#am I making any sense?

[greenfiend]

You have to stop the world…

Just to stop the feeling…

[david-talks-sw]

I will say that I'm starting to notice a pattern around the approach taken with some live-action Star Wars content.

To give you an idea...

Let's say they announce something called "Dooku - A Star Wars Story".

It wouldn't be too far-fetched to assume it'll be about Count Dooku, maybe about his rise and fall. Former Jedi, evil Sith Lord, you'd expect lightsaber fights galore, him leaving the Jedi, or training under Yoda, training Qui-Gon, studying the Dark Side, stuff like that, y'know?

And instead... instead it would be a story set in the 2-3 years between him leaving the Jedi Order and becoming a Sith Acolyte, and focuses majorly around him getting used to be the Count of Serenno, trying to fight off corrupt bureaucrats and/or pirates/bandits from getting their hands on Serenno and finally, at the end, joining Sidious.

Yoda might make a cameo, Sidious would for sure, but the story's main cast would be a young fish-out-of-water POV character for the audience, the butler of Chateau Serenno, Dooku's sister, a disposable baddie and maybe his political rivals in the House of Lords or something. No one of consequence.

See what I mean?

And I'm specifying "live-action" because I think there's a different approach taken with these stories when they're in live action. Example:

Boba Fett is a bounty hunter. You'd expect a series about him to be centered on that. But nope... let's NOT be predictable, let's make him, I dunno, a crime boss... but not a Peaky Blinders type of crime boss, that'd be too obvious, no let's make him Don Corleone but like 10x softer. See? Now, we're shaking the system! Nobody could've predicted we'd focus on this specific aspect! Fresh, original! AKA quality stuff!

And I know they were going for a decent story, I've already broken it down here. But sometimes, some of this stuff is just straight-forward and seeing them NOT tick those boxes is baffling.

And it's not just an approach Lucasfilm takes, it's all studios.

For instance, the "this superhero needs to spend the whole film in civilian clothing until they earn their costume/powers/name" trope is also a result of this approach.

[incognit0slut]

Every time I read fanfiction I always wonder am I in love with this character or am I in love with the author’s interpretation of said character? Do you get what I mean??? Like yes, I grow more delusional but I’m delusional because of their perception on how they view the character we both feel connected with? DO YOU GET WHAT I MEAN?

And it’s interesting to me how we (the majority) are women, obsessed with a male character, but seek fiction of them who are also written by women.

Men written by women are truly the best.

[ohhamlet-art]

tearing your guts out. can anyone hear me.

[michelle-ma-cherie]

i think it is so telling that both Rafa and Roger wanted their last tournament to be a team event

[fancygremlin]

Aesop's fable of "The Woodcutter and the Trees" being used to understand the dynamic between Arthur and John for season two, while also presenting the themes for the season is such a genious move that I am back analysing it again.

In summary: Arthur is the axe, the one that brings harm to the forest because he doesn’t understand it and is afraid of being hurt himself. He is the axe because he is the person that directly caused harm to the King in Yellow by influencing John and making him stray away from the KiY ideals and duties.

John is the handle, the Dreamlands are his home even if his memories are limited (and from the looks of it, upsetting) of his time there. He is the handle because he is part of this world and he is the only reason Arthur is even able to access this place.

John was welcomed back to his home, offered his title and his status back, the King in Yellow was more than willing to make him whole again…

However, John is pushed away and placed back in Arthurs body.

The King in Yellow cast him aside because John was no longer aligned with his ideals. He changed too much to go back to who he was. He is a fragment that doesn’t fit anymore where it’s supposed to. He is no longer welcome back in the Dreamlands because he fraternised with Arthur, an intruder, someone who corrupted him so profoundly John is unrecognisable by his own family and home.

John brought his own demise onto himself.

The forest is endless and is not letting them out because they did welcome their old friend (John) back, but they are not forgiving him. The woods are lonely and want their friend back. John needs to repent, to ask for forgiveness and to show he doesn’t mean harm if he wants to move forwards.

The woods do let Arthur and John leave after they offer a bite of their pinky. It’s interesting how John did not hesitate and immediately gave his (left) hand as an offering. After all, this is his home, his domain. John once ruled the Dreamlands and its woods... now he is no longer recognised by his own home. So he must give a part of himself back... give them a farewell so that they can let him leave and move on.

As John states, Arthur does not understand the rules of the forest or how the Dreamlands work. It is John's decision to make, it is John's repentance, not Arthur's.

Maybe, I think, there’s something about finding solace and acceptance as well: by giving a part of himself to the place he once called home, John makes a permanent connection that makes him still part of it despite the changes he went through and will continue to go through. In return, the woods accept him and welcome him back despite his intentions.

Less pertinent to the scene above, but I also wanted to mention something more here.

The black roots of the pinky and the left harm being quite visible are also quite symbolic in terms of John’s character in the later seasons. As previously suggested, in season two, the roots are symbolic for John making peace with the woods.

I think that in season three, John is trying very hard to distance himself further from his identity as the King in Yellow, while in season four he is struggling to come to terms with two very contrasting parts that make him himself. On one side there’s his human side that was cultivated from his time modulating and learning from Arthur; while on the other side, there’s his “true nature”, the one he was born into and was favoured while he was the King in Yellow.

Throughout his character development in season two, three and four, these two contrasting parts seem to always be at odds. John struggles to balance them out.

The black roots and the pinky finger acted as very visible reminder to John that no matter how much he changed or tried to ignore his “true nature”, he could not escape it. That is to say: he must embrace both of his sides and accept that he is more than the sum of these two parts. I think that season five might be the time for him to do so.

[roxannepolice]

Getting stuff out of my system so maybe I can sleep. So obviously I loved The Giggle and loved the Toymaker, but as a Thoschei shipper I can't express how important it is to me how impersonal the Toymaker was about the whole thing and while my dreams of old men making out have not been realied, the ghost of the Master hanging over the episode really emphasised that. Like, welcome home cheater jokes are great and I was getting lowkey irritated by how both the fans and the writers were making ALL of the Master's actions about the Doctor.

But I was also worried that with a campy game loving villain that would also have a love hate obsession with and resentment for the Doctor, RTD would basically say behold the Master only +++ this obviously had nothing to do with CC giving the Doctor a literal speech about being better than the Master introducing a Dia de los Muertos villain that has soooo much history with the Doctor but is also soooo very powerful and then reiterating that the Master hates themself and only wants to be the Doctor but can't because of essentialism posing as existentialism. nothing whatsoever.

But no. Again, I am a bit tired of the Master being presented mainly as not-Doctor and I do think that if Ten didn't timelock the Tardis, they wouldn't have chosen their pet planet specifically, but compare Saxon's No. This is my turn. Revenge. Best. Served. Hot. to the Toymaker's cold Best of three. Compare the Master drawing pleasure from playing Satan the accuser about humans-turned-toclafane to the Doctor specifically because it's their pet species to the Toymaker being himself attracted to humans because of their nature sth sth Johan Huizinga sth sth homo ludens and play as the foundation of culture sth sth 2001: SO with bone and ball sth sth murder as kickstarter of culture and play as kickstarter of culture. Look at Ten's addendum of If that's what you want to the offer he makes the Master in s3, emphasising that he wants to understand what is it that the latter is after, and at Fourteen's certainty that the Toymaker really is only after games.

Don't get me wrong, I'm far from throwing monogamy at either the Doctor or the Master and they probably both made out with the Toymaker, both individually and menage a trois. But if after literal weeks of holding my breath for an actual cameo I leave the episode fully sated after a gold tooth and laughing sounds and people from outside my Davy Jones' Locker stuck ghost ship notice it too, then I'd say RTD did some really good job hanging the Master's ghost over the story. And that was not just to fan serve. It also made a point about the differences between those relationships.

[daydreamerwonderkid]

I slept for 11 hrs straight and Idk how to explain it but somehow water tastes like the finest wine and my body is trying to convince me I'm a devout divine worshipping alcoholic.

[asteroidtroglodyte]

Thinking about the concept of Memetic Hazards and Memetic Weaponry in the SCP-verse. Thinking about the Antimemetics Division. About living ideas; ideas that feed and propagate and multiply and evolve.

Thinking about Gods; the stories we tell that influence our behavior, these narratives that shape the logic behind personality. The spirits that needn’t be real for horrors to be committed in their name.

Thinking about the parasitic worm of Fascism working its way through Civilization, finding itself fat and comfortable both in the hallucinogenic kaleidoscope of Hinduism and the austere purity of Protestantism.

Thinking about Snow Crash; the origin of the term Avatar in its modern usage, about the villain who weaponized language to hijack people’s nervous systems with gospel and computers.

About the holographic model of the cosmos. The holographic model of the mind. The natural laws as a kind of operating system for reality. The implications of miracles in such a context; what nature of being undermines the code.

Living Ideas. Gods that cannot die, because they were never alive, but are like Life, living as a signal in the air, a song or a story; a pattern of lights, the printed page, the phone; Viruses in the Operating System of Civilization. Self-propagating, mutating, evolving.

I dunno. I can’t find the right words to express it. But. There’s a. Pattern. There’s a signal in the static. I can hear it, but I can’t pick the notes apart. But. There’s an Insight, wedged into the crack. There’s something True lodged in there.

I’ll sleep on it. That usually helps.

[ridasart]

But no amount of grooming, of cleaning, of polishing, could erase the gaunt woman she had been, more animal than human, with dirty hair so tangled they’d had to cut most of it off.

…

She raised her gaze from the top of his head and looked again in the mirror, where a rag-clothed, filthy, bony woman with empty eyes the color of a still lake stared back at her.

Wild Sign by Patricia Briggs

[eldritch-vibe]

so! new theory about my current favorite fictional homosexual- Rosty Nowman. we all know by now that he has some kind of connection to Elfie, with the popular theory being that he's a kind of genderbent clone.

I don't like this theory. It leaves a sour taste in my mouth, as he is pretty distinctly his own character and person within the series. this theory takes away his agency in the story, and while I can see how him being a mask for Elfie can be appealing to some the idea it might be true leaves me feeling vaguely disappointed. besides---he's already somewhat a victim of the "bury your gays" trope from what I've heard (haven't gotten to that part yet). taking everything else from him would make him feel hollow, as opposed to the mysterious and affectionate queer-coded roommate that I love.

In lieu of this theory I strive to propose an alternate. we all know by now his name is a pun on "frosty the snowman". this is often used as evidence for the previous theory, as (pretty famously) frosty the snowman was a snowman brought to life by magic. I'd like to take the parallels further than that. what if he was a creation of ice and snow, but just like frosty he had a vibrant personality of his own? the ice clones are only the first of twelve spells, and it stands to reason Elfie could have experimented further with creating ice homunculi.

I don't have the time as of now to collect solid evidence, but I feel like this satisfies every part of me against the popular theory and explains many of the same things the popular theory does. Rosty is still his own person, but he could have still been created by Elfie in an attempt to keep Will safe. it would also explain the connections between Rosty and Elfie, at least somewhat.

it also creates an interesting character dynamic---how do you act when you were made as an act of love for another person, meant to keep them safe, happy, and loved? do you feel jealous? do you wish you were your creator when you learn how much your person loves them?

generally, I think this theory is a lot funner. it also makes me imagine Rosty in a Frankenstein costume which I may or may not realize.

[konjkitkatty]

god there is something just so perfectly pleasant about planet wisp’s music (no not the colors ultimate remixes, i think we all have collectively agreed that the remixes are bad. objectively bad. bad remixes. doesn’t fit planet wisp at all.)

there is something so ear-gratingly wonderful playing through what is supposed to be a lush, heavily forested environment with calm piano music, but just as immediately as your eyes are greeted with the landscape being suffocated by mechanical engineering, the serene piano is suffocated by a wicked bass line that slowly builds on itself and overwhelms the more serene instruments until its melody is warped just as the landscape is- warped into something eggman prefers- and i think that is just fucking beautiful storytelling that i’m not nearly eloquent enough to fully explain. It just works. sonic colors, you weren’t the best sonic game by a long shot but you gave me planet wisp and i thank you.

[frankiebirds]

ive had this thought rattling around in my brain for a thousand years but i wanted to wait until i got to diana's introduction to share it. do you ever think about how reid's life would have changed if he'd had any siblings? particularly younger ones?

how it would have changed the kind of person he became, how much worse the parentification would have been. how much more of a scumbag it would have made his father. if he had custody or if he lost them to the system or to family he barely knew (whenever i think about this sort of au i always think of the first, maybe because the latter two are just Too Real). do you ever think about it. i do.

[maranull]

can't explain it properly unfortunately, but

something about Meli's fire being connected to life and the world in general with how often her butterflies are found and how often they are next to campfires

something about how the theme of her character is life and hope and her being a fire (or rather a spark) in the darkness

[ghostly-pigeon]

Am I the only one who thought the The Captain becoming Kitty’s Fairy Godmother in the panto kinda showed Kitty’s relationship not just with him but with Mary? Like Fanny having to double up (even though there were “extra” roles like Buttons which could have probably been removed) shows there is a gap left behind by Mary. Furthermore, had Mary been there, she would have been cast as the Fairy Godmother as she is the most motherly (nylkies and all that). So The Captain stepping in shows that he’s now that support for Kitty and that he’s her best friend and I love them <3

[deepspace-letters]

i am not trying to sound like a hater or anything so I'm clarifying this before that I'm in no way hating but it's just genuine curiosity. Isn't mc supposed to be everyone of who plays the game then isn't making a single account of mc kinda weird because mc is everyone of us?

i assume this is about the MC ask blog, yeah?

by your logic babe, then that one singular account can exist too, right? it's someone's MC's interpretation too, isn't it? and i have to argue that the MC rp account is actually the closest we have to a canon MC, devoid of personal headcanons and whatnot. hence the MC ask blog not even having a proper name.

at the end of it all, though, it is all just fun and games. you are always welcome to make your own accounts (whether it be another MC or another Zayne, for example). it's just that the group linkon playground seems to have found their own little community with each other