#analyzing fiction

[smallmartiniolive]

Thinking abt how Jurassic Park is like obviously abt chaos and the evils of mindless capitalism that destroys what it touches for a profit but also it’s abt the people you know? This is coming from the movie standpoint bc the book didn’t really check off the right boxes for me but the movies are just so inherently abt people and connection! To me

I’m gonna just give my thoughts abt mainly dinot3 bc they are something. So special. To me.

Imagine you’re Alan Grant, in love w dinosaurs and being in the field, ur at the top of your game and it doesn’t even matter as long as you get to study what you love. Then, unexpectedly! You get to share this passion and love w another person and part of you doesn’t understand why it works but that’s ok as long you get to dig up dinosaurs and be with her, Dr. Sattler (understandable

Imagine being Dr. Sattler and always chasing after something and wanting more. You find the love of your life and he doesn’t hold you back at all, he’s perfect! You both thrive in your own lanes! You get on a helicopter to who knows where and you meet this exciting new guy, you don’t love him, not like Grant but he’s exciting and new and you feel like he sees you for something you’re not even sure you see yourself

Imagine you’re Ian Malcolm and you’re made aware of people trying to remake dinosaurs and you know it’s impossible but you also know that life finds a way so you go along. You flirt w some paleontologists, have fun, berate the senselessness of the actions around you. I mean what else is there to do. Then, you get a life altering injury that’s gonna bug you forever and the last person you see is a person you hoped you got to save, who is risking his life to save children (I.e. Grant) and then suddenly you’re waking up to the face that saves you (I.e. Sattler).

And through that all, nobody comes out ok! There’s nightmares and injuries and assumedly they’re quarantined in a Costan Rican hospital till everything’s sorted and people are good to go. Alan and Ellie always find each other, planets in orbit etc, and of course Lex and Tim are connected to Alan after everything. The kids cling to them and they protect them, but also they at least have each other and are stronger for it, but it also makes them aware of how awful it would be to be alone right now- Ian Malcolm. So they all spend time together drifting in and out of hospital rooms (most commonly Ian’s bc he can’t move around much) and after all that they’re connected by shared experiences and the knowledge they can’t share. Pandora’s box and all that but they all end up woven together.

They separate but I’m sure it’s apparent that Malcolm ends up alone, not wanting to rely on anyone, especially not his ex-wives and kids cause that would be unfair and even in pain he’s still trying to protect other people. So they end up together again, how could they not? Malcolm needs help, they all do but that’s a touchy topic and it’s easier to focus on what they can see. Alan and Ellie and Ian finish up at the dig and Alan just wants everything to be the same so he can forget and Ian needs the change, but Ellie? She’s not really sure and it leaves her unsteady.

All at the same time you have Malcolm writing his book bc the truth was always what was most important to him, like Alan to dinosaurs. Alan doesn’t want him to ruin his life, and Ellie wants to support him but doesn’t know how but they coexist.

Ian gets better. He leaves w/ Sara a woman he met shortly after the hospital and whom he seems inexplicably fond of having witty banter with. He leaves so that when he publishes his book it doesn’t come down on them, he leaves because Ian Malcolm has never been one to want to settle down and he’s afraid of becoming complacent, that if he stops moving he’ll lose something critical (he’s shark-like, Ian).

And then the digs over and Alan’s ready to throw himself back into another, but Ellie simply isn’t. She gets a teaching position in another state, and Alan doesn’t ask her to stay but by god he wants to (just like he wanted to w Ian although he never had the chance bc he was gone so much quicker) and it’s the biggest mistake he ever makes.

Ellie leaves. Ian reconnects w his kids, reminded by Alan and Ellie how important family is and that hiding only does them a disservice. Alan digs.

They still stay relatively close, stuck in orbit even though they’re separated, they message and mail and spontaneously stop by when they’re in town (Ian). There’s distance but it’s not uncrossable, they’re still there for each other. They still call and those calls never go unanswered, no matter how late.

Ian goes to Isla Sorna and it’s shoved in his face that he’s changed, whether he wanted to or not. He wants something more stable, of course he still wants independence but he also wants to come home to *something* (he misses what he had w Alan and Ellie but he’s trying to avoid that iceberg). Alan and Ellie find out and it’s the beginning of an end, they fly out immediately and check in w him, and stay a few days. But. But Ian didn’t tell them, didn’t tell them abt something so critical to the three of them.

They grow a lil farther apart.

Alan goes back to work. Ian mutually splits w Sara (word is she and Nick have something weird going on when they aren’t traveling the world for respective careers)

Ellie marries Mark, the guy she met while teaching. He made her laugh and was a lil plain but she liked it (reminded her of Alan). Although Mark is different, he brings up kids on the third date and he’s everything she needs right now, he’s stable and kind and his job travels w him so she never has to worry which would take precedence (her or the job). He loves her for her or what she is right now and there’s something in the back of her mind but she loves him and they build a life together.

Ian meets a woman he can settle down with, an intellectual and a perfect mix of Ellie and Alan (although he doesn’t know it) and he settles down too, finally ready for that build-a-family lifestyle that he’s started to want. They have two kids (canon compliant due to the five kids comment in Dominion) probably around Ellie’s kids age, they probably have play dates. Alan doesn’t come around too much but he mails occasionally or helps set up furniture, but he’s undeniably pulling away.

Alan who couldn’t just ask people to stay, is alone and he’s become increasingly aware because of his new grad student. Billy Brennan is a mirror, he’s everything Alan was (admittedly more flirtatious tho) and Alan can’t do anything but nurture it because he wouldn’t even know how to change (because god knows he wants to). So he pulls away and focuses on work and at least w Billy he’s not alone and maybe maybe he can help him get on a better track (his version of accepting defeat)

Of course he doesn’t stop seeing Ellie or visiting w Ian over mail or the occasional spontaneous visit (couldn’t bring himself to) but he pulls away still. During play dates, Ian sneaks looks at Ellie’s calendar and will conveniently tell Alan when Marks out on business ( bc I refuse to believe Alan didn’t visit Ellie even tho Mark first meets him when Charlie is 2 so I believe he snuck on in cus it makes sense you know). Alan loves Ellie’s kids more than himself and probably bought Charlie his dinosaur toys (Ellie groans abt his taste but she knew it would happen and loves him anyway).

And then Alan, who has never really been alone but has isolated himself to that point, gets a chance to see dinosaurs again (he says it’s for the money but dinosaurs are what’s always made sense to him). He gets lost. He’s got no way out. He calls Ellie bc she’s always been his beacon of light, saving grace, Hail Mary etc etc. (Also him bringing Ian up to Eric bc that man has never been normal about *either* of them).

Ellie meets him at the hospital (maybe w Ian who knows) and Alan is made increasingly aware (between yelling and crying and thank gods) that he’s not alone he’ll never be alone as long as they’re around.

And after that they’re sort of ok. They have regular visits and there’s distance but they settle, they try. They bitch abt Jurassic World together and how all the kids they’ve collected are doing. One of Ian’s eldest going into paleontology bc she met Alan Grant at the age of 15 and it altered how she thought academically and Ian is exhausted. Ian and Ellie’s partners don’t really understand it but they also know not to interfere (even if sometimes frantic calls wake them up in the middle of the night).

Alan stays in his ways (hoping for a change but not seeking one).

Ian and his wife have a tiff bc she accused him of loving her bc he loves Alan and Ellie at least at first (still does in a different and perhaps more powerful way than her?) and he can’t lie bc it’s all the truth with him. He says it’s not fair to her to not know that Alan and Ellie are just his people, you get it. She doesn’t, not really, it only ever made sense to the three of them. They divorce but it’s amicable.

Ellie and Mark have been on the rocks for a little, they’re relationship has always been a bit boring but that was never a real problem. However, she wants to go out and do more field work (writing books was great but she’s ready for a change bc the world turns quick but she’s always moved faster). He wants to have an at home life and one thing spirals to another. She chose him bc he’d never need to choose between anything and she wouldn’t either, they could both have everything and he’s a great guy, but. But now she needs a change and once again she’s left in a situation where someone can’t bend for her, so she breaks it. They divorce and it’s heartbreaking, they love each other, but Ellie has always needed some flexibility (she calls Alan and Ian later on and they drop plans to have dinner together, she doesn’t bring up the break up but she does note how they changed things for *her*, it’s nice maybe they changed)

Maybe they’ve all changed a lil you know? Ian travels, lectures, makes connections, and visits w the people he loves. Ellie writes paper after amazing paper after amazing book between field work. Alan digs. They communicate in academic papers and books that they send each other, their love notes are annotations that feel a lil too raw so they’re kept private. Every new paper and book and interview fuels the three of them forward and keeps them in orbit. Despite everything.

Then, Ian is hired by Biosyn (Ellie encourages it a bit bc she doesn’t trust them, Alan discourages it for the same reason). And then they’re back, they are SO back. They come together to fight against what they’ve always had to fight against, it’s a lil exhausting but they have each other. Through it all it’s always them. Every single time. Alan and Ellie meet and see each other like they don’t see anyone else. It’s a little unfair to Ian because they’re prepared and his entire world gets flipped for a second when he sees them (it’s ok he recovers pretty quick). They fall in step, into old conversations and patterns.

And between taking down Biosyn and avoiding dinosaurs they all kind of fall in love, not again bc it’s always been that way for them but it’s just so so apparent. They can’t give each other up and everytime they look at each other there’s comfort and understanding without words. It was easier to deny a part but now they are here and it’s just so. Perfect

Ellie tells Alan she needs to go, she’s always been too fast for this world, Alan tells her he’ll stay which is the best love declaration she could have asked for.

Ian says he needs to tell the truth, he’s always had to, and they say “we’ll be with the you, we will tell the truth with you.” You know and that’s their love declaration, Thats them asking him to stay, to be with them.

And at the end of it all, Alan says in the end he’d just rather not be lonely again, and Ian and Ellie look at him like he’s absurd bc of course he’s stuck w them now. It’s always been them even if they didn’t realize it

OH MY GOD LOOOOONG POST IM SORRY IM NOT NORMAL AT ALL HAHA. Dinot3 is something I’m not normal about because look at their stories!! Look at how through everything they fit together!! They are in Montana somewhere rn having a beer and laughing abt something silly one of them did and talking abt their collective kiddos.

TLDR; just my thoughts on DINOT3 and just their canon timeline and how it’s always been those three.

[risetherivermoon]

i dont really like it when people dumb down Curly's characterization to just the guy enabling Jimmy. I get that that makes it easier to not like him, so that's why a lot of people do that, because they feel guilty about sympathizing with someone who's done smth fucked up like that, but i really don't think it's giving Curly the justice he deserves.

regardless of if you like him as a person or not, Curly is still a victim and he suffered greatly at Jimmy's hand. Just because he did something fucked up doesn't make him a 'monster' (sorry because i saw someone say that he looks like a monster post-crash and thats sticking with me because why TF are we saying disabled burn victims look like LITERAL MONSTERS- yall use some common sense I BEG)

Dumbing down characters is what fandom does best, but i think it particularly irks me in Mouthwashing because of the nature of the story. Jimmy already thinks of the rest of the crew poorly and doesn't see them for how they really are, we don't need to be doing that too.

I also feel like people don't really recognize the fact Jimmy manipulates and abuses Curly too, even before the crash. What Curly did was fucked up but for the love, don't dumb him down to just this one thing he did.

[gnomeniche]

you Will read 3d workers island. it’s so detailed and rich. it captures an atmosphere of old internet rumors and creepypasta very well WHICH ties into the narrative’s themes of what outsiders see/don’t see in familial abuse situations + interpreting media and seeing a reflection of one’s experiences

i love the open-endedness about what is real or fiction. it works thematically whether you choose to see the creepiness as real or a rumor, whether the program is alive or not. i also love that even if nothing nefarious is there it’s still meaningful to the people who see themselves in amber

[potatobugz]

eek! scary!

[dotcircledot]

just small thoughts on how i think their established relationship would be like

[transmechanicus]

The extent of the left wing politics you see in a Terry Pratchett book are introductory and are not a replacement for in-depth political theory, it looks just as silly to constantly be referencing Discworld abt capitalism as it does to be referencing The Hunger Games, you do still have to read other books!!

[guardian-angle22]

I know Carlos is still very much processing his grief and burying himself in his work and the search for his father's killer. But there's something about when he's talks with Mr. Soup Man about Gabriel being an "insufferable pain in the ass" and the way he smiles and laughs in response...

One of the tasks of grieving is learning to laugh and smile again when you're thinking about your loved one... and this feels like a small touch of healing to me.

[pipsqueakparker]

i’ve not seen anyone talk about this yet, so i’m gonna… looking at apology tour, i’d like to present that

this scene:

and this scene:

are direct parallels of each other

we see both of them like ALMSOT GETTING IT, you’re almost there bb, you see that you done buffed it.

the difference being that blitz is the king of self-sabotaging, and stolas is, well, royal — which in itself is reflecting what their issues are.

blitz’s whole thing is internal, it’s coming from his trauma, it’s his own sense of self-worth aiding in this blockade between them. HE SAYS IT, and then he dismisses it all because that’s what he does.

stolas is also wrong - he did fail to recognize his own issues, he failed to recognize that their deal with the grimoire was wrong (at first), he’s failed to recognize how the way he’s spoken to blitz or about blitz or other imps is Not Okay, he’s failed to recognize the power imbalance between them essentially. there’s a LOT that he got wrong, and for this split second mid-song he Gets It - just like Blitz did for a second during their argument. But, his pressuring factors arent internal. they’re external. verosika & tex literally pull him back on track with his sad ballad and put the blame back on blitz - which makes sense considering she’s holding an anti-blitz party. she’s projecting. but we’ve seen examples of external, societal forces that influence stolas to stay blind to all of this - he’s reprimanded for bowing to blitz as a child, we see how the other goetia or demons higher up the totem pole feel and talk about imps. verosika in that moment is reflecting how stolas’s lack of growth or personal development or whatever you wanna call it is in large part due to outside forces telling him who he is and how to act.

and both these fools are gonna have to work through those so they can be together

anyway. just thought that was really lovely writing, these parallel so well & i really love that

[canisalbus]

Which is your favorite platform? (of the ones you have accounts to post things I mean. I can't imagine it being Instagram since you don't really post there which honestly fair)

Tumblr, Twitter (X?) bluesky? Something else?

I think I'm going to have to go with tumblr, and it's not just because we're here. Twitter and Bluesky are nice and my experiences on both are overwhelmingly positive. But tumblr has an atmosphere that encourages originality, sharing your creations and talking about things in depth.

[stars-obsession-pit]

What do blob ghosts do?

Blob ghosts as filter feeders or cleaners of the Zone is a common trope.

But what does that mean? Like, ecologically speaking.

What are the impurities they’re filtering out, and what do they do with them?

The idea of ectoplasm “going rancid” over time sometimes appears in DP x DC fics as an explanation for Lazarus Water, but what does that actually imply?

Would it mean ectoplasm just generally breaks down with time and the blob ghosts repair it somehow?

But if we assume that the cleaned ecto can now be used by ghosts again, then doesn’t that imply that the blob ghosts are spending energy to do that (since they’re returning it to a state with stored potential energy other ghosts can then consume)? If that is the case, what’s the source of their energy?

Or maybe the impurities are something actually mixed into the ectoplasm. I can think of two possibilities - “pollution” from the emotions people give off or material from the living world. If that’s the case, the blob ghosts would just be improving the ectoplasm by separating the substances. There’s no “supplying energy” problem since they could spend some of that ectoplasm’s energy in the process and still excrete the rest in a more usable state.

This also then raises the peripheral question of “what happens when they’re exposed to that substance in other situations?”

Like if they drain emotions, that would be helpful with cases of festering emotions, but it would be harmful in other situations from the exact same process - taking away the healthy emotions and leaving someone depressed/numb.

Or with the material from the living realm option, what happens if they enter the living realm where the material is everywhere but ectoplasm is scare? Could they physically even take it in without enough ectoplasm present? If they can take it in, would the process damage whatever it is they’re munching on or would it be left unharmed? If it does damage it, how much destruction would they leave behind? Also, would the high concentration of living realm material become lethally toxic over time as they take in too much?

Also, what happens to the stuff they’ve filtered out? If it’s emotions I could easily see it just kinda dissipating or being digested, but what about material from the physical world? If it’s bad for ghosts, they probably can’t just let it build up inside them forever, right?

So do they excrete it as a waste product? What happens to it then? If they’re just releasing particles of the material out into the Zone, could it build up later and cause further effects? What would those effects be? Or maybe they bind the material into a more stable state that won’t harm other ghosts - but again, what happens to it after? Does it have any unique effects that influence the Zone’s environments? Can the material eventually make its way back to the living world?

Or maybe they genuinely can digest the material, having a special metabolic system that allows them to turn it into ectoplasm. If so, that might have implications for the relationship between worlds; it’d mean material from the living realm(s) actually supplies at least some of the ectoplasm in the Ghost Zone. Which actually could make thematic sense cosmologically - the state of heat death when all the usable energy in a universe is expended would potentially involve all material having moved to the Ghost Zone, the universe itself joining the realm of the dead.

…Heck, what even is ectoplasm????

[wonder-worker]

Wild how we know that Elizabeth Woodville was officially appointed to royal councils in her own right during her husband’s reign and fortified the Tower of London in preparation of a siege while 8-months pregnant and had forces gathering at Westminster “in the queen’s name” in 1483 – only for NONE of these things to be even included, let alone explored, in the vast majority of scholarship and historical novels involving her.

[the-necromancer-wife]

The moment I get my hands on the full story of this event im going to make a full analysis. Im counting the days.

[lonestardust]

my comfort show *stresses me the fuck out*

[musicalmoritz]

I was skimming through my old Soukoku fics and LMAO Chuuya chill out

[hexedwinchester]

Angry Sam is Sexy Sam

What I love about Sam's anger is that he doesn't bottle and bitter it up. More often than not, Sam is the one to let go and give people second chances (notice that Dean doesn't). Neither does he hold grudges (Dean absolutely does). I have read a lot of comments that say Sam represses his anger which is unhealthy. The screencaps above, that's not repressed anger. He is literally angry and what caused that anger is something way beyond his control or his scope of forgiveness, so his anger erupts like a volcano.

[llawlieta]

I love L outsourcing his moral compass to Soichiro