess they thought we were taking reference photos or something

i always found the concept of games blurring/censoring gore and death WAYYY more disturbing than just showing the actual thing, especially when layered over the face. the absence of something so distinct and defining. the presence of a simple jarring black box where there should be someone you once knew. you know whats supposed to be there, but it just. isnt. it makes you feel like you werent supposed to see it

anyways heres some adventures from the day

i had to create a Little Guy in another artists style so i quickly made this mizuiyama chibi and clicked one button and. this happened. i cant recreate this no matter how hard i try. it took up the ENTIRE DAMN PASTEBOARD and made my computer lag

when taking the photos me and 'mahiru' (not using their real name for privacy) went out into the hallway and i tried to say "lets do a photoshoot" and "take photos of me" at the same time. but instead i looked them dead in the eyes and said "shoot me."

dont tell 'natsumi' this but the original plan was yui/licorne/kyoko but she started singing the usa national anthem for some fucking reason and i changed it up at the last second because i wanted an excuse to beat her on her big head.... someone brought a giant bento box in a very conveniently-swingable bag and when i tell you that shit was CALLING to me like the green goblin mask..

theres some event going on where students were supposed to be characters and one of our classmates was a teletubby and since we were some of the only people dressed up for the occasion it looked a bit like this

no joke when i walked in NOBODY was being cool then suddenly i saw TWO PEOPLE COSPLAYING PIECES OF TOAST. JUST. GIANT BROWN SQUARES. RUNNING DOWN THE HALLWAY. GIGGLING. a few other people in the design program were dressed as stitch and someone came up to them and said "i used to be scared of you little shits"

even tho this is "cringe" or whatever 1) we all die in the end so be free 2) i only get to see them for a few hours a week so we had to embrace this. also i was stranded at the school for over half an hour after this in the freezing cold whoopsies. i did have a little scare when a police car pulled up and i thought they got my ass for something i didnt even know i did

[wizisbored]

also can we talk about centaur au? im not sure if the maitlands have a roll or what they are but centaur babs would be so pretty, like one of those centaur girls from fantasia, all shiny gold and flowers in her hair. to me. adam is brown.

okay, first off that in an incredible and also very accurate mental image. 10/10 no notes.

but anyway, it depends on which centaur au. anarchy's apprentice, the centaurworld crossover, theyre fallow deer taurs who live in a cute little woodland cabin and become friends with lydia and beetlejuice after they invite them over for dinner as apology for kicking beetlejuice in the head. in their defence, they did see him sneaking up on lydia for shits and giggles with no context and panic.

in ten paces, as the plan is currently, the whole bit with the maitlands is that theyre a startlingly normal human couple. all these demons and centaurs and satyrs and adam and barbara are just in there running a little shop and being generally pleasant. the thing about ten paces right now tho is that there is a chance i might fold an offshoot of it ive been playing around with into the fic but that entirely depends on if my spontaneous fixation on astrid continues after i actually watch beetlejuice 2. not sure if the multidimensional collapse would cause the maitlands to change species, but like, it could.

how they meet lydia is again dependant on wether i collapse the multiverse but either way (if they stay human) they initially hold the common belief that centaurs are smart animals but not on par with humans, not out of any malice just out of ignorance. and then after a while interacting with lydia they realise 'oh this isnt a smart horse this is a child slave'. in any case though they love lydia thats their 7 foot tall horse daughter and if i do include astrid they absolutely dote on that kid too, while also (again if they are humans in this case) being baffled by how tall this literal baby is. i havent figured out how tall lydia is as an adult which i need to do before i can figure out the size of her foal but as an infant astrid would be somewhere around four foot.

and then theres the running iron, which is the au i think you were probably thinking of initially, in which the maitlands are centaurs who kinda got emotionally manipulated into helping traffic a foal. the night emily died lydia (age 12-ish?) was staying with her at the doctor's while charles had to stay elsewhere because there wasnt room for a massive draft centaur at the clinic. the doctor kidnapped lydia that night, telling her that with her mother dead charles couldnt look after her anymore, and later insisting to charles that he was supposed to have her overnight. lydia was taken out west by a trafficer who then looked for someone to foster her while she grew up a bit, and the maitlands took her in. they looked after her until she was 16 until she was 'adopted' by maxie dean and sent off to work on the railway, and in that time they absolutely fall in love with this kid. they wanted to adopt her themselves but the trafficer knew they wouldnt be able to afford the 'adoption fee' so he made excuses rather than risk them getting suspicious about the price. theyre devestated when shes adopted, as is lydia, but she promises to write to them. so they help her pack her bags and send her off in the boots adam insists she wear to protect her legs from thorns and the vest barbara embroidered for her. and then they get her fist letter and its... odd. stilted. they are very concerned.

[oh-snapperss]

@hitheeprithee too! i drew this in powerpoint is this an accurate representation of what happened when the collab started

anyways THE KNIGHRS ARE BAVK IM SPINNING IN CIRCELS ALL ARUND MY ROOM IM SO HAPPY AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA MY BOYSSSSS I LOVE THEM SO MUCH

I CAN ALREADY TELL THAT I AM GOING TO CRY AT SOME POINT, MOST LIKELY NEXT CHAPTER! :D eating the entire fic. chomp chomp mmmm IT'S SO GOOD

also yes the comic is loss jpg. i had to

HELP ME . HELP ME. WHAT AM I. LOSS ENDJEJKCKEKFKE THE COMIC IM. OH MY GOD LMAOOOOOOOOOO

that is about EXACTLY how it went... except i must confess a good portion of what's going in the next chapter was written earlier today... while sitting in the same room because theo is visiting me. There was a point I had to run through the house to avoid retribution/silly

THEYRE BAAAAACK!!! i think a lot of this chapter was setup for what's coming and gave context to so much stuff in the knights fic:] if you have any thoughts i'd love to hear them!

[askata]

a thought about cos because Ive been playing it lately and Im so fascinated by it in some way, so heres what I think about it

theres a lot of talk around the whole idea of the game itself, a lot of arguing over what is right and what is wrong. carebears, kos, that kind of stuff. its a topic for a lot of survival games, its really only tradition. I personally dont think theres any specific way it should be played. the mechanics are there, but its all a suggestion and no one can stop you from how you play with it

its a survival game with social and cosmetic aspects, it also encourages strategy but will not make it a dire mechanic of your run. it allows room to breathe and sit and talk but not without the looming threat of some larger creature. it balances the risk of death with the social comfort of the open map and chat

its not a forgiving game in many aspects (specifically the death point system (I used to farm points, its hell)) but its also not entirely unempathetic. you can be rewarded for your work and dedication, and there are so many positive aspects of giving it a try instead of tossing in the towel. just because it says you might not win against something doesnt mean its not worth the fight, and often times its more satisfying to die fighting than to die trying to escape

when you sit back to think about it, its a beautifully balanced game. sure, the pay system can seem really unfair, and the economy side of things can be strange. it can also be extremely frustrating to be a collector or someone who leans into the trade side of things, but I think the frustration of it is intentional. its not meant to be easy, and thats what makes it so fun!!

Im not a huge trader, seller, buyer, whatever. I dont really like collecting things either. I like playing as creatures I feel confident handling and fighting with. I like to socialize, but I also love the anxiety of being a creature in a world of other strange and unpredictable creatures. the constant threat of death is a thrill that enriches the positive feelings of survival and risk taking

you start to feel proud of yourself, and then you begin to accept your losses when they come around. fairness goes both ways, you cant always win and call it an equal balance

I love seeing people have fun, even if that fun is mindless slaughter or the aggressive helicopter parent treatment. admittedly, Ive been under every single one of the labels you could think of, outside of the roleplay stuff. Ive kosed, Ive carebeared, Ive been an anklebiter, Ive logged before, Ive whatever.

(never really got into roleplaying on there, unless you count being in a pack of the same creature and acting in a "lore accurate" way (hunting, traveling together, nesting, etc etc) but I dont mind the roleplayers. you guys are cool, and I respect the determination despite how people talk about you guys. you do you, just be safe and follow the rules :) ❤️)

what matters is that I find it to be both mechanically and mentally rewarding. I love this game, even though it sucks sometimes, and it glitches out, and hackers can be a bit of a pain if theyre mass killing, but whatever!!! games have flaws, and Im happy with that

anyway, this was a big ramble. I appreciate this game a lot, I love it for what it is, and its super fun to get home after a long day and be weird and happy without worrying about much else

[ithappensoffstage]

r&g report

I had the privilege of seeing rosencrantz & guildenstern are dead with billy boyd and dominic monaghan on march 5! a few people asked for my thoughts after, so here's a sort of stream of consciousness report that may or may not be comprehensive depending on what you're looking for out of said theatre report

anyway I do genuinely believe boydmonaghan are literally the only people who can and should ever play r&g

to start off I will say that this was my first time seeing r&g staged -- I've previously just read it A LOT -- so I can't make comparisons to other productions. I am also a lifetime fan of theatre and have been somewhat involved, but do lack some technical knowledge, so apologies if I can't cover some aspects accurately!

most important of course, boydmonaghan were stellar. their comfort and familiarity with one another is amazing to witness. of course it's staged, but none of their movements come across as anything other than two old friends. they move together like dance partners; there's really no other way to put it. when you put on a show with someone you're so intimate with, it just comes through in the physicality in ways that aren't replicable with people meeting just for one production. watching them as r&g just feels like you're watching them hanging out. they anticipate each other's movements beautifully, lean into each other naturally, play off each other with such comfortable rapport that you feel like you're watching childhood friends goofing off from your corner of the party.

and the RAPPORT I mean wow. damn. if you're familiar with r&g -- the question game scene? holy shit. breathtaking quickness. they are rapid-fire, on each other's heels in the vein of the best comedies. for everyone who knows my tastes of course, they have * the * hawkbeej dynamic. (I almost cried watching because I kept thinking of my beloved url namesake fic.)

great pacing, great chemistry. even when they're sitting still you can still feel the intimacy between them in just how they arrange themselves. lots of staging to reflect mirroring, lots of staging to reflect the thematic element of identity (sorry, I'm rosencrantz; he's guildenstern), etc. great costuming choice -- billy wears green except his blue waistcoat; dom wear blue but for his green waistcoat.

their deliveries were nothing short of spectacular. that of course wraps into pacing and chemistry as mentioned above. but I do feel it's worth mentioning again that they're both so good at speaking their lines. they have such rhythm with each other. and of course that's going to happen--they have a podcast, theyre incredibly close friends, but it's so great to see in a setting with predetermined script, predetermined runtime. again, youre watching two friends who are off their minds at a party really Go Through It.

boydmonaghan aside, I had some general issues with the production. they had quite regular sound errors, and made some sound design choices with music and vocal warping/autotune that were not to my taste. there was a cool echo element utilized that I liked a lot. as I mentioned I don't know other productions so I don't know if this is standard practice, but for this one it was quite fun. coin echoing, echoing around the stage when they shouted into the wings to give you that sense of being trapped. when they spoke to the audience space, it felt enormous, and as if they were speaking to you specifically. I just got so distracted by the mic problems and weird autotune.

the autotune moments were exclusive to the hamlet scenes. that brings me to the other actors. the player himself was magnetic. phenomenal. so much presence. emcee cabaret presence. great stuff. hamlet? so lacking imo. he played hamlet very angry and masculine, which is a choice I guess, but not how I like to see hamlet done. it did make some of the intersectional scenes a little jarring; which, I know is not entirely without reason, but it just wasn't my ideal way to play it.

other than the question scene, one of my favorite scenes in the original text of r&g is when they're talking about leaving the stage, and they continue to make excuses not to. "i think he went this way / maybe that way / why don't you come with me it'll be safer / we should try this direction / oh we should actually wait in case he comes back here." the director did skip this dialogue, which I think gives the indication of less agency for r&g. a little less participation, a little more of things happening to them. which is fine. I have no feelings either way of a better way to do it, but that is just the sense I got of it.

the stage is very small, the set is very cramped. lots of overt use of trapped imagery. theyre often crowded into specific space, sitting very close. when they make space, they make SPACE, indicating periods of disagreement. pretty basic staging for this, I'd assume.

outside staging, very cool lighting, although I am generally against scenes with "party lighting." again, not sure what typical lighting is the scenes with the players that got that, but I could have left it out. similarly, we got a scene with "rock" lighting, and I just thought it was too on the nose / in bad taste. arguable how meta you need meta/absurdist work to be ofc but that decision wasn't for me.

the other lighting choices were great. it starts SO dark. I had lower balcony seating and have great vision, but the start spotlight was so soft the two of them were damn fuzzy for me at the beginning. they gradually get more light in the spotlight, and then it expands. there was a great sunrise moment where they turned the Big Warm Light on the audience and it truly felt like a sunrise over me. the final "rosenc--? guilden--? now you see me / now you don't" from billy was beautifully performed. the lights split the stage into two distinct chambers, truly separating r&g for the first time despite any previous physical distance. I did get a little choked up.

(the final hamlet scene that follows jarred me from the emotion a bit because the horatio actor didn't even try at an accent ToT and it was just weirdly red-lit and they came in with the autotune for the Big End of Speech). and I wish they hadn't made it so Intense and Dramatic because they of course we get our time loop / back to the start / they start on "heads!" and it's such a hold-your-breath type moment. boydmonaghan are good enough that it brought me back but damn. (horatio actor please don't skip vocal lessons again.)

and yeah then I skipped stage door because it made me a little uncomfortable and I went home!

I was very lucky to go and I took my lovely wife (who liked it very much despite only having seen hamlet the day before lol). anyway if you can go I highly recommend! I am even considering pulling a @thealogie and going to see if I can scoop some last-minute box office tickets one of my remaining days here.

ask box is of course open for any questions <3

quick edit: I will say, sincerely, the r&g audience was one of the worst audiences I’ve been in. none of these people knew what the fuck was going on. I wanted to eject them all from their seats into the city skyline and have the theatre to myself (+ wife). literally constantly “what” “what is going on” “huh” from around us. go away. mutuals please come see this show so I can sit with you and not next to someone trying to have a y/n when they look at the audience.

edit 2: I think I mentioned but I did have lower balcony seating. I could see well! I think I might have preferred to be a bit closer just for the microexpressions I probably missed, but I would echo others in saying there really were no *bad * seats at all.

edit 3: stage door is out front to the left of the main doors if you're interested. I personally was not (I already have something signed by billy/have met him multiple times, and would prefer to meet dom at a comic con setting because that makes me more comfortable than stage door).

[transmutationisms]

hey! i cant recall the post but you mentioned something about social sciences in quotes recently and i wanted to ask if youd be up to elaborate on it. as in which fields were you referring to and in what sense would you say theyre lacking? sorry if this is too random lol i was just discussing anthropology with a friend (admittedly only as it applies to our own branch of study and our qualms with it) and remembered this

i just always feel compelled to scare-quote that phrase because it's soooo very 19th century positivist to group those disciplines together by appealing to a supposed affinity with the 'natural sciences' lmao. it's also not even really accurate atp because like sociology for example is generally grounded more in like durkheimian and marxist theoretical principles than the positivist 'science of man' concept that comte was talking about when he tried to systematise these disciplinary demarcations. and then something like economics functions very differently because although that term was coined by the physiocrats and nobody really does econ like them anymore, there is still a higher degree generally of affinity to that type of investigation that claims legitimacy for itself by borrowing the language of empiricism and scientific methodology.

so i just find the idea of a coherent category of 'social sciences' to be really misleading and pointlessly deferent to a positivist movement nobody should have taken seriously in the first place. but i do unfortunately still find the phrase sometimes necessary because people usually know which fields you mean by that, largely because at least in french and anglo academia, certain characteristics of that taxonomical scheme have survived in university departmental structures and grant allocations and so forth. (tho with some major exceptions, such as the near-total separation of medicine from 'social sciences' in the anglosohere, and corresponding loss of institutional infrastructure for 'anthropological medicine' and other such approaches that would now usually just be handwaved away as 'interdisciplinary'.)

anyway i wouldn't say as a blanket statement that not being a 'natural science' is a failure of these fields and in fact the pretense to objectivity, empiricism, natural-scientific methods, etc has often been made specifically in the attempt to justify and naturalise colonial exploitation and racism. which is still something that people in these fields really struggle to grapple with and to excise from their work because it's so foundational to the entire raisin d'être of a lot of this work.

[freshlybakedspiderbread]

ive always wanted to talk a bit about how i feel about the connection between Yukari and Merry because i love the endless parallels and thematic connections (like everyone else on the planet 😁), but wondering if it was ever 'worth' it since i may just be spouting a lot of what is already considered 'common knowledge' among hifuu aficionados. Not to mention i think my thoughts on it are somehow both really messy but also crystal clear. 😐 Well whatever! Its my own head anyway so i'll try not to worry and am gonna attempt to elaborate even if just a little on this post, which may not be entirely coherent due to sleepy, post-medicine fatigue.

i feel like over the years i may have started to become reflexively more 'against' yukari = merry fandom, although 'against' is probably too strong and its much more complicated than just "i dont subscribe to that theory" because thats not even entirely accurate!

it is of course a classic and really cool idea of the Merry one day becoming Yukari has been and continues to be thoroughly explored by many many fans for moving, tragic, bittersweet, or thought provoking work. I love Absolute One-Way Street, and also Dream and Reality among many other works like it 📖

but i also think its a little stiffling to think of that as the one and only story to tell about them? Now its possible that the sentiment im about to express isn't actually common and im actually just making up a person to respond to, but i think taking the teasing connections between Yukari and Merry and treating the idea of them being the same individual as the absolute obvious truth is a bit of a limiting perspective.

Of course everyone is entitled to their own opinions and headcanons! but i want to make a case that when it comes to touhou and especially hifuu in particular, there's also a richer (and possibly deliberate on the author? who knows!) point to treat it more abstractly.

Maybe they are the same person. Maybe one day Merry becomes Yukari, or Yukari becomes Merry. Maybe they're different people. Maybe they come from the same lineage. Or maybe one is a clone of the other grown in a lab or made with a magic spell.

None of that is as important to me as the the roles they serve in their stories. touhou has always had themes about the gap and the bridge between fantasy and reality by taking place in a world where fantasy seeks refuge from reality, and hifuu goes much further in that theme by taking place in a reality that has completely left behind fantasy. That parallel is really cool to me and its embodied perfectly by both stories having a purple-clad blonde girl with the means to poking their toes into the boundary between fantasy and reality.

In the fantastical world of touhou, one serves as gensokyo's powerful (if frustrating, shady, annoying, disagreeable) protector with allies that she watches over (and sometimes manipulates) with her great power, all to preserve their little wonderworld. And I think its sooo compelling how zun introduced hifuu in the music cds and designed a very similar-looking character, who lives in a stifled reality lacking in imagination, mostly spends her day chasing after even the smallest traces of dreams with a partner whose own small logical world expanded with infinite possiblities upon their meeting...

In the last few cds, Merry's powers may be growing stronger and i get why feeds the implication she's becoming something other than human. But my take on that has always been its more of a sign that she and Renko are already outliers in their world simply for daring to believe there is more to the world beyond facts and logic. I dont expect their story (assuming zun ever brings them back. we havent heard what theyre up to since 2016....) to ever end with both or either of them becoming a youkai or vanishing to gensokyo, because frankly that wouldn't serve any purpose for the themes hifuu has been about, which is embracing fantasy while living in a world that has abandoned it.

trying to remember what my point with this post is.... Oh right its that I think all these themes about the nature of gensokyo or the state of reality in hifuu are only made richer when you think about how they contrast with one another. And by extension, I think Yukari and Merry are both richer if you think of them as conceptual and thematic counterparts in two different stories on the opposite end of a similar spectrum, before thinking about what literal or objective connection they might have. Subjectivity definitely means more than objectivity in this case!